He has no idea that little Jessy will die young, she is so gay and chattering, arch, original even now; passionate when provoked, but most affectionate if caressed; by turns gentle and rattling; exacting, yet generous; fearless — of her mother, for instance, whose irrationally hard and strict rule she has often defied — yet reliant on any who will help her. Jessy, with her little piquant face, engaging prattle, and winning ways, is made to be a pet, and her father’s pet she accordingly is. It is odd that the doll should resemble her mother feature by feature, as Rose resembles her father, and yet the physiognomy — how different!
Mr. Yorke, if a magic mirror were now held before you, and if therein were shown you your two daughters as they will be twenty years from this night, what would you think? The magic mirror is here: you shall learn their destinies — and first that of your little life, Jessy.
Do you know this place? No, you never saw it; but you recognize the nature of these trees, this foliage — the cypress, the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place — green sod and a gray marble headstone. Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an April day; much loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief life, shed tears, she had frequent sorrows; she smiled between, gladdening whatever saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in Rose’s guardian arms, for Rose had been her stay and defence through many trials. The dying and the watching English girls were at that hour alone in a foreign country, and the soil of that country gave Jessy a grave.
Now, behold Rose two years later. The crosses and garlands looked strange, but the hills and woods of this landscape look still stranger. This, indeed, is far from England; remote must be the shores which wear that wild, luxuriant aspect. This is some virgin solitude. Unknown birds flutter round the skirts of that forest; no European river this, on whose banks Rose sits thinking. The little quiet Yorkshire girl is a lonely emigrant in some region of the southern hemisphere. Will she ever come back?
The three eldest of the family are all boys — Matthew, Mark, and Martin. They are seated together in that corner, engaged in some game. Observe their three heads: much alike at a first glance; at a second, different; at a third, contrasted. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, red-cheeked are the whole trio; small English features they all possess; all own a blended resemblance to sire and mother; and yet a distinctive physiognomy, mark of a separate character, belongs to each.
I shall not say much about Matthew, the first-born of the house, though it is impossible to avoid gazing at him long, and conjecturing what qualities that visage hides or indicates. He is no plain-looking boy: that jet-black hair, white brow, high-coloured cheek, those quick, dark eyes, are good points in their way. How is it that, look as long as you will, there is but one object in the room, and that the most sinister, to which Matthew’s face seems to bear an affinity, and of which, ever and anon, it reminds you strangely — the eruption of Vesuvius? Flame and shadow seem the component parts of that lad’s soul — no daylight in it, and no sunshine, and no pure, cool moonbeam ever shone there. He has an English frame, but, apparently, not an English mind — you would say, an Italian stiletto in a sheath of British workmanship. He is crossed in the game — look at his scowl. Mr. Yorke sees it, and what does he say? In a low voice he pleads, “Mark and Martin, don’t anger your brother.” And this is ever the tone adopted by both parents. Theoretically, they decry partiality — no rights of primogeniture are to be allowed in that house; but Matthew is never to be vexed, never to be opposed; they avert provocation from him as assiduously as they would avert fire from a barrel of gunpowder. “Concede, conciliate,” is their motto wherever he is concerned. The republicans are fast making a tyrant of their own flesh and blood. This the younger scions know and feel, and at heart they all rebel against the injustice. They cannot read their parents’ motives; they only see the difference of treatment. The dragon’s teeth are already sown amongst Mr. Yorke’s young olive-branches; discord will one day be the harvest.
Mark is a bonny-looking boy, the most regular-featured of the family. He is exceedingly calm; his smile is shrewd; he can say the driest, most cutting things in the quietest of tones. Despite his tranquillity, a somewhat heavy brow speaks temper, and reminds you that the smoothest waters are not always the safest. Besides, he is too still, unmoved, phlegmatic, to be happy. Life will never have much joy in it for Mark. By the time he is five-and-twenty he will wonder why people ever laugh, and think all fools who seem merry. Poetry will not exist for Mark, either in literature or in life; its best effusions will sound to him mere rant and jargon. Enthusiasm will be his aversion and contempt. Mark will have no youth; while he looks juvenile and blooming, he will be already middle-aged in mind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but his soul is already thirty.
Martin, the youngest of the three, owns another nature. Life may, or may not, be brief for him, but it will certainly be brilliant. He will pass through all its illusions, half believe in them, wholly enjoy them, then outlive them. That boy is not handsome — not so handsome as either of his brothers. He is plain; there is a husk upon him, a dry shell, and he will wear it till he is near twenty, then he will put it off. About that period he will make himself handsome. He will wear uncouth manners till that age, perhaps homely garments; but the chrysalis will retain the power of transfiguring itself into the butterfly, and such transfiguration will, in due season, take place. For a space he will be vain, probably a downright puppy, eager for pleasure and desirous of admiration, athirst, too, for knowledge. He will want all that the world can give him, both of enjoyment and lore; he will, perhaps, take deep draughts at each fount. That thirst satisfied, what next? I know not. Martin might be a remarkable man. Whether he will or not, the seer is powerless to predict: on that subject there has been no open vision.
Take Mr. Yorke’s family in the aggregate: there is as much mental power in those six young heads, as much originality, as much activity and vigour of brain, as — divided amongst half a dozen commonplace broods — would give to each rather more than an average amount of sense and capacity. Mr. Yorke knows this, and is proud of his race. Yorkshire has such families here and there amongst her hills and wolds — peculiar, racy, vigorous; of good blood and strong brain; turbulent somewhat in the pride of their strength, and intractable in the force of their native powers; wanting polish, wanting consideration, wanting docility, but sound, spirited, and true-bred as the eagle on the cliff or the steed in the steppe.
A low tap is heard at the parlour door; the boys have been making such a noise over their game, and little Jessy, besides, has been singing so sweet a Scotch song to her father — who delights in Scotch and Italian songs, and has taught his musical little daughter some of the best — that the ring at the outer door was not observed.
“Come in,” says Mrs. Yorke, in that conscientiously constrained and solemnized voice of hers, which ever modulates itself to a funereal dreariness of tone, though the subject it is exercised upon be but to give orders for the making of a pudding in the kitchen, to bid the boys hang up their caps in the hall, or to call the girls to their sewing — “come in!” And in came Robert Moore.
Moore’s habitual gravity, as well as his abstemiousness (for the case of spirit decanters is never ordered up when he pays an evening visit), has so far recommended him to Mrs. Yorke that she has not yet made him the subject of private animadversions with her husband; she has not yet found out that he is hampered by a secret intrigue which prevents him from marrying, or that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing — discoveries which she made at an early date after marriage concerning most of her husband’s bachelor friends, and excluded them from her board accordingly; which part of her conduct, indeed, might be said to have its just and sensible as well as its harsh side.
“Well, is it you?” she says to Mr. Moore, as he comes up to her and gives his hand. “What are you roving about at this time of night for? You should be at home.”
�
��Can a single man be said to have a home, madam?” he asks.
“Pooh!” says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional smoothness quite as much as her husband does, and practises it as little, and whose plain speaking on all occasions is carried to a point calculated, sometimes, to awaken admiration, but oftener alarm — “pooh! you need not talk nonsense to me; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, does not your sister make a home for you?”
“Not she,” joined in Mr. Yorke. “Hortense is an honest lass. But when I was Robert’s age I had five or six sisters, all as decent and proper as she is; but you see, Hesther, for all that it did not hinder me from looking out for a wife.”
“And sorely he has repented marrying me,” added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. “He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment” (here she pointed to her children). “Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help it? It is not only bringing them into the world, though that is bad enough, but they are all to feed, to clothe, to rear, to settle in life. Young sir, when you feel tempted to marry, think of our four sons and two daughters, and look twice before you leap.”
“I am not tempted now, at any rate. I think these are not times for marrying or giving in marriage.”
A lugubrious sentiment of this sort was sure to obtain Mrs. Yorke’s approbation. She nodded and groaned acquiescence; but in a minute she said, “I make little account of the wisdom of a Solomon of your age; it will be upset by the first fancy that crosses you. Meantime, sit down, sir. You can talk, I suppose, as well sitting as standing?”
This was her way of inviting her guest to take a chair. He had no sooner obeyed her than little Jessy jumped from her father’s knee and ran into Mr. Moore’s arms, which were very promptly held out to receive her.
“You talk of marrying him,” said she to her mother, quite indignantly, as she was lifted lightly to his knee, “and he is married now, or as good. He promised that I should be his wife last summer, the first time he saw me in my new white frock and blue sash. Didn’t he, father?” (These children were not accustomed to say papa and mamma; their mother would allow no such “namby-pamby.”)
“Ay, my little lassie, he promised; I’ll bear witness. But make him say it over again now, Jessy. Such as he are only false loons.”
“He is not false. He is too bonny to be false,” said Jessy, looking up to her tall sweetheart with the fullest confidence in his faith.
“Bonny!” cried Mr. Yorke. “That’s the reason that he should be, and proof that he is, a scoundrel.”
“But he looks too sorrowful to be false,” here interposed a quiet voice from behind the father’s chair. “If he was always laughing, I should think he forgot promises soon, but Mr. Moore never laughs.”
“Your sentimental buck is the greatest cheat of all, Rose,” remarked Mr. Yorke.
“He’s not sentimental,” said Rose.
Mr. Moore turned to her with a little surprise, smiling at the same time.
“How do you know I am not sentimental, Rose?”
“Because I heard a lady say you were not.”
“Voilà, qui devient intéressant!” exclaimed Mr. Yorke, hitching his chair nearer the fire. “A lady! That has quite a romantic twang. We must guess who it is. — Rosy, whisper the name low to your father. Don’t let him hear.”
“Rose, don’t be too forward to talk,” here interrupted Mrs. Yorke, in her usual kill-joy fashion, “nor Jessy either. It becomes all children, especially girls, to be silent in the presence of their elders.”
“Why have we tongues, then?” asked Jessy pertly; while Rose only looked at her mother with an expression that seemed to say she should take that maxim in and think it over at her leisure. After two minutes’ grave deliberation, she asked, “And why especially girls, mother?”
“Firstly, because I say so; and secondly, because discretion and reserve are a girl’s best wisdom.”
“My dear madam,” observed Moore, “what you say is excellent — it reminds me, indeed, of my dear sister’s observations; but really it is not applicable to these little ones. Let Rose and Jessy talk to me freely, or my chief pleasure in coming here is gone. I like their prattle; it does me good.”
“Does it not?” asked Jessy. “More good than if the rough lads came round you. — You call them rough, mother, yourself.”
“Yes, mignonne, a thousand times more good. I have rough lads enough about me all day long, poulet.”
“There are plenty of people,” continued she, “who take notice of the boys. All my uncles and aunts seem to think their nephews better than their nieces, and when gentlemen come here to dine, it is always Matthew, and Mark, and Martin that are talked to, and never Rose and me. Mr. Moore is our friend, and we’ll keep him. — But mind, Rose, he’s not so much your friend as he is mine. He is my particular acquaintance ; remember that!” And she held up her small hand with an admonitory gesture.
Rose was quite accustomed to be admonished by that small hand. Her will daily bent itself to that of the impetuous little Jessy. She was guided, overruled by Jessy in a thousand things. On all occasions of show and pleasure Jessy took the lead, and Rose fell quietly into the background; whereas, when the disagreeables of life — its work and privations — were in question, Rose instinctively took upon her, in addition to her own share, what she could of her sister’s. Jessy had already settled it in her mind that she, when she was old enough, was to be married; Rose, she decided, must be an old maid, to live with her, look after her children, keep her house. This state of things is not uncommon between two sisters, where one is plain and the other pretty; but in this case, if there was a difference in external appearance, Rose had the advantage: her face was more regular-featured than that of the piquant little Jessy. Jessy, however, was destined to possess, along with sprightly intelligence and vivacious feeling, the gift of fascination, the power to charm when, where, and whom she would. Rose was to have a fine, generous soul, a noble intellect profoundly cultivated, a heart as true as steel, but the manner to attract was not to be hers.
“Now, Rose, tell me the name of this lady who denied that I was sentimental,” urged Mr. Moore.
Rose had no idea of tantalization, or she would have held him a while in doubt. She answered briefly, “I can’t. I don’t know her name.”
“Describe her to me. What was she like? Where did you see her?”
“When Jessy and I went to spend the day at Whinbury with Kate and Susan Pearson, who were just come home from school, there was a party at Mrs. Pearson’s, and some grown-up ladies were sitting in a corner of the drawing-room talking about you.”
“Did you know none of them?”
“Hannah, and Harriet, and Dora, and Mary Sykes.”
“Good. Were they abusing me, Rosy?”
“Some of them were. They called you a misanthrope. I remember the word. I looked for it in the dictionary when I came home. It means a man-hater.”
“What besides?”
“Hannah Sykes said you were a solemn puppy.”
“Better!” cried Mr. Yorke, laughing. “Oh, excellent! Hannah! that’s the one with the red hair — a fine girl, but half-witted.”
“She has wit enough for me, it appears,” said Moore. “A solemn puppy, indeed! Well, Rose, go on.”
“Miss Pearson said she believed there was a good deal of affectation about you, and that with your dark hair and pale face you looked to her like some sort of a sentimental noodle.”
Again Mr. Yorke laughed. Mrs. Yorke even joined in this time. “You see in what esteem you are held behind your back,” said she; “yet I believe that Miss Pearson would like to catch you. She set her cap at you when you first came into the country, old as she is.”
The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë Page 76