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

Of course I assented.

“Is there,” he pursued, “another in the room as lovely?”

“I think there is not another as handsome.”

“I agree with you, Lucy: you and I do often agree in opinion, in taste, I think; or at least in judgment.”

“Do we?” I said, somewhat doubtfully.

“I believe if you had been a boy, Lucy, instead of a girl⁠—my mother’s godson instead of her goddaughter, we should have been good friends: our opinions would have melted into each other.”

He had assumed a bantering air: a light, half-caressing, half-ironic, shone aslant in his eye. Ah, Graham! I have given more than one solitary moment to thoughts and calculations of your estimate of Lucy Snowe: was it always kind or just? Had Lucy been intrinsically the same but possessing the additional advantages of wealth and station, would your manner to her, your value for her, have been quite what they actually were? And yet by these questions I would not seriously infer blame. No; you might sadden and trouble me sometimes; but then mine was a soon-depressed, an easily-deranged temperament⁠—it fell if a cloud crossed the sun. Perhaps before the eye of severe equity I should stand more at fault than you.

Trying, then, to keep down the unreasonable pain which thrilled my heart, on thus being made to feel that while Graham could devote to others the most grave and earnest, the manliest interest, he had no more than light raillery for Lucy, the friend of lang syne, I inquired calmly⁠—“On what points are we so closely in accordance?”

“We each have an observant faculty. You, perhaps, don’t give me credit for the possession; yet I have it.”

“But you were speaking of tastes: we may see the same objects, yet estimate them differently?”

“Let us bring it to the test. Of course, you cannot but render homage to the merits of Miss Fanshawe: now, what do you think of others in the room?⁠—my mother, for instance; or the lions yonder, Messieurs A⁠⸺ and Z⁠⸺; or, let us say, that pale little lady, Miss de Bassompierre?”

“You know what I think of your mother. I have not thought of Messieurs A⁠⸺ and Z⁠⸺.”

“And the other?”

“I think she is, as you say, a pale little lady⁠—pale, certainly, just now, when she is fatigued with over-excitement.”

“You don’t remember her as a child?”

“I wonder, sometimes, whether you do.”

“I had forgotten her; but it is noticeable, that circumstances, persons, even words and looks, that had slipped your memory, may, under certain conditions, certain aspects of your own or another’s mind, revive.”

“That is possible enough.”

“Yet,” he continued, “the revival is imperfect⁠—needs confirmation, partakes so much of the dim character of a dream, or of the airy one of a fancy, that the testimony of a witness becomes necessary for corroboration. Were you not a guest at Bretton ten years ago, when Mr. Home brought his little girl, whom we then called ‘little Polly,’ to stay with mamma?”

“I was there the night she came, and also the morning she went away.”

“Rather a peculiar child, was she not? I wonder how I treated her. Was I fond of children in those days? Was there anything gracious or kindly about me⁠—great, reckless, schoolboy as I was? But you don’t recollect me, of course?”

“You have seen your own picture at La Terrasse. It is like you personally. In manner, you were almost the same yesterday as today.”

“But, Lucy, how is that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What am I today? What was I the yesterday of ten years back?”

“Gracious to whatever pleased you⁠—unkindly or cruel to nothing.”

“There you are wrong; I think I was almost a brute to you, for instance.”

“A brute! No, Graham: I should never have patiently endured brutality.”

“This, however, I do remember: quiet Lucy Snowe tasted nothing of my grace.”

“As little of your cruelty.”

“Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not have tormented a being inoffensive as a shadow.”

I smiled; but I also hushed a groan. Oh!⁠—I just wished he would let me alone⁠—cease allusion to me. These epithets⁠—these attributes I put from me. His “quiet Lucy Snowe,” his “inoffensive shadow,” I gave him back; not with scorn, but with extreme weariness: theirs was the coldness and the pressure of lead; let him whelm me with no such weight. Happily, he was soon on another theme.

“On what terms were ‘little Polly’ and I? Unless my recollections deceive me, we were not foes⁠—”

“You speak very vaguely. Do you think little Polly’s memory, not more definite?”

“Oh! we don’t talk of ‘little Polly’ now. Pray say, Miss de Bassompierre; and, of course, such a stately personage remembers nothing of Bretton. Look at her large eyes, Lucy; can they read a word in the page of memory? Are they the same which I used to direct to a hornbook? She does not know that I partly taught her to read.”

“In the Bible on Sunday nights?”

“She has a calm, delicate, rather fine profile now: once what a little restless, anxious countenance was hers! What a thing is a child’s preference⁠—what a bubble! Would you believe it? that lady was fond of me!”

“I think she was in some measure fond of you,” said I, moderately.

“You don’t remember then? I had forgotten; but I remember now. She liked me the best of whatever there was at Bretton.”

“You thought so.”

“I quite well recall it. I wish I could tell her all I recall; or rather, I wish some one, you for instance, would go behind and whisper it all in her ear, and I could have the delight⁠—here, as I sit⁠—of watching her look under the intelligence. Could you manage that, think you, Lucy, and make me ever grateful?”

“Could I manage to make you ever grateful?” said I. “No, I could not.” And I felt my fingers work and my hands interlock: I felt, too, an inward courage, warm and resistant. In this matter I was not disposed to gratify Dr. John: not at all. With now welcome force, I realized his entire misapprehension of my character