Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (128 page)

CHAPTER XXVIII.

PHŒBE.

Shirley probably got on pleasantly with Sir Philip that evening, for the next morning she came down in one of her best moods.

“Who will take a walk with me?” she asked, after breakfast. “Isabella and Gertrude, will you?”

So rare was such an invitation from Miss Keeldar to her female cousins that they hesitated before they accepted it. Their mamma, however, signifying acquiescence in the project, they fetched their bonnets, and the trio set out.

It did not suit these three young persons to be thrown much together. Miss Keeldar liked the society of few ladies; indeed, she had a cordial pleasure in that of none except Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone. She was civil, kind, attentive even to her cousins; but still she usually had little to say to them. In the sunny mood of this particular morning, she contrived to entertain even the Misses Sympson. Without deviating from her wonted rule of discussing with them only ordinary themes, she imparted to these themes an extraordinary interest; the sparkle of her spirit glanced along her phrases.

What made her so joyous? All the cause must have been in herself. The day was not bright. It was dim — a pale, waning autumn day. The walks through the dun woods were damp; the atmosphere was heavy, the sky overcast; and yet it seemed that in Shirley’s heart lived all the light and azure of Italy, as all its fervour laughed in her gray English eye.

Some directions necessary to be given to her foreman, John, delayed her behind her cousins as they neared Fieldhead on their return. Perhaps an interval of twenty minutes elapsed between her separation from them and her re-entrance into the house. In the meantime she had spoken to John, and then she had lingered in the lane at the gate. A summons to luncheon called her in. She excused herself from the meal, and went upstairs.

“Is not Shirley coming to luncheon?” asked Isabella. “She said she was hungry.”

An hour after, as she did not quit her chamber, one of her cousins went to seek her there. She was found sitting at the foot of the bed, her head resting on her hand; she looked quite pale, very thoughtful, almost sad.

“You are not ill?” was the question put.

“A little sick,” replied Miss Keeldar.

Certainly she was not a little changed from what she had been two hours before.

This change, accounted for only by those three words, explained no otherwise; this change — whencesoever springing, effected in a brief ten minutes — passed like no light summer cloud. She talked when she joined her friends at dinner, talked as usual. She remained with them during the evening. When again questioned respecting her health, she declared herself perfectly recovered. It had been a mere passing faintness, a momentary sensation, not worth a thought; yet it was felt there was a difference in Shirley.

The next day — the day, the week, the fortnight after — this new and peculiar shadow lingered on the countenance, in the manner of Miss Keeldar. A strange quietude settled over her look, her movements, her very voice. The alteration was not so marked as to court or permit frequent questioning, yet it
was
there, and it would not pass away. It hung over her like a cloud which no breeze could stir or disperse. Soon it became evident that to notice this change was to annoy her. First she shrank from remark; and, if persisted in, she, with her own peculiar
hauteur
, repelled it. “Was she ill?” The reply came with decision.

“I
am not
.”

“Did anything weigh on her mind? Had anything happened to affect her spirits?”

She scornfully ridiculed the idea. “What did they mean by spirits? She had no spirits, black or white, blue or gray, to affect.”

“Something must be the matter — she was so altered.”

“She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was plainer. If it suited her to grow ugly, why need others fret themselves on the subject?”

“There must be a cause for the change. What was it?”

She peremptorily requested to be let alone.

Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, and she seemed indignant at herself that she could not perfectly succeed. Brief self-spurning epithets burst from her lips when alone. “Fool! coward!” she would term herself. “Poltroon!” she would say, “if you must tremble, tremble in secret! Quail where no eye sees you!”

“How dare you,” she would ask herself — “how dare you show your weakness and betray your imbecile anxieties? Shake them off; rise above them. If you cannot do this, hide them.”

And to hide them she did her best. She once more became resolutely lively in company. When weary of effort and forced to relax, she sought solitude — not the solitude of her chamber (she refused to mope, shut up between four walls), but that wilder solitude which lies out of doors, and which she could chase, mounted on Zoë, her mare. She took long rides of half a day. Her uncle disapproved, but he dared not remonstrate. It was never pleasant to face Shirley’s anger, even when she was healthy and gay; but now that her face showed thin, and her large eye looked hollow, there was something in the darkening of that face and kindling of that eye which touched as well as alarmed.

To all comparative strangers who, unconscious of the alterations in her spirits, commented on the alteration in her looks, she had one reply, —

“I am perfectly well; I have not an ailment.”

And health, indeed, she must have had, to be able to bear the exposure to the weather she now encountered. Wet or fair, calm or storm, she took her daily ride over Stilbro’ Moor, Tartar keeping up at her side, with his wolf-like gallop, long and untiring.

Twice, three times, the eyes of gossips — those eyes which are everywhere, in the closet and on the hill-top — noticed that instead of turning on Rushedge, the top ridge of Stilbro’ Moor, she rode forwards all the way to the town. Scouts were not wanting to mark her destination there. It was ascertained that she alighted at the door of one Mr. Pearson Hall, a solicitor, related to the vicar of Nunnely. This gentleman and his ancestors had been the agents of the Keeldar family for generations back. Some people affirmed that Miss Keeldar was become involved in business speculations connected with Hollow’s Mill — that she had lost money, and was constrained to mortgage her land. Others conjectured that she was going to be married, and that the settlements were preparing.

Mr. Moore and Henry Sympson were together in the schoolroom. The tutor was waiting for a lesson which the pupil seemed busy in preparing.

“Henry, make haste. The afternoon is getting on.”

“Is it, sir?”

“Certainly. Are you nearly ready with that lesson?”

“No.”

“Not
nearly
ready?”

“I have not construed a line.”

Mr. Moore looked up. The boy’s tone was rather peculiar.

“The task presents no difficulties, Henry; or, if it does, bring them to me. We will work together.”

“Mr. Moore, I can do no work.”

“My boy, you are ill.”

“Sir, I am not worse in bodily health than usual, but my heart is full.”

“Shut the book. Come hither, Harry. Come to the fireside.”

Harry limped forward. His tutor placed him in a chair; his lips were quivering, his eyes brimming. He laid his crutch on the floor, bent down his head, and wept.

“This distress is not occasioned by physical pain, you say, Harry? You have a grief; tell it me.”

“Sir, I have such a grief as I never had before. I wish it could be relieved in some way; I can hardly bear it.”

“Who knows but, if we talk it over, we may relieve it? What is the cause? Whom does it concern?”

“The cause, sir, is Shirley; it concerns Shirley.”

“Does it? You think her changed?”

“All who know her think her changed — you too, Mr. Moore.”

“Not seriously — no. I see no alteration but such as a favourable turn might repair in a few weeks; besides, her own word must go for something: she says she is well.”

“There it is, sir. As long as she maintained she was well, I believed her. When I was sad out of her sight, I soon recovered spirits in her presence. Now —
 
— “

“Well, Harry, now. Has she said anything to you? You and she were together in the garden two hours this morning. I saw her talking, and you listening. Now, my dear Harry, if Miss Keeldar has said she is ill, and enjoined you to keep her secret, do not obey her. For her life’s sake, avow everything. Speak, my boy.”

“
She
say she is ill! I believe, sir, if she were dying, she would smile, and aver, ‘Nothing ails me.’”

“What have you learned then? What new circumstance?”

“I have learned that she has just made her will.”

“Made her will?”

The tutor and pupil were silent.

“She told you that?” asked Moore, when some minutes had elapsed.

“She told me quite cheerfully, not as an ominous circumstance, which I felt it to be. She said I was the only person besides her solicitor, Pearson Hall, and Mr. Helstone and Mr. Yorke, who knew anything about it; and to me, she intimated, she wished specially to explain its provisions.”

“Go on, Harry.”

“‘Because,’ she said, looking down on me with her beautiful eyes — oh! they
are
beautiful, Mr. Moore! I love them! I love her! She is my star! Heaven must not claim her! She is lovely in this world, and fitted for this world. Shirley is not an angel; she is a woman, and she shall live with men. Seraphs shall not have her! Mr. Moore, if one of the ‘sons of God,’ with wings wide and bright as the sky, blue and sounding as the sea, having seen that she was fair, descended to claim her, his claim should be withstood — withstood by me — boy and cripple as I am.”

“Henry Sympson, go on, when I tell you.”

“‘Because,’ she said, ‘if I made no will, and died before you, Harry, all my property would go to you; and I do not intend that it should be so, though your father would like it. But you,’ she said, ‘will have his whole estate, which is large — larger than Fieldhead. Your sisters will have nothing; so I have left them some money, though I do not love them, both together, half so much as I love one lock of your fair hair.’ She said these words, and she called me her ‘darling,’ and let me kiss her. She went on to tell me that she had left Caroline Helstone some money too; that this manor house, with its furniture and books, she had bequeathed to me, as she did not choose to take the old family place from her own blood; and that all the rest of her property, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, exclusive of the legacies to my sisters and Miss Helstone, she had willed, not to me, seeing I was already rich, but to a good man, who would make the best use of it that any human being could do — a man, she said, that was both gentle and brave, strong and merciful — a man that might not profess to be pious, but she knew he had the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of love and peace was with him. He visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world. Then she asked, ‘Do you approve what I have done, Harry?’ I could not answer. My tears choked me, as they do now.”

Mr. Moore allowed his pupil a moment to contend with and master his emotion. He then demanded, “What else did she say?”

“When I had signified my full consent to the conditions of her will, she told me I was a generous boy, and she was proud of me. ‘And now,’ she added, ‘in case anything should happen, you will know what to say to Malice when she comes whispering hard things in your ear, insinuating that Shirley has wronged you, that she did not love you. You will know that I
did
love you, Harry; that no sister could have loved you better — my own treasure.’ Mr. Moore, sir, when I remember her voice, and recall her look, my heart beats as if it would break its strings. She
may
go to heaven before me — if God commands it, she
must
; but the rest of my life — and my life will not be long, I am glad of that now — shall be a straight, quick, thoughtful journey in the path her step has pressed. I thought to enter the vault of the Keeldars before her. Should it be otherwise, lay my coffin by Shirley’s side.”