Villette | Page 4

witness. She folded her night-dress, she smoothed
the drapery of her couch quite neatly; withdrawing into a corner, where

the sweep of the white curtain concealed her, she became still. I half
rose, and advanced my, head to see how she was occupied. On her
knees, with her forehead bent on her hands, I perceived that she was
praying.
Her nurse tapped at the door. She started up.
"I am dressed, Harriet," said she; "I have dressed myself, but I do not
feel neat. Make me neat!"
"Why did you dress yourself, Missy?"
"Hush! speak low, Harriet, for fear of waking _the girl_" (meaning me,
who now lay with my eyes shut). "I dressed myself to learn, against the
time you leave me."
"Do you want me to go?"
"When you are cross, I have many a time wanted you to go, but not
now. Tie my sash straight; make my hair smooth, please."
"Your sash is straight enough. What a particular little body you are!"
"It must be tied again. Please to tie it."
"There, then. When I am gone you must get that young lady to dress
you."
"On no account."
"Why? She is a very nice young lady. I hope you mean to behave
prettily to her, Missy, and not show your airs."
"She shall dress me on no account."
"Comical little thing!"
"You are not passing the comb straight through my hair, Harriet; the
line will be crooked."

"Ay, you are ill to please. Does that suit?"
"Pretty well. Where should I go now that I am dressed?"
"I will take you into the breakfast-room."
"Come, then."
They proceeded to the door. She stopped.
"Oh! Harriet, I wish this was papa's house! I don't know these people."
"Be a good child, Missy."
"I am good, but I ache here;" putting her hand to her heart, and
moaning while she reiterated, "Papa! papa!"
I roused myself and started up, to check this scene while it was yet
within bounds.
"Say good-morning to the young lady," dictated Harriet. She said,
"Good-morning," and then followed her nurse from the room. Harriet
temporarily left that same day, to go to her own friends, who lived in
the neighbourhood.
On descending, I found Paulina (the child called herself Polly, but her
full name was Paulina Mary) seated at the breakfast-table, by Mrs.
Bretton's side; a mug of milk stood before her, a morsel of bread filled
her hand, which lay passive on the table-cloth: she was not eating.
"How we shall conciliate this little creature," said Mrs. Bretton to me,
"I don't know: she tastes nothing, and by her looks, she has not slept."
I expressed my confidence in the effects of time and kindness.
"If she were to take a fancy to anybody in the house, she would soon
settle; but not till then," replied Mrs. Bretton.

CHAPTER II.
PAULINA.
Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was not likely to take much of
a fancy to anybody in the house. She was not exactly naughty or wilful:
she was far from disobedient; but an object less conducive to
comfort--to tranquillity even--than she presented, it was scarcely
possible to have before one's eyes. She moped: no grown person could
have performed that uncheering business better; no furrowed face of
adult exile, longing for Europe at Europe's antipodes, ever bore more
legibly the signs of home sickness than did her infant visage. She
seemed growing old and unearthly. I, Lucy Snowe, plead guiltless of
that curse, an overheated and discursive imagination; but whenever,
opening a room-door, I found her seated in a corner alone, her head in
her pigmy hand, that room seemed to me not inhabited, but haunted.
And again, when of moonlight nights, on waking, I beheld her figure,
white and conspicuous in its night-dress, kneeling upright in bed, and
praying like some Catholic or Methodist enthusiast--some precocious
fanatic or untimely saint--I scarcely know what thoughts I had; but they
ran risk of being hardly more rational and healthy than that child's mind
must have been.
I seldom caught a word of her prayers, for they were whispered low:
sometimes, indeed, they were not whispered at all, but put up unuttered;
such rare sentences as reached my ear still bore the burden, "Papa; my
dear papa!" This, I perceived, was a one-idea'd nature; betraying that
monomaniac tendency I have ever thought the most unfortunate with
which man or woman can be cursed.
What might have been the end of this fretting, had it continued
unchecked, can only be conjectured: it received, however, a sudden
turn.
One afternoon, Mrs. Bretton, coaxing her from her usual station in a
corner, had lifted her into the window-seat, and, by way of occupying
her attention, told her to watch the passengers and count how many

ladies should