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

sent me your portrait, taken at eight years old; that portrait confirmed my fears. Had it shown me a sunburnt little rustic⁠—a heavy, blunt-featured, commonplace child⁠—I should have hastened to claim you; but there, under the silver paper, I saw blooming the delicacy of an aristocratic flower⁠—‘little lady’ was written on every trait. I had too recently crawled from under the yoke of the fine gentleman⁠—escaped galled, crushed, paralyzed, dying⁠—to dare to encounter his still finer and most fairy-like representative. My sweet little lady overwhelmed me with dismay; her air of native elegance froze my very marrow. In my experience I had not met with truth, modesty, good principle as the concomitants of beauty. A form so straight and fine, I argued, must conceal a mind warped and cruel. I had little faith in the power of education to rectify such a mind; or rather, I entirely misdoubted my own ability to influence it. Caroline, I dared not undertake to rear you. I resolved to leave you in your uncle’s hands. Matthewson Helstone I knew, if an austere, was an upright man. He and all the world thought hardly of me for my strange, unmotherly resolve, and I deserved to be misjudged.”

“Mamma, why did you call yourself Mrs. Pryor?”

“It was a name in my mother’s family. I adopted it that I might live unmolested. My married name recalled too vividly my married life; I could not bear it. Besides, threats were uttered of forcing me to return to bondage. It could not be. Rather a bier for a bed, the grave for a home. My new name sheltered me. I resumed under its screen my old occupation of teaching. At first it scarcely procured me the means of sustaining life; but how savoury was hunger when I fasted in peace! How safe seemed the darkness and chill of an unkindled hearth when no lurid reflection from terror crimsoned its desolation! How serene was solitude, when I feared not the irruption of violence and vice!”

“But, mamma, you have been in this neighbourhood before. How did it happen that when you reappeared here with Miss Keeldar you were not recognized?”

“I only paid a short visit, as a bride, twenty years ago, and then I was very different to what I am now⁠—slender, almost as slender as my daughter is at this day. My complexion, my very features are changed; my hair, my style of dress⁠—everything is altered. You cannot fancy me a slim young person, attired in scanty drapery of white muslin, with bare arms, bracelets and necklace of beads, and hair disposed in round Grecian curls above my forehead?”

“You must, indeed, have been different. Mamma, I heard the front door open. If it is my uncle coming in, just ask him to step upstairs, and let me hear his assurance that I am truly awake and collected, and not dreaming or delirious.”

The rector, of his own accord, was mounting the stairs, and Mrs. Pryor summoned him to his niece’s apartment.

“She’s not worse, I hope?” he inquired hastily.

“I think her better. She is disposed to converse; she seems stronger.”

“Good!” said he, brushing quickly into the room.⁠—“Ha, Cary! how do? Did you drink my cup of tea? I made it for you just as I like it myself.”

“I drank it every drop, uncle. It did me good; it has made me quite alive. I have a wish for company, so I begged Mrs. Pryor to call you in.”

The respected ecclesiastic looked pleased, and yet embarrassed. He was willing enough to bestow his company on his sick niece for ten minutes, since it was her whim to wish it; but what means to employ for her entertainment he knew not. He hemmed⁠—he fidgeted.

“You’ll be up in a trice,” he observed, by way of saying something. “The little weakness will soon pass off; and then you must drink port wine⁠—a pipe, if you can⁠—and eat game and oysters. I’ll get them for you, if they are to be had anywhere. Bless me! we’ll make you as strong as Samson before we’re done with you.”

“Who is that lady, uncle, standing beside you at the bed-foot?”

“Good God!” he ejaculated. “She’s not wandering, is she, ma’am?”

Mrs. Pryor smiled.

“I am wandering in a pleasant world,” said Caroline, in a soft, happy voice, “and I want you to tell me whether it is real or visionary. What lady is that? Give her a name, uncle.”

“We must have Dr. Rile again, ma’am; or better still, MacTurk. He’s less of a humbug. Thomas must saddle the pony and go for him.”

“No; I don’t want a doctor. Mamma shall be my only physician. Now, do you understand, uncle?”

Mr. Helstone pushed up his spectacles from his nose to his forehead, handled his snuffbox, and administered to himself a portion of the contents. Thus fortified, he answered briefly, “I see daylight. You’ve told her then, ma’am?”

“And is it true?” demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. “Is she really my mother?”

“You won’t cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if I answer Yes?”

“Cry! I’d cry if you said No. It would be terrible to be disappointed now. But give her a name. How do you call her?”

“I call this stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough to wear much smarter raiment, if she would⁠—I call her Agnes Helstone. She married my brother James, and is his widow.”

“And my mother?”

“What a little sceptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor, scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and eagerness.” To Caroline⁠—“She had the trouble of bringing you into the world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting well, and repairing the waste of these cheeks.⁠—Heigh-ho! she used to be plump. What she has done with it all I can’t, for the life of me, divine.”

“If wishing to get well will help me, I shall not be long sick. This morning I had no reason and no strength to wish it.”

Fanny here tapped at the door, and said