The Complete Works: Charlotte, Emily, Anne, Patrick & Branwell Brontë. Anne Bronte
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rushed after his comrade. The first was already safe in a bedroom; he held the door against his fellow — nothing so merciless as terror. But the other fugitive struggled hard; the door was about to yield to his strength.
“Gentlemen,” was uttered in Miss Keeldar’s silvery but vibrating tones, “spare my locks, if you please. Calm yourselves! Come down! Look at Tartar; he won’t harm a cat.”
She was caressing the said Tartar. He lay crouched at her feet, his fore paws stretched out, his tail still in threatening agitation, his nostrils snorting, his bulldog eyes conscious of a dull fire. He was an honest, phlegmatic, stupid, but stubborn canine character. He loved his mistress and John — the man who fed him — but was mostly indifferent to the rest of the world. Quiet enough he was, unless struck or threatened with a stick, and that put a demon into him at once.
“Mr. Malone, how do you do?” continued Shirley, lifting up her mirth-lit face to the gallery. “That is not the way to the oak parlour; that is Mrs. Pryor’s apartment. Request your friend Mr. Donne to evacuate. I shall have the greatest pleasure in receiving him in a lower room.”
“Ha! ha!” cried Malone, in hollow laughter, quitting the door, and leaning over the massive balustrade. “Really that animal alarmed Donne. He is a little timid,” he proceeded, stiffening himself, and walking trimly to the stairhead. “I thought it better to follow, in order to reassure him.”
“It appears you did. Well, come down, if you please. — John” (turning to her manservant), “go upstairs and liberate Mr. Donne. — Take care, Mr. Malone; the stairs are slippery.”
In truth they were, being of polished oak. The caution came a little late for Malone. He had slipped already in his stately descent, and was only saved from falling by a clutch at the banisters, which made the whole structure creak again.
Tartar seemed to think the visitor’s descent effected with unwarranted éclat, and accordingly he growled once more. Malone, however, was no coward. The spring of the dog had taken him by surprise, but he passed him now in suppressed fury rather than fear. If a look could have strangled Tartar, he would have breathed no more. Forgetting politeness in his sullen rage, Malone pushed into the parlour before Miss Keeldar. He glanced at Miss Helstone; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to her. He glared on both the ladies. He looked as if, had either of them been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband at the moment. In each hand he seemed as if he would have liked to clutch one and gripe her to death.
However, Shirley took pity. She ceased to laugh; and Caroline was too true a lady to smile even at any one under mortification. Tartar was dismissed; Peter Augustus was soothed — for Shirley had looks and tones that might soothe a very bull. He had sense to feel that, since he could not challenge the owner of the dog, he had better be civil. And civil he tried to be; and his attempts being well received, he grew presently very civil and quite himself again. He had come, indeed, for the express purpose of making himself charming and fascinating. Rough portents had met him on his first admission to Fieldhead; but that passage got over, charming and fascinating he resolved to be. Like March, having come in like a lion, he purposed to go out like a lamb.
For the sake of air, as it appeared, or perhaps for that of ready exit in case of some new emergency arising, he took his seat, — not on the sofa, where Miss Keeldar offered him enthronization, nor yet near the fireside, to which Caroline, by a friendly sign, gently invited him, but on a chair close to the door. Being no longer sullen or furious, he grew, after his fashion, constrained and embarrassed. He talked to the ladies by fits and starts, choosing for topics whatever was most intensely commonplace. He sighed deeply, significantly, at the close of every sentence; he sighed in each pause; he sighed ere he opened his mouth. At last, finding it desirable to add ease to his other charms, he drew forth to aid him an ample silk pocket-handkerchief. This was to be the graceful toy with which his unoccupied hands were to trifle. He went to work with a certain energy. He folded the red-and-yellow square cornerwise; he whipped it open with a waft; again he folded it in narrower compass; he made of it a handsome band. To what purpose would he proceed to apply the ligature? Would he wrap it about his throat — his head? Should it be a comforter or a turban? Neither. Peter Augustus had an inventive, an original genius. He was about to show the ladies graces of action possessing at least the charm of novelty. He sat on the chair with his athletic Irish legs crossed, and these legs, in that attitude, he circled with the bandana and bound firmly together. It was evident he felt this device to be worth an encore; he repeated it more than once. The second performance sent Shirley to the window, to laugh her silent but irrepressible laugh unseen; it turned Caroline’s head aside, that her long curls might screen the smile mantling on her features. Miss Helstone, indeed, was amused by more than one point in Peter’s demeanour. She was edified at the complete though abrupt diversion of his homage from herself to the heiress. The £5,000 he supposed her likely one day to inherit were not to be weighed in the balance against Miss Keeldar’s estate and hall. He took no pains to conceal his calculations and tactics. He pretended to no gradual change of views; he wheeled about at once. The pursuit of the lesser fortune was openly relinquished for that of the greater. On what grounds he expected to succeed in his chase himself best knew; certainly not by skilful management.
From the length of time that elapsed, it appeared that John had some difficulty in persuading Mr. Donne to descend. At length, however, that gentleman appeared; nor, as he presented himself at the oak-parlour door, did he seem in the slightest degree ashamed or confused — not a whit. Donne, indeed, was of that coldly phlegmatic, immovably complacent, densely self-satisfied nature which is insensible to shame. He had never blushed in his life; no humiliation could abash him; his nerves were not capable of sensation enough to stir his life and make colour mount to his cheek; he had no fire in his blood and no modesty in his soul; he was a frontless, arrogant, decorous slip of the commonplace — conceited, inane, insipid; and this gentleman had a notion of wooing Miss Keeldar! He knew no more, however, how to set about the business than if he had been an image carved in wood. He had no idea of a taste to be pleased, a heart to be reached in courtship. His notion was, when he should have formally visited her a few times, to write a letter proposing marriage. Then he calculated she would accept him for love of his office; then they would be married; then he should be master of Fieldhead; and he should live very comfortably, have servants at his command, eat and drink of the best, and be a great man. You would not have suspected his intentions when he addressed his intended bride in an impertinent, injured tone — “A very dangerous dog that, Miss Keeldar. I wonder you should keep such an animal.”
“Do you, Mr. Donne? Perhaps you will wonder more when I tell you I am very fond of him.”
“I should say you are not serious in the assertion. Can’t fancy a lady fond of that brute — ‘tis so ugly — a mere carter’s dog. Pray hang him.”
“Hang what I am fond of!”
“And purchase in his stead some sweetly pooty pug or poodle — something appropriate to the fair sex. Ladies generally like lapdogs.”
“Perhaps I am an exception.”
“Oh, you can’t be, you know. All ladies are alike in those matters. That is universally allowed.”
“Tartar frightened you terribly, Mr. Donne. I hope you won’t take any harm.”
“That I shall, no doubt. He gave me a turn I shall not soon forget. When I sor him” (such was Mr. Donne’s pronunciation) “about to spring, I thought I should have fainted.”
“Perhaps you did faint in the bedroom; you were a long time there.”
“No; I bore up that I might hold the door fast. I was determined not to let any one enter. I thought I would keep a barrier between me and the enemy.”
“But what if your friend Mr. Malone had been worried?”
“Malone must take care of himself. Your man persuaded me to come out at last by saying the dog was chained up in his kennel. If I had not been assured of this, I would have remained all day in the chamber. But what is that? I declare the man has told a falsehood! The dog is there!”
And indeed Tartar walked past the glass door opening