Shirley
palette, or book, or sampler; leave that tinting work. By-the-bye, do
you put your pencil to your lips when you paint?"
"Sometimes, uncle, when I forget."
"Then it is that which is poisoning you. The paints are deleterious,
child. There is white lead and red lead, and verdigris, and gamboge, and
twenty other poisons in those colour cakes. Lock them up! lock them up!
Get your bonnet on. I want you to make a call with me."
"With _you_, uncle?"
This question was asked in a tone of surprise. She was not accustomed to
make calls with her uncle. She never rode or walked out with him on any
occasion.
"Quick! quick! I am always busy, you know. I have no time to lose."
She hurriedly gathered up her materials, asking, meantime, where they
were going.
"To Fieldhead."
"Fieldhead! What! to see old James Booth, the gardener? Is he ill?"
"We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar."
"Miss Keeldar! Is she coming to Yorkshire? Is she at Fieldhead?"
"She is. She has been there a week. I met her at a party last
night--that party to which you would not go. I was pleased with her. I
choose that you shall make her acquaintance. It will do you good."
"She is now come of age, I suppose?"
"She is come of age, and will reside for a time on her property. I
lectured her on the subject; I showed her her duty. She is not
intractable. She is rather a fine girl; she will teach you what it is to
have a sprightly spirit. Nothing lackadaisical about _her_."
"I don't think she will want to see me, or to have me introduced to her.
What good can I do her? How can I amuse her?"
"Pshaw! Put your bonnet on."
"Is she proud, uncle?"
"Don't know. You hardly imagine she would show her pride to me, I
suppose? A chit like that would scarcely presume to give herself airs
with the rector of her parish, however rich she might be."
"No. But how did she behave to other people?"
"Didn't observe. She holds her head high, and probably can be saucy
enough where she dare. She wouldn't be a woman otherwise. There! Away
now for your bonnet at once!"
Not naturally very confident, a failure of physical strength and a
depression of spirits had not tended to increase Caroline's presence of
mind and ease of manner, or to give her additional courage to face
strangers, and she quailed, in spite of self-remonstrance, as she and
her uncle walked up the broad, paved approach leading from the gateway
of Fieldhead to its porch. She followed Mr. Helstone reluctantly through
that porch into the sombre old vestibule beyond.
Very sombre it was--long, vast, and dark; one latticed window lit it but
dimly. The wide old chimney contained now no fire, for the present warm
weather needed it not; it was filled instead with willow-boughs. The
gallery on high, opposite the entrance, was seen but in outline, so
shadowy became this hall towards its ceiling. Carved stags' heads, with
real antlers, looked down grotesquely from the walls. This was neither a
grand nor a comfortable house; within as without it was antique,
rambling, and incommodious. A property of a thousand a year belonged to
it, which property had descended, for lack of male heirs, on a female.
There were mercantile families in the district boasting twice the
income, but the Keeldars, by virtue of their antiquity, and their
distinction of lords of the manor, took the precedence of all.
Mr. and Miss Helstone were ushered into a parlour. Of course, as was to
be expected in such a Gothic old barrack, this parlour was lined with
oak: fine, dark, glossy panels compassed the walls gloomily and grandly.
Very handsome, reader, these shining brown panels are, very mellow in
colouring and tasteful in effect, but--if you know what a "spring clean"
is--very execrable and inhuman. Whoever, having the bowels of humanity,
has seen servants scrubbing at these polished wooden walls with
beeswaxed cloths on a warm May day must allow that they are "intolerable
and not to be endured;" and I cannot but secretly applaud the benevolent
barbarian who had painted another and larger apartment of Fieldhead--the
drawing-room, to wit, formerly also an oak-room--of a delicate pinky
white, thereby earning for himself the character of a Hun, but mightily
enhancing the cheerfulness of that portion of his abode, and saving
future housemaids a world of toil.
The brown-panelled parlour was furnished all in old style, and with real
old furniture. On each side of the high mantelpiece stood two antique
chairs of oak, solid as silvan thrones, and in one of these sat a lady.
But if this were Miss Keeldar, she must have come of age at least some
twenty years ago. She was of matronly form, and though she wore no cap,
and possessed hair of quite an undimmed auburn, shading small and
naturally young-looking features, she had no youthful aspect, nor
apparently the wish to assume it. You could have wished her attire of a
newer fashion. In a well-cut, well-made gown hers would have been no
uncomely presence. It puzzled you to guess why a garment of handsome
materials should be arranged in such scanty folds, and devised after
such an obsolete mode. You felt disposed to set down the wearer as
somewhat eccentric at once.
This lady received the visitors with a mixture of ceremony and
diffidence quite English. No middle-aged matron who was not an
Englishwoman _could_ evince precisely the same manner--a manner so
uncertain of herself, of her own merits, of her power to please, and yet
so anxious to be proper, and, if possible, rather agreeable than
otherwise. In the present instance, however, more embarrassment was
shown than is usual even with diffident Englishwomen. Miss Helstone felt
this, sympathized with the stranger, and knowing by experience what was
good for the timid, took a seat quietly near her, and began to talk to
her with a gentle ease, communicated for the moment by the presence of
one less self-possessed than herself.
She and this lady would, if alone, have at once got on extremely well
together. The lady had the clearest voice imaginable--infinitely softer
and more tuneful than could have been reasonably expected from forty
years--and a form decidedly inclined to _embonpoint_. This voice
Caroline liked; it atoned for the formal, if correct, accent and
language. The lady would soon have discovered she liked it and her, and
in ten minutes they would have been friends. But Mr. Helstone stood on
the rug looking at them both, looking especially at the strange lady
with his sarcastic, keen eye, that clearly expressed impatience of her
chilly ceremony, and annoyance at her want of _aplomb_. His hard gaze
and rasping voice discomfited the lady more and more. She tried,
however, to get up little speeches about the weather, the aspect of the
country, etc.; but the impracticable Mr. Helstone presently found
himself somewhat deaf. Whatever she said he affected not to hear
distinctly, and she was obliged to go over each elaborately-constructed
nothing twice. The effort soon became too much for her. She was just
rising in a perplexed flutter, nervously murmuring that she knew not
what detained Miss Keeldar, that she would go and look for her, when
Miss Keeldar saved her the trouble by appearing. It was to be presumed
at least that she who now came in through a glass door from the garden
owned that name.
There is real grace in ease of manner, and so old Helstone felt when an
erect, slight girl walked up to him, retaining with her left hand her
little silk apron full of flowers, and, giving him her right hand, said
pleasantly, "I knew you would come to see me, though you _do_ think Mr.
Yorke has made me a Jacobin. Good-morning."
"But we'll not have you a Jacobin," returned he. "No, Miss Shirley; they
shall not steal the flower of my parish from me. Now that you are
amongst us, you shall be my pupil in politics and religion; I'll teach
you sound doctrine on both points."
"Mrs. Pryor has anticipated you," she replied, turning to the elder
lady. "Mrs. Pryor, you know, was my governess, and is still my friend;
and of all the high and rigid Tories she is queen; of all the stanch
churchwomen she is chief. I have been well drilled both in theology and
history, I assure you, Mr. Helstone."
The rector immediately bowed very low to Mrs. Pryor, and expressed
himself obliged to her.
The ex-governess disclaimed skill either in political or religious
controversy, explained that she thought such matters little adapted for
female minds, but avowed herself in general terms the advocate of order
and loyalty, and, of course, truly attached to the Establishment. She
added she was ever averse to change under any circumstances, and
something scarcely audible about the extreme danger of being too ready
to take up new ideas closed her sentence.
"Miss Keeldar thinks as you think, I hope, madam."
"Difference of age and difference of temperament occasion difference of
sentiment," was the reply. "It can scarcely be expected that the eager
and young should hold the opinions of the cool and middle-aged."
"Oh! oh! we are independent; we think for ourselves!" cried Mr.
Helstone. "We are a little Jacobin, for anything I know--a little
freethinker, in good earnest. Let us have a confession of faith on the
spot."
And he took the heiress's two hands--causing her to let fall her whole
cargo of flowers--and seated her by him on the sofa.
"Say your creed," he ordered.
"The Apostles' Creed?"
"Yes."
She said it like a child.
"Now for St. Athanasius's. That's the test!"
"Let me gather up my flowers. Here is Tartar coming; he will tread upon
them."
Tartar was a rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly,
being of a breed between mastiff and bulldog, who at this moment entered
through the glass door, and posting directly to the rug, snuffed the
fresh flowers scattered there. He seemed to scorn them as food; but
probably thinking their velvety petals might be convenient as litter, he
was turning round preparatory to depositing his tawny bulk upon them,
when Miss Helstone and Miss Keeldar simultaneously stooped to the
rescue.
"Thank you," said the heiress, as she again held out her little apron
for Caroline to heap the blossoms into it. "Is this your daughter, Mr.
Helstone?" she asked.
"My niece Caroline."
Miss Keeldar shook hands with her, and then looked at her. Caroline also
looked at her hostess.
Shirley Keeldar (she had no Christian name but Shirley: her parents, who
had wished to have a son, finding that, after eight years of marriage,
Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same
masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with a
boy they had been blessed)--Shirley Keeldar was no ugly heiress. She was
agreeable to the eye. Her height and shape were not unlike Miss
Helstone's; perhaps in stature she might have the advantage by an inch
or two. She was gracefully made, and her face, too, possessed a charm as
well described by the word grace as any other. It was pale naturally,
but intelligent, and of varied expression. She was not a blonde, like
Caroline. Clear and dark were the characteristics of her aspect as to
colour. Her face and brow were clear, her eyes of the darkest gray (no
green lights in them--transparent, pure, neutral gray), and her hair of
the darkest brown. Her features were distinguished--by which I do not
mean that they were high, bony, and Roman, being indeed rather small and
slightly marked than otherwise, but only that they were, to use a few
French words, "fins, gracieux, spirituels"--mobile they were and
speaking; but their changes were not to be understood nor their language
interpreted all at once. She examined Caroline seriously, inclining her
head a little to one side, with a thoughtful air.