Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (138 page)

The boy entered briskly.

“Mr. Moore, a lady called to inquire after you. None of the women were about. It is washing-day, and the maids are over the crown of the head in soap-suds in the back kitchen, so I asked her to step up.”

“Up here, sir?”

“Up here, sir; but if you object, she shall go down again.”

“Is this a place or am I a person to bring a lady to, you absurd lad?”

“No; so I’ll take her off.”

“Martin, you will stay here. Who is she?”

“Your grandmother from that château on the Scheldt Miss Moore talks about.”

“Martin,” said the softest whisper at the door, “don’t be foolish.”

“Is she there?” inquired Moore hastily. He had caught an imperfect sound.

“She is there, fit to faint. She is standing on the mat, shocked at your want of filial affection.”

“Martin, you are an evil cross between an imp and a page. What is she like?”

“More like me than you; for she is young and beautiful.”

“You are to show her forward. Do you hear?”

“Come, Miss Caroline.”

“Miss Caroline!” repeated Moore.

And when Miss Caroline entered she was encountered in the middle of the chamber by a tall, thin, wasted figure, who took both her hands.

“I give you a quarter of an hour,” said Martin, as he withdrew, “no more. Say what you have to say in that time. Till it is past I will wait in the gallery; nothing shall approach; I’ll see you safe away. Should you persist in staying longer, I leave you to your fate.”

He shut the door. In the gallery he was as elate as a king. He had never been engaged in an adventure he liked so well, for no adventure had ever invested him with so much importance or inspired him with so much interest.

“You are come at last,” said the meagre man, gazing on his visitress with hollow eyes.

“Did you expect me before?”

“For a month, near two months, we have been very near; and I have been in sad pain, and danger, and misery, Cary.”

“I could not come.”

“Couldn’t you? But the rectory and Briarmains are very near — not two miles apart.”

There was pain and there was pleasure in the girl’s face as she listened to these implied reproaches. It was sweet, it was bitter to defend herself.

“When I say I could not come, I mean I could not see you; for I came with mamma the very day we heard what had happened. Mr. MacTurk then told us it was impossible to admit any stranger.”

“But afterwards — every fine afternoon these many weeks past I have waited and listened. Something here, Cary” — laying his hand on his breast — “told me it was impossible but that you should think of me. Not that I merit thought; but we are old acquaintance — we are cousins.”

“I came again, Robert; mamma and I came again.”

“Did you? Come, that is worth hearing. Since you came again, we will sit down and talk about it.”

They sat down. Caroline drew her chair up to his. The air was now dark with snow; an Iceland blast was driving it wildly. This pair neither heard the long “wuthering” rush, nor saw the white burden it drifted. Each seemed conscious but of one thing — the presence of the other.

“So mamma and you came again?”

“And Mrs. Yorke did treat us strangely. We asked to see you. ‘No,’ said she, ‘not in my house. I am at present responsible for his life; it shall not be forfeited for half an hour’s idle gossip.’ But I must not tell you all she said; it was very disagreeable. However, we came yet again — mamma, Miss Keeldar, and I. This time we thought we should conquer, as we were three against one, and Shirley was on our side. But Mrs. Yorke opened such a battery.”

Moore smiled. “What did she say?”

“Things that astonished us. Shirley laughed at last; I cried; mamma was seriously annoyed. We were all three driven from the field. Since that time I have only walked once a day past the house, just for the satisfaction of looking up at your window, which I could distinguish by the drawn curtains. I really dared not come in.”

“I
have
wished for you, Caroline.”

“I did not know that; I never dreamt one instant that you thought of me. If I had but most distantly imagined such a possibility —
 
— “

“Mrs. Yorke would still have beaten you.”

“She would not. Stratagem should have been tried, if persuasion failed. I would have come to the kitchen door; the servants should have let me in, and I would have walked straight upstairs. In fact, it was far more the fear of intrusion — the fear of yourself — that baffled me than the fear of Mrs. Yorke.”

“Only last night I despaired of ever seeing you again. Weakness has wrought terrible depression in me — terrible depression.”

“And you sit alone?”

“Worse than alone.”

“But you must be getting better, since you can leave your bed?”

“I doubt whether I shall live. I see nothing for it, after such exhaustion, but decline.”

“You — you shall go home to the Hollow.”

“Dreariness would accompany, nothing cheerful come near me.”

“I
will
alter this. This
shall
be altered, were there ten Mrs. Yorkes to do battle with.”

“Cary, you make me smile.”

“Do smile; smile again. Shall I tell you what I should like?”

“Tell me anything — only keep talking. I am Saul; but for music I should perish.”

“I should like you to be brought to the rectory, and given to me and mamma.”

“A precious gift! I have not laughed since they shot me till now.”

“Do you suffer pain, Robert?”

“Not so much pain now; but I am hopelessly weak, and the state of my mind is inexpressible — dark, barren, impotent. Do you not read it all in my face? I look a mere ghost.”

“Altered; yet I should have known you anywhere. But I understand your feelings; I experienced something like it. Since we met, I too have been very ill.”

“
Very
ill?”

“I thought I should die. The tale of my life seemed told. Every night, just at midnight, I used to wake from awful dreams; and the book lay open before me at the last page, where was written ‘Finis.’ I had strange feelings.”

“You speak my experience.”

“I believed I should never see you again; and I grew so thin — as thin as you are now. I could do nothing for myself — neither rise nor lie down; and I could not eat. Yet you see I am better.”

“Comforter — sad as sweet. I am too feeble to say what I feel; but while you speak I
do
feel.”

“Here I am at your side, where I thought never more to be. Here I speak to you. I see you listen to me willingly — look at me kindly. Did I count on that? I despaired.”

Moore sighed — a sigh so deep it was nearly a groan. He covered his eyes with his hand.

“May I be spared to make some atonement.”

Such was his prayer.

“And for what?”

“We will not touch on it now, Cary; unmanned as I am, I have not the power to cope with such a topic. Was Mrs. Pryor with you during your illness?”

“Yes” — Caroline smiled brightly — “you know she is mamma?”

“I have heard — Hortense told me; but that tale too I will receive from yourself. Does she add to your happiness?”

“What! mamma? She is
dear
to me;
how
dear I cannot say. I was altogether weary, and she held me up.”

“I deserve to hear that in a moment when I can scarce lift my hand to my head. I deserve it.”

“It is no reproach against you.”

“It is a coal of fire heaped on my head; and so is every word you address to me, and every look that lights your sweet face. Come still nearer, Lina; and give me your hand — if my thin fingers do not scare you.”

She took those thin fingers between her two little hands; she bent her head
et les effleura de ses lèvres
. (I put that in French because the word
effleurer
is an exquisite word.) Moore was much moved. A large tear or two coursed down his hollow cheek.

“I’ll keep these things in my heart, Cary; that kiss I will put by, and you shall hear of it again one day.”

“Come out!” cried Martin, opening the door — “come away; you have had twenty minutes instead of a quarter of an hour.”

“She will not stir yet, you hempseed.”

“I dare not stay longer, Robert.”

“Can you promise to return?”

“No, she can’t,” responded Martin. “The thing mustn’t become customary. I can’t be troubled. It’s very well for once; I’ll not have it repeated.”

“
You
’ll not have it repeated.”

“Hush! don’t vex him; we could not have met to-day but for him. But I will come again, if it is your wish that I should come.”

“It
is
my wish — my
one
wish — almost the only wish I can feel.”

“Come this minute. My mother has coughed, got up, set her feet on the floor. Let her only catch you on the stairs, Miss Caroline. You’re not to bid him good-bye” — stepping between her and Moore — “you are to march.”

“My shawl, Martin.”

“I have it. I’ll put it on for you when you are in the hall.”

He made them part. He would suffer no farewell but what could be expressed in looks. He half carried Caroline down the stairs. In the hall he wrapped her shawl round her, and, but that his mother’s tread then creaked in the gallery, and but that a sentiment of diffidence — the proper, natural, therefore the noble impulse of his boy’s heart — held him back, he would have claimed his reward; he would have said, “Now, Miss Caroline, for all this give me one kiss.” But ere the words had passed his lips she was across the snowy road, rather skimming than wading the drifts.

“She is my debtor, and I
will
be paid.”

He flattered himself that it was opportunity, not audacity, which had failed him. He misjudged the quality of his own nature, and held it for something lower than it was.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION — REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELIGIOUS DUTIES.

Martin, having known the taste of excitement, wanted a second draught; having felt the dignity of power, he loathed to relinquish it. Miss Helstone — that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine — had once come within his sphere. It fretted him to think the visit might never be repeated.

Though a schoolboy he was no ordinary schoolboy; he was destined to grow up an original. At a few years’ later date he took great pains to pare and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, but he never succeeded; an unique stamp marked him always. He now sat idle at his desk in the grammar school, casting about in his mind for the means of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know how many commenced life-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent in the wood with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book of his imagination.

Martin harboured an irreligious reluctance to see the approach of Sunday. His father and mother, while disclaiming community with the Establishment, failed not duly, once on the sacred day, to fill their large pew in Briarfield Church with the whole of their blooming family. Theoretically, Mr. Yorke placed all sects and churches on a level. Mrs. Yorke awarded the palm to Moravians and Quakers, on account of that crown of humility by these worthies worn. Neither of them were ever known, however, to set foot in a conventicle.

Martin, I say, disliked Sunday, because the morning service was long, and the sermon usually little to his taste. This Saturday afternoon, however, his woodland musings disclosed to him a new-found charm in the coming day.

It proved a day of deep snow — so deep that Mrs. Yorke during breakfast announced her conviction that the children, both boys and girls, would be better at home; and her decision that, instead of going to church, they should sit silent for two hours in the back parlour, while Rose and Martin alternately read a succession of sermons — John Wesley’s “Sermons.” John Wesley, being a reformer and an agitator, had a place both in her own and her husband’s favour.

“Rose will do as she pleases,” said Martin, not looking up from the book which, according to his custom then and in after-life, he was studying over his bread and milk.

“Rose will do as she is told, and Martin too,” observed the mother.

“I am going to church.”

So her son replied, with the ineffable quietude of a true Yorke, who knows his will and means to have it, and who, if pushed to the wall, will let himself be crushed to death, provided no way of escape can be found, but will never capitulate.

“It is not fit weather,” said the father.

No answer. The youth read studiously; he slowly broke his bread and sipped his milk.

“Martin hates to go to church, but he hates still more to obey,” said Mrs. Yorke.

“I suppose I am influenced by pure perverseness?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Mother,
I am not
.”

“By what, then, are you influenced?”

“By a complication of motives, the intricacies of which I should as soon think of explaining to you as I should of turning myself inside out to exhibit the internal machinery of my frame.”

“Hear Martin! hear him!” cried Mr. Yorke. “I must see and have this lad of mine brought up to the bar. Nature meant him to live by his tongue. Hesther, your third son must certainly be a lawyer; he has the stock-in-trade — brass, self-conceit, and words — words — words.”

“Some bread, Rose, if you please,” requested Martin, with intense gravity, serenity, phlegm. The boy had naturally a low, plaintive voice, which in his “dour moods” rose scarcely above a lady’s whisper. The more inflexibly stubborn the humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He rang the bell, and gently asked for his walking-shoes.

“But, Martin,” urged his sire, “there is drift all the way; a man could hardly wade through it. However, lad,” he continued, seeing that the boy rose as the church bell began to toll, “this is a case wherein I would by no means balk the obdurate chap of his will. Go to church by all means. There is a pitiless wind, and a sharp, frozen sleet, besides the depth under foot. Go out into it, since thou prefers it to a warm fireside.”

Martin quietly assumed his cloak, comforter, and cap, and deliberately went out.

“My father has more sense than my mother,” he pronounced. “How women miss it! They drive the nail into the flesh, thinking they are hammering away at insensate stone.”

He reached church early.

“Now, if the weather frightens her (and it is a real December tempest), or if that Mrs. Pryor objects to her going out, and I should miss her after all, it will vex me; but, tempest or tornado, hail or ice, she
ought
to come, and if she has a mind worthy of her eyes and features she
will
come. She will be here for the chance of seeing me, as I am here for the chance of seeing her. She will want to get a word respecting her confounded sweetheart, as I want to get another flavour of what I think the essence of life — a taste of existence, with the spirit preserved in it, and not evaporated. Adventure is to stagnation what champagne is to flat porter.”

He looked round. The church was cold, silent, empty, but for one old woman. As the chimes subsided and the single bell tolled slowly, another and another elderly parishioner came dropping in, and took a humble station in the free sittings. It is always the frailest, the oldest, and the poorest that brave the worst weather, to prove and maintain their constancy to dear old mother church. This wild morning not one affluent family attended, not one carriage party appeared — all the lined and cushioned pews were empty; only on the bare oaken seats sat ranged the gray-haired elders and feeble paupers.

“I’ll scorn her if she doesn’t come,” muttered Martin, shortly and savagely, to himself. The rector’s shovel-hat had passed the porch. Mr. Helstone and his clerk were in the vestry.

The bells ceased — the reading-desk was filled — the doors were closed — the service commenced. Void stood the rectory pew — she was not there. Martin scorned her.

“Worthless thing! vapid thing! commonplace humbug! Like all other girls — weakly, selfish, shallow!”

Such was Martin’s liturgy.

“She is not like our picture. Her eyes are not large and expressive; her nose is not straight, delicate, Hellenic; her mouth has not that charm I thought it had, which I imagined could beguile me of sullenness in my worst moods. What is she? A thread-paper, a doll, a toy, a
girl
, in short.”

So absorbed was the young cynic he forgot to rise from his knees at the proper place, and was still in an exemplary attitude of devotion when, the litany over, the first hymn was given out. To be so caught did not contribute to soothe him. He started up red (for he was as sensitive to ridicule as any girl). To make the matter worse, the church door had reopened, and the aisles were filling: patter, patter, patter, a hundred little feet trotted in. It was the Sunday scholars. According to Briarfield winter custom, these children had till now been kept where there was a warm stove, and only led into church just before the communion and sermon.

The little ones were settled first, and at last, when the boys and the younger girls were all arranged — when the organ was swelling high, and the choir and congregation were rising to uplift a spiritual song — a tall class of young women came quietly in, closing the procession. Their teacher, having seen them seated, passed into the rectory pew. The French-gray cloak and small beaver bonnet were known to Martin; it was the very costume his eyes had ached to catch. Miss Helstone had not suffered the storm to prove an impediment. After all, she was come to church. Martin probably whispered his satisfaction to his hymn book; at any rate, he therewith hid his face two minutes.

Satisfied or not, he had time to get very angry with her again before the sermon was over. She had never once looked his way; at least he had not been so lucky as to encounter a glance.

“If,” he said — “if she takes no notice of me, if she shows I am not in her thoughts, I shall have a worse, a meaner opinion of her than ever. Most despicable would it be to come for the sake of those sheep-faced Sunday scholars, and not for my sake or that long skeleton Moore’s.”

The sermon found an end; the benediction was pronounced; the congregation dispersed. She had not been near him.

Now, indeed, as Martin set his face homeward, he felt that the sleet was sharp and the east wind cold.

His nearest way lay through some fields. It was a dangerous, because an untrodden way. He did not care; he would take it. Near the second stile rose a clump of trees. Was that an umbrella waiting there? Yes, an umbrella, held with evident difficulty against the blast; behind it fluttered a French-gray cloak. Martin grinned as he toiled up the steep, encumbered field, difficult to the foot as a slope in the upper realms of Etna. There was an inimitable look in his face when, having gained the stile, he seated himself coolly thereupon, and thus opened a conference which, for his own part, he was willing to prolong indefinitely.

“I think you had better strike a bargain. Exchange me for Mrs. Pryor.”

“I was not sure whether you would come this way, Martin, but I thought I would run the chance. There is no such thing as getting a quiet word spoken in the church or churchyard.”

“Will you agree? — make over Mrs. Pryor to my mother, and put me in her skirts?”

“As if I could understand you! What puts Mrs. Pryor into your head?”

“You call her ‘mamma,’ don’t you?”

“She
is
my mamma.”

“Not possible — or so inefficient, so careless a mamma; I should make a five times better one. You
may
laugh. I have no objection to see you laugh. Your teeth — I hate ugly teeth; but yours are as pretty as a pearl necklace, and a necklace of which the pearls are very fair, even, and well matched too.”

“Martin, what now? I thought the Yorkes never paid compliments?”

“They have not done till this generation; but I feel as if it were my vocation to turn out a new variety of the Yorke species. I am rather tired of my own ancestors. We have traditions going back for four ages — tales of Hiram, which was the son of Hiram, which was the son of Samuel, which was the son of John, which was the son of Zerubbabel Yorke. All, from Zerubbabel down to the last Hiram, were such as you see my father. Before that there was a Godfrey. We have his picture; it hangs in Moore’s bedroom; it is like me. Of his character we know nothing; but I am sure it was different to his descendants. He has long, curling dark hair; he is carefully and cavalierly dressed. Having said that he is like me, I need not add that he is handsome.”

“You are not handsome, Martin.”

“No; but wait awhile — just let me take my time. I mean to begin from this day to cultivate, to polish, and we shall see.”

“You are a very strange, a very unaccountable boy, Martin. But don’t imagine you ever will be handsome; you cannot.”

“I mean to try. But we were talking about Mrs. Pryor. She must be the most unnatural mamma in existence, coolly to let her daughter come out in this weather. Mine was in such a rage because I would go to church; she was fit to fling the kitchen brush after me.”

“Mamma was very much concerned about me; but I am afraid I was obstinate. I
would
go.”

“To see me?”

“Exactly; I thought of nothing else. I greatly feared the snow would hinder you from coming. You don’t know how pleased I was to see you all by yourself in the pew.”

“
I
came to fulfil my duty, and set the parish a good example. And so you were obstinate, were you? I should like to see you obstinate, I should. Wouldn’t I have you in good discipline if I owned you? Let me take the umbrella.”