Shirley
smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it: ask no
questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected
bread, and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't
shriek because the nerves are martyrized; do not doubt that your mental
stomach--if you have such a thing--is strong as an ostrich's; the stone
will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a
scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the
gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your
hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed
scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to
endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive
the test--some, it is said, die under it--you will be stronger, wiser,
less sensitive. This you are not aware of, perhaps, at the time, and so
cannot borrow courage of that hope. Nature, however, as has been
intimated, is an excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips,
interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation--a
dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down
to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a
convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because it is half-bitter.
Half-bitter! Is that wrong? No; it should be bitter: bitterness is
strength--it is a tonic. Sweet, mild force following acute suffering you
find nowhere; to talk of it is delusion. There may be apathetic
exhaustion after the rack. If energy remains, it will be rather a
dangerous energy--deadly when confronted with injustice.
Who has read the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee"--that old Scotch ballad,
written I know not in what generation nor by what hand? Mary had been
ill-used--probably in being made to believe that truth which was
falsehood. She is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the
snowstorm, and you hear her thoughts. They are not the thoughts of a
model heroine under her circumstances, but they are those of a
deeply-feeling, strongly-resentful peasant-girl. Anguish has driven her
from the ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills.
Crouched under the "cauld drift," she recalls every image of
horror--"the yellow-wymed ask," "the hairy adder," "the auld moon-bowing
tyke," "the ghaist at e'en,", "the sour bullister," "the milk on the
taed's back." She hates these, but "waur she hates Robin-a-Ree."
"Oh, ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn--
The warld was in love wi' me;
But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn,
And curse black Robin-a-Ree!
"Then whudder awa, thou bitter biting blast,
And sough through the scrunty tree,
And smoor me up in the snaw fu' fast,
And n'er let the sun me see!
"Oh, never melt awa, thou wreath o' snaw,
That's sae kind in graving me;
But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw
O' villains like Robin-a-Ree!"
But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to
Caroline Helstone's feelings, or to the state of things between her and
Robert Moore. Robert had done her no wrong; he had told her no lie; it
was she that was to blame, if any one was. What bitterness her mind
distilled should and would be poured on her own head. She had loved
without being asked to love--a natural, sometimes an inevitable chance,
but big with misery.
Robert, indeed, had sometimes seemed to be fond of her; but why? Because
she had made herself so pleasing to him, he could not, in spite of all
his efforts, help testifying a state of feeling his judgment did not
approve nor his will sanction. He was about to withdraw decidedly from
intimate communication with her, because he did not choose to have his
affections inextricably entangled, nor to be drawn, despite his reason,
into a marriage he believed imprudent. Now, what was she to do? To give
way to her feelings, or to vanquish them? To pursue him, or to turn
upon herself? If she is weak, she will try the first expedient--will
lose his esteem and win his aversion; if she has sense, she will be her
own governor, and resolve to subdue and bring under guidance the
disturbed realm of her emotions. She will determine to look on life
steadily, as it is; to begin to learn its severe truths seriously, and
to study its knotty problems closely, conscientiously.
It appeared she had a little sense, for she quitted Robert quietly,
without complaint or question, without the alteration of a muscle or the
shedding of a tear, betook herself to her studies under Hortense as
usual, and at dinner-time went home without lingering.
When she had dined, and found herself in the rectory drawing-room alone,
having left her uncle over his temperate glass of port wine, the
difficulty that occurred to and embarrassed her was, "How am I to get
through this day?"
Last night she had hoped it would be spent as yesterday was, that the
evening would be again passed with happiness and Robert. She had learned
her mistake this morning; and yet she could not settle down, convinced
that no chance would occur to recall her to Hollow's Cottage, or to
bring Moore again into her society.
He had walked up after tea more than once to pass an hour with her
uncle. The door-bell had rung, his voice had been heard in the passage
just at twilight, when she little expected such a pleasure; and this had
happened twice after he had treated her with peculiar reserve; and
though he rarely talked to her in her uncle's presence, he had looked at
her relentingly as he sat opposite her work-table during his stay. The
few words he had spoken to her were comforting; his manner on bidding
her good-night was genial. Now, he might come this evening, said False
Hope. She almost knew it was False Hope which breathed the whisper, and
yet she listened.
She tried to read--her thoughts wandered; she tried to sew--every stitch
she put in was an _ennui_, the occupation was insufferably tedious; she
opened her desk and attempted to write a French composition--she wrote
nothing but mistakes.
Suddenly the door-bell sharply rang; her heart leaped; she sprang to the
drawing-room door, opened it softly, peeped through the aperture. Fanny
was admitting a visitor--a gentleman--a tall man--just the height of
Robert. For one second she thought it was Robert--for one second she
exulted; but the voice asking for Mr. Helstone undeceived her. That
voice was an Irish voice, consequently not Moore's, but the
curate's--Malone's. He was ushered into the dining-room, where,
doubtless, he speedily helped his rector to empty the decanters.
It was a fact to be noted, that at whatever house in Briarfield,
Whinbury, or Nunnely one curate dropped in to a meal--dinner or tea, as,
the case might be--another presently followed, often two more. Not that
they gave each other the rendezvous, but they were usually all on the
run at the same time; and when Donne, for instance, sought Malone at his
lodgings and found him not, he inquired whither he had posted, and
having learned of the landlady his destination, hastened with all speed
after him. The same causes operated in the same way with Sweeting. Thus
it chanced on that afternoon that Caroline's ears were three times
tortured with the ringing of the bell and the advent of undesired
guests; for Donne followed Malone, and Sweeting followed Donne; and more
wine was ordered up from the cellar into the dining-room (for though old
Helstone chid the inferior priesthood when he found them "carousing," as
he called it, in their own tents, yet at his hierarchical table he ever
liked to treat them to a glass of his best), and through the closed
doors Caroline heard their boyish laughter, and the vacant cackle of
their voices. Her fear was lest they should stay to tea, for she had no
pleasure in making tea for that particular trio. What distinctions
people draw! These three were men--young men--educated men, like Moore;
yet, for her, how great the difference! Their society was a bore--his a
delight.
Not only was she destined to be favoured with their clerical company,
but Fortune was at this moment bringing her four other guests--lady
guests, all packed in a pony-phaeton now rolling somewhat heavily along
the road from Whinbury: an elderly lady and three of her buxom daughters
were coming to see her "in a friendly way," as the custom of that
neighbourhood was. Yes, a fourth time the bell clanged. Fanny brought
the present announcement to the drawing-room,--
"Mrs. Sykes and the three Misses Sykes."
When Caroline was going to receive company, her habit was to wring her
hands very nervously, to flush a little, and come forward hurriedly yet
hesitatingly, wishing herself meantime at Jericho. She was, at such
crises, sadly deficient in finished manner, though she had once been at
school a year. Accordingly, on this occasion, her small white hands
sadly maltreated each other, while she stood up, waiting the entrance of
Mrs. Sykes.
In stalked that lady, a tall, bilious gentlewoman, who made an ample and
not altogether insincere profession of piety, and was greatly given to
hospitality towards the clergy. In sailed her three daughters, a showy
trio, being all three well-grown, and more or less handsome.
In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked. Whether
young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all (or almost
all) have a certain expression stamped on their features, which seems to
say, "I know--I do not boast of it, but I _know_ that I am the standard
of what is proper; let every one therefore whom I approach, or who
approaches me, keep a sharp lookout, for wherein they differ from me--be
the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle, or practice--therein they
are wrong."
Mrs. and Misses Sykes, far from being exceptions to this observation,
were pointed illustrations of its truth. Miss Mary--a well-looked,
well-meant, and, on the whole, well-dispositioned girl--wore her
complacency with some state, though without harshness. Miss Harriet--a
beauty--carried it more overbearingly; she looked high and cold. Miss
Hannah, who was conceited, dashing, pushing, flourished hers consciously
and openly. The mother evinced it with the gravity proper to her age and
religious fame.
The reception was got through somehow. Caroline "was glad to see them"
(an unmitigated fib), hoped they were well, hoped Mrs. Sykes's cough was
better (Mrs. Sykes had had a cough for the last twenty years), hoped the
Misses Sykes had left their sisters at home well; to which inquiry the
Misses Sykes, sitting on three chairs opposite the music-stool, whereon
Caroline had undesignedly come to anchor, after wavering for some
seconds between it and a large arm-chair, into which she at length
recollected she ought to induct Mrs. Sykes--and indeed that lady saved
her the trouble by depositing herself therein--the Misses Sykes replied
to Caroline by one simultaneous bow, very majestic and mighty awful. A
pause followed. This bow was of a character to ensure silence for the
next five minutes, and it did. Mrs. Sykes then inquired after Mr.
Helstone, and whether he had had any return of rheumatism, and whether
preaching twice on a Sunday fatigued him, and if he was capable of
taking a full service now; and on being assured he was, she and all her
daughters, combining in chorus, expressed their opinion that he was "a
wonderful man of his years."
Pause second.
Miss Mary, getting up the steam in her turn, asked whether Caroline had
attended the Bible Society meeting which had been held at Nunnely last
Thursday night. The negative answer which truth compelled Caroline to
utter--for last Thursday evening she had been sitting at home, reading a