Shirley (14 page)

Hortense had been for some time nodding over her knitting; fallen into a doze now, she made no

response to the remark.

"You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening?" inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from the side-table, where it still lay, and carefully wrapped it round her.

"I like to come here; but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not hinting to be asked; you must understand that."

"Oh! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to be rich, Lina; but if I
were
rich, you should live here always—at any rate, you should live with me wherever my habitation might

be."

"That would be pleasant; and if you were poor—ever so poor—it would still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert."

"I promised to walk with you up to the rectory."

"I know you did; but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how to remind you, though I

wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is a cold night, and as Fanny is come, there is no necessity——"

"Here is your muff; don't wake Hortense—come."

The half mile to the rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the garden without kiss, scarcely

with a pressure of hands; yet Robert sent his cousin in excited and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind to her that day—not in phrase, compliment, profession, but in manner, in look, and in

soft and friendly tones.

For himself, he came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the hushed, dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow

round, he exclaimed, abruptly,—

"This won't do! There's weakness—there's downright ruin in all this. However," he added, dropping his voice, "the frenzy is quite temporary. I know it very well; I have had it before. It will be gone to-morrow."

Chapter 7

THE CURATES AT TEA.

Caroline Helstone was just eighteen years old, and at eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes, and

sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half-divine

or semi-demon; its scenes are dream-scenes; darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields

than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time!

How the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty! As to our sun, it is a burning heaven—the world of gods.

At that time, at eighteen, drawing near the confines of illusive, void dreams, Elf-land lies behind us,

the shores of Reality rise in front. These shores are yet distant; they look so blue, soft, gentle, we long to reach them. In sunshine we see a greenness beneath the azure, as of spring meadows; we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine the roll of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we think

to hunger and thirst no more; whereas many a wilderness, and often the flood of death, or some stream of sorrow as cold and almost as black as death, is to be crossed ere true bliss can be tasted.

Every joy that life gives must be earned ere it is secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles over it.

At eighteen we are not aware of this. Hope, when she smiles on us, and promises happiness to-morrow, is implicitly believed; Love, when he comes wandering like a lost angel to our door, is at

once admitted, welcomed, embraced. His quiver is not seen; if his arrows penetrate, their wound is like a thrill of new life. There are no fears of poison, none of the barb which no leech's hand can extract. That perilous passion—an agony ever in some of its phases; with many, an agony throughout

—is believed to be an unqualified good. In short, at eighteen the school of experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing, grinding, but yet purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be learned.

Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours, none wears a robe so

black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through life's wilds; without it, how they stumble, how they

stray! On what forbidden grounds do they intrude, down what dread declivities are they hurled!

Caroline, having been convoyed home by Robert, had no wish to pass what remained of the

evening with her uncle. The room in which he sat was very sacred ground to her; she seldom intruded

on it; and to-night she kept aloof till the bell rang for prayers. Part of the evening church service was the form of worship observed in Mr. Helstone's household. He read it in his usual nasal voice, clear,

loud, and monotonous. The rite over, his niece, according to her wont, stepped up to him.

"Good-night, uncle."

"Hey! You've been gadding abroad all day—visiting, dining out, and what not!"

"Only at the cottage."

"And have you learned your lessons?"

"Yes."

"And made a shirt?"

"Only part of one."

"Well, that will do. Stick to the needle, learn shirt-making and gown-making and piecrust-making,

and you'll be a clever woman some day. Go to bed now. I'm busy with a pamphlet here."

Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bedroom, the door bolted, her white dressing-gown

assumed, her long hair loosened and falling thick, soft, and wavy to her waist; and as, resting from

the task of combing it out, she leaned her check on her hand and fixed her eyes on the carpet, before

her rose, and close around her drew, the visions we see at eighteen years.

Her thoughts were speaking with her, speaking pleasantly, as it seemed, for she smiled as she listened. She looked pretty meditating thus; but a brighter thing than she was in that apartment—the spirit of youthful Hope. According to this flattering prophet, she was to know disappointment, to feel

chill no more; she had entered on the dawn of a summer day—no false dawn, but the true spring of

morning—and her sun would quickly rise. Impossible for her now to suspect that she was the sport of

delusion; her expectations seemed warranted, the foundation on which they rested appeared solid.

"When people love, the next step is they marry," was her argument. "Now, I love Robert, and I feel sure that Robert loves me. I have thought so many a time before; to-day I
felt
it. When I looked up at him after repeating Chénier's poem, his eyes (what handsome eyes he has!) sent the truth through my

heart. Sometimes I am afraid to speak to him, lest I should be too frank, lest I should seem forward—

for I have more than once regretted bitterly overflowing, superfluous words, and feared I had said more than he expected me to say, and that he would disapprove what he might deem my indiscretion;

now, to-night I could have ventured to express any thought, he was so indulgent. How kind he was as

we walked up the lane! He does not flatter or say foolish things; his love-making (friendship, I mean;

of course I don't yet account him my lover, but I hope he will be so some day) is not like what we read

of in books,—it is far better—original, quiet, manly, sincere. I
do
like him; I would be an excellent wife to him if he did marry me; I would tell him of his faults (for he has a few faults), but I would

study his comfort, and cherish him, and do my best to make him happy. Now, I am sure he will not be

cold to-morrow. I feel almost certain that to-morrow evening he will either come here, or ask me to

go there."

She recommenced combing her hair, long as a mermaid's. Turning her head as she arranged it she

saw her own face and form in the glass. Such reflections are soberizing to plain people: their own eyes are not enchanted with the image; they are confident then that the eyes of others can see in it no

fascination. But the fair must naturally draw other conclusions: the picture is charming, and must charm. Caroline saw a shape, a head, that, daguerreotyped in that attitude and with that expression, would have been lovely. She could not choose but derive from the spectacle confirmation to her hopes. It was then in undiminished gladness she sought her couch.

And in undiminished gladness she rose the next day. As she entered her uncle's breakfast-room, and

with soft cheerfulness wished him good-morning, even that little man of bronze himself thought, for

an instant, his niece was growing "a fine girl." Generally she was quiet and timid with him—very docile, but not communicative; this morning, however, she found many things to say. Slight topics alone might be discussed between them; for with a woman—a girl—Mr. Helstone would touch on no

other. She had taken an early walk in the garden, and she told him what flowers were beginning to spring there; she inquired when the gardener was to come and trim the borders; she informed him that certain starlings were beginning to build their nests in the church-tower (Briarfield church was

close to Briarfield rectory); she wondered the tolling of the bells in the belfry did not scare them.

Mr. Helstone opined that "they were like other fools who had just paired—insensible to inconvenience just for the moment." Caroline, made perhaps a little too courageous by her temporary good spirits, here hazarded a remark of a kind she had never before ventured to make on

observations dropped by her revered relative.

"Uncle," said she, "whenever you speak of marriage you speak of it scornfully. Do you think people shouldn't marry?"

"It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially for women."

"Are all marriages unhappy?"

"Millions of marriages are unhappy. If everybody confessed the truth, perhaps all are more or less

so."

"You are always vexed when you are asked to come and marry a couple. Why?"

"Because one does not like to act as accessory to the commission of a piece of pure folly."

Mr. Helstone spoke so readily, he seemed rather glad of the opportunity to give his niece a piece of

his mind on this point. Emboldened by the impunity which had hitherto attended her questions, she went a little further.

"But why," said she, "should it be pure folly? If two people like each other, why shouldn't they consent to live together?"

"They tire of each other—they tire of each other in a month. A yokefellow is not a companion; he

or she is a fellow-sufferer."

It was by no means naïve simplicity which inspired Caroline's next remark; it was a sense of antipathy to such opinions, and of displeasure at him who held them.

"One would think you had never been married, uncle. One would think you were an old bachelor."

"Practically, I am so."

"But you have been married. Why were you so inconsistent as to marry?"

"Every man is mad once or twice in his life."

"So you tired of my aunt, and my aunt of you, and you were miserable together?"

Mr. Helstone pushed out his cynical lip, wrinkled his brown forehead, and gave an inarticulate grunt.

"Did she not suit you? Was she not good-tempered? Did you not get used to her? Were you not sorry when she died?"

"Caroline," said Mr. Helstone, bringing his hand slowly down to within an inch or two of the table, and then smiting it suddenly on the mahogany, "understand this: it is vulgar and puerile to confound generals with particulars. In every case there is the rule and there are the exceptions. Your questions

are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell, if you have done breakfast."

The breakfast was taken away, and that meal over, it was the general custom of uncle and niece to

separate, and not to meet again till dinner; but to-day the niece, instead of quitting the room, went to the window-seat, and sat down there. Mr. Helstone looked round uneasily once or twice, as if he wished her away; but she was gazing from the window, and did not seem to mind him: so he continued the perusal of his morning paper—a particularly interesting one it chanced to be, as new movements had just taken place in the Peninsula, and certain columns of the journal were rich in long

dispatches from General Lord Wellington. He little knew, meantime, what thoughts were busy in his

niece's mind—thoughts the conversation of the past half-hour had revived but not generated;

tumultuous were they now, as disturbed bees in a hive, but it was years since they had first made their

cells in her brain.

She was reviewing his character, his disposition, repeating his sentiments on marriage. Many a time had she reviewed them before, and sounded the gulf between her own mind and his; and then, on

the other side of the wide and deep chasm, she had seen, and she now saw, another figure standing beside her uncle's—a strange shape, dim, sinister, scarcely earthly—the half-remembered image of her own father, James Helstone, Matthewson Helstone's brother.

Rumours had reached her ear of what that father's character was; old servants had dropped hints;

she knew, too, that he was not a good man, and that he was never kind to her. She recollected—a dark

recollection it was—some weeks that she had spent with him in a great town somewhere, when she had had no maid to dress her or take care of her; when she had been shut up, day and night, in a high

garret-room, without a carpet, with a bare uncurtained bed, and scarcely any other furniture; when he

went out early every morning, and often forgot to return and give her her dinner during the day, and

at night, when he came back, was like a madman, furious, terrible, or—still more painful—like an idiot, imbecile, senseless. She knew she had fallen ill in this place, and that one night, when she was