Villette (33 page)

‘I would bring my work here,’ she said, as she took from me the emptied tea-cup, ‘and sit with you the whole day, if that overbearing John Graham had not put his veto upon such a proceeding. “Now, mama,” he said, when he went out, “take notice, you are not to knock up your god-daughter with gossip,” and he particularly desired me to keep close to my own quarters, and spare you my fine company. He says, Lucy, he thinks you have had a nervous fever, judging from your look,—is that so?’

I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that I had certainly suffered a good deal, especially in mind. Further, on this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The difference between her and me might be figured by that between the stately ship, cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old, dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide between them the rule of the great deep. No, the ‘Louisa Bretton’ never was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, and spins no yams.

She left me, and I lay in bed content: it was good of Graham to remember me before he went out.

My day was lonely, but the prospect of coming evening abridged and cheered it. Then, too, I felt weak, and rest seemed welcome; and after the morning hours were gone by—those hours which always bring, even to the necessarily unoccupied, a sense of business to be done, of tasks waiting fulfilment, a vague impression of obligation to be employed—when this stirring time was past, and the silent descent of afternoon hushed housemaid steps on the stairs and in the chambers, I then passed into a dreamy mood, not unpleasant.

My calm little room seemed somehow like a cave in the sea. There was no colour about it, except that white and pale green, suggestive of foam and deep water; the blanched cornice was adorned with shell-shaped ornaments, and there were white mouldings like dolphins in the ceiling-angles. Even that one touch of colour visible in the red satin pincushion bore affinity to coral; even that dark, shining glass might have mirrored a mermaid. When I closed my eyes, I heard a gale, subsiding at last, bearing upon the house-front like a settling swell upon a rock-base. I heard it drawn and withdrawn far, far off, like a tide retiring from a shore of the upper world—a world so high above that the rush of its largest waves, the dash of its fiercest breakers could sound down in this submarine home, only like murmurs and a lullaby.

Amidst these dreams came evening, and then Martha brought a light; with her aid I was quickly dressed, and, stronger now than in the morning, I made my way down to the blue saloon unassisted.

Dr. John, it appears, had concluded his round of professional calls earlier than usual; his form was the first object that met my eyes as I entered the parlour; he stood in that window-recess opposite the door, reading the close type of a newspaper by such dull light as closing day yet gave. The fire shone clear, but the lamp stood on the table unlit, and tea was not yet brought up.

As to Mrs. Bretton, my active godmother—who, I afterwards found, had been out in the open air all day—lay half-reclined in her deep-cushioned chair, actually lost in a nap. Her son seeing me, came forward. I noticed that he trod carefully, not to wake the sleeper; he also spoke low: his mellow voice never had any sharpness in it; modulated as at present, it was calculated rather to soothe than startle slumber.

‘This is a quiet little chateau,’ he observed, after inviting me to sit near the casement, ‘I don’t know whether you may have noticed it in your walks: though, indeed, from the chaussée it is not visible; just a mile beyond the Porte de Crécy, you turn down a lane which soon becomes an avenue, and that leads you on, through meadow and shade, to the very door of this house. It is not a modern place, but built somewhat in the old style of the Basse-Ville. It is rather a manoir than a chateau; they call it ‘La Terrasse,’ because its front rises from a broad turfed walk, whence steps lead down a grassy slope to the avenue. See yonder! The moon rises: she looks well through the tree boles.’

Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow? Rosy or fiery, she mounted now above a not distant bank; even while we watched her flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, and in very brief space, floated up stainless into a now calm sky. Did moonlight soften or sadden Dr. Bretton? Did it touch him with romance? I think it did. Albeit of no sighing mood, he sighed in watching it: sighed to himself quietly. No need to ponder the cause or the course of that sigh; I knew it was wakened by beauty: I knew it pursued Ginevra. Knowing this, the idea pressed upon me that it was in some sort my duty to speak the name he meditated. Of course he was ready for the subject: I saw in his countenance a teeming plenitude of comment, question and interest; a pressure of language and sentiment, only checked, I thought, by sense of embarrassment how to begin. To spare him this embarrassment was my best, indeed my sole use. I had but to utter the idol’s name, and love’s tender litany would flow out. I had just found a fitting phrase: ‘You know that Miss Fanshawe is gone on a tour with the Cholmondeleys,’ and was opening my lips to speak it, when he scattered my plans by introducing another theme.

‘The first thing this morning,’ said he, putting his sentiment in his pocket, turning from the moon, and sitting down, ‘I went to the Rue Fossette, and told the cuisinière that you were safe and in good hands. Do you know I actually found that she had not yet discovered your absence from the house: she thought you safe in the great dormitory. With what care must you have been waited on!’

‘Oh! all that is very conceivable,’ said I. ‘Goton could do nothing for me but bring me a little tisane and a crust of bread, and I had rejected both so often during the past week, that the good woman got tired of useless journeys from the dwelling-house kitchen to the school-dormitory, and only came once a day at noon, to make my bed. Believe, however, that she is a good natured creature, and would have been delighted to cook me cotelettes de mouton, if I could have eaten them.’

‘What did Madame Beck mean by leaving you alone?’

‘Madame Beck could not foresee that I should fall ill.’

‘Your nervous system bore a good share of the suffering?’

‘I am not quite sure what my nervous system is, but I was dreadfully low-spirited.’

‘Which disables me from helping you by pill or potion. Medicine can give nobody good spirits. My art halts at the threshold of Hypochondria:
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she just looks in and sees a chamber of torture, but can neither say nor do much. Cheerful society would be of use; you should be as little alone as possible; you should take plenty of exercise.’

Acquiescence and a pause followed these remarks. They sounded all right, I thought, and bore the safe sanction of custom, and the well worn stamp of use.

‘Miss Snowe,’ recommenced Dr. John—my health, nervous system included, being now somewhat to my relief, discussed and done with—‘is it permitted me to ask what your religion now is? Are you a Catholic?’

I looked up in some surprise—‘A Catholic? No! Why suggest such an idea?’

‘The manner in which you were consigned to me last night, made me doubt.’

‘I consigned to you? But, indeed, I forget. It remains yet for me to learn how I fell into your hands.’

‘Why, under circumstances that puzzled me. I had been in attendance all day yesterday on a case of singularly interesting, and critical character; the disease being rare, and its treatment doubtful: I saw a similar and still finer case in a hospital at Paris; but that will not interest you. At last a mitigation of the patient’s most urgent symptoms (acute pain is one of its accompaniments) liberated me, and I set out homeward. My shortest way lay through the Basse Ville, and as the night was excessively dark, wild and wet, I took it. In riding past an old church belonging to a community of Béguines, I saw by a lamp burning over the porch or deep arch of the entrance, a priest lifting some object in his arms. The lamp was bright enough to reveal the priest’s features clearly, and I recognized him; he was a man I have often met by the sick beds of both rich and poor: and, chiefly, the latter. He is, I think, a good old man, far better than most of his class in this country; superior, indeed, in every way: better informed, as well as more devoted to duty. Our eyes met, he called on me to stop; what he supported was a woman, fainting or dying. I alighted.

‘ “This person is one of your countrywomen,” he said: “save her, if she is not dead.”’

‘My countrywoman, on examination, turned out to be the English teacher at Madame Beck’s pensionnat. She was perfectly unconscious, perfectly bloodless, and nearly cold.’

‘ “What does it all mean?”’ was my inquiry.

‘He communicated a curious account: that you had been to him that evening at confessional; that your exhausted and suffering appearance, coupled with some things you had said—’

‘Things I had said? I wonder what things!’

‘Awful crimes, no doubt; but he did not tell me what: there, you know, the seal of the confessional checked his garrulity and my curiosity. Your confidences, however, had not made an enemy of the good father; it seems he was so struck, and felt so sorry that you should be out on such a night alone, he had esteemed it a christian duty to watch when you quitted the church, and so to manage as not to lose sight of you, till you should have reached home. Perhaps the worthy man might, half unconsciously, have blent in this proceeding, some little of the subtility of his class: it might have been his resolve to learn the locality of your home—did you impart that in your confession?’

‘I did not: on the contrary, I carefully avoided the shadow of any indication; and as to my confession, Dr. John, I suppose you will think me mad for taking such a step, but I could not help it: I suppose it was all the fault of what you call my “nervous system.” I cannot put the case into words, but, my days and nights were grown intolerable; a cruel sense of desolation pained my mind: a feeling that would make its way, rush out, or kill me—like (and this you will understand, Dr. John) the current which passes through the heart, and which, if aneurism or any other morbid cause obstructs its natural channels, seeks abnormal outlet. I wanted companionship, I wanted friendship, I wanted counsel. I could find none of these in closet, or chamber, so I went and sought them in church and confessional. As to what I said, it was no confidence, no narrative. I have done nothing wrong: my life has not been active enough for any dark deed, either of romance or reality: all I poured out was a dreary, desperate complaint.’

‘Lucy, you ought to travel for about six months: why, your calm nature is growing quite excitable! Confound Madame Beck! Has the little buxom widow no bowels, to condemn her best teacher to solitary confinement?’

‘It was not Madame Beck’s fault,’ said I, ‘it is no living being’s fault, and I won’t hear any one blamed.’

‘Who is in the wrong then, Lucy?’

‘Me—Dr. John—me; and a great abstraction on whose wide shoulders I like to lay the mountains of blame they were sculptured to bear: me and Fate.’

‘“Me” must take better care in future,’ said Dr. John—smiling, I suppose, at my bad grammar.

‘Change of air—change of scene; those are my prescriptions,’ pursued the practical young doctor. ‘But to return to our muttons, Lucy. As yet, Père Silas, with all his tact (they say he is a Jesuit), is no wiser than you choose him to be; for, instead of returning to the Rue Fossette, your fevered wanderings—there must have been high fever—’

‘No, Dr. John: the fever took its turn that night—now, don’t make out that I was delirious, for I know differently.’

‘Good! you were as collected as myself at this moment, no doubt! Your wanderings had taken an opposite direction to the Pensionnat. Near the Béguinage, amidst the street of flood and gust, and in the perplexity of darkness, you had swooned and fallen. The priest came to your succour, and the physician, as we have seen, supervened. Between us we procured a fiacre and brought you here. Père Silas, old as he is, would carry you up stairs, and lay you on that couch himself. He would certainly have remained with you till suspended animation had been restored; and so should I, but, at that juncture, a hurried messenger arrived from the dying patient I had scarcely left—the last duties were called for—the physician’s last visit and the priest’s last rite; extreme unction could not be deferred. Père Silas and myself departed together, my mother was spending the evening abroad; we gave you in charge to Martha, leaving directions, which it seems she followed successfully. Now, are you a Catholic?’

‘Not yet,’ said I, with a smile. ‘And never let Père Silas know where I live, or he will try to convert me; but give him my best and truest thanks when you see him, and if ever I get rich I will send him money for his charities. See, Dr. John, your mother wakes; you ought to ring for tea.’

Which he did; and, as Mrs. Bretton sat up—astonished and indignant at herself for the indulgence to which she had succumbed, and fully prepared to deny that she had slept at all—her son came gaily to the attack:

‘Hushaby, mama! Sleep again. You look the picture of innocence in your slumbers.’

‘My slumbers, John Graham! What are you talking about? You know I never do sleep by day: it was the slightest doze possible.’

‘Exactly! a seraph’s gentle lapse—a fairy’s dream. Mama, under such circumstances, you always remind me of Titania.’

‘That is because you, yourself, are so like Bottom.’
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