Shirley. Charlotte Bronte
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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 schoolgirl. What life are you destined for, Caroline? What will you do with your French, drawing, and other accomplishments, when they are acquired?”
“You may well say, when they are acquired; for, as you are aware, till Hortense began to teach me, I knew precious little. As to the life I am destined for, I cannot tell. I suppose to keep my uncle’s house till…” She hesitated.
“Till what? Till he dies?”
“No. How harsh to say that! I never think of his dying. He is only fifty-five. But till – in short, till events offer other occupations for me.”
“A remarkably vague prospect! Are you content with it?”
“I used to be, formerly. Children, you know, have little reflection, or rather their reflections run on ideal themes. There are moments now when I am not quite satisfied.”
“Why?”
“I am making no money – earning nothing.”
“You come to the point, Lina. You too, then, wish to make money?”
“I do. I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, pleasant way of learning a business, and making my way in life.”
“Go on. Let us hear what way.”
“I could be apprenticed to your trade – the cloth-trade. I could learn it of you, as we are distant relations. I would do the counting house work, keep the books, and write the letters, while you went to market. I know you greatly desire to be rich, in order to pay your father’s debts; perhaps I could help you to get rich.”
“Help me? You should think of yourself.”
“I do think of myself; but must one forever think only of oneself?”
“Of whom else do I think? Of whom else dare I think? The poor ought to have no large sympathies; it is their duty to be narrow.”
“No, Robert”
“Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, grovelling, anxious. Now and then a poor man’s heart, when certain beams and dews visit it, may smell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage, perhaps blossom; but he must not encourage the pleasant impulse; he must invoke Prudence to check it, with that frosty breath of hers, which is as nipping as any north wind.”
“No cottage would be happy then.”
“When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the natural, habitual poverty of the working-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in debt. My grubworm is always a straitened, struggling, careworn tradesman.”
“Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become too fixed in your mind. It may be presumptuous to say it, but I have the impression that there is something wrong in your notions of the best means of attaining happiness, as there is in…” Second hesitation.
“I am all ear, Caroline.”
“In (courage! let me speak the truth) – in your manner – mind, I say only manner – to these Yorkshire workpeople.”
“You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not?”
“Yes; often – very often.”
“The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I am not proud. What has a man in my position to be proud of? I am only taciturn, phlegmatic, and joyless.”
“As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and shears. In your own house you seem different.”
“To those of my own house I am no alien, which I am to these English clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, but acting is not my forte. I find them irrational, perverse; they hinder me when I long to hurry forward. In treating them justly I fulfil my whole duty towards them.”
“You don’t expect them to love you, of course?”
“Nor wish it.”
“Ah!” said the monitress, shaking her head and heaving a deep sigh. With this ejaculation, indicative that she perceived a screw to be loose somewhere, but that it was out of her reach to set it right, she bent over her grammar, and sought the rule and exercise for the day.
“I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline. The attachment of a very few suffices me.”
“If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two before you go?”
“First let me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, I think?”
“Such as you generally make for me and Hortense; not your own broad points.”
“If I were of Louis’s calling I might stay at home and dedicate this morning to you and your studies, whereas I must spend it in Skyes’s wool warehouse.”
“You will be making money.”
“More likely losing it.”
As he finished mending the pens, a horse, saddled and bridled, was brought up to the garden-gate.
“There, Fred is ready for me; I must go. I’ll take one look to see what the spring has done in the south border, too, first.”
He quitted the room, and went out into the garden ground behind the mill. A sweet fringe of young verdure and opening flowers – snowdrop, crocus, even primrose – bloomed in the sunshine under the hot wall of the factory Moore plucked here and there a blossom and leaf, till he had collected a little bouquet. He returned to the parlour, pilfered a thread of silk from his sister’s work basket, tied the flowers, and laid them on Caroline’s desk.
“Now, good morning.”
“Thank you, Robert. It is pretty; it looks, as it lies there, like sparkles of sunshine and blue sky. Good morning.”
He went to the door, stopped, opened his lips as if to speak, said nothing, and moved on. He passed through the wicket, and mounted his horse. In a second he had flung himself from his saddle again, transferred the reins to Murgatroyd, and re-entered the cottage.
“I forgot my gloves,” he said, appearing to take something from the side table; then, as an impromptu thought, he remarked, “You have no binding engagement at home perhaps, Caroline?”
“I never have. Some children’s socks, which Mrs. Ramsden has ordered, to knit for the Jew’s basket; but they will keep.”
“Jew’s basket be – sold! Never was utensil better named. Anything more Jewish than it – its contents and their prices – cannot be conceived. But I see something, a very tiny curl, at the corners of your lip, which tells me that you know its merits as well as I do. Forget the Jew’s basket, then, and spend the day here as a change. Your uncle won’t break his heart at your absence?”
She smiled. “No.”
“The old Cossack! I dare say not,” muttered Moore.
“Then stay and dine with Hortense; she will be glad of your company. I shall return in good time. We will have a little reading