Villette
I laughed out: I had heard her adjudge to every jewel its price; and
well I knew money-embarrassment, money-schemes; money’s worth, and
endeavours to realise supplies, had, young as she was, furnished the
most frequent, and the favourite stimulus of her thoughts for years.
He pursued. “You should have seen her whenever I have laid on her lap
some trifle; so cool, so unmoved: no eagerness to take, not even
pleasure in contemplating. Just from amiable reluctance to grieve me,
she would permit the bouquet to lie beside her, and perhaps consent to
bear it away. Or, if I achieved the fastening of a bracelet on her
ivory arm, however pretty the trinket might be (and I always carefully
chose what seemed to _me_ pretty, and what of course was not
valueless), the glitter never dazzled her bright eyes: she would hardly
cast one look on my gift.”
“Then, of course, not valuing it, she would unloose, and return it to
you?”
“No; for such a repulse she was too good-natured. She would consent to
seem to forget what I had done, and retain the offering with lady-like
quiet and easy oblivion. Under such circumstances, how can a man build
on acceptance of his presents as a favourable symptom? For my part,
were I to offer her all I have, and she to take it, such is her
incapacity to be swayed by sordid considerations, I should not venture
to believe the transaction advanced me one step.”
“Dr. John,” I began, “Love is blind;” but just then a blue subtle ray
sped sideways from Dr. John’s eye: it reminded me of old days, it
reminded me of his picture: it half led me to think that part, at
least, of his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe’s _naïveté_ was
assumed; it led me dubiously to conjecture that perhaps, in spite of
his passion for her beauty, his appreciation of her foibles might
possibly be less mistaken, more clear-sighted, than from his general
language was presumable. After all it might be only a chance look, or
at best the token of a merely momentary impression. Chance or
intentional real or imaginary, it closed the conversation.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CLEOPATRA.
My stay at La Terrasse was prolonged a fortnight beyond the close of
the vacation. Mrs. Bretton’s kind management procured me this respite.
Her son having one day delivered the dictum that “Lucy was not yet
strong enough to go back to that den of a pensionnat,” she at once
drove over to the Rue Fossette, had an interview with the directress,
and procured the indulgence, on the plea of prolonged rest and change
being necessary to perfect recovery. Hereupon, however, followed an
attention I could very well have dispensed with, viz.—a polite call
from Madame Beck.
That lady—one fine day—actually came out in a fiacre as far as the
château. I suppose she had resolved within herself to see what manner
of place Dr. John inhabited. Apparently, the pleasant site and neat
interior surpassed her expectations; she eulogized all she saw,
pronounced the blue salon “une pièce magnifique,” profusely
congratulated me on the acquisition of friends, “tellement dignes,
aimables, et respectables,” turned also a neat compliment in my favour,
and, upon Dr. John coming in, ran up to him with the utmost buoyancy,
opening at the same time such a fire of rapid language, all sparkling
with felicitations and protestations about his “château,”—“madame sa
mère, la digne châtelaine:” also his looks; which, indeed, were very
flourishing, and at the moment additionally embellished by the
good-natured but amused smile with which he always listened to Madame’s
fluent and florid French. In short, Madame shone in her very best phase
that day, and came in and went out quite a living catherine-wheel of
compliments, delight, and affability. Half purposely, and half to ask
some question about school-business, I followed her to the carriage,
and looked in after she was seated and the door closed. In that brief
fraction of time what a change had been wrought! An instant ago, all
sparkles and jests, she now sat sterner than a judge and graver than a
sage. Strange little woman!
I went back and teased Dr. John about Madame’s devotion to him. How he
laughed! What fun shone in his eyes as he recalled some of her fine
speeches, and repeated them, imitating her voluble delivery! He had an
acute sense of humour, and was the finest company in the world—when he
could forget Miss Fanshawe.
To “sit in sunshine calm and sweet” is said to be excellent for weak
people; it gives them vital force. When little Georgette Beck was
recovering from her illness, I used to take her in my arms and walk
with her in the garden by the hour together, beneath a certain wall
hung with grapes, which the Southern sun was ripening: that sun
cherished her little pale frame quite as effectually as it mellowed and
swelled the clustering fruit.
There are human tempers, bland, glowing, and genial, within whose
influence it is as good for the poor in spirit to live, as it is for
the feeble in frame to bask in the glow of noon. Of the number of these
choice natures were certainly both Dr. Bretton’s and his mother’s. They
liked to communicate happiness, as some like to occasion misery: they
did it instinctively; without fuss, and apparently with little
consciousness; the means to give pleasure rose spontaneously in their
minds. Every day while I stayed with them, some little plan was
proposed which resulted in beneficial enjoyment. Fully occupied as was
Dr. John’s time, he still made it in his way to accompany us in each
brief excursion. I can hardly tell how he managed his engagements; they
were numerous, yet by dint of system, he classed them in an order which
left him a daily period of liberty. I often saw him hard-worked, yet
seldom over-driven, and never irritated, confused, or oppressed. What
he did was accomplished with the ease and grace of all-sufficing
strength; with the bountiful cheerfulness of high and unbroken
energies. Under his guidance I saw, in that one happy fortnight, more
of Villette, its environs, and its inhabitants, than I had seen in the
whole eight months of my previous residence. He took me to places of
interest in the town, of whose names I had not before so much as heard;
with willingness and spirit he communicated much noteworthy
information. He never seemed to think it a trouble to talk to me, and,
I am sure, it was never a task to me to listen. It was not his way to
treat subjects coldly and vaguely; he rarely generalized, never prosed.
He seemed to like nice details almost as much as I liked them myself:
he seemed observant of character: and not superficially observant,
either. These points gave the quality of interest to his discourse; and
the fact of his speaking direct from his own resources, and not
borrowing or stealing from books—here a dry fact, and there a trite
phrase, and elsewhere a hackneyed opinion—ensured a freshness, as
welcome as it was rare. Before my eyes, too, his disposition seemed to
unfold another phase; to pass to a fresh day: to rise in new and nobler
dawn.
His mother possessed a good development of benevolence, but he owned a
better and larger. I found, on accompanying him to the Basse-Ville—the
poor and crowded quarter of the city—that his errands there were as
much those of the philanthropist as the physician. I understood
presently that cheerfully, habitually, and in single-minded
unconsciousness of any special merit distinguishing his deeds—he was
achieving, amongst a very wretched population, a world of active good.
The lower orders liked him well; his poor patients in the hospitals
welcomed him with a sort of enthusiasm.
But stop—I must not, from the faithful narrator, degenerate into the
partial eulogist. Well, full well, do I know that Dr. John was not
perfect, any more than I am perfect. Human fallibility leavened him
throughout: there was no hour, and scarcely a moment of the time I
spent with him that in act or speech, or look, he did not betray
something that was not of a god. A god could not have the cruel vanity
of Dr. John, nor his sometime levity. No immortal could have resembled
him in his occasional temporary oblivion of all but the present—in his
passing passion for that present; shown not coarsely, by devoting it to
material indulgence, but selfishly, by extracting from it whatever it
could yield of nutriment to his masculine self-love: his delight was to
feed that ravenous sentiment, without thought of the price of
provender, or care for the cost of keeping it sleek and high-pampered.
The reader is requested to note a seeming contradiction in the two
views which have been given of Graham Bretton—the public and
private—the out-door and the in-door view. In the first, the public, he
is shown oblivious of self; as modest in the display of his energies,
as earnest in their exercise. In the second, the fireside picture,
there is expressed consciousness of what he has and what he is;
pleasure in homage, some recklessness in exciting, some vanity in
receiving the same. Both portraits are correct.
It was hardly possible to oblige Dr. John quietly and in secret. When
you thought that the fabrication of some trifle dedicated to his use
had been achieved unnoticed, and that, like other men, he would use it
when placed ready for his use, and never ask whence it came, he amazed
you by a smilingly-uttered observation or two, proving that his eye had
been on the work from commencement to close: that he had noted the
design, traced its progress, and marked its completion. It pleased him
to be thus served, and he let his pleasure beam in his eye and play
about his mouth.
This would have been all very well, if he had not added to such kindly
and unobtrusive evidence a certain wilfulness in discharging what he
called debts. When his mother worked for him, he paid her by showering
about her his bright animal spirits, with even more affluence than his
gay, taunting, teasing, loving wont. If Lucy Snowe were discovered to
have put her hand to such work, he planned, in recompence, some
pleasant recreation.
I often felt amazed at his perfect knowledge of Villette; a knowledge
not merely confined to its open streets, but penetrating to all its
galleries, salles, and cabinets: of every door which shut in an object
worth seeing, of every museum, of every hall, sacred to art or science,
he seemed to possess the “Open! Sesame.” I never had a head for
science, but an ignorant, blind, fond instinct inclined me to art. I
liked to visit the picture-galleries, and I dearly liked to be left
there alone. In company, a wretched idiosyncracy forbade me to see much
or to feel anything. In unfamiliar company, where it was necessary to
maintain a flow of talk on the subjects in presence, half an hour would
knock me up, with a combined pressure of physical lassitude and entire
mental incapacity. I never yet saw the well-reared child, much less the
educated adult, who could not put me to shame, by the sustained
intelligence of its demeanour under the ordeal of a conversable,
sociable visitation of pictures, historical sights or buildings, or any
lions of public interest. Dr. Bretton was a cicerone after my own
heart; he would take me betimes, ere the galleries were filled, leave
me there for two or three hours, and call for me when his own
engagements were discharged. Meantime, I was happy; happy, not always
in admiring, but in examining, questioning, and forming conclusions. In
the commencement of these visits, there was some misunderstanding and
consequent struggle between Will and Power. The former faculty exacted
approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the
latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then
self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet