Villette (71 page)

‘God be merciful to me, a sinner!’

When I had so spoken, so declared my faith, and so widely severed myself from him I addressed—then, at last, came a tone accordant, an echo responsive, one sweet chord of harmony in two conflicting spirits.

‘Whatever say priests or controversialists,’ murmured M. Emanuel, ‘God is good, and loves all the sincere. Believe, then, what you can; believe it as you can; one prayer, at least, we have in common; I also cry—“0 Dieu, sois appaisé envers moi qui suis pécheur!”’
^iy

He leaned on the back of my chair. After some thought he again spoke:

‘How seem in the eyes of that God who made all firmaments, from whose nostrils issued whatever of life is here, or in the stars shining yonder—how seem the differences of man? But as Time is not for God, nor Space, so neither is Measure, nor Comparison. We abase ourselves in our littleness, and we do right; yet it may be that the constancy of one heart, the truth and faith of one mind according to the light He has appointed, import as much to Him as the just motion of satellites about their planets, of planets about their suns, of suns around that mighty unseen centre incomprehensible, irrealizable, with strange mental effort only divined.

‘God guide us all! God bless you, Lucy!’

I
t was very well for Paulina to decline further correspondence with Graham till her father had sanctioned the intercourse, but Dr. Bretton could not live within a league of the Hotel Crécy, and not contrive to visit there often. Both lovers meant at first, I believe, to be distant; they kept their intention so far as demonstrative courtship went, but in feeling they soon drew very near.

All that was best in Graham sought Paulina; whatever in him was noble, awoke, and grew in her presence. With his past admiration of Miss Fanshawe, I suppose his intellect had little to do, but his whole intellect, and his highest tastes, came in question now. These, like all his faculties, were active, eager for nutriment, and alive to gratification when it came.

I cannot say that Paulina designedly led him to talk of books, or formally proposed to herself for a moment the task of winning him to reflection, or planned the improvement of his mind, or so much as fancied his mind could in any one respect be improved. She thought him very perfect; it was Graham himself, who, at first by the merest chance, mentioned some book he had been reading, and when in her response, sounded a welcome harmony of sympathies, something pleasant to his soul, he talked on, more and better perhaps than he had ever talked before on such subjects. She listened with delight, and answered with animation. In each successive answer, Graham heard a music waxing finer and finer to his sense; in each he found a suggestive, persuasive, magic accent that opened a scarce known treasure-house within, showed him unsuspected power in his own mind, and what was better, latent goodness in his heart. Each liked the way in which the other talked; the voice, the diction, the expression pleased; each keenly relished the flavour of the other’s wit; they met each other’s meaning with strange quickness, their thoughts often matched like carefully-chosen pearls. Graham had wealth of mirth by nature; Paulina possessed no such inherent flow of animal spirits—unstimulated, she inclined to be thoughtful and pensive—but now she seemed merry as a lark; in her lover’s genial presence, she glanced like some soft glad light. How beautiful she grew in her happiness, I can hardly express, but I wondered to see her. As to that gentle ice of hers—that reserve on which she had depended; where was it now? Ah! Graham would not long bear it; he brought with him a generous influence that soon thawed the timid, self-imposed restriction.

Now were the old Bretton days talked over; perhaps brokenly at first, with a sort of smiling diffidence, then with opening candour and still growing confidence. Graham had made for himself a better opportunity than that he had wished me to give; he had earned independence of the collateral help that disobliging Lucy had refused; all his reminiscences of ‘little Polly’ found their proper expression in his own pleasant tones, by his own kind and handsome lips; how much better than if suggested by me.

More than once when we were alone, Paulina would tell me how wonderful and curious it was to discover the richness and accuracy of his memory in this matter. How, while he was looking at her, recollections would seem to be suddenly quickened in his mind. He reminded her that she had once gathered his head in her arms, caressed his leonine graces, and cried out, ‘Graham, I
do
like you!’ He told her how she would set a foot-stool beside him, and climb by its aid to his knee. At this day he said he could recall the sensation of her little hands smoothing his cheek, or burying themselves in his thick mane. He remembered the touch of her small forefinger, placed half tremblingly, half curiously, in the cleft of his chin, the lisp, the look with which she would name it ‘a pretty dimple,’ then seek his eyes and question why they pierced so, telling him he had a ‘nice, strange face; far nicer, far stranger, than either his mama or Lucy Snowe.’

‘Child as I was,’ remarked Paulina, ‘I wonder how I dared be so venturous. To me he seems now all sacred, his locks are inaccessible, and, Lucy, I feel a sort of fear when I look at his firm, marble chin, at his straight Greek features. Women are called beautiful, Lucy; he is not like a woman, therefore I suppose he is not beautiful, but what is he then? Do other people see him with my eyes? Do
you
admire him?’

‘I’ll tell you what I do, Paulina,’ was once my answer to her many questions.
‘I never see him.
I looked at him twice or thrice about a year ago, before he recognized me, and then I shut my eyes; and if he were to cross their balls twelve times between each day’s sunset and sunrise, except from memory, I should hardly know what shape had gone by.’

‘Lucy, what do you mean?’ said she, under her breath.

‘I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.’ It was best to answer her strongly at once, and to silence for ever the tender, passionate confidences which left her lips, sweet honey, and sometimes dropped in my ear—molten lead. To me, she commented no more on her lover’s beauty.

Yet speak of him she would; sometimes shyly in quiet, brief phrases; sometimes with a tenderness of cadence, and music of voice exquisite in itself, but which chafed me at times miserably; and then, I know, I gave her stern looks and words; but cloudless happiness had dazzled her native clear sight, and she only thought Lucy—fitful.

‘Spartan girl! Proud Lucy!’ she would say, smiling at me.

‘Graham says you are the most peculiar, capricious little woman he knows; but yet you are excellent; we both think so.’

‘You both think you know not what,’ said I. ‘Have the goodness to make me as little the subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as possible. I have my sort of life apart from yours.’

‘But ours, Lucy, is a beautiful life, or it will be; and you shall share it.’

‘I shall share no man’s or woman’s life in this world, as you understand sharing. I think I have one friend of my own, but am not sure; and till I
am
sure, I live solitary.’

‘But solitude is sadness.’

‘Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy, lies heartbreak.’

‘Lucy, I wonder if anybody will ever comprehend you altogether.’

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may. Paulina had forbidden letters, yet Dr. Bretton wrote; she had resolved against correspondence, yet she answered, were it only to chide. She showed me these letters; with something of the spoiled child’s wilfulness, and of the heiress’s imperious-ness, she
made
me read them. As I read Graham’s, I scarce wondered at her exaction, and understood her pride: they were fine letters—manly and fond—modest and gallant. Hers must have appeared to him beautiful. They had not been written to show her talents; still less, I think, to express her love. On the contrary, it appeared that she had proposed to herself the task of hiding that feeling, and bridling her lover’s ardour. But how could such letters serve such a purpose? Graham was become dear as her life; he drew her like a powerful magnet. For her there was influence unspeakable in all he uttered, wrote, thought, or looked. With this unconfessed confession, her letters glowed; it kindled them, from greeting to adieu.

‘I wish papa knew; I
do
wish papa knew!’ began now to be her anxious murmur. ‘I wish, and yet I fear. I can hardly keep Graham back from telling him. There is nothing I long for more than to have this affair settled—to speak out candidly; and yet I dread the crisis. I know, I am certain, papa will be angry at the first; I fear he will dislike me almost; it will seem to him an untoward business; it will be a surprise, a shock; I can hardly foresee its whole effect on him.’

The fact was—her father, long calm, was beginning to be a little stirred: long blind on one point, an importunate light was beginning to trespass on his eye.

To
her,
he said nothing; but when she was not looking at, or perhaps thinking of him, I saw him gaze and meditate on her.

One evening—Paulina was in her dressing-room, writing, I believe, to Graham; she had left me in the library, reading—M. de Bassompierre came in; he sat down: I was about to withdraw; he requested me to remain—gently, yet in a manner which showed he wished compliance. He had taken his seat near the window, at a distance from me; he opened a desk; he took from it what looked like a memorandum-book; of this book he studied a certain entry for several minutes.

‘Miss Snowe,’ said he, laying it down, ‘do you know my little girl’s age?’

‘About eighteen, is it not, sir.’

‘It seems so. This old pocket-book tells me she was born on the 5th of May, in the year 18—, eighteen years ago. It is strange; I had lost the just reckoning of her age. I thought of her as twelve—fourteen—an indefinite date; but she seemed a child.’

‘She is about eighteen,’ I repeated. ‘She is grown up; she will be no taller.’

‘My little jewel!’ said M. de Bassompierre, in a tone which penetrated like some of his daughter’s accents.

He sat very thoughtful.

‘Sir, don’t grieve,’ I said; for I knew his feelings, utterly unspoken as they were.

‘She is the only pearl I have,’ he said; ‘and now others will find out that she is pure and of price; they will covet her.’

I made no answer. Graham Bretton had dined with us that day; he had shone both in converse and looks: I know not what pride of bloom embellished his aspect and mellowed his intercourse. Under the stimulus of a high hope, something had unfolded in his whole manner which compelled attention. I think he had purposed on that day to indicate the origin of his endeavours, and the aim of his ambition. M. de Bassompierre had found himself forced, in a manner, to descry the direction and catch the character of his homage. Slow in remarking, he was logical in reasoning; having once seized the thread, it had guided him through a long labyrinth.

‘Where is she?’ he asked.

‘She is up-stairs.’

‘What is she doing?’

‘She is writing.’

‘She writes, does she? Does she receive letters?’

‘None but such as she can show me. And—sir—she—
they
have long wanted to consult you.’

‘Pshaw! They don’t think of me—an old father! I am in the way.

‘Ah, M. de Bassompierre—not so—that can’t be! But Paulina must speak for herself; and Dr. Bretton, too, must be his own advocate.’

‘It is a little late. Matters are advanced, it seems.’

‘Sir, till you approve, nothing is done—only they love each other.’

‘Only!’ he echoed.

Invested by fate with the part of confidante and mediator, I was obliged to go on:—

‘Hundreds of times has Dr. Bretton been on the point of appealing to you, sir; but, with all his high courage, he fears you mortally.’

‘He may well—he may well fear me. He has touched the best thing I have. Had he but let her alone, she would have remained a child for years yet. So. Are they engaged?’

‘They could not become engaged without your permission.’

‘It is well for you, Miss Snowe, to talk and think with that propriety which always characterizes you; but this matter is a grief to me; my little girl was all I had; I have no more daughters and no son; Bretton might as well have looked elsewhere; there are scores of rich and pretty women who would not, I daresay, dislike him; he has looks, and conduct, and connection. Would nothing serve him but my Polly?’

‘If he had never seen your “Polly,” others might and would have pleased him—your niece, Miss Fanshawe, for instance.’

‘Ah! I would have given him Ginevra with all my heart; but Polly!—I can’t let him have her. No—I can’t. He is not her equal,’ he affirmed, rather gruffly. ‘In what particular is he her match? They talk of fortune! I am not an avaricious or interested man, but the world thinks of these things—and Polly will be rich.’

‘Yes, that is known,’ said I: ‘all Villette knows her as an heiress.’

‘Do they talk of my little girl in that light?’

‘They do, sir.’

He fell into deep thought. I ventured to say:—

‘Would you, sir, think any one Paulina’s match? Would you prefer any other to Dr. Bretton? Do you think higher rank or more wealth would make much difference in your feelings towards a future son-in-law?’

‘You touch me there,’ said he.

‘Look at the aristocracy of Villette—you would not like them, sir?’

‘I should not—never a duc, baron, or vicomte of the lot.’

‘I am told many of these persons think about her, sir,’ I went on, gaining courage on finding that I met attention rather than repulse. ‘Other suitors will come, therefore, if Dr. Bretton is refused. Wherever you go, I suppose, aspirants will not be wanting. Independent of heiress-ship, it appears to me that Paulina charms most of those who see her.’