Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (111 page)

“A peculiar one, at least.”

“But Caroline — is she peculiar?”

“In her way — yes.”

“Her way! What is her way?”

“You know her as well as I do.”

“And knowing her, I assert that she is neither eccentric nor difficult of control. Is she?”

“That depends —
 
— “

“However, there is nothing masculine about
her
?”

“Why lay such emphasis on
her
? Do you consider her a contrast, in that respect, to yourself?”

“You do, no doubt; but that does not signify. Caroline is neither masculine, nor of what they call the spirited order of women.”

“I have seen her flash out.”

“So have I, but not with manly fire. It was a short, vivid, trembling glow, that shot up, shone, vanished —
 
— “

“And left her scared at her own daring. You describe others besides Caroline.”

“The point I wish to establish is, that Miss Helstone, though gentle, tractable, and candid enough, is still perfectly capable of defying even Mr. Moore’s penetration.”

“What have you and she been doing?” asked Moore suddenly.

“Have you had any breakfast?”

“What is your mutual mystery?”

“If you are hungry, Mrs. Gill will give you something to eat here. Step into the oak parlour, and ring the bell. You will be served as if at an inn; or, if you like better, go back to the Hollow.”

“The alternative is not open to me; I
must
go back. Good-morning. The first leisure I have I will see you again.”

CHAPTER XXI.

MRS. PRYOR.

While Shirley was talking with Moore, Caroline rejoined Mrs. Pryor upstairs. She found that lady deeply depressed. She would not say that Miss Keeldar’s hastiness had hurt her feelings, but it was evident an inward wound galled her. To any but a congenial nature she would have seemed insensible to the quiet, tender attentions by which Miss Helstone sought to impart solace; but Caroline knew that, unmoved or slightly moved as she looked, she felt, valued, and was healed by them.

“I am deficient in self-confidence and decision,” she said at last. “I always have been deficient in those qualities. Yet I think Miss Keeldar should have known my character well enough by this time to be aware that I always feel an even painful solicitude to do right, to act for the best. The unusual nature of the demand on my judgment puzzled me, especially following the alarms of the night. I could not venture to act promptly for another; but I trust no serious harm will result from my lapse of firmness.”

A gentle knock was here heard at the door. It was half opened.

“Caroline, come here,” said a low voice.

Miss Helstone went out. There stood Shirley in the gallery, looking contrite, ashamed, sorry as any repentant child.

“How is Mrs. Pryor?” she asked.

“Rather out of spirits,” said Caroline.

“I have behaved very shamefully, very ungenerously, very ungratefully to her,” said Shirley. “How insolent in me to turn on her thus for what, after all, was no fault — only an excess of conscientiousness on her part. But I regret my error most sincerely. Tell her so, and ask if she will forgive me.”

Caroline discharged the errand with heartfelt pleasure. Mrs. Pryor rose, came to the door. She did not like scenes; she dreaded them as all timid people do. She said falteringly, “Come in, my dear.”

Shirley did come in with some impetuosity. She threw her arms round her governess, and while she kissed her heartily she said, “You know you
must
forgive me, Mrs. Pryor. I could not get on at all if there was a misunderstanding between you and me.”

“I have nothing to forgive,” was the reply. “We will pass it over now, if you please. The final result of the incident is that it proves more plainly than ever how unequal I am to certain crises.”

And that was the painful feeling which
would
remain on Mrs. Pryor’s mind. No effort of Shirley’s or Caroline’s could efface it thence. She could forgive her offending pupil, not her innocent self.

Miss Keeldar, doomed to be in constant request during the morning, was presently summoned downstairs again. The rector called first. A lively welcome and livelier reprimand were at his service. He expected both, and, being in high spirits, took them in equally good part.

In the course of his brief visit he quite forgot to ask after his niece; the riot, the rioters, the mill, the magistrates, the heiress, absorbed all his thoughts to the exclusion of family ties. He alluded to the part himself and curate had taken in the defence of the Hollow.

“The vials of pharisaical wrath will be emptied on our heads for our share in this business,” he said; “but I defy every calumniator. I was there only to support the law, to play my part as a man and a Briton; which characters I deem quite compatible with those of the priest and Levite, in their highest sense. Your tenant Moore,” he went on, “has won my approbation. A cooler commander I would not wish to see, nor a more determined. Besides, the man has shown sound judgment and good sense — first, in being thoroughly prepared for the event which has taken place; and subsequently, when his well-concerted plans had secured him success, in knowing how to use without abusing his victory. Some of the magistrates are now well frightened, and, like all cowards, show a tendency to be cruel. Moore restrains them with admirable prudence. He has hitherto been very unpopular in the neighbourhood; but, mark my words, the tide of opinion will now take a turn in his favour. People will find out that they have not appreciated him, and will hasten to remedy their error; and he, when he perceives the public disposed to acknowledge his merits, will show a more gracious mien than that with which he has hitherto favoured us.”

Mr. Helstone was about to add to this speech some half-jesting, half-serious warnings to Miss Keeldar on the subject of her rumoured partiality for her talented tenant, when a ring at the door, announcing another caller, checked his raillery; and as that other caller appeared in the form of a white-haired elderly gentleman, with a rather truculent countenance and disdainful eye — in short, our old acquaintance, and the rector’s old enemy, Mr. Yorke — the priest and Levite seized his hat, and with the briefest of adieus to Miss Keeldar and the sternest of nods to her guest took an abrupt leave.

Mr. Yorke was in no mild mood, and in no measured terms did he express his opinion on the transaction of the night. Moore, the magistrates, the soldiers, the mob leaders, each and all came in for a share of his invectives; but he reserved his strongest epithets — and real racy Yorkshire Doric adjectives they were — for the benefit of the fighting parsons, the “sanguinary, demoniac” rector and curate. According to him, the cup of ecclesiastical guilt was now full indeed.

“The church,” he said, “was in a bonny pickle now. It was time it came down when parsons took to swaggering amang soldiers, blazing away wi’ bullet and gunpowder, taking the lives of far honester men than themselves.”

“What would Moore have done if nobody had helped him?” asked Shirley.

“Drunk as he’d brewed, eaten as he’d baked.”

“Which means you would have left him by himself to face that mob. Good! He has plenty of courage, but the greatest amount of gallantry that ever garrisoned one human breast could scarce avail against two hundred.”

“He had the soldiers, those poor slaves who hire out their own blood and spill other folk’s for money.”

“You abuse soldiers almost as much as you abuse clergymen. All who wear red coats are national refuse in your eyes, and all who wear black are national swindlers. Mr. Moore, according to you, did wrong to get military aid, and he did still worse to accept of any other aid. Your way of talking amounts to this: he should have abandoned his mill and his life to the rage of a set of misguided madmen, and Mr. Helstone and every other gentleman in the parish should have looked on, and seen the building razed and its owner slaughtered, and never stirred a finger to save either.”

“If Moore had behaved to his men from the beginning as a master ought to behave, they never would have entertained their present feelings towards him.”

“Easy for you to talk,” exclaimed Miss Keeldar, who was beginning to wax warm in her tenant’s cause — “you, whose family have lived at Briarmains for six generations, to whose person the people have been accustomed for fifty years, who know all their ways, prejudices, and preferences — easy, indeed, for
you
to act so as to avoid offending them. But Mr. Moore came a stranger into the district; he came here poor and friendless, with nothing but his own energies to back him, nothing but his honour, his talent, and his industry to make his way for him. A monstrous crime indeed that, under such circumstances, he could not popularize his naturally grave, quiet manners all at once; could not be jocular, and free, and cordial with a strange peasantry, as you are with your fellow-townsmen! An unpardonable transgression that when he introduced improvements he did not go about the business in quite the most politic way, did not graduate his changes as delicately as a rich capitalist might have done! For errors of this sort is he to be the victim of mob outrage? Is he to be denied even the privilege of defending himself? Are those who have the hearts of men in their breasts (and Mr. Helstone, say what you will of him, has such a heart) to be reviled like malefactors because they stand by him, because they venture to espouse the cause of one against two hundred?”

“Come, come now, be cool,” said Mr. Yorke, smiling at the earnestness with which Shirley multiplied her rapid questions.

“Cool! Must I listen coolly to downright nonsense — to dangerous nonsense? No. I like you very well, Mr. Yorke, as you know, but I thoroughly dislike some of your principles. All that cant — excuse me, but I repeat the word — all that
cant
about soldiers and parsons is most offensive in my ears. All ridiculous, irrational crying up of one class, whether the same be aristocrat or democrat — all howling down of another class, whether clerical or military — all exacting injustice to individuals, whether monarch or mendicant — is really sickening to me; all arraying of ranks against ranks, all party hatreds, all tyrannies disguised as liberties, I reject and wash my hands of.
You
think you are a philanthropist;
you
think you are an advocate of liberty; but I will tell you this — Mr. Hall, the parson of Nunnely, is a better friend both of man and freedom than Hiram Yorke, the reformer of Briarfield.”

From a man Mr. Yorke would not have borne this language very patiently, nor would he have endured it from some women; but he accounted Shirley both honest and pretty, and her plain-spoken ire amused him. Besides, he took a secret pleasure in hearing her defend her tenant, for we have already intimated he had Robert Moore’s interest very much at heart. Moreover, if he wished to avenge himself for her severity, he knew the means lay in his power: a word, he believed, would suffice to tame and silence her, to cover her frank forehead with the rosy shadow of shame, and veil the glow of her eye under down-drooped lid and lash.

“What more hast thou to say?” he inquired, as she paused, rather, it appeared, to take breath than because her subject or her zeal was exhausted.

“Say, Mr. Yorke!” was the answer, the speaker meantime walking fast from wall to wall of the oak parlour — “say? I have a great deal to say, if I could get it out in lucid order, which I never
can
do. I have to say that your views, and those of most extreme politicians, are such as none but men in an irresponsible position
can
advocate; that they are purely opposition views, meant only to be talked about, and never intended to be acted on. Make you Prime Minister of England to-morrow, and you would have to abandon them. You abuse Moore for defending his mill. Had you been in Moore’s place you could not with honour or sense have acted otherwise than he acted. You abuse Mr. Helstone for everything he does. Mr. Helstone has his faults; he sometimes does wrong, but oftener right. Were you ordained vicar of Briarfield, you would find it no easy task to sustain all the active schemes for the benefit of the parish planned and persevered in by your predecessor. I wonder people cannot judge more fairly of each other and themselves. When I hear Messrs. Malone and Donne chatter about the authority of the church, the dignity and claims of the priesthood, the deference due to them as clergymen; when I hear the outbreaks of their small spite against Dissenters; when I witness their silly, narrow jealousies and assumptions; when their palaver about forms, and traditions, and superstitions is sounding in my ear; when I behold their insolent carriage to the poor, their often base servility to the rich — I think the Establishment is indeed in a poor way, and both she and her sons appear in the utmost need of reformation. Turning away distressed from minster tower and village spire — ay, as distressed as a churchwarden who feels the exigence of white-wash and has not wherewithal to purchase lime — I recall your senseless sarcasms on the ‘fat bishops,’ the ‘pampered parsons,’ ‘old mother church,’ etc. I remember your strictures on all who differ from you, your sweeping condemnation of classes and individuals, without the slightest allowance made for circumstances or temptations; and then, Mr. Yorke, doubt clutches my inmost heart as to whether men exist clement, reasonable, and just enough to be entrusted with the task of reform. I don’t believe
you
are of the number.”

“You have an ill opinion of me, Miss Shirley. You never told me so much of your mind before.”

“I never had an opening. But I have sat on Jessy’s stool by your chair in the back-parlour at Briarmains, for evenings together, listening excitedly to your talk, half admiring what you said, and half rebelling against it. I think you a fine old Yorkshireman, sir. I am proud to have been born in the same county and parish as yourself. Truthful, upright, independent you are, as a rock based below seas; but also you are harsh, rude, narrow, and merciless.”

“Not to the poor, lass, nor to the meek of the earth; only to the proud and high-minded.”

“And what right have you, sir, to make such distinctions? A prouder, a higher-minded man than yourself does not exist. You find it easy to speak comfortably to your inferiors; you are too haughty, too ambitious, too jealous to be civil to those above you. But you are all alike. Helstone also is proud and prejudiced. Moore, though juster and more considerate than either you or the rector, is still haughty, stern, and, in a public sense, selfish. It is well there are such men as Mr. Hall to be found occasionally — men of large and kind hearts, who can love their whole race, who can forgive others for being richer, more prosperous, or more powerful than they are. Such men may have less originality, less force of character than you, but they are better friends to mankind.”