Villette
poured out water, and measured drops from a phial: glass in hand, she
approached me. What dark-tinged draught might she now be offering? what
Genii-elixir or Magi-distillation?
It was too late to inquire—I had swallowed it passively, and at once. A
tide of quiet thought now came gently caressing my brain; softer and
softer rose the flow, with tepid undulations smoother than balm. The
pain of weakness left my limbs, my muscles slept. I lost power to move;
but, losing at the same time wish, it was no privation. That kind bonne
placed a screen between me and the lamp; I saw her rise to do this, but
do not remember seeing her resume her place: in the interval between
the two acts, I “fell on sleep.”
At waking, lo! all was again changed. The light of high day surrounded
me; not, indeed, a warm, summer light, but the leaden gloom of raw and
blustering autumn. I felt sure now that I was in the pensionnat—sure by
the beating rain on the casement; sure by the “wuther” of wind amongst
trees, denoting a garden outside; sure by the chill, the whiteness, the
solitude, amidst which I lay. I say _whiteness_—for the dimity
curtains, dropped before a French bed, bounded my view.
I lifted them; I looked out. My eye, prepared to take in the range of a
long, large, and whitewashed chamber, blinked baffled, on encountering
the limited area of a small cabinet—a cabinet with sea-green walls;
also, instead of five wide and naked windows, there was one high
lattice, shaded with muslin festoons: instead of two dozen little
stands of painted wood, each holding a basin and an ewer, there was a
toilette-table dressed, like a lady for a ball, in a white robe over a
pink skirt; a polished and large glass crowned, and a pretty
pin-cushion frilled with lace, adorned it. This toilette, together with
a small, low, green and white chintz arm-chair, a washstand topped with
a marble slab, and supplied with utensils of pale-green ware,
sufficiently furnished the tiny chamber.
Reader; I felt alarmed! Why? you will ask. What was there in this
simple and somewhat pretty sleeping-closet to startle the most timid?
Merely this—These articles of furniture could not be real, solid
arm-chairs, looking-glasses, and washstands—they must be the ghosts of
such articles; or, if this were denied as too wild an hypothesis—and,
confounded as I was, I _did_ deny it—there remained but to conclude
that I had myself passed into an abnormal state of mind; in short, that
I was very ill and delirious: and even then, mine was the strangest
figment with which delirium had ever harassed a victim.
I knew—I was obliged to know—the green chintz of that little chair; the
little snug chair itself, the carved, shining-black, foliated frame of
that glass; the smooth, milky-green of the china vessels on the stand;
the very stand too, with its top of grey marble, splintered at one
corner;—all these I was compelled to recognise and to hail, as last
night I had, perforce, recognised and hailed the rosewood, the drapery,
the porcelain, of the drawing-room.
Bretton! Bretton! and ten years ago shone reflected in that mirror. And
why did Bretton and my fourteenth year haunt me thus? Why, if they came
at all, did they not return complete? Why hovered before my distempered
vision the mere furniture, while the rooms and the locality were gone?
As to that pincushion made of crimson satin, ornamented with gold beads
and frilled with thread-lace, I had the same right to know it as to
know the screens—I had made it myself. Rising with a start from the
bed, I took the cushion in my hand and examined it. There was the
cipher “L. L. B.” formed in gold beds, and surrounded with an oval
wreath embroidered in white silk. These were the initials of my
godmother’s name—Louisa Lucy Bretton.
“Am I in England? Am I at Bretton?” I muttered; and hastily pulling up
the blind with which the lattice was shrouded, I looked out to try and
discover _where_ I was; half-prepared to meet the calm, old, handsome
buildings and clean grey pavement of St. Ann’s Street, and to see at
the end the towers of the minster: or, if otherwise, fully expectant of
a town view somewhere, a rue in Villette, if not a street in a pleasant
and ancient English city.
I looked, on the contrary, through a frame of leafage, clustering round
the high lattice, and forth thence to a grassy mead-like level, a
lawn-terrace with trees rising from the lower ground beyond—high
forest-trees, such as I had not seen for many a day. They were now
groaning under the gale of October, and between their trunks I traced
the line of an avenue, where yellow leaves lay in heaps and drifts, or
were whirled singly before the sweeping west wind. Whatever landscape
might lie further must have been flat, and these tall beeches shut it
out. The place seemed secluded, and was to me quite strange: I did not
know it at all.
Once more I lay down. My bed stood in a little alcove; on turning my
face to the wall, the room with its bewildering accompaniments became
excluded. Excluded? No! For as I arranged my position in this hope,
behold, on the green space between the divided and looped-up curtains,
hung a broad, gilded picture-frame enclosing a portrait. It was
drawn—well drawn, though but a sketch—in water-colours; a head, a boy’s
head, fresh, life-like, speaking, and animated. It seemed a youth of
sixteen, fair-complexioned, with sanguine health in his cheek; hair
long, not dark, and with a sunny sheen; penetrating eyes, an arch
mouth, and a gay smile. On the whole a most pleasant face to look at,
especially for those claiming a right to that youth’s
affections—parents, for instance, or sisters. Any romantic little
school-girl might almost have loved it in its frame. Those eyes looked
as if when somewhat older they would flash a lightning-response to
love: I cannot tell whether they kept in store the steady-beaming shine
of faith. For whatever sentiment met him in form too facile, his lips
menaced, beautifully but surely, caprice and light esteem.
Striving to take each new discovery as quietly as I could, I whispered
to myself—
“Ah! that portrait used to hang in the breakfast-room, over the
mantel-piece: somewhat too high, as I thought. I well remember how I
used to mount a music-stool for the purpose of unhooking it, holding it
in my hand, and searching into those bonny wells of eyes, whose glance
under their hazel lashes seemed like a pencilled laugh; and well I
liked to note the colouring of the cheek, and the expression of the
mouth.” I hardly believed fancy could improve on the curve of that
mouth, or of the chin; even _my_ ignorance knew that both were
beautiful, and pondered perplexed over this doubt: “How it was that
what charmed so much, could at the same time so keenly pain?” Once, by
way of test, I took little Missy Home, and, lifting her in my arms,
told her to look at the picture.
“Do you like it, Polly?” I asked. She never answered, but gazed long,
and at last a darkness went trembling through her sensitive eye, as she
said, “Put me down.” So I put her down, saying to myself. “The child
feels it too.”
All these things do I now think over, adding, “He had his faults, yet
scarce ever was a finer nature; liberal, suave, impressible.” My
reflections closed in an audibly pronounced word, “Graham!”
“Graham!” echoed a sudden voice at the bedside. “Do you want Graham?”
I looked. The plot was but thickening; the wonder but culminating. If
it was strange to see that well-remembered pictured form on the wall,
still stranger was it to turn and behold the equally well-remembered
living form opposite—a woman, a lady, most real and substantial, tall,
well-attired, wearing widow’s silk, and such a cap as best became her
matron and motherly braids of hair. Hers, too, was a good face; too
marked, perhaps, now for beauty, but not for sense or character. She
was little changed; something sterner, something more robust—but she
was my godmother: still the distinct vision of Mrs. Bretton.
I kept quiet, yet internally _I_ was much agitated: my pulse fluttered,
and the blood left my cheek, which turned cold.
“Madam, where am I?” I inquired.
“In a very safe asylum; well protected for the present; make your mind
quite easy till you get a little better; you look ill this morning.”
“I am so entirely bewildered, I do not know whether I can trust my
senses at all, or whether they are misleading me in every particular:
but you speak English, do you not, madam?”
“I should think you might hear that: it would puzzle me to hold a long
discourse in French.”
“You do not come from England?”
“I am lately arrived thence. Have you been long in this country? You
seem to know my son?”
“Do, I, madam? Perhaps I do. Your son—the picture there?”
“That is his portrait as a youth. While looking at it, you pronounced
his name.”
“Graham Bretton?”
She nodded.
“I speak to Mrs. Bretton, formerly of Bretton, ——shire?”
“Quite right; and you, I am told, are an English teacher in a foreign
school here: my son recognised you as such.”
“How was I found, madam, and by whom?”
“My son shall tell you that by-and-by,” said she; “but at present you
are too confused and weak for conversation: try to eat some breakfast,
and then sleep.”
Notwithstanding all I had undergone—the bodily fatigue, the
perturbation of spirits, the exposure to weather—it seemed that I was
better: the fever, the real malady which had oppressed my frame, was
abating; for, whereas during the last nine days I had taken no solid
food, and suffered from continual thirst, this morning, on breakfast
being offered, I experienced a craving for nourishment: an inward
faintness which caused me eagerly to taste the tea this lady offered,
and to eat the morsel of dry toast she allowed in accompaniment. It was
only a morsel, but it sufficed; keeping up my strength till some two or
three hours afterwards, when the bonne brought me a little cup of broth
and a biscuit.
As evening began to darken, and the ceaseless blast still blew wild and
cold, and the rain streamed on, deluge-like, I grew weary—very weary of
my bed. The room, though pretty, was small: I felt it confining: I
longed for a change. The increasing chill and gathering gloom, too,
depressed me; I wanted to see—to feel firelight. Besides, I kept
thinking of the son of that tall matron: when should I see him?
Certainly not till I left my room.
At last the bonne came to make my bed for the night. She prepared to
wrap me in a blanket and place me in the little chintz chair; but,
declining these attentions, I proceeded to dress myself:
The business was just achieved, and I was sitting down to take breath,
when Mrs. Bretton once more appeared.
“Dressed!” she exclaimed, smiling with that smile I so well knew—a
pleasant smile, though not soft. “You are quite better then? Quite
strong—eh?”
She spoke to me so much as of old she used to speak that I almost
fancied she was beginning to know me. There was the same sort of
patronage in her voice and manner that, as a girl, I had always
experienced from her—a patronage I yielded to and even liked; it was
not founded on conventional grounds of superior wealth or station (in
the last particular there had never been any inequality; her degree was
mine); but on natural reasons of physical advantage: it was the shelter
the tree gives the herb. I put a request without further ceremony.
“Do let me go down-stairs, madam; I am so cold and dull here.”
“I desire nothing better, if you are strong enough to bear the change,”
was her reply. “Come then; here is an arm.” And she offered me hers: I
took it, and we descended one flight of carpeted steps to a landing
where a tall door, standing open, gave admission into the blue-damask