Villette

A TERRASSE.

These struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of
the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good.
They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that
turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps, too often
opposes: they certainly make a difference in the general tenour of a
life, and enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on
the surface; and it is on the surface only the common gaze will fall.
As to what lies below, leave that with God. Man, your equal, weak as
you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out thence: take it to
your Maker—show Him the secrets of the spirit He gave—ask Him how you
are to bear the pains He has appointed—kneel in His presence, and pray
with faith for light in darkness, for strength in piteous weakness, for
patience in extreme need. Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps not
your hour, the waiting waters will stir; in some shape, though
perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for
which it bled, the healing herald will descend, the cripple and the
blind, and the dumb, and the possessed will be led to bathe. Herald,
come quickly! Thousands lie round the pool, weeping and despairing, to
see it, through slow years, stagnant. Long are the “times” of Heaven:
the orbits of angel messengers seem wide to mortal vision; they may
enring ages: the cycle of one departure and return may clasp unnumbered
generations; and dust, kindling to brief suffering life, and through
pain, passing back to dust, may meanwhile perish out of memory again,
and yet again. To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first
and sole angel visitant, him easterns call Azrael!

I tried to get up next morning, but while I was dressing, and at
intervals drinking cold water from the carafe on my washstand, with
design to brace up that trembling weakness which made dressing so
difficult, in came Mrs. Bretton.

“Here is an absurdity!” was her morning accost. “Not so,” she added,
and dealing with me at once in her own brusque, energetic fashion—that
fashion which I used formerly to enjoy seeing applied to her son, and
by him vigorously resisted—in two minutes she consigned me captive to
the French bed.

“There you lie till afternoon,” said she. “My boy left orders before he
went out that such should be the case, and I can assure you my son is
master and must be obeyed. Presently you shall have breakfast.”

Presently she brought that meal—brought it with her own active
hands—not leaving me to servants. She seated herself on the bed while I
ate. Now it is not everybody, even amongst our respected friends and
esteemed acquaintance, whom we like to have near us, whom we like to
watch us, to wait on us, to approach us with the proximity of a nurse
to a patient. It is not every friend whose eye is a light in a sick
room, whose presence is there a solace: but all this was Mrs. Bretton
to me; all this she had ever been. Food or drink never pleased me so
well as when it came through her hands. I do not remember the occasion
when her entrance into a room had not made that room cheerier. Our
natures own predilections and antipathies alike strange. There are
people from whom we secretly shrink, whom we would personally avoid,
though reason confesses that they are good people: there are others
with faults of temper, &c., evident enough, beside whom we live
content, as if the air about them did us good. My godmother’s lively
black eye and clear brunette cheek, her warm, prompt hand, her
self-reliant mood, her decided bearing, were all beneficial to me as
the atmosphere of some salubrious climate. Her son used to call her
“the old lady;” it filled me with pleasant wonder to note how the
alacrity and power of five-and-twenty still breathed from her and
around her.

“I would bring my work here,” she said, as she took from me the emptied
teacup, “and sit with you the whole day, if that overbearing John
Graham had not put his veto upon such a proceeding. ‘Now, mamma,’ 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 yarns.

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 château,” 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 château;
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 to 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 that 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 you must 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. I
believe, however, that she is a good-natured creature, and would have
been delighted to cook me côtelettes 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: 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 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 yet remains 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 in 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 recognised 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, that he had esteemed it a Christian duty to watch
you 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 subtlety 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 stress 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, mamma! 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. Mamma, under such
circumstances, you always remind me of Titania.”

“That is because you, yourself, are so like Bottom.”

“Miss Snowe—did you ever hear anything like mamma’s wit? She is a most
sprightly woman of her size and age.”

“Keep your compliments to yourself, sir, and do not neglect your own
size: which seems to me a good deal on the increase. Lucy, has he not
rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an
eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent—a beef-eater
tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you.”

“As if you could not sooner disown your own personality! I am
indispensable to the old lady’s happiness, Lucy. She would pine away in
green and yellow melancholy if she had not my six feet of iniquity to
scold. It keeps her lively—it maintains the wholesome ferment of her
spirits.”

The two were now standing opposite to each other, one on each side the
fire-place; their words were not very fond, but their mutual looks
atoned for verbal deficiencies. At least, the best treasure of Mrs.
Bretton’s life was certainly casketed in her son’s bosom; her dearest
pulse throbbed in his heart. As to him, of course another love shared
his feelings with filial love, and, no doubt, as the new passion was
the latest born, so he assigned it in his emotions Benjamin’s portion.
Ginevra! Ginevra! Did Mrs. Bretton yet know at whose feet her own young
idol had laid his homage? Would she approve that choice? I could not
tell; but I could well guess that if she knew Miss Fanshawe’s conduct
towards Graham: her alternations between coldness and coaxing, and
repulse and allurement; if she could at all suspect the pain with which
she had tried him; if she could have seen, as I had seen, his fine
spirits subdued and harassed, his inferior preferred before him, his
subordinate made the instrument of his humiliation—then Mrs. Bretton
would have pronounced Ginevra imbecile, or perverted, or both. Well—I
thought so too.

That second evening passed as sweetly as the first—more sweetly
indeed: we enjoyed a smoother interchange of thought; old troubles were
not reverted to, acquaintance was better cemented; I felt happier,
easier, more at home. That night—instead of crying myself asleep—I went
down to dreamland by a pathway bordered with pleasant thoughts.