Shirley
"I am wandering in a pleasant world," said Caroline, in a soft, happy
voice, "and I want you to tell me whether it is real or visionary. What
lady is that? Give her a name, uncle."
"We must have Dr. Rile again, ma'am; or better still, MacTurk. He's less
of a humbug. Thomas must saddle the pony and go for him."
"No; I don't want a doctor. Mamma shall be my only physician. Now, do
you understand, uncle?"
Mr. Helstone pushed up his spectacles from his nose to his forehead,
handled his snuff-box, and administered to himself a portion of the
contents. Thus fortified, he answered briefly, "I see daylight. You've
told her then, ma'am?"
"And is it _true_?" demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. "Is she
_really_ my mother?"
"You won't cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if I answer Yes?"
"Cry! I'd cry if you said _No_. It would be terrible to be disappointed
now. But give her a name. How do you call her?"
"I call this stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough
to wear much smarter raiment, if she would--I call her Agnes Helstone.
She married my brother James, and is his widow."
"And my mother?"
"What a little sceptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor,
scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and
eagerness." To Caroline--"She had the trouble of bringing you into the
world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting
well, and repairing the waste of these cheeks.--Heigh-ho! she used to be
plump. What she has done with it all I can't, for the life of me,
divine."
"If _wishing_ to get well will help me, I shall not be long sick. This
morning I had no reason and no strength to wish it."
Fanny here tapped at the door, and said that supper was ready.
"Uncle, if you please, you may send me a little bit of supper--anything
you like, from your own plate. That is wiser than going into hysterics,
is it not?"
"It is spoken like a sage, Cary. See if I don't cater for you
judiciously. When women are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I
can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and
extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to
give her an edible or a wearable--be the same a roc's egg or the
breastplate of Aaron, a share of St. John's locusts and honey or the
leathern girdle about his loins--I can, at least, understand the demand;
but when they pine for they know not what--sympathy, sentiment, some of
these indefinite abstractions--I can't do it; I don't know it; I haven't
got it.--Madam, accept my arm."
Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her daughter that
evening. Helstone, accordingly, left them together. He soon returned,
bringing a plate in his own consecrated hand.
"This is chicken," he said, "but we'll have partridge to-morrow.--Lift
her up, and put a shawl over her. On my word, I understand
nursing.--Now, here is the very same little silver fork you used when
you first came to the rectory. That strikes me as being what you may
call a happy thought--a delicate attention. Take it, Cary, and munch
away cleverly."
Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her powers were so
limited. He prophesied, however, great things for the future; and as she
praised the morsel he had brought, and smiled gratefully in his face, he
stooped over her pillow, kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged
accent, "Good-night, bairnie! God bless thee!"
Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled by her mother's
arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she forgot to wish for any other
stay; and though more than one feverish dream came to her in slumber,
yet, when she woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned
with returning consciousness that her agitation was soothed almost as
soon as felt.
As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. Till break
of day she wrestled with God in earnest prayer.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WEST WIND BLOWS.
Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after
night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant
may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its
appeal is to the Invisible. "Spare my beloved," it may implore. "Heal my
life's life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole
nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!" And after this cry and
strife the sun may rise and see him worsted. That opening morn, which
used to salute him with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks,
may breathe, as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and
heat have quitted, "Oh! I have had a suffering night. This morning I am
worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have
troubled me."
Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees a new and
strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the
insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is God's will his idol
shall be broken, and bends his head, and subdues his soul to the
sentence he cannot avert and scarce can bear.
Happy Mrs. Pryor! She was still praying, unconscious that the summer sun
hung above the hills, when her child softly woke in her arms. No
piteous, unconscious moaning--sound which so wastes our strength that,
even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps
away the oath--preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy followed.
The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from
this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign
to the living. Caroline evidently remembered with clearness what had
happened.
"Mamma, I have slept _so_ well. I only dreamed and woke twice."
Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not see the joyful
tears called into her eyes by that affectionate word "mamma," and the
welcome assurance that followed it.
For many days the mother dared rejoice only with trembling. That first
revival seemed like the flicker of a dying lamp. If the flame streamed
up bright one moment, the next it sank dim in the socket. Exhaustion
followed close on excitement.
There was always a touching endeavour to _appear_ better, but too often
ability refused to second will; too often the attempt to bear up failed.
The effort to eat, to talk, to look cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an
hour passed during which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could
never more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking might be
deferred.
During this space the mother and daughter seemed left almost alone in
the neighbourhood. It was the close of August; the weather was
fine--that is to say, it was very dry and very dusty, for an arid wind
had been blowing from the east this month past; very cloudless, too,
though a pale haze, stationary in the atmosphere, seemed to rob of all
depth of tone the blue of heaven, of all freshness the verdure of earth,
and of all glow the light of day. Almost every family in Briarfield was
absent on an excursion. Miss Keeldar and her friends were at the
seaside; so were Mrs. Yorke's household. Mr. Hall and Louis Moore,
between whom a spontaneous intimacy seemed to have arisen--the result,
probably, of harmony of views and temperament--were gone "up north" on a
pedestrian excursion to the Lakes. Even Hortense, who would fain have
stayed at home and aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so
earnestly entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to Wormwood
Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings greatly aggravated by the
insalubrious weather, that she felt obliged to comply; indeed, it was
not in her nature to refuse a request that at once appealed to her
goodness of heart, and, by a confession of dependency, flattered her
_amour propre_. As for Robert, from Birmingham he had gone on to London,
where he still sojourned.
So long as the breath of Asiatic deserts parched Caroline's lips and
fevered her veins, her physical convalescence could not keep pace with
her returning mental tranquillity; but there came a day when the wind
ceased to sob at the eastern gable of the rectory, and at the oriel
window of the church. A little cloud like a man's hand arose in the
west; gusts from the same quarter drove it on and spread it wide; wet
and tempest prevailed a while. When that was over the sun broke out
genially, heaven regained its azure, and earth its green; the livid
cholera-tint had vanished from the face of nature; the hills rose clear
round the horizon, absolved from that pale malaria-haze.
Caroline's youth could now be of some avail to her, and so could her
mother's nurture. Both, crowned by God's blessing, sent in the pure west
wind blowing soft as fresh through the ever-open chamber lattice,
rekindled her long-languishing energies. At last Mrs. Pryor saw that it
was permitted to hope: a genuine, material convalescence had commenced.
It was not merely Caroline's smile which was brighter, or her spirits
which were cheered, but a certain look had passed from her face and
eye--a look dread and indescribable, but which will easily be recalled
by those who have watched the couch of dangerous disease. Long before
the emaciated outlines of her aspect began to fill, or its departed
colour to return, a more subtle change took place; all grew softer and
warmer. Instead of a marble mask and glassy eye, Mrs. Pryor saw laid on
the pillow a face pale and wasted enough, perhaps more haggard than the
other appearance, but less awful; for it was a sick, living girl, not a
mere white mould or rigid piece of statuary.
Now, too, she was not always petitioning to drink. The words, "I am _so_
thirsty," ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a
morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were
no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to
indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did
not her nurse prepare what was selected! How she watched her as she
partook of it!
Nourishment brought strength. She could sit up. Then she longed to
breathe the fresh air, to revisit her flowers, to see how the fruit had
ripened. Her uncle, always liberal, had bought a garden-chair for her
express use. He carried her down in his own arms, and placed her in it
himself, and William Farren was there to wheel her round the walks, to
show her what he had done amongst her plants, to take her directions for
further work.
William and she found plenty to talk about. They had a dozen topics in
common--interesting to them, unimportant to the rest of the world. They
took a similar interest in animals, birds, insects, and plants; they
held similar doctrines about humanity to the lower creation, and had a
similar turn for minute observation on points of natural history. The
nest and proceedings of some ground-bees, which had burrowed in the turf
under an old cherry-tree, was one subject of interest; the haunts of
certain hedge-sparrows, and the welfare of certain pearly eggs and
callow fledglings, another.
Had _Chambers's Journal_ existed in those days, it would certainly have
formed Miss Helstone's and Farren's favourite periodical. She would have
subscribed for it, and to him each number would duly have been lent;
both would have put implicit faith and found great savour in its
marvellous anecdotes of animal sagacity.
This is a digression, but it suffices to explain why Caroline would have
no other hand than William's to guide her chair, and why his society and
conversation sufficed to give interest to her garden-airings.
Mrs. Pryor, walking near, wondered how her daughter could be so much at
ease with a "man of the people." _She_ found it impossible to speak to