Villette (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charlotte Bronte [15]
On going to bed an hour afterwards, I found her still wide awake. She had arranged her pillows so as to support her little person in a sitting posture; her hands, placed one within the other, rested quietly on the sheet, with an old-fashioned calm most unchildlike. I abstained from speaking to her for some time, but just before extinguishing the light, I recommended her to lie down.
‘By and by,’ was the answer.
‘But you will take cold, missy.’
She took some tiny article of raiment from the chair at her crib side, and with it covered her shoulders. I suffered her to do as she pleased. Listening awhile in the darkness, I was aware that she still wept—wept under restraint, quietly and cautiously.
On awaking with daylight, a trickling of water caught my ear. Behold! there she was risen and mounted on a stool near the wash-stand, with pains and difficulty inclining the ewer (which she could not lift) so as to pour its contents into the basin. It was curious to watch her as she washed and dressed, so small, busy, and noiseless. Evidently she was little accustomed to perform her own toilet; and the buttons, strings, hooks and eyes, offered difficulties which she encountered with a perseverance good to 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 tablecloth: 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 2
Paulina
Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was