Shirley
"You generally contrive to leave the room when he is announced."
"Do you walk out this morning, my dear?"
"Yes, I shall go to the rectory, and seek and find Caroline Helstone,
and make her take some exercise. She shall have a breezy walk over
Nunnely Common."
"If you go in that direction, my dear, have the goodness to remind Miss
Helstone to wrap up well, as there is a fresh wind, and she appears to
me to require care."
"You shall be minutely obeyed, Mrs. Pryor. Meantime, will you not
accompany us yourself?"
"No, my love; I should be a restraint upon you. I am stout, and cannot
walk so quickly as you would wish to do."
Shirley easily persuaded Caroline to go with her, and when they were
fairly out on the quiet road, traversing the extensive and solitary
sweep of Nunnely Common, she as easily drew her into conversation. The
first feelings of diffidence overcome, Caroline soon felt glad to talk
with Miss Keeldar. The very first interchange of slight observations
sufficed to give each an idea of what the other was. Shirley said she
liked the green sweep of the common turf, and, better still, the heath
on its ridges, for the heath reminded her of moors. She had seen moors
when she was travelling on the borders near Scotland. She remembered
particularly a district traversed one long afternoon, on a sultry but
sunless day in summer. They journeyed from noon till sunset, over what
seemed a boundless waste of deep heath, and nothing had they seen but
wild sheep, nothing heard but the cries of wild birds.
"I know how the heath would look on such a day," said Caroline;
"purple-black--a deeper shade of the sky-tint, and that would be livid."
"Yes, quite livid, with brassy edges to the clouds, and here and there a
white gleam, more ghastly than the lurid tinge, which, as you looked at
it, you momentarily expected would kindle into blinding lightning."
"Did it thunder?"
"It muttered distant peals, but the storm did not break till evening,
after we had reached our inn--that inn being an isolated house at the
foot of a range of mountains."
"Did you watch the clouds come down over the mountains?"
"I did. I stood at the window an hour watching them. The hills seemed
rolled in a sullen mist, and when the rain fell in whitening sheets,
suddenly they were blotted from the prospect; they were washed from the
world."
"I have seen such storms in hilly districts in Yorkshire; and at their
riotous climax, while the sky was all cataract, the earth all flood, I
have remembered the Deluge."
"It is singularly reviving after such hurricanes to feel calm return,
and from the opening clouds to receive a consolatory gleam, softly
testifying that the sun is not quenched."
"Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at Nunnely dale and
wood."
They both halted on the green brow of the common. They looked down on
the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pearled with
daisies, and some golden with king-cups. To-day all this young verdure
smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and amber gleams played
over it. On Nunnwood--the sole remnant of antique British forest in a
region whose lowlands were once all silvan chase, as its highlands were
breast-deep heather--slept the shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were
dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl; silvery
blues, soft purples, evanescent greens and rose-shades, all melting into
fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye as with a
remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow was
fresh, and sweet, and bracing.
"Our England is a bonny island," said Shirley, "and Yorkshire is one of
her bonniest nooks."
"You are a Yorkshire girl too?"
"I am--Yorkshire in blood and birth. Five generations of my race sleep
under the aisles of Briarfield Church. I drew my first breath in the old
black hall behind us."
Hereupon Caroline presented her hand, which was accordingly taken and
shaken. "We are compatriots," said she.
"Yes," agreed Shirley, with a grave nod.
"And that," asked Miss Keeldar, pointing to the forest--"that is
Nunnwood?"
"It is."
"Were you ever there?"
"Many a time."
"In the heart of it?"
"Yes."
"What is it like?"
"It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees are huge and
old. When you stand at their roots, the summits seem in another region.
The trunks remain still and firm as pillars, while the boughs sway to
every breeze. In the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed,
and in high wind a flood rushes, a sea thunders above you."
"Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts?"
"Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To penetrate into
Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back into the dim days of old. Can
you see a break in the forest, about the centre?"
"Yes, distinctly."
"That break is a dell--a deep, hollow cup, lined with turf as green and
short as the sod of this common. The very oldest of the trees, gnarled
mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell. In the bottom lie the
ruins of a nunnery."
"We will go--you and I alone, Caroline--to that wood, early some fine
summer morning, and spend a long day there. We can take pencils and
sketch-books, and any interesting reading book we like; and of course we
shall take something to eat. I have two little baskets, in which Mrs.
Gill, my housekeeper, might pack our provisions, and we could each carry
our own. It would not tire you too much to walk so far?"
"Oh no; especially if we rested the whole day in the wood. And I know
all the pleasantest spots. I know where we could get nuts in nutting
time; I know where wild strawberries abound; I know certain lonely,
quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as if
gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know groups of trees that
ravish the eye with their perfect, picture-like effects--rude oak,
delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered in contrast; and ash trees
stately as Saul, standing isolated; and superannuated wood-giants clad
in bright shrouds of ivy. Miss Keeldar, I could guide you."
"You would be dull with me alone?"
"I should not. I think we should suit; and what third person is there
whose presence would not spoil our pleasure?"
"Indeed, I know of none about our own ages--no lady at least; and as to
gentlemen----"
"An excursion becomes quite a different thing when there are gentlemen
of the party," interrupted Caroline.
"I agree with you--quite a different thing to what we were proposing."
"We were going simply to see the old trees, the old ruins; to pass a day
in old times, surrounded by olden silence, and above all by quietude."
"You are right; and the presence of gentlemen dispels the last charm, I
think. If they are of the wrong sort, like your Malones, and your young
Sykes, and Wynnes, irritation takes the place of serenity. If they are
of the right sort, there is still a change; I can hardly tell what
change--one easy to feel, difficult to describe."
"We forget Nature, _imprimis_."
"And then Nature forgets us, covers her vast calm brow with a dim veil,
conceals her face, and withdraws the peaceful joy with which, if we had
been content to worship her only, she would have filled our hearts."
"What does she give us instead?"
"More elation and more anxiety; an excitement that steals the hours away
fast, and a trouble that ruffles their course."
"Our power of being happy lies a good deal in ourselves, I believe,"
remarked Caroline sagely. "I have gone to Nunnwood with a large
party--all the curates and some other gentry of these parts, together
with sundry ladies--and I found the affair insufferably tedious and
absurd; and I have gone quite alone, or accompanied but by Fanny, who
sat in the woodman's hut and sewed, or talked to the goodwife, while I
roamed about and made sketches, or read; and I have enjoyed much
happiness of a quiet kind all day long. But that was when I was
young--two years ago."
"Did you ever go with your cousin, Robert Moore?"
"Yes; once."
"What sort of a companion is he on these occasions?"
"A cousin, you know, is different to a stranger."
"I am aware of that; but cousins, if they are stupid, are still more
insupportable than strangers, because you cannot so easily keep them at
a distance. But your cousin is not stupid?"
"No; but----"
"Well?"
"If the company of fools irritates, as you say, the society of clever
men leaves its own peculiar pain also. Where the goodness or talent of
your friend is beyond and above all doubt, your own worthiness to be his
associate often becomes a matter of question."
"Oh! there I cannot follow you. That crotchet is not one I should choose
to entertain for an instant. I consider myself not unworthy to be the
associate of the best of them--of gentlemen, I mean--though that is
saying a great deal. Where they are good, they are very good, I believe.
Your uncle, by-the-bye, is not a bad specimen of the elderly gentleman.
I am always glad to see his brown, keen, sensible old face, either in my
own house or any other. Are you fond of him? Is he kind to you? Now,
speak the truth."
"He has brought me up from childhood, I doubt not, precisely as he would
have brought up his own daughter, if he had had one; and that is
kindness. But I am not fond of him. I would rather be out of his
presence than in it."
"Strange, when he has the art of making himself so agreeable."
"Yes, in company; but he is stern and silent at home. As he puts away
his cane and shovel-hat in the rectory hall, so he locks his liveliness
in his book-case and study-desk: the knitted brow and brief word for the
fireside; the smile, the jest, the witty sally for society."
"Is he tyrannical?"
"Not in the least. He is neither tyrannical nor hypocritical. He is
simply a man who is rather liberal than good-natured, rather brilliant
than genial, rather scrupulously equitable than truly just--if you can
understand such superfine distinctions."
"Oh yes! Good-nature implies indulgence, which he has not; geniality,
warmth of heart, which he does not own; and genuine justice is the
offspring of sympathy and considerateness, of which, I can well
conceive, my bronzed old friend is quite innocent."
"I often wonder, Shirley, whether most men resemble my uncle in their
domestic relations; whether it is necessary to be new and unfamiliar to
them in order to seem agreeable or estimable in their eyes; and whether
it is impossible to their natures to retain a constant interest and
affection for those they see every day."
"I don't know. I can't clear up your doubts. I ponder over similar ones
myself sometimes. But, to tell you a secret, if I were convinced that
they are necessarily and universally different from us--fickle, soon
petrifying, unsympathizing--I would never marry. I should not like to
find out that what I loved did not love me, that it was weary of me, and
that whatever effort I might make to please would hereafter be worse
than useless, since it was inevitably in its nature to change and become
indifferent. That discovery once made, what should I long for? To go
away, to remove from a presence where my society gave no pleasure."
"But you could not if you were married."
"No, I could not. There it is. I could never be my own mistress more. A
terrible thought! It suffocates me! Nothing irks me like the idea of
being a burden and a bore--an inevitable burden, a ceaseless bore! Now,
when I feel my company superfluous, I can comfortably fold my
independence round me like a mantle, and drop my pride like a veil, and
withdraw to solitude. If married, that could not be."
"I wonder we don't all make up our minds to remain single," said