Her usual manner being resumed, she proceeded to talk of ordinary topics. In a miscellaneous company Mrs. Pryor rarely opened her lips, or, if obliged to speak, she spoke under restraint, and consequently not well; in dialogue she was a good converser. Her language, always a little formal, was well chosen; her sentiments were just; her information was varied and correct. Caroline felt it pleasant to listen to her, more pleasant than she could have anticipated.
On the wall opposite the sofa where they sat hung three pictures — the centre one, above the mantelpiece, that of a lady; the two others, male portraits.
“That is a beautiful face,” said Mrs. Pryor, interrupting a brief pause which had followed half an hour’s animated conversation. “The features may be termed perfect; no statuary’s chisel could improve them. It is a portrait from the life, I presume?”
“It is a portrait of Mrs. Helstone.”
“Of Mrs. Matthewson Helstone? Of your uncle’s wife?”
“It is, and is said to be a good likeness. Before her marriage she was accounted the beauty of the district.”
“I should say she merited the distinction. What accuracy in all the lineaments! It is, however, a passive face. The original could not have been what is generally termed ‘a woman of spirit.’”
“I believe she was a remarkably still, silent person.”
“One would scarcely have expected, my dear, that your uncle’s choice should have fallen on a partner of that description. Is he not fond of being amused by lively chat?”
“In company he is. But he always says he could never do with a talking wife. He must have quiet at home. You go out to gossip, he affirms; you come home to read and reflect.”
“Mrs. Matthewson lived but a few years after her marriage, I think I have heard?”
“About five years.”
“Well, my dear,” pursued Mrs. Pryor, rising to go, “I trust it is understood that you will frequently come to Fieldhead. I hope you will. You must feel lonely here, having no female relative in the house; you must necessarily pass much of your time in solitude.”
“I am inured to it. I have grown up by myself. May I arrange your shawl for you?”
Mrs. Pryor submitted to be assisted.
“Should you chance to require help in your studies,” she said, “you may command me.”
Caroline expressed her sense of such kindness.
“I hope to have frequent conversations with you. I should wish to be of use to you.”
Again Miss Helstone returned thanks. She thought what a kind heart was hidden under her visitor’s seeming chilliness. Observing that Mrs. Pryor again glanced with an air of interest towards the portraits, as she walked down the room, Caroline casually explained: “The likeness that hangs near the window, you will see, is my uncle, taken twenty years ago; the other, to the left of the mantelpiece, is his brother James, my father.”
“They resemble each other in some measure,” said Mrs. Pryor; “yet a difference of character may be traced in the different mould of the brow and mouth.”
“What difference?” inquired Caroline, accompanying her to the door. “James Helstone — that is, my father — is generally considered the best-looking of the two. Strangers, I remark, always exclaim, ‘What a handsome man!’ Do you think his picture handsome, Mrs. Pryor?”
“It is much softer or finer featured than that of your uncle.”
“But where or what is the difference of character to which you alluded? Tell me. I wish to see if you guess right.”
“My dear, your uncle is a man of principle. His forehead and his lips are firm, and his eye is steady.”
“Well, and the other? Do not be afraid of offending me. I always like the truth.”
“Do you like the truth? It is well for you. Adhere to that preference — never swerve thence. The other, my dear, if he had been living now, would probably have furnished little support to his daughter. It is, however, a graceful head — taken in youth, I should think. My dear” (turning abruptly), “you acknowledge an inestimable value in principle?”
“I am sure no character can have true worth without it.”
“You feel what you say? You have considered the subject?”
“Often. Circumstances early forced it upon my attention.”
“The lesson was not lost, then, though it came so prematurely. I suppose the soil is not light nor stony, otherwise seed falling in that season never would have borne fruit. My dear, do not stand in the air of the door; you will take cold. Good-afternoon.”
Miss Helstone’s new acquaintance soon became of value to her: their society was acknowledged a privilege. She found she would have been in error indeed to have let slip this chance of relief, to have neglected to avail herself of this happy change. A turn was thereby given to her thoughts; a new channel was opened for them, which, diverting a few of them at least from the one direction in which all had hitherto tended, abated the impetuosity of their rush, and lessened the force of their pressure on one worn-down point.
Soon she was content to spend whole days at Fieldhead, doing by turns whatever Shirley or Mrs. Pryor wished her to do; and now one would claim her, now the other. Nothing could be less demonstrative than the friendship of the elder lady, but also nothing could be more vigilant, assiduous, untiring. I have intimated that she was a peculiar personage, and in nothing was her peculiarity more shown than in the nature of the interest she evinced for Caroline. She watched all her movements; she seemed as if she would have guarded all her steps. It gave her pleasure to be applied to by Miss Helstone for advice and assistance. She yielded her aid, when asked, with such quiet yet obvious enjoyment that Caroline ere long took delight in depending on her.
Shirley Keeldar’s complete docility with Mrs. Pryor had at first surprised Miss Helstone, and not less the fact of the reserved ex-governess being so much at home and at ease in the residence of her young pupil, where she filled with such quiet independency a very dependent post; but she soon found that it needed but to know both ladies to comprehend fully the enigma. Every one, it seemed to her, must like, must love, must prize Mrs. Pryor when they knew her. No matter that she perseveringly wore old-fashioned gowns; that her speech was formal and her manner cool; that she had twenty little ways such as nobody else had: she was still such a stay, such a counsellor, so truthful, so kind in her way, that, in Caroline’s idea, none once accustomed to her presence could easily afford to dispense with it.
As to dependency or humiliation, Caroline did not feel it in her intercourse with Shirley, and why should Mrs. Pryor? The heiress was rich — very rich — compared with her new friend: one possessed a clear thousand a year, the other not a penny; and yet there was a safe sense of equality experienced in her society, never known in that of the ordinary Briarfield and Whinbury gentry.
The reason was, Shirley’s head ran on other things than money and position. She was glad to be independent as to property; by fits she was even elated at the notion of being lady of the manor, and having tenants and an estate. She was especially tickled with an agreeable complacency when reminded of “all that property” down in the Hollow, “comprising an excellent cloth-mill, dyehouse, warehouse, together with the messuage, gardens, and outbuildings, termed Hollow’s Cottage;” but her exultation being quite undisguised was singularly inoffensive; and, for her serious thoughts, they tended elsewhere. To admire the great, reverence the good, and be joyous with the genial, was very much the bent of Shirley’s soul: she mused, therefore, on the means of following this bent far oftener than she pondered on her social superiority.
In Caroline Miss Keeldar had first taken an interest because she was quiet, retiring, looked delicate, and seemed as if she needed some one to take care of her. Her predilection increased greatly when she discovered that her own way of thinking and talking was understood and responded to by this new acquaintance. She had hardly expected it. Miss Helstone, she fancied, had too pretty a face, manners and voice too soft, to be anything out of the common way in m
ind and attainments; and she very much wondered to see the gentle features light up archly to the reveille of a dry sally or two risked by herself; and more did she wonder to discover the self-won knowledge treasured, and the untaught speculations working in that girlish, curl-veiled head. Caroline’s instinct of taste, too, was like her own. Such books as Miss Keeldar had read with the most pleasure were Miss Helstone’s delight also. They held many aversions too in common, and could have the comfort of laughing together over works of false sentimentality and pompous pretension.
Few, Shirley conceived, men or women have the right taste in poetry, the right sense for discriminating between what is real and what is false. She had again and again heard very clever people pronounce this or that passage, in this or that versifier, altogether admirable, which, when she read, her soul refused to acknowledge as anything but cant, flourish, and tinsel, or at the best elaborate wordiness, curious, clever, learned, perhaps, haply even tinged with the fascinating hues of fancy, but, God knows, as different from real poetry as the gorgeous and massy vase of mosaic is from the little cup of pure metal; or, to give the reader a choice of similes, as the milliner’s artificial wreath is from the fresh-gathered lily of the field.
Caroline, she found, felt the value of the true ore, and knew the deception of the flashy dross. The minds of the two girls being toned in harmony often chimed very sweetly together.
One evening they chanced to be alone in the oak-parlour. They had passed a long 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 for ever 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 broken-hearted 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 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. Sh
e 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?”
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 79
