by William Henry Wills (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.2 #38 (14 Dec 1850).
When I became incumbent of the parochial district of St. Barnabas, Copenhagen Lanes, I lodged in Peppermint Place. It was then creeping its way into the fields, with the apparent determination not to stop till it had reached Highgate. The brick-and-mortar invasion had extended to two ranks of houses, which were then in all conditions, from neat snug finish, to cheerless rooflessness. When I went to take the rooms in number one, on a drizzling afternoon, my landlord was pleased to assure me, while sweeping his arm out of a back window over a landscape in the last stage of damp decay, that the situation was "uncommonly cheerful." The view consisted of a few dismantled garden allotments; a superannuated summer-house was lying in an attitude of utter despondency against a deserted pigsty; bunches of drooping hollyhocks, broken down by the weight of their misfortunes, wept rain-drops; patches of the cabbage and other greens were sicklied over with the pale cast of lime and mortar; and tulips struggled up out of their beds between brick-bats, in the last agonies of strangulation. This uncommonly "cheerful situation" was finished off in the back ground by a damp and ragged hedge; the whole presenting a vivid tableau of the insatiable Ogre, Town, swallowing up the passive, pastoral, Country.
The chief attraction from my sitting-room was a clayey slough, in which a constant succession of brick-carts were continually stuck during all the working hours of the day; yet the boundary to this prospect was far from uninviting. Several of the opposite houses were finished and inhabited. The neatest and prettiest of them was that immediately facing my room. If window curtains were ever made of woven snow, that must have been the material of those at the first-floor window of that modest habitation;—they were so white and transparent. There was such variety in their arrangement: so much taste in the disposition of the crocuses and snow-drops in the window-sill; such evident pleasure taken in concealing the wires of the bird cage in impromptu arbours, now of geranium, now of myrtle, or else by an intertwining of cut primroses—that I was irresistibly reminded of one of those charming little cottage windows in the scenes of a French vaudeville. Nor was this impression weakened when I occasionally espied—but very seldom—between the rows of bob-fringe that dangled merrily from the curtains, the face of a lovely brunette, framed in bandeaux of jet hair, and illuminated by a pair of piercing black eyes.
What busy eyes they were! Though I seldom saw them, I could see what they were doing all day long; for, every thing being dark, as if to correspond to them, (their owner was in mourning), I could observe the plainer how the little lady in black employed herself behind the film of white curtain. She was incessantly bending over a frame, and I could guess, from the motion of the arm nearest the window, that she embroidered, or did something of that sort, all day long. Now and then the hand appeared to move higher than the frame, and I supposed, from the angle of the elbow, that she was pressing it against her over-wrought eyes. Poor girl!—No wonder if they ached; for, from morning till evening, every day, except Sundays, during all that cold and cheerless spring, she was to be seen in busy motion. Except on Sunday mornings—I suppose to go to church—she never went abroad; and no other living soul was ever observed in her room.
In the course of months, my observations of the captivating SILHOUETTE—so I had nicknamed the little black profile—were more frequent than polite. The delicious little gauze of mystery which half-veiled her, piqued my curiosity; and I could safely indulge in it, as my draperies were much less aerial than hers. Though the east wind blew with continued intensity, and it was quite an effort to leave one's fireside, she was never, during daylight, away from her window. Sometimes I could distinguish that she paused, leant her head on her hand, and gazed with earnest intensity directly under where I sat. Then, as if suddenly caught in the act, she would turn like lightning to her frame, and the little black arm would move up and down with unusual rapidity. There was a curious circumstance connected with these fits of abstraction and starts of work: I remarked that they happened inversely to the proceedings of my clever young landlord below (an in-layer, carver, and cabinet-maker); for, during the moments of my Silhouette's fascination, his saw, his chisel, or plane, or hammer were in full and noisy operation; and it was exactly at the instant that either of these tools were laid down and the sound ceased, that my little lady resumed her work. I was convinced one morning that this coincidence was no mere fancy. I had by this time got used to the noises in the shop below, and could distinguish, on the forenoon referred to, that friend Bevil was making, at each stroke of his plane, very long shavings. While trying to guess, from the sounds, the length of the plank he was smoothing, I observed the damsel opposite tracing an embroidery pattern against the glass. The tracing goes on well enough for awhile; but, presently, the left-hand is lifted to the little head, the tip of the elbow rests against the window-frame, the tracing hangs against the glass by the point of the pencil held in the other hand; and the black eyes pour their rays straight into the window below me. The long shavings are turned off with vigorous regularity; but, hark!—the plane is suddenly arrested half way!—and see, the tracing and pencil instantaneously drop from the glass opposite, and the piquant little artist vanishes like magic from the window. Presently the planing goes on again with a slow and pensive irregularity that makes me feel quite low-spirited.
Although mine was a pastoral as well as an ecclesiastical charge of the St. Barnabas district, and I was bound to watch over my flock, yet it may be said that such close scrutiny of my neighbours as that which I have confessed was scarcely dignified in a clergyman; but it must be remembered that what I have here brought together in a short space was spread over several months. Nor did the arduous duties of a new district admit of much idle window gazing. My church was only a temporary one, and I made it my business to call, in succession, on my parishioners, not only to make myself personally acquainted with each, but to invite them to worship. I began this mission at home; for, although my landlord's mother was a regular attendant at church, the son never once made his appearance within its walls.
Old Mrs. Bevil was a large old lady of painfully timid temperament, whose existence was passed in one of the sunken kitchens, and whose mission on earth was apparently to cook glue for her son, vouchsafing any of the time to be spared between the steaming of the pots in attendance upon me. One Saturday morning I expressed my regret to her that so excellent and industrious a son should appear to be negligent to his Sabbath duties.
"He isn't!" said Mrs. Bevil, sidling towards the door, and feeling, with a hand outstretched behind her, for the handle.
I should mention that Mrs. Bevil was so much "put out" when spoken to by anyone above her in station, that when you showed symptoms of engaging her in talk, she winced and made artful efforts to escape—like a child when a dentist exhibits his instruments.
"What church does he go to?"
"French Protestant."
"Indeed! then he is conversant with French!"
Mrs. Bevil had by this time found the door-knob, and had turned it. Her confusion was so great, that her face—never very pale—glowed like a live coal.
"Of course," I repeated, "as your son attends a French place of worship, he understands French."
In the midst of her bewilderment Mrs. Bevil stammered,
"Yes—French polishing."
I dared not smile, lest the ignorant old sours shame should overwhelm her; so in order to appear to change the subject without actually doing so, I asked if she knew anything of the mysterious young lady opposite?
The old woman curtseyed herself backwards into the opening of the door, and having felt that retreat was practicable, she said, "Please Sir; no, Sir;" and vanished with the rapidity of a mouse, let out of a lion's cage.
It was not difficult to guess why young Bevil preferred the French church to my own. I had never doubted that the charming embroideress opposite was a foreigner. She worshipped in a language she understood best; and her admirer—more in obedience to his silent passion than his spiritual duties—followed her thither to worship her. On expatiating one day, however, on the sinfulness of Sabbath-breaking, he partially disarmed me by owning that he had been assiduously learning French in order to understand and join in the service. I made not the slightest allusion to the charming
Silhouette; for I saw from his nervous and blushing manner, that it was too deep an affair with him to be lightly touched. I ascertained that although he saw his adored daily, and followed her weekly to church, he had never had courage to speak to her, or to address her in any way whatever.
My interest in this absorbing case of silent love deepened daily. I pitied young Bevil. Supposing, after he had proceeded to the extremity of avowed courtship, his idol should prove a wicked little French coquette, and jilt him? Such a presentiment did not want foundation. Although the summer had arrived—and warmer, more congenial weather I never remember—the Silhouette disappeared entirely from behind the fairy curtains. During all the cold weather, when she must have shivered to sit there, she was never absent; but now, when the window is the only endurable part of a room, she is utterly invisible. Is she skilfully manœuvring Love's delicate, sensitive telegraph, conscious that she has secured her victim; and now, after the manner of finished coquettes, does she leave him to pine in the throes of hopeless despair? Or, doubts she the truth and ardency of his love, as expressed by his silent watchings of her window, and by his regular church-goings; and does she disappear from his longing, loving looks to lure him to the overt act—a verbal declaration? If the latter, her tactics will fail. Young Bevil's passion is not a mere flash of romance; it is earnest and practical. He does not stand idly gazing, and sighing, and hoping, and despairing. The more he loves the harder he works. Until he has placed himself in a position to speak to her with confidence as to the future, he will be silent.
Here I am probably asked, how could I know all this? I answer, from substantial evidence. When one sees a man running a race, it is certain that there is, far or near, a goal. Young Bevil raced manfully, and the winning-post he kept in view was matrimony. Early and late his tools were audible, not only to obtain capital in money, but to provide property of his own handy-work. When I first took his lodgings, they were scantily furnished; but the rooms were rapidly filled up; evidently not for my use and pleasure. The capacious tea-caddy, curiously inlaid and splendidly mounted, did not signify much to me; neither was I ever likely to require the Gothic work-table that I found one evening slid, as if by accident, into a recess; and to what earthly use could a bachelor in lodgings put that frame on swivels, studded all round with cribbage-pegs, that looked like a swing-cheval without its glass? In short, every addition to the garniture of the apartments was of the feminine gender. I looked upon these novelties as so many notices to quit; for I did not doubt that the rooms were being quietly prepared for a more cherished occupant. This supposition was confirmed, when, curiosity prompting me to examine the work-table, I saw, exquisitely inlaid in cypher on the inside of the lid, the word "Manette."
All this while, the Silhouette remained obstinately invisible. For a few Sundays she continued to go to church, but so thickly veiled that a sight of her face was impossible. Still he followed; but refrained from speaking. The time had not come. He would not offer his rough but honest hand while yet without a home to which it could lead her. Poor Bevil had soon to live on not only in silent, but in sightless, despair; the little black profile ceased to appear not only behind her snowy transparencies, but bodily on Sundays. From this time Bevil's intelligent, but sad and thoughtful features struck me with pity; I could not but see that he was staking his hopes—his very existence—on a cast, which might turn up a deadly blank.
On one occasion, my hopes revived for him. It was towards the close of a lovely summer's day. The whiteness of the gossamer curtains made them dazzle in the sun. The figure in black approached; and after a hesitating interval appeared in distinct outline close behind the gauze. All this while, the sharp cuts of Bevil's chisel were audible in busy succession under me. The Silhouette's eyes only, appeared just above the short curtain, darting a long, devouring gaze upon the toiler: they were red; a handkerchief was pressed closely to her face. The chisel goes on chipping away, without one intermission. I would give a quarter's stipend if Bevil would only be idle for a second, and look up; for as the gazer strains her eyes upon him, tears pour out of them, and sparkle in the sun like falling diamonds. Presently she sinks into a chair, as if overcome with grief; and disappears. With this anguish, whatever its immediate cause, I felt certain that Bevil was connected.
"Surely this mystery is not impenetrable. I will unravel it." Accordingly, next morning I took our opposite neighbours out of the regular order of my visits, called, and questioned the woman who rented the house. I learnt that the girl's name was Manette. She was an orphan: her father, a French teacher, had died recently in a hospital. Her embroidery was fetched and carried to and from the warehouse by my informant's husband. Her industry was extraordinary, and she earned a comfortable subsistence. I asked to see her, but was told she admitted no person whatever into her room. Of late, especially, she concealed her face, with an apparent dread of being recognised by strangers.
My inquiries, therefore, darkened rather than cleared up the mystery. As I left the house, I observed that my landlord had been watching. He looked wistfully into my face as I passed him on the door-step, and I answered his silent appeal by desiring him to follow me to my room.
A very short conversation proved that all my observations and deductions had been correctly made. He owned everything. It was painful to see a fine, muscular, handsome man, suffused with the shame—honest shame though it was—trembling with the weakness we only expect from young impulsive girls. I reasoned with him. I showed him the full risk he ran in nurturing so perfect an ideal out of a mere image; for to him Manette was nothing more. I pointed out the utter uselessness of his self-imposed penance. She might be all he thought her; she might be everything the reverse. How could he know without some acquaintance-ship? It would be madness to give rashly a pledge of matrimony without some probation.
In the end he promised to try and see Manette the following day; and, descending to his shop, worked away harder than ever.
Even now I see Bevil as, next morning he stood at the door opposite. His lips quiver; but his brow expresses a firm but anxious purpose. The woman who admits him tells him something which surprises and disappoints him. Manette, for the first time for a month, has gone out.—The next day was Sunday, and the lover abstained from intruding himself. On the Monday he had as little success. In the evening he consulted me as to what he had better to. Should he write?
I advised him by no means to commit himself; and offered, if he would wait, I would use the influence of my cloth to obtain an interview for him. When the morning came, Bevil desired to accompany me. He would, he said, go himself; but would feel comforted and fortified by the sanction of my presence.
Accordingly we sallied forth across the road at noon the next morning. I would not wait to hear the answer of the landlady; but, pushing by the driver of a spring cart that had just stopped at the house, went straight up to Manette's door. Bevil followed. I knocked; no answer. Not a sound within. I knocked again, and quietly called her by name. Utter silence. I then tried the door; it yielded, and we entered.
The picture of neatness and prettiness which I had drawn as existing behind those dainty muslin curtains was not realised. It was indeed reversed. The room was in the greatest confusion, and untenanted. "Why you see, Sir," said the woman of the house who had ushered the carter up behind us, "Madam'selle went away the first thing yesterday morning. She sold her bits of things to the broker (you'll have to get the sofa bed out o'window, Mr. Bracket), and never give us no notice in a regular way (now mind the walls with them saucepans), leastways not a week's; but my husband never went for to charge her, poor thing, for she paid as punctual as the Monday morning cum—allays."
"Has she left her present address?" I asked.
"O dear no, quite contra-ry. Says she to me, says she—leastways as well as I could understand her French brogue, and she had her han'kercher a kivering of her face—Mrs. Blinkinson," says she, "don't," says she, "answer no questions as may be asked about me. I am a going," says she, "to where I hope nobody may find me out." And then she pulled the street door to, and I never see her more—and never shall."
I looked at Bevil. He was shivering as if an icy chill had struck to his heart. He looked round the room slowly, vacantly. The bird was lying at the bottom of its cage—dead. The flowers, no longer tended, were drooping. He stretched forth his trembling hand, and, plucking a geranium, put it into his bosom. He then turned, and, without speaking, descended the stairs. With unsteady gait he entered his own house.
For more than a week I missed the sounds from below. Bevil had gone straight to his bed-room, and had not left it since. His mother now, instead of tending him with glue-pots, was constantly on the stairs with broths, and coffee, and tea, and a variety of other sloppy sustentation; but her son would partake of them but very sparingly. I determined to rouse him, and advised that, as he would not or could not work, an active search after the lost damsel was better than stolid, inactive grief. This roused him, and he followed my advice.
Weary days and weary weeks were spent in the search. The cunning Silhouette eluded him as if she had been an Ombre Chinois. Bevil first addressed himself to the shop for which Manette had worked. The master of it said that he never saw Manette but once, and then she came with specimens of her embroidery, to get more. It was so good that he had employed her ever since, and was both surprised and chagrined at her sudden desertion. He had, through her landlord, offered her a good salary to work at his house, and had hoped she would accept. Her strange disappearance was therefore the more unaccountable.
The clergyman of the French church, when Bevil sought him, was as surprised as her lover at Manette's absence from service and communion. In the latter he said she was a regular and deeply-impressed partaker. He could give no information. Neither could the officers of the hospital, where the girl's father had died in the winter (of whom Bevil also inquired), give him comfort.
"There is nothing for it," I told him one day, "but time and work."
He did after a time resume his work, but the sounds given out from his bench made me melancholy. His tools were taken up, used and laid down with a slow, intermittent apathy, which showed that the heart and the hands did not go together.
Work, on the contrary, grew so fast on my hands, that I hardly had time for sleep. My successor to the curacy I had left in Southwark was taken ill, and besides my own duty, I had volunteered to do a part of his. This occasionally consisted in administering consolation and prayer to the inmates of one of the Borough hospitals.
During one of my visits to the female ward, I was attracted by a few words which fell from the clinical lecturer who was addressing a knot of pupils standing at the bed on a case of tumour of the face. He had, in fact, (warming with his subject), glided from an explanation of the operation which had been performed and of the after-treatment, to an involuntary eulogium on the beauty of the patient, which the consequences of the disease and its remedy tended to impair. I got a peep at the damsel between the shoulders of a couple of the shortest of the listeners, and saw just above the bedclothes (which were held up with extreme rigidity and care to conceal the lower part of the face) a pair of familiar black eyes. They quite thrilled through me. The students were dismissed; and I overheard a sweet voice ask "if zat scar—"
"Don't let it trouble you for one instant," said Dr. Fleam, as he left the bed-side; "it will hardly be visible, and in a week you will be as well—and as pretty—as ever." I looked again. Those piercing black eyes met mine point-blank. There was a scream, smothered by the bedclothes—under which the head was instantly popped.
But that was enough. I felt convinced that Manette was found.
About a month from that date there was joy at No. 1, Peppermint Place. It is November: on one side of my fireplace sit Bevil and Manette. Old Mrs. Bevil has gradually pushed her chair back to the window; and bit by bit has nibbled folds of the curtain, until she is completely hidden behind it in that comfortable obscurity in which she alone delights. They had assembled to hear a lecture from me.
"Personal vanity," I began with all the solemnity to be invoked in the presence of a pair of eyes, which sparkled so with joy, that it seemed impossible for their mistress to school and temper them to the occasion—"the vanity of mere personal comeliness had nearly wrecked the happiness of both of you. Because you, Manette, were afflicted with a mere tumour that distorted for a time that which you seemed to cherish more than your worldly welfare—your beauty—you sold your worldly goods and deserted your home, and means of subsistence, rather than the deformity should be seen by one whom you secretly loved. Had you no confidence in the attractions which never fade, that you depended solely upon those which, despite all your efforts, will assuredly pass away?"
"Non" said Manette, lifting her eyelids with a sort of timid courage, "He loved me only for my face—he 'ad nevare spoken. When he saw and loved my face, it was comme il faut. Eh, bien! if he 'ad seen my face when it was horrib' disfiguré, would he
not have hate me? Oui"
A pardonable impulse threw Bevil's arm over the back of Manette's chair, as he exclaimed—
"Oh! no, no."
"You were, I must say, both to blame. Bevil for timidity, and Manette for rashness," I remarked.
Manette, looked down on the prettiest little toe in the district of St. Barnabas, as it pointed itself to trace in outline the pattern of the hearth-rug, and went into a long explanation of her motives in the most delicious broken French. She was quite alone in the world, and the pain and hideous tumour in her face prevented her from working—she saw ruin, and nothing but ruin before her. The day her bird died, she felt so desolate, that she determined to go to a hospital, in order to have the operation performed. On recovering, if she had been much disfigured, she intended never to see Bevil more. She had not courage to bear the disappointment which he might have inflicted, by the altered sentiments she anticipated in her lover, in consequence of her altered appearance; and she preferred the certainty of trying to forget him. If she were perfectly cured, she intended again to return to her old lodging, and by hard work to regain her furniture.
The end of this, like most other romances, was marriage. With marriage, as is well known, all mysteries vanish. Mauette's story was this: Her father was a political refugee from the storm of 1848; he had been a staunch Orleanist Deputy in the French Chamber, and had to fly, with his daughter, for his life. In England he taught his native tongue as a means of livelihood, till overtaken by illness. Then Manette practised an accomplishment she was proficient in, with so much success that she supported her father till his death. She knew the time would come when the family property they possessed near Bordeaux would be restored, and she did not wish to let her situation be known, especially to the unhappy family at Clarernont. Hence, she kept herself a recluse till the terrible disappointment drove her to the hospital.
I was not allowed the honour of officiating, the minister of the French Protestant Chapel having been preferred. Of course I was obliged to remove to another lodging. Nor did the Bevils stay long in Peppermint Place. Their united talents in the decorative arts did not long remain hidden. They removed to a fine house near Cavendish Square, and worked for the first nobility. A label in the window tells you, that there "They speak French."
Passing the shop the other day, I was surprised to find another name over the door. The owner of it told me that Mr. Bevil had gone to live in France, in order to superintend his wife's estate on the Garonne. It appeared, then, that my piquant Silhouette had regained her patrimony. The next holiday I get I shall certainly pay them a visit.