Shirley

“No; I don’t want a doctor. Mamma shall be my only physician. Now, do you understand, uncle?”

Mr. Helstone pushed up his spectacles from his nose to his forehead, handled his snuffbox, and administered to himself a portion of the contents. Thus fortified, he answered briefly, “I see daylight. You’ve told her then, ma’am?”

“And is it true?” demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. “Is she really my mother?”

“You won’t cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if I answer Yes?”

“Cry! I’d cry if you said No. It would be terrible to be disappointed now. But give her a name. How do you call her?”

“I call this stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough to wear much smarter raiment, if she would – I call her Agnes Helstone. She married my brother James, and is his widow.”

“And my mother?”

“What a little skeptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor, scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and eagerness.” To Caroline—“She had the trouble of bringing you into the world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting well, and repairing the waste of these cheeks. – Heigh-ho! she used to be plump. What she has done with it all I can’t, for the life of me, divine.”

“If wishing to get well will help me, I shall not be long sick. This morning I had no reason and no strength to wish it.”

Fanny here tapped at the door, and said that supper was ready.

“Uncle, if you please, you may send me a little bit of supper – anything you like, from your own plate. That is wiser than going into hysterics, is it not?”

“It is spoken like a sage, Cary. See if I don’t cater for you judiciously. When women are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to give her an edible or a wearable – be the same a roc’s egg or the breastplate of Aaron, a share of St. John’s locusts and honey or the leathern girdle about his loins – I can, at least, understand the demand; but when they pine for they know not what – sympathy, sentiment, some of these indefinite abstractions – I can’t do it; I don’t know it; I haven’t got it. – Madam, accept my arm.”

Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her daughter that evening. Helstone, accordingly, left them together. He soon returned, bringing a plate in his own consecrated hand.

“This is chicken,” he said, “but we’ll have partridge tomorrow. – Lift her up, and put a shawl over her. On my word, I understand nursing. – Now, here is the very same little silver fork you used when you first came to the rectory. That strikes me as being what you may call a happy thought – a delicate attention. Take it, Cary, and munch away cleverly.”

Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her powers were so limited. He prophesied, however, great things for the future; and as she praised the morsel he had brought, and smiled gratefully in his face, he stooped over her pillow, kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged accent, “Good night, bairnie! God bless thee!”

Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled by her mother’s arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she forgot to wish for any other stay; and though more than one feverish dream came to her in slumber, yet, when she woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned with returning consciousness that her agitation was soothed almost as soon as felt.

As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. Till break of day she wrestled with God in earnest prayer.

Chapter XXV

The West Wind Blows

Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. “Spare my beloved,” it may implore. “Heal my life’s life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!” And after this cry and strife the sun may rise and see him worsted. That opening morn, which used to salute him with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may breathe, as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and heat have quitted, “Oh! I have had a suffering night. This morning I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have troubled me.”

Then the watcher approaches the patient’s pillow, and sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is God’s will his idol shall be broken, and bends his head, and subdues his soul to the sentence he cannot avert and scarce can bear.

Happy Mrs. Pryor! She was still praying, unconscious that the summer sun hung above the hills, when her child softly woke in her arms. No piteous, unconscious moaning – sound which so wastes our strength that, even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps away the oath – preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy followed. The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign to the living. Caroline evidently remembered with clearness what had happened.

“Mamma, I have slept so well. I only dreamed and woke twice.”

Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not see the joyful tears called into her eyes by that affectionate word “mamma,” and the welcome assurance that followed it.

For many days the mother dared rejoice only with trembling. That first revival seemed like the flicker of a dying lamp. If the flame streamed up bright one moment, the next it sank dim in the socket. Exhaustion followed close on excitement.

There was always a touching endeavour to appear better, but too often ability refused to second will; too often the attempt to bear up failed. The effort to eat, to talk, to look cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an hour passed during which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could never more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking might be deferred.

During this space the mother and daughter seemed left almost alone in the neighbourhood. It was the close of August; the weather was fine – that is to say, it was very dry and very dusty, for an arid wind had been blowing from the east this month past; very cloudless, too, though a pale haze, stationary in the atmosphere, seemed to rob of all depth of tone the blue of heaven, of all freshness the verdure of earth, and of all glow the light of day. Almost every family in Briarfield was absent on an excursion. Miss Keeldar and her friends were at the seaside; so were Mrs. Yorke’s household. Mr. Hall and Louis Moore, between whom a spontaneous intimacy seemed to have arisen – the result, probably, of harmony of views and temperament – were gone “up north” on a pedestrian excursion to the Lakes. Even Hortense, who would fain have stayed at home and aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so earnestly entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to Wormwood Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings greatly aggravated by the insalubrious weather, that she felt obliged to comply; indeed, it was not in her nature to refuse a request that at once appealed to her goodness of heart, and, by a confession of dependency, flattered her amour propre. As for Robert, from Birmingham he had gone on to London, where he still sojourned.

So long as the breath of Asiatic deserts parched Caroline’s lips and fevered her veins, her physical convalescence could not keep pace with her returning mental tranquillity; but there came a day when the wind ceased to sob at the eastern gable of the rectory, and at the oriel window of the church. A little cloud like a man’s hand arose in the west; gusts from the same quarter drove it on and spread it wide; wet and tempest prevailed a while. When that was over the sun broke out genially, heaven regained its azure, and earth its green; the livid cholera-tint had vanished from the face of nature; the hills rose clear round the horizon, absolved from that pale malaria-haze.

Caroline’s youth could now be of some avail to her, and so could her mother’s nurture. Both, crowned by God’s blessing, sent in the pure west wind blowing soft as fresh through the ever-open chamber lattice, rekindled her long-languishing energies. At last Mrs. Pryor saw that it was permitted to hope: a genuine, material convalescence had commenced. It was not merely Caroline’s smile which was brighter, or her spirits which were cheered, but a certain look had passed from her face and eye – a look dread and indescribable, but which will easily be recalled by those who have watched the couch of dangerous disease. Long before the emaciated outlines of her aspect began to fill, or its departed colour to return, a more subtle change took place; all grew softer and warmer. Instead of a marble mask and glassy eye, Mrs. Pryor saw laid on the pillow a face pale and wasted enough, perhaps more haggard than the other appearance, but less awful; for it was a sick, living girl, not a mere white mould or rigid piece of statuary.

Now, too, she was not always petitioning to drink. The words, “I am so thirsty,” ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did not her nurse prepare what was selected! How she watched her as she partook of it!

Nourishment brought strength. She could sit up. Then she longed to breathe the fresh air, to revisit her flowers, to see how the fruit had ripened. Her uncle, always liberal, had bought a garden-chair for her express use. He carried her down in his own arms, and placed her in it himself, and William Farren was there to wheel her round the walks, to show her what he had done amongst her plants, to take her directions for further work.

William and she found plenty to talk about. They had a dozen topics in common – interesting to them, unimportant to the rest of the world. They took a similar interest in animals, birds, insects, and plants; they held similar doctrines about humanity to the lower creation, and had a similar turn for minute observation on points of natural history. The nest and proceedings of some ground-bees, which had burrowed in the turf under an old cherry tree, was one subject of interest; the haunts of certain hedge sparrows, and the welfare of certain pearly eggs and callow fledglings, another.

Had Chambers’s Journal existed in those days, it would certainly have formed Miss Helstone’s and Farren’s favourite periodical. She would have subscribed for it, and to him each number would duly have been lent; both would have put implicit faith and found great savour in its marvellous anecdotes of animal sagacity.

This is a digression, but it suffices to explain why Caroline would have no other hand than William’s to guide her chair, and why his society and conversation sufficed to give interest to her garden airings.

Mrs. Pryor, walking near, wondered how her daughter could be so much at ease with a “man of the people.” She found it impossible to speak to him otherwise than stiffly. She felt as if a great gulf lay between her caste and his, and that to cross it or meet him half-way would be to degrade herself. She gently asked Caroline, “Are you not afraid, my dear, to converse with that person so unreservedly? He may presume, and become troublesomely garrulous.”

“William presume, mamma? You don’t know him. He never presumes. He is altogether too proud and sensitive to do so. William has very fine feelings.”

And Mrs. Pryor smiled skeptically at the naïve notion of that rough-handed, rough-headed, fustian-clad clown having “fine feelings.”

Farren, for his part, showed Mrs. Pryor only a very sulky brow. He knew when he was misjudged, and was apt to turn unmanageable with such as failed to give him his due.

The evening restored Caroline entirely to her mother, and Mrs. Pryor liked the evening; for then, alone with her daughter, no human shadow came between her and what she loved. During the day she would have her stiff demeanour and cool moments, as was her wont. Between her and Mr. Helstone a very respectful but most rigidly ceremonious intercourse was kept up. Anything like familiarity would have bred contempt at once in one or both these personages; but by dint of strict civility and well-maintained distance they got on very smoothly.

Towards the servants Mrs. Pryor’s bearing was not uncourteous, but shy, freezing, ungenial. Perhaps it was diffidence rather than pride which made her appear so haughty; but, as was to be expected, Fanny and Eliza failed to make the distinction, and she was unpopular with them accordingly. She felt the effect produced; it rendered her at times dissatisfied with herself for faults she could not help, and with all else dejected, chill, and taciturn.

This mood changed to Caroline’s influence, and to that influence alone. The dependent fondness of her nursling, the natural affection of her child, came over her suavely. Her frost fell away, her rigidity unbent; she grew smiling and pliant. Not that Caroline made any wordy profession of love – that would ill have suited Mrs. Pryor; she would have read therein the proof of insincerity – but she hung on her with easy dependence; she confided in her with fearless reliance. These things contented the mother’s heart.

She liked to hear her daughter say, “Mamma, do this;” “Please, mamma, fetch me that;” “Mamma, read to me;” “Sing a little, mamma.”

Nobody else – not one living thing – had ever so claimed her services, so looked for help at her hand. Other people were always more or less reserved and stiff with her, as she was reserved and stiff with them; other people betrayed consciousness of and annoyance at her weak points. Caroline no more showed such wounding sagacity or reproachful sensitiveness now than she had done when a suckling of three months old.

Yet Caroline could find fault. Blind to the constitutional defects that were incurable, she had her eyes wide open to the acquired habits that were susceptible of remedy. On certain points she would quite artlessly lecture her parent; and that parent, instead of being hurt, felt a sensation of pleasure in discovering that the girl dared lecture her, that she was so much at home with her.

“Mamma, I am determined you shall not wear that old gown any more. Its fashion is not becoming; it is too strait in the skirt. You shall put on your black silk every afternoon. In that you look nice; it suits you. And you shall have a black satin dress for Sundays – a real satin, not a satinet or any of the shams. And, mamma, when you get the new one, mind you must wear it.”

“My dear, I thought of the black silk serving me as a best dress for many years yet, and I wished to buy you several things.”

“Nonsense, mamma. My uncle gives me cash to get what I want. You know he is generous enough; and I have set my heart on seeing you in a black satin. Get it soon, and let it be made by a dressmaker of my recommending. Let me choose the pattern. You always want to disguise yourself like a grandmother. You would persuade one that you are old and ugly. Not at all! On the contrary, when well dressed and cheerful you are very comely indeed; your smile is so pleasant, your teeth are so white, your hair is still such a pretty light colour. And then you speak like a young lady, with such a clear, fine tone, and you sing better than any young lady I ever heard. Why do you wear such dresses and bonnets, mamma, such as nobody else ever wears?”

“Does it annoy you, Caroline?”

“Very much; it vexes me even. People say you are miserly; and yet you are not, for you give liberally to the poor and to religious societies – though your gifts are conveyed so secretly and quietly that they are known to few except the receivers. But I will be your lady’s-maid myself. When I get a little stronger I will set to work, and you must be good, mamma, and do as I bid you.”

And Caroline, sitting near her mother, rearranged her muslin handkerchief and re-smoothed her hair.