Villette
steadily clinging to a gentleman before us, was suddenly struck from
her protector’s arms by a big, butcherly intruder, and hurled under the
feet of the crowd. Scarce two seconds lasted her disappearance. Graham
rushed forwards; he and the gentleman, a powerful man though
grey-haired, united their strength to thrust back the throng; her head
and long hair fell back over his shoulder: she seemed unconscious.
“Trust her with me; I am a medical man,” said Dr. John.
“If you have no lady with you, be it so,” was the answer. “Hold her,
and I will force a passage: we must get her to the air.”
“I have a lady,” said Graham; “but she will be neither hindrance nor
incumbrance.”
He summoned me with his eye: we were separated. Resolute, however, to
rejoin him, I penetrated the living barrier, creeping under where I
could not get between or over.
“Fasten on me, and don’t leave go,” he said; and I obeyed him.
Our pioneer proved strong and adroit; he opened the dense mass like a
wedge; with patience and toil he at last bored through the
flesh-and-blood rock—so solid, hot, and suffocating—and brought us to
the fresh, freezing night.
“You are an Englishman!” said he, turning shortly on Dr. Bretton, when
we got into the street.
“An Englishman. And I speak to a countryman?” was the reply.
“Right. Be good enough to stand here two minutes, whilst I find my
carriage.”
“Papa, I am not hurt,” said a girlish voice; “am I with papa?”
“You are with a friend, and your father is close at hand.”
“Tell him I am not hurt, except just in my shoulder. Oh, my shoulder!
They trod just here.”
“Dislocation, perhaps!” muttered the Doctor: “let us hope there is no
worse injury done. Lucy, lend a hand one instant.”
And I assisted while he made some arrangement of drapery and position
for the ease of his suffering burden. She suppressed a moan, and lay in
his arms quietly and patiently.
“She is very light,” said Graham, “like a child!” and he asked in my
ear, “Is she a child, Lucy? Did you notice her age?”
“I am not a child—I am a person of seventeen,” responded the patient,
demurely and with dignity. Then, directly after: “Tell papa to come; I
get anxious.”
The carriage drove up; her father relieved Graham; but in the exchange
from one bearer to another she was hurt, and moaned again.
“My darling!” said the father, tenderly; then turning to Graham, “You
said, sir, you are a medical man?”
“I am: Dr. Bretton, of La Terrasse.”
“Good. Will you step into my carriage?”
“My own carriage is here: I will seek it, and accompany you.”
“Be pleased, then, to follow us.” And he named his address: “The Hôtel
Crécy, in the Rue Crécy.”
We followed; the carriage drove fast; myself and Graham were silent.
This seemed like an adventure.
Some little time being lost in seeking our own equipage, we reached the
hotel perhaps about ten minutes after these strangers. It was an hotel
in the foreign sense: a collection of dwelling-houses, not an inn—a
vast, lofty pile, with a huge arch to its street-door, leading through
a vaulted covered way, into a square all built round.
We alighted, passed up a wide, handsome public staircase, and stopped
at Numéro 2 on the second landing; the first floor comprising the abode
of I know not what “prince Russe,” as Graham informed me. On ringing
the bell at a second great door, we were admitted to a suite of very
handsome apartments. Announced by a servant in livery, we entered a
drawing-room whose hearth glowed with an English fire, and whose walls
gleamed with foreign mirrors. Near the hearth appeared a little group:
a slight form sunk in a deep arm-chair, one or two women busy about it,
the iron-grey gentleman anxiously looking on.
“Where is Harriet? I wish Harriet would come to me,” said the girlish
voice, faintly.
“Where is Mrs. Hurst?” demanded the gentleman impatiently and somewhat
sternly of the man-servant who had admitted us.
“I am sorry to say she is gone out of town, sir; my young lady gave her
leave till to-morrow.”
“Yes—I did—I did. She is gone to see her sister; I said she might go: I
remember now,” interposed the young lady; “but I am so sorry, for Manon
and Louison cannot understand a word I say, and they hurt me without
meaning to do so.”
Dr. John and the gentleman now interchanged greetings; and while they
passed a few minutes in consultation, I approached the easy-chair, and
seeing what the faint and sinking girl wished to have done, I did it
for her.
I was still occupied in the arrangement, when Graham drew near; he was
no less skilled in surgery than medicine, and, on examination, found
that no further advice than his own was necessary to the treatment of
the present case. He ordered her to be carried to her chamber, and
whispered to me:—“Go with the women, Lucy; they seem but dull; you can
at least direct their movements, and thus spare her some pain. She must
be touched very tenderly.”
The chamber was a room shadowy with pale-blue hangings, vaporous with
curtainings and veilings of muslin; the bed seemed to me like
snow-drift and mist—spotless, soft, and gauzy. Making the women stand
apart, I undressed their mistress, without their well-meaning but
clumsy aid. I was not in a sufficiently collected mood to note with
separate distinctness every detail of the attire I removed, but I
received a general impression of refinement, delicacy, and perfect
personal cultivation; which, in a period of after-thought, offered in
my reflections a singular contrast to notes retained of Miss Ginevra
Fanshawe’s appointments.
The girl was herself a small, delicate creature, but made like a model.
As I folded back her plentiful yet fine hair, so shining and soft, and
so exquisitely tended, I had under my observation a young, pale, weary,
but high-bred face. The brow was smooth and clear; the eyebrows were
distinct, but soft, and melting to a mere trace at the temples; the
eyes were a rich gift of nature—fine and full, large, deep, seeming to
hold dominion over the slighter subordinate features—capable, probably,
of much significance at another hour and under other circumstances than
the present, but now languid and suffering. Her skin was perfectly
fair, the neck and hands veined finely like the petals of a flower; a
thin glazing of the ice of pride polished this delicate exterior, and
her lip wore a curl—I doubt not inherent and unconscious, but which, if
I had seen it first with the accompaniments of health and state, would
have struck me as unwarranted, and proving in the little lady a quite
mistaken view of life and her own consequence.
Her demeanour under the Doctor’s hands at first excited a smile; it was
not puerile—rather, on the whole, patient and firm—but yet, once or
twice she addressed him with suddenness and sharpness, saying that he
hurt her, and must contrive to give her less pain; I saw her large
eyes, too, settle on his face like the solemn eyes of some pretty,
wondering child. I know not whether Graham felt this examination: if he
did, he was cautious not to check or discomfort it by any retaliatory
look. I think he performed his work with extreme care and gentleness,
sparing her what pain he could; and she acknowledged as much, when he
had done, by the words:—“Thank you, Doctor, and good-night,” very
gratefully pronounced as she uttered them, however, it was with a
repetition of the serious, direct gaze, I thought, peculiar in its
gravity and intentness.
The injuries, it seems, were not dangerous: an assurance which her
father received with a smile that almost made one his friend—it was so
glad and gratified. He now expressed his obligations to Graham with as
much earnestness as was befitting an Englishman addressing one who has
served him, but is yet a stranger; he also begged him to call the next
day.
“Papa,” said a voice from the veiled couch, “thank the lady, too; is
she there?”
I opened the curtain with a smile, and looked in at her. She lay now at
comparative ease; she looked pretty, though pale; her face was
delicately designed, and if at first sight it appeared proud, I believe
custom might prove it to be soft.
“I thank the lady very sincerely,” said her father: “I fancy she has
been very good to my child. I think we scarcely dare tell Mrs. Hurst
who has been her substitute and done her work; she will feel at once
ashamed and jealous.”
And thus, in the most friendly spirit, parting greetings were
interchanged; and refreshment having been hospitably offered, but by
us, as it was late, refused, we withdrew from the Hôtel Crécy.
On our way back we repassed the theatre. All was silence and darkness:
the roaring, rushing crowd all vanished and gone—the damps, as well as
the incipient fire, extinct and forgotten. Next morning’s papers
explained that it was but some loose drapery on which a spark had
fallen, and which had blazed up and been quenched in a moment.
CHAPTER XXIV.
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE.
Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the
seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are
liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of
their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps,
and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse—some
congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel
would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of
communication—there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long
blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and
unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the
visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other
token that indicated remembrance, comes no more.
Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but
knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without
are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which
passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the
wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at
milestones—that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants
with hurry for his friends.
The hermit—if he be a sensible hermit—will swallow his own thoughts,
and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He
will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the
dormouse, and he will be conformable: make a tidy ball of himself,
creep into a hole of life’s wall, and submit decently to the drift
which blows in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the
season.
Let him say, “It is quite right: it ought to be so, since so it is.”
And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulchre will open, spring’s softness
will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of
hedges, and carolling of birds, and singing of liberated streams, will
call him to kindly resurrection. _Perhaps_ this may be the case,
perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when
spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his
dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be
supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the
way of all flesh, “As well soon as syne.”
Following that eventful evening at the theatre, came for me seven weeks
as bare as seven sheets of blank paper: no word was written on one of
them; not a visit, not a token.
About the middle of that time I entertained fancies that something had
happened to my friends at La Terrasse. The mid-blank is always a
beclouded point for the solitary: his nerves ache with the strain of
long expectancy; the doubts hitherto repelled gather now to a mass
and—strong in accumulation—roll back upon him with a force which