Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (113 page)

“Miss Hardman, my love, was a very strong-minded young lady, of most distinguished talents. The aristocracy are decidedly a very superior class, you know, both physically, and morally, and mentally; as a high Tory I acknowledge that. I could not describe the dignity of her voice and mien as she addressed me thus; still, I fear she was selfish, my dear. I would never wish to speak ill of my superiors in rank, but I think she was a little selfish.”

“I remember,” continued Mrs. Pryor, after a pause, “another of Miss H.’s observations, which she would utter with quite a grand air. ‘We,’ she would say — ‘we need the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes, and crimes of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which we reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of trades-people, however well educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be inmates of our dwellings, or guardians of our children’s minds and persons. We shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as ourselves.’”

“Miss Hardman must have thought herself something better than her fellow-creatures, ma’am, since she held that their calamities, and even crimes, were necessary to minister to her convenience. You say she was religious. Her religion must have been that of the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not as other men are, nor even as that publican.”

“My dear, we will not discuss the point. I should be the last person to wish to instil into your mind any feeling of dissatisfaction with your lot in life, or any sentiment of envy or insubordination towards your superiors. Implicit submission to authorities, scrupulous deference to our betters (under which term I, of course, include the higher classes of society), are, in my opinion, indispensable to the well-being of every community. All I mean to say, my dear, is that you had better not attempt to be a governess, as the duties of the position would be too severe for your constitution. Not one word of disrespect would I breathe towards either Mrs. or Miss Hardman; only, recalling my own experience, I cannot but feel that, were you to fall under auspices such as theirs, you would contend a while courageously with your doom, then you would pine and grow too weak for your work; you would come home — if you still had a home — broken down. Those languishing years would follow of which none but the invalid and her immediate friends feel the heart-sickness and know the burden. Consumption or decline would close the chapter. Such is the history of many a life. I would not have it yours. My dear, we will now walk about a little, if you please.”

They both rose, and slowly paced a green natural terrace bordering the chasm.

“My dear,” ere long again began Mrs. Pryor, a sort of timid, embarrassed abruptness marking her manner as she spoke, “the young, especially those to whom nature has been favourable, often — frequently — anticipate — look forward to — to marriage as the end, the goal of their hopes.”

And she stopped. Caroline came to her relief with promptitude, showing a great deal more self-possession and courage than herself on the formidable topic now broached.

“They do, and naturally,” she replied, with a calm emphasis that startled Mrs. Pryor. “They look forward to marriage with some one they love as the brightest, the only bright destiny that can await them. Are they wrong?”

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Pryor, clasping her hands; and again she paused. Caroline turned a searching, an eager eye on the face of her friend: that face was much agitated. “My dear,” she murmured, “life is an illusion.”

“But not love! Love is real — the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know.”

“My dear, it is very bitter. It is said to be strong — strong as death! Most of the cheats of existence are strong. As to their sweetness, nothing is so transitory; its date is a moment, the twinkling of an eye. The sting remains for ever. It may perish with the dawn of eternity, but it tortures through time into its deepest night.”

“Yes, it tortures through time,” agreed Caroline, “except when it is mutual love.”

“Mutual love! My dear, romances are pernicious. You do not read them, I hope?”

“Sometimes — whenever I can get them, indeed. But romance-writers might know nothing of love, judging by the way in which they treat of it.”

“Nothing whatever, my dear,” assented Mrs. Pryor eagerly, “nor of marriage; and the false pictures they give of those subjects cannot be too strongly condemned. They are not like reality. They show you only the green, tempting surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or truthful hint of the slough underneath.”

“But it is not always slough,” objected Caroline. “There are happy marriages. Where affection is reciprocal and sincere, and minds are harmonious, marriage
must
be happy.”

“It is never wholly happy. Two people can never literally be as one. There is, perhaps, a possibility of content under peculiar circumstances, such as are seldom combined; but it is as well not to run the risk — you may make fatal mistakes. Be satisfied, my dear. Let all the single be satisfied with their freedom.”

“You echo my uncle’s words!” exclaimed Caroline, in a tone of dismay. “You speak like Mrs. Yorke in her most gloomy moments, like Miss Mann when she is most sourly and hypochondriacally disposed. This is terrible!”

“No, it is only true. O child, you have only lived the pleasant morning time of life; the hot, weary noon, the sad evening, the sunless night, are yet to come for you. Mr. Helstone, you say, talks as I talk; and I wonder how Mrs. Matthewson Helstone would have talked had she been living. She died! she died!”

“And, alas! my own mother and father —
 
— “ exclaimed Caroline, struck by a sombre recollection.

“What of them?”

“Did I never tell you that they were separated?”

“I have heard it.”

“They must, then, have been very miserable.”

“You see all
facts
go to prove what I say.”

“In this case there ought to be no such thing as marriage.”

“There ought, my dear, were it only to prove that this life is a mere state of probation, wherein neither rest nor recompense is to be vouchsafed.”

“But your own marriage, Mrs. Pryor?”

Mrs. Pryor shrank and shuddered as if a rude finger had pressed a naked nerve. Caroline felt she had touched what would not bear the slightest contact.

“My marriage was unhappy,” said the lady, summoning courage at last; “but yet —
 
— “ She hesitated.

“But yet,” suggested Caroline, “not immitigably wretched?”

“Not in its results, at least. No,” she added, in a softer tone; “God mingles something of the balm of mercy even in vials of the most corrosive woe. He can so turn events that from the very same blind, rash act whence sprang the curse of half our life may flow the blessing of the remainder. Then I am of a peculiar disposition — I own that — far from facile, without address, in some points eccentric. I ought never to have married. Mine is not the nature easily to find a duplicate or likely to assimilate with a contrast. I was quite aware of my own ineligibility; and if I had not been so miserable as a governess, I never should have married; and then —
 
— “

Caroline’s eyes asked her to proceed. They entreated her to break the thick cloud of despair which her previous words had seemed to spread over life.

“And then, my dear, Mr. — that is, the gentleman I married — was, perhaps, rather an exceptional than an average character. I hope, at least, the experience of few has been such as mine was, or that few have felt their sufferings as I felt mine. They nearly shook my mind; relief was so hopeless, redress so unattainable. But, my dear, I do not wish to dishearten; I only wish to warn you, and to prove that the single should not be too anxious to change their state, as they may change for the worse.”

“Thank you, my dear madam. I quite understand your kind intentions, but there is no fear of my falling into the error to which you allude. I, at least, have no thoughts of marriage, and for that reason I want to make myself a position by some other means.”

“My dear, listen to me. On what I am going to say I have carefully deliberated, having, indeed, revolved the subject in my thoughts ever since you first mentioned your wish to obtain a situation. You know I at present reside with Miss Keeldar in the capacity of companion. Should she marry (and that she
will
marry ere long many circumstances induce me to conclude), I shall cease to be necessary to her in that capacity. I must tell you that I possess a small independency, arising partly from my own savings, and partly from a legacy left me some years since. Whenever I leave Fieldhead I shall take a house of my own. I could not endure to live in solitude. I have no relations whom I care to invite to close intimacy; for, as you must have observed, and as I have already avowed, my habits and tastes have their peculiarities. To you, my dear, I need not say I am attached; with you I am happier than I have ever been with any living thing” (this was said with marked emphasis). “Your society I should esteem a very dear privilege — an inestimable privilege, a comfort, a blessing. You shall come to me, then. Caroline, do you refuse me? I hope you can love me?”

And with these two abrupt questions she stopped.

“Indeed, I
do
love you,” was the reply. “I should like to live with you. But you are too kind.”

“All I have,” went on Mrs. Pryor, “I would leave to you. You should be provided for. But never again say I am
too kind
. You pierce my heart, child!”

“But, my dear madam — this generosity — I have no claim —
 
— “

“Hush! you must not talk about it. There are some things we cannot bear to hear. Oh! it is late to begin, but I may yet live a few years. I can never wipe out the past, but perhaps a brief space in the future may yet be mine.”

Mrs. Pryor seemed deeply agitated. Large tears trembled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Caroline kissed her, in her gentle, caressing way, saying softly, “I love you dearly. Don’t cry.”

But the lady’s whole frame seemed shaken. She sat down, bent her head to her knee, and wept aloud. Nothing could console her till the inward storm had had its way. At last the agony subsided of itself.

“Poor thing!” she murmured, returning Caroline’s kiss, “poor lonely lamb! But come,” she added abruptly — “come; we must go home.”

For a short distance Mrs. Pryor walked very fast. By degrees, however, she calmed down to her wonted manner, fell into her usual characteristic pace — a peculiar one, like all her movements — and by the time they reached Fieldhead she had re-entered into herself. The outside was, as usual, still and shy.

CHAPTER XXII.

TWO LIVES.

Only half of Moore’s activity and resolution had been seen in his defence of the mill; he showed the other half (and a terrible half it was) in the indefatigable, the relentless assiduity with which he pursued the leaders of the riot. The mob, the mere followers, he let alone. Perhaps an innate sense of justice told him that men misled by false counsel and goaded by privations are not fit objects of vengeance, and that he who would visit an even violent act on the bent head of suffering is a tyrant, not a judge. At all events, though he knew many of the number, having recognized them during the latter part of the attack when day began to dawn, he let them daily pass him on street and road without notice or threat.

The leaders he did not know. They were strangers — emissaries from the large towns. Most of these were not members of the operative class. They were chiefly “down-draughts,” bankrupts, men always in debt and often in drink, men who had nothing to lose, and much, in the way of character, cash, and cleanliness, to gain. These persons Moore hunted like any sleuth-hound, and well he liked the occupation. Its excitement was of a kind pleasant to his nature. He liked it better than making cloth.

His horse must have hated these times, for it was ridden both hard and often. He almost lived on the road, and the fresh air was as welcome to his lungs as the policeman’s quest to his mood; he preferred it to the steam of dye-houses. The magistrates of the district must have dreaded him. They were slow, timid men; he liked both to frighten and to rouse them. He liked to force them to betray a certain fear, which made them alike falter in resolve and recoil in action — the fear, simply, of assassination. This, indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered every manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. Helstone alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew well he might be shot. He knew there was risk; but such death had for his nerves no terrors. It would have been his chosen, might he have had a choice.

Moore likewise knew his danger. The result was an unquenchable scorn of the quarter whence such danger was to be apprehended. The consciousness that he hunted assassins was the spur in his high-mettled temper’s flank. As for fear, he was too proud, too hard-natured (if you will), too phlegmatic a man to fear. Many a time he rode belated over the moors, moonlit or moonless as the case might be, with feelings far more elate, faculties far better refreshed, than when safety and stagnation environed him in the counting-house. Four was the number of the leaders to be accounted for. Two, in the course of a fortnight, were brought to bay near Stilbro’; the remaining two it was necessary to seek farther off. Their haunts were supposed to lie near Birmingham.

Meantime the clothier did not neglect his battered mill. Its reparation was esteemed a light task, carpenters’ and glaziers’ work alone being needed. The rioters not having succeeded in effecting an entrance, his grim metal darlings — the machines — had escaped damage.

Whether during this busy life — whether while stern justice and exacting business claimed his energies and harassed his thoughts — he now and then gave one moment, dedicated one effort, to keep alive gentler fires than those which smoulder in the fane of Nemesis, it was not easy to discover. He seldom went near Fieldhead; if he did, his visits were brief. If he called at the rectory, it was only to hold conferences with the rector in his study. He maintained his rigid course very steadily. Meantime the history of the year continued troubled. There was no lull in the tempest of war; her long hurricane still swept the Continent. There was not the faintest sign of serene weather, no opening amid “the clouds of battle-dust and smoke,” no fall of pure dews genial to the olive, no cessation of the red rain which nourishes the baleful and glorious laurel. Meantime, Ruin had her sappers and miners at work under Moore’s feet, and whether he rode or walked, whether he only crossed his counting-house hearth or galloped over sullen Rushedge, he was aware of a hollow echo, and felt the ground shake to his tread.

While the summer thus passed with Moore, how did it lapse with Shirley and Caroline? Let us first visit the heiress. How does she look? Like a love-lorn maiden, pale and pining for a neglectful swain? Does she sit the day long bent over some sedentary task? Has she for ever a book in her hand, or sewing on her knee, and eyes only for that, and words for nothing, and thoughts unspoken?

By no means. Shirley is all right. If her wistful cast of physiognomy is not gone, no more is her careless smile. She keeps her dark old manor-house light and bright with her cheery presence. The gallery and the low-ceiled chambers that open into it have learned lively echoes from her voice; the dim entrance-hall, with its one window, has grown pleasantly accustomed to the frequent rustle of a silk dress, as its wearer sweeps across from room to room, now carrying flowers to the barbarous peach-bloom salon, now entering the dining-room to open its casements and let in the scent of mignonette and sweet-briar, anon bringing plants from the staircase window to place in the sun at the open porch door.

She takes her sewing occasionally; but, by some fatality, she is doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five minutes at a time. Her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce threaded, when a sudden thought calls her upstairs. Perhaps she goes to seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle-book or older china-topped work-box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment indispensable; perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she recollects to have seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; perhaps only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular view, whence Briarfield church and rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered in trees. She has scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of cambric or square of half-wrought canvas, when Tartar’s bold scrape and strangled whistle are heard at the porch door, and she must run to open it for him. It is a hot day; he comes in panting; she must convoy him to the kitchen, and see with her own eyes that his water-bowl is replenished. Through the open kitchen door the court is visible, all sunny and gay, and people with turkeys and their poults, peahens and their chicks, pearl-flecked Guinea-fowls, and a bright variety of pure white, and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon plumed pigeons. Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She runs to the pantry for a roll, and she stands on the door step scattering crumbs. Around her throng her eager, plump, happy feathered vassals John is about the stables, and John must be talked to, and her mare looked at. She is still petting and patting it when the cows come in to be milked. This is important; Shirley must stay and take a review of them all. There are perhaps some little calves, some little new-yeaned lambs — it may be twins, whose mothers have rejected them. Miss Keeldar must be introduced to them by John, must permit herself the treat of feeding them with her own hand, under the direction of her careful foreman. Meantime John moots doubtful questions about the farming of certain “crofts,” and “ings,” and “holmes,” and his mistress is necessitated to fetch her garden-hat — a gipsy straw — and accompany him, over stile and along hedgerow, to hear the conclusion of the whole agricultural matter on the spot, and with the said “crofts,” “ings,” and “holms” under her eye. Bright afternoon thus wears into soft evening, and she comes home to a late tea, and after tea she never sews.

After tea Shirley reads, and she is just about as tenacious of her book as she is lax of her needle. Her study is the rug, her seat a footstool, or perhaps only the carpet at Mrs. Pryor’s feet: there she always learned her lessons when a child, and old habits have a strong power over her. The tawny and lionlike bulk of Tartar is ever stretched beside her, his negro muzzle laid on his fore paws — straight, strong, and shapely as the limbs of an Alpine wolf. One hand of the mistress generally reposes on the loving serf’s rude head, because if she takes it away he groans and is discontented. Shirley’s mind is given to her book. She lifts not her eyes; she neither stirs nor speaks — unless, indeed, it be to return a brief respectful answer to Mrs. Pryor, who addresses deprecatory phrases to her now and then.

“My dear, you had better not have that great dog so near you; he is crushing the border of your dress.”

“Oh, it is only muslin. I can put a clean one on to-morrow.”

“My dear, I wish you could acquire the habit of sitting to a table when you read.”

“I will try, ma’am, some time; but it is so comfortable to do as one has always been accustomed to do.”

“My dear, let me beg of you to put that book down. You are trying your eyes by the doubtful firelight.”

“No, ma’am, not at all; my eyes are never tired.”

At last, however, a pale light falls on the page from the window. She looks; the moon is up. She closes the volume, rises, and walks through the room. Her book has perhaps been a good one; it has refreshed, refilled, rewarmed her heart; it has set her brain astir, furnished her mind with pictures. The still parlour, the clean hearth, the window opening on the twilight sky, and showing its “sweet regent,” new throned and glorious, suffice to make earth an Eden, life a poem, for Shirley. A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins, unmingled, untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency, because by no human agency bestowed — the pure gift of God to His creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her experience of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence angels looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it. No, not as she wishes it; she has not time to wish. The swift glory spreads out, sweeping and kindling, and multiplies its splendours faster than Thought can effect his combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter her longings. Shirley says nothing while the trance is upon her — she is quite mute; but if Mrs. Pryor speaks to her now, she goes out quietly, and continues her walk upstairs in the dim gallery.

If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and most ignorant; for she does not know her dreams are rare, her feelings peculiar. She does not know, has never known, and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green.

Shirley takes life easily. Is not that fact written in her eye? In her good-tempered moments is it not as full of lazy softness as in her brief fits of anger it is fulgent with quick-flashing fire? Her nature is in her eye. So long as she is calm, indolence, indulgence, humour, and tenderness possess that large gray sphere; incense her, a red ray pierces the dew, it quickens instantly to flame.

Ere the month of July was past, Miss Keeldar would probably have started with Caroline on that northern tour they had planned; but just at that epoch an invasion befell Fieldhead. A genteel foraging party besieged Shirley in her castle, and compelled her to surrender at discretion. An uncle, an aunt, and two cousins from the south — a Mr., Mrs., and two Misses Sympson, of Sympson Grove, —
 
— shire — came down upon her in state. The laws of hospitality obliged her to give in, which she did with a facility which somewhat surprised Caroline, who knew her to be prompt in action and fertile in expedient where a victory was to be gained for her will. Miss Helstone even asked her how it was she submitted so readily. She answered, old feelings had their power; she had passed two years of her early youth at Sympson Grove.

“How did she like her relatives?”

She had nothing in common with them, she replied. Little Harry Sympson, indeed, the sole son of the family, was very unlike his sisters, and of him she had formerly been fond; but he was not coming to Yorkshire — at least not yet.

The next Sunday the Fieldhead pew in Briarfield Church appeared peopled with a prim, trim, fidgety, elderly gentleman, who shifted his spectacles, and changed his position every three minutes; a patient, placid-looking elderly lady in brown satin; and two pattern young ladies, in pattern attire, with pattern deportment. Shirley had the air of a black swan or a white crow in the midst of this party, and very forlorn was her aspect. Having brought her into respectable society, we will leave her there a while, and look after Miss Helstone.

Separated from Miss Keeldar for the present, as she could not seek her in the midst of her fine relatives, scared away from Fieldhead by the visiting commotion which the new arrivals occasioned in the neighbourhood, Caroline was limited once more to the gray rectory, the solitary morning walk in remote by-paths, the long, lonely afternoon sitting in a quiet parlour which the sun forsook at noon, or in the garden alcove where it shone bright, yet sad, on the ripening red currants trained over the trellis, and on the fair monthly roses entwined between, and through them fell chequered on Caroline sitting in her white summer dress, still as a garden statue. There she read old books, taken from her uncle’s library. The Greek and Latin were of no use to her, and its collection of light literature was chiefly contained on a shelf which had belonged to her aunt Mary — some venerable Lady’s Magazines, that had once performed a sea-voyage with their owner, and undergone a storm, and whose pages were stained with salt water; some mad Methodist Magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living; a few old English classics. From these faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the honey; they were tasteless to her now. By way of change, and also of doing good, she would sew — make garments for the poor, according to good Miss Ainley’s direction. Sometimes, as she felt and saw her tears fall slowly on her work, she would wonder how the excellent woman who had cut it out and arranged it for her managed to be so equably serene in
her
solitude.