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

with scorn, as she surveyed the little poems cursorily. I chid her. ‘Ma cousine,’ said she, ‘tout cela m’ennuie à la mort.’ I told her this was improper language. ‘Dieu!’ she exclaimed, ‘il n’y a donc pas deux lignes de poësie dans toute la littérature française?’ I inquired what she meant. She begged my pardon with proper submission. Ere long she was still. I saw her smiling to herself over the book. She began to learn assiduously. In half an hour she came and stood before me, presented the volume, folded her hands, as I always require her to do, and commenced the repetition of that short thing by Chénier, ‘La Jeune Captive.’ If you had heard the manner in which she went through this, and in which she uttered a few incoherent comments when she had done, you would have known what I meant by the phrase ‘unsettled hurry.’ One would have thought Chénier was more moving than all Racine and all Corneille. You, brother, who have so much sagacity, will discern that this disproportionate preference argues an ill-regulated mind; but she is fortunate in her preceptress. I will give her a system, a method of thought, a set of opinions; I will give her the perfect control and guidance of her feelings.”

“Be sure you do, Hortense. Here she comes. That was her shadow passed the window, I believe.”

“Ah! truly. She is too early⁠—half an hour before her time.⁠—My child, what brings you here before I have breakfasted?”

This question was addressed to an individual who now entered the room, a young girl, wrapped in a winter mantle, the folds of which were gathered with some grace round an apparently slender figure.

“I came in haste to see how you were, Hortense, and how Robert was too. I was sure you would be both grieved by what happened last night. I did not hear till this morning. My uncle told me at breakfast.”

“Ah! it is unspeakable. You sympathize with us? Your uncle sympathizes with us?”

“My uncle is very angry⁠—but he was with Robert, I believe, was he not?⁠—Did he not go with you to Stilbro’ Moor?”

“Yes, we set out in very martial style, Caroline; but the prisoners we went to rescue met us halfway.”

“Of course nobody was hurt?”

“Why, no; only Joe Scott’s wrists were a little galled with being pinioned too tightly behind his back.”

“You were not there? You were not with the wagons when they were attacked?”

“No. One seldom has the fortune to be present at occurrences at which one would particularly wish to assist.”

“Where are you going this morning? I saw Murgatroyd saddling your horse in the yard.”

“To Whinbury. It is market day.”

“Mr. Yorke is going too. I met him in his gig. Come home with him.”

“Why?”

“Two are better than one, and nobody dislikes Mr. Yorke⁠—at least, poor people do not dislike him.”

“Therefore he would be a protection to me, who am hated?”

“Who are misunderstood. That, probably, is the word. Shall you be late?⁠—Will he be late, Cousin Hortense?”

“It is too probable. He has often much business to transact at Whinbury. Have you brought your exercise-book, child?”

“Yes.⁠—What time will you return, Robert?”

“I generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at home earlier?”

“Try rather to be back by six. It is not absolutely dark at six now, but by seven daylight is quite gone.”

“And what danger is to be apprehended, Caroline, when daylight is gone? What peril do you conceive comes as the companion of darkness for me?”

“I am not sure that I can define my fears, but we all have a certain anxiety at present about our friends. My uncle calls these times dangerous. He says, too, that mill-owners are unpopular.”

“And I am one of the most unpopular? Is not that the fact? You are reluctant to speak out plainly, but at heart you think me liable to Pearson’s fate, who was shot at⁠—not, indeed, from behind a hedge, but in his own house, through his staircase window, as he was going to bed.”

“Anne Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber-door,” remarked Caroline gravely, as she folded her mantle and arranged it and her muff on a side-table. “You know,” she continued, “there is a hedge all the way along the road from here to Whinbury, and there are the Fieldhead plantations to pass; but you will be back by six⁠—or before?”

“Certainly he will,” affirmed Hortense. “And now, my child, prepare your lessons for repetition, while I put the peas to soak for the purée at dinner.”

With this direction she left the room.

“You suspect I have many enemies, then, Caroline,” said Mr. Moore, “and doubtless you know me to be destitute of friends?”

“Not destitute, Robert. There is your sister, your brother Louis, whom I have never seen; there is Mr. Yorke, and there is my uncle⁠—besides, of course, many more.”

Robert smiled. “You would be puzzled to name your ‘many more,’ ” said he. “But show me your exercise-book. What extreme pains you take with the writing! My sister, I suppose, exacts this care. She wants to form you in all things after the model of a Flemish schoolgirl. What life are you destined for, Caroline? What will you do with your French, drawing, and other accomplishments, when they are acquired?”

“You may well say, when they are acquired; for, as you are aware, till Hortense began to teach me, I knew precious little. As to the life I am destined for, I cannot tell. I suppose to keep my uncle’s house till⁠—” She hesitated.

“Till what? Till he dies?”

“No. How harsh to say that! I never think of his dying. He is only fifty-five. But till⁠—in short, till events offer other occupations for me.”

“A remarkably vague prospect! Are you content with it?”

“I used to be, formerly. Children, you know, have little reflection, or rather their reflections run on ideal themes. There are moments now when I am not quite satisfied.”

“Why?”

“I am making no money⁠—earning nothing.”

“You come to the point, Lina. You too,