Shirley
fast flow the heart and mind of reader and listener.
"Now, have you felt Shakespeare?" asked Caroline, some ten minutes after
her cousin had closed the book.
"I think so."
"And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you?"
"Perhaps I have."
"Was he not faulty as well as great?"
Moore nodded.
"And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What
caused him to be banished by his countrymen?"
"What do you think it was?"
"I ask again--
'Whether was it pride,
Which out of daily fortune ever taints
The happy man? whether defect of judgment,
To fail in the disposing of those chances
Which he was lord of? or whether nature,
Not to be other than one thing, not moving
From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace
Even with the same austerity and garb
As he controlled the war?'"
"Well, answer yourself, Sphinx."
"It was a spice of all; and you must not be proud to your workpeople;
you must not neglect chances of soothing them; and you must not be of an
inflexible nature, uttering a request as austerely as if it were a
command."
"That is the moral you tack to the play. What puts such notions into
your head?"
"A wish for your good, a care for your safety, dear Robert, and a fear,
caused by many things which I have heard lately, that you will come to
harm."
"Who tells you these things?"
"I hear my uncle talk about you. He praises your hard spirit, your
determined cast of mind, your scorn of low enemies, your resolution not
'to truckle to the mob,' as he says."
"And would you have me truckle to them?"
"No, not for the world. I never wish you to lower yourself; but somehow
I cannot help thinking it unjust to include all poor working-people
under the general and insulting name of 'the mob,' and continually to
think of them and treat them haughtily."
"You are a little democrat, Caroline. If your uncle knew, what would he
say?"
"I rarely talk to my uncle, as you know, and never about such things. He
thinks everything but sewing and cooking above women's comprehension,
and out of their line."
"And do you fancy you comprehend the subjects on which you advise me?"
"As far as they concern you, I comprehend them. I know it would be
better for you to be loved by your workpeople than to be hated by them,
and I am sure that kindness is more likely to win their regard than
pride. If you were proud and cold to me and Hortense, should we love
you? When you are cold to me, as you _are_ sometimes, can I venture to
be affectionate in return?"
"Now, Lina, I've had my lesson both in languages and ethics, with a
touch on politics; it is your turn. Hortense tells me you were much
taken by a little piece of poetry you learned the other day, a piece by
poor André Chénier--'La Jeune Captive.' Do you remember it still?"
"I think so."
"Repeat it, then. Take your time and mind your accent; especially let us
have no English _u_'s."
Caroline, beginning in a low, rather tremulous voice, but gaining
courage as she proceeded, repeated the sweet verses of Chénier. The last
three stanzas she rehearsed well.
"Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin!
Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin
J'ai passé le premiers à peine.
Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé,
Un instant seulement mes lèvres ont pressé
La coupe en mes mains encore pleine.
"Je ne suis qu'au printemps--je veux voir la moisson;
Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison,
Je veux achever mon année,
Brillante sur ma tige, et l'honneur du jardin
Je n'ai vu luire encore que les feux du matin,
Je veux achever ma journée!"
Moore listened at first with his eyes cast down, but soon he furtively
raised them. Leaning back in his chair he could watch Caroline without
her perceiving where his gaze was fixed. Her cheek had a colour, her
eyes a light, her countenance an expression this evening which would
have made even plain features striking; but there was not the grievous
defect of plainness to pardon in her case. The sunshine was not shed on
rough barrenness; it fell on soft bloom. Each lineament was turned with
grace; the whole aspect was pleasing. At the present moment--animated,
interested, touched--she might be called beautiful. Such a face was
calculated to awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant
one of admiration, but some feeling more tender, genial,
intimate--friendship, perhaps, affection, interest. When she had
finished, she turned to Moore, and met his eye.
"Is that pretty well repeated?" she inquired, smiling like any happy,
docile child.
"I really don't know."
"Why don't you know? Have you not listened?"
"Yes--and looked. You are fond of poetry, Lina?"
"When I meet with _real_ poetry, I cannot rest till I have learned it by
heart, and so made it partly mine."
Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck nine o'clock.
Sarah entered, and said that Mr. Helstone's servant was come for Miss
Caroline.
"Then the evening is gone already," she observed, "and it will be long,
I suppose, before I pass another here."
Hortense had been for some time nodding over her knitting; fallen into a
doze now, she made no response to the remark.
"You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening?"
inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from the side-table, where
it still lay, and carefully wrapped it round her.
"I like to come here; but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not
hinting to be asked; you must understand that."
"Oh! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to
be rich, Lina; but if I _were_ rich, you should live here always--at any
rate, you should live with me wherever my habitation might be."
"That would be pleasant; and if you were poor--ever so poor--it would
still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert."
"I promised to walk with you up to the rectory."
"I know you did; but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how
to remind you, though I wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is
a cold night, and as Fanny is come, there is no necessity----"
"Here is your muff; don't wake Hortense--come."
The half mile to the rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the
garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure of hands; yet Robert sent
his cousin in excited and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind
to her that day--not in phrase, compliment, profession, but in manner,
in look, and in soft and friendly tones.
For himself, he came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on
his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the hushed,
dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round, he exclaimed,
abruptly,--
"This won't do! There's weakness--there's downright ruin in all this.
However," he added, dropping his voice, "the frenzy is quite temporary.
I know it very well; I have had it before. It will be gone to-morrow."
CHAPTER VII.
The Curates at Tea.
Caroline Helstone was just eighteen years old, and at eighteen the true
narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit
listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad
sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic,
its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dream-scenes;
darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters,
sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts,
sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe.
What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts
at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty! As to our sun, it
is a burning heaven--the world of gods.
At that time, at eighteen, drawing near the confines of illusive, void
dreams, Elf-land lies behind us, the shores of Reality rise in front.
These shores are yet distant; they look so blue, soft, gentle, we long
to reach them. In sunshine we see a greenness beneath the azure, as of
spring meadows; we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine the roll
of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we think to hunger and
thirst no more; whereas many a wilderness, and often the flood of death,
or some stream of sorrow as cold and almost as black as death, is to be
crossed ere true bliss can be tasted. Every joy that life gives must be
earned ere it is secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who
have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red
beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles
over it.
At eighteen we are not aware of this. Hope, when she smiles on us, and
promises happiness to-morrow, is implicitly believed; Love, when he
comes wandering like a lost angel to our door, is at once admitted,
welcomed, embraced. His quiver is not seen; if his arrows penetrate,
their wound is like a thrill of new life. There are no fears of poison,
none of the barb which no leech's hand can extract. That perilous
passion--an agony ever in some of its phases; with many, an agony
throughout--is believed to be an unqualified good. In short, at eighteen
the school of experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing,
grinding, but yet purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be
learned.
Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as
yours, none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with
hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces
him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your
instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through
life's wilds; without it, how they stumble, how they stray! On what
forbidden grounds do they intrude, down what dread declivities are they
hurled!
Caroline, having been convoyed home by Robert, had no wish to pass what
remained of the evening with her uncle. The room in which he sat was
very sacred ground to her; she seldom intruded on it; and to-night she
kept aloof till the bell rang for prayers. Part of the evening church
service was the form of worship observed in Mr. Helstone's household. He
read it in his usual nasal voice, clear, loud, and monotonous. The rite
over, his niece, according to her wont, stepped up to him.
"Good-night, uncle."
"Hey! You've been gadding abroad all day--visiting, dining out, and what
not!"
"Only at the cottage."
"And have you learned your lessons?"
"Yes."
"And made a shirt?"
"Only part of one."
"Well, that will do. Stick to the needle, learn shirt-making and
gown-making and piecrust-making, and you'll be a clever woman some day.
Go to bed now. I'm busy with a pamphlet here."
Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bedroom, the door bolted,
her white dressing-gown assumed, her long hair loosened and falling
thick, soft, and wavy to her waist; and as, resting from the task of
combing it out, she leaned her check on her hand and fixed her eyes on
the carpet, before her rose, and close around her drew, the visions we
see at eighteen years.
Her thoughts were speaking with her, speaking pleasantly, as it seemed,
for she smiled as she listened. She looked pretty meditating thus; but a
brighter thing than she was in that apartment--the spirit of youthful
Hope. According to this flattering prophet, she was to know
disappointment, to feel chill no more; she had entered on the dawn of a
summer day--no false dawn, but the true spring of morning--and her sun
would quickly rise. Impossible for her now to suspect that she was the
sport of delusion; her expectations seemed warranted, the foundation on
which they rested appeared solid.