The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Bronte

  Caroline advanced to the mighty matron with some sense of diffidence. She knew little of Mrs. Yorke, and, as a parson’s niece, was doubtful what sort of a reception she might get. She got a very cool one, and was glad to hide her discomfiture by turning away to take off her bonnet. Nor, upon sitting down, was she displeased to be immediately accosted by a little personage in a blue frock and sash, who started up like some fairy from the side of the great dame’s chair, where she had been sitting on a footstool, screened from view by the folds of the wide red gown, and running to Miss Helstone, unceremoniously threw her arms round her neck and demanded a kiss.

  “My mother is not civil to you,” said the petitioner, as she received and repaid a smiling salute, “and Rose there takes no notice of you; it is their way. If, instead of you, a white angel, with a crown of stars, had come into the room, mother would nod stiffly, and Rose never lift her head at all; but I will be your friend — I have always liked you.”

  “Jessie, curb that tongue of yours, and repress your forwardness!” said Mrs. Yorke.

  “But, mother, you are so frozen!” expostulated Jessie. “Miss Helstone has never done you any harm; why can’t you be kind to her? You sit so stiff, and look so cold, and speak so dry — what for? That’s just the fashion in which you treat Miss Shirley Keeldar and every other young lady who comes to our house. And Rose there is such an aut — aut — I have forgotten the word, but it means a machine in the shape of a human being. However, between you, you will drive every soul away from Briarmains; Martin often says so.”

  “I am an automaton? Good! Let me alone, then,” said Rose, speaking from a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase, with a volume spread open on her knee. — “Miss Helstone, how do you do?” she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book and returning to the study of its pages.

  Caroline stole a quiet gaze towards her, dwelling on her young, absorbed countenance, and observing a certain unconscious movement of the mouth as she read — a movement full of character. Caroline had tact, and she had fine instinct. She felt that Rose Yorke was a peculiar child — one of the unique; she knew how to treat her. Approaching quietly, she knelt on the carpet at her side, and looked over her little shoulder at her book. It was a romance of Mrs. Radcliffe’s — “The Italian.”

  Caroline read on with her, making no remark. Presently Rose showed her the attention of asking, ere she turned the leaf, “Are you ready?”

  Caroline only nodded.

  “Do you like it?” inquired Rose ere long.

  “Long since, when I read it as a child, I was wonderfully taken with it.”

  “Why?”

  “It seemed to open with such promise — such foreboding of a most strange tale to be unfolded.”

  “And in reading it you feel as if you were far away from England — really in Italy — under another sort of sky — that blue sky of the south which travellers describe.”

  “You are sensible of that, Rose?”

  “It makes me long to travel, Miss Helstone.”

  “When you are a woman, perhaps, you may be able to gratify your wish.”

  “I mean to make a way to do so, if one is not made for me. I cannot live always in Briarfield. The whole world is not very large compared with creation. I must see the outside of our own round planet, at least.”

  “How much of its outside?”

  “First this hemisphere where we live; then the other. I am resolved that my life shall be a life. Not a black trance like the toad’s, buried in marble; nor a long, slow death like yours in Briarfield rectory.”

  “Like mine! what can you mean, child?”

  “Might you not as well be tediously dying as for ever shut up in that glebe-house — a place that, when I pass it, always reminds me of a windowed grave? I never see any movement about the door. I never hear a sound from the wall. I believe smoke never issues from the chimneys. What do you do there?”

  “I sew, I read, I learn lessons.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Should I be happy wandering alone in strange countries as you wish to do?”

  “Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however, that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on, like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now. In a day’s wandering you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse, each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was overcast; as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. Nothing changes in Briarfield rectory. The plaster of the parlour ceilings, the paper on the walls, the curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same.”

  “Is change necessary to happiness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it synonymous with it?”

  “I don’t know; but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.”

  Here Jessie spoke.

  “Isn’t she mad?” she asked.

  “But, Rose,” pursued Caroline, “I fear a wanderer’s life, for me at least, would end like that tale you are reading — in disappointment, vanity, and vexation of spirit.”

  “Does ‘The Italian’ so end?”

  “I thought so when I read it.”

  “Better to try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin — despicable sluggard!”

  “Rose,” observed Mrs. Yorke, “solid satisfaction is only to be realized by doing one’s duty.”

  “Right, mother! And if my Master has given me ten talents, my duty is to trade with them, and make them ten talents more. Not in the dust of household drawers shall the coin be interred. I will not deposit it in a broken-spouted teapot, and shut it up in a china closet among tea-things. I will not commit it to your work-table to be smothered in piles of woollen hose. I will not prison it in the linen press to find shrouds among the sheets. And least of all, mother” (she got up from the floor) — “least of all will I hide it in a tureen of cold potatoes, to be ranged with bread, butter, pastry, and ham on the shelves of the larder.”

  She stopped, then went on, “Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master’s coming to pay Him His own with usury.”

  “Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  “Sit down, and do a line of marking.”

  Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. After a busy pause of ten minutes, her mother asked, “Do you think yourself oppressed now — a victim?”

  “No, mother.”

  “Yet, as far as I understood your tirade, it was a protest against all womanly and domestic employment.”

  “You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not to learn to sew. You do right to teach me, and to make me work.”

  “Even to the mending of your brothers’ stockings and the making of sheets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the use of ranting and spouting about it, then?”

  “Am I to do nothing but that? I will do that, and then I will do more. Now, mother, I have said my say. I am twelve years old at present, and not till I am sixteen will I speak again about talents. For four years I bind myself an industrious apprentice to all you can teach me.”

  “You see what my daughters are, Miss Helstone,” observed Mrs. Yorke; “how precociously wise in their own conceits! ‘I would rather this, I prefer that’ — such is Jessie’s cuckoo song; while Rose utters the bolder cry, ‘I will, and I will not!’”

  “I render a reason, mother; besides, if my cry is bold, it is only heard once in a twelvemonth. About each birthday the spirit mov
es me to deliver one oracle respecting my own instruction and management. I utter it and leave it; it is for you, mother, to listen or not.”

  “I would advise all young ladies,” pursued Mrs. Yorke, “to study the characters of such children as they chance to meet with before they marry and have any of their own to consider well how they would like the responsibility of guiding the careless, the labour of persuading the stubborn, the constant burden and task of training the best.”

  “But with love it need not be so very difficult,” interposed Caroline. “Mothers love their children most dearly — almost better than they love themselves.”

  “Fine talk! very sentimental! There is the rough, practical part of life yet to come for you, young miss.”

  “But, Mrs. Yorke, if I take a little baby into my arms — any poor woman’s infant, for instance — I feel that I love that helpless thing quite peculiarly, though I am not its mother. I could do almost anything for it willingly, if it were delivered over entirely to my care — if it were quite dependent on me.”

  “You feel! Yes, yes! I dare say, now. You are led a great deal by your feelings, and you think yourself a very sensitive personage, no doubt. Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to train your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, better suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the real world by dint of common sense?”

  “No; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke.”

  “Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face you see there with that of any early-rising, hard-working milkmaid.”

  “My face is a pale one, but it is not sentimental; and most milkmaids, however red and robust they may be, are more stupid and less practically fitted to make their way in the world than I am. I think more, and more correctly, than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they would often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of reflection, should act judiciously.”

  “Oh no! you would be influenced by your feelings; you would be guided by impulse.”

  “Of course I should often be influenced by my feelings. They were given me to that end. Whom my feelings teach me to love I must and shall love; and I hope, if ever I have a husband and children, my feelings will induce me to love them. I hope, in that case, all my impulses will be strong in compelling me to love.”

  Caroline had a pleasure in saying this with emphasis; she had a pleasure in daring to say it in Mrs. Yorke’s presence. She did not care what unjust sarcasm might be hurled at her in reply. She flushed, not with anger but excitement, when the ungenial matron answered coolly, “Don’t waste your dramatic effects. That was well said — it was quite fine; but it is lost on two women — an old wife and an old maid. There should have been a disengaged gentleman present. — Is Mr. Robert nowhere hid behind the curtains, do you think, Miss Moore?”

  Hortense, who during the chief part of the conversation had been in the kitchen superintending the preparations for tea, did not yet quite comprehend the drift of the discourse. She answered, with a puzzled air, that Robert was at Whinbury. Mrs. Yorke laughed her own peculiar short laugh.

  “Straightforward Miss Moore!” said she patronizingly. “It is like you to understand my question so literally and answer it so simply. Your mind comprehends nothing of intrigue. Strange things might go on around you without your being the wiser; you are not of the class the world calls sharp-witted.”

  These equivocal compliments did not seem to please Hortense. She drew herself up, puckered her black eyebrows, but still looked puzzled.

  “I have ever been noted for sagacity and discernment from childhood,” she returned; for, indeed, on the possession of these qualities she peculiarly piqued herself.

  “You never plotted to win a husband, I’ll be bound,” pursued Mrs. Yorke; “and you have not the benefit of previous experience to aid you in discovering when others plot.”

  Caroline felt this kind language where the benevolent speaker intended she should feel it — in her very heart. She could not even parry the shafts; she was defenceless for the present. To answer would have been to avow that the cap fitted. Mrs. Yorke, looking at her as she sat with troubled, downcast eyes, and cheek burning painfully, and figure expressing in its bent attitude and unconscious tremor all the humiliation and chagrin she experienced, felt the sufferer was fair game. The strange woman had a natural antipathy to a shrinking, sensitive character — a nervous temperament; nor was a pretty, delicate, and youthful face a passport to her affections. It was seldom she met with all these obnoxious qualities combined in one individual; still more seldom she found that individual at her mercy, under circumstances in which she could crush her well. She happened this afternoon to be specially bilious and morose — as much disposed to gore as any vicious “mother of the herd.” Lowering her large head she made a new charge.

  “Your cousin Hortense is an excellent sister, Miss Helstone. Such ladies as come to try their life’s luck here at Hollow’s Cottage may, by a very little clever female artifice, cajole the mistress of the house, and have the game all in their own hands. You are fond of your cousin’s society, I dare say, miss?”

  “Of which cousin’s?”

  “Oh, of the lady’s, of course.”

  “Hortense is, and always has been, most kind to me.”

  “Every sister with an eligible single brother is considered most kind by her spinster friends.”

  “Mrs. Yorke,” said Caroline, lifting her eyes slowly, their blue orbs at the same time clearing from trouble, and shining steady and full, while the glow of shame left her cheek, and its hue turned pale and settled — “Mrs. Yorke, may I ask what you mean?”

  “To give you a lesson on the cultivation of rectitude, to disgust you with craft and false sentiment.”

  “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 any one 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.