Villette (52 page)

She had different moods for different people. With her father she really was still a child, or child-like, affectionate, merry, and playful. With me she was serious, and as womanly as thought and feeling could make her. With Mrs. Bretton she was docile and reliant, but not expansive. With Graham she was shy, at present very shy; at moments she tried to be cold; on occasion she endeavoured to shun him. His step made her start; his entrance hushed her; when he spoke, her answers failed of fluency; when he took leave, she remained self-vexed and disconcerted. Even her father noticed this demeanour in her.

‘My little Polly,’ he said once, ‘you live too retired a life; if you grow to be a woman with these shy manners, you will hardly be fitted for society. You really make quite a stranger of Dr. Bretton: how is this? Don’t you remember that, as a little girl, you used to be rather partial to him.’

‘Rather,
papa,’ echoed she, with her slightly dry, yet gentle and simple tone.

‘And you don’t like him now? What has he done?’

‘Nothing. Y-e-s, I like him a little; but we are grown strange to each other.’

‘Then rub it off, Polly: rub the rust and the strangeness off. Talk away when he is here, and have no fear of him!’

‘He
does not talk much. Is he afraid of me, do you think, papa?’

‘Oh, to be sure! What man would not be afraid of such a lit tle silent lady?’

‘Then tell him some day not to mind my being silent. Say that it is my way, and that I have no unfriendly intention.’

‘Your way, you little chatter-box? So far from being your way, it is only your whim!’

‘Well, I’ll improve, papa.’

And very pretty was the grace with which, the next day, she tried to keep her word. I saw her make the effort to converse affably with Dr. John on general topics. The attention called into her guest’s face a pleasurable glow; he met her with caution, and replied to her in his softest tones, as if there was a kind of gossamer happiness hanging in the air which he feared to disturb by drawing too deep a breath. Certainly, in her timid yet earnest advance to friendship, it could not be denied that there was a most exquisite and fairy charm.

When the Doctor was gone, she approached her father’s chair.

‘Did I keep my word, papa? Did I behave better?’

‘My Polly behaved like a queen. I shall become quite proud of her if this improvement continues. By and by we shall see her receiving my guests with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even to lisp as you lisped when you were six years old.’

‘No, papa,’ interrupted she, indignantly, ‘that can’t be true.’

‘I appeal to Miss Lucy. Did she not, in answering Dr. Bretton’s question as to whether she had ever seen the palace of the Prince of Bois l’Etang, say “yeth,” she had been there “theveral” times.’

‘Papa, you are satirical, you are méchant! I can pronounce all the letters of the alphabet as clearly as you can. But tell me this: you are very particular in making me be civil to Dr. Bretton, do you like him yourself?’

‘To be sure: for old acquaintance sake I like him: then he is a very good son to his mother; besides being a kind-hearted fellow and clever in his profession: yes, the callant is well enough.’

‘Callant!
Ah, Scotchman! Papa, is it the Edinburgh or the Aberdeen accent you have?’

‘Both, my pet, both; and doubtless the Glaswegian into the bargain: it is that which enables me to speak French so well: a gude Scots tongue always succeeds well at the French.’

‘The
French! Scotch again: incorrigible, papa! You, too, need schooling.’

‘Well, Polly, you must persuade Miss Snowe to undertake both you and me; to make you steady and womanly, and me refined and classical.’

The light in which M. de Bassompierre evidently regarded ‘Miss Snowe,’ used to occasion me much inward edification. What contradictory attributes of character we sometimes find ascribed to us, according to the eye with which we are viewed! Madame Beck esteemed me learned and blue; Miss Fanshawe, caustic, ironic, and cynical; Mr. Home, a model teacher, the essence of the sedate and discreet: somewhat conventional perhaps, too strict, limited and scrupulous, but still the pink and pattern of governess-correctness; whilst another person, Professor Paul Emanuel, to wit, never lost an opportunity of intimating his opinion that mine was rather a fiery and rash nature—adventurous, indocile, and audacious. I smiled at them all. If any one knew me it was little Paulina Mary.

As I would not be Paulina’s nominal and paid companion, genial and harmonious as I began to find her intercourse, she persuaded me to join her in some study, as a regular and settled means of sustaining communication: she proposed the German language, which, like myself, she found difficult of mastery. We agreed to take our lessons in the Rue Crécy of the same mistress; this arrangement threw us together for some hours of every week. M. de Bassompierre seemed quite pleased: it perfectly met his approbation that Madame Minerva Gravity should associate a portion of her leisure with that of his fair and dear child.

That other self-elected judge of mine, the professor in the Rue Fossette, discovering by some surreptitious, spying means, that I was no longer so stationary as hitherto, but went out regularly at certain hours of certain days, took it upon himself to place me under surveillance. People said M. Emanuel had been brought up amongst Jesuits. I should more readily have accredited this report had his manoeuvres been better masked. As it was I doubted it. Never was a more undisguised schemer, a franker, looser intriguer. He would analyze his own machinations: elaborately contrive plots, and forthwith indulge in explanatory boasts of their skill. I know not whether I was more amused or provoked, by his stepping up to me one morning and whispering solemnly that he ‘had his eye on me:
he
at least would discharge the duty of a friend and not leave me entirely to my own devices. My proceedings seemed at present very unsettled: he did not know what to make of them: he thought his cousin Beck very much to blame in suffering this sort of fluttering inconsistency in a teacher attached to her house. What had a person devoted to a serious calling, that of education, to do with Counts and Countesses, hotels and chateaux? To him, I seemed altogether “en l’air.” On his faith, he believed I went out six days in the seven.’

I said, ‘Monsieur exaggerated. I certainly had enjoyed the advantage of a little change lately, but not before it had become necessary; and the privilege was by no means exercised in excess.’

‘Necessary! How was it necessary? I was well enough, he supposed? Change necessary! He would recommend me to look at the Catholic “religièuses,” and study
their
lives. They asked no change.’

I am no judge of what expression crossed my face when he thus spoke, but it was one which provoked him: he accused me of being reckless, worldly, and epicurean; ambitious of greatness and feverishly athirst for the pomps and vanities of life. It seems I had no ‘dévouement,’ no ‘récueillement’ in my character; no spirit of grace, faith, sacrifice, or self-abasement. Feeling the inutility of answering these charges, I mutely continued the correction of a pile of English exercises.

‘He could see in me nothing Christian: like many other Protestants, I revelled in the pride and self-will of paganism.’

I slightly turned from him, nestling still closer under the wing of silence.

A vague sound grumbled between his teeth; it could not surely be a ‘juron:’ he was too religious for that; but I am certain I heard the word
sacré.
Grievous to relate, the same word was repeated, with the unequivocal addition of
mille
^fg
something, when I passed him about two hours afterwards in the corridor, prepared to go and take my German lesson in the Rue Crécy. Never was a better little man, in some points, than M. Paul: never, in others, a more waspish little despot.

Our German mistress, Fräulein Anna Braun, was a worthy, hearty woman, of about forty-five; she ought, perhaps, to have lived in the days of Queen Elizabeth, as she habitually consumed, for her first and second breakfast, beer and beef: also, her direct and downright Deutsch nature seemed to suffer a sensation of cruel restraint from what she called our English reserve; though we thought we were very cordial with her: but we did not slap her on the shoulder, and if we consented to kiss her cheek, it was done quietly, and without any explosive smack. These omissions oppressed and depressed her considerably; still, on the whole, we got on very well. Accustomed to instruct foreign girls, who hardly ever will think and study for themselves—who have no idea of grappling with a difficulty, and overcoming it by dint of reflection or application—our progress, which, in truth, was very leisurely, seemed to astound her. In her eyes, we were a pair of glacial prodigies, cold, proud, and preternatural.

The young Countess
was
a little proud, a little fastidious: and perhaps, with her native delicacy and beauty, she had a right to these feelings; but I think it was a total mistake to ascribe them to me. I never evaded the morning salute, which Paulina would slip when she could; nor was a certain little manner of still disdain a weapon known in my armoury of defence; whereas, Paulina always kept it clear, fine and bright, and any rough German sally called forth at once its steely glisten.

Honest Anna Braun, in some measure, felt this difference; and while she half-feared, half-worshipped Paulina, as a sort of dainty nymph—an Undine—she took refuge with me, as a being all mortal, and of easier mood.

A book we liked well to read and translate was Schiller’s Ballads; Paulina soon learned to read them beautifully: the Fraulein would listen to her with a broad smile of pleasure, and say her voice sounded like music. She translated them too with a facile flow of language, and in a strain of kindred and poetic fervour: her cheek would flush, her lips tremblingly smile, her beauteous eyes kindle or melt as she went on. She learnt the best by heart, and would often recite them when we were alone together. One she liked well was ‘Des Mädchens Klage’: that is, she liked well to repeat the words, she found plaintive melody in the sound; the sense she would criticise. She murmured, as we sat over the fire one evening:—

‘Lived and loved!’ said she, ‘is that the summit of earthly happiness, the end of life—to love? I don’t think it is. It may be the extreme of mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, and fruitless torture of feeling. If Schiller had said to
be
loved—he might have come nearer the truth. Is not that another thing, Lucy, to be loved?’

‘I suppose it may be: but why consider the subject? What is love to you? What do you know about it?’

She crimsoned, half in irritation, half in shame.

‘Now, Lucy,’ she said, ‘I won’t take that from you. It may be well for papa to look on me as a baby: I rather prefer that he

‘No matter if it were your twenty-ninth; we will anticipate no feelings by discussion and conversation: we will not talk about love.’

‘Indeed, indeed!’ said she—all in hurry and heat—‘you may think to check and hold me in, as much as you please; but I
have
talked about it, and heard about it too; and a great deal and lately, and disagreeably and detrimentally: and in a way you wouldn’t approve.’

And the vexed, triumphant, pretty, naughty being laughed. I could not discern what she meant, and I would not ask her: I was nonplussed. Seeing, however, the utmost innocence in her countenance—combined with some transient perverseness and petulance—I said at last,—

‘Who talks to you disagreeably and detrimentally on such matters? Who that has near access to you would dare to do it?’

‘Lucy,’ replied she more softly, ‘it is a person who makes me miserable sometimes; and I wish she would keep away—I don’t want her.’

‘But who, Paulina, can it be? You puzzle me much.’

‘It is—it is my cousin Ginevra. Every time she has leave to visit Mrs. Cholmondeley she calls here, and whenever she finds me alone she begins to talk about her admirers. Love, indeed! You should hear all she has to say about love.’

‘Oh, I have heard it,’ said I, quite coolly; ‘and on the whole, perhaps, it is as well you should have heard it too: it is not to be regretted, it is all right. Yet, surely, Ginevra’s mind cannot influence yours. You can look over both her head and her heart.’

‘She does influence me very much. She has the art of disturbing my happiness and unsettling my opinions. She hurts me through the feelings and people dearest to me.’

‘What does she say, Paulina? Give me some idea. There may be counteraction of the damage done.’