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

inquiries as to whether the gentleman was such as her parents, and especially her uncle⁠—on whom, it appeared, she was dependent⁠—would be likely to approve. She allowed that this was very doubtful, as she did not believe “Isidore” had much money.

“Do you encourage him?” I asked.

“Furieusement sometimes,” said she.

“Without being certain that you will be permitted to marry him?”

“Oh, how dowdyish you are! I don’t want to be married. I am too young.”

“But if he loves you as much as you say, and yet it comes to nothing in the end, he will be made miserable.”

“Of course he will break his heart. I should be shocked and, disappointed if he didn’t.”

“I wonder whether this M. Isidore is a fool?” said I.

“He is, about me; but he is wise in other things, à ce qu’on dit. Mrs. Cholmondeley considers him extremely clever: she says he will push his way by his talents; all I know is, that he does little more than sigh in my presence, and that I can wind him round my little finger.”

Wishing to get a more definite idea of this love-stricken M. Isidore; whose position seemed to me of the least secure, I requested her to favour me with a personal description; but she could not describe: she had neither words nor the power of putting them together so as to make graphic phrases. She even seemed not properly to have noticed him: nothing of his looks, of the changes in his countenance, had touched her heart or dwelt in her memory⁠—that he was “beau, mais plutôt bel homme que joli garçon,” was all she could assert. My patience would often have failed, and my interest flagged, in listening to her, but for one thing. All the hints she dropped, all the details she gave, went unconsciously to prove, to my thinking, that M. Isidore’s homage was offered with great delicacy and respect. I informed her very plainly that I believed him much too good for her, and intimated with equal plainness my impression that she was but a vain coquette. She laughed, shook her curls from her eyes, and danced away as if I had paid her a compliment.

Miss Ginevra’s school-studies were little better than nominal; there were but three things she practised in earnest, viz. music, singing, and dancing; also embroidering the fine cambric handkerchiefs which she could not afford to buy ready worked: such mere trifles as lessons in history, geography, grammar, and arithmetic, she left undone, or got others to do for her. Very much of her time was spent in visiting. Madame, aware that her stay at school was now limited to a certain period, which would not be extended whether she made progress or not, allowed her great licence in this particular. Mrs. Cholmondeley⁠—her chaperon⁠—a gay, fashionable lady, invited her whenever she had company at her own house, and sometimes took her to evening-parties at the houses of her acquaintance. Ginevra perfectly approved this mode of procedure: it had but one inconvenience; she was obliged to be well dressed, and she had not money to buy variety of dresses. All her thoughts turned on this difficulty; her whole soul was occupied with expedients for effecting its solution. It was wonderful to witness the activity of her otherwise indolent mind on this point, and to see the much-daring intrepidity to which she was spurred by a sense of necessity, and the wish to shine.

She begged boldly of Mrs. Cholmondeley⁠—boldly, I say: not with an air of reluctant shame, but in this strain⁠—

“My darling Mrs. C., I have nothing in the world fit to wear for your party next week; you must give me a book-muslin dress, and then a ceinture bleu celeste: do⁠—there’s an angel! will you?”

The “darling Mrs. C.” yielded at first; but finding that applications increased as they were complied with, she was soon obliged, like all Miss Fanshawe’s friends, to oppose resistance to encroachment. After a while I heard no more of Mrs. Cholmondeley’s presents; but still, visiting went on, and the absolutely necessary dresses continued to be supplied; also many little expensive etcetera⁠—gloves, bouquets, even trinkets. These things, contrary to her custom, and even nature⁠—for she was not secretive⁠—were most sedulously kept out of sight for a time; but one evening, when she was going to a large party for which particular care and elegance of costume were demanded, she could not resist coming to my chamber to show herself in all her splendour.

Beautiful she looked: so young, so fresh, and with a delicacy of skin and flexibility of shape altogether English, and not found in the list of continental female charms. Her dress was new, costly, and perfect. I saw at a glance that it lacked none of those finishing details which cost so much, and give to the general effect such an air of tasteful completeness.

I viewed her from top to toe. She turned airily round that I might survey her on all sides. Conscious of her charms, she was in her best humour: her rather small blue eyes sparkled gleefully. She was going to bestow on me a kiss, in her schoolgirl fashion of showing her delights but I said, “Steady! Let us be Steady, and know what we are about, and find out the meaning of our magnificence”⁠—and so put her off at arm’s length, to undergo cooler inspection.

“Shall I do?” was her question.

“Do?” said I. “There are different ways of doing; and, by my word, I don’t understand yours.”

“But how do I look?”

“You look well dressed.”

She thought the praise not warm enough, and proceeded to direct attention to the various decorative points of her attire. “Look at this parure,” said she. “The brooch, the earrings, the bracelets: no one in the school has such a set⁠—not Madame herself.”

“I see them all.” (Pause.) “Did M. de Bassompierre give you those jewels?”

“My uncle knows nothing about them.”

“Were they presents from Mrs. Cholmondeley?”

“Not they, indeed. Mrs. Cholmondeley is a mean, stingy creature; she never