Shirley

“Well, well! don’t put on the sabots again. I told you before I thought they were not quite the thing for this country.”

“But, brother, they are not common sabots, such as the peasantry wear. I tell you, they are sabots noirs, tres propres, tres convenables. At Mons and Leuze—cities not very far removed from the elegant capital of Brussels—it is very seldom that the respectable people wear anything else for walking in winter. Let any one try to wade the mud of the Flemish chaussees in a pair of Paris brodequins, on m’en dirait des nouvelles!”

“Never mind Mons and Leuze and the Flemish chaussees; do at Rome as the Romans do. And as to the camisole and jupon, I am not quite sure about them either. I never see an English lady dressed in such garments. Ask Caroline Helstone.”

“Caroline! I ask Caroline? I consult her about my dress? It is she who on all points should consult me. She is a child.”

“She is eighteen, or at least seventeen—old enough to know all about gowns, petticoats, and chaussures.”

“Do not spoil Caroline, I entreat you, brother. Do not make her of more consequence than she ought to be. At present she is modest and unassuming: let us keep her so.”

“With all my heart. Is she coming this morning?”

“She will come at ten, as usual, to take her French lesson.”

“You don’t find that she sneers at you, do you?”

“She does not. She appreciates me better than any one else here; but then she has more intimate opportunities of knowing me. She sees that I have education, intelligence, manner, principles—all, in short, which belongs to a person well born and well bred.”

“Are you at all fond of her?”

“For fond I cannot say. I am not one who is prone to take violent fancies, and, consequently, my friendship is the more to be depended on. I have a regard for her as my relative; her position also inspires interest, and her conduct as my pupil has hitherto been such as rather to enhance than diminish the attachment that springs from other causes.”

“She behaves pretty well at lessons?”

“To me she behaves very well; but you are conscious, brother, that I have a manner calculated to repel over-familiarity, to win esteem, and to command respect. Yet, possessed of penetration, I perceive clearly that Caroline is not perfect, that there is much to be desired in her.”

“Give me a last cup of coffee, and while I am drinking it amuse me with an account of her faults.”

“Dear brother, I am happy to see you eat your breakfast with relish, after the fatiguing night you have passed. Caroline, then, is defective; but with my forming hand and almost motherly care she may improve. There is about her an occasional something—a reserve, I think—which I do not quite like, because it is not sufficiently girlish and submissive; and there are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her nature, which put me out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever disapprove what is not intelligible.”

“I don’t understand your account in the least. What do you mean by ‘unsettled hurries,’ for instance?”

“An example will, perhaps, be the most satisfactory explanation. I sometimes, you are aware, make her read French poetry by way of practice in pronunciation. She has in the course of her lessons gone through much of Corneille and Racine, in a very steady, sober spirit, such as I approve. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of languor in the perusal of those esteemed authors, partaking rather of apathy than sobriety; and apathy is what I cannot tolerate in those who have the benefit of my instructions—besides, one should not be apathetic in studying standard works. The other day I put into her hands a volume of short fugitive pieces. I sent her to the window to learn one by heart, and when I looked up I saw her turning the leaves over impatiently, and curling her lip, absolutely with scorn, as she surveyed the little poems cursorily. I chid her. ‘Ma cousine,’ said she, ‘tout cela m’ennuie a la mort.’ I told her this was improper language. ‘Dieu!’ she exclaimed, ‘il n’y a donc pas deux lignes de poesie dans toute la litterature francaise?’ 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 Chenier, ‘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 Chenier 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 half-way.”

“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 puree 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 school-girl. 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, then, wish to make money?”

“I do. I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, pleasant way of learning a business, and making my way in life.”

“Go on. Let us hear what way.”

“I could be apprenticed to your trade—the cloth-trade. I could learn it of you, as we are distant relations. I would do the counting-house work, keep the books, and write the letters, while you went to market. I know you greatly desire to be rich, in order to pay your father’s debts; perhaps I could help you to get rich.”

“Help me? You should think of yourself.”

“I do think of myself; but must one for ever think only of oneself?”

“Of whom else do I think? Of whom else dare I think? The poor ought to have no large sympathies; it is their duty to be narrow.”

“No, Robert—”

“Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, grovelling, anxious. Now and then a poor man’s heart, when certain beams and dews visit it, may smell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage, perhaps blossom; but he must not encourage the pleasant impulse; he must invoke Prudence to check it, with that frosty breath of hers, which is as nipping as any north wind.”

“No cottage would be happy then.”

“When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the natural, habitual poverty of the working-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in debt. My grub-worm is always a straitened, struggling, care-worn tradesman.”

“Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become too fixed in your mind. It may be presumptuous to say it, but I have the impression that there is something wrong in your notions of the best means of attaining happiness, as there is in—” Second hesitation.

“I am all ears, Caroline.”

“In (courage! let me speak the truth)—in your manner—mind, I say only manner—to these Yorkshire workpeople.”

“You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not?”

“Yes; often—very often.”

“The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I am not proud. What has a man in my position to be proud of? I am only taciturn, phlegmatic, and joyless.”

“As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and shears. In your own house you seem different.”

“To those of my own house I am no alien, which I am to these English clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, but acting is not my forte. I find them irrational, perverse; they hinder me when I long to hurry forward. In treating them justly I fulfil my whole duty towards them.”

“You don’t expect them to love you, of course?”

“Nor wish it.”

“Ah!” said the monitress, shaking her head and heaving a deep sigh. With this ejaculation, indicative that she perceived a screw to be loose somewhere, but that it was out of her reach to set it right, she bent over her grammar, and sought the rule and exercise for the day.

“I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline. The attachment of a very few suffices me.”

“If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two before you go?”

“First let me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, I think?”

“Such as you generally make for me and Hortense; not your own broad points.”

“If I were of Louis’s calling I might stay at home and dedicate this morning to you and your studies, whereas I must spend it in Skyes’s wool-warehouse.”

“You will be making money.”

“More likely losing it.”

As he finished mending the pens, a horse, saddled and bridled, was brought up to the garden-gate.

“There, Fred is ready for me; I must go. I’ll take one look to see what the spring has done in the south border, too, first.”

He quitted the room, and went out into the garden ground behind the mill. A sweet fringe of young verdure and opening flowers—snowdrop, crocus, even primrose—bloomed in the sunshine under the hot wall of the factory Moore plucked here and there a blossom and leaf, till he had collected a little bouquet. He returned to the parlour, pilfered a thread of silk from his sister’s work-basket, tied the flowers, and laid them on Caroline’s desk.

“Now, good-morning.”

“Thank you, Robert. It is pretty; it looks, as it lies there, like sparkles of sunshine and blue sky. Good-morning.”

He went to the door, stopped, opened his lips as if to speak, said nothing, and moved on. He passed through the wicket, and mounted his horse. In a second he had flung himself from his saddle again, transferred the reins to Murgatroyd, and re-entered the cottage.

“I forgot my gloves,” he said, appearing to take something from the side-table; then, as an impromptu thought, he remarked, “You have no binding engagement at home perhaps, Caroline?”

“I never have. Some children’s socks, which Mrs. Ramsden has ordered, to knit for the Jew’s basket; but they will keep.”

“Jew’s basket be—sold! Never was utensil better named. Anything more Jewish than it—its contents and their prices—cannot be conceived. But I see something, a very tiny curl, at the corners of your lip, which tells me that you know its merits as well as I do. Forget the Jew’s basket, then, and spend the day here as a change. Your uncle won’t break his heart at your absence?”

She smiled. “No.”

“The old Cossack! I dare say not,” muttered Moore.

“Then stay and dine with Hortense; she will be glad of your company. I shall return in good time. We will have a little reading in the evening. The moon rises at half-past eight, and I will walk up to the rectory with you at nine. Do you agree?”

She nodded her head, and her eyes lit up.

Moore lingered yet two minutes. He bent over Caroline’s desk and glanced at her grammar, he fingered her pen, he lifted her bouquet and played with it; his horse stamped impatient; Fred Murgatroyd hemmed and coughed at the gate, as if he wondered what in the world his master was doing. “Good-morning,” again said Moore, and finally vanished.

Hortense, coming in ten minutes after, found, to her surprise, that Caroline had not yet commenced her exercise.

CHAPTER 6 Coriolanus

Mademoiselle Moore had that morning a somewhat absent-minded pupil. Caroline forgot, again and again, the explanations which were given to her. However, she still bore with unclouded mood the chidings her inattention brought upon her. Sitting in the sunshine near the window, she seemed to receive with its warmth a kind influence, which made her both happy and good. Thus disposed, she looked her best, and her best was a pleasing vision.

To her had not been denied the gift of beauty. It was not absolutely necessary to know her in order to like her; she was fair enough to please, even at the first view. Her shape suited her age: it was girlish, light, and pliant; every curve was neat, every limb proportionate; her face was expressive and gentle; her eyes were handsome, and gifted at times with a winning beam that stole into the heart, with a language that spoke softly to the affections. Her mouth was very pretty; she had a delicate skin, and a fine flow of brown hair, which she knew how to arrange with taste; curls became her, and she possessed them in picturesque profusion. Her style of dress announced taste in the wearer—very unobtrusive in fashion, far from costly in material, but suitable in colour to the fair complexion with which it contrasted, and in make to the slight form which it draped. Her present winter garb was of merino—the same soft shade of brown as her hair; the little collar round her neck lay over a pink ribbon, and was fastened with a pink knot. She wore no other decoration.

So much for Caroline Helstone’s appearance. As to her character or intellect, if she had any, they must speak for themselves in due time.

Her connections are soon explained. She was the child of parents separated soon after her birth, in consequence of disagreement of disposition. Her mother was the half-sister of Mr. Moore’s father; thus, though there was no mixture of blood, she was, in a distant sense, the cousin of Robert, Louis, and Hortense. Her father was the brother of Mr. Helstone—a man of the character friends desire not to recall, after death has once settled all earthly accounts. He had rendered his wife unhappy. The reports which were known to be true concerning him had given an air of probability to those which were falsely circulated respecting his better-principled brother. Caroline had never known her mother, as she was taken from her in infancy, and had not since seen her; her father died comparatively young, and her uncle, the rector, had for some years been her sole guardian. He was not, as we are aware, much adapted, either by nature or habits, to have the charge of a young girl. He had taken little trouble about her education; probably he would have taken none if she, finding herself neglected, had not grown anxious on her own account, and asked, every now and then, for a little attention, and for the means of acquiring such amount of knowledge as could not be dispensed with. Still, she had a depressing feeling that she was inferior, that her attainments were fewer than were usually possessed by girls of her age and station; and very glad was she to avail herself of the kind offer made by her cousin Hortense, soon after the arrival of the latter at Hollow’s Mill, to teach her French and fine needle-work. Mdlle. Moore, for her part, delighted in the task, because it gave her importance; she liked to lord it a little over a docile yet quick pupil. She took Caroline precisely at her own estimate, as an irregularly-taught, even ignorant girl; and when she found that she made rapid and eager progress, it was to no talent, no application, in the scholar she ascribed the improvement, but entirely to her own superior method of teaching. When she found that Caroline, unskilled in routine, had a knowledge of her own, desultory but varied, the discovery caused her no surprise, for she still imagined that from her conversation had the girl unawares gleaned these treasures. She thought it even when forced to feel that her pupil knew much on subjects whereof she knew little. The idea was not logical, but Hortense had perfect faith in it.

Mademoiselle, who prided herself on possessing “un esprit positif,” and on entertaining a decided preference for dry studies, kept her young cousin to the same as closely as she could. She worked her unrelentingly at the grammar of the French language, assigning her, as the most improving exercise she could devise, interminable “analyses logiques.” These “analyses” were by no means a source of particular pleasure to Caroline; she thought she could have learned French just as well without them, and grudged excessively the time spent in pondering over “propositions, principales, et incidents;” in deciding the “incidente determinative,” and the “incidente applicative;” in examining whether the proposition was “pleine,” “elliptique,” or “implicite.” Sometimes she lost herself in the maze, and when so lost she would, now and then (while Hortense was rummaging her drawers upstairs—an unaccountable occupation in which she spent a large portion of each day, arranging, disarranging, rearranging, and counter-arranging), carry her book to Robert in the counting-house, and get the rough place made smooth by his aid. Mr. Moore possessed a clear, tranquil brain of his own. Almost as soon as he looked at Caroline’s little difficulties they seemed to dissolve beneath his eye. In two minutes he would explain all, in two words give the key to the puzzle. She thought if Hortense could only teach like him, how much faster she might learn! Repaying him by an admiring and grateful smile, rather shed at his feet than lifted to his face, she would leave the mill reluctantly to go back to the cottage, and then, while she completed the exercise, or worked out the sum (for Mdlle. Moore taught her arithmetic too), she would wish nature had made her a boy instead of a girl, that she might ask Robert to let her be his clerk, and sit with him in the counting-house, instead of sitting with Hortense in the parlour.

Occasionally—but this happened very rarely—she spent the evening at Hollow’s Cottage. Sometimes during these visits Moore was away attending a market; sometimes he was gone to Mr. Yorke’s; often he was engaged with a male visitor in another room; but sometimes, too, he was at home, disengaged, free to talk with Caroline. When this was the case, the evening hours passed on wings of light; they were gone before they were counted. There was no room in England so pleasant as that small parlour when the three cousins occupied it. Hortense, when she was not teaching, or scolding, or cooking, was far from ill-humoured; it was her custom to relax towards evening, and to be kind to her young English kinswoman. There was a means, too, of rendering her delightful, by inducing her to take her guitar and sing and play. She then became quite good-natured. And as she played with skill, and had a well-toned voice, it was not disagreeable to listen to her. It would have been absolutely agreeable, except that her formal and self-important character modulated her strains, as it impressed her manners and moulded her countenance.

Mr. Moore, released from the business yoke, was, if not lively himself, a willing spectator of Caroline’s liveliness, a complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her questions. He was something agreeable to sit near, to hover round, to address and look at. Sometimes he was better than this—almost animated, quite gentle and friendly.

The drawback was that by the next morning he was sure to be frozen up again; and however much he seemed, in his quiet way, to enjoy these social evenings, he rarely contrived their recurrence. This circumstance puzzled the inexperienced head of his cousin. “If I had a means of happiness at my command,” she thought, “I would employ that means often. I would keep it bright with use, and not let it lie for weeks aside, till it gets rusty.”