To which Miss Mary retorts:—
"Ah! madame, le jour le plus malheureux de ma vie serait celui où je quitterais votre famille avec la douloureuse conviction que mon nom y serait maudit."
There were, we see, conflicting views in Brussels social and literary circles, in the eighteen-forties, as to the degree of intimacy to which Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger attained. It is when we perceive the ambiguity of the relations existing between Miss Brontë and the professor that we recognize the fidelity of Eugène Sue's portrayal of Currer Bell's Brussels life. Even Charlotte Brontë herself, in Villette, published after M. Sue's story, relates that M. Paul Emanuel (M. Héger) said to her:—"I call myself your brother. I hardly know what I am—brother—friend—I cannot tell. I know I think of you—I feel I wish you well—but I must check myself; you are to be feared. My best friends point out danger and whisper caution." In Mdlle. Lagrange and Catherine Bell, Charlotte Brontë figures as represented by those who said ill of her; as Miss Mary Lawson, the Irish governess, she has "beauty, youth, and grace," which charms, Jane tells us, she possessed in Rochester's eyes. Of her, in the phase of Catherine Bell, we have many insinuations of a detractive character, the keynote to which is found in the fortune-telling incident, wherein Catherine is foretold she will be "married and not married"; while in Miss Mary Lawson we have a portrayal of un bon ange[67] of whom Madame de Morville is jealous, not without reason, though, to use Miss Mary's own words, she had been "la cause involontaire."
We must, therefore, set it to the credit of Eugène Sue that he placed two versions in the balance; and his evidence for ever sweeps away the illogical and unfair contention of some writers on the Brontës, that Charlotte Brontë may have cared for M. Héger, but that he, in his turn, had been only "intellectually" interested in her. M. Sue shows the attitude of M. Héger was ever unequivocal as regards Charlotte Brontë; whether in her phase as "Lagrange," as "Catherine Bell," or as "Miss Mary Lawson"—she was loved by him. We now see Morton of Jane Eyre was Haworth to Charlotte Brontë, and Thornfield, the home of Mr. Rochester, the Pensionnat Héger. And the flight from temptation at Thornfield and seeking refuge with the Rivers family were really representative of her leaving Brussels and returning home to her father and sisters. Obviously M. Sue wrote his feuilleton to aid, maliciously or not, in breaking the dangerous friendship between M. Héger and Miss Brontë. Charlotte Brontë's works are testimony it was not only Madame Héger's harsh jealousy that led her to leave Brussels. In Chapter XX. of The Professor, published years after M. Sue's work, but written before it, she gives us the reason for this determination. By her Method I., Interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life, Professor Crimsworth, who is alternately Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger, in this instance is Charlotte Brontë, while Mdlle. Reuter is M. Héger. Crimsworth [Miss Brontë] says:—
I could not conceal ... that it would not do for me to remain.... Her [his] present demeanour towards me was deficient neither in dignity nor propriety; but I knew her [his] former feeling was unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but Opportunity would be too strong for either of these—Temptation would shiver their restraints. I was no pope, ... in short, if I stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a practical modern French novel would be in full process of concoction.... From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave, ... and that instantly.... The Spirit of Evil ... sought to lead me astray.[68] Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which Temptation strewed flowers.
And thus at last do we understand why Charlotte Brontë asks herself as Jane Eyre when at home with the Rivers family—with her father, her sisters, and Tabby at Haworth:—
Which is better? To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle; but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it ... to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress ... I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms.... Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village schoolmistress [The Brontë school project was under contemplation in 1844], free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes, I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance.
And her fervent gratitude is as sincere when in the same connection she says in Villette of her confessor—her Fénelon[69]:—"He was kind when I needed kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!" But we now see Charlotte Brontë did not suffer alone. Eugène Sue has given us an insight into the bitterness of M. de Morville's (M. Héger's) life, which resulted from their unhappy love, and doubtless those words of Heathcliffe to Catherine in Wuthering Heights were uttered or written by M. Héger in reproach to Charlotte Brontë:—
"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy?... You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?... Because misery and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong."
Charlotte Brontë tells us in Jane Eyre she loved to imagine she and Mr. Rochester had met under happier conditions; and if the meeting of the runaway lovers Charlotte Brontë repeats so faithfully in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre did not refer to a private meeting subsequent to the beginning of 1844, between her and M. Héger, or to their meeting again when she returned to Brussels the second time, then have we evidence of the fact that she at one time perhaps believed Wuthering Heights would be never published. Assuredly nothing was sweeter to Currer Bell's fancy than a dream of the happiness that might have been hers, and well may she have written in the last sentences of Villette:—