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

sheltered, fostered, taught, by my dear father; and now⁠—now⁠—another comes. Graham loves me.”

For some minutes we both paused on this climax.

“Does your father know?” I inquired, in a low voice.

“Graham spoke with deep respect of papa, but implied that he dared not approach that quarter as yet; he must first prove his worth: he added that he must have some light respecting myself and my own feelings ere he ventured to risk a step in the matter elsewhere.”

“How did you reply?”

“I replied briefly, but I did not repulse him. Yet I almost trembled for fear of making the answer too cordial: Graham’s tastes are so fastidious. I wrote it three times⁠—chastening and subduing the phrases at every rescript; at last, having confected it till it seemed to me to resemble a morsel of ice flavoured with ever so slight a zest of fruit or sugar, I ventured to seal and despatch it.”

“Excellent, Paulina! Your instinct is fine; you understand Dr. Bretton.”

“But how must I manage about papa? There I am still in pain.”

“Do not manage at all. Wait now. Only maintain no further correspondence till your father knows all, and gives his sanction.”

“Will he ever give it?”

“Time will show. Wait.”

“Dr. Bretton wrote one other letter, deeply grateful for my calm, brief note; but I anticipated your advice, by saying, that while my sentiments continued the same, I could not, without my father’s knowledge, write again.”

“You acted as you ought to have done; so Dr. Bretton will feel: it will increase his pride in you, his love for you, if either be capable of increase. Paulina, that gentle hoarfrost of yours, surrounding so much pure, fine flame, is a priceless privilege of nature.”

“You see I feel Graham’s disposition,” said she. “I feel that no delicacy can be too exquisite for his treatment.”

“It is perfectly proved that you comprehend him, and then⁠—whatever Dr. Bretton’s disposition, were he one who expected to be more nearly met⁠—you would still act truthfully, openly, tenderly, with your father.”

“Lucy, I trust I shall thus act always. Oh, it will be pain to wake papa from his dream, and tell him I am no more a little girl!”

“Be in no hurry to do so, Paulina. Leave the revelation to Time and your kind Fate. I also have noticed the gentleness of her cares for you: doubt not she will benignantly order the circumstances, and fitly appoint the hour. Yes: I have thought over your life just as you have yourself thought it over; I have made comparisons like those to which you adverted. We know not the future, but the past has been propitious.

“As a child I feared for you; nothing that has life was ever more susceptible than your nature in infancy: under harshness or neglect, neither your outward nor your inward self would have ripened to what they now are. Much pain, much fear, much struggle, would have troubled the very lines of your features, broken their regularity, would have harassed your nerves into the fever of habitual irritation; you would have lost in health and cheerfulness, in grace and sweetness. Providence has protected and cultured you, not only for your own sake, but I believe for Graham’s. His star, too, was fortunate: to develop fully the best of his nature, a companion like you was needed: there you are, ready. You must be united. I knew it the first day I saw you together at La Terrasse. In all that mutually concerns you and Graham there seems to me promise, plan, harmony. I do not think the sunny youth of either will prove the forerunner of stormy age. I think it is deemed good that you two should live in peace and be happy⁠—not as angels, but as few are happy amongst mortals. Some lives are thus blessed: it is God’s will: it is the attesting trace and lingering evidence of Eden. Other lives run from the first another course. Other travellers encounter weather fitful and gusty, wild and variable⁠—breast adverse winds, are belated and overtaken by the early closing winter night. Neither can this happen without the sanction of God; and I know that, amidst His boundless works, is somewhere stored the secret of this last fate’s justice: I know that His treasures contain the proof as the promise of its mercy.”

XXXIII M. Paul Keeps His Promise

On the first of May, we had all⁠—i.e. the twenty boarders and the four teachers⁠—notice to rise at five o’clock of the morning, to be dressed and ready by six, to put ourselves under the command of M. le Professeur Emanuel, who was to head our march forth from Villette, for it was on this day he proposed to fulfil his promise of taking us to breakfast in the country. I, indeed, as the reader may perhaps remember, had not had the honour of an invitation when this excursion was first projected⁠—rather the contrary; but on my now making allusion to this fact, and wishing to know how it was to be, my ear received a pull, of which I did not venture to challenge the repetition by raising, further difficulties.

“Je vous conseille de vous faire prier,” said M. Emanuel, imperially menacing the other ear. One Napoleonic compliment, however, was enough, so I made up my mind to be of the party.

The morning broke calm as summer, with singing of birds in the garden, and a light dew-mist that promised heat. We all said it would be warm, and we all felt pleasure in folding away heavy garments, and in assuming the attire suiting a sunny season. The clean fresh print dress, and the light straw bonnet, each made and trimmed as the French workwoman alone can make and trim, so as to unite the utterly unpretending with the perfectly becoming, was the rule of costume. Nobody flaunted in faded silk; nobody wore a secondhand best article.

At six the bell rang merrily, and we poured down the staircase, through the carré, along the