Shirley

“Do I need this lesson?”

“Most young ladies of the present day need it. You are quite a modern young lady – morbid, delicate, professing to like retirement; which implies, I suppose, that you find little worthy of your sympathies in the ordinary world. The ordinary world – everyday honest folks – are better than you think them, much better than any bookish, romancing chit of a girl can be who hardly ever puts her nose over her uncle the parson’s garden wall.”

“Consequently of whom you know nothing. Excuse me – indeed, it does not matter whether you excuse me or not – you have attacked me without provocation; I shall defend myself without apology. Of my relations with my two cousins you are ignorant. In a fit of ill-humour you have attempted to poison them by gratuitous insinuations, which are far more crafty and false than anything with which you can justly charge me. That I happen to be pale, and sometimes to look diffident, is no business of yours; that I am fond of books, and indisposed for common gossip, is still less your business; that I am a ‘romancing chit of a girl’ is a mere conjecture on your part. I never romanced to you nor to anybody you know. That I am the parson’s niece is not a crime, though you may be narrow-minded enough to think it so. You dislike me. You have no just reason for disliking me; therefore keep the expression of your aversion to yourself. If at any time in future you evince it annoyingly, I shall answer even less scrupulously than I have done now.”

She ceased, and sat in white and still excitement. She had spoken in the clearest of tones, neither fast nor loud; but her silver accents thrilled the ear. The speed of the current in her veins was just then as swift as it was viewless.

Mrs. Yorke was not irritated at the reproof, worded with a severity so simple, dictated by a pride so quiet. Turning coolly to Miss Moore, she said, nodding her cap approvingly, “She has spirit in her, after all. – Always speak as honestly as you have done just now,” she continued, “and you’ll do.”

“I repel a recommendation so offensive,” was the answer, delivered in the same pure key, with the same clear look. “I reject counsel poisoned by insinuation. It is my right to speak as I think proper; nothing binds me to converse as you dictate. So far from always speaking as I have done just now, I shall never address anyone in a tone so stern or in language so harsh, unless in answer to unprovoked insult.”

“Mother, you have found your match,” pronounced little Jessie, whom the scene appeared greatly to edify. Rose had heard the whole with an unmoved face. She now said, “No; Miss Helstone is not my mother’s match, for she allows herself to be vexed. My mother would wear her out in a few weeks. Shirley Keeldar manages better. – Mother, you have never hurt Miss Keeldar’s feelings yet. She wears armour under her silk dress that you cannot penetrate.”

Mrs. Yorke often complained that her children were mutinous. It was strange that with all her strictness, with all her “strong-mindedness,” she could gain no command over them. A look from their father had more influence with them than a lecture from her.

Miss Moore – to whom the position of witness to an altercation in which she took no part was highly displeasing, as being an unimportant secondary post – now rallying her dignity, prepared to utter a discourse which was to prove both parties in the wrong, and to make it clear to each disputant that she had reason to be ashamed of herself, and ought to submit humbly to the superior sense of the individual then addressing her. Fortunately for her audience, she had not harangued above ten minutes when Sarah’s entrance with the tea-tray called her attention, first to the fact of that damsel having a gilt comb in her hair and a red necklace round her throat, and secondly, and subsequently to a pointed remonstrance, to the duty of making tea. After the meal Rose restored her to good-humour by bringing her guitar and asking for a song, and afterwards engaging her in an intelligent and sharp cross-examination about guitar-playing and music in general.

Jessie, meantime, directed her assiduities to Caroline. Sitting on a stool at her feet, she talked to her, first about religion and then about politics. Jessie was accustomed at home to drink in a great deal of what her father said on these subjects, and afterwards in company to retail, with more wit and fluency than consistency or discretion, his opinions, antipathies, and preferences. She rated Caroline soundly for being a member of the Established Church, and for having an uncle a clergyman. She informed her that she lived on the country, and ought to work for her living honestly, instead of passing a useless life, and eating the bread of idleness in the shape of tithes. Thence Jessie passed to a review of the ministry at that time in office, and a consideration of its deserts. She made familiar mention of the names of Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Perceval. Each of these personages she adorned with a character that might have separately suited Moloch and Belial. She denounced the war as wholesale murder, and Lord Wellington as a “hired butcher.”

Her auditress listened with exceeding edification. Jessie had something of the genius of humour in her nature. It was inexpressibly comic to hear her repeating her sire’s denunciations in his nervous northern Doric; as hearty a little Jacobin as ever pent a free mutinous spirit in a muslin frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language was not so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little face gave a piquancy to every phrase which held a beholder’s interest captive.

Caroline chid her when she abused Lord Wellington; but she listened delighted to a subsequent tirade against the Prince Regent. Jessie quickly read, in the sparkle of her hearer’s eye and the laughter hovering round her lips, that at last she had hit on a topic that pleased. Many a time had she heard the fat “Adonis of fifty” discussed at her father’s breakfast-table, and she now gave Mr. Yorke’s comments on the theme – genuine as uttered by his Yorkshire lips.

But, Jessie, I will write about you no more. This is an autumn evening, wet and wild. There is only one cloud in the sky, but it curtains it from pole to pole. The wind cannot rest; it hurries sobbing over hills of sullen outline, colourless with twilight and mist. Rain has beat all day on that church tower. It rises dark from the stony enclosure of its graveyard. The nettles, the long grass, and the tombs all drip with wet. This evening reminds me too forcibly of another evening some years ago – a howling, rainy autumn evening too – when certain who had that day performed a pilgrimage to a grave new-made in a heretic cemetery sat near a wood fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They were merry and social, but they each knew that a gap, never to be filled, had been made in their circle. They knew they had lost something whose absence could never be quite atoned for so long as they lived; and they knew that heavy falling rain was soaking into the wet earth which covered their lost darling, and that the sad, sighing gale was mourning above her buried head. The fire warmed them; life and friendship yet blessed them; but Jessie lay cold, coffined, solitary – only the sod screening her from the storm.

Mrs. Yorke folded up her knitting, cut short the music lesson and the lecture on politics, and concluded her visit to the cottage, at an hour early enough to ensure her return to Briarmains before the blush of sunset should quite have faded in heaven, or the path up the fields have become thoroughly moist with evening dew.

The lady and her daughters being gone, Caroline felt that she also ought to resume her scarf, kiss her cousin’s cheek, and trip away homeward. If she lingered much later dusk would draw on, and Fanny would be put to the trouble of coming to fetch her. It was both baking and ironing day at the rectory, she remembered – Fanny would be busy. Still, she could not quit her seat at the little parlour window. From no point of view could the west look so lovely as from that lattice with the garland of jessamine round it, whose white stars and green leaves seemed now but gray pencil outlines – graceful in form, but colourless in tint – against the gold incarnadined of a summer evening – against the fire-tinged blue of an August sky at eight o’clock p.m.

Caroline looked at the wicket-gate, beside which holly-oaks spired up tall. She looked at the close hedge of privet and laurel fencing in the garden; her eyes longed to see something more than the shrubs before they turned from that limited prospect. They longed to see a human figure, of a certain mould and height, pass the hedge and enter the gate. A human figure she at last saw – nay, two. Frederick Murgatroyd went by, carrying a pail of water; Joe Scott followed, dangling on his forefinger the keys of the mill. They were going to lock up mill and stables for the night, and then betake themselves home.

“So must I,” thought Caroline, as she half rose and sighed.

“This is all folly – heartbreaking folly,” she added. “In the first place, though I should stay till dark there will be no arrival; because I feel in my heart, Fate has written it down in today’s page of her eternal book, that I am not to have the pleasure I long for. In the second place, if he stepped in this moment, my presence here would be a chagrin to him, and the consciousness that it must be so would turn half my blood to ice. His hand would, perhaps, be loose and chill if I put mine into it; his eye would be clouded if I sought its beam. I should look up for that kindling, something I have seen in past days, when my face, or my language, or my disposition had at some happy moment pleased him; I should discover only darkness. I had better go home.”

She took her bonnet from the table where it lay, and was just fastening the ribbon, when Hortense, directing her attention to a splendid bouquet of flowers in a glass on the same table, mentioned that Miss Keeldar had sent them that morning from Fieldhead; and went on to comment on the guests that lady was at present entertaining, on the bustling life she had lately been leading; adding divers conjectures that she did not very well like it, and much wonderment that a person who was so fond of her own way as the heiress did not find some means of sooner getting rid of this cortége of relatives.

“But they say she actually will not let Mr. Sympson and his family go,” she added. “They wanted much to return to the south last week, to be ready for the reception of the only son, who is expected home from a tour. She insists that her cousin Henry shall come and join his friends here in Yorkshire. I dare say she partly does it to oblige Robert and myself.”

“How to oblige Robert and you?” inquired Caroline.

“Why, my child, you are dull. Don’t you know – you must often have heard.”

“Please, ma’am,” said Sarah, opening the door, “the preserves that you told me to boil in treacle – the congfiters, as you call them – is all burnt to the pan.”

“Les confitures! Elles sont brûlées? Ah, quelle négligence coupable! Coquine de cuisinière, fille insupportable!”

And mademoiselle, hastily taking from a drawer a large linen apron, and tying it over her black apron, rushed éperdue into the kitchen, whence, to speak truth, exhaled an odour of calcined sweets rather strong than savoury.

The mistress and maid had been in full feud the whole day, on the subject of preserving certain black cherries, hard as marbles, sour as sloes. Sarah held that sugar was the only orthodox condiment to be used in that process; mademoiselle maintained – and proved it by the practice and experience of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother – that treacle, “mélasse,” was infinitely preferable. She had committed an imprudence in leaving Sarah in charge of the preserving-pan, for her want of sympathy in the nature of its contents had induced a degree of carelessness in watching their confection, whereof the result was – dark and cindery ruin. Hubbub followed; high upbraiding, and sobs rather loud than deep or real.

Caroline, once more turning to the little mirror, was shading her ringlets from her cheek to smooth them under her cottage bonnet, certain that it would not only be useless but unpleasant to stay longer, when, on the sudden opening of the back door, there fell an abrupt calm in the kitchen. The tongues were checked, pulled up as with bit and bridle. “Was it – was it – Robert?” He often – almost always – entered by the kitchen way on his return from market. No; it was only Joe Scott, who, having hemmed significantly thrice – every hem being meant as a lofty rebuke to the squabbling womankind – said, “Now, I thowt I heerd a crack?”

None answered.

“And,” he continued pragmatically, “as t’ maister’s comed, and as he’ll enter through this hoyle, I considered it desirable to step in and let ye know. A household o’ women is nivver fit to be comed on wi’out warning. Here he is. – Walk forrard, sir. They war playing up queerly, but I think I’ve quietened ’em.”

Another person, it was now audible, entered. Joe Scott proceeded with his rebukes.

“What d’ye mean by being all i’ darkness? Sarah, thou quean, canst t’ not light a candle? It war sundown an hour syne. He’ll brak his shins agean some o’ yer pots, and tables, and stuff. – Tak tent o’ this baking bowl, sir; they’ve set it i’ yer way, fair as if they did it i’ malice.”

To Joe’s observations succeeded a confused sort of pause, which Caroline, though she was listening with both her ears, could not understand. It was very brief. A cry broke it – a sound of surprise, followed by the sound of a kiss; ejaculations, but half articulate, succeeded.

“Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Est-ce que je m’y attendais?” were the words chiefly to be distinguished.

“Et tu te portes toujours bien, bonne soeur?” inquired another voice – Robert’s, certainly.

Caroline was puzzled. Obeying an impulse the wisdom of which she had not time to question, she escaped from the little parlour, by way of leaving the coast clear, and running upstairs took up a position at the head of the banisters, whence she could make further observations ere presenting herself. It was considerably past sunset now; dusk filled the passage, yet not such deep dusk but that she could presently see Robert and Hortense traverse it.

“Caroline! Caroline!” called Hortense, a moment afterwards, “venez voir mon frère!”

“Strange,” commented Miss Helstone, “passing strange! What does this unwonted excitement about such an everyday occurrence as a return from market portend? She has not lost her senses, has she? Surely the burnt treacle has not crazed her?”

She descended in a subdued flutter. Yet more was she fluttered when Hortense seized her hand at the parlour door, and leading her to Robert, who stood in bodily presence, tall and dark against the one window, presented her with a mixture of agitation and formality, as though they had been utter strangers, and this was their first mutual introduction.

Increasing puzzle! He bowed rather awkwardly, and turning from her with a stranger’s embarrassment, he met the doubtful light from the window. It fell on his face, and the enigma of the dream (a dream it seemed) was at its height. She saw a visage like and unlike – Robert, and no Robert.

“What is the matter?” said Caroline. “Is my sight wrong? Is it my cousin?”

“Certainly it is your cousin,” asserted Hortense.

Then who was this now coming through the passage – now entering the room? Caroline, looking round, met a new Robert – the real Robert, as she felt at once.

“Well,” said he, smiling at her questioning, astonished face, “which is which?”

“Ah, this is you!” was the answer.

He laughed. “I believe it is me. And do you know who he is? You never saw him before, but you have heard of him.”

She had gathered her senses now.

“It can be only one person – your brother, since it is so like you; my other cousin, Louis.”

“Clever little Oedipus! you would have baffled the Sphinx! But now, see us together. – Change places; change again, to confuse her, Louis. – Which is the old love now, Lina?”

“As if it were possible to make a mistake when you speak! You should have told Hortense to ask. But you are not so much alike. It is only your height, your figure, and complexion that are so similar.”

“And I am Robert, am I not?” asked the newcomer, making a first effort to overcome what seemed his natural shyness.