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

wet day together without ennui. It was now on the edge of dark; candles were not yet brought in; both, as twilight deepened, grew meditative and silent. A western wind roared high round the hall, driving wild clouds and stormy rain up from the far-remote ocean; all was tempest outside the antique lattices, all deep peace within. Shirley sat at the window, watching the rack in heaven, the mist on earth, listening to certain notes of the gale that plained like restless spirits⁠—notes which, had she not been so young, gay, and healthy, would have swept her trembling nerves like some omen, some anticipatory dirge. In this her prime of existence and bloom of beauty they but subdued vivacity to pensiveness. Snatches of sweet ballads haunted her ear; now and then she sang a stanza. Her accents obeyed the fitful impulse of the wind; they swelled as its gusts rushed on, and died as they wandered away. Caroline, withdrawn to the farthest and darkest end of the room, her figure just discernible by the ruby shine of the flameless fire, was pacing to and fro, muttering to herself fragments of well-remembered poetry. She spoke very low, but Shirley heard her; and while singing softly, she listened. This was the strain:⁠—

“Obscurest night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roared,
When such a destined wretch as I,
Washed headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home forever left.”

Here the fragment stopped, because Shirley’s song, erewhile somewhat full and thrilling, had become delicately faint.

“Go on,” said she.

“Then you go on too. I was only repeating ‘The Castaway.’ ”

“I know. If you can remember it all, say it all.”

And as it was nearly dark, and, after all, Miss Keeldar was no formidable auditor, Caroline went through it. She went through it as she should have gone through it. The wild sea, the drowning mariner, the reluctant ship swept on in the storm, you heard were realized by her; and more vividly was realized the heart of the poet, who did not weep for “The Castaway,” but who, in an hour of tearless anguish, traced a semblance to his own God-abandoned misery in the fate of that man-forsaken sailor, and cried from the depths where he struggled⁠—

“No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone,
When, snatched from all effectual aid,
We perished⁠—each alone!
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.”

“I hope William Cowper is safe and calm in heaven now,” said Caroline.

“Do you pity what he suffered on earth?” asked Miss Keeldar.

“Pity him, Shirley? What can I do else? He was nearly brokenhearted when he wrote that poem, and it almost breaks one’s heart to read it. But he found relief in writing it⁠—I know he did; and that gift of poetry⁠—the most divine bestowed on man⁠—was, I believe, granted to allay emotions when their strength threatens harm. It seems to me, Shirley, that nobody should write poetry to exhibit intellect or attainment. Who cares for that sort of poetry? Who cares for learning⁠—who cares for fine words in poetry? And who does not care for feeling⁠—real feeling⁠—however simply, even rudely expressed?”

“It seems you care for it, at all events; and certainly, in hearing that poem, one discovers that Cowper was under an impulse strong as that of the wind which drove the ship⁠—an impulse which, while it would not suffer him to stop to add ornament to a single stanza, filled him with force to achieve the whole with consummate perfection. You managed to recite it with a steady voice, Caroline. I wonder thereat.”

“Cowper’s hand did not tremble in writing the lines. Why should my voice falter in repeating them? Depend on it, Shirley, no tear blistered the manuscript of ‘The Castaway.’ I hear in it no sob of sorrow, only the cry of despair; but, that cry uttered, I believe the deadly spasm passed from his heart, that he wept abundantly, and was comforted.”

Shirley resumed her ballad minstrelsy. Stopping short, she remarked ere long, “One could have loved Cowper, if it were only for the sake of having the privilege of comforting him.”

“You never would have loved Cowper,” rejoined Caroline promptly. “He was not made to be loved by woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. I know there is a kind of natures in the world⁠—and very noble, elevated natures too⁠—whom love never comes near. You might have sought Cowper with the intention of loving him, and you would have looked at him, pitied him, and left him, forced away by a sense of the impossible, the incongruous, as the crew were borne from their drowning comrade by ‘the furious blast.’ ”

“You may be right. Who told you this?”

“And what I say of Cowper, I should say of Rousseau. Was Rousseau ever loved? He loved passionately; but was his passion ever returned? I am certain, never. And if there were any female Cowpers and Rousseaus, I should assert the same of them.”

“Who told you this, I ask? Did Moore?”

“Why should anybody have told me? Have I not an instinct? Can I not divine by analogy? Moore never talked to me either about Cowper, or Rousseau, or love. The voice we hear in solitude told me all I know on these subjects.”

“Do you like characters of the Rousseau order, Caroline?”

“Not at all, as a whole. I sympathize intensely with certain qualities they possess. Certain divine sparks in their nature dazzle my eyes, and make my soul glow. Then, again, I scorn them. They are made of clay and gold. The refuse and the ore make a mass of weakness: taken altogether, I feel them unnatural, unhealthy, repulsive.”

“I dare say I should be more tolerant of a Rousseau than you would, Cary. Submissive and contemplative yourself, you like the stern and the practical. By the way, you must miss that Cousin Robert of yours very much, now that you and he never meet.”

“I do.”

“And he must miss you?”

“That he does not.”

“I cannot imagine,” pursued Shirley, who had