The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Bronte

  “If we keep on the alert, Shirley, we shall perhaps find the clue to their secret.”

  “There will be some unusual movements ere long — perhaps tomorrow, possibly tonight. But my eyes and ears are wide open. Mr. Moore, you shall be under surveillance. Be you vigilant also, Lina.”

  “I will. Robert is going; I saw him turn. I believe he noticed us. They are shaking hands.”

  “Shaking hands, with emphasis,” added Shirley, “as if they were ratifying some solemn league and covenant.”

  They saw Robert quit the group, pass through a gate, and disappear.

  “And he has not bid us good-bye,” murmured Caroline.

  Scarcely had the words escaped her lips when she tried by a smile to deny the confession of disappointment they seemed to imply. An unbidden suffusion for one moment both softened and brightened her eyes.

  “Oh, that is soon remedied!” exclaimed Shirley: “we’ll make him bid us good-bye.”

  “Make him! That is not the same thing,” was the answer.

  “It shall be the same thing.”

  “But he is gone; you can’t overtake him.”

  “I know a shorter way than that he has taken. We will intercept him.”

  “But, Shirley, I would rather not go.”

  Caroline said this as Miss Keeldar seized her arm and hurried her down the fields. It was vain to contend. Nothing was so wilful as Shirley when she took a whim into her head. Caroline found herself out of sight of the crowd almost before she was aware, and ushered into a narrow shady spot, embowered above with hawthorns, and enamelled under foot with daisies. She took no notice of the evening sun chequering the turf, nor was she sensible of the pure incense exhaling at this hour from tree and plant; she only heard the wicket opening at one end, and knew Robert was approaching. The long sprays of the hawthorns, shooting out before them, served as a screen. They saw him before he observed them. At a glance Caroline perceived that his social hilarity was gone; he had left it behind him in the joy-echoing fields round the school. What remained now was his dark, quiet, business countenance. As Shirley had said, a certain hardness characterized his air, while his eye was excited, but austere. So much the worse timed was the present freak of Shirley’s. If he had looked disposed for holiday mirth, it would not have mattered much; but now — —

  “I told you not to come,” said Caroline, somewhat bitterly, to her friend. She seemed truly perturbed. To be intruded on Robert thus, against her will and his expectation, and when he evidently would rather not be delayed, keenly annoyed her. It did not annoy Miss Keeldar in the least. She stepped forward and faced her tenant, barring his way. “You omitted to bid us good-bye,” she said.

  “Omitted to bid you good-bye! Where did you come from? Are you fairies? I left two like you, one in purple and one in white, standing at the top of a bank, four fields off, but a minute ago.”

  “You left us there and find us here. We have been watching you, and shall watch you still. You must be questioned one day, but not now. At present all you have to do is to say goodnight, and then pass.”

  Moore glanced from one to the other without unbending his aspect. “Days of fête have their privileges, and so have days of hazard,” observed he gravely.

  “Come, don’t moralize. Say goodnight, and pass,” urged Shirley.

  “Must I say goodnight to you, Miss Keeldar?”

  “Yes, and to Caroline likewise. It is nothing new, I hope. You have bid us both goodnight before.”

  He took her hand, held it in one of his, and covered it with the other. He looked down at her gravely, kindly, yet commandingly. The heiress could not make this man her subject. In his gaze on her bright face there was no servility, hardly homage; but there were interest and affection, heightened by another feeling. Something in his tone when he spoke, as well as in his words, marked that last sentiment to be gratitude.

  “Your debtor bids you goodnight! May you rest safely and serenely till morning.”

  “And you, Mr. Moore — what are you going to do? What have you been saying to Mr. Helstone, with whom I saw you shake hands? Why did all those gentlemen gather round you? Put away reserve for once. Be frank with me.”

  “Who can resist you? I will be frank. Tomorrow, if there is anything to relate, you shall hear it.”

  “Just now,” pleaded Shirley; “don’t procrastinate.”

  “But I could only tell half a tale. And my time is limited; I have not a moment to spare. Hereafter I will make amends for delay by candour.”

  “But are you going home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not to leave it any more tonight?”

  “Certainly not. At present, farewell to both of you.”

  He would have taken Caroline’s hand and joined it in the same clasp in which he held Shirley’s, but somehow it was not ready for him. She had withdrawn a few steps apart. Her answer to Moore’s adieu was only a slight bend of the head and a gentle, serious smile. He sought no more cordial token. Again he said “Farewell,” and quitted them both.

  “There! it is over,” said Shirley when he was gone. “We have made him bid us goodnight, and yet not lost ground in his esteem, I think, Cary.”

  “I hope not,” was the brief reply.

  “I consider you very timid and undemonstrative,” remarked Miss Keeldar. “Why did you not give Moore your hand when he offered you his? He is your cousin; you like him. Are you ashamed to let him perceive your affection?”

  “He perceives all of it that interests him. No need to make a display of feeling.”

  “You are laconic; you would be stoical if you could. Is love, in your eyes, a crime, Caroline?”

  “Love a crime! No, Shirley; love is a divine virtue. But why drag that word into the conversation? It is singularly irrelevant.”

  “Good!” pronounced Shirley.

  The two girls paced the green lane in silence. Caroline first resumed.

  “Obtrusiveness is a crime, forwardness is a crime, and both disgust; but love! no purest angel need blush to love. And when I see or hear either man or woman couple shame with love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations debased. Many who think themselves refined ladies and gentlemen, and on whose lips the word ‘vulgarity’ is for ever hovering, cannot mention ‘love’ without betraying their own innate and imbecile degradation. It is a low feeling in their estimation, connected only with low ideas for them.”

  “You describe three-fourths of the world, Caroline.”

  “They are cold — they are cowardly — they are stupid on the subject, Shirley! They never loved — they never were loved!”

  “Thou art right, Lina. And in their dense ignorance they blaspheme living fire, seraph-brought from a divine altar.”

  “They confound it with sparks mounting from Tophet.”

  The sudden and joyous clash of bells here stopped the dialogue by summoning all to the church.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED.

  Table of Contents

  The evening was still and warm; close and sultry it even promised to become. Round the descending sun the clouds glowed purple; summer tints, rather Indian than English, suffused the horizon, and cast rosy reflections on hillside, house-front, tree-bole, on winding road and undulating pasture-ground. The two girls came down from the fields slowly. By the time they reached the churchyard the bells were hushed; the multitudes were gathered into the church. The whole scene was solitary.

  “How pleasant and calm it is!” said Caroline.

  “And how hot it will be in the church!” responded Shirley. “And what a dreary long speech Dr. Boultby will make! And how the curates will hammer over their prepared orations! For my part, I would rather not enter.”

  “But my uncle will be angry if he observes our absence.”

  “I will bear the brunt of his wrath; he will not devour me. I shall be sorry to miss his pungent speech. I know it will be all sense fo
r the church, and all causticity for schism. He’ll not forget the battle of Royd Lane. I shall be sorry also to deprive you of Mr. Hall’s sincere friendly homily, with all its racy Yorkshireisms; but here I must stay. The gray church and grayer tombs look divine with this crimson gleam on them. Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling before those red hills. I see her prostrate on the great steps of her altar, praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in deserts, for lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods. Caroline, I see her, and I will tell you what she is like. She is like what Eve was when she and Adam stood alone on earth.”

  “And that is not Milton’s Eve, Shirley.”

  “Milton’s Eve! Milton’s Eve! I repeat. No, by the pure Mother of God, she is not! Cary, we are alone; we may speak what we think. Milton was great; but was he good? His brain was right; how was his heart? He saw heaven; he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin his daughter, and Death their horrible offspring. Angels serried before him their battalions; the long lines of adamantine shields flashed back on his blind eyeballs the unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered their legions in his sight; their dim, discrowned, and tarnished armies passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see the first woman; but, Cary, he saw her not.”

  “You are bold to say so, Shirley.”

  “Not more bold than faithful. It was his cook that he saw; or it was Mrs. Gill, as I have seen her, making custards, in the heat of summer, in the cool dairy, with rose-trees and nasturtiums about the latticed window, preparing a cold collation for the rectors — preserves and ‘dulcet creams;’ puzzled ‘what choice to choose for delicacy best; what order so contrived as not to mix tastes, not well-joined, inelegant, but bring taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change.’”

  “All very well too, Shirley.”

  “I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother; from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus — — “

  “Pagan that you are! what does that signify?”

  “I say, there were giants on the earth in those days — giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman’s breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence, the strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage, the vitality which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born. Vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations, and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.”

  “She coveted an apple, and was cheated by a snake; but you have got such a hash of Scripture and mythology into your head that there is no making any sense of you. You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills.”

  “I saw — I now see — a woman-Titan. Her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as an avalanche sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon; through its blush shines the star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture. They are clear, they are deep as lakes, they are lifted and full of worship, they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers. She reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro’ Moor; her mighty hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehovah’s daughter, as Adam was His son.”

  “She is very vague and visionary. Come, Shirley, we ought to go into church.”

  “Caroline, I will not; I will stay out here with my mother Eve, in these days called Nature. I love her — undying, mighty being! Heaven may have faded from her brow when she fell in paradise, but all that is glorious on earth shines there still. She is taking me to her bosom, and showing me her heart. Hush, Caroline! You will see her and feel as I do, if we are both silent.”

  “I will humour your whim; but you will begin talking again ere ten minutes are over.”

  Miss Keeldar, on whom the soft excitement of the warm summer evening seemed working with unwonted power, leaned against an upright headstone; she fixed her eyes on the deep-burning west, and sank into a pleasurable trance. Caroline, going a little apart, paced to and fro beneath the rectory garden wall, dreaming too in her way. Shirley had mentioned the word “mother.” That word suggested to Caroline’s imagination not the mighty and mystical parent of Shirley’s visions, but a gentle human form — the form she ascribed to her own mother, unknown, unloved, but not unlonged for.

  “Oh that the day would come when she would remember her child! Oh that I might know her, and knowing, love her!”

  Such was her aspiration.

  The longing of her childhood filled her soul again. The desire which many a night had kept her awake in her crib, and which fear of its fallacy had of late years almost extinguished, relit suddenly, and glowed warm in her heart, that her mother might come some happy day, and send for her to her presence, look upon her fondly with loving eyes, and say to her tenderly, in a sweet voice, “Caroline, my child, I have a home for you; you shall live with me. All the love you have needed, and not tasted, from infancy, I have saved for you carefully. Come; it shall cherish you now.”

  A noise on the road roused Caroline from her filial hopes, and Shirley from her Titan visions. They listened, and heard the tramp of horses. They looked, and saw a glitter through the trees. They caught through the foliage glimpses of martial scarlet; helm shone, plume waved. Silent and orderly, six soldiers rode softly by.

  “The same we saw this afternoon,” whispered Shirley. “They have been halting somewhere till now. They wish to be as little noticed as possible, and are seeking their rendezvous at this quiet hour, while the people are at church. Did I not say we should see unusual things ere long?”

  Scarcely were sight and sound of the soldiers lost, when another and somewhat different disturbance broke the night-hush — a child’s impatient scream. They looked. A man issued from the church, carrying in his arms an infant — a robust, ruddy little boy of some two years old — roaring with all the power of his lungs. He had probably just awaked from a church-sleep. Two little girls, of nine and ten, followed. The influence of the fresh air, and the attraction of some flowers gathered from a grave, soon quieted the child. The man sat down with him, dandling him on his knee as tenderly as any woman; the two little girls took their places one on each side.

  “Good-evening, William,” said Shirley, after due scrutiny of the man. He had seen her before, and apparently was waiting to be recognized. He now took off his hat, and grinned a smile of pleasure. He was a rough-headed, hard-featured personage, not old, but very weather-beaten. His attire was decent and clean; that of his children singularly neat. It was our old friend Farren. The young ladies approached him.

  “You are not going into the church?” he inquired, gazing at them complacently, yet with a mixture of bashfulness in his look — a sentiment not by any means the result of awe of their station, but only of appreciation of their elegance and youth. Before gentlemen — such as Moore or Helstone, for instance — William was often a little dogged; with proud or insolent ladies, too, he was quite unmanageable, sometimes very resentful; but he was most sensible of, most tractable to, good-humour and civility. His nature — a stubborn one — was repelled by inflexibility in other natures; for which reason he had never been able to like his former master, Moore; and unconscious of that gentleman’s good opinion of himself, and of the service he had secretly rendered him in recommending him as gardener to Mr. Yorke, and by this means to other families in the neighbourhood, he continued to harbour a grudge against his austerity. Latterly he had often worked at Fieldhead. Miss Keeldar’s frank, hospitable manners were perfectly ch
arming to him. Caroline he had known from her childhood; unconsciously she was his ideal of a lady. Her gentle mien, step, gestures, her grace of person and attire, moved some artist-fibres about his peasant heart. He had a pleasure in looking at her, as he had in examining rare flowers or in seeing pleasant landscapes. Both the ladies liked William; it was their delight to lend him books, to give him plants; and they preferred his conversation far before that of many coarse, hard, pretentious people immeasurably higher in station.

  “Who was speaking, William, when you came out?” asked Shirley.

  “A gentleman ye set a deal of store on, Miss Shirley — Mr. Donne.”

  “You look knowing, William. How did you find out my regard for Mr. Donne?”

  “Ay, Miss Shirley, there’s a gleg light i’ your een sometimes which betrays you. You look raight down scornful sometimes when Mr. Donne is by.”