Shirley
pleasant as it was unpretending.
The sort of reverent pleasure with which Caroline listened--so sincere,
so quiet, yet so evident--stirred the elder lady's faculties to gentle
animation. Rarely, probably, had she, with her chill, repellent outside,
her diffident mien, and incommunicative habits, known what it was to
excite in one whom she herself could love feelings of earnest affection
and admiring esteem. Delightful, doubtless, was the consciousness that a
young girl towards whom it seemed, judging by the moved expression of
her eyes and features, her heart turned with almost a fond impulse,
looked up to her as an instructor, and clung to her as a friend. With a
somewhat more marked accent of interest than she often permitted herself
to use, she said, as she bent towards her youthful companion, and put
aside from her forehead a pale brown curl which had strayed from the
confining comb, "I do hope this sweet air blowing from the hill will do
you good, my dear Caroline. I wish I could see something more of colour
in these cheeks; but perhaps you were never florid?"
"I had red cheeks once," returned Miss Helstone, smiling. "I remember a
year--two years ago--when I used to look in the glass, I saw a different
face there to what I see now--rounder and rosier. But when we are
young," added the girl of eighteen, "our minds are careless and our
lives easy."
"Do you," continued Mrs. Pryor, mastering by an effort that tyrant
timidity which made it difficult for her, even under present
circumstances, to attempt the scrutiny of another's heart--"do you, at
your age, fret yourself with cares for the future? Believe me, you had
better not. Let the morrow take thought for the things of itself."
"True, dear madam. It is not over the future I pine. The evil of the day
is sometimes oppressive--too oppressive--and I long to escape it."
"That is--the evil of the day--that is--your uncle perhaps is not--you
find it difficult to understand--he does not appreciate----"
Mrs. Pryor could not complete her broken sentences; she could not manage
to put the question whether Mr. Helstone was too harsh with his niece.
But Caroline comprehended.
"Oh, that is nothing," she replied. "My uncle and I get on very well. We
never quarrel--I don't call him harsh--he never scolds me. Sometimes I
wish somebody in the world loved me, but I cannot say that I
particularly wish him to have more affection for me than he has. As a
child, I should perhaps have felt the want of attention, only the
servants were very kind to me; but when people are long indifferent to
us, we grow indifferent to their indifference. It is my uncle's way not
to care for women and girls, unless they be ladies that he meets in
company. He could not alter, and I have no wish that he should alter, as
far as I am concerned. I believe it would merely annoy and frighten me
were he to be affectionate towards me now. But you know, Mrs. Pryor, it
is scarcely _living_ to measure time as I do at the rectory. The hours
pass, and I get them over somehow, but I do not _live_. I endure
existence, but I rarely enjoy it. Since Miss Keeldar and you came I have
been--I was going to say happier, but that would be untrue." She paused.
"How untrue? You are fond of Miss Keeldar, are you not, my dear?"
"Very fond of Shirley. I both like and admire her. But I am painfully
circumstanced. For a reason I cannot explain I want to go away from this
place, and to forget it."
"You told me before you wished to be a governess; but, my dear, if you
remember, I did not encourage the idea. I have been a governess myself
great part of my life. In Miss Keeldar's acquaintance I esteem myself
most fortunate. Her talents and her really sweet disposition have
rendered my office easy to me; but when I was young, before I married,
my trials were severe, poignant. I should not like a---- I should not
like you to endure similar ones. It was my lot to enter a family of
considerable pretensions to good birth and mental superiority, and the
members of which also believed that 'on them was perceptible' an unusual
endowment of the 'Christian graces;' that all their hearts were
regenerate, and their spirits in a peculiar state of discipline. I was
early given to understand that 'as I was not their equal,' so I could
not expect 'to have their sympathy.' It was in no sort concealed from me
that I was held a 'burden and a restraint in society.' The gentlemen, I
found, regarded me as a 'tabooed woman,' to whom 'they were interdicted
from granting the usual privileges of the sex,' and yet 'who annoyed
them by frequently crossing their path.' The ladies too made it plain
that they thought me 'a bore.' The servants, it was signified, 'detested
me;' _why_, I could never clearly comprehend. My pupils, I was told,
'however much they might love me, and how deep soever the interest I
might take in them, could not be my friends.' It was intimated that I
must 'live alone, and never transgress the invisible but rigid line
which established the difference between me and my employers.' My life
in this house was sedentary, solitary, constrained, joyless, toilsome.
The dreadful crushing of the animal spirits, the ever-prevailing sense
of friendlessness and homelessness consequent on this state of things
began ere long to produce mortal effects on my constitution. I sickened.
The lady of the house told me coolly I was the victim of 'wounded
vanity.' She hinted that if I did not make an effort to quell my
'ungodly discontent,' to cease 'murmuring against God's appointment,'
and to cultivate the profound humility befitting my station, my mind
would very likely 'go to pieces' on the rock that wrecked most of my
sisterhood--morbid self-esteem--and that I should die an inmate of a
lunatic asylum.
"I said nothing to Mrs. Hardman--it would have been useless; but to her
eldest daughter I one day dropped a few observations, which were
answered thus. There were hardships, she allowed, in the position of a
governess. 'Doubtless they had their trials; but,' she averred, with a
manner it makes me smile now to recall--'but it must be so. _She_' (Miss
H.) 'had neither view, hope, nor _wish_ to see these things remedied;
for in the inherent constitution of English habits, feelings, and
prejudices there was no possibility that they should be. Governesses,'
she observed, 'must ever be kept in a sort of isolation. It is the only
means of maintaining that distance which the reserve of English manners
and the decorum of English families exact.'
"I remember I sighed as Miss Hardman quitted my bedside. She caught the
sound, and turning, said severely, 'I fear, Miss Grey, you have
inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature--the sin
of pride. You are proud, and therefore you are ungrateful too. Mamma
pays you a handsome salary, and if you had average sense you would
thankfully put up with much that is fatiguing to do and irksome to bear,
since it is so well made worth your while.'
"Miss Hardman, my love, was a very strong-minded young lady, of most
distinguished talents. The aristocracy are decidedly a very superior
class, you know, both physically, and morally, and mentally; as a high
Tory I acknowledge that. I could not describe the dignity of her voice
and mien as she addressed me thus; still, I fear she was selfish, my
dear. I would never wish to speak ill of my superiors in rank, but I
think she was a little selfish."
"I remember," continued Mrs. Pryor, after a pause, "another of Miss H.'s
observations, which she would utter with quite a grand air. 'WE,' she
would say--'WE need the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes, and crimes
of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the
harvest of governesses. The daughters of trades-people, however well
educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be
inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children's minds and
persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring who
have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as
OURSELVES.'"
"Miss Hardman must have thought herself something better than her
fellow-creatures, ma'am, since she held that their calamities, and even
crimes, were necessary to minister to her convenience. You say she was
religious. Her religion must have been that of the Pharisee who thanked
God that he was not as other men are, nor even as that publican."
"My dear, we will not discuss the point. I should be the last person to
wish to instil into your mind any feeling of dissatisfaction with your
lot in life, or any sentiment of envy or insubordination towards your
superiors. Implicit submission to authorities, scrupulous deference to
our betters (under which term I, of course, include the higher classes
of society), are, in my opinion, indispensable to the well-being of
every community. All I mean to say, my dear, is that you had better not
attempt to be a governess, as the duties of the position would be too
severe for your constitution. Not one word of disrespect would I breathe
towards either Mrs. or Miss Hardman; only, recalling my own experience,
I cannot but feel that, were you to fall under auspices such as theirs,
you would contend a while courageously with your doom, then you would
pine and grow too weak for your work; you would come home--if you still
had a home--broken down. Those languishing years would follow of which
none but the invalid and her immediate friends feel the heart-sickness
and know the burden. Consumption or decline would close the chapter.
Such is the history of many a life. I would not have it yours. My dear,
we will now walk about a little, if you please."
They both rose, and slowly paced a green natural terrace bordering the
chasm.
"My dear," ere long again began Mrs. Pryor, a sort of timid, embarrassed
abruptness marking her manner as she spoke, "the young, especially those
to whom nature has been favourable, often--frequently--anticipate--look
forward to--to marriage as the end, the goal of their hopes."
And she stopped. Caroline came to her relief with promptitude, showing a
great deal more self-possession and courage than herself on the
formidable topic now broached.
"They do, and naturally," she replied, with a calm emphasis that
startled Mrs. Pryor. "They look forward to marriage with some one they
love as the brightest, the only bright destiny that can await them. Are
they wrong?"
"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Pryor, clasping her hands; and again she
paused. Caroline turned a searching, an eager eye on the face of her
friend: that face was much agitated. "My dear," she murmured, "life is
an illusion."
"But not love! Love is real--the most real, the most lasting, the
sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know."
"My dear, it is very bitter. It is said to be strong--strong as death!
Most of the cheats of existence are strong. As to their sweetness,
nothing is so transitory; its date is a moment, the twinkling of an eye.
The sting remains for ever. It may perish with the dawn of eternity, but
it tortures through time into its deepest night."
"Yes, it tortures through time," agreed Caroline, "except when it is
mutual love."
"Mutual love! My dear, romances are pernicious. You do not read them, I
hope?"
"Sometimes--whenever I can get them, indeed. But romance-writers might
know nothing of love, judging by the way in which they treat of it."
"Nothing whatever, my dear," assented Mrs. Pryor eagerly, "nor of
marriage; and the false pictures they give of those subjects cannot be
too strongly condemned. They are not like reality. They show you only
the green, tempting surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or
truthful hint of the slough underneath."
"But it is not always slough," objected Caroline. "There are happy