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

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 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 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 kindhearted 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.

“Shirley,” said Caroline one day, as they two were sitting alone in the summerhouse,