Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes

by Bronte Sisters

  “Thats more than I did”

  “But he is your servant and so he must have met her on a message from yourself”

  “Thats more than I know”

  “Is he not your servant?”

  “No — He is my groom but the devils servant”

  “Percy you play with edge tools and I will not be baulked by you! Mind what I say — I will not be baulked by you! You know what I mean and either in one case or in another I repeat I will not be baulked by you! I am a man of few words Percy but if I do not say much I think a deal and on occasion I can act — I do not speak threatningly — I regard you as my guest and aquaintance and friend and in fact all that sort of thing — but — why if the truth will out — I have lost a deal of money and I cannot be bothered — there will be mischeif Sir if I am in the least troubled depend upon it — You know all about Miss Allen — You know whether or not she is my cousin — and Mr Montmorency says you did meet her this morning — It could be to no good Percy for I have a deal of black blood, though I will not as I repeat threaten any one, and I could bear no interference with any arrangements of mine! — Then besides all that — all we have talked about — ”

  “Nay Thurston” remarked Percy “I have not talked at all — I have not the most distant idea of the goal which you would gain — I only know that we are delaying our sport incommoding our friends and, if the truth must bespoken, making cursed fools of ourselves.”

  Mr Thurston on hearing the calm and rather supercilious voice of Mr Percy seemed to suffer a mental change similar to what a wet blanket might physically produce if wrapped round a fevered body. He leaned on his gun and holding out his hand rather awkwardly replied

  “I meant nothing wrong — nothing I assure you — I only wanted to know — that is I do know Mr Montmorency is a — ”

  “A Scoundrel” said Percy, finishing the sentence as without accepting Thurstons proffered hand he turned with hasty steps to rejoin his still hastier companions.

  Mr Thurston followed with a look so sweet that O’ Connor declared he had swallowed vitriolic acid instead of porter and Quamina swore he never had a blacker bargain from Camaroons or Congo rivers. Montmorency had long been joking with the Keepers who evidently marked him down as a delightful fellow and Mr Robert King had for an equal space of time been venting the indignation of outraged virtue upon the boys and grooms who held charge of the baskets. Now however — the two magnates having returned without black eyes or bloody noses and apparently on terms of friendship, however wide their hearts might be assunder — though one might be conscious of his mastership over and exulting in his powers to torture a being bound by this worlds laws to him in the old Hall far below them — and the other — two days since,

  “Vacant hand and heart and eye”

  now feeling a lawless abandonment of self to the white cheek and the melancholy eyes which from habitual discharge of a routine of duties hardly ever changed however much the heart might throb or the soul might sicken — Now, the procession felt at liberty to move, and with the wild moors before them the hopes of sport around them — the possession of sound health among them — for even old King was undecayed — why did they not feel truly happy?

  Those whose lives lie within the walls of their library little know what has formed the existence of the men who have given them their treasures and those who know no feelings beyond domestic duties cannot divine the thoughts that cross strong but unbridled minds without a home to flee to or long lost to thoughts of home.

  Among the gentlemen who formed this army against the ‘Moors’ who had a real home? Mr Montmorency had not — whose wife lay under the huge roof of Cologne Cathedral dead after a few years of sufferance under himself and a few months of the outbreak and indulgence of long felt and late enjoyed love of the man who ‘left her alone to die’ — That Man — Mr Percy had not — who besides such thorns in his flesh — such pinches as the old man Adam gave Christians — knew that cold earth embraced the little lady who never thought but for him — Nor had Mr O’ Connor who felt bitterly that his rents as soon as due must be recieved not by his own itching fingers but by the widely expanding palm of Mr Jeremiah Simpson — Nor had the said Simpson whose nerves were troubled respecting the value of certain American and Spanish mortgages held from Mr Quamina Nor had Quamina whose soul longed by another venture on the now hazardous middle passage to gain enough to clear himself from Jeremiahs talons — Nor had Gordon who felt that his fate and fortune spun round with a teetotum — that Red and Black gave the colours to his chamelion destiny — Nor had probably any one of the fry of Servants Keepers watchers and drivers — for

  “Each have their sufferings all are men

  Condemned alike to groan

  The feeling for anothers pain

  The unfeeling for his own.”

  However a wide expanse of breezy highland heathers with the sun of the ‘twelfth’ tipping thro purple bloom and where broad breasts face a healthy breeze and Britains peculiar birds surrender their lives at every shot — was no place for remembering by past sorrows or participating in the feelings of the bard of Olney, and when at noontide the diverging groups of sportsman and attendants met at a lonely spring whose diamond water gushed up through deep green mosses in a dell of knee deep heather under a semicircle of whinstone rock they seemed all engrossed in the display of their bags or in excusing a want of display. Thurston from his knowledge of the ground and power over the underlings seemed to produce two or three brace more than any of his guests — O’ Connor and Quamina who had given themselves up to the sport regardless of every other consideration save a pull at the whiskey flask ranked second as victors Montmorency could afford to swagger over Simpson and Gordon but all rode triumphant over the acknowledged best shot in the party — Mr Percy.

  “Well” exclaimed Mr O’ Connor turning over Percys single Cockbird which was minus a head from some access of fury on the part of the shooter — “Well Gentlemen — hand me the flask — I have lived through many troubles in my time but this is a regular extinguisher upon all! To think that I have nine brace to shew against half an one from the best gun between Derbyshire and Westmoreland is enough to make me fancy I can pay off my debts — I can tell why Simpson and Gordon have failed for they have had their hands in their purses instead of on their triggers, and as for Montmorency — He’s been thinking of his next breif in a ‘crius cori’ case or an action for assault and battery. Then Thurston can do as he pleases because the fellows about us know that when he wishes a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse — but Percy with half a bird — I say Quamina hand me over the flask — Well may we have more Percy’s ere the days out and then thou and I Quashia may do a little business at our old profits of per cent.”

  Mr Quamina replied — “He is head over ears O’ Connor — He is indeed Arthur! I see it in his squint at us two! He has bagged his bird before he donned his jacket and Thurston had better take care of that” —

  “Who — I? What are you saying?” exclaimed the Host furiously but Mr Quamina evidently astonished swallowed all reply in another pull at his flask and so Mr Thurston turned to Percy for either an answer or a quarrel but as the latter saw Montmorency watching with an eager eye the cloud no bigger than a mans hand which should presage storms to others and pass unnoticed over himself; and as he was not desirous of being the victim of his friends or his hosts revenge he tossed off his horn of mountain dew — threw his single headless bird to his old servant and bidding him take care to bring the poney and his own skin safe back to Darkwall he lost no time in good mornings or excuses but dashed back across the gulley and down the long cart rut which served as a path from the peat pits to the farm steads of a more civilized land

  I cannot be expected to dissect Mr Percy’s feelings or emotions during his rapid walk back to Darkwall as I believe he scarce left time to do so himself but with a scorn of his morning employment a distaste toward his mornings companions and a revulsion of thoughts which made the whole twelf
th a day of black chalks he sprung over the first style and strode over the first causeways through the twenty acre pastures of green land stolen from heather and made part and parcel of Darkwall farm

  Percy did not make any halt in his intrusion so soon and so unexpectedly upon the quietude of a Hall which expected domestic slumber till evening brought in such visitors as might be willing to turn night into day. He made his return known to the Lady of the mansion and was recieved by her in the breakfast room

  “I have returned so soon” he said “because I felt my hand was not in for sport and among men over whom I am accustomed to crow I do not like appear second best so you as are aware that fruitless rest is better than fruitless labour I have returned to find in your mansion the ancient works of man which I can look at while seated on a sopha instead of the ancient works of nature which take so many miles of bog trotting to enjoy. How many hours of rest shall I have ere my sad crew return?”

  “Thurston did not mention any certain time for the return of your party but I expected no one before six.”

  While Mrs Thurston spoke and during the first moments of her meeting with the unexpectedly arrived guest no servant about the establishment could have been so dull as not to percieve the embarrasment of their usually calm and sweet tempered Mistress — The eye which usually had a dove like glance for all — the voice which had a gentle tone and the steps which were so quiet now changed into a phase of irritation in manner — trouble in the eyes and hesitation both in voice and step — but a ready Key might have been given to these changes had the observers been aware of the risks she was running from an innocent breach of promises given to her furious husband and meant to be kept as faithfully as made, and the revulsion of all hospitable or lady-like feeling should she keep to the letter of her promise as well as the still small voice scarce daring to whisper amid conflicting winds which told a womans and a ladys heart that a visitor was sheltered under her roof whose mind possessd some mettle more attractive than ebullitions of sour reproach — whose feelings had a wider higher and deeper range than what would be exersised in attempts to ruin others or onse self — whose person likewise gave animated instead of cloudy looks gentle flexibility of tone instead of bilious snappishness — Eyes of mobile imaginativeness instead of bull-like suspicion — lips of winning sweetness instead of acerb ill temper, that she might now in fact have hoped for one happy afternoon after so many blank or blotted ones but for the grim threatning scowl which from neighbouring moors frowned upon her companionship the thunder shadows of resentment and revenge.

  Percy took his station at a window which faced the moors and after a long look at moving clouds which from chrysalis like mists had condensed into an emphemeral life of sunny joy and on moors whose clearly defined outlines while they spoke to sportsmen of “the battle and the breeze,” left his mind ’scaped from scenes of havoc which would make “e’en moorcocks weep” to recurr to former times and like the dove “to flee away and be at rest”

  “One would think” he remarked without noticing the embarrasment in the manner of his hostess — “that these melancholy wastes rose above the warm atmosphere of pleasure and beyond the mild influences of sympathy but unless among the dull brick built streets and foggy air and filthy pavement of a town view, one seldom can see a natural prospect of which we can say truthfully “it is stark naught” I once sat not far from Scarboro’ under a black wet semicircle of rock with no objects in sight except sand and star fish for a few yards in front and the tidal waves framed in the dark rocks of my cove which ended in a grey background of sea stretching parallel to a milky sky. Now one might ask where lay the charm that could keep me half an hour biting my cane and like the laird on his ‘louping on stane’ ‘looking frae’ me when if the prospect did embrace the three great objects of nature Heaven Earth and Ocean they would all have been seen to better advantage on the walls of the National Gallery or in the pages of a young ladies scrap book, and besides did not the ever changing tide of human life on the promenade offer a wider scope for reflection than the monotonous surges of the sea? Would not a railway cutting shew rock work in a more scientific as well as more shapely form than the shapeless and useless piles that girdled me? Would not even the little circular Museum hold forth at an easy distance more interesting specimens of geological and Zoological history than those afforded by the cornelian pebbles or limpet shells or starfish that sprawled among the narrow foreground of sand and sea weed? Very true Mrs Thurston — but neither science and the picturesque combined or any other compound known can produce at ones own will or that of another person the incommunicable emotions of an inward reflective joy.”

  “Joy is not the appropriate term for it I think Sir.”

  “How do you know that? I was aware of my mistake but I did not imagine a lady would discover it.”

  “Perhaps one who has been for years accustomed to see natural beauty only in grey walls and naked fields and barren moors may — although a woman — have attained to some expertness in extracting from them what they have to give of subdued emotion or pleasurable calm. The owner of Chatsworth must not fancy he alone has a delight in Flora because he owns a five hundred feet Conservatory. The heath bloom or the daisy or the foxglove with “its silent peal of bells” may give a thrill of pleasure to the walker through rushy fields and over boggy moors which could not have been exceeded by Schomburgh himself when he first saw the immense Victoria flower gleaming among the reeds of the Essequibo”

  “You speak justly — but — I know not how it is — I do not like to hear women speak thus as it appears that they have to fall back on indefinable musings for a refuge from palpable care. Let such rescources be left to a fellow like myself as I should be as cloud capped as ever was Boulshill yonder if I thought that a wife of mine were like a bee sucking comfort from wild flowers on the ridge of his heathy brow! But I suppose we must all get happiness where we can and if it escapes our pursuit we must not repine. Were we born into this world for happiness or is joy the puzzling and contradictory exception to the routine engagements of life and sorrow the Egyptian task work which binds us to our long life-day’s work of toil?

  “We have guides Sir in even the most intricate journey and of these Duty is one very safe if sometimes unpleasing. Rectitude of conduct points out the straightest road from this to the other world and hope if healthy will help one over ordinary obstacles and if feverish it will do us more harm than what might be caused by the common excitement of wine. Resignation I would recommend as a faster friend than either for it neither craves for hope or fears despair.”

  Mr Percy did not immediately reply to Mrs Thurstons words but he took his seat on the sopha leaned his head on his hand and surveyed the furniture of the room with eyes that might have been mistaken for those of an Auctioneer or Upholsterer had not their matter of fact inquisitiveness been contradicted and relieved by the peculiar smile of his mobile lips. Mrs Thurston was already seated at her little work table and examined her embroidery frame with an attention which might have been as much mistaken as his own — for the patience with which she proceeded in her work partook of the commonplace character of — not perhaps an Upholsterer — but a Power loom weaver — Still the dark eye lashes, bent ever downwards, seemed sometimes moist; and she never once looked at his face whose gaze (though with no difference in expression from that which examined her footstool) was so often bent on hers. One of those pauses in which thought seems struggling among the meshes of a net which it has not the power to break and wherein a few minutes of silence send ones mind flying over a score of years occurred to give additional abstraction to both the lady’s and the gentlemans countenance, till Mr Percy broke the ice by soliloquizing —

  “What a fool they will think me to escape so soon and with half a brace from the sports of so sweet a twelfth of August! Had I brought down a bag crammed with birds flesh and feathers — had I been able to boast of dozens instead of units I had been a hero but now — reclining at noon in Thurstons parlour
while my companions are roaming ten thousand acres of heather is really a virtual resignment of my sportsmans crown — Well — when I have nothing else to think of or when I want to drive off all thought I can be as sharp a shot and as stalwart a walker as any one but when I am out o’ the vein I will not brag of performances worthy of being registered in any column of Bells Life in London. What have I returned for? My head can not tell me and I wonder if my heart could give me my reason.”

  “Perhaps your caprice might — for people generally give you credit for the possession of that uncertain quality.”

  Mr Percy turned his face towards his hostess as he half reclined on the cushions and said rather growlingly

  “Do people in general fancy me like an actor or an Opera dancer and do you imagine that my return hither was because I liked whinrocks built into a wall better than whin rocks scattered over a moor? That I preferred my host’s servants to my host’s guests? That I was attacked by a ‘male green sickness’ and loved chalk better than cheese? No I believe you to be so far advanced in sense and so well able to appreciate motives or divine intentions as to feel that I returned because a couple of hours spent with yourself would appear one hour and three quarters shorter in the registered revolution of this sun than the same time spent among the pursuits I travelled hither to take part in — because I hoped to find in you the gaslight which in a Theatre or ballroom apologises for the

  “gay beams of lightsome day”

  You are aware that being a forlorn widower my daylight has winked its wearied eye and dreams or fancies only can restore in the present and future night those alleviations to trouble which fate and fortune have carried far off and far away. Should I very hastily ride back at the risk of a horses knees or walk back at the risk of my own to see Mr O’ Connor or Mr Quamina discuss a couple of bottles before luncheon — to calculate the value of the estates yet to be or just having been mortgaged by them with Simpson and Gordon — to try with Hector which of the two could look most treacherous or with Thurston which could look most sour? No — no — I returned as if to a shadow of my ancient returning during years wherein I could doff my shooting dress and find a face to welcome me milder than that of a man though that man might be a friend — You are looking confused and serious but you need not do so as I must speak what I feel and what I feel is not in want of a cloak” —