Shirley

“When is what to be?”

“The wedding.”

“Whose wedding?”

“Only that of Robert Gérard Moore, Esq., of Hollow’s Cottage, with Miss Keeldar, daughter and heiress of the late Charles Cave Keeldar of Fieldhead Hall.”

Shirley gazed at the questioner with rising colour. But the light in her eye was not faltering; it shone steadily – yes, it burned deeply.

“That is your revenge,” she said slowly; then added, “Would it be a bad match, unworthy of the late Charles Cave Keeldar’s representative?”

“My lass, Moore is a gentleman; his blood is pure and ancient as mine or thine.”

“And we two set store by ancient blood? We have family pride, though one of us at least is a republican?”

Yorke bowed as he stood before her. His lips were mute, but his eye confessed the impeachment. Yes, he had family pride; you saw it in his whole bearing.

“Moore is a gentleman,” echoed Shirley, lifting her head with glad grace. She checked herself. Words seemed crowding to her tongue. She would not give them utterance; but her look spoke much at the moment. What, Yorke tried to read, but could not. The language was there, visible, but untranslatable – a poem, a fervid lyric, in an unknown tongue. It was not a plain story, however, no simple gush of feeling, no ordinary love-confession – that was obvious. It was something other, deeper, more intricate than he guessed at. He felt his revenge had not struck home. He felt that Shirley triumphed. She held him at fault, baffled, puzzled. She enjoyed the moment, not he.

“And if Moore is a gentleman, you can be only a lady; therefore…”

“Therefore there would be no inequality in our union.”

“None.”

“Thank you for your approbation. Will you give me away when I relinquish the name of Keeldar for that of Moore?”

Mr. Yorke, instead of replying, gazed at her much puzzled. He could not divine what her look signified – whether she spoke in earnest or in jest. There were purpose and feeling, banter and scoff, playing, mingled, on her mobile lineaments.

“I don’t understand thee,” he said, turning away.

She laughed. “Take courage, sir; you are not singular in your ignorance. But I suppose if Moore understands me that will do, will it not?”

“Moore may settle his own matters henceforward for me; I’ll neither meddle nor make with them further.”

A new thought crossed her. Her countenance changed magically. With a sudden darkening of the eye and austere fixing of the features she demanded, “Have you been asked to interfere? Are you questioning me as another’s proxy?”

“The Lord save us! Whoever weds thee must look about him! Keep all your questions for Robert; I’ll answer no more on ’em. Good day, lassie!”

The day being fine, or at least fair – for soft clouds curtained the sun, and a dim but not chill or waterish haze slept blue on the hills – Caroline, while Shirley was engaged with her callers, had persuaded Mrs. Pryor to assume her bonnet and summer shawl, and to take a walk with her up towards the narrow end of the Hollow.

Here the opposing sides of the glen, approaching each other and becoming clothed with brushwood and stunted oaks, formed a wooded ravine, at the bottom of which ran the mill stream, in broken, unquiet course, struggling with many stones, chafing against rugged banks, fretting with gnarled tree roots, foaming, gurgling, battling as it went. Here, when you had wandered half a mile from the mill, you found a sense of deep solitude – found it in the shade of unmolested trees, received it in the singing of many birds, for which that shade made a home. This was no trodden way. The freshness of the wood flowers attested that foot of man seldom pressed them; the abounding wild roses looked as if they budded, bloomed, and faded under the watch of solitude, as if in a sultan’s harem. Here you saw the sweet azure of bluebells, and recognized in pearl-white blossoms, spangling the grass, a humble type of some starlit spot in space.

Mrs. Pryor liked a quiet walk. She ever shunned high-roads, and sought byways and lonely lanes. One companion she preferred to total solitude, for in solitude she was nervous; a vague fear of annoying encounters broke the enjoyment of quite lonely rambles. But she feared nothing with Caroline. When once she got away from human habitations, and entered the still demesne of nature accompanied by this one youthful friend, a propitious change seemed to steal over her mind and beam in her countenance. When with Caroline – and Caroline only – her heart, you would have said, shook off a burden, her brow put aside a veil, her spirits too escaped from a restraint. With her she was cheerful; with her, at times, she was tender; to her she would impart her knowledge, reveal glimpses of her experience, give her opportunities for guessing what life she had lived, what cultivation her mind had received, of what calibre was her intelligence, how and where her feelings were vulnerable.

Today, for instance, as they walked along, Mrs. Pryor talked to her companion about the various birds singing in the trees, discriminated their species, and said something about their habits and peculiarities. English natural history seemed familiar to her. All the wild flowers round their path were recognized by her; tiny plants springing near stones and peeping out of chinks in old walls – plants such as Caroline had scarcely noticed before – received a name and an intimation of their properties. It appeared that she had minutely studied the botany of English fields and woods. Having reached the head of the ravine, they sat down together on a ledge of gray and mossy rock jutting from the base of a steep green hill which towered above them. She looked round her, and spoke of the neighbourhood as she had once before seen it long ago. She alluded to its changes, and compared its aspect with that of other parts of England, revealing in quiet, unconscious touches of description a sense of the picturesque, an appreciation of the beautiful or commonplace, a power of comparing the wild with the cultured, the grand with the tame, that gave to her discourse a graphic charm as pleasant as it was unpretending.

The sort of reverent pleasure with which Caroline listened – so sincere, so quiet, yet so evident – stirred the elder lady’s faculties to gentle animation. Rarely, probably, had she, with her chill, repellent outside, her diffident mien, and incommunicative habits, known what it was to excite in one whom she herself could love feelings of earnest affection and admiring esteem. Delightful, doubtless, was the consciousness that a young girl towards whom it seemed, judging by the moved expression of her eyes and features, her heart turned with almost a fond impulse, looked up to her as an instructor, and clung to her as a friend. With a somewhat more marked accent of interest than she often permitted herself to use, she said, as she bent towards her youthful companion, and put aside from her forehead a pale brown curl which had strayed from the confining comb, “I do hope this sweet air blowing from the hill will do you good, my dear Caroline. I wish I could see something more of colour in these cheeks; but perhaps you were never florid?”

“I had red cheeks once,” returned Miss Helstone, smiling. “I remember a year – two years ago – when I used to look in the glass, I saw a different face there to what I see now – rounder and rosier. But when we are young,” added the girl of eighteen, “our minds are careless and our lives easy.”

“Do you,” continued Mrs. Pryor, mastering by an effort that tyrant timidity which made it difficult for her, even under present circumstances, to attempt the scrutiny of another’s heart—“do you, at your age, fret yourself with cares for the future? Believe me, you had better not. Let the morrow take thought for the things of itself.”

“True, dear madam. It is not over the future I pine. The evil of the day is sometimes oppressive – too oppressive – and I long to escape it.”

“That is – the evil of the day – that is – your uncle perhaps is not – you find it difficult to understand – he does not appreciate.”

Mrs. Pryor could not complete her broken sentences; she could not manage to put the question whether Mr. Helstone was too harsh with his niece. But Caroline comprehended.

“Oh, that is nothing,” she replied. “My uncle and I get on very well. We never quarrel – I don’t call him harsh – he never scolds me. Sometimes I wish somebody in the world loved me, but I cannot say that I particularly wish him to have more affection for me than he has. As a child, I should perhaps have felt the want of attention, only the servants were very kind to me; but when people are long indifferent to us, we grow indifferent to their indifference. It is my uncle’s way not to care for women and girls, unless they be ladies that he meets in company. He could not alter, and I have no wish that he should alter, as far as I am concerned. I believe it would merely annoy and frighten me were he to be affectionate towards me now. But you know, Mrs. Pryor, it is scarcely living to measure time as I do at the rectory. The hours pass, and I get them over somehow, but I do not live. I endure existence, but I rarely enjoy it. Since Miss Keeldar and you came I have been – I was going to say happier, but that would be untrue.” She paused.

“How untrue? You are fond of Miss Keeldar, are you not, my dear?”

“Very fond of Shirley. I both like and admire her. But I am painfully circumstanced. For a reason I cannot explain I want to go away from this place, and to forget it.”

“You told me before you wished to be a governess; but, my dear, if you remember, I did not encourage the idea. I have been a governess myself great part of my life. In Miss Keeldar’s acquaintance I esteem myself most fortunate. Her talents and her really sweet disposition have rendered my office easy to me; but when I was young, before I married, my trials were severe, poignant. I should not like a – I should not like you to endure similar ones. It was my lot to enter a family of considerable pretensions to good birth and mental superiority, and the members of which also believed that ‘on them was perceptible’ an unusual endowment of the ‘Christian graces;’ that all their hearts were regenerate, and their spirits in a peculiar state of discipline. I was early given to understand that ‘as I was not their equal,’ so I could not expect ‘to have their sympathy.’ It was in no sort concealed from me that I was held a ‘burden and a restraint in society.’ The gentlemen, I found, regarded me as a ‘tabooed woman,’ to whom ‘they were interdicted from granting the usual privileges of the sex,’ and yet ‘who annoyed them by frequently crossing their path.’ The ladies too made it plain that they thought me ‘a bore.’ The servants, it was signified, ‘detested me;’ why, I could never clearly comprehend. My pupils, I was told, ‘however much they might love me, and how deep soever the interest I might take in them, could not be my friends.’ It was intimated that I must ‘live alone, and never transgress the invisible but rigid line which established the difference between me and my employers.’ My life in this house was sedentary, solitary, constrained, joyless, toilsome. The dreadful crushing of the animal spirits, the ever-prevailing sense of friendlessness and homelessness consequent on this state of things began ere long to produce mortal effects on my constitution. I sickened. The lady of the house told me coolly I was the victim of ‘wounded vanity.’ She hinted that if I did not make an effort to quell my ‘ungodly discontent,’ to cease ‘murmuring against God’s appointment,’ and to cultivate the profound humility befitting my station, my mind would very likely ‘go to pieces’ on the rock that wrecked most of my sisterhood – morbid self-esteem – and that I should die an inmate of a lunatic asylum.

“I said nothing to Mrs. Hardman – it would have been useless; but to her eldest daughter I one day dropped a few observations, which were answered thus. There were hardships, she allowed, in the position of a governess. ‘Doubtless they had their trials; but,’ she averred, with a manner it makes me smile now to recall—‘but it must be so. She’ (Miss H.) ‘had neither view, hope, nor wish to see these things remedied; for in the inherent constitution of English habits, feelings, and prejudices there was no possibility that they should be. Governesses,’ she observed, ‘must ever be kept in a sort of isolation. It is the only means of maintaining that distance which the reserve of English manners and the decorum of English families exact.’

“I remember I sighed as Miss Hardman quitted my bedside. She caught the sound, and turning, said severely, ‘I fear, Miss Grey, you have inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature – the sin of pride. You are proud, and therefore you are ungrateful too. Mamma pays you a handsome salary, and if you had average sense you would thankfully put up with much that is fatiguing to do and irksome to bear, since it is so well made worth your while.’

“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 instill 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 someone 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 forever. 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.”