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

the furrow where the mighty husbandman with the scythe deposits the seed he has shaken from the ripe stem; and there it falls, decays, and thence it springs again, when the world has rolled round a few times more. So much for the body. The soul meantime wings its long flight upward, folds its wings on the brink of the sea of fire and glass, and gazing down through the burning clearness, finds there mirrored the vision of the Christian’s triple Godhead⁠—the sovereign Father, the mediating Son, the Creator Spirit. Such words, at least, have been chosen to express what is inexpressible, to describe what baffles description. The soul’s real hereafter who shall guess?”

Her fire was decayed to its last cinder; Malone had departed; and now the study bell rang for prayers.

The next day Caroline had to spend altogether alone, her uncle being gone to dine with his friend Dr. Boultby, vicar of Whinbury. The whole time she was talking inwardly in the same strain⁠—looking forwards, asking what she was to do with life. Fanny, as she passed in and out of the room occasionally, intent on housemaid errands, perceived that her young mistress sat very still. She was always in the same place, always bent industriously over a piece of work. She did not lift her head to speak to Fanny, as her custom was; and when the latter remarked that the day was fine, and she ought to take a walk, she only said, “It is cold.”

“You are very diligent at that sewing, Miss Caroline,” continued the girl, approaching her little table.

“I am tired of it, Fanny.”

“Then why do you go on with it? Put it down. Read, or do something to amuse you.”

“It is solitary in this house, Fanny. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t find it so, miss. Me and Eliza are company for one another; but you are quite too still. You should visit more. Now, be persuaded: go upstairs and dress yourself smart, and go and take tea, in a friendly way, with Miss Mann or Miss Ainley. I am certain either of those ladies would be delighted to see you.”

“But their houses are dismal: they are both old maids. I am certain old maids are a very unhappy race.”

“Not they, miss. They can’t be unhappy; they take such care of themselves. They are all selfish.”

“Miss Ainley is not selfish, Fanny. She is always doing good. How devotedly kind she was to her stepmother as long as the old lady lived; and now when she is quite alone in the world, without brother or sister, or anyone to care for her, how charitable she is to the poor, as far as her means permit! Still nobody thinks much of her, or has pleasure in going to see her; and how gentlemen always sneer at her!”

“They shouldn’t, miss. I believe she is a good woman. But gentlemen think only of ladies’ looks.”

“I’ll go and see her,” exclaimed Caroline, starting up; “and if she asks me to stay to tea, I’ll stay. How wrong it is to neglect people because they are not pretty, and young, and merry! And I will certainly call to see Miss Mann too. She may not be amiable, but what has made her unamiable? What has life been to her?”

Fanny helped Miss Helstone to put away her work, and afterwards assisted her to dress.

“You’ll not be an old maid, Miss Caroline,” she said, as she tied the sash of her brown silk frock, having previously smoothed her soft, full, and shining curls; “there are no signs of an old maid about you.”

Caroline looked at the little mirror before her, and she thought there were some signs. She could see that she was altered within the last month; that the hues of her complexion were paler, her eyes changed⁠—a wan shade seemed to circle them; her countenance was dejected⁠—she was not, in short, so pretty or so fresh as she used to be. She distantly hinted this to Fanny, from whom she got no direct answer, only a remark that people did vary in their looks, but that at her age a little falling away signified nothing; she would soon come round again, and be plumper and rosier than ever. Having given this assurance, Fanny showed singular zeal in wrapping her up in warm shawls and handkerchiefs, till Caroline, nearly smothered with the weight, was fain to resist further additions.

She paid her visits⁠—first to Miss Mann, for this was the most difficult point. Miss Mann was certainly not quite a lovable person. Till now, Caroline had always unhesitatingly declared she disliked her, and more than once she had joined her cousin Robert in laughing at some of her peculiarities. Moore was not habitually given to sarcasm, especially on anything humbler or weaker than himself; but he had once or twice happened to be in the room when Miss Mann had made a call on his sister, and after listening to her conversation and viewing her features for a time, he had gone out into the garden where his little cousin was tending some of his favourite flowers, and while standing near and watching her he had amused himself with comparing fair youth, delicate and attractive, with shrivelled eld, livid and loveless, and in jestingly repeating to a smiling girl the vinegar discourse of a cankered old maid. Once on such an occasion Caroline had said to him, looking up from the luxuriant creeper she was binding to its frame, “Ah! Robert, you do not like old maids. I, too, should come under the lash of your sarcasm if I were an old maid.”

“You an old maid!” he had replied. “A piquant notion suggested by lips of that tint and form. I can fancy you, though, at forty, quietly dressed, pale and sunk, but still with that straight nose, white forehead, and those soft eyes. I suppose, too, you will keep your voice, which has another ‘timbre’ than that hard, deep organ of Miss Mann’s.