Villette
“Don’t think I should care a fig about it,” was the response.
“That is not true. You told Lucy Snowe you longed to have a ride.”
“Lucy Snowe is a _tatter_-box,” I heard her say: (her imperfect
articulation was the least precocious thing she had about her); and
with this, she walked into the house.
Graham coming in soon after, observed to his mother,—“Mamma, I believe
that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities;
but I should be dull without her; she amuses me a great deal more than
you or Lucy Snowe.”
“Miss Snowe,” said Paulina to me (she had now got into the habit of
occasionally chatting with me when we were alone in our room at night),
“do you know on what day in the week I like Graham best?”
“How can I possibly know anything so strange? Is there one day out of
the seven when he is otherwise than on the other six?”
“To be sure! Can’t you see? Don’t you know? I find him the most
excellent on a Sunday; then we have him the whole day, and he is quiet,
and, in the evening, _so_ kind.”
This observation was not altogether groundless: going to church, &c.,
kept Graham quiet on the Sunday, and the evening he generally dedicated
to a serene, though rather indolent sort of enjoyment by the parlour
fireside. He would take possession of the couch, and then he would call
Polly.
Graham was a boy not quite as other boys are; all his delight did not
lie in action: he was capable of some intervals of contemplation; he
could take a pleasure too in reading, nor was his selection of books
wholly indiscriminate: there were glimmerings of characteristic
preference, and even of instinctive taste in the choice. He rarely, it
is true, remarked on what he read, but I have seen him sit and think of
it.
Polly, being near him, kneeling on a little cushion or the carpet, a
conversation would begin in murmurs, not inaudible, though subdued. I
caught a snatch of their tenor now and then; and, in truth, some
influence better and finer than that of every day, seemed to soothe
Graham at such times into no ungentle mood.
“Have you learned any hymns this week, Polly?”
“I have learned a very pretty one, four verses long. Shall I say it?”
“Speak nicely, then: don’t be in a hurry.”
The hymn being rehearsed, or rather half-chanted, in a little singing
voice, Graham would take exceptions at the manner, and proceed to give
a lesson in recitation. She was quick in learning, apt in imitating;
and, besides, her pleasure was to please Graham: she proved a ready
scholar. To the hymn would succeed some reading—perhaps a chapter in
the Bible; correction was seldom required here, for the child could
read any simple narrative chapter very well; and, when the subject was
such as she could understand and take an interest in, her expression
and emphasis were something remarkable. Joseph cast into the pit; the
calling of Samuel; Daniel in the lions’ den;—these were favourite
passages: of the first especially she seemed perfectly to feel the
pathos.
“Poor Jacob!” she would sometimes say, with quivering lips. “How he
loved his son Joseph! As much,” she once added—“as much, Graham, as I
love you: if you were to die“ (and she re-opened the book, sought the
verse, and read), “I should refuse to be comforted, and go down into
the grave to you mourning.”
With these words she gathered Graham in her little arms, drawing his
long-tressed head towards her. The action, I remember, struck me as
strangely rash; exciting the feeling one might experience on seeing an
animal dangerous by nature, and but half-tamed by art, too heedlessly
fondled. Not that I feared Graham would hurt, or very roughly check
her; but I thought she ran risk of incurring such a careless, impatient
repulse, as would be worse almost to her than a blow. On the whole,
however, these demonstrations were borne passively: sometimes even a
sort of complacent wonder at her earnest partiality would smile not
unkindly in his eyes. Once he said:—“You like me almost as well as if
you were my little sister, Polly.”
“Oh! I _do_ like you,” said she; “I _do_ like you very much.”
I was not long allowed the amusement of this study of character. She
had scarcely been at Bretton two months, when a letter came from Mr.
Home, signifying that he was now settled amongst his maternal kinsfolk
on the Continent; that, as England was become wholly distasteful to
him, he had no thoughts of returning hither, perhaps, for years; and
that he wished his little girl to join him immediately.
“I wonder how she will take this news?” said Mrs. Bretton, when she had
read the letter. _I_ wondered, too, and I took upon myself to
communicate it.
Repairing to the drawing-room—in which calm and decorated apartment she
was fond of being alone, and where she could be implicitly trusted, for
she fingered nothing, or rather soiled nothing she fingered—I found her
seated, like a little Odalisque, on a couch, half shaded by the
drooping draperies of the window near. She seemed happy; all her
appliances for occupation were about her; the white wood workbox, a
shred or two of muslin, an end or two of ribbon collected for
conversion into doll-millinery. The doll, duly night-capped and
night-gowned, lay in its cradle; she was rocking it to sleep, with an
air of the most perfect faith in its possession of sentient and
somnolent faculties; her eyes, at the same time, being engaged with a
picture-book, which lay open on her lap.
“Miss Snowe,” said she in a whisper, “this is a wonderful book.
Candace” (the doll, christened by Graham; for, indeed, its begrimed
complexion gave it much of an Ethiopian aspect)—“Candace is asleep now,
and I may tell you about it; only we must both speak low, lest she
should waken. This book was given me by Graham; it tells about distant
countries, a long, long way from England, which no traveller can reach
without sailing thousands of miles over the sea. Wild men live in these
countries, Miss Snowe, who wear clothes different from ours: indeed,
some of them wear scarcely any clothes, for the sake of being cool, you
know; for they have very hot weather. Here is a picture of thousands
gathered in a desolate place—a plain, spread with sand—round a man in
black,—a good, _good_ Englishman—a missionary, who is preaching to them
under a palm-tree.” (She showed a little coloured cut to that effect.)
“And here are pictures” (she went on) “more stranger” (grammar was
occasionally forgotten) “than that. There is the wonderful Great Wall
of China; here is a Chinese lady, with a foot littler than mine. There
is a wild horse of Tartary; and here, most strange of all—is a land of
ice and snow, without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this land,
they found some mammoth bones: there are no mammoths now. You don’t
know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty,
goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not
a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes, if I met one
in a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when
it would trample me down amongst the bushes, as I might tread on a
grasshopper in a hayfield without knowing it.”
Thus she rambled on.
“Polly,” I interrupted, “should you like to travel?”
“Not just yet,” was the prudent answer; “but perhaps in twenty years,
when I am grown a woman, as tall as Mrs. Bretton, I may travel with
Graham. We intend going to Switzerland, and climbing Mount Blanck; and
some day we shall sail over to South America, and walk to the top of
Kim-kim-borazo.”
“But how would you like to travel now, if your papa was with you?”
Her reply—not given till after a pause—evinced one of those unexpected
turns of temper peculiar to her.
“Where is the good of talking in that silly way?” said she. “Why do you
mention papa? What is papa to you? I was just beginning to be happy,
and not think about him so much; and there it will be all to do over
again!”
Her lip trembled. I hastened to disclose the fact of a letter having
been received, and to mention the directions given that she and Harriet
should immediately rejoin this dear papa. “Now, Polly, are you not
glad?” I added.
She made no answer. She dropped her book and ceased to rock her doll;
she gazed at me with gravity and earnestness.
“Shall not you like to go to papa?”
“Of course,” she said at last in that trenchant manner she usually
employed in speaking to me; and which was quite different from that she
used with Mrs. Bretton, and different again from the one dedicated to
Graham. I wished to ascertain more of what she thought but no: she
would converse no more. Hastening to Mrs. Bretton, she questioned her,
and received the confirmation of my news. The weight and importance of
these tidings kept her perfectly serious the whole day. In the evening,
at the moment Graham’s entrance was heard below, I found her at my
side. She began to arrange a locket-ribbon about my neck, she displaced
and replaced the comb in my hair; while thus busied, Graham entered.
“Tell him by-and-by,” she whispered; “tell him I am going.”
In the course of tea-time I made the desired communication. Graham, it
chanced, was at that time greatly preoccupied about some school-prize,
for which he was competing. The news had to be told twice before it
took proper hold of his attention, and even then he dwelt on it but
momently.
“Polly going? What a pity! Dear little Mousie, I shall be sorry to lose
her: she must come to us again, mamma.”
And hastily swallowing his tea, he took a candle and a small table to
himself and his books, and was soon buried in study.
“Little Mousie” crept to his side, and lay down on the carpet at his
feet, her face to the floor; mute and motionless she kept that post and
position till bed-time. Once I saw Graham—wholly unconscious of her
proximity—push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two.
A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to
which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot. When
summoned by her nurse she rose and departed very obediently, having bid
us all a subdued good-night.
I will not say that I dreaded going to bed, an hour later; yet I
certainly went with an unquiet anticipation that I should find that
child in no peaceful sleep. The forewarning of my instinct was but
fulfilled, when I discovered her, all cold and vigilant, perched like a
white bird on the outside of the bed. I scarcely knew how to accost
her; she was not to be managed like another child. She, however,
accosted me. As I closed the door, and put the light on the
dressing-table, she turned to me with these words:—“I cannot—_cannot_
sleep; and in this way I cannot—_cannot_ live!”
I asked what ailed her.
“Dedful miz-er-y!” said she, with her piteous lisp.
“Shall I call Mrs. Bretton?”
“That is downright silly,” was her impatient reply; and, indeed, I well
knew that if she had heard Mrs. Bretton’s foot approach, she would have
nestled quiet as a mouse under the bedclothes. Whilst lavishing her
eccentricities regardlessly before me—for whom she professed scarcely
the semblance of affection—she never showed my godmother one glimpse of
her inner self: for her, she was nothing but a docile, somewhat quaint
little maiden. I examined her; her cheek was crimson; her dilated eye
was both troubled and glowing, and painfully restless: in this state it
was obvious she must not be left till morning. I guessed how the case
stood.
“Would you like to bid Graham good-night again?” I asked. “He is not
gone to his room yet.”
She at once stretched out her little arms to be lifted. Folding a shawl
round her, I carried her back to the drawing-room. Graham was just
coming out.
“She cannot sleep without seeing and speaking to you once more,” I