Shirley
women, Mrs. Yorke condemned; and what they overlook or despise, she
patronized.
Caroline advanced to the mighty matron with some sense of diffidence.
She knew little of Mrs. Yorke, and, as a parson's niece, was doubtful
what sort of a reception she might get. She got a very cool one, and was
glad to hide her discomfiture by turning away to take off her bonnet.
Nor, upon sitting down, was she displeased to be immediately accosted by
a little personage in a blue frock and sash, who started up like some
fairy from the side of the great dame's chair, where she had been
sitting on a footstool, screened from view by the folds of the wide red
gown, and running to Miss Helstone, unceremoniously threw her arms round
her neck and demanded a kiss.
"My mother is not civil to you," said the petitioner, as she received
and repaid a smiling salute, "and Rose there takes no notice of you; it
is their way. If, instead of you, a white angel, with a crown of stars,
had come into the room, mother would nod stiffly, and Rose never lift
her head at all; but I will be your friend--I have always liked you."
"Jessie, curb that tongue of yours, and repress your forwardness!" said
Mrs. Yorke.
"But, mother, you are so frozen!" expostulated Jessie. "Miss Helstone
has never done you any harm; why can't you be kind to her? You sit so
stiff, and look so cold, and speak so dry--what for? That's just the
fashion in which you treat Miss Shirley Keeldar and every other young
lady who comes to our house. And Rose there is such an aut--aut--I have
forgotten the word, but it means a machine in the shape of a human
being. However, between you, you will drive every soul away from
Briarmains; Martin often says so."
"I am an automaton? Good! Let me alone, then," said Rose, speaking from
a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase,
with a volume spread open on her knee.--"Miss Helstone, how do you do?"
she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then
again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book and returning
to the study of its pages.
Caroline stole a quiet gaze towards her, dwelling on her young, absorbed
countenance, and observing a certain unconscious movement of the mouth
as she read--a movement full of character. Caroline had tact, and she
had fine instinct. She felt that Rose Yorke was a peculiar child--one of
the unique; she knew how to treat her. Approaching quietly, she knelt on
the carpet at her side, and looked over her little shoulder at her book.
It was a romance of Mrs. Radcliffe's--"The Italian."
Caroline read on with her, making no remark. Presently Rose showed her
the attention of asking, ere she turned the leaf, "Are you ready?"
Caroline only nodded.
"Do you like it?" inquired Rose ere long.
"Long since, when I read it as a child, I was wonderfully taken with
it."
"Why?"
"It seemed to open with such promise--such foreboding of a most strange
tale to be unfolded."
"And in reading it you feel as if you were far away from England--really
in Italy--under another sort of sky--that blue sky of the south which
travellers describe."
"You are sensible of that, Rose?"
"It makes me long to travel, Miss Helstone."
"When you are a woman, perhaps, you may be able to gratify your wish."
"I mean to make a way to do so, if one is not made for me. I cannot live
always in Briarfield. The whole world is not very large compared with
creation. I must see the outside of our own round planet, at least."
"How much of its outside?"
"First this hemisphere where we live; then the other. I am resolved that
my life shall be a life. Not a black trance like the toad's, buried in
marble; nor a long, slow death like yours in Briarfield rectory."
"Like mine! what can you mean, child?"
"Might you not as well be tediously dying as for ever shut up in that
glebe-house--a place that, when I pass it, always reminds me of a
windowed grave? I never see any movement about the door. I never hear a
sound from the wall. I believe smoke never issues from the chimneys.
What do you do there?"
"I sew, I read, I learn lessons."
"Are you happy?"
"Should I be happy wandering alone in strange countries as you wish to
do?"
"Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however,
that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on,
like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now.
In a day's wandering you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse,
each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was
overcast; as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. Nothing
changes in Briarfield rectory. The plaster of the parlour ceilings, the
paper on the walls, the curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same."
"Is change necessary to happiness?"
"Yes."
"Is it synonymous with it?"
"I don't know; but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same."
Here Jessie spoke.
"Isn't she mad?" she asked.
"But, Rose," pursued Caroline, "I fear a wanderer's life, for me at
least, would end like that tale you are reading--in disappointment,
vanity, and vexation of spirit."
"Does 'The Italian' so end?"
"I thought so when I read it."
"Better to try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and
leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who
buried his talent in a napkin--despicable sluggard!"
"Rose," observed Mrs. Yorke, "solid satisfaction is only to be realized
by doing one's duty."
"Right, mother! And if my Master has given me ten talents, my duty is to
trade with them, and make them ten talents more. Not in the dust of
household drawers shall the coin be interred. I will _not_ deposit it in
a broken-spouted teapot, and shut it up in a china closet among
tea-things. I will _not_ commit it to your work-table to be smothered in
piles of woollen hose. I will _not_ prison it in the linen press to find
shrouds among the sheets. And least of all, mother" (she got up from the
floor)--"least of all will I hide it in a tureen of cold potatoes, to be
ranged with bread, butter, pastry, and ham on the shelves of the
larder."
She stopped, then went on, "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our
talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account.
The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern
tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your
daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may
be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own with usury."
"Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?"
"Yes, mother."
"Sit down, and do a line of marking."
Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. After a busy
pause of ten minutes, her mother asked, "Do you think yourself oppressed
now--a victim?"
"No, mother."
"Yet, as far as I understood your tirade, it was a protest against all
womanly and domestic employment."
"You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not to learn to sew.
You do right to teach me, and to make me work."
"Even to the mending of your brothers' stockings and the making of
sheets?"
"Yes."
"Where is the use of ranting and spouting about it, then?"
"Am I to do nothing but that? I will do that, and then I will do more.
Now, mother, I have said my say. I am twelve years old at present, and
not till I am sixteen will I speak again about talents. For four years I
bind myself an industrious apprentice to all you can teach me."
"You see what my daughters are, Miss Helstone," observed Mrs. Yorke;
"how precociously wise in their own conceits! 'I would rather this, I
prefer that'--such is Jessie's cuckoo song; while Rose utters the bolder
cry, 'I _will_, and I will _not_!'"
"I render a reason, mother; besides, if my cry is bold, it is only heard
once in a twelvemonth. About each birthday the spirit moves me to
deliver one oracle respecting my own instruction and management. I utter
it and leave it; it is for you, mother, to listen or not."
"I would advise all young ladies," pursued Mrs. Yorke, "to study the
characters of such children as they chance to meet with before they
marry and have any of their own to consider well how they would like
the responsibility of guiding the careless, the labour of persuading the
stubborn, the constant burden and task of training the best."
"But with love it need not be so very difficult," interposed Caroline.
"Mothers love their children most dearly--almost better than they love
themselves."
"Fine talk! very sentimental! There is the rough, practical part of life
yet to come for you, young miss."
"But, Mrs. Yorke, if I take a little baby into my arms--any poor woman's
infant, for instance--I feel that I love that helpless thing quite
peculiarly, though I am not its mother. I could do almost anything for
it willingly, if it were delivered over entirely to my care--if it were
quite dependent on me."
"You _feel_! Yes, yes! I dare say, now. You are led a great deal by your
_feelings_, and you think yourself a very sensitive personage, no doubt.
Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to
train your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, better
suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the
real world by dint of common sense?"
"No; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke."
"Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face you see there with
that of any early-rising, hard-working milkmaid."
"My face is a pale one, but it is _not_ sentimental; and most milkmaids,
however red and robust they may be, are more stupid and less practically
fitted to make their way in the world than I am. I think more, and more
correctly, than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they would
often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of reflection,
should act judiciously."
"Oh no! you would be influenced by your feelings; you would be guided by
impulse."
"Of course I should often be influenced by my feelings. They were given
me to that end. Whom my feelings teach me to love I _must_ and _shall_
love; and I hope, if ever I have a husband and children, my feelings
will induce me to love them. I hope, in that case, all my impulses will
be strong in compelling me to love."
Caroline had a pleasure in saying this with emphasis; she had a pleasure
in daring to say it in Mrs. Yorke's presence. She did not care what
unjust sarcasm might be hurled at her in reply. She flushed, not with
anger but excitement, when the ungenial matron answered coolly, "Don't
waste your dramatic effects. That was well said--it was quite fine; but
it is lost on two women--an old wife and an old maid. There should have
been a disengaged gentleman present.--Is Mr. Robert nowhere hid behind
the curtains, do you think, Miss Moore?"
Hortense, who during the chief part of the conversation had been in the
kitchen superintending the preparations for tea, did not yet quite
comprehend the drift of the discourse. She answered, with a puzzled air,
that Robert was at Whinbury. Mrs. Yorke laughed her own peculiar short
laugh.
"Straightforward Miss Moore!" said she patronizingly. "It is like you to
understand my question so literally and answer it so simply. _Your_ mind
comprehends nothing of intrigue. Strange things might go on around you
without your being the wiser; you are not of the class the world calls
sharp-witted."
These equivocal compliments did not seem to please Hortense. She drew
herself up, puckered her black eyebrows, but still looked puzzled.
"I have ever been noted for sagacity and discernment from childhood,"
she returned; for, indeed, on the possession of these qualities she
peculiarly piqued herself.