The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 17

One morning my G.o.dmother decreed that we should go with Graham to a concert that night, at which the most advanced pupils of the conservatoire were to perform. There, in the suite of the British emba.s.sy, was Ginevra Fanshawe, seated by the daughter of an English peer. I noticed that she looked quite steadily at Dr. John, and then raised a gla.s.s to examine his mother, and a minute or two afterwards laughingly whispered to her neighbour.

"Miss Fanshawe is here," I whispered. "Have you noticed her?"

"Oh yes," was the reply; "and I happen to know her companion, who is a proud girl, but not in the least insolent; and I doubt whether Ginevra will have gained ground in her estimation by making a b.u.t.t of her neighbours."

"What neighbours?"

"Myself and my mother. As for me, it is very natural; but my mother! I never saw her ridiculed before. Through me she could not in ten years have done what in a moment she has done through my mother."

Never before had I seen so much fire and so little suns.h.i.+ne in Dr.

John's blue eyes.

"My mother shall not be ridiculed with my consent, or without my scorn,"

he added. "Mother," said he to her later, "You are better to me than ten wives." And when we were out in the keen night air, he said to himself: "Thank you, Miss Fanshawe. I am glad you laughed at my mother. That sneer did me a world of good."

_V.--Reunion Completed_

One evening in December Dr. Bretton called to take me to the theatre in place of his mother, who had been prevented by an arrival. In the course of the performance a cry of "Fire!" rang out, and a panic ensued. Graham remained quite cool until he saw a young girl struck from her protector's arms and hurled under the feet of the crowd. Then he rushed forward, thrust back the throng with the a.s.sistance of the gentleman--a powerful man, though grey-haired--and bore the girl into the fresh night, I following him closely.

"She is very light," he said; "like a child."

"I am not a child! I am a person of seventeen!" responded his burden, demurely.

Her father's carriage drove up, and Graham, having introduced himself as an English doctor, we drove to the hotel where father and daughter were staying in handsome apartments. The injuries were not dangerous, and the father, after earnestly expressing his obligations to Graham, asked him to call the next day.

When next I visited the Bretton's chateau I found an intruder in the room I had occupied during my illness.

"Miss de Ba.s.sompierre, I p.r.o.nounced, recognising the rescued lady, whose name I had heard on the night of the accident.

"No," was the reply. "Not Miss de Ba.s.sompierre to you." Then, as I seemed at fault, she added: "You have forgotten, then, that I have sat on your knee, been lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow. I am Paulina Mary Home de Ba.s.sompierre."

I often visited Mary de Ba.s.sompierre with pleasure. That young lady had different moods for different people. With her father she was even now a child. With me she was serious and womanly. With Mrs. Bretton she was docile and reliant. With Graham she was shy--very shy. At moments she tried to be cold, and, on occasion, she endeavoured to shun him. Even her father noticed this demeanour in her, and asked her what her old friend had done.

"Nothing," she replied; "but we are grown strange to each other."

I became apprised of the return of M. de Ba.s.sompierre and Paulina, after a few weeks' absence in Paris, by seeing them riding before me in a quiet boulevard with Dr. Bretton. How animated was Graham's face! How true, yet how retiring the joy it expressed! They parted. He pa.s.sed me at speed, hardly feeling the earth he skimmed, and seeing nothing on either hand.

It was after this that she made me her confession of love, and of fear lest her father should be grieved.

"I wish papa knew! I do wish papa knew!" began now to be her anxious murmur; but it was M. de Ba.s.sompierre who first broached the subject of his daughter's affections, and it was to me that he introduced it. She came into the room while we talked and Graham followed.

"Take her, John Bretton," he said, "and may G.o.d deal with you as you deal with her!"

_VI.--A Professor's Love-Story_

The pupils from the schools of the city were a.s.sembled for the yearly prize distribution--a ceremony followed by an oration from one of the professors. I think I was glad when M. Paul appeared behind the crimson desk, fierce and frank, dark and candid, testy and fearless, for then I knew that neither formalism nor flattery would be the doom of the audience.

On Monsieur's birthday it was the habit of the scholars to present him with flowers, and I had worked a beaded watch-chain, and enclosed it in a sparkling sh.e.l.l-box, with his initials graved on the lid. He entered that day in a mood that made him as good as a sunbeam, and each pupil presented her bouquet, till he was hidden at his desk behind a pile of flowers. I waited. Then he demanded thrice, in tragic tones: "Is that all?" The effect was ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had pa.s.sed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was he of friendliness.

The professor's care for me took curious forms. He haunted my desk with unseen gift-bringing--the newest books, the correction of exercises, the concealment of bonbons, of which he was fond.

One day he asked me whether, if I were his sister, I should always be content to stay with a brother such as he. I said I believed I should.

He continued: "If I were to go beyond seas for two or three years, should you welcome me on my return?"

"Monsieur, how could I live in the interval?" was my reply.

The explanation of that question soon came. He had, it seemed, to sail to Ba.s.seterre, in Guadeloupe, to attend to a friend's business interests. For what I felt there was no help, and how could I help feeling?

Of late he had spent hours with me, with temper soothed, with eye content, with manner home-like and mild. The mutual understanding was settling and fixing. And when the time came for him to say good-bye, we rambled forth into the city. He talked of his voyage. What did I propose to do in his absence? He did not like leaving me at Madame Beck's--I should be so desolate.

We were now returning from our walk, when, pa.s.sing a small but pleasant and neat abode in a clean _faubourg_, he took a key from his pocket, opened, and entered. "_Voici!_" he cried, and put a prospectus in my hand. "Externat de demoiselles. Numero 7, Faubourg Clotilde. Directrice, Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe."

"Now," said he, "you shall live here and have a school. You shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall think of me; you shall mind your health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back----"

I touched his hand with my lips. Royal to me had been its bounty.

And now three years are past. M. Emanuel's return is fixed. He is to be with me ere the mists of November come. My school flourishes; my house is ready.

But the skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting sh.o.r.es, listened for that voice; but when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Here pause. Enough is said. Trouble no kind heart. Leave sunny imaginations hope. Let them picture union and a happy life.

EMILY BRONTe

Wuthering Heights

"That chainless soul," Emily Jane Bronte, was born at Thornton, Yorks.h.i.+re, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at Haworth on December 19, 1848. She will always have a place in English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful, strained novel, "Wuthering Heights," and a few poems. Emily Bronte, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan School and at Brussels. For a time she became a governess, but it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination of the Yorks.h.i.+re moors, and she went home to keep house at the Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught. Two months after the publication of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, that is, in December, 1847, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, and "Agnes Grey," by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were issued in one volume. The critics, who did not discover these books were by women, suggested persistently that "Wuthering Heights" must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte).

A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame.

She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell. That she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.

_I.--A Surly Brood_

"Mr. Heathcliff?"

A nod was the answer.

"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir."