Shirley
"You see she is only a feeble chick," observed Mr. Helstone.
"She looks young--younger than I.--How old are you?" she inquired in a
manner that would have been patronizing if it had not been extremely
solemn and simple.
"Eighteen years and six months."
"And I am twenty-one."
She said no more. She had now placed her flowers on the table, and was
busied in arranging them.
"And St. Athanasius's Creed?" urged the rector. "You believe it all,
don't you?"
"I can't remember it quite all. I will give you a nosegay, Mr. Helstone,
when I have given your niece one."
She had selected a little bouquet of one brilliant and two or three
delicate flowers, relieved by a spray of dark verdure. She tied it with
silk from her work-box, and placed it on Caroline's lap; and then she
put her hands behind her, and stood bending slightly towards her guest,
still regarding her, in the attitude and with something of the aspect of
a grave but gallant little cavalier. This temporary expression of face
was aided by the style in which she wore her hair, parted on one temple,
and brushed in a glossy sweep above the forehead, whence it fell in
curls that looked natural, so free were their wavy undulations.
"Are you tired with your walk?" she inquired.
"No--not in the least. It is but a short distance--but a mile."
"You look pale.--Is she always so pale?" she asked, turning to the
rector.
"She used to be as rosy as the reddest of your flowers."
"Why is she altered? What has made her pale? Has she been ill?"
"She tells me she wants a change."
"She ought to have one. You ought to give her one. You should send her
to the sea-coast."
"I will, ere summer is over. Meantime, I intend her to make acquaintance
with you, if you have no objection."
"I am sure Miss Keeldar will have no objection," here observed Mrs.
Pryor. "I think I may take it upon me to say that Miss Helstone's
frequent presence at Fieldhead will be esteemed a favour."
"You speak my sentiments precisely, ma'am," said Shirley, "and I thank
you for anticipating me.--Let me tell you," she continued, turning again
to Caroline, "that you also ought to thank my governess. It is not every
one she would welcome as she has welcomed you. You are distinguished
more than you think. This morning, as soon as you are gone, I shall ask
Mrs. Pryor's opinion of you. I am apt to rely on her judgment of
character, for hitherto I have found it wondrous accurate. Already I
foresee a favourable answer to my inquiries.--Do I not guess rightly,
Mrs. Pryor?"
"My dear, you said but now you would ask my opinion when Miss Helstone
was gone. I am scarcely likely to give it in her presence."
"No; and perhaps it will be long enough before I obtain it.--I am
sometimes sadly tantalized, Mr. Helstone, by Mrs. Pryor's extreme
caution. Her judgments ought to be correct when they come, for they are
often as tardy of delivery as a Lord Chancellor's. On some people's
characters I cannot get her to pronounce a sentence, entreat as I may."
Mrs. Pryor here smiled.
"Yes," said her pupil, "I know what that smile means. You are thinking
of my gentleman-tenant.--Do you know Mr. Moore of the Hollow?" she asked
Mr. Helstone.
"Ay! ay! Your tenant--so he is. You have seen a good deal of him, no
doubt, since you came?"
"I have been obliged to see him. There was business to transact.
Business! Really the word makes me conscious I am indeed no longer a
girl, but quite a woman and something more. I am an esquire! Shirley
Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man's
name; I hold a man's position. It is enough to inspire me with a touch
of manhood; and when I see such people as that stately
Anglo-Belgian--that Gérard Moore--before me, gravely talking to me of
business, really I feel quite gentlemanlike. You must choose me for your
churchwarden, Mr. Helstone, the next time you elect new ones. They ought
to make me a magistrate and a captain of yeomanry. Tony Lumpkin's mother
was a colonel, and his aunt a justice of the peace. Why shouldn't I be?"
"With all my heart. If you choose to get up a requisition on the
subject, I promise to head the list of signatures with my name. But you
were speaking of Moore?"
"Ah! yes. I find it a little difficult to understand Mr. Moore, to know
what to think of him, whether to like him or not. He seems a tenant of
whom any proprietor might be proud--and proud of him I am, in that
sense; but as a neighbour, what is he? Again and again I have entreated
Mrs. Pryor to say what she thinks of him, but she still evades returning
a direct answer. I hope you will be less oracular, Mr. Helstone, and
pronounce at once. Do you like him?"
"Not at all, just now. His name is entirely blotted from my good books."
"What is the matter? What has he done?"
"My uncle and he disagree on politics," interposed the low voice of
Caroline. She had better not have spoken just then. Having scarcely
joined in the conversation before, it was not apropos to do it now. She
felt this with nervous acuteness as soon as she had spoken, and coloured
to the eyes.
"What are Moore's politics?" inquired Shirley.
"Those of a tradesman," returned the rector--"narrow, selfish, and
unpatriotic. The man is eternally writing and speaking against the
continuance of the war. I have no patience with him."
"The war hurts his trade. I remember he remarked that only yesterday.
But what other objection have you to him?"
"That is enough."
"He looks the gentleman, in my sense of the term," pursued Shirley, "and
it pleases me to think he is such."
Caroline rent the Tyrian petals of the one brilliant flower in her
bouquet, and answered in distinct tones, "Decidedly he is." Shirley,
hearing this courageous affirmation, flashed an arch, searching glance
at the speaker from her deep, expressive eyes.
"_You_ are his friend, at any rate," she said. "You defend him in his
absence."
"I am both his friend and his relative," was the prompt reply. "Robert
Moore is my cousin."
"Oh, then, you can tell me all about him. Just give me a sketch of his
character."
Insuperable embarrassment seized Caroline when this demand was made. She
could not, and did not, attempt to comply with it. Her silence was
immediately covered by Mrs. Pryor, who proceeded to address sundry
questions to Mr. Helstone regarding a family or two in the
neighbourhood, with whose connections in the south she said she was
acquainted. Shirley soon withdrew her gaze from Miss Helstone's face.
She did not renew her interrogations, but returning to her flowers,
proceeded to choose a nosegay for the rector. She presented it to him as
he took leave, and received the homage of a salute on the hand in
return.
"Be sure you wear it for my sake," said she.
"Next my heart, of course," responded Helstone.--"Mrs. Pryor, take care
of this future magistrate, this churchwarden in perspective, this
captain of yeomanry, this young squire of Briarfield, in a word. Don't
let him exert himself too much; don't let him break his neck in hunting;
especially, let him mind how he rides down that dangerous hill near the
Hollow."
"I like a descent," said Shirley; "I like to clear it rapidly; and
especially I like that romantic Hollow with all my heart."
"Romantic, with a mill in it?"
"Romantic with a mill in it. The old mill and the white cottage are each
admirable in its way."
"And the counting-house, Mr. Keeldar?"
"The counting-house is better than my bloom-coloured drawing-room. I
adore the counting-house."
"And the trade? The cloth, the greasy wool, the polluting dyeing-vats?"
"The trade is to be thoroughly respected."
"And the tradesman is a hero? Good!"
"I am glad to hear you say so. I thought the tradesman looked heroic."
Mischief, spirit, and glee sparkled all over her face as she thus
bandied words with the old Cossack, who almost equally enjoyed the tilt.
"Captain Keeldar, you have no mercantile blood in your veins. Why are
you so fond of trade?"
"Because I am a mill-owner, of course. Half my income comes from the
works in that Hollow."
"Don't enter into partnership--that's all."
"You've put it into my head! you've put it into my head!" she exclaimed,
with a joyous laugh. "It will never get out. Thank you." And waving her
hand, white as a lily and fine as a fairy's, she vanished within the
porch, while the rector and his niece passed out through the arched
gateway.
CHAPTER XII.
SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE.
Shirley showed she had been sincere in saying she should be glad of
Caroline's society, by frequently seeking it; and, indeed, if she had
not sought it, she would not have had it, for Miss Helstone was slow to
make fresh acquaintance. She was always held back by the idea that
people could not want her, that she could not amuse them; and a
brilliant, happy, youthful creature like the heiress of Fieldhead seemed
to her too completely independent of society so uninteresting as hers
ever to find it really welcome.
Shirley might be brilliant, and probably happy likewise, but no one is
independent of genial society; and though in about a month she had made
the acquaintance of most of the families round, and was on quite free
and easy terms with all the Misses Sykes, and all the Misses Pearson,
and the two superlative Misses Wynne of Walden Hall, yet, it appeared,
she found none amongst them very genial: she fraternized with none of
them, to use her own words. If she had had the bliss to be really
Shirley Keeldar, Esq., lord of the manor of Briarfield, there was not a
single fair one in this and the two neighbouring parishes whom she
should have felt disposed to request to become Mrs. Keeldar, lady of the
manor. This declaration she made to Mrs. Pryor, who received it very
quietly, as she did most of her pupil's off-hand speeches, responding,
"My dear, do not allow that habit of alluding to yourself as a gentleman
to be confirmed. It is a strange one. Those who do not know you, hearing
you speak thus, would think you affected masculine manners."
Shirley never laughed at her former governess; even the little
formalities and harmless peculiarities of that lady were respectable in
her eyes. Had it been otherwise, she would have proved herself a weak
character at once; for it is only the weak who make a butt of quiet
worth. Therefore she took her remonstrance in silence. She stood
quietly near the window, looking at the grand cedar on her lawn
watching a bird on one of its lower boughs. Presently she began to
chirrup to the bird; soon her chirrup grew clearer; ere long she was
whistling; the whistle struck into a tune, and very sweetly and deftly
it was executed.
"My dear!" expostulated Mrs. Pryor.
"Was I whistling?" said Shirley. "I forgot. I beg your pardon, ma'am. I
had resolved to take care not to whistle before you."
"But, Miss Keeldar, where did you learn to whistle? You must have got
the habit since you came down into Yorkshire. I never knew you guilty of
it before."
"Oh! I learned to whistle a long while ago."
"Who taught you?"
"No one. I took it up by listening, and I had laid it down again. But
lately, yesterday evening, as I was coming up our lane, I heard a
gentleman whistling that very tune in the field on the other side of the
hedge, and that reminded me."
"What gentleman was it?"
"We have only one gentleman in this region, ma'am, and that is Mr.
Moore--at least he is the only gentleman who is not gray-haired. My two
venerable favourites, Mr. Helstone and Mr. Yorke, it is true, are fine
old beaus, infinitely better than any of the stupid young ones."
Mrs. Pryor was silent.
"You do not like Mr. Helstone, ma'am?"
"My dear, Mr. Helstone's office secures him from criticism."