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

lately got a habit of introducing Moore’s name into the conversation, even when it seemed to have no business there⁠—“I cannot imagine but that he was fond of you, since he took so much notice of you, talked to you, and taught you so much.”

“He never was fond of me; he never professed to be fond of me. He took pains to prove that he only just tolerated me.”

Caroline, determined not to err on the flattering side in estimating her cousin’s regard for her, always now habitually thought of it and mentioned it in the most scanty measure. She had her own reasons for being less sanguine than ever in hopeful views of the future, less indulgent to pleasurable retrospections of the past.

“Of course, then,” observed Miss Keeldar, “you only just tolerated him in return?”

“Shirley, men and women are so different; they are in such a different position. Women have so few things to think about, men so many. You may have a friendship for a man, while he is almost indifferent to you. Much of what cheers your life may be dependent on him, while not a feeling or interest of moment in his eyes may have reference to you. Robert used to be in the habit of going to London, sometimes for a week or a fortnight together. Well, while he was away, I found his absence a void. There was something wanting; Briarfield was duller. Of course, I had my usual occupations; still I missed him. As I sat by myself in the evenings, I used to feel a strange certainty of conviction I cannot describe, that if a magician or a genius had, at that moment, offered me Prince Ali’s tube (you remember it in the Arabian Nights?), and if, with its aid, I had been enabled to take a view of Robert⁠—to see where he was, how occupied⁠—I should have learned, in a startling manner, the width of the chasm which gaped between such as he and such as I. I knew that, however my thoughts might adhere to him, his were effectually sundered from me.”

“Caroline,” demanded Miss Keeldar abruptly, “don’t you wish you had a profession⁠—a trade?”

“I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often wonder what I came into the world for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill my head and hands and to occupy my thoughts.”

“Can labour alone make a human being happy?”

“No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none.”

“But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make women masculine, coarse, unwomanly.”

“And what does it signify whether unmarried and never-to-be-married women are unattractive and inelegant or not? Provided only they are decent, decorous, and neat, it is enough. The utmost which ought to be required of old maids, in the way of appearance, is that they should not absolutely offend men’s eyes as they pass them in the street; for the rest, they should be allowed, without too much scorn, to be as absorbed, grave, plain-looking, and plain-dressed as they please.”

“You might be an old maid yourself, Caroline, you speak so earnestly.”

“I shall be one. It is my destiny. I will never marry a Malone or a Sykes; and no one else will ever marry me.”

Here fell a long pause. Shirley broke it. Again the name by which she seemed bewitched was almost the first on her lips.

“Lina⁠—did not Moore call you Lina sometimes?”

“Yes. It is sometimes used as the abbreviation of Caroline in his native country.”

“Well, Lina, do you remember my one day noticing an inequality in your hair⁠—a curl wanting on that right side⁠—and your telling me that it was Robert’s fault, as he had once cut therefrom a long lock?”

“Yes.”

“If he is, and always was, as indifferent to you as you say, why did he steal your hair?”

“I don’t know⁠—yes, I do. It was my doing, not his. Everything of that sort always was my doing. He was going from home⁠—to London, as usual; and the night before he went, I had found in his sister’s workbox a lock of black hair⁠—a short, round curl. Hortense told me it was her brother’s, and a keepsake. He was sitting near the table. I looked at his head. He has plenty of hair; on the temples were many such round curls. I thought he could spare me one. I knew I should like to have it, and I asked for it. He said, on condition that he might have his choice of a tress from my head. So he got one of my long locks of hair, and I got one of his short ones. I keep his, but I dare say he has lost mine. It was my doing, and one of those silly deeds it distresses the heart and sets the face on fire to think of; one of those small but sharp recollections that return, lacerating your self-respect like tiny penknives, and forcing from your lips, as you sit alone, sudden, insane-sounding interjections.”

“Caroline!”

“I do think myself a fool, Shirley, in some respects; I do despise myself. But I said I would not make you my confessor, for you cannot reciprocate foible for foible; you are not weak. How steadily you watch me now! Turn aside your clear, strong, she-eagle eye; it is an insult to fix it on me thus.”

“What a study of character you are⁠—weak, certainly, but not in the sense you think!⁠—Come in!”

This was said in answer to a tap at the door. Miss Keeldar happened to be near it at the moment, Caroline at the other end of the room. She saw a note put into Shirley’s hands, and heard the words, “From Mr. Moore, ma’am.”

“Bring candles,” said Miss Keeldar.

Caroline sat expectant.

“A communication on business,” said the heiress; but when candles were brought, she neither opened nor read it. The rector’s Fanny