Villette
room. How pleasant it was in its air of perfect domestic comfort! How
warm in its amber lamp-light and vermilion fire-flush! To render the
picture perfect, tea stood ready on the table—an English tea, whereof
the whole shining service glanced at me familiarly; from the solid
silver urn, of antique pattern, and the massive pot of the same metal,
to the thin porcelain cups, dark with purple and gilding. I knew the
very seed-cake of peculiar form, baked in a peculiar mould, which
always had a place on the tea-table at Bretton. Graham liked it, and
there it was as of yore—set before Graham’s plate with the silver knife
and fork beside it. Graham was then expected to tea: Graham was now,
perhaps, in the house; ere many minutes I might see him.
“Sit down—sit down,” said my conductress, as my step faltered a little
in passing to the hearth. She seated me on the sofa, but I soon passed
behind it, saying the fire was too hot; in its shade I found another
seat which suited me better. Mrs. Bretton was never wont to make a fuss
about any person or anything; without remonstrance she suffered me to
have my own way. She made the tea, and she took up the newspaper. I
liked to watch every action of my godmother; all her movements were so
young: she must have been now above fifty, yet neither her sinews nor
her spirit seemed yet touched by the rust of age. Though portly, she
was alert, and though serene, she was at times impetuous—good health
and an excellent temperament kept her green as in her spring.
While she read, I perceived she listened—listened for her son. She was
not the woman ever to confess herself uneasy, but there was yet no lull
in the weather, and if Graham were out in that hoarse wind—roaring
still unsatisfied—I well knew his mother’s heart would be out with him.
“Ten minutes behind his time,” said she, looking at her watch; then, in
another minute, a lifting of her eyes from the page, and a slight
inclination of her head towards the door, denoted that she heard some
sound. Presently her brow cleared; and then even my ear, less
practised, caught the iron clash of a gate swung to, steps on gravel,
lastly the door-bell. He was come. His mother filled the teapot from
the urn, she drew nearer the hearth the stuffed and cushioned blue
chair—her own chair by right, but I saw there was one who might with
impunity usurp it. And when that _one_ came up the stairs—which he soon
did, after, I suppose, some such attention to the toilet as the wild
and wet night rendered necessary, and strode straight in—
“Is it you, Graham?” said his mother, hiding a glad smile and speaking
curtly.
“Who else should it be, mamma?” demanded the Unpunctual, possessing
himself irreverently of the abdicated throne.
“Don’t you deserve cold tea, for being late?”
“I shall not get my deserts, for the urn sings cheerily.”
“Wheel yourself to the table, lazy boy: no seat will serve you but
mine; if you had one spark of a sense of propriety, you would always
leave that chair for the Old Lady.”
“So I should; only the dear Old Lady persists in leaving it for me. How
is your patient, mamma?”
“Will she come forward and speak for herself?” said Mrs. Bretton,
turning to my corner; and at this invitation, forward I came. Graham
courteously rose up to greet me. He stood tall on the hearth, a figure
justifying his mother’s unconcealed pride.
“So you are come down,” said he; “you must be better then—much better.
I scarcely expected we should meet thus, or here. I was alarmed last
night, and if I had not been forced to hurry away to a dying patient, I
certainly would not have left you; but my mother herself is something
of a doctress, and Martha an excellent nurse. I saw the case was a
fainting-fit, not necessarily dangerous. What brought it on, I have yet
to learn, and all particulars; meantime, I trust you really do feel
better?”
“Much better,” I said calmly. “Much better, I thank you, Dr. John.”
For, reader, this tall young man—this darling son—this host of
mine—this Graham Bretton, _was_ Dr. John: he, and no other; and, what
is more, I ascertained this identity scarcely with surprise. What is
more, when I heard Graham’s step on the stairs, I knew what manner of
figure would enter, and for whose aspect to prepare my eyes. The
discovery was not of to-day, its dawn had penetrated my perceptions
long since. Of course I remembered young Bretton well; and though ten
years (from sixteen to twenty-six) may greatly change the boy as they
mature him to the man, yet they could bring no such utter difference as
would suffice wholly to blind my eyes, or baffle my memory. Dr. John
Graham Bretton retained still an affinity to the youth of sixteen: he
had his eyes; he had some of his features; to wit, all the
excellently-moulded lower half of the face; I found him out soon. I
first recognised him on that occasion, noted several chapters back,
when my unguardedly-fixed attention had drawn on me the mortification
of an implied rebuke. Subsequent observation confirmed, in every point,
that early surmise. I traced in the gesture, the port, and the habits
of his manhood, all his boy’s promise. I heard in his now deep tones
the accent of former days. Certain turns of phrase, peculiar to him of
old, were peculiar to him still; and so was many a trick of eye and
lip, many a smile, many a sudden ray levelled from the irid, under his
well-charactered brow.
To _say_ anything on the subject, to _hint_ at my discovery, had not
suited my habits of thought, or assimilated with my system of feeling.
On the contrary, I had preferred to keep the matter to myself. I liked
entering his presence covered with a cloud he had not seen through,
while he stood before me under a ray of special illumination which
shone all partial over his head, trembled about his feet, and cast
light no farther.
Well I knew that to him it could make little difference, were I to come
forward and announce, “This is Lucy Snowe!” So I kept back in my
teacher’s place; and as he never asked my name, so I never gave it. He
heard me called “Miss,” and “Miss Lucy;” he never heard the surname,
“Snowe.” As to spontaneous recognition—though I, perhaps, was still
less changed than he—the idea never approached his mind, and why should
I suggest it?
During tea, Dr. John was kind, as it was his nature to be; that meal
over, and the tray carried out, he made a cosy arrangement of the
cushions in a corner of the sofa, and obliged me to settle amongst
them. He and his mother also drew to the fire, and ere we had sat ten
minutes, I caught the eye of the latter fastened steadily upon me.
Women are certainly quicker in some things than men.
“Well,” she exclaimed, presently, “I have seldom seen a stronger
likeness! Graham, have you observed it?”
“Observed what? What ails the Old Lady now? How you stare, mamma! One
would think you had an attack of second sight.”
“Tell me, Graham, of whom does that young lady remind you?” pointing to
me.
“Mamma, you put her out of countenance. I often tell you abruptness is
your fault; remember, too, that to you she is a stranger, and does not
know your ways.”
“Now, when she looks down; now, when she turns sideways, who is she
like, Graham?”
“Indeed, mamma, since you propound the riddle, I think you ought to
solve it!”
“And you have known her some time, you say—ever since you first began
to attend the school in the Rue Fossette:—yet you never mentioned to me
that singular resemblance!”
“I could not mention a thing of which I never thought, and which I do
not now acknowledge. What _can_ you mean?”
“Stupid boy! look at her.”
Graham did look: but this was not to be endured; I saw how it must end,
so I thought it best to anticipate.
“Dr. John,” I said, “has had so much to do and think of, since he and I
shook hands at our last parting in St. Ann’s Street, that, while I
readily found out Mr. Graham Bretton, some months ago, it never
occurred to me as possible that he should recognise Lucy Snowe.”
“Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!” cried Mrs. Bretton. And she at
once stepped across the hearth and kissed me. Some ladies would,
perhaps, have made a great bustle upon such a discovery without being
particularly glad of it; but it was not my godmother’s habit to make a
bustle, and she preferred all sentimental demonstrations in bas-relief.
So she and I got over the surprise with few words and a single salute;
yet I daresay she was pleased, and I know I was. While we renewed old
acquaintance, Graham, sitting opposite, silently disposed of his
paroxysm of astonishment.
“Mamma calls me a stupid boy, and I think I am so,” at length he said;
“for, upon my honour, often as I have seen you, I never once suspected
this fact: and yet I perceive it all now. Lucy Snowe! To be sure! I
recollect her perfectly, and there she sits; not a doubt of it. But,”
he added, “you surely have not known me as an old acquaintance all this
time, and never mentioned it.”
“That I have,” was my answer.
Dr. John commented not. I supposed he regarded my silence as eccentric,
but he was indulgent in refraining from censure. I daresay, too, he
would have deemed it impertinent to have interrogated me very closely,
to have asked me the why and wherefore of my reserve; and, though he
might feel a little curious, the importance of the case was by no means
such as to tempt curiosity to infringe on discretion.
For my part, I just ventured to inquire whether he remembered the
circumstance of my once looking at him very fixedly; for the slight
annoyance he had betrayed on that occasion still lingered sore on my
mind.
“I think I do!” said he: “I think I was even cross with you.”
“You considered me a little bold; perhaps?” I inquired.
“Not at all. Only, shy and retiring as your general manner was, I
wondered what personal or facial enormity in me proved so magnetic to
your usually averted eyes.”
“You see how it was now?”
“Perfectly.”
And here Mrs. Bretton broke in with many, many questions about past
times; and for her satisfaction I had to recur to gone-by troubles, to
explain causes of seeming estrangement, to touch on single-handed
conflict with Life, with Death, with Grief, with Fate. Dr. John
listened, saying little. He and she then told me of changes they had
known: even with them all had not gone smoothly, and fortune had
retrenched her once abundant gifts. But so courageous a mother, with
such a champion in her son, was well fitted to fight a good fight with
the world, and to prevail ultimately. Dr. John himself was one of those
on whose birth benign planets have certainly smiled. Adversity might
set against him her most sullen front: he was the man to beat her down
with smiles. Strong and cheerful, and firm and courteous; not rash, yet
valiant; he was the aspirant to woo Destiny herself, and to win from
her stone eyeballs a beam almost loving.
In the profession he had adopted, his success was now quite decided.
Within the last three months he had taken this house (a small château,
they told me, about half a league without the Porte de Crécy); this
country site being chosen for the sake of his mother’s health, with
which town air did not now agree. Hither he had invited Mrs. Bretton,
and she, on leaving England, had brought with her such residue
furniture of the former St. Ann’s Street mansion as she had thought fit
to keep unsold. Hence my bewilderment at the phantoms of chairs, and
the wraiths of looking-glasses, tea-urns, and teacups.
As the clock struck eleven, Dr. John stopped his mother.
“Miss Snowe must retire now,” he said; “she is beginning to look very
pale. To-morrow I will venture to put some questions respecting the
cause of her loss of health. She is much changed, indeed, since last