Villette
sometimes witnessing cruel sufferings—perhaps, occasionally, as I tell
him, inflicting them—at night he still comes home to me in such kindly,
pleasant mood, that really, I seem to live in a sort of moral
antipodes, and on these January evenings my day rises when other
people’s night sets in.
“Still he needs keeping in order, and correcting, and repressing,
and I do him that good service; but the boy is so elastic there is
no such thing as vexing him thoroughly. When I think I have at last
driven him to the sullens, he turns on me with jokes for
retaliation: but you know him and all his iniquities, and I am but
an elderly simpleton to make him the subject of this epistle.
“As for me, I have had my old Bretton agent here on a visit, and
have been plunged overhead and ears in business matters. I do so
wish to regain for Graham at least some part of what his father
left him. He laughs to scorn my anxiety on this point, bidding me
look and see how he can provide for himself and me too, and asking
what the old lady can possibly want that she has not; hinting about
sky-blue turbans; accusing me of an ambition to wear diamonds, keep
livery servants, have an hotel, and lead the fashion amongst the
English clan in Villette.
“Talking of sky-blue turbans, I wish you had been with us the other
evening. He had come in really tired, and after I had given him his
tea, he threw himself into my chair with his customary presumption.
To my great delight, he dropped asleep. (You know how he teases me
about being drowsy; I, who never, by any chance, close an eye by
daylight.) While he slept, I thought he looked very bonny, Lucy:
fool as I am to be so proud of him; but who can help it? Show me
his peer. Look where I will, I see nothing like him in Villette.
Well, I took it into my head to play him a trick: so I brought out
the sky-blue turban, and handling it with gingerly precaution, I
managed to invest his brows with this grand adornment. I assure you
it did not at all misbecome him; he looked quite Eastern, except
that he is so fair. Nobody, however, can accuse him of having red
hair _now_—it is genuine chestnut—a dark, glossy chestnut; and when
I put my large cashmere about him, there was as fine a young bey,
dey, or pacha improvised as you would wish to see.
“It was good entertainment; but only half-enjoyed, since I was
alone: you should have been there.
“In due time my lord awoke: the looking-glass above the fireplace
soon intimated to him his plight: as you may imagine, I now live
under threat and dread of vengeance.
“But to come to the gist of my letter. I know Thursday is a
half-holiday in the Rue Fossette: be ready, then, by five in the
afternoon, at which hour I will send the carriage to take you out
to La Terrasse. Be sure to come: you may meet some old
acquaintance. Good-by, my wise, dear, grave little
god-daughter.—Very truly yours,
“LOUISA BRETTON.”
Now, a letter like that sets one to rights! I might still be sad after
reading that letter, but I was more composed; not exactly cheered,
perhaps, but relieved. My friends, at least, were well and happy: no
accident had occurred to Graham; no illness had seized his
mother—calamities that had so long been my dream and thought. Their
feelings for me too were—as they had been. Yet, how strange it was to
look on Mrs. Bretton’s seven weeks and contrast them with my seven
weeks! Also, how very wise it is in people placed in an exceptional
position to hold their tongues and not rashly declare how such position
galls them! The world can understand well enough the process of
perishing for want of food: perhaps few persons can enter into or
follow out that of going mad from solitary confinement. They see the
long-buried prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot!—how his senses
left him—how his nerves, first inflamed, underwent nameless agony, and
then sunk to palsy—is a subject too intricate for examination, too
abstract for popular comprehension. Speak of it! you might almost as
well stand up in an European market-place, and propound dark sayings in
that language and mood wherein Nebuchadnezzar, the imperial
hypochondriac, communed with his baffled Chaldeans. And long, long may
the minds to whom such themes are no mystery—by whom their bearings are
sympathetically seized—be few in number, and rare of rencounter. Long
may it be generally thought that physical privations alone merit
compassion, and that the rest is a figment. When the world was younger
and haler than now, moral trials were a deeper mystery still: perhaps
in all the land of Israel there was but one Saul—certainly but one
David to soothe or comprehend him.
The keen, still cold of the morning was succeeded, later in the day, by
a sharp breathing from Russian wastes: the cold zone sighed over the
temperate zone, and froze it fast. A heavy firmament, dull, and thick
with snow, sailed up from the north, and settled over expectant Europe.
Towards afternoon began the descent. I feared no carriage would come,
the white tempest raged so dense and wild. But trust my godmother! Once
having asked, she would have her guest. About six o’clock I was lifted
from the carriage over the already blocked-up front steps of the
château, and put in at the door of La Terrasse.
Running through the vestibule, and up-stairs to the drawing-room, there
I found Mrs. Bretton—a summer-day in her own person. Had I been twice
as cold as I was, her kind kiss and cordial clasp would have warmed me.
Inured now for so long a time to rooms with bare boards, black benches,
desks, and stoves, the blue saloon seemed to me gorgeous. In its
Christmas-like fire alone there was a clear and crimson splendour which
quite dazzled me.
When my godmother had held my hand for a little while, and chatted with
me, and scolded me for having become thinner than when she last saw me,
she professed to discover that the snow-wind had disordered my hair,
and sent me up-stairs to make it neat and remove my shawl.
Repairing to my own little sea-green room, there also I found a bright
fire, and candles too were lit: a tall waxlight stood on each side the
great looking-glass; but between the candles, and before the glass,
appeared something dressing itself—an airy, fairy thing—small, slight,
white—a winter spirit.
I declare, for one moment I thought of Graham and his spectral
illusions. With distrustful eye I noted the details of this new vision.
It wore white, sprinkled slightly with drops of scarlet; its girdle was
red; it had something in its hair leafy, yet shining—a little wreath
with an evergreen gloss. Spectral or not, here truly was nothing
frightful, and I advanced.
Turning quick upon me, a large eye, under long lashes, flashed over me,
the intruder: the lashes were as dark as long, and they softened with
their pencilling the orb they guarded.
“Ah! you are come!” she breathed out, in a soft, quiet voice, and she
smiled slowly, and gazed intently.
I knew her now. Having only once seen that sort of face, with that cast
of fine and delicate featuring, I could not but know her.
“Miss de Bassompierre,” I pronounced.
“No,” was the reply, “not Miss de Bassompierre for _you!_” I did not
inquire who then she might be, but waited voluntary information.
“You are changed, but still you are yourself,” she said, approaching
nearer. “I remember you well—your countenance, the colour of your hair,
the outline of your face….”
I had moved to the fire, and she stood opposite, and gazed into me; and
as she gazed, her face became gradually more and more expressive of
thought and feeling, till at last a dimness quenched her clear vision.
“It makes me almost cry to look so far back,” said she: “but as to
being sorry, or sentimental, don’t think it: on the contrary, I am
quite pleased and glad.”
Interested, yet altogether at fault, I knew not what to say. At last I
stammered, “I think I never met you till that night, some weeks ago,
when you were hurt…?”
She smiled. “You have forgotten then that I have sat on your knee, been
lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow? You no longer remember
the night when I came crying, like a naughty little child as I was, to
your bedside, and you took me in. You have no memory for the comfort
and protection by which you soothed an acute distress? Go back to
Bretton. Remember Mr. Home.”
At last I saw it all. “And you are little Polly?”
“I am Paulina Mary Home de Bassompierre.”
How time can change! Little Polly wore in her pale, small features, her
fairy symmetry, her varying expression, a certain promise of interest
and grace; but Paulina Mary was become beautiful—not with the beauty
that strikes the eye like a rose—orbed, ruddy, and replete; not with
the plump, and pink, and flaxen attributes of her blond cousin Ginevra;
but her seventeen years had brought her a refined and tender charm
which did not lie in complexion, though hers was fair and clear; nor in
outline, though her features were sweet, and her limbs perfectly
turned; but, I think, rather in a subdued glow from the soul outward.
This was not an opaque vase, of material however costly, but a lamp
chastely lucent, guarding from extinction, yet not hiding from worship,
a flame vital and vestal. In speaking of her attractions, I would not
exaggerate language; but, indeed, they seemed to me very real and
engaging. What though all was on a small scale, it was the perfume
which gave this white violet distinction, and made it superior to the
broadest camelia—the fullest dahlia that ever bloomed.
“Ah! and you remember the old time at Bretton?”
“Better,” said she, “better, perhaps, than you. I remember it with
minute distinctness: not only the time, but the days of the time, and
the hours of the days.”
“You must have forgotten some things?”
“Very little, I imagine.”
“You were then a little creature of quick feelings: you must, long ere
this, have outgrown the impressions with which joy and grief, affection
and bereavement, stamped your mind ten years ago.”
“You think I have forgotten whom I liked, and in what degree I liked
them when a child?”
“The sharpness must be gone—the point, the poignancy—the deep imprint
must be softened away and effaced?”
“I have a good memory for those days.”
She looked as if she had. Her eyes were the eyes of one who can
remember; one whose childhood does not fade like a dream, nor whose
youth vanish like a sunbeam. She would not take life, loosely and
incoherently, in parts, and let one season slip as she entered on
another: she would retain and add; often review from the commencement,
and so grow in harmony and consistency as she grew in years. Still I
could not quite admit the conviction that _all_ the pictures which now
crowded upon me were vivid and visible to her. Her fond attachments,
her sports and contests with a well-loved playmate, the patient, true
devotion of her child’s heart, her fears, her delicate reserves, her
little trials, the last piercing pain of separation…. I retraced these
things, and shook my head incredulous. She persisted. “The child of
seven years lives yet in the girl of seventeen,” said she.
“You used to be excessively fond of Mrs. Bretton,” I remarked,
intending to test her. She set me right at once.
“Not _excessively_ fond,” said she; “I liked her: I respected her as I
should do now: she seems to me very little altered.”
“She is not much changed,” I assented.
We were silent a few minutes. Glancing round the room she said, “There
are several things here that used to be at Bretton! I remember that
pincushion and that looking-glass.”