Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

their curates, and their churchwardens now issued from the church porch. There was a great confabulation, shaking of hands, congratulation on speeches, recommendation to be careful of the night air, etc. By degrees the throng dispersed, the carriages drove off. Miss Keeldar was just emerging from her flowery refuge when Mr. Helstone entered the garden and met her.

“Oh, I want you!” he said. “I was afraid you were already gone.⁠—Caroline, come here.”

Caroline came, expecting, as Shirley did, a lecture on not having been visible at church. Other subjects, however, occupied the rector’s mind.

“I shall not sleep at home tonight,” he continued. “I have just met with an old friend, and promised to accompany him. I shall return probably about noon tomorrow. Thomas, the clerk, is engaged, and I cannot get him to sleep in the house, as I usually do when I am absent for a night. Now⁠—”

“Now,” interrupted Shirley, “you want me as a gentleman⁠—the first gentleman in Briarfield, in short⁠—to supply your place, be master of the rectory and guardian of your niece and maids while you are away?”

“Exactly, captain. I thought the post would suit you. Will you favour Caroline so far as to be her guest for one night? Will you stay here instead of going back to Fieldhead?”

“And what will Mrs. Pryor do? she expects me home.”

“I will send her word. Come, make up your mind to stay. It grows late; the dew falls heavily. You and Caroline will enjoy each other’s society, I doubt not.”

“I promise you, then, to stay with Caroline,” replied Shirley. “As you say, we shall enjoy each other’s society. We will not be separated tonight. Now, rejoin your old friend, and fear nothing for us.”

“If there should chance to be any disturbance in the night, captain; if you should hear the picking of a lock, the cutting out of a pane of glass, a stealthy tread of steps about the house (and I need not fear to tell you, who bear a well-tempered, mettlesome heart under your girl’s ribbon sash, that such little incidents are very possible in the present time), what would you do?”

“Don’t know; faint, perhaps⁠—fall down, and have to be picked up again. But, doctor, if you assign me the post of honour, you must give me arms. What weapons are there in your stronghold?”

“You could not wield a sword?”

“No; I could manage the carving-knife better.”

“You will find a good one in the dining-room sideboard⁠—a lady’s knife, light to handle, and as sharp-pointed as a poniard.”

“It will suit Caroline. But you must give me a brace of pistols. I know you have pistols.”

“I have two pairs. One pair I can place at your disposal. You will find them suspended over the mantelpiece of my study in cloth cases.”

“Loaded?”

“Yes, but not on the cock. Cock them before you go to bed. It is paying you a great compliment, captain, to lend you these. Were you one of the awkward squad you should not have them.”

“I will take care. You need delay no longer, Mr. Helstone. You may go now.⁠—He is gracious to me to lend me his pistols,” she remarked, as the rector passed out at the garden gate. “But come, Lina,” she continued, “let us go in and have some supper. I was too much vexed at tea with the vicinage of Mr. Sam Wynne to be able to eat, and now I am really hungry.”

Entering the house, they repaired to the darkened dining-room, through the open windows of which apartment stole the evening air, bearing the perfume of flowers from the garden, the very distant sound of far-retreating steps from the road, and a soft, vague murmur whose origin Caroline explained by the remark, uttered as she stood listening at the casement, “Shirley, I hear the beck in the Hollow.”

Then she rang the bell, asked for a candle and some bread and milk⁠—Miss Keeldar’s usual supper and her own. Fanny, when she brought in the tray, would have closed the windows and the shutters, but was requested to desist for the present. The twilight was too calm, its breath too balmy to be yet excluded. They took their meal in silence. Caroline rose once to remove to the windowsill a glass of flowers which stood on the sideboard, the exhalation from the blossoms being somewhat too powerful for the sultry room. In returning she half opened a drawer, and took from it something that glittered clear and keen in her hand.

“You assigned this to me, then, Shirley, did you? It is bright, keen-edged, finely tapered; it is dangerous-looking. I never yet felt the impulse which could move me to direct this against a fellow-creature. It is difficult to fancy that circumstances could nerve my arm to strike home with this long knife.”

“I should hate to do it,” replied Shirley, “but I think I could do it, if goaded by certain exigencies which I can imagine.” And Miss Keeldar quietly sipped her glass of new milk, looking somewhat thoughtful and a little pale; though, indeed, when did she not look pale? She was never florid.

The milk sipped and the bread eaten, Fanny was again summoned. She and Eliza were recommended to go to bed, which they were quite willing to do, being weary of the day’s exertions, of much cutting of currant-buns, and filling of urns and teapots, and running backwards and forwards with trays. Ere long the maids’ chamber door was heard to close. Caroline took a candle and went quietly all over the house, seeing that every window was fast and every door barred. She did not even evade the haunted back kitchen nor the vault-like cellars. These visited, she returned.

“There is neither spirit nor flesh in the house at present,” she said, “which should not be there. It is now near eleven o’clock, fully bedtime; yet I would rather sit up a little longer, if you do not object, Shirley. Here,” she continued, “I have brought the brace of pistols from my uncle’s study. You may examine