Villette by Charlotte Brontë (free e reader .TXT) 📕

to the latest the rape of every faculty, would see, would hear, would breathe, would live, up to, within, well-nigh beyond the moment when death says to all sense and all being⁠—“Thus far and no farther!”⁠—

Just then a stir, pregnant with omen, rustled behind the scenes⁠—feet ran, voices spoke. What was it? demanded the whole house. A flame, a smell of smoke replied.

“Fire!” rang through the gallery. “Fire!” was repeated, reechoed, yelled forth: and then, and faster than pen can set it down, came panic, rushing, crushing⁠—a blind, selfish, cruel chaos.

And Dr. John? Reader, I see him yet, with his look of comely courage and cordial calm.

“Lucy will sit still, I know,” said he, glancing down at me with the same serene goodness, the same repose of firmness that I have seen in him when sitting at his side amid the secure peace of his mother’s hearth. Yes, thus adjured, I think I would have sat still under a rocking crag: but, indeed, to sit still in actual circumstances was my instinct; and at the price of my very life, I would not have moved to give him trouble, thwart his will, or make demands on his attention. We were in the stalls, and for a few minutes there was a most terrible, ruthless pressure about us.

“How terrified are the women!” said he; “but if the men were not almost equally so, order might be maintained. This is a sorry scene: I see fifty selfish brutes at this moment, each of whom, if I were near, I could conscientiously knock down. I see some women braver than some men. There is one yonder⁠—Good God!”

While Graham was speaking, a young girl who had been very quietly and steadily clinging to a gentleman before us, was suddenly struck from her protector’s arms by a big, butcherly intruder, and hurled under the feet of the crowd. Scarce two seconds lasted her disappearance. Graham rushed forwards; he and the gentleman, a powerful man though grey-haired, united their strength to thrust back the throng; her head and long hair fell back over his shoulder: she seemed unconscious.

“Trust her with me: I am a medical man,” said Dr. John.

“If you have no lady with you, be it so,” was the answer. “Hold her, and I will force a passage: we must get her to the air.”

“I have a lady,” said Graham; “but she will be neither hindrance nor incumbrance.”

He summoned me with his eye: we were separated. Resolute, however, to rejoin him, I penetrated the living barrier, creeping under where I could not get between or over.

“Fasten on me, and don’t leave go,” he said; and I obeyed him.

Our pioneer proved strong and adroit; he opened the dense mass like a wedge; with patience and toil he at last bored through the flesh-and-blood rock⁠—so solid, hot, and suffocating⁠—and brought us to the fresh, freezing night.

“You are an Englishman!” said he, turning shortly on Dr. Bretton, when we got into the street.

“An Englishman. And I speak to a countryman?” was the reply.

“Right. Be good enough to stand here two minutes, whilst I find my carriage.”

“Papa, I am not hurt,” said a girlish voice; “am I with papa?”

“You are with a friend, and your father is close at hand.”

“Tell him I am not hurt, except just in my shoulder. Oh, my shoulder! They trod just here.”

“Dislocation, perhaps!” muttered the Doctor: “let us hope there is no worse injury done. Lucy, lend a hand one instant.”

And I assisted while he made some arrangement of drapery and position for the ease of his suffering burden. She suppressed a moan, and lay in his arms quietly and patiently.

“She is very light,” said Graham, “like a child!” and he asked in my ear, “Is she a child, Lucy? Did you notice her age?”

“I am not a child⁠—I am a person of seventeen,” responded the patient, demurely and with dignity. Then, directly after: “Tell papa to come; I get anxious.”

The carriage drove up; her father relieved Graham; but in the exchange from one bearer to another she was hurt, and moaned again.

“My darling!” said the father, tenderly; then turning to Graham, “You said, sir, you are a medical man?”

“I am: Dr. Bretton, of La Terrasse.”

“Good. Will you step into my carriage?”

“My own carriage is here; I will seek it, and accompany you.”

“Be pleased, then, to follow us.” And he named his address: “The Hôtel Crécy, in the Rue Crécy.”

We followed; the carriage drove fast; myself and Graham were silent. This seemed like an adventure.

Some little time being lost in seeking our own equipage, we reached the hotel perhaps about ten minutes after these strangers. It was an hotel in the foreign sense: a collection of dwelling-houses, not an inn⁠—a vast, lofty pile, with a huge arch to its street-door, leading through a vaulted covered way, into a square all built round.

We alighted, passed up a wide, handsome public staircase, and stopped at Numéro 2 on the second landing; the first floor comprising the abode of I know not what “prince Russe,” as Graham informed me. On ringing the bell at a second great door, we were admitted to a suite of very handsome apartments. Announced by a servant in livery, we entered a drawing-room whose hearth glowed with an English fire, and whose walls gleamed with foreign mirrors. Near the hearth appeared a little group; a slight form sunk in a deep armchair, one or two women busy about it, the iron-grey gentleman anxiously looking on.

“Where is Harriet? I wish Harriet would come to me,” said the girlish voice, faintly.

“Where is Mrs. Hurst?” demanded the gentleman impatiently and somewhat sternly of the manservant who had admitted us.

“I am sorry to say she is gone out of town, sir; my young lady gave her leave till tomorrow.”

“Yes⁠—I did⁠—I did. She is gone to see her sister; I said she might go: I remember now,” interposed the young lady; “but I am so sorry, for Manon and Louison cannot understand a word I say, and they hurt me without meaning