Villette
said. “She does not like the thought of leaving you.”
“I’ve spoilt her,” said he, taking her from me with good humour, and
kissing her little hot face and burning lips. “Polly, you care for me
more than for papa, now—”
“I _do_ care for you, but you care nothing for me,” was her whisper.
She was assured to the contrary, again kissed, restored to me, and I
carried her away; but, alas! not soothed.
When I thought she could listen to me, I said—“Paulina, you should not
grieve that Graham does not care for you so much as you care for him.
It must be so.”
Her lifted and questioning eyes asked why.
“Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he is sixteen and you are only
six; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise.”
“But I love him so much; he _should_ love me a little.”
“He does. He is fond of you. You are his favourite.”
“Am I Graham’s favourite?”
“Yes, more than any little child I know.”
The assurance soothed her; she smiled in her anguish.
“But,” I continued, “don’t fret, and don’t expect too much of him, or
else he will feel you to be troublesome, and then it is all over.”
“All over!” she echoed softly; “then I’ll be good. I’ll try to be good,
Lucy Snowe.”
I put her to bed.
“Will he forgive me this one time?” she asked, as I undressed myself. I
assured her that he would; that as yet he was by no means alienated;
that she had only to be careful for the future.
“There is no future,” said she: “I am going. Shall I ever—ever—see him
again, after I leave England?”
I returned an encouraging response. The candle being extinguished, a
still half-hour elapsed. I thought her asleep, when the little white
shape once more lifted itself in the crib, and the small voice
asked—“Do you like Graham, Miss Snowe?”
“Like him! Yes, a little.”
“Only a little! Do you like him as I do?”
“I think not. No: not as you do.”
“Do you like him much?”
“I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so
very much: he is full of faults.”
“Is he?”
“All boys are.”
“More than girls?”
“Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and
as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship
none.”
“Are you a wise person?”
“I mean to try to be so. Go to sleep.”
“I _cannot_ go to sleep. Have you no pain just here” (laying her elfish
hand on her elfish breast,) “when you think _you_ shall have to leave
Graham; for _your_ home is not here?”
“Surely, Polly,” said I, “you should not feel so much pain when you are
very soon going to rejoin your father. Have you forgotten him? Do you
no longer wish to be his little companion?”
Dead silence succeeded this question.
“Child, lie down and sleep,” I urged.
“My bed is cold,” said she. “I can’t warm it.”
I saw the little thing shiver. “Come to me,” I said, wishing, yet
scarcely hoping, that she would comply: for she was a most strange,
capricious, little creature, and especially whimsical with me. She
came, however, instantly, like a small ghost gliding over the carpet. I
took her in. She was chill: I warmed her in my arms. She trembled
nervously; I soothed her. Thus tranquillized and cherished she at last
slumbered.
“A very unique child,” thought I, as I viewed her sleeping countenance
by the fitful moonlight, and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering
eyelids and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief. “How will she get
through this world, or battle with this life? How will she bear the
shocks and repulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and
my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?”
She departed the next day; trembling like a leaf when she took leave,
but exercising self-command.
CHAPTER IV.
MISS MARCHMONT.
On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after Paulina’s
departure—little thinking then I was never again to visit it; never
more to tread its calm old streets—I betook myself home, having been
absent six months. It will be conjectured that I was of course glad to
return to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable conjecture does no
harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted. Far from saying
nay, indeed, I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next eight
years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour still
as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to
heaven, his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great
many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that
fashion; why not I with the rest?
Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a
cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes
indolently soft. However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, I
must somehow have fallen overboard, or that there must have been wreck
at last. I too well remember a time—a long time—of cold, of danger, of
contention. To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats the
rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat, and their icy pressure
on my lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that not of one hour
nor one day. For many days and nights neither sun nor stars appeared;
we cast with our own hands the tackling out of the ship; a heavy
tempest lay on us; all hope that we should be saved was taken away. In
fine, the ship was lost, the crew perished.
As far as I recollect, I complained to no one about these troubles.
Indeed, to whom could I complain? Of Mrs. Bretton I had long lost
sight. Impediments, raised by others, had, years ago, come in the way
of our intercourse, and cut it off. Besides, time had brought changes
for her, too: the handsome property of which she was left guardian for
her son, and which had been chiefly invested in some joint-stock
undertaking, had melted, it was said, to a fraction of its original
amount. Graham, I learned from incidental rumours, had adopted a
profession; both he and his mother were gone from Bretton, and were
understood to be now in London. Thus, there remained no possibility of
dependence on others; to myself alone could I look. I know not that I
was of a self-reliant or active nature; but self-reliance and exertion
were forced upon me by circumstances, as they are upon thousands
besides; and when Miss Marchmont, a maiden lady of our neighbourhood,
sent for me, I obeyed her behest, in the hope that she might assign me
some task I could undertake.
Miss Marchmont was a woman of fortune, and lived in a handsome
residence; but she was a rheumatic cripple, impotent, foot and hand,
and had been so for twenty years. She always sat upstairs: her
drawing-room adjoined her bed-room. I had often heard of Miss
Marchmont, and of her peculiarities (she had the character of being
very eccentric), but till now had never seen her. I found her a
furrowed, grey-haired woman, grave with solitude, stern with long
affliction, irritable also, and perhaps exacting. It seemed that a
maid, or rather companion, who had waited on her for some years, was
about to be married; and she, hearing of my bereaved lot, had sent for
me, with the idea that I might supply this person’s place. She made the
proposal to me after tea, as she and I sat alone by her fireside.
“It will not be an easy life;” said she candidly, “for I require a good
deal of attention, and you will be much confined; yet, perhaps,
contrasted with the existence you have lately led, it may appear
tolerable.”
I reflected. Of course it ought to appear tolerable, I argued inwardly;
but somehow, by some strange fatality, it would not. To live here, in
this close room, the watcher of suffering—sometimes, perhaps, the butt
of temper—through all that was to come of my youth; while all that was
gone had passed, to say the least, not blissfully! My heart sunk one
moment, then it revived; for though I forced myself to _realise_ evils,
I think I was too prosaic to _idealise_, and consequently to exaggerate
them.
“My doubt is whether I should have strength for the undertaking,” I
observed.
“That is my own scruple,” said she; “for you look a worn-out creature.”
So I did. I saw myself in the glass, in my mourning-dress, a faded,
hollow-eyed vision. Yet I thought little of the wan spectacle. The
blight, I believed, was chiefly external: I still felt life at life’s
sources.
“What else have you in view—anything?”
“Nothing clear as yet: but I may find something.”
“So you imagine: perhaps you are right. Try your own method, then; and
if it does not succeed, test mine. The chance I have offered shall be
left open to you for three months.”
This was kind. I told her so, and expressed my gratitude. While I was
speaking, a paroxysm of pain came on. I ministered to her; made the
necessary applications, according to her directions, and, by the time
she was relieved, a sort of intimacy was already formed between us. I,
for my part, had learned from the manner in which she bore this attack,
that she was a firm, patient woman (patient under physical pain, though
sometimes perhaps excitable under long mental canker); and she, from
the good-will with which I succoured her, discovered that she could
influence my sympathies (such as they were). She sent for me the next
day; for five or six successive days she claimed my company. Closer
acquaintance, while it developed both faults and eccentricities,
opened, at the same time, a view of a character I could respect. Stern
and even morose as she sometimes was, I could wait on her and sit
beside her with that calm which always blesses us when we are sensible
that our manners, presence, contact, please and soothe the persons we
serve. Even when she scolded me—which she did, now and then, very
tartly—it was in such a way as did not humiliate, and left no sting; it
was rather like an irascible mother rating her daughter, than a harsh
mistress lecturing a dependant: lecture, indeed, she could not, though
she could occasionally storm. Moreover, a vein of reason ever ran
through her passion: she was logical even when fierce. Ere long a
growing sense of attachment began to present the thought of staying
with her as companion in quite a new light; in another week I had
agreed to remain.
Two hot, close rooms thus became my world; and a crippled old woman, my
mistress, my friend, my all. Her service was my duty—her pain, my
suffering—her relief, my hope—her anger, my punishment—her regard, my
reward. I forgot that there were fields, woods, rivers, seas, an
ever-changing sky outside the steam-dimmed lattice of this sick
chamber; I was almost content to forget it. All within me became
narrowed to my lot. Tame and still by habit, disciplined by destiny, I
demanded no walks in the fresh air; my appetite needed no more than the
tiny messes served for the invalid. In addition, she gave me the
originality of her character to study: the steadiness of her virtues, I
will add, the power of her passions, to admire; the truth of her
feelings to trust. All these things she had, and for these things I
clung to her.
For these things I would have crawled on with her for twenty years, if
for twenty years longer her life of endurance had been protracted. But
another decree was written. It seemed I must be stimulated into action.
I must be goaded, driven, stung, forced to energy. My little morsel of
human affection, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must melt
in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving hailstone. My small
adopted duty must be snatched from my easily contented conscience. I
had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies
by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains. Fate would
not so be pacified; nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth
and cowardly indolence.