Chương Chương 37 · Sunshine
ll for Paulina to decline further correspondence with
Graham till her father had sanctioned the intercourse. But Dr. Bretton
could not live within a league of the Hôtel Crécy, and not contrive to
visit there often. Both lovers meant at first, I believe, to be
distant; they kept their intention so far as demonstrative courtship
went, but in feeling they soon drew very near.
All that was best in Graham sought Paulina; whatever in him was noble,
awoke, and grew in her presence. With his past admiration of Miss
Fanshawe, I suppose his intellect had little to do, but his whole
intellect, and his highest tastes, came in question now. These, like
all his faculties, were active, eager for nutriment, and alive to
gratification when it came.
I cannot say that Paulina designedly led him to talk of books, or
formally proposed to herself for a moment the task of winning him to
reflection, or planned the improvement of his mind, or so much as
fancied his mind could in any one respect be improved. She thought him
very perfect; it was Graham himself, who, at first by the merest
chance, mentioned some book he had been reading, and when in her
response sounded a welcome harmony of sympathies, something, pleasant
to his soul, he talked on, more and better perhaps than he had ever
talked before on such subjects. She listened with delight, and answered
with animation. In each successive answer, Graham heard a music waxing
finer and finer to his sense; in each he found a suggestive,
persuasive, magic accent that opened a scarce-known treasure-house
within, showed him unsuspected power in his own mind, and what was
better, latent goodness in his heart. Each liked the way in which the
other talked; the voice, the diction, the expression pleased; each
keenly relished the flavour of the other’s wit; they met each other’s
meaning with strange quickness, their thoughts often matched like
carefully-chosen pearls. Graham had wealth of mirth by nature; Paulina
possessed no such inherent flow of animal spirits—unstimulated, she
inclined to be thoughtful and pensive—but now she seemed merry as a
lark; in her lover’s genial presence, she glanced like some soft glad
light. How beautiful she grew in her happiness, I can hardly express,
but I wondered to see her. As to that gentle ice of hers—that reserve
on which she had depended; where was it now? Ah! Graham would not long
bear it; he brought with him a generous influence that soon thawed the
timid, self-imposed restriction.
Now were the old Bretton days talked over; perhaps brokenly at first,
with a sort of smiling diffidence, then with opening candour and still
growing confidence. Graham had made for himself a better opportunity
than that he had wished me to give; he had earned independence of the
collateral help that disobliging Lucy had refused; all his
reminiscences of “little Polly” found their proper expression in his
own pleasant tones, by his own kind and handsome lips; how much better
than if suggested by me.
More than once when we were alone, Paulina would tell me how wonderful
and curious it was to discover the richness and accuracy of his memory
in this matter. How, while he was looking at her, recollections would
seem to be suddenly quickened in his mind. He reminded her that she had
once gathered his head in her arms, caressed his leonine graces, and
cried out, “Graham, I _do_ like you!” He told her how she would set a
footstool beside him, and climb by its aid to his knee. At this day he
said he could recall the sensation of her little hands smoothing his
cheek, or burying themselves in his thick mane. He remembered the touch
of her small forefinger, placed half tremblingly, half curiously, in
the cleft in his chin, the lisp, the look with which she would name it
“a pretty dimple,” then seek his eyes and question why they pierced so,
telling him he had a “nice, strange face; far nicer, far stranger, than
either his mamma or Lucy Snowe.”
“Child as I was,” remarked Paulina, “I wonder how I dared be so
venturous. To me he seems now all sacred, his locks are inaccessible,
and, Lucy, I feel a sort of fear, when I look at his firm, marble chin,
at his straight Greek features. Women are called beautiful, Lucy; he is
not like a woman, therefore I suppose he is not beautiful, but what is
he, then? Do other people see him with my eyes? Do _you_ admire him?”
“I’ll tell you what I do, Paulina,” was once my answer to her many
questions. “_I never see him_. I looked at him twice or thrice about a
year ago, before he recognised me, and then I shut my eyes; and if he
were to cross their balls twelve times between each day’s sunset and
sunrise, except from memory, I should hardly know what shape had gone
by.”
“Lucy, what do you mean?” said she, under her breath.
“I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.”
It was best to answer her strongly at once, and to silence for ever the
tender, passionate confidences which left her lips sweet honey, and
sometimes dropped in my ear—molten lead. To me, she commented no more
on her lover’s beauty.
Yet speak of him she would; sometimes shyly, in quiet, brief phrases;
sometimes with a tenderness of cadence, and music of voice exquisite in
itself; but which chafed me at times miserably; and then, I know, I
gave her stern looks and words; but cloudless happiness had dazzled her
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