Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (75 page)

Accordingly, as soon as the said Robert was seated at the breakfast-table, and she had helped him to a portion of stewed pears, and cut him a good-sized Belgian tartine, she began to pour out a flood of amazement and horror at the transaction of last night, the destruction of the frames.

“Quelle idée! to destroy them.
Quelle action honteuse! On voyait bien que les ouvriers de ce pays étaient à la fois betes et méchants. C’était absolument comme les domestiques anglais, les servantes surtout: rien d’insupportable comme cette Sara, par exemple!”

“She looks clean and industrious,” Mr. Moore remarked.

“Looks! I don’t know how she looks, and I do not say that she is altogether dirty or idle, mais elle est d’une insolence! She disputed with me a quarter of an hour yesterday about the cooking of the beef; she said I boiled it to rags, that English people would never be able to eat such a dish as our bouilli, that the bouillon was no better than greasy warm water, and as to the choucroute, she affirms she cannot touch it! That barrel we have in the cellar — delightfully prepared by my own hands — she termed a tub of hog-wash, which means food for pigs. I am harassed with the girl, and yet I cannot part with her lest I should get a worse. You are in the same position with your workmen, pauvre cher frère!”

“I am afraid you are not very happy in England, Hortense.”

“It is my duty to be happy where you are, brother; but otherwise there are certainly a thousand things which make me regret our native town. All the world here appears to me ill-bred (mal-élevé). I find my habits considered ridiculous. If a girl out of your mill chances to come into the kitchen and find me in my jupon and camisole preparing dinner (for you know I cannot trust Sarah to cook a single dish), she sneers. If I accept an invitation out to tea, which I have done once or twice, I perceive I am put quite into the background; I have not that attention paid me which decidedly is my due. Of what an excellent family are the Gérards, as we know, and the Moores also! They have a right to claim a certain respect, and to feel wounded when it is withheld from them. In Antwerp I was always treated with distinction; here, one would think that when I open my lips in company I speak English with a ridiculous accent, whereas I am quite assured that I pronounce it perfectly.”

“Hortense, in Antwerp we were known rich; in England we were never known but poor.”

“Precisely, and thus mercenary are mankind. Again, dear brother, last Sunday, if you recollect, was very wet; accordingly I went to church in my neat black sabots, objects one would not indeed wear in a fashionable city, but which in the country I have ever been accustomed to use for walking in dirty roads. Believe me, as I paced up the aisle, composed and tranquil, as I am always, four ladies, and as many gentlemen, laughed and hid their faces behind their prayer-books.”

“Well, well! don’t put on the sabots again. I told you before I thought they were not quite the thing for this country.”

“But, brother, they are not common sabots, such as the peasantry wear. I tell you, they are sabots noirs, très propres, très convenables. At Mons and Leuze — cities not very far removed from the elegant capital of Brussels — it is very seldom that the respectable people wear anything else for walking in winter. Let any one try to wade the mud of the Flemish chaussées in a pair of Paris brodequins, on m’en dirait des nouvelles!”

“Never mind Mons and Leuze and the Flemish chaussées; do at Rome as the Romans do. And as to the camisole and jupon, I am not quite sure about them either. I never see an English lady dressed in such garments. Ask Caroline Helstone.”

“Caroline!
I
ask Caroline?
I
consult her about my dress? It is
she
who on all points should consult
me
. She is a child.”

“She is eighteen, or at least seventeen — old enough to know all about gowns, petticoats, and chaussures.”

“Do not spoil Caroline, I entreat you, brother. Do not make her of more consequence than she ought to be. At present she is modest and unassuming: let us keep her so.”

“With all my heart. Is she coming this morning?”

“She will come at ten, as usual, to take her French lesson.”

“You don’t find that she sneers at you, do you?”

“She does not. She appreciates me better than any one else here; but then she has more intimate opportunities of knowing me. She sees that I have education, intelligence, manner, principles — all, in short, which belongs to a person well born and well bred.”

“Are you at all fond of her?”

“For
fond
I cannot say. I am not one who is prone to take violent fancies, and, consequently, my friendship is the more to be depended on. I have a regard for her as my relative; her position also inspires interest, and her conduct as my pupil has hitherto been such as rather to enhance than diminish the attachment that springs from other causes.”

“She behaves pretty well at lessons?”

“To
me
she behaves very well; but you are conscious, brother, that I have a manner calculated to repel over-familiarity, to win esteem, and to command respect. Yet, possessed of penetration, I perceive clearly that Caroline is not perfect, that there is much to be desired in her.”

“Give me a last cup of coffee, and while I am drinking it amuse me with an account of her faults.”

“Dear brother, I am happy to see you eat your breakfast with relish, after the fatiguing night you have passed. Caroline, then, is defective; but with my forming hand and almost motherly care she may improve. There is about her an occasional something — a reserve, I think — which I do not quite like, because it is not sufficiently girlish and submissive; and there are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her nature, which put me out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever disapprove what is not intelligible.”

“I don’t understand your account in the least. What do you mean by ‘unsettled hurries,’ for instance?”

“An example will, perhaps, be the most satisfactory explanation. I sometimes, you are aware, make her read French poetry by way of practice in pronunciation. She has in the course of her lessons gone through much of Corneille and Racine, in a very steady, sober spirit, such as I approve. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of languor in the perusal of those esteemed authors, partaking rather of apathy than sobriety; and apathy is what I cannot tolerate in those who have the benefit of my instructions — besides, one should not be apathetic in studying standard works. The other day I put into her hands a volume of short fugitive pieces. I sent her to the window to learn one by heart, and when I looked up I saw her turning the leaves over impatiently, and curling her lip, absolutely with scorn, as she surveyed the little poems cursorily.
I chid her. ‘Ma cousine,’ said she, ‘tout cela m’ennuie à la mort.’ I told her this was improper language. ‘Dieu!’ she exclaimed, ‘il n’y a donc pas deux lignes de poësie dans toute la littérature française?’
I inquired what she meant. She begged my pardon with proper submission. Ere long she was still. I saw her smiling to herself over the book. She began to learn assiduously. In half an hour she came and stood before me, presented the volume, folded her hands, as I always require her to do, and commenced the repetition of that short thing by Chénier, ‘La Jeune Captive.’ If you had heard the manner in which she went through this, and in which she uttered a few incoherent comments when she had done, you would have known what I meant by the phrase ‘unsettled hurry.’ One would have thought Chénier was more moving than all Racine and all Corneille. You, brother, who have so much sagacity, will discern that this disproportionate preference argues an ill-regulated mind; but she is fortunate in her preceptress. I will give her a system, a method of thought, a set of opinions; I will give her the perfect control and guidance of her feelings.”

“Be sure you do, Hortense. Here she comes. That was her shadow passed the window, I believe.”

“Ah! truly. She is too early — half an hour before her time. — My child, what brings you here before I have breakfasted?”

This question was addressed to an individual who now entered the room, a young girl, wrapped in a winter mantle, the folds of which were gathered with some grace round an apparently slender figure.

“I came in haste to see how you were, Hortense, and how Robert was too. I was sure you would be both grieved by what happened last night. I did not hear till this morning. My uncle told me at breakfast.”

“Ah! it is unspeakable. You sympathize with us? Your uncle sympathizes with us?”

“My uncle is very angry — but he was with Robert, I believe, was he not? — Did he not go with you to Stilbro’ Moor?”

“Yes, we set out in very martial style, Caroline; but the prisoners we went to rescue met us half-way.”

“Of course nobody was hurt?”

“Why, no; only Joe Scott’s wrists were a little galled with being pinioned too tightly behind his back.”

“You were not there? You were not with the wagons when they were attacked?”

“No. One seldom has the fortune to be present at occurrences at which one would particularly wish to assist.”

“Where are you going this morning? I saw Murgatroyd saddling your horse in the yard.”

“To Whinbury. It is market day.”

“Mr. Yorke is going too. I met him in his gig. Come home with him.”

“Why?”

“Two are better than one, and nobody dislikes Mr. Yorke — at least, poor people do not dislike him.”

“Therefore he would be a protection to me, who am hated?”

“Who are
misunderstood
. That, probably, is the word. Shall you be late? — Will he be late, Cousin Hortense?”

“It is too probable. He has often much business to transact at Whinbury. Have you brought your exercise-book, child?”

“Yes. — What time will you return, Robert?”

“I generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at home earlier?”

“Try rather to be back by six. It is not absolutely dark at six now, but by seven daylight is quite gone.”

“And what danger is to be apprehended, Caroline, when daylight
is
gone? What peril do you conceive comes as the companion of darkness for me?”

“I am not sure that I can define my fears, but we all have a certain anxiety at present about our friends. My uncle calls these times dangerous. He says, too, that mill-owners are unpopular.”

“And I am one of the most unpopular? Is not that the fact? You are reluctant to speak out plainly, but at heart you think me liable to Pearson’s fate, who was shot at — not, indeed, from behind a hedge, but in his own house, through his staircase window, as he was going to bed.”

“Anne Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber-door,” remarked Caroline gravely, as she folded her mantle and arranged it and her muff on a side-table. “You know,” she continued, “there is a hedge all the way along the road from here to Whinbury, and there are the Fieldhead plantations to pass; but you will be back by six — or before?”

“Certainly he will,” affirmed Hortense. “And now, my child, prepare your lessons for repetition, while I put the peas to soak for the purée at dinner.”

With this direction she left the room.

“You suspect I have many enemies, then, Caroline,” said Mr. Moore, “and doubtless you know me to be destitute of friends?”

“Not destitute, Robert. There is your sister, your brother Louis, whom I have never seen; there is Mr. Yorke, and there is my uncle — besides, of course, many more.”

Robert smiled. “You would be puzzled to name your ‘many more,’” said he. “But show me your exercise-book. What extreme pains you take with the writing! My sister, I suppose, exacts this care. She wants to form you in all things after the model of a Flemish school-girl. What life are you destined for, Caroline? What will you do with your French, drawing, and other accomplishments, when they are acquired?”