Villette
July, when I saw her enact with no little spirit the part of a very
killing fine gentleman. As to last night’s catastrophe, I am sure
thereby hangs a tale, but we will inquire no further this evening.
Good-night, Miss Lucy.”
And so he kindly led me to the door, and holding a wax-candle, lighted
me up the one flight of stairs.
When I had said my prayers, and when I was undressed and laid down, I
felt that I still had friends. Friends, not professing vehement
attachment, not offering the tender solace of well-matched and
congenial relationship; on whom, therefore, but moderate demand of
affection was to be made, of whom but moderate expectation formed; but
towards whom my heart softened instinctively, and yearned with an
importunate gratitude, which I entreated Reason betimes to check.
“Do not let me think of them too often, too much, too fondly,” I
implored: “let me be content with a temperate draught of this living
stream: let me not run athirst, and apply passionately to its welcome
waters: let me not imagine in them a sweeter taste than earth’s
fountains know. Oh! would to God I may be enabled to feel enough
sustained by an occasional, amicable intercourse, rare, brief,
unengrossing and tranquil: quite tranquil!”
Still repeating this word, I turned to my pillow; and _still_ repeating
it, I steeped that pillow with tears.
CHAPTER XVII.
LA TERRASSE.
These struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of
the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good.
They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that
turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps, too often
opposes: they certainly make a difference in the general tenour of a
life, and enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on
the surface; and it is on the surface only the common gaze will fall.
As to what lies below, leave that with God. Man, your equal, weak as
you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out thence: take it to
your Maker—show Him the secrets of the spirit He gave—ask Him how you
are to bear the pains He has appointed—kneel in His presence, and pray
with faith for light in darkness, for strength in piteous weakness, for
patience in extreme need. Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps not
_your_ hour, the waiting waters will stir; in _some_ shape, though
perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for
which it bled, the healing herald will descend, the cripple and the
blind, and the dumb, and the possessed will be led to bathe. Herald,
come quickly! Thousands lie round the pool, weeping and despairing, to
see it, through slow years, stagnant. Long are the “times” of Heaven:
the orbits of angel messengers seem wide to mortal vision; they may
enring ages: the cycle of one departure and return may clasp unnumbered
generations; and dust, kindling to brief suffering life, and through
pain, passing back to dust, may meanwhile perish out of memory again,
and yet again. To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first
and sole angel visitant, him easterns call Azrael!
I tried to get up next morning, but while I was dressing, and at
intervals drinking cold water from the _carafe_ on my washstand, with
design to brace up that trembling weakness which made dressing so
difficult, in came Mrs. Bretton.
“Here is an absurdity!” was her morning accost. “Not so,” she added,
and dealing with me at once in her own brusque, energetic fashion—that
fashion which I used formerly to enjoy seeing applied to her son, and
by him vigorously resisted—in two minutes she consigned me captive to
the French bed.
“There you lie till afternoon,” said she. “My boy left orders before he
went out that such should be the case, and I can assure you my son is
master and must be obeyed. Presently you shall have breakfast.”
Presently she brought that meal—brought it with her own active
hands—not leaving me to servants. She seated herself on the bed while I
ate. Now it is not everybody, even amongst our respected friends and
esteemed acquaintance, whom we like to have near us, whom we like to
watch us, to wait on us, to approach us with the proximity of a nurse
to a patient. It is not every friend whose eye is a light in a sick
room, whose presence is there a solace: but all this was Mrs. Bretton
to me; all this she had ever been. Food or drink never pleased me so
well as when it came through her hands. I do not remember the occasion
when her entrance into a room had not made that room cheerier. Our
natures own predilections and antipathies alike strange. There are
people from whom we secretly shrink, whom we would personally avoid,
though reason confesses that they are good people: there are others
with faults of temper, &c., evident enough, beside whom we live
content, as if the air about them did us good. My godmother’s lively
black eye and clear brunette cheek, her warm, prompt hand, her
self-reliant mood, her decided bearing, were all beneficial to me as
the atmosphere of some salubrious climate. Her son used to call her
“the old lady;” it filled me with pleasant wonder to note how the
alacrity and power of five-and-twenty still breathed from her and
around her.
“I would bring my work here,” she said, as she took from me the emptied
teacup, “and sit with you the whole day, if that overbearing John
Graham had not put his veto upon such a proceeding. ‘Now, mamma,’ he
said, when he went out, ‘take notice, you are not to knock up your
god-daughter with gossip,’ and he particularly desired me to keep close
to my own quarters, and spare you my fine company. He says, Lucy, he
thinks you have had a nervous fever, judging from your look,—is that
so?”
I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that
I had certainly suffered a good deal especially in mind. Further, on
this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details
of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which
I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region
would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The
difference between her and me might be figured by that between the
stately ship cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of
crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the
life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old,
dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough
weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide
between them the rule of the great deep. No, the “Louisa Bretton” never
was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could
not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own
counsel, and spins no yarns.
She left me, and I lay in bed content: it was good of Graham to
remember me before he went out.
My day was lonely, but the prospect of coming evening abridged and
cheered it. Then, too, I felt weak, and rest seemed welcome; and after
the morning hours were gone by,—those hours which always bring, even to
the necessarily unoccupied, a sense of business to be done, of tasks
waiting fulfilment, a vague impression of obligation to be
employed—when this stirring time was past, and the silent descent of
afternoon hushed housemaid steps on the stairs and in the chambers, I
then passed into a dreamy mood, not unpleasant.
My calm little room seemed somehow like a cave in the sea. There was no
colour about it, except that white and pale green, suggestive of foam
and deep water; the blanched cornice was adorned with shell-shaped
ornaments, and there were white mouldings like dolphins in the
ceiling-angles. Even that one touch of colour visible in the red satin
pincushion bore affinity to coral; even that dark, shining glass might
have mirrored a mermaid. When I closed my eyes, I heard a gale,
subsiding at last, bearing upon the house-front like a settling swell
upon a rock-base. I heard it drawn and withdrawn far, far off, like a
tide retiring from a shore of the upper world—a world so high above
that the rush of its largest waves, the dash of its fiercest breakers,
could sound down in this submarine home, only like murmurs and a
lullaby.
Amidst these dreams came evening, and then Martha brought a light; with
her aid I was quickly dressed, and stronger now than in the morning, I
made my way down to the blue saloon unassisted.
Dr. John, it appears, had concluded his round of professional calls
earlier than usual; his form was the first object that met my eyes as I
entered the parlour; he stood in that window-recess opposite the door,
reading the close type of a newspaper by such dull light as closing day
yet gave. The fire shone clear, but the lamp stood on the table unlit,
and tea was not yet brought up.
As to Mrs. Bretton, my active godmother—who, I afterwards found, had
been out in the open air all day—lay half-reclined in her
deep-cushioned chair, actually lost in a nap. Her son seeing me, came
forward. I noticed that he trod carefully, not to wake the sleeper; he
also spoke low: his mellow voice never had any sharpness in it;
modulated as at present, it was calculated rather to soothe than
startle slumber.
“This is a quiet little château,” he observed, after inviting me to sit
near the casement. “I don’t know whether you may have noticed it in
your walks: though, indeed, from the chaussée it is not visible; just a
mile beyond the Porte de Crécy, you turn down a lane which soon becomes
an avenue, and that leads you on, through meadow and shade, to the very
door of this house. It is not a modern place, but built somewhat in the
old style of the Basse-Ville. It is rather a manoir than a château;
they call it ‘La Terrasse,’ because its front rises from a broad turfed
walk, whence steps lead down a grassy slope to the avenue. See yonder!
The moon rises: she looks well through the tree-boles.”
Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined
or expansive, which her orb does not hallow? Rosy or fiery, she mounted
now above a not distant bank; even while we watched her flushed ascent,
she cleared to gold, and in very brief space, floated up stainless into
a now calm sky. Did moonlight soften or sadden Dr. Bretton? Did it
touch him with romance? I think it did. Albeit of no sighing mood, he
sighed in watching it: sighed to himself quietly. No need to ponder the
cause or the course of that sigh; I knew it was wakened by beauty; I
knew it pursued Ginevra. Knowing this, the idea pressed upon me that it
was in some sort my duty to speak the name he meditated. Of course he
was ready for the subject: I saw in his countenance a teeming plenitude
of comment, question and interest; a pressure of language and
sentiment, only checked, I thought, by sense of embarrassment how to
begin. To spare him this embarrassment was my best, indeed my sole use.
I had but to utter the idol’s name, and love’s tender litany would flow
out. I had just found a fitting phrase, “You know that Miss Fanshawe is
gone on a tour with the Cholmondeleys,” and was opening my lips to
speak to it, when he scattered my plans by introducing another theme.
“The first thing this morning,” said he, putting his sentiment in his
pocket, turning from the moon, and sitting down, “I went to the Rue
Fossette, and told the cuisinière that you were safe and in good hands.
Do you know that I actually found that she had not yet discovered your
absence from the house: she thought you safe in the great dormitory.
With what care you must have been waited on!”
“Oh! all that is very conceivable,” said I. “Goton could do nothing for
me but bring me a little tisane and a crust of bread, and I had
rejected both so often during the past week, that the good woman got