Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [uplifting books for women .txt] 📗

spoke well, quite otherwise than your worthy uncle—correctly, gently, smoothly. You inherit the gift."

"Poor papa! When he was so agreeable, why was he not good?"

"Why he was as he was—and happily of that you, child,[Pg 391] can form no conception—I cannot tell. It is a deep mystery. The key is in the hands of his Maker. There I leave it."

"Mamma, you will keep stitching, stitching away. Put down the sewing; I am an enemy to it. It cumbers your lap, and I want it for my head; it engages your eyes, and I want them for a book. Here is your favourite—Cowper."

These importunities were the mother's pleasure. If ever she delayed compliance, it was only to hear them repeated, and to enjoy her child's soft, half-playful, half-petulant urgency. And then, when she yielded, Caroline would say archly, "You will spoil me, mamma. I always thought I should like to be spoiled, and I find it very sweet." So did Mrs. Pryor.[Pg 392]

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CHAPTER XXVI.

OLD COPY-BOOKS.

By the time the Fieldhead party returned to Briarfield Caroline was nearly well. Miss Keeldar, who had received news by post of her friend's convalescence, hardly suffered an hour to elapse between her arrival at home and her first call at the rectory.

A shower of rain was falling gently, yet fast, on the late flowers and russet autumn shrubs, when the garden wicket was heard to swing open, and Shirley's well-known form passed the window. On her entrance her feelings were evinced in her own peculiar fashion. When deeply moved by serious fears or joys she was not garrulous. The strong emotion was rarely suffered to influence her tongue, and even her eye refused it more than a furtive and fitful conquest. She took Caroline in her arms, gave her one look, one kiss, then said, "You are better."

And a minute after, "I see you are safe now; but take care. God grant your health may be called on to sustain no more shocks!"

She proceeded to talk fluently about the journey. In the midst of vivacious discourse her eye still wandered to Caroline. There spoke in its light a deep solicitude, some trouble, and some amaze.

"She may be better," it said, "but how weak she still is! What peril she has come through!"

Suddenly her glance reverted to Mrs. Pryor. It pierced her through.

"When will my governess return to me?" she asked.

"May I tell her all?" demanded Caroline of her mother. Leave being signified by a gesture, Shirley was presently enlightened on what had happened in her absence.

"Very good," was the cool comment—"very good! But it is no news to me."

"What! did you know?"

"I guessed long since the whole business. I have heard[Pg 393] somewhat of Mrs. Pryor's history—not from herself, but from others. With every detail of Mr. James Helstone's career and character I was acquainted. An afternoon's sitting and conversation with Miss Mann had rendered me familiar therewith; also he is one of Mrs. Yorke's warning examples—one of the blood-red lights she hangs out to scare young ladies from matrimony. I believe I should have been sceptical about the truth of the portrait traced by such fingers—both these ladies take a dark pleasure in offering to view the dark side of life—but I questioned Mr. Yorke on the subject, and he said, 'Shirley, my woman, if you want to know aught about yond' James Helstone, I can only say he was a man-tiger. He was handsome, dissolute, soft, treacherous, courteous, cruel——' Don't cry, Cary; we'll say no more about it."

"I am not crying, Shirley; or if I am, it is nothing. Go on; you are no friend if you withhold from me the truth. I hate that false plan of disguising, mutilating the truth."

"Fortunately I have said pretty nearly all that I have to say, except that your uncle himself confirmed Mr. Yorke's words; for he too scorns a lie, and deals in none of those conventional subterfuges that are shabbier than lies."

"But papa is dead; they should let him alone now."

"They should; and we will let him alone. Cry away, Cary; it will do you good. It is wrong to check natural tears. Besides, I choose to please myself by sharing an idea that at this moment beams in your mother's eye while she looks at you. Every drop blots out a sin. Weep! your tears have the virtue which the rivers of Damascus lacked. Like Jordan, they can cleanse a leprous memory."

"Madam," she continued, addressing Mrs. Pryor, "did you think I could be daily in the habit of seeing you and your daughter together—marking your marvellous similarity in many points, observing (pardon me) your irrepressible emotions in the presence and still more in the absence of your child—and not form my own conjectures? I formed them, and they are literally correct. I shall begin to think myself shrewd."

"And you said nothing?" observed Caroline, who soon regained the quiet control of her feelings.

"Nothing. I had no warrant to breathe a word on the subject. My business it was not; I abstained from making it such."

[Pg 394]"You guessed so deep a secret, and did not hint that you guessed it?"

"Is that so difficult?"

"It is not like you."

"How do you know?"

"You are not reserved; you are frankly communicative."

"I may be communicative, yet know where to stop. In showing my treasure I may withhold a gem or two—a curious, unbought graven stone—an amulet of whose mystic glitter I rarely permit even myself a glimpse. Good-day."

Caroline thus seemed to get a view of Shirley's character under a novel aspect. Ere long the prospect was renewed; it opened upon her.

No sooner had she regained sufficient strength to bear a change of scene—the excitement of a little society—than Miss Keeldar sued daily for her presence at Fieldhead. Whether Shirley had become wearied of her honoured relatives is not known. She did not say she was; but she claimed and retained Caroline with an eagerness which proved that an addition to that worshipful company was not unwelcome.

The Sympsons were church people. Of course the rector's niece was received by them with courtesy. Mr. Sympson proved to be a man of spotless respectability, worrying temper, pious principles, and worldly views; his lady was a very good woman—patient, kind, well-bred. She had been brought up on a narrow system of views, starved on a few prejudices—a mere handful of bitter herbs; a few preferences, soaked till their natural flavour was extracted, and with no seasoning added in the cooking; some excellent principles, made up in a stiff raised crust of bigotry difficult to digest. Far too submissive was she to complain of this diet or to ask for a crumb beyond it.

The daughters were an example to their sex. They were tall, with a Roman nose apiece. They had been educated faultlessly. All they did was well done. History and the most solid books had cultivated their minds. Principles and opinions they possessed which could not be mended. More exactly-regulated lives, feelings, manners, habits, it would have been difficult to find anywhere. They knew by heart a certain young-ladies'-schoolroom code of laws on language, demeanour, etc.; themselves never deviated from its curious little pragmatical provisions, and they regarded with secret whispered horror all deviations in others. The[Pg 395] Abomination of Desolation was no mystery to them; they had discovered that unutterable Thing in the characteristic others call Originality. Quick were they to recognize the signs of this evil; and wherever they saw its trace—whether in look, word, or deed; whether they read it in the fresh, vigorous style of a book, or listened to it in interesting, unhackneyed, pure, expressive language—they shuddered, they recoiled. Danger was above their heads, peril about their steps. What was this strange thing? Being unintelligible it must be bad. Let it be denounced and chained up.

Henry Sympson, the only son and youngest child of the family, was a boy of fifteen. He generally kept with his tutor. When he left him, he sought his cousin Shirley. This boy differed from his sisters. He was little, lame, and pale; his large eyes shone somewhat languidly in a wan orbit. They were, indeed, usually rather dim, but they were capable of illumination. At times they could not only shine, but blaze. Inward emotion could likewise give colour to his cheek and decision to his crippled movements. Henry's mother loved him; she thought his peculiarities were a mark of election. He was not like other children, she allowed. She believed him regenerate—a new Samuel—called of God from his birth. He was to be a clergyman. Mr. and the Misses Sympson, not understanding the youth, let him much alone. Shirley made him her pet, and he made Shirley his playmate.

In the midst of this family circle, or rather outside it, moved the tutor—the satellite.

Yes, Louis Moore was a satellite of the house of Sympson—connected, yet apart; ever attendant, ever distant. Each member of that correct family treated him with proper dignity. The father was austerely civil, sometimes irritable; the mother, being a kind woman, was attentive, but formal; the daughters saw in him an abstraction, not a man. It seemed, by their manner, that their brother's tutor did not live for them. They were learned; so was he—but not for them. They were accomplished; he had talents too, imperceptible to their senses. The most spirited sketch from his fingers was a blank to their eyes; the most original observation from his lips fell unheard on their ears. Nothing could exceed the propriety of their behaviour.

I should have said nothing could have equalled it; but I remember a fact which strangely astonished Caroline[Pg 396] Helstone. It was—to discover that her cousin had absolutely no sympathizing friend at Fieldhead; that to Miss Keeldar he was as much a mere teacher, as little a gentleman, as little a man, as to the estimable Misses Sympson.

What had befallen the kind-hearted Shirley that she should be so indifferent to the dreary position of a fellow-creature thus isolated under her roof? She was not, perhaps, haughty to him, but she never noticed him—she let him alone. He came and went, spoke or was silent, and she rarely recognized his existence.

As to Louis Moore himself, he had the air of a man used to this life, and who had made up his mind to bear it for a time. His faculties seemed walled up in him, and were unmurmuring in their captivity. He never laughed; he seldom smiled; he was uncomplaining. He fulfilled the round of his duties scrupulously. His pupil loved him; he asked nothing more than civility from the rest of the world. It even appeared that he would accept nothing more—in that abode at least; for when his cousin Caroline made gentle overtures of friendship, he did not encourage them—he rather avoided than sought her. One living thing alone, besides his pale, crippled scholar, he fondled in the house, and that was the ruffianly Tartar, who, sullen and impracticable to others, acquired a singular partiality for him—a partiality so marked that sometimes, when Moore, summoned to a meal, entered the room and sat down unwelcomed, Tartar would rise from his lair at Shirley's feet and betake himself to the taciturn tutor. Once—but once—she noticed the desertion, and holding out her white hand, and speaking softly, tried to coax him back. Tartar looked, slavered, and sighed, as his manner was, but yet disregarded the invitation, and coolly settled himself on his haunches at Louis Moore's side. That gentleman drew the dog's big, black-muzzled head on to his knee, patted him, and smiled one little smile to himself.

An acute observer might have remarked, in the course of the same evening, that after Tartar had resumed his allegiance to Shirley, and was once more couched near her footstool, the audacious tutor by one word and gesture fascinated him again. He pricked up his ears at the word; he started erect at the gesture, and came, with head lovingly depressed, to receive the expected caress. As it was given, the significant smile again rippled across Moore's quiet face.

[Pg 397]

"Shirley," said Caroline one day, as they two were sitting alone in the summer-house, "did you know that my cousin Louis was tutor in your uncle's family before the Sympsons came down here?"

Shirley's reply was not so prompt as her responses usually were, but at last she answered, "Yes—of course; I knew it well."

"I thought you must have been aware of the circumstance."

"Well! what then?"

"It puzzles me to guess how it chanced that you never mentioned it to me."

"Why should it puzzle you?"

"It seems odd. I cannot account for it. You talk a great deal—you talk freely. How was that circumstance never touched on?"

"Because it never was," and Shirley laughed.

"You are a singular being!" observed her friend. "I thought I knew you quite well; I begin to find myself mistaken. You were silent as the grave about Mrs.