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

“Miss Snowe,” recommenced Dr. John⁠—my health, nervous system included, being now, somewhat to my relief, discussed and done with⁠—“is it permitted me to ask what your religion is? Are you a Catholic?”

I looked up in some surprise⁠—“A Catholic? No! Why suggest such an idea?”

“The manner in which you were consigned to me last night made me doubt.”

“I consigned to you? But, indeed, I forget. It yet remains for me to learn how I fell into your hands.”

“Why, under circumstances that puzzled me. I had been in attendance all day yesterday on a case of singularly interesting and critical character; the disease being rare, and its treatment doubtful: I saw a similar and still finer case in a hospital in Paris; but that will not interest you. At last a mitigation of the patient’s most urgent symptoms (acute pain is one of its accompaniments) liberated me, and I set out homeward. My shortest way lay through the Basse-Ville, and as the night was excessively dark, wild, and wet, I took it. In riding past an old church belonging to a community of Béguines, I saw by a lamp burning over the porch or deep arch of the entrance, a priest lifting some object in his arms. The lamp was bright enough to reveal the priest’s features clearly, and I recognised him; he was a man I have often met by the sick beds of both rich and poor: and chiefly the latter. He is, I think, a good old man, far better than most of his class in this country; superior, indeed, in every way, better informed, as well as more devoted to duty. Our eyes met; he called on me to stop: what he supported was a woman, fainting or dying. I alighted.

“ ‘This person is one of your countrywomen,’ he said: ‘save her, if she is not dead.’ ”

“My countrywoman, on examination, turned out to be the English teacher at Madame Beck’s pensionnat. She was perfectly unconscious, perfectly bloodless, and nearly cold.”

“ ‘What does it all mean?’ ” was my inquiry.

“He communicated a curious account; that you had been to him that evening at confessional; that your exhausted and suffering appearance, coupled with some things you had said⁠—”

“Things I had said? I wonder what things!”

“Awful crimes, no doubt; but he did not tell me what: there, you know, the seal of the confessional checked his garrulity, and my curiosity. Your confidences, however, had not made an enemy of the good father; it seems he was so struck, and felt so sorry that you should be out on such a night alone, that he had esteemed it a Christian duty to watch you when you quitted the church, and so to manage as not to lose sight of you, till you should have reached home. Perhaps the worthy man might, half unconsciously, have blent in this proceeding some little of the subtlety of his class: it might have been his resolve to learn the locality of your home⁠—did you impart that in your confession?”

“I did not: on the contrary, I carefully avoided the shadow of any indication: and as to my confession, Dr. John, I suppose you will think me mad for taking such a step, but I could not help it: I suppose it was all the fault of what you call my ‘nervous system.’ I cannot put the case into words, but my days and nights were grown intolerable; a cruel sense of desolation pained my mind: a feeling that would make its way, rush out, or kill me⁠—like (and this you will understand, Dr. John) the current which passes through the heart, and which, if aneurism or any other morbid cause obstructs its natural channels, seeks abnormal outlet. I wanted companionship, I wanted friendship, I wanted counsel. I could find none of these in closet or chamber, so I went and sought them in church and confessional. As to what I said, it was no confidence, no narrative. I have done nothing wrong: my life has not been active enough for any dark deed, either of romance or reality: all I poured out was a dreary, desperate complaint.”

“Lucy, you ought to travel for about six months: why, your calm nature is growing quite excitable! Confound Madame Beck! Has the little buxom widow no bowels, to condemn her best teacher to solitary confinement?”

“It was not Madame Beck’s fault,” said I; “it is no living being’s fault, and I won’t hear any one blamed.”

“Who is in the wrong, then, Lucy?”

“Me⁠—Dr. John⁠—me; and a great abstraction on whose wide shoulders I like to lay the mountains of blame they were sculptured to bear: me and Fate.”

“ ‘Me’ must take better care in future,” said Dr. John⁠—smiling, I suppose, at my bad grammar.

“Change of air⁠—change of scene; those are my prescriptions,” pursued the practical young doctor. “But to return to our muttons, Lucy. As yet, Père Silas, with all his tact (they say he is a Jesuit), is no wiser than you choose him to be; for, instead of returning to the Rue Fossette, your fevered wanderings⁠—there must have been high fever⁠—”

“No, Dr. John: the fever took its turn that night⁠—now, don’t make out that I was delirious, for I know differently.”

“Good! you were as collected as myself at this moment, no doubt. Your wanderings had taken an opposite direction to the pensionnat. Near the Béguinage, amidst the stress of flood and gust, and in the perplexity of darkness, you had swooned and fallen. The priest came to your succour, and the physician, as we have seen, supervened. Between us we procured a fiacre and brought you here. Père Silas, old as he is, would carry you upstairs, and lay you on that couch himself. He would certainly have remained with you till suspended animation had been restored; and so should I, but, at that juncture, a hurried messenger arrived from the dying patient I had scarcely left⁠—the last duties were called for⁠—the physician’s last visit and the priest’s last rite; extreme unction could not be deferred. Père Silas and myself departed