Villette - Charlotte Brontë (best fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

but it was buried. Sometimes I thought the tomb unquiet, and dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and of hair, still golden, and living, obtruded through coffin-chinks.

Had I been too hasty? I used to ask myself; and this question would occur with a cruel sharpness after some brief chance interview with Dr. John. He had still such kind looks, such a warm hand; his voice still kept so pleasant a tone for my name; I never liked “Lucy” so well as when he uttered it. But I learned in time that this benignity, this cordiality, this music, belonged in no shape to me: it was a part of himself; it was the honey of his temper; it was the balm of his mellow mood; he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the rifling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their perfume. Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is the sweetbriar enamoured of the air?

“Good night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine. Good night, and God bless you!”

Thus I closed my musings. “Good night” left my lips in sound; I heard the words spoken, and then I heard an echo⁠—quite close.

“Good night, Mademoiselle; or, rather, good evening⁠—the sun is scarce set; I hope you slept well?”

I started, but was only discomposed a moment; I knew the voice and speaker.

“Slept, Monsieur! When? where?”

“You may well inquire when⁠—where. It seems you turn day into night, and choose a desk for a pillow; rather hard lodging⁠—?”

“It was softened for me, Monsieur, while I slept. That unseen, gift-bringing thing which haunts my desk, remembered me. No matter how I fell asleep; I awoke pillowed and covered.”

“Did the shawls keep you warm?”

“Very warm. Do you ask thanks for them?”

“No. You looked pale in your slumbers; are you homesick?”

“To be homesick, one must have a home; which I have not.”

“Then you have more need of a careful friend. I scarcely know any one, Miss Lucy, who needs a friend more absolutely than you; your very faults imperatively require it. You want so much checking, regulating, and keeping down.”

This idea of “keeping down” never left M. Paul’s head; the most habitual subjugation would, in my case, have failed to relieve him of it. No matter; what did it signify? I listened to him, and did not trouble myself to be too submissive; his occupation would have been gone had I left him nothing to “keep down.”

“You need watching, and watching over,” he pursued; “and it is well for you that I see this, and do my best to discharge both duties. I watch you and others pretty closely, pretty constantly, nearer and oftener than you or they think. Do you see that window with a light in it?”

He pointed to a lattice in one of the college boardinghouses.

“That,” said he, “is a room I have hired, nominally for a study⁠—virtually for a post of observation. There I sit and read for hours together: it is my way⁠—my taste. My book is this garden; its contents are human nature⁠—female human nature. I know you all by heart. Ah! I know you well⁠—St. Pierre, the Parisienne⁠—cette maîtresse-femme, my cousin Beck herself.”

“It is not right, Monsieur.”

“Comment? it is not right? By whose creed? Does some dogma of Calvin or Luther condemn it? What is that to me? I am no Protestant. My rich father (for, though I have known poverty, and once starved for a year in a garret in Rome⁠—starved wretchedly, often on a meal a day, and sometimes not that⁠—yet I was born to wealth)⁠—my rich father was a good Catholic; and he gave me a priest and a Jesuit for a tutor. I retain his lessons; and to what discoveries, grand Dieu! have they not aided me!”

“Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dishonourable discoveries.”

“Puritaine! I doubt it not. Yet see how my Jesuit’s system works. You know the St. Pierre?”

“Partially.”

He laughed. “You say right⁠—‘partially’; whereas I know her thoroughly; there is the difference. She played before me the amiable; offered me patte de velours; caressed, flattered, fawned on me. Now, I am accessible to a woman’s flattery⁠—accessible against my reason. Though never pretty, she was⁠—when I first knew her⁠—young, or knew how to look young. Like all her countrywomen, she had the art of dressing⁠—she had a certain cool, easy, social assurance, which spared me the pain of embarrassment⁠—”

“Monsieur, that must have been unnecessary. I never saw you embarrassed in my life.”

“Mademoiselle, you know little of me; I can be embarrassed as a petite pensionnaire; there is a fund of modesty and diffidence in my nature⁠—”

“Monsieur, I never saw it.”

“Mademoiselle, it is there. You ought to have seen it.”

“Monsieur, I have observed you in public⁠—on platforms, in tribunes, before titles and crowned heads⁠—and you were as easy as you are in the third division.”

“Mademoiselle, neither titles nor crowned heads excite my modesty; and publicity is very much my element. I like it well, and breathe in it quite freely;⁠—but⁠—but, in short, here is the sentiment brought into action, at this very moment; however, I disdain to be worsted by it. If, Mademoiselle, I were a marrying man (which I am not; and you may spare yourself the trouble of any sneer you may be contemplating at the thought), and found it necessary to ask a lady whether she could look upon me in the light of a future husband, then would it be proved that I am as I say⁠—modest.”

I quite believed him now; and, in believing, I honoured him with a sincerity of esteem which made my heart ache.

“As to the St. Pierre,” he went on, recovering himself, for his voice had altered a little, “she once intended to be Madame Emanuel; and I don’t know whither I might have been led, but for yonder little lattice with the light. Ah, magic lattice! what miracles of discovery hast thou wrought! Yes,”