The Weight of Returning — Villette

Three days remain, and Lucy counts them on the clock. She would slow them, and they are gone while she still fears their going. At breakfast Mrs Bretton coaxes: Lucy will not leave today, a second respite can be got. Lucy will not ask for one even if a word could buy it. She wants the goodbye over and herself settled again in the Rue Fossette. Her trunk is packed and corded. Going, though, depends on Graham, and he is engaged until dusk. Then Mrs Bretton and her son press her to stay one night more. She could cry from irritation. She longs to leave as a criminal longs for the axe, because she wants the pang finished, and they cannot tell how much, the feeling being outside their experience. It is dark, and raining the November drizzle that has lasted all day, when he hands her from the carriage at Madame Beck's door. The lamp gleams on the wet pavement. The night matches the night, not a year ago, when she first waited at that threshold, a solitary suppliant, and briefly met the man who stands with her now. She has never reminded him of that meeting. She likes the thought kept to herself. He rings. Rosine is alert, because the half-boarders are leaving. Lucy tells him not to come in. He steps into the lighted vestibule anyway. She had not wanted him to see the water in her eyes. He always wishes to heal what a physician cannot always heal. He tells her to keep her courage, to think of his mother and himself as true friends. They will not forget her. Nor will she forget him. Her trunk is brought in. They have shaken hands, and still he is not satisfied. Will she feel very solitary? At first, yes. His mother will call, and meantime he will write, any cheerful nonsense that comes into his head. She tells him not to impose the task. He says he will make the time. The heavy door crashes shut. The axe has fallen.

She gives herself no time to think. She swallows tears as if they were wine and pays Madame Beck the visit of ceremony. The welcome is cordial, well acted, brief. In ten minutes she is dismissed. The refectory welcome, from pupils and teachers at evening study, feels less hollow. Then she is free to go to the dormitory. She sinks on the edge of the bed and asks whether Graham will really write. Reason comes up through the twilight of that long room and whispers that he may write once, from kindness, and that she must not build a feast on it. Hope of delight, of mind, of any faculty on holiday, is refused her. If she writes back with too much life, Reason says, she does it at her peril. The hag will not let her look up. Lucy knows Reason may be right, and she also knows why people break bounds. Hope, when it comes, is better than that voice. She has been turned out by Reason on winter nights with a gnawed bone for food. She lets a kinder influence gild one night's dreams, wakes in the middle of the dormitory with day already broken, and pities anyone whom mental pain stuns instead of rousing. Then the school harness returns.

Ginevra is back, and she gives Lucy no credit for disinterestedness. She calls her crabbed, hopes the old bargain still holds, and trades coffee for pistolets as before. Lucy still gives her the half, and still does not know why the preference holds, except that it does. Madame Beck warns her, solemnly, not to study too much, as if Lucy were a confirmed bluestocking. Ginevra catches her in the carré, whirls her round, and will not be sheered off when Lucy says she does not want her company. She wants Lucy's. The chatter runs where Lucy does not want it. Has she done with Dr Bretton? Does she want him to give her up? Lucy asks it seriously. Ginevra is airy. Lucy will not stay for a scene of golden locks and glittering bracelets. She tells Ginevra to go to her own affairs. A fortnight passes. The passionate pain of the change dulls into the palsy of custom. Lucy is in harness again.

One afternoon, crossing the carré on her way to help with a literature lesson, she sees Rosine at a long window, at ease, one hand in her apron pocket, the other holding a letter to the light. Rosine reads the address and studies the seal. A letter of that shape has sat in the core of Lucy's brain for seven days. She dreamed of one last night. She is drawn, and she doubts she would dare ask even for a glance, for fear of the rebuff of disappointment. The step she hears is not that rebuff. It is Monsieur Paul measuring the corridor. She flees, sits, imposes silence, and has her work out before he bursts in with his redundant bow. Instead of flashing to the estrade, he stops at her desk, his back to the room, and gives her a look of scowling distrust. He puts the letter down. It is the same enamelled envelope, the same red seal, that was in Rosine's hand. For once a hope is realised. She holds a morsel of solid joy, not a dream. She thanks him. He curls his lip, gives her a vicious glance, and strides on. She does not read it there. The cover and the three clear letters on the seal are enough for the moment. She steals out, gets the key of the great dormitory, and at her bureau, hurrying lest Madame creep upstairs, opens drawer, box, and case. She looks once more, touches the seal to her lips with awe and shame and delight, folds the letter still unopened in silver paper, locks it away, and returns feeling as if a fairy gift were real. The feeling does not survive the doorway. Monsieur Paul is raging like a pestilence because some pupil has not spoken clearly enough. The storm is his usual weather. A person who did not know him would bungle the moment when, later, he softens. He hates sewing in his class and says so. The lesson that follows is eloquent, and by the end of it he is kind. The sun is out. Tears have been exchanged for smiles. Leaving, he stops again. Has she read the letter? Not yet. He guesses she is saving it as he once saved a peach at its ripest. Her face answers. He says youth has only one season, and that she will open it alone. She whispers after him that he must not mistake her. It is only a friend's letter. She can vouch for that without reading it. He understands, he says, what a friend is, and he leaves his handkerchief. She is to bring it back when the letter is read. He will read the tenor in her eyes. The pupils have poured out to the garden. Lucy, gladdened by a glimmer of childhood and by the treasure upstairs, tosses the handkerchief like a ball. A hand in a paletôt sleeve comes over her shoulder, catches it, and carries it off. He sees that she is mocking him and his things. The little man is dreadful, a sprite of whim and ubiquity. She never knows which she will meet.