The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Bronte

  Shirley laughed; she laughed again, each time with a slightly sarcastic sound. “Well, well,” was her comment. “On the plea of the man being Cyril Hall’s friend and Robert Moore’s brother, we’ll just tolerate his existence; won’t we, Cary? You believe him to be intelligent, do you? Not quite an idiot — eh? Something commendable in his disposition! — id est, not an absolute ruffian. Good! Your representations have weight with me; and to prove that they have, should he come this way I will speak to him.”

  He approached the summer-house. Unconscious that it was tenanted, he sat down on the step. Tartar, now his customary companion, had followed him, and he couched across his feet.

  “Old boy!” said Louis, pulling his tawny ear, or rather the mutilated remains of that organ, torn and chewed in a hundred battles, “the autumn sun shines as pleasantly on us as on the fairest and richest. This garden is none of ours, but we enjoy its greenness and perfume, don’t we?”

  He sat silent, still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding affection. A faint twittering commenced among the trees round. Something fluttered down as light as leaves. They were little birds, which, lighting on the sward at shy distance, hopped as if expectant.

  “The small brown elves actually remember that I fed them the other day,” again soliloquized Louis. “They want some more biscuit. To-day I forgot to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have not a crumb for you.”

  He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out empty.

  “A want easily supplied,” whispered the listening Miss Keeldar.

  She took from her reticule a morsel of sweet-cake; for that repository was never destitute of something available to throw to the chickens, young ducks, or sparrows. She crumbled it, and bending over his shoulder, put the crumbs into his hand.

  “There,” said she — “there is a providence for the improvident.”

  “This September afternoon is pleasant,” observed Louis Moore, as, not at all discomposed, he calmly cast the crumbs on to the grass.

  “Even for you?”

  “As pleasant for me as for any monarch.”

  “You take a sort of harsh, solitary triumph in drawing pleasure out of the elements and the inanimate and lower animate creation.”

  “Solitary, but not harsh. With animals I feel I am Adam’s son, the heir of him to whom dominion was given over ‘every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ Your dog likes and follows me. When I go into that yard, the pigeons from your dovecot flutter at my feet. Your mare in the stable knows me as well as it knows you, and obeys me better.”

  “And my roses smell sweet to you, and my trees give you shade.”

  “And,” continued Louis, “no caprice can withdraw these pleasures from me; they are mine.”

  He walked off. Tartar followed him, as if in duty and affection bound, and Shirley remained standing on the summer-house step. Caroline saw her face as she looked after the rude tutor. It was pale, as if her pride bled inwardly.

  “You see,” remarked Caroline apologetically, “his feelings are so often hurt it makes him morose.”

  “You see,” retorted Shirley, with ire, “he is a topic on which you and I shall quarrel if we discuss it often; so drop it henceforward and for ever.”

  “I suppose he has more than once behaved in this way,” thought Caroline to herself, “and that renders Shirley so distant to him. Yet I wonder she cannot make allowance for character and circumstances. I wonder the general modesty, manliness, sincerity of his nature do not plead with her in his behalf. She is not often so inconsiderate, so irritable.”

  The verbal testimony of two friends of Caroline’s to her cousin’s character augmented her favourable opinion of him. William Farren, whose cottage he had visited in company with Mr. Hall, pronounced him a “real gentleman;” there was not such another in Briarfield. He — William — “could do aught for that man. And then to see how t’ bairns liked him, and how t’ wife took to him first minute she saw him. He never went into a house but t’ childer wor about him directly. Them little things wor like as if they’d a keener sense nor grown-up folks i’ finding our folk’s natures.”

  Mr. Hall, in answer to a question of Miss Helstone’s as to what he thought of Louis Moore, replied promptly that he was the best fellow he had met with since he left Cambridge.

  “But he is so grave,” objected Caroline.

  “Grave! the finest company in the world! Full of odd, quiet, out-of-the-way humour. Never enjoyed an excursion so much in my life as the one I took with him to the Lakes. His understanding and tastes are so superior, it does a man good to be within their influence; and as to his temper and nature, I call them fine.”

  “At Fieldhead he looks gloomy, and, I believe, has the character of being misanthropical.”

  “Oh! I fancy he is rather out of place there — in a false position. The Sympsons are most estimable people, but not the folks to comprehend him. They think a great deal about form and ceremony, which are quite out of Louis’s way.”

  “I don’t think Miss Keeldar likes him.”

  “She doesn’t know him — she doesn’t know him; otherwise she has sense enough to do justice to his merits.”

  “Well, I suppose she doesn’t know him,” mused Caroline to herself, and by this hypothesis she endeavoured to account for what seemed else unaccountable. But such simple solution of the difficulty was not left her long. She was obliged to refuse Miss Keeldar even this negative excuse for her prejudice.

  One day she chanced to be in the schoolroom with Henry Sympson, whose amiable and affectionate disposition had quickly recommended him to her regard. The boy was busied about some mechanical contrivance; his lameness made him fond of sedentary occupation. He began to ransack his tutor’s desk for a piece of wax or twine necessary to his work. Moore happened to be absent. Mr. Hall, indeed, had called for him to take a long walk. Henry could not immediately find the object of his search. He rummaged compartment after compartment; and at last, opening an inner drawer, he came upon — not a ball of cord or a lump of beeswax, but a little bundle of small marble-coloured cahiers, tied with tape. Henry looked at them. “What rubbish Mr. Moore stores up in his desk!” he said. “I hope he won’t keep my old exercises so carefully.”

  “What is it?”

  “Old copy-books.”

  He threw the bundle to Caroline. The packet looked so neat externally her curiosity was excited to see its contents.

  “If they are only copy-books, I suppose I may open them?”

  “Oh yes, quite freely. Mr. Moore’s desk is half mine — for he lets me keep all sorts of things in it — and I give you leave.”

  On scrutiny they proved to be French compositions, written in a hand peculiar but compact, and exquisitely clean and clear. The writing was recognizable. She scarcely needed the further evidence of the name signed at the close of each theme to tell her whose they were. Yet that name astonished her — “Shirley Keeldar, Sympson Grove, — — shire” (a southern county), and a date four years back.

  She tied up the packet, and held it in her hand, meditating over it. She half felt as if, in opening it, she had violated a confidence.

  “They are Shirley’s, you see,” said Henry carelessly.

  “Did you give them to Mr. Moore? She wrote them with Mrs. Pryor, I suppose?”

  “She wrote them in my schoolroom at Sympson Grove, when she lived with us there. Mr. Moore taught her French; it is his native language.”

  “I know. Was she a good pupil, Henry?”

  “She was a wild, laughing thing, but pleasant to have in the room. She made lesson-time charming. She learned fast — you could hardly tell when or how. French was nothing to her. She spoke it quick, quick — as quick as Mr. Moore himself.”

  “Was she obedient? Did she give trouble?”

  “She gave plenty of trouble, in a way. She was giddy, but I liked her. I’m desperately fond of Shirley.”

  “Desperately fond — you small simpleton! You don’t know what y
ou say.”

  “I am desperately fond of her. She is the light of my eyes. I said so to Mr. Moore last night.”

  “He would reprove you for speaking with exaggeration.”

  “He didn’t. He never reproves and reproves, as girls’ governesses do. He was reading, and he only smiled into his book, and said that if Miss Keeldar was no more than that, she was less than he took her to be; for I was but a dim-eyed, shortsighted little chap. I’m afraid I am a poor unfortunate, Miss Caroline Helstone. I am a cripple, you know.”

  “Never mind, Henry, you are a very nice little fellow; and if God has not given you health and strength, He has given you a good disposition and an excellent heart and brain.”

  “I shall be despised. I sometimes think both Shirley and you despise me.”

  “Listen, Henry. Generally, I don’t like schoolboys. I have a great horror of them. They seem to me little ruffians, who take an unnatural delight in killing and tormenting birds, and insects, and kittens, and whatever is weaker than themselves. But you are so different I am quite fond of you. You have almost as much sense as a man (far more, God wot,” she muttered to herself, “than many men); you are fond of reading, and you can talk sensibly about what you read.”

  “I am fond of reading. I know I have sense, and I know I have feeling.”

  Miss Keeldar here entered.

  “Henry,” she said, “I have brought your lunch here. I shall prepare it for you myself.”

  She placed on the table a glass of new milk, a plate of something which looked not unlike leather, and a utensil which resembled a toasting-fork.

  “What are you two about,” she continued, “ransacking Mr. Moore’s desk?”

  “Looking at your old copy-books,” returned Caroline.

  “My old copy-books?”

  “French exercise-books. Look here! They must be held precious; they are kept carefully.”

  She showed the bundle. Shirley snatched it up. “Did not know one was in existence,” she said. “I thought the whole lot had long since lit the kitchen fire, or curled the maid’s hair at Sympson Grove. — What made you keep them, Henry?”

  “It is not my doing. I should not have thought of it. It never entered my head to suppose copy-books of value. Mr. Moore put them by in the inner drawer of his desk. Perhaps he forgot them.”

  “C’est cela. He forgot them, no doubt,” echoed Shirley. “They are extremely well written,” she observed complacently.

  “What a giddy girl you were, Shirley, in those days! I remember you so well. A slim, light creature whom, though you were so tall, I could lift off the floor. I see you with your long, countless curls on your shoulders, and your streaming sash. You used to make Mr. Moore lively — that is, at first. I believe you grieved him after a while.”

  Shirley turned the closely-written pages and said nothing. Presently she observed, “That was written one winter afternoon. It was a description of a snow scene.”

  “I remember,” said Henry. “Mr. Moore, when he read it, cried, ‘Voilà le Français gagné!’ He said it was well done. Afterwards you made him draw, in sepia, the landscape you described.”

  “You have not forgotten, then, Hal?”

  “Not at all. We were all scolded that day for not coming down to tea when called. I can remember my tutor sitting at his easel, and you standing behind him, holding the candle, and watching him draw the snowy cliff, the pine, the deer couched under it, and the half-moon hung above.”

  “Where are his drawings, Harry? Caroline should see them.”

  “In his portfolio. But it is padlocked; he has the key.”

  “Ask him for it when he comes in.”

  “You should ask him, Shirley. You are shy of him now. You are grown a proud lady to him; I notice that.”

  “Shirley, you are a real enigma,” whispered Caroline in her ear. “What queer discoveries I make day by day now! — I who thought I had your confidence. Inexplicable creature! even this boy reproves you.”

  “I have forgotten ‘auld lang syne,’ you see, Harry,” said Miss Keeldar, answering young Sympson, and not heeding Caroline.

  “Which you never should have done. You don’t deserve to be a man’s morning star if you have so short a memory.”

  “A man’s morning star, indeed! and by ‘a man’ is meant your worshipful self, I suppose? Come, drink your new milk while it is warm.”

  The young cripple rose and limped towards the fire; he had left his crutch near the mantelpiece.

  “My poor lame darling!” murmured Shirley, in her softest voice, aiding him.

  “Whether do you like me or Mr. Sam Wynne best, Shirley?” inquired the boy, as she settled him in an armchair.

  “O Harry, Sam Wynne is my aversion; you are my pet.”

  “Me or Mr. Malone?”

  “You again, a thousand times.”

  “Yet they are great whiskered fellows, six feet high each.”

  “Whereas, as long as you live, Harry, you will never be anything more than a little pale lameter.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You need not be sorrowful. Have I not often told you who was almost as little, as pale, as suffering as you, and yet potent as a giant and brave as a lion?”

  “Admiral Horatio?”

  “Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson, and Duke of Bronte; great at heart as a Titan; gallant and heroic as all the world and age of chivalry; leader of the might of England; commander of her strength on the deep; hurler of her thunder over the flood.”

  “A great man. But I am not warlike, Shirley; and yet my mind is so restless I burn day and night — for what I can hardly tell — to be — to do — to suffer, I think.”

  “Harry, it is your mind, which is stronger and older than your frame, that troubles you. It is a captive; it lies in physical bondage. But it will work its own redemption yet. Study carefully not only books but the world. You love nature; love her without fear. Be patient — wait the course of time. You will not be a soldier or a sailor, Henry; but if you live you will be — listen to my prophecy — you will be an author, perhaps a poet.”

  “An author! It is a flash — a flash of light to me! I will — I will! I’ll write a book that I may dedicate it to you.”

  “You will write it that you may give your soul its natural release. Bless me! what am I saying? more than I understand, I believe, or can make good. Here, Hal — here is your toasted oatcake; eat and live!”

  “Willingly!” here cried a voice outside the open window. “I know that fragrance of meal bread. Miss Keeldar, may I come in and partake?”

  “Mr. Hall” — it was Mr. Hall, and with him was Louis Moore, returned from their walk — “there is a proper luncheon laid out in the dining-room and there are proper people seated round it. You may join that society and share that fare if you please; but if your ill-regulated tastes lead you to prefer ill-regulated proceedings, step in here, and do as we do.”

  “I approve the perfume, and therefore shall suffer myself to be led by the nose,” returned Mr. Hall, who presently entered, accompanied by Louis Moore. That gentleman’s eye fell on his desk, pillaged.

  “Burglars!” said he. — “Henry, you merit the ferule.”

  “Give it to Shirley and Caroline; they did it,” was alleged, with more attention to effect than truth.

  “Traitor and false witness!” cried both the girls. “We never laid hands on a thing, except in the spirit of laudable inquiry!”

  “Exactly so,” said Moore, with his rare smile. “And what have you ferreted out, in your ‘spirit of laudable inquiry’?”

  He perceived the inner drawer open.

  “This is empty,” said he. “Who has taken — — “

  “Here, here!” Caroline hastened to say, and she restored the little packet to its place. He shut it up; he locked it in with a small key attached to his watchguard; he restored the other papers to order, closed the repository, and sat down without further remark.

  “I thought you would have scolde
d much more, sir,” said Henry. “The girls deserve reprimand.”

  “I leave them to their own consciences.”

  “It accuses them of crimes intended as well as perpetrated, sir. If I had not been here, they would have treated your portfolio as they have done your desk; but I told them it was padlocked.”

  “And will you have lunch with us?” here interposed Shirley, addressing Moore, and desirous, as it seemed, to turn the conversation.