Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (77 page)

No time did she lose in seeking up a hopeless pair of hose, of which the heels were entirely gone, and in setting the ignorant English girl to repair the deficiency. This task had been commenced two years ago, and Caroline had the stockings in her work-bag yet. She did a few rows every day, by way of penance for the expiation of her sins. They were a grievous burden to her; she would much have liked to put them in the fire; and once Mr. Moore, who had observed her sitting and sighing over them, had proposed a private incremation in the counting-house; but to this proposal Caroline knew it would have been impolitic to accede — the result could only be a fresh pair of hose, probably in worse condition. She adhered, therefore, to the ills she knew.

All the afternoon the two ladies sat and sewed, till the eyes and fingers, and even the spirits of one of them, were weary. The sky since dinner had darkened; it had begun to rain again, to pour fast. Secret fears began to steal on Caroline that Robert would be persuaded by Mr. Sykes or Mr. Yorke to remain at Whinbury till it cleared, and of that there appeared no present chance. Five o’clock struck, and time stole on; still the clouds streamed. A sighing wind whispered in the roof-trees of the cottage; day seemed already closing; the parlour fire shed on the clear hearth a glow ruddy as at twilight.

“It will not be fair till the moon rises,” pronounced Mademoiselle Moore, “consequently I feel assured that my brother will not return till then. Indeed I should be sorry if he did. We will have coffee. It would be vain to wait for him.”

“I am tired. May I leave my work now, cousin?”

“You may, since it grows too dark to see to do it well. Fold it up; put it carefully in your bag; then step into the kitchen and desire Sarah to bring in the goûter, or tea, as you call it.”

“But it has not yet struck six. He may still come.”

“He will not, I tell you. I can calculate his movements. I understand my brother.”

Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter. All the world has, some time or other, felt that. Caroline, obedient to orders, passed into the kitchen. Sarah was making a dress for herself at the table.

“You are to bring in coffee,” said the young lady in a spiritless tone; and then she leaned her arm and head against the kitchen mantelpiece, and hung listlessly over the fire.

“How low you seem, miss! But it’s all because your cousin keeps you so close to work. It’s a shame!”

“Nothing of the kind, Sarah,” was the brief reply.

“Oh! but I know it is. You’re fit to cry just this minute, for nothing else but because you’ve sat still the whole day. It would make a kitten dull to be mewed up so.”

“Sarah, does your master often come home early from market when it is wet?”

“Never, hardly; but just to-day, for some reason, he has made a difference.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is come. I am certain I saw Murgatroyd lead his horse into the yard by the back-way, when I went to get some water at the pump five minutes since. He was in the counting-house with Joe Scott, I believe.”

“You are mistaken.”

“What should I be mistaken for? I know his horse surely?”

“But you did not see himself?”

“I heard him speak, though. He was saying something to Joe Scott about having settled all concerning ways and means, and that there would be a new set of frames in the mill before another week passed, and that this time he would get four soldiers from Stilbro’ barracks to guard the wagon.”

“Sarah, are you making a gown?”

“Yes. Is it a handsome one?”

“Beautiful! Get the coffee ready. I’ll finish cutting out that sleeve for you, and I’ll give you some trimming for it. I have some narrow satin ribbon of a colour that will just match it.”

“You’re very kind, miss.”

“Be quick; there’s a good girl. But first put your master’s shoes on the hearth: he will take his boots off when he comes in. I hear him; he is coming.”

“Miss, you are cutting the stuff wrong.”

“So I am; but it is only a snip. There is no harm done.”

The kitchen door opened; Mr. Moore entered, very wet and cold. Caroline half turned from her dressmaking occupation, but renewed it for a moment, as if to gain a minute’s time for some purpose. Bent over the dress, her face was hidden; there was an attempt to settle her features and veil their expression, which failed. When she at last met Mr. Moore, her countenance beamed.

“We had ceased to expect you. They asserted you would not come,” she said.

“But I promised to return soon.
You
expected me, I suppose?”

“No, Robert; I dared not when it rained so fast. And you are wet and chilled. Change everything. If you took cold, I should — we should blame ourselves in some measure.”

“I am not wet through: my riding-coat is waterproof. Dry shoes are all I require. There — the fire is pleasant after facing the cold wind and rain for a few miles.”

He stood on the kitchen hearth; Caroline stood beside him. Mr. Moore, while enjoying the genial glow, kept his eyes directed towards the glittering brasses on the shelf above. Chancing for an instant to look down, his glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy, shaded with silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Sarah was gone into the parlour with the tray; a lecture from her mistress detained her there. Moore placed his hand a moment on his young cousin’s shoulder, stooped, and left a kiss on her forehead.

“Oh!” said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips, “I was miserable when I thought you would not come. I am almost too happy now. Are you happy, Robert? Do you like to come home?”

“I think I do — to-night, at least.”

“Are you certain you are not fretting about your frames, and your business, and the war?”

“Not just now.”

“Are you positive you don’t feel Hollow’s Cottage too small for you, and narrow, and dismal?”

“At this moment, no.”

“Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great people forget you?”

“No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I am anxious to curry favour with rich and great people. I only want means — a position — a career.”

“Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. You were made to be great; you
shall
be great.”

“I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, what recipe you would give me for acquiring this same greatness; but I know it — better than you know it yourself. Would it be efficacious? Would it work? Yes — poverty, misery, bankruptcy. Oh, life is not what you think it, Lina!”

“But you are what I think you.”

“I am not.”

“You are better, then?”

“Far worse.”

“No; far better. I know you are good.”

“How do you know it?”

“You look so, and I feel you
are
so.”

“Where do you feel it?”

“In my heart.”

“Ah! You judge me with your heart, Lina: you should judge me with your head.”

“I do; and then I am quite proud of you. Robert, you cannot tell all my thoughts about you.”

Mr. Moore’s dark face mustered colour; his lips smiled, and yet were compressed; his eyes laughed, and yet he resolutely knit his brow.

“Think meanly of me, Lina,” said he. “Men, in general, are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea. I make no pretension to be better than my fellows.”

“If you did, I should not esteem you so much. It is because you are modest that I have such confidence in your merit.”

“Are you flattering me?” he demanded, turning sharply upon her, and searching her face with an eye of acute penetration.

“No,” she said softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. She seemed to think it unnecessary to proffer any eager disavowal of the charge.

“You don’t care whether I think you flatter me or not?”

“No.”

“You are so secure of your own intentions?”

“I suppose so.”

“What are they, Caroline?”

“Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think, and then to make you better satisfied with yourself.”

“By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere friend?”

“Just so. I am your sincere friend, Robert.”

“And I am — what chance and change shall make me, Lina.”

“Not my enemy, however?”

The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress entering the kitchen together in some commotion. They had been improving the time which Mr. Moore and Miss Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the subject of “café au lait,” which Sarah said was the queerest mess she ever saw, and a waste of God’s good gifts, as it was “the nature of coffee to be boiled in water,” and which mademoiselle affirmed to be “un breuvage royal,” a thousand times too good for the mean person who objected to it.

The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into the parlour. Before Hortense followed them thither, Caroline had only time again to question, “Not my enemy, Robert?” And Moore, Quaker-like, had replied with another query, “Could I be?” And then, seating himself at the table, had settled Caroline at his side.

Caroline scarcely heard mademoiselle’s explosion of wrath when she rejoined them; the long declamation about the “conduite indigne de cette méchante créature” sounded in her ear as confusedly as the agitated rattling of the china. Robert laughed a little at it, in very subdued sort, and then, politely and calmly entreating his sister to be tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the majority of the women of her class.

Mademoiselle admitted the truth of this conjecture: according to her, “ces paysannes anglaises étaient tout insupportables.” What would she not give for some “bonne cuisinière anversoise,” with the high cap, short petticoat, and decent sabots proper to her class — something better, indeed, than an insolent coquette in a flounced gown, and absolutely without cap! (For Sarah, it appears, did not partake the opinion of St. Paul that “it is a shame for a woman to go with her head uncovered;” but, holding rather a contrary doctrine, resolutely refused to imprison in linen or muslin the plentiful tresses of her yellow hair, which it was her wont to fasten up smartly with a comb behind, and on Sundays to wear curled in front.)

“Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl?” asked Mr. Moore, who, stern in public, was on the whole very kind in private.

“Merci du cadeau!” was the answer. “An Antwerp girl would not stay here ten days, sneered at as she would be by all the young coquines in your factory;” then softening, “You are very good, dear brother — excuse my petulance — but truly my domestic trials are severe, yet they are probably my destiny; for I recollect that our revered mother experienced similar sufferings, though she had the choice of all the best servants in Antwerp. Domestics are in all countries a spoiled and unruly set.”

Mr. Moore had also certain reminiscences about the trials of his revered mother. A good mother she had been to him, and he honoured her memory; but he recollected that she kept a hot kitchen of it in Antwerp, just as his faithful sister did here in England. Thus, therefore, he let the subject drop, and when the coffee-service was removed, proceeded to console Hortense by fetching her music-book and guitar; and having arranged the ribbon of the instrument round her neck with a quiet fraternal kindness he knew to be all-powerful in soothing her most ruffled moods, he asked her to give him some of their mother’s favourite songs.