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

and made it superior to the broadest camelia⁠—the fullest dahlia that ever bloomed.

“Ah! and you remember the old time at Bretton?”

“Better,” said she, “better, perhaps, than you. I remember it with minute distinctness: not only the time, but the days of the time, and the hours of the days.”

“You must have forgotten some things?”

“Very little, I imagine.”

“You were then a little creature of quick feelings: you must, long ere this, have outgrown the impressions with which joy and grief, affection and bereavement, stamped your mind ten years ago.”

“You think I have forgotten whom I liked, and in what degree I liked them when a child?”

“The sharpness must be gone⁠—the point, the poignancy⁠—the deep imprint must be softened away and effaced?”

“I have a good memory for those days.”

She looked as if she had. Her eyes were the eyes of one who can remember; one whose childhood does not fade like a dream, nor whose youth vanish like a sunbeam. She would not take life, loosely and incoherently, in parts, and let one season slip as she entered on another: she would retain and add; often review from the commencement, and so grow in harmony and consistency as she grew in years. Still I could not quite admit the conviction that all the pictures which now crowded upon me were vivid and visible to her. Her fond attachments, her sports and contests with a well-loved playmate, the patient, true devotion of her child’s heart, her fears, her delicate reserves, her little trials, the last piercing pain of separation.⁠ ⁠… I retraced these things, and shook my head incredulous. She persisted. “The child of seven years lives yet in the girl of seventeen,” said she.

“You used to be excessively fond of Mrs. Bretton,” I remarked, intending to test her. She set me right at once.

“Not excessively fond,” said she; “I liked her: I respected her as I should do now: she seems to me very little altered.”

“She is not much changed,” I assented.

We were silent a few minutes. Glancing round the room she said, “There are several things here that used to be at Bretton! I remember that pincushion and that looking-glass.”

Evidently she was not deceived in her estimate of her own memory; not, at least, so far.

“You think, then, you would have known Mrs. Bretton?” I went on.

“I perfectly remembered her; the turn of her features, her olive complexion, and black hair, her height, her walk, her voice.”

“Dr. Bretton, of course,” I pursued, “would be out of the question: and, indeed, as I saw your first interview with him, I am aware that he appeared to you as a stranger.”

“That first night I was puzzled,” she answered.

“How did the recognition between him and your father come about?”

“They exchanged cards. The names Graham Bretton and Home de Bassompierre gave rise to questions and explanations. That was on the second day; but before then I was beginning to know something.”

“How⁠—know something?”

“Why,” she said, “how strange it is that most people seem so slow to feel the truth⁠—not to see, but feel! When Dr. Bretton had visited me a few times, and sat near and talked to me; when I had observed the look in his eyes, the expression about his mouth, the form of his chin, the carriage of his head, and all that we do observe in persons who approach us⁠—how could I avoid being led by association to think of Graham Bretton? Graham was slighter than he, and not grown so tall, and had a smoother face, and longer and lighter hair, and spoke⁠—not so deeply⁠—more like a girl; but yet he is Graham, just as I am little Polly, or you are Lucy Snowe.”

I thought the same, but I wondered to find my thoughts hers: there are certain things in which we so rarely meet with our double that it seems a miracle when that chance befalls.

“You and Graham were once playmates.”

“And do you remember that?” she questioned in her turn.

“No doubt he will remember it also,” said I.

“I have not asked him: few things would surprise me so much as to find that he did. I suppose his disposition is still gay and careless?”

“Was it so formerly? Did it so strike you? Do you thus remember him?”

“I scarcely remember him in any other light. Sometimes he was studious; sometimes he was merry: but whether busy with his books or disposed for play, it was chiefly the books or game he thought of; not much heeding those with whom he read or amused himself.”

“Yet to you he was partial.”

“Partial to me? Oh, no! he had other playmates⁠—his schoolfellows; I was of little consequence to him, except on Sundays: yes, he was kind on Sundays. I remember walking with him hand-in-hand to St. Mary’s, and his finding the places in my prayerbook; and how good and still he was on Sunday evenings! So mild for such a proud, lively boy; so patient with all my blunders in reading; and so wonderfully to be depended on, for he never spent those evenings from home: I had a constant fear that he would accept some invitation and forsake us; but he never did, nor seemed ever to wish to do it. Thus, of course, it can be no more. I suppose Sunday will now be Dr. Bretton’s dining-out day⁠ ⁠… ?”

“Children, come down!” here called Mrs. Bretton from below. Paulina would still have lingered, but I inclined to descend: we went down.

XXV The Little Countess

Cheerful as my godmother naturally was, and entertaining as, for our sakes, she made a point of being, there was no true enjoyment that evening at La Terrasse, till, through the wild howl of the winter-night, were heard the signal sounds of arrival. How often, while women and girls sit warm at snug firesides, their hearts and imaginations are doomed to divorce from the comfort surrounding their persons, forced out by night to wander through dark ways, to dare stress of weather, to contend with the snow-blast, to wait at lonely gates and stiles