 CHAPTER V PART ONE of SHIRLEY Moore's good spirits were still with him when he rose next morning. He and Joe Scott had both spent the night in the mill, availing themselves of certain sleeping accommodations producible from recesses in the front and back counting-houses. The master, always an early riser, was out somewhat sooner even than usual. He awoke his man by singing a French song as he made his toilet. "'You're not Couste-en-Dame, then, Meister,' cried Joe. "'Not a stiver, mon garçon, which means my lad. Get up and we'll take a turn through the mill before the hands come in, and I'll explain my future plans. We'll have the machinery yet, Joseph. You've never heard of Bruce, perhaps? And there aren't? Yes, but I have. I read this tree of Scotland, and haven't known as much entesia, and I understand you to mean to say you'll persevere. I do? Is that money or your make in your country?' inquired Joe, as he folded up his temporary bed and put it away. "'In my country? Which is my country? What France, isn't it?' Not it, indeed. The circumstance of the French having seized Antwerp where I was born does not make me a Frenchman.' "'Hollanden?' "'I'm not a Dutchman. Now you're confounding Antwerp with Amsterdam.' "'Flanders?' "'I score in the insinuation. Joe, I a Flemish. Have I a Flemish face? Have I a Flemish face, the clumsy nose standing out, the mean forehead falling back, the pale blue eyes, a fleur de tête? Am I all body and no legs, like a flamon? But you don't know what they're like, those Netherlanders. "'Joe, I'm an Anversois. My mother was an Anversoise, though she came a French lineage, which is the reason I speak French.' "'But your father, a Yorkshire. Which makes him a bit Yorkshire, too? None of you may see you're akin to us. You're so keen on making brass and getting forads.' "'Joe, you're an impudent dog. But I've always been accustomed to a boor sort of insolence from my youth up. The class de Vrières, that is, the working people in Belgium, bear themselves brutally towards their employers. And by brutally, Joe, I mean brutalement, which perhaps unproperly translated, should be roughly. We always speak our minds in this country. Them young Parsons and grand folk from London's shocked that we're in civility. I would like Willard to give us something to be shocked at, because it's sport to us to watch them turn out the whites of their eat, and spread out their bits of hands like as they're flayed with bogards, and then to hear them say, nipping off their words short like, "'Dear, dear, what savages, how very coarse!' "'You are savages, Joe. You don't suppose you're civilised, do you?' "'Midlin, midlin, Meister. I reckon a manufacturer lads in north is a dear more intelligent, and now there's a good deal more in the farming folk in south. Trade sharpens your wits, and them that's mechanics like me is forced to think, you know, what we're looking after machinery is such like I've gotten into that way that when I see an effect, I look straight out for cause, and I have flick-hauled on to purpose. And then I like reading, and curious to know what them that reckons to govern our sayings to do for us, and wit us. And there's many cutin' on me. There's many a one among them greasy chaps that smells of oil, and among them dyes with blue and black skins that has a long head. I can tell what foil of a law is. As well as you of old York, and a deal better in a softened like Christopher Sykes of Winbury, and great Hector and Outs like your Irish Peter Hellstone's Curret. You think yourself a clever fellow, I know, Scott. I am fairish. I can tell cheese for chalk, and I'm very wheel aware that I haven't proved such opportune is as I've had. A deal better in a summit reckons to be above me, but there's thousands of Yorkshire that's as good as me at two, three that's better. You're a great man. You're a sublime fellow, but you're a prig, a conceited noodle with it all, Joe. You need not to think that because you've picked up a little knowledge of practical mathematics, and because you've found out some scantling of the elements of chemistry at the bottom of a dying vent, that therefore you're a neglected man of science, and you need not to suppose that because the course of trade does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you are sometimes short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong. And moreover, you need not for a moment insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let me tell you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because I know so well that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breeds, vice and virtue are ever found blended in smaller or greater proportions, and that the proportion is not determined by station. I've seen villains who were rich, and I've seen villains who were poor, and I've seen villains who were neither rich nor poor, but who had realized Agar's wish, and lived in fair and modest competency. The clock is going to strike six away with you, Joe, and ring the middle bell. It was now the middle of the month of February. By six o'clock, therefore, dawn was just beginning to steal on night, to penetrate with a pale ray its brown obscurity, and give a demi-translucence to its opaque shadows. Pale enough that ray was on this particular morning. No color tinged the east, no flesh warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted, what a waned glance she flung along the hills, you would have thought the sun's fire quenched in last night's floods. The breath of this morning was chill as its aspect. A raw wind stirred the mass of night cloud, and showed, as it slowly rose, leaving a colorless, silver-gleaming ring all round the horizon, not blue sky, but a stratum of paler vapor beyond. It had ceased to rain, but the earth was sodden, and the pools and rivulets were full. The mill windows were alight. The bell still rung loud, and now the little children came running in, in too great a hurry let us hope, to feel very much nipped by the inclement air. And indeed, by contrast, perhaps the morning appeared rather favorable to them than otherwise, for they'd often come to their work that winter through snowstorms, through heavy rain, through hard frost. Mr. Moore stood at the entrance to watch them pass. He counted them as they went by. To those who came rather late he said a word of reprimand, which was a little more sharply repeated by Joe Scott when the lingers reached the work rooms. The master and the overlookers spoke savagely. They were not savage men, either of them, though it appeared both were rigid, for they find a linkwant who came considerably too late. Mr. Moore made him pay his penny down, ere he entered, and informed him that the next repetition of the fault would cost him two pints. Rules no doubt are necessary in such cases, and chorus and cruel masters will make chorus and cruel rules, which at the time we treat of at least, they use sometimes to enforce tyrannically. But though I describe imperfect characters, every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line. I have not undertaken to handle degraded or utterly infamous ones. Child torturers, slave masters, and drivers, I consign to the hands of jailers. The novelist may be excused from selling his page with the record of their deeds. Instead, then, of harrowing up my reader's soul and delighting his organ of wonder with effective descriptions of stripes and scourgings, I am happy to be able to inform him that neither Mr. Moore nor his overlooker ever struck a child in their mill. But indeed once very severely flogged a son of his own for telling a lie and persisting in it. But like his employer, he was too phlegmatic, too calm, as well as too reasonable a man to make corporeal chest eyesmen other than the exception to his treatment of the young. Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his millyard, his dye house, and his warehouse till the sickly dawn strengthened him today. The sun even rose, at least a white disc, clear, tintless, and almost chill-looking as ice, peeped over the dark crest of the hill, changed to silver the livid edge of the cloud above it, and looked solemnly down the whole length of the den, or narrow dale, to whose straight bounds were at present limited. It was eight o'clock, the middle-lights were all extinguished, the signal was given for breakfast, the children released for half an hour from toil, but took themselves with the little tin cans which held their coffee, and to the small baskets which contained their allowance of bread. Let us hope they have enough to eat, it would be a pity word otherwise. And now at last Mr. Moore quitted the millyard and bent his steps to his dwelling-house. It was only a short distance from the factory, but the hedge and high bank on each side of the lane which conducted to it seemed to give it something of the appearance and feeling of seclusion. It was a small, white-washed place, with a green porch over the door, scanty-bound stalks showed in the garden soil near this porch, and likewise beneath the windows, stalks, buddlest and flowerless now, but giving dim prediction of trained and blooming creepers for summer days. A grass plot and borders fronted the cottage. The borders presented only black mould yet, except where, in sheltered nooks, the first shoots of snow-drop were crocus-peeped, green as emerald from the earth. The spring was late. It had been a severe and prolonged winter. The last deep snow had but just disappeared before yesterday's rains. On the hills indeed, white remnants of it yet gleamed, licking the hollows and crowning the peaks. The lawn was not verdant, but bleached, as was the grass on the bank, and under the hedge in the lane. Every tree is gracefully grouped to rose beside the cottage. They were not lofty, but having no rivals near, they looked well and imposing where they grew. Such was Mr. Moore's home, a snug nest for content and contemplation, but one within which the wings of action and ambition could not long lie folded. Its air of modest comfort seemed to possess no particular attraction for its owner. Instead of entering the house at once, he fetched a spade from a little shed and began to work in the garden. For about a quarter of an hour he dug on uninterrupted. At length, however, a window opened, and a female voice called to him, Eh bien, tu n'étais pas ce matin? The answer and the rest of the conversation was in French, but as this is an English book I shall translate it into English. Is breakfast ready, Hortense? Certainly it has been ready for half an hour. Then I am ready to. I have a canine hunger. He threw down a spade and entered the house. The narrow passage conducted him to a small parlor, where a breakfast of coffee and bread and butter with a somewhat odd English accompaniment of stewed pears was spread on the table. Over these vines presided the lady who had spoken from the window. I must describe her before I go any further. She seemed a little older than Mr. Moore. Perhaps she was thirty-five, tall and proportionately stout. She had very black hair, for the present twisted up in curl papers, a high color in her cheeks, a small nose, a pair of little black eyes. The lower part of her face was large in proportion to the upper. Her forehead was small and rather corrugated. She had a fretful, though not an ill-natured, expression of countenance. There was something in her whole appearance one felt inclined to be half provoked with and half amused at. The strangest point was her dress, a stuffed petticoat with a striped cotton camisole. The petticoat was short, displaying well a pair of feet and ankles which left much to be desired in the article of symmetry. You will think I have depicted a remarkable slattern reader. Not at all. Hortense Moore, she was Mr. Moore's sister, was a very orderly economical person. The petticoat, camisole, and curl papers were her mourning costume. In which of foreign owns she had always been accustomed to go her household ways in her own country. She did not choose to adopt English fashions because she was obliged to live in England. She adhered to her old Belgian modes, quite satisfied that there was a merit in so doing. Mademoiselle had an excellent opinion of herself, an opinion not wholly undeserved, for she possessed some good and sterling qualities, but she rather overestimated the kind and degree of these qualities and quite left out of the account sundry little defects which accompanied them. You could never have persuaded her that she was a prejudice and narrow-minded person, that she was too susceptible on the subject of her own dignity and importance, and too apt to take offense about trifles. Yet all this was true. However, where her claims to distinction were not opposed, and where her prejudices were not offended, she could be kind and friendly enough. To her two brothers, for there was another Jared Moore besides Robert, she was very much attached. As the sole remaining representatives of their decayed family, the persons of both were almost sacred in her eyes. Of Louis, however, she knew less than of Robert. He had been sent to England when a mere boy, and had received his education at an English school. His education not being such as to adapt and for trade perhaps, too, his natural bent not inclining him to mercantile pursuits, he had, when the blight of her tarry prospects rendered it necessary for him to push his own fortune, adopted the very arduous and very modest career of a teacher. He had been unsure in a school, and was set not to tutor in a private family. Hortense, when she mentioned Louis, described him as having what she called Des Moins, but as being too backward and quiet. Her praise of Robert was in a different strain, less qualified. She was very proud of him. She regarded him as the greatest man in Europe. All he said and did was remarkable to her eyes, and she expected others to behold him from the same point of view. Nothing could be more irrational, monstrous, and infamous than opposition from any quarter to Robert, unless it was opposition to herself. CHAPTER V. PART II HOLLOW'S COTTAGE Accordingly, as soon as it 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. She looks clean and industrious, Mr. Moore remarked. Looks? I don't know how she looks, and I do not say that she is all together dirty or idle. Mais elle est d'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 bouillie, that the bouillon was no better than greasy warm water, and as to the chocout, she affirmed she cannot touch it. That barrel we have in the cellar, delightfully prepared by my own hands, she termed a tub of hogwash, which means food for pigs. I am harassed with the girl, and yet I cannot part with her lest I should get her worse. You are in the same position with your workmen. Pauvre cher frère. I'm afraid you're 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 à lever. 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 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 to me, which decidedly is my due. Of what an excellent family are the Gérard, 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 opened my lips in company I speak English with a ridiculous accent, whereas I am quite assured that I pronounce it perfectly. Orton, 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 sabreau. 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 have always, four ladies and as many gentlemen laughed and hid their faces behind their prayer-books. Well, well, don't put on the sabreau again. I told you before, I thought they were not quite the thing for this country. But brother, they are not common sabreau, such as the peasantry-wear. I tell you, they are sabreau noir, très propre, très convenable. At Moores, 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 anyone try to wait in the might of the Flemish Chaucet in a pair of Paris-Poitquins, au monde d'hier des nouvelles. Never mind, Moores, and the Flemish Chaucet. Do it, Rome, as the Romans do. And I say the Camus-Olin-Jupin. I'm not quite sure about them, either. I never see an English lady dressed in such garments. Ask Caroline Hellstone. Caroline? I ask Caroline? I consult her about my dress? It is she who, at all points, should consult me. She's a child. She's 18, or at least 17, old enough to know all about gowns, petticoats, and chaucerre. Do not spoil Caroline, I entreat you, brother. Do not make of her more consequent 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 10 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 anyone 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-worn 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, it listens. To me she behaves pretty well, but you are a conscious brother that I have a manner calculated to repel over familiarity, to win esteem and to command respect. Yet possessive penetration I perceive dearly that Caroline is not perfect, but 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 that you have passed. Caroline then is defective, but with my forming hand at almost motherly care she may improve. There is about her an occasional something—a reserve, I think—a 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 of 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 or make her read French poetry by way of practice and pronunciation. She has in the course of her lessons gone through much of Cournet-Racine in a very steady, sober spirit such as I prove. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of languor and 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, why should not be apathetic in studying standard works? The other day I put into her hands a volume of short, fugitive pieces. I set her to the window to learn my 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 cheered. My cousin said she. Tous les mains nues à la mort. I told her this was improper language. Dear, she exclaimed. Il n'y a donc pas deux lignes de poésie 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 required to do, and commenced the repetition of that short thing by Chignet, 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 Chignet was more moving than all Hacine and all Cournet. You, a brother who have so much sagacity, will discern that this disproportionate preference argues an ill-regulated mind. But she is fortunate in her perceptress. 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 past the window, I believe. Ah, truly. She's too early, half an hour before her time. My child, what brings you here before I have breakfast sit? 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 around an apparently slender figure. I came in haste to see how you were, Hortense, and how Robert was, too. I'm sure you would both be grieved by what happened last night. I did not hear it this morning. My uncle told me at breakfast. 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 Silvermore? Yes. We sat out in very martial style, Caroline. But the prisoners we went to rescue met us halfway. Of course nobody was hurt. I know, only Joe Scott's wrists were a little gold 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 Murgatruid saddling your horse in the yard. To Winbury, it is market day. Mr. York is going, too. I met him in his gig. Come home with him. Why? Two are better than one. Nobody dislikes Mr. York. At least poor people do not dislike him. Therefore he would be protection to me, whom he hated, who are misunderstood. That probably is the word. Shall you be late? Will he be late, cousin Ortaz? It is too probable. He has often much business to transact at Winbury. Have you brought your exercise book, child? Yes. What time will you turn, Robert? I generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at home earlier? Try whether to be back at six. It is not absolutely dark at six now. But by seven daylight is quite gone. And what dangerous 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, 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 a staircase window as he was going to bed. And Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber door, remarked Caroline gravely, and she folded her mantle and arranged it in her mouth on a side table. You know, she continued, there is a hedge all the way along the road from here to Winbury. And there are the field head plantations to pass. But you will be back at six, or before? Certainly he will, affirmed Hortense. And now, my child, prepare your lessons for repetition, while I put the piece to soak for the puree 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's your sister, your brother, Louis, whom I have never seen. There's Mr. York, and there's 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 her times forget to teach me, I knew precious little. As the life I'm destined for, I cannot tell. I suppose to keep my uncle's house till she hesitated. Till what? Till he dies? Oh, how harsh to say that. I never think of his dying. He's only 55. But 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 they're reflections on ideal themes. There are moments now when I'm not quite satisfied. Why? I'm making no money, earning nothing. You come to the point, Lyna. 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 housework, 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. And is their duty to be narrow? No, Robert. Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, groveling, anxious. Now and then a poor man's heart, when certain beams and dues visited, may swell 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 grubworms always as straightened, struggling, care-worn tradesmen. 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. In courage, let me speak the truth. In your manner, mind I say only manner, to these Yorkshire work people. You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not? Yes, often, very often. The faults of my manner, I think, only negative. I'm not proud. What has a man in my position to be proud of? I'm 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. Or wish it. Ah! Ah! said the monitoress, 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 that 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 can try to draw the lines of slant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, I think? Such as you generally make for me in our tints, not your own broad points. If I were of Lewis' calling, I might stay at home and dedicate this morning to you and your studies, whereas I must spend it in Sykes' Wool Warehouse. I know you'll 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 is on the south border to, first. He quitted the room and went into the garden ground behind the mill. A sweet fringe of young verger and opening flowers, snow drop, crocus, even primrose, bloomed in the sunshine under the hot wall of the factory. More plaque here and there, blossom and leaf, till they had collected a little bouquet. He returned to the parlor, 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, stooped, 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 the saddle again, transferred his reins to Murgatroyd, and re-entered the cottage. I forgot my gloves, he said. He appeared to take something from the side-table, then, as an impromptu thought he remarked. You have no abiding engagement at home, perhaps, Caroline. I never have. Some children's socks, which Mrs. Ramston has ordered, to knit for the Jew's basket, but they will keep. Choose basket, V. Sold. Never was you, Tencel, 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 by your absence." She smiled. No. The old cossack, I dare say not, muttered Moore. And stay and dine with our times. She'll be glad to be a company. I shall return in good time. We will have a little reading in the evening. Moon rises at half-fast date, and I will walk up to the rektry with you at nine. Do you agree? She nodded her head, and her eyes lit up. Moore lingered yet two minutes. He bent over Caroline's desk and glanced at her grammar. He fingered a pen. He lifted a bouquet and played with it. His horse stamped impatient. Fred Murgatroyd hemmed and coughed at the gate, as if he wondered what in the world his master was doing. Good morning, again said Moore, and finally banished. Orteans, coming in ten minutes after, found to her surprise that Caroline had not yet commenced her exercise. End of chapter five. Chapter six, part one, of Shirley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. Chapter six, Coriolanus, part one. Mademoiselle Moore had that morning a similar absent mind with people. Caroline forgot, again and again, the explanation was to give him to him. However, she still bore with unclouded mood, the chiding to her inattention brought upon her. Sitting in the sunshine near the window, she seemed to receive with his warmth a kind influence between her both happy and good. Thus, disposed, she looked her best and her best with a pleasing vision. To her had not been denied the gift of beauty. It was not absolutely necessary to know her and not to like her. She was fair enough to please, even at the first view. Her shape suited her age. It was girlish, light and pliant. Every curve was neat, every limb proportionate. Her face was expressive and gentle. Her eyes were handsome and gifted at times with a winning beam that stole into the heart with a languid that spoke softly to the objections. Her mouth was very pretty. She had a delicate skin and a fine flow of round hair which she knew how to arrange with tape. Curls became thin, and she possessed an inflicted rest of the fusion. Her style of dress announced taste familiar. Brand obtrusive in fashion, vibrant, costly material, suitable in color to the fair complexion with which she contrasted and to make the slight form which it draped. Her present winter guy was of marina. The same soft shade of round as her hair. The little collar around her neck lay over her pink ribbon and the spasm of the pink knot. She wore no other decoration. So much for Carolyn Hale's own appearance. As to her character intellect, if she had any, they must speak for themselves in due time. Her connections are soon explained. She was the child of parents separated soon after her birth in consequence of disagreement and disposition. Her mother was the half-sister of Mr. Moore's father. Thus, with a no-mixture of blood, she was, in a distant sense, the cousin of Robert Lewis and Hortense. Her father was the brother of Mr. Hellstone, a man of the character of Fran's desire not to recall after death is once settled all earthly accounts. He had rendered his life unhappy. The reports which were known to be true concerning him had given an air of probability to those which were falsely circulated respecting his better prince and brother. Carolyn had ever known her mother as she was taken from her infancy and had not since seen her. Her father died comparatively young and her uncle, director, had for some years been her sole guardian. He was not aware much of aptitude either by nature or habits to have the charge of young girl. He had taken little trouble about her education. Probably he would have taken none if she, finding herself neglected, had not grown anxious on her own account and asked, every now and then, for little attention and to the means of acquiring such amount of knowledge as could not be dispensable. Still, she had a depressing feeling that she was inferior, that her attainments were fewer than they usually possessed by girls in her agent station and very glad was she to avail herself of the kind offer made by her cousin Hortense soon after the arrival of the latter, as her followers know, to teach her French and fine needlework. But my son Laura, for her part, delighted in the task because it gave her importance. She liked to lord a little over and docile it quick people. She took Carol into sight later on estimate as an irregularly taught and ignorant girl and when she found that she made rather an eager progress, it was to no talent, no application, the scholar she ascribed the improvement but entirely to her own superior method of teaching. When she found that Caroline, unskilled and routine, had a knowledge of her own, this alter even varied. The discovery caused her no surprise but she still imagined that from her conversation had the girl unaware as we knew treasures. She thought even in force to feel that her pupil knew much on subjects where she knew little. The idea was not logical but Hortense had perfect faith in it. Mademoiselle, who quieted herself on possessing honest people to keep and on entertaining, I decided preference for dry studies, kept her young cousin to the same as closely as she could. She worked her unrelentingly at the grammar of the French language, assigning her as the most improving exercise she could divide in terminable analise logique. These analises were by no means the source of particular pleasure to Caroline. She thought she could have learned French just about without them and grabbed excess of the time spent in pondering over propositions principal and acédant in deciding the acédant déterminative and the acédant applicative and examining whether the proposition was planned, apique, or unceasing. Sometimes she lost herself in the maze and so long she would now and then while Hortense was rummaging who grew upstairs and arranging an unaccountable occupation in which she spent a large portion of each day arranging, disarranging, rearranging and counter-arranging carrying her book to Roberts in the counting house and get the rough place made smooth by his aid. Mr. Moore possess a clear tranquil brain of his own. Almost as soon as he looked at Caroline through the difficult of this interdissolved in the design, in two minutes he would explain all in two words he would keep the pungent. She thought of Hortense but only to shite him how much faster she might learn. Repaying him by lying great for smile rather shed his feet then up to his face. She would leave them there with the luck to go back to the cottage and then while she could with the exercise and worked out the sum from what was on Moore taught her arithmetic too. To which nature had made her a boy instead of a girl that she might ask Roberts to let her be his clerk and sit with him in the counting house instead of sitting with Hortense in Harlem. Occasionally, but it's happened very rarely, she spent the evening at Hall's cottage. Sometimes during these visits Mr. Moore was away attending a market. Sometimes he was gone to Miss York's. Often he would engage with a male visitor in another room but sometimes too he was at home disengaged, pre-to-talked Caroline. When this was the case the evening hours passed by millions of lives. They were gone before they were counted. There was no room in England so present with that small parlour and the three cousins occupied it. Hortense, which was not teaching no school nor cooking, was far from no humor. It was her custom to relax toward eating it and to be kind to her young English cringling. There was a means too rendering her delightful by inducing her to take her to time and sing and play. She then became quite good natured and as she played the skill and had a well-toned voice it was not disagreeable to look into it. It would have been absolutely agreeable except that her formal and self-important character remarked with her strain as it impressed her manners and molded her countless. Mr. Moore, released from the business yoke was, if not lively himself, a willing spectator of fair-life blabberness. I can place it listening to her talk already responding to her questions. He was something agreeable to sit near to have a round to address and look at. Sometimes he was better than this almost animated, quite gentle and friendly. The drawback was that by the next morning he was sure to be frozen up again and however much he seemed in his quiet way to enjoy the social evening, he rarely contrived over currents. This circumstance puzzled me and experienced head of his cousin. If I had a means of happiness at my command, she thought, I would employ that means often. I would keep it bright with use and not let it lie for weeks aside till it gets dusty. Yet she was careful not to put in practice her own theory. Much as she liked an evening visit to the toilet, she never paid one on out. Often indeed when impressed by her times to come she refused because Robert did not second or but slightly seconded the request. This morning was the first time he'd ever of his own uncomfortable will given her an invitation and then he had spoken so kindly that in hearing of she had received a sense of happiness sufficient to keep her glad for the whole day. The morning passes me through. I'm on sale, ever breathlessly busy, spent it in bustling from kitchen to parlor, now scolding Sarah now looking over Carolyn's exercise or hearing her repetition lesson. However faultless indeed passed the cheat she never commended. It was a maxim of her that praise is inconsistent with the teacher's dignity and that blame in more or less unqualified measure is indispensable to it. She thought incessant as a man, severe slight, quite necessary to the maintenance of her authority and of no possible errors be found in a lesson through the pupils carriage or air or dress or mean which are current corrections. The usual afraid took place about the dinner which meal when Sarah at last brought into the room she almost flung upon the table the looks expressed quite plainly. I never dished such stuff in my life before, it's not fit for dollars. Notwithstanding Sarah's score, it was a savory repass enough. The soup was a sort of purée of dried peas with my myself as a pair of bitter lamentations that in this desolate country of England no echoed beans was to be had. Then came a dish of meat, nature unknown, but supposed to be miscellaneous, singularly chopped up with crumbs of bread, seasoned uniquely than I am presently and baked in a mold, a queer, but by no means unpalatable dish. Greens, oddly bruised, formed the company vegetable, and a pâté of fruit conserved as her recipe devised by Madame Gérard Mour's grameur, and from the taste of which appeared probable that Nélas had been substitute for sugar, completed the meat. Caroline had no objections to the Belgian cuisine. Indeed, she rather liked it for change and it was well she did so, for how she advanced any disrelage thereof such manifestation would have injured her in my myself with grazes forever. A positive crime might have been more easily pardoned than a symptom of distaste for the foreign domestic youth. Soon after dinner, Caroline coaxed her governess cousin upstairs address. This maneuver required management. To have hinted that the jupe en camisole and curled papers were odious objects or indeed other than quite meritorious points would have been a felony. Any premature attempt to urge their disappearance was therefore unwise and would be likely eschewing, persevering wear of them during the whole day. Carefully avoiding rocks and quick santa or the pupil on pretence of acquiring change of scene contrived to get the teacher aloft and once in the bedroom she persuaded her that it was not worthwhile the turning day and that she might as well make her toilet now. Amal Abazel delivered a solemn homily on her own surpassing marriage and disregarding all frivolities of fashion. Caroline zuded her of the camisole, invested her with a decent gown, made her collar, hair, etc. and made her quite presential. But Hortense put the finishing touches herself and these finishing touches consisted in a thick handkerchief on the throat and a large servant-like black apron which spoiled everything. On no account was Amal Abazel who appeared in her own house without the thick handkerchief and the ballooned apron. The first was a pocketed matter of morality. It was quite improper not to wear her shoe. The second was the insin of a good housewife. She appeared to think that by means of it she somehow affected a large saving in her brother's income. She had with her own hands made and presented to Caroline similar equipment and the only serious quarrel they'd ever had and which still left the soreness in the elder present soul had arisen from the refusal of the younger one to accept Govind's prophet by the elder present. I wear a high dress in the collar at Caroline and I should feel suffocated with a handkerchief in addition and my short apron would do quite as well as that very long one. I would rather make than a change. In Hortense by dint of perseverance would probably have compelled her to make a change and not missed a more chance to overhear dispute on the subject and decided that Caroline's little aprons would suffice and then in his opinion as she was still but a child she might for the present dispense of the tissue especially as her curls were long and almost touched her shoulders. There was no appeal against Robert's opinion therefore her sister was compelled to yield and she disapproved entirely of the decontinentness of Caroline's costume and the lady-like grace of her appearance. Something more solid and homely she would have considered beaucoup plus commandant. The afternoon was devoted to soreness. Mademoiselle like most Belgian ladies especially skillful with the mood she by no means put waste of time to devote unnumbered hours to fine embroidery, psych-destroying lacework, marble snedding and knitting and above all to most elaborate stocking and mending. She would give a day to the men with two holes in the stocking any time and think her mission nobody fulfilled when she had accomplished it. It was another Carol who was troubled to be condemned to learn this foreign style of darning which was done stitch by stitch so as exactly to imitate the fabric of the stocking itself. A wearable process but considered by our Tangéra and by her ancestors before her for long generations back as one of the first duties of women. She herself had a needle caught in a fearfully torn stocking put into her hand while she yet wore a child's pop on a little black head. Her old Faye in the Darning Line had been exited to the company ere she was six years old and when she first discovered the Carol in a profound ignorant of this most essential of attainment she could have wept with pity over her miserably neglected youth. No time that she moved in seeking of a hopeless pair of hose of which the fields were entirely long and in setting the ignorant English girl to repair the deficiency. This tab had been commenced two years ago and Carolyn had the stockings in her work baguette. She had a few rows every day by way of penance for the expiation of her sin. They were a grievous burden to her. She would much of like to put them in the fire and once Miss Moore would observe her sitting and thawing of them had proposed of private information counting house. But to this proposal Carolyn knew it would have been in politics to exceed. The result could only be a fresh pair of hose probably in rule's condition. She adhered therefore to the ills she knew. All the afternoon the two ladies sat and soared to the eyes and fingers and even the spirits of one of them were weary. Disguised and thinner had darkened and she began to rain again to pour fast secret fears. Began to steal on Caroline that the robber would be persuaded by Mr. Sykes and Mr. York to remain that wind breeze were cleared and of that there appeared no pen chance. Five o'clock struck and time still long. Still the clouds streamed. A sighing wind whispered in the roof tree to the cottage. They seemed already closing. The pile of fire shed on the clear proof and glow ready as twilight. It will not be fair to the moon rises but as I was at war consequently I feel assured that my brother will not return to land. Indeed I should be sorry if he did. We will have coffee. It will be vain to date them. I'm tired. May I leave my work now, Cuddling? You may since it grows too dark to see to do it well. Fold it up, put it carefully in your bag and set into the kitchen the desire, Sarah, to bring in the Goutte or tea or you call it. But it has not yet struck six. He may still come. He will not have thought it. I can calculate his reasons. I understand my brother. Suspense is lurching this appointment bitter. All the world has some time rather felt bad. Caroline obedient to order his passing addition. Sarah's making dress for herself the table. He was bringing coffee to the young lady in the spirit of the stone. And then she leaned her arm and heading into the kitchen recipes and hung a list of the two of the fire. How low are you seeing this? Quite tall because your covering keeps so close to work. It's a shame. Nothing in the time, Sarah, to be replied. All but I noted. You'll 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 mute up so. Sarah, did your master often come home early from my sit when he's wet? Never hardly. But just today for some reason he's made a difference. What do you mean? He's come. I'm certain I saw Murgatroyd lead his horse into the yard by the back way. When I went to get some more earth, it pumped five minutes in. He was in the counting house with Joe Scott I believe. Yeah, I'm mistaken. What should I have you mistaken for? I know his horse surely. But you did not see himself. I heard speak though. So I said something to Joe Scott about having settled all concerning ways and means. There would be a new set of frames in the middle before another week passed. And about this time he'll get four soldiers from Silver Barracks to guard the wagon. Sarah, are you making a gown? Yeah. Is it handsome one? Beautiful. Get the coffee ready. I'll finish cutting out that cleave for you. I'll give you some trimming for it. I saw a narrow satin of a color that will just match it. A very kind bit. Be quick. There's a good girl. But first put your master's shoes on the hearth who will take his boots off when he comes in. I hear him. He's coming. Hey, it's just you're cutting this stuff wrong. So I am. But it's only a snip. There's no harm done. The kitchen door opened. The sewer entered very wet and cold. Caroline half-turned from her dress-making occupation. But renewed it for a moment as if to gain a minute's tune for some purpose. Then to the dress her face was hidden. There was an attempt to settle her features and veil their expressions which failed. When she at last met the sewer for countless weeks. 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 ain't so fast. And you are wet and chilled. Change everything. You took cold. I should. We should blame ourselves in some measure. I'm not wet through. My riding coat is waterproof. Drawing shoes were all required. There. The virus present after facing the cold wind and rain for a few months. He stood on the kitchen heard. Helen said this item. Mr. Moore, while enjoying the genuine glow, kept his eyes directed towards the glittering brass on the shelf above. Chanting for an instant to look down, to the glance rested on an uplifted face, splashed, smiling, happy, chained with silky curls, with the fine eyes. Sarah was going to the parlor with a tray, a lecture from Mr. the painter there. Moore placed his hand in moments in the young cousin's shoulder, stooped and left the chip on her forehead. End of part one. Chapter Six, Part Two of Shirley. This is a Lippervux recording. All Lippervux recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Lippervux.org. Recording by Kadeka Stig. On the 22nd of February two thousand and ten. Shirley by Charlotte Brunty. Chapter Six, Part Two. Oh, said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips. I was miserable when I thought he would not come. I am almost too happy now. Are you happy, Robert? Do you like to come home? I think I do. Tonight at least. Are you certain you are not spreading about your frames and your business in the war? Not just now. Are you positive you don't feel hollow Scottish 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 favourable rich and great people. I only want me. A possession. A career. With 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? Yeah. Powered you. Misery. Bankruptcy. Oh, life is not what you think it Lena. But you are what I think you. I am not. You are better than? 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 Lena. 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. With the most dark-faced mustard colour his lips smiled and yet were compressed. His eyes laughed and yet he resolutely nicked his brow. Think mainly of me Lena. 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 have seen you so much. It is because you are modest that I have such confident marriage. 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 proper any eager disavowal of the charge. You don't care with what 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 eat 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 kin's woman is my sincere friend? Just so. I am your sincere friend, Robert. And I am for chance and change shall make me lean up. 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 Halstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the subject of Cafe au lait which Sarah said was a curious myth she ever saw and the ways of God's good gift as it was the nature of coffee to be boiled in water and which Madame Marcel affirmed to be unbrewage royale. A fascinating times too good for the mean person who objected to it. The former occupants of the kitchen now were thrown into the parlour. Before Hortons followed them lifers Caroline had only time again to question that my enemy Robert and more Quaker-like have replied with not a query. Could I be? And then sitting 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 Conduix-Idiens-de-Sèd-Michon-Perture sounded in her ear as confusively as the agitated rattling of the china. Robert laughed a little at it in various subdued sort and then politely and calmly in treating his sister to be tranquil assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction she should have a choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in this meal. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her as they were most of them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work and pardoned self-world as there 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, that they sound and play a tale too into patate. What would she not give for some vanquissinier and versoise with the high cap, short petticoat, indecent sabote proper to a club? Something better indeed than an influence of head in a flanged gown and absolutely without cap. For Sarah it appears to not protect the opinion of Saint Paul that it is a shame for women to go with her head uncovered. But holding rather a contrary doctrine resolutely refused to imprison linen and muslin the plentiful tresses of the yellow hair, which it was a want to fasten up smartly with the corn behind and on Sundays to wear curled in front. Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl, asked Mr. Moore, whose turn in public was on the whole very kind and private? Merci du cadeau with the answer. An Antwerp girl would not stay here ten days, sneered at as she would be by all the young concreants in your factory. Plans of me. 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, as spoiled and untruly said. Mr. Moore had also certain reminiscences about the trials of his revered mother. A good mother she had been to him, and he honored her memory, but he recollected that she kept a hot kitchen offered 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 Horton by fetching her music book and guitar, and having arranged the ribbon of the instrument around his neck to acquire his paternal kindness, he knew to be all-powerful in souping his most ruffled moods. He asked her to give him some of the mother's favorite songs. Nothing refined like a section. Family during vulgarizes. Family union elevates. Horton's playful for brother, and grateful to him, the look as she touched her guitar almost graceful, almost handsome. Her everyday faithful look was gone for a moment, and was replaced by a severe plan de vente. She sang the songs he asked for, with feelings, they reminded her of a parent in whom she had been truly attached, they reminded her of a young date. She observed, too, that Caroline listened with naive interest. This augmented her good humor, and the exclamation at the close of the song. I wish I could sing and play like Horton, achieved the business, and rendered her charming for the evening. It is true, a little lecture to Caroline follow, on the vanity of wishing and the duty of trying. As wrong, it was suggested, had not been built in a day, so neither had met myself. She wrote more as education being completed in a week, or by merely wishing to be covered. There was effort that had accomplished that great work. She was ever remarkable for her perseverance for her industry. Her masters had remarked that it was as delightful as it was uncommon to find so much talent united with so much solidity and so warmth. Once on the theme of her own merit met myself as fluent. Creedle at last, in blissful self-complacency, she took a knitting and sat down for a kill. Drone curtains, a clear fire, a softly shining lamp, gave now to the little pallor its best, its evening charm. It is probable that with three there present felders charm, they all look happy. What shall we do now, Caroline, after Mr. Moore, returning to his seat beside his cousin? What shall we do, Robert, repeat as you playfully? You decide. Not play a chess. No. No draws, no backgammon. No, no. We both hate silent games that only keep one's hands employed, don't we? I believe we do. Then shall we talk scandal? About whom? Are we sufficiently interested in anybody to take a pleasure in calling their character to pizzas? A question that comes to the point. From my part, unamiable as it sounds, I must say no. And I too, but it is strange, though we want no food, poor farming, she has to lay in with contrition, glance and whortons, living person among us, so selfish we are in our happiness. Though we don't want to think of the present existing world, it would be pleasant to go back to the past, to hear people that have slept for generations, engraved that perhaps no longer grace now, for gardens and fields, speak to us and tell us their force and impart their ideas. Who shall be the speaker? What language shall he utter? French? Your French forefathers then speak so sweetly, nor so solemnly, nor so impressively as your English ancestors, Robert. Tonight you shall be entirely English. You shall read an English book. An old English book? Yes, an old English book. When would you like? And I'll choose a part of it that is turned quite in harmony with something in you. It shall awaken your nature, fill your mind with music. It shall pass like a spell for the hand over your heart and make its string sound. Your heart is a liar, Robert. But the lot of your life has not been a minstrel to sweep it, and it is often silent. Let Gloria's William come near and touch it. You will see how he will draw the English power in melody out of its course. I must read Shakespeare. You must have a spirit before you. You must hear his voice with your mind's ear. You must take some of your soul into yours. With a view to making me better, is it to operate like a sermon? It is to stir you, to give you new sensations. It is to make you feel your life strongly, not only your virtues but your wishes for those points. Jew, could you tell, cried her tense, for he, though, had been counting stitches in his knitting and had not much attended to what was said, but whose ear these two strong words caught with a tweak? Never mind her, sister. Let her talk. Not just let her say anything she pleases tonight. She likes to come down hard upon your brother sometimes. It amuses me, so let her alone. Caroline, who mounted on a chair, had been rummaging the bookcase, returned with the book. Here's Shakespeare, she said, and there's Coriolanus. Now read and discover by the feelings the reading will give you at once how low and how high you are. Come then, sit near me and correct when I mispronounce. I am to be the teacher then and you my pupil. I'm C. Swartil. And Shakespeare is our sign since we are going to study. It appears so. And you are not going to be French and skeptical and sneering. You are not going to think it a sign of wisdom to refuse to admire. I don't know. If you do, Robert, I'll take Shakespeare away and I'll scrabble up within myself. I'll put on my bonane and go home. Sit down, you are I begin. One minute if you please, brother, interrupt with Mademoiselle. When the gentleman of a family reads, the ladies should always sue. Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery. You may get three sprigs done tonight. Caroline, look this maid. I can't see by lamplight. My eyes are tired and I can't do two things well at once. If I sue, I cannot listen. If I listen, I cannot sue. See, don't kill on fontillage, began Hortons. Miss the maw, as usual, swaverly interposed. Permit her to neglect the embroidery for this evening. I wish her whole attention to be fixed on my accent, and to ensure this, she must follow the reading with her eyes. She must look at the book. He placed it between them, reposed his arm on the back of Caroline's chair, and thus began to read. The very first scene in Coriolanus came with smart relish to his intellectual palette, and still as he read, he warmed. He delivered the holy speech of Kairus Marcius to the starving citizens with unction. He did not say he thought his irrational prior right, but he seemed to feel it so. Caroline looked up at him with a singular smile. There's a vicious point he'd already, she said. He sympathized with that prior protrusion, who does not sympathize with his famished fellow men, and insults them. There, go on. He proceeded. The warlike potions did not rise him much, he said. All that was out of date, or should be. The spirit displayed was barbarous, yet the encounter single-handed between Marcius and Tollus of Edius he delighted him, as he advanced and forgot to criticize. It was evident he appreciated the power, the truth of each portion, and, stepping out of the narrow line of private prejudices, began to revel in the large picture of human nature to feel the reality stand upon the characters who were speaking from that page before him. He did not read the comic scenes well, and Caroline, taking the book out of his hand, read these parts for him. From her he seemed to enjoy them, and indeed she gave them with the spirit no one could have expected of her. He prepared the expression, with which he seemed gifted on the spot, and for that brave moment only. It may be remarked, in passing, that the general character of the conversation that evening, with her serious as privately, grave or gay, was as of something untoward, unstudied, intuitive, pitiful, when once gone, no more to be reproduced as it had been when the glancing ray of the meteor, then the tins of the dew gem, then the color or form of the sunset cloud, then the fleeting and glittering ripple varying in the flow of a rivulet. Coriolanus in glory, Coriolanus in disaster, Coriolanus banished, followed like giant shades one after the other. Before the vision of the banished man, more spirits seemed to pause. He stood on the hearth of Ophideus' hall, facing the image of greatness fallen, but greater than ever in that low estate. He saw the grim appearance, the dark face bearing command in it, the noble vessel with its tackled torn, with the revenge of Caillus Marcius more perfectly simplified. He was not scandalized by it, and again, Coriolanus whispered. There I see another glimpse of brotherhood and error. The marginal roam, the modusification, the long resistance, the final yielding of bad passions to good, whichever must be the case and the nature worthy, the epithet of noble, the rage of Ophideus, and what he considered his ally's weakness, the depth of Coriolanus, the final sorrow of his great enemy. All scenes made of continent's truth and strength came on into succession and carried with them in their deep past flow the heart and mind of reader and listener. Now have you felt Shakespeare, asked Caroline some ten minutes after her cousin had closed the book. I think so. And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you? Perhaps I have. Was he not faulty as well as great? More nutted. And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What caused him to be banished by his countrymen? What do you think it was? I ask again. What for was it Christ, which out of daily fortune ever tamed the happy man, with a defect of judgment, to fail in the disposing of those chances which he was lured of, or with a nature, not to be other than one thing, not moving from the caste to the caution, but commanding peace, even with the same austerity and gub as he controlled the war? Well answer yourself, Spinks. It was a spice of all. And you must not be proud to your work, people. You must not neglect chances of soothing them. And you must not be of an inflexible nature, uttering a repressed or as seriously as it were command. That is the maul you tacked to the play. What put such motions into your head? It wished for your good, a care for your safety, dear Robert, and a fear, caused by many things which I have heard lately, that you will come to harm. Who tells you these things? I hear my uncle talk about you. He praises your heart spirit, your determined caste of mind, your scorn of low enemies, your resolution not to truggle to the mob, as he says. And would you have me truggle to them? No, not for the world. I never wish you to lower yourself, but somehow I cannot help thinking it unjust to include all four working people under the general and insulting name of the mob, and continually to think of them and treat them heartily. You are a little Democrat, Caroline. If your uncle knew, what would he say? I rarely talk to my uncle, as you know, and never about such things. He thinks everything but showing and cooking above women's comprehension and out of their line. And do you fancy you comprehend the subjects on which you advise me? As far as they concern you, I comprehend them. I know it would be better for you to be loved by your work people than to be hated by them, and I am sure that kindness is more likely to win their regard than price. If you were proud and called to me in Hortons, should we love you? When you are called to me, as you are sometimes, can I venture to the affectionate in return? Now, Lina, I've had my lesson both in languages and ethics, with the Tarjan politics. It is your turn. Hortons tells me you were much taken by a little piece of poetry you learned the other day, a piece by poor Anglès Chignet, la chienne captive. Do you remember it still? I think so. Repeat it then. Take your time and mind your accent, especially let us have no English use. Caroline, beginning in the low, write a tremulous voice by gaining courage as she proceeded. Repeat it as sweet verses of Chignet. The last brief stances, she rehearsed well. Mon beurre yas encore est si loin de sa part, si part est de son mot, qui borde le chemin. Je passais le premier à paix, au panquer de la vie et paix incommensée. En un instant, seulement me l'est pas encrassé. La coupe en même temps encore plomb. Je ne suis proprement comme je veux voir la moissante, comme le soleil de ce sang en ce sang. Je veux achever mon ennemi, brûlant son mâtique et l'honneur du jardin. Chignet voulut encore que le fer du matin. Je veux achever ma charnée. More listened at first with his eyes cast down, but soon he furtively raised them. Leaning back in his chair, he could watch Caroline without perceiving where his gaze was fixed. Her cheek had a color, her eyes the light, her countenance an expression. This evening, which would have made even pain features striking, but there was not the grievous effect of plainness to pardon in her case. The sunshine was not shed on rough bearingness, it fell on soft bloom. If a liniment was turned with grace, the whole aspect was pleasing. At the present moment, animated, interested, touched, she might be called beautiful. Such a face was calculated to awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant warmth of admiration, but some feeling more tender, genile, intimate, friendship perhaps, affection, interest. When she had finished, she turned to more and met his eye. Is that pretty well repeated, she inquired, smiling like any happy docile child. I really don't know. Why don't you know? Have you not listened? Yes, and looked. You are fond of poetry, Lena. When I meet with real poetry, I cannot rest till I have learned of my heart and so may proudly mine. Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck nine o'clock. Sarah entered and said that Mr. Hellstone's servant was come from Miss Caroline. Then the evening was gone already, she observed, and it will be long, I suppose, before I pass another year. Hordens had been for some time nodding over her knitting, hauling into a dose now. She made no response to the remark. You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening, inquired Robert, as he took a folded mantle from the side paper, where it still lay and carefully rusted round her. I like to come here, but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not hinting to be asked. You must understand that. Oh, I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to be rich, Lena. But if I were rich, you should live here always. At any rate, you should live with me wherever my habitation might be. That would be pleasant, and if you were poor, ever so poor, it would still be pleasant. Good night, Robert. I promised to walk with you after the rectory. And now you did, but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how to remind you, though I wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is a cold night, and as funny as come, there is no necessity. Here is your mop. Don't wake Hordens. Come. The half-mile to the rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure of hand. Yet Robert sent his cousin in excite and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind to her that day, not in phrase, compliment, or fashion, but in manner, and look, and in soft and friendly tones. For himself, he came home brave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on his own yard gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the harsh dark mill before him, the hell-enviant hollow round he explained abruptly. This won't do. There's weakness. There's downright ruin in all this. However, he added Robert's voice. The frenzy is quite temporary. I know it very well. I have had it before. It will be gone tomorrow. End of Chapter 6. Recording by Rebecca Steeves on the 22nd of February 2010. Chapter 7, Part 1 of Shirley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte. The Curates at T. Part 1. Carolyn Hellstone was just 18 years old, and at 18 the true narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvelous fiction, delightful sometimes and sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half divine or semi-daemon, its scenes or dream scenes, darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, dreary or deserts, sunnier fields than our found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time, how the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty. As to our sun, it's a burning heaven, the world of gods. At that time, at 18, drawing near the confines of elusive void dreams, elf land lies behind us, the shores of reality rise in front. These shores are yet distant, they look so blue, soft, gentle, we long to reach them. In sunshine we see a greenness beneath these jurors of spring meadows, we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine the role of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we think, to hunger and thirst no more, whereas many a wilderness and often the flood of death or some stream of sorrow as cold and almost as black as death, is to be crossed ere true bliss can be tasted. Every joy that life gives must be earned ere it is secured, and how hardly earned, those only know who have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles over it. At 18 we are not aware of this. Hope, when she smiles on us, and promises happiness tomorrow, is implicitly believed. Love, when he comes wandering like a lost angel to our doors, at once admitted, welcomed embrace. His quiver is not seen, if his arrows penetrate, their wound is like a thrill of new life. There are no fears of poison, none of the barb which no leeches hand can extract, that perilous passion, an agony ever in some of its phases, with many an agony throughout, is believed to be an unqualified good. In short, at 18 the school of experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing grinding, but yet purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be learned. Alas, experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours. None wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy. None with hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through life's wilds. Without it how they stumble, how they stray. On what forbidden grounds did they intrude, down what dread dequivities are they hurled? Caroline, having been conveyed home by Robert, had no wish to pass what remained of the evening with her uncle. The room in which he sat was very sacred ground to her, she seldom intruded on it, and to-night she kept aloof till the bell ring for prayers. Part of the evening church service was the form of worship observed in Mr. Hellstone's household. He read it in his usual nasal voice, clear, loud, and monotonous. The right over, his niece, according to her want, stepped up to him. Good-night, uncle. Hey, you've been getting abroad all day, visiting, dining out, and what not? Only at the cottage. And have you learned your lessons? Yes. Made a shirt? Only part of one. Well, that will do. Stick to the needle, learn shirt-making, and gown-making, and pie-crust-making, and you'll be a clever woman some day. Go to bed now, I'm busy with the pamphlet here. Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bedroom, the door bolted, her white dressing-gown assumed, her long hair loosened and falling thick, soft, and wavy to her waist. And as, resting from the task of combing it out, she leaned her cheek on her hand and fixed her eyes on the carpet. Before her rose and close around her drew the visions we see at eighteen years. Her thoughts were speaking with her, speaking pleasantly, as it seemed, for she smiled as she listened. She looked pretty meditating thus, but a brighter thing than she was in the apartment. The spirit of youthful hope. According to this flattering prophet she was to no disappointment, to feel chill no more. She had entered on the dawn of a summer day, no false dawn, but the true spring of mourning, and her sun would quickly rise. Impossible for her now to suspect that she was the sport of delusion. Her expectations seemed warranted, foundation on which they rested appeared solid. When people fall in love, the next step is they marry, was her argument. Now I love Robert, and I feel sure that Robert loves me. I've thought so many times before, to-day I felt it. When I looked up at him after repeating Chenier's poem, his eyes, but handsom eyes he has, sent the truth through my heart. Sometimes I'm afraid to speak to him, lest I should be too frank, lest I should seem forward. For I have more than once regretted bitterly overflowing, superfluous words, and feared I had said more than he expected me to say, and that he would disapprove, what he might deem my indiscretion. To-night I could have ventured to express any thought he was so indulgent, how kind he was as we walked up the lane. He does not flatter or say foolish things, his love-making, friendship, I mean. Of course I don't yet account him my lover, but I hope he will be so some day. He's not like what we read of in books. It's far better, original, quiet, manly, sincere. I do like him. I would be an excellent wife to him if he did marry me. I would tell him of his faults. For he has a few faults, but I would steady his comfort and cherish him, and do my best to make him happy. Now I am sure he will not be cold tomorrow. I feel almost certain that tomorrow evening he will either come here, or ask me to go there. She recommenced combing her hair, long as a mermaid's. Turning her head as she arranged it, she saw her own face and form in the glass. Such reflections are soberizing to plain people. Their own eyes are not enchanted with the image, and they are confident then that the eyes of others can see in it no fascination. But the fair must naturally draw other conclusions. The picture is charming and must charm. Caroline saw a shape, a head, that daguerreotype, and that attitude, and with that expression would have been lovely. She could not choose but derive from the spectacle confirmation to her hopes. It was then, in undiminished gladness, she sought her couch. And, in undiminished gladness, she rose the next day. As she entered her uncle's breakfast-room and with soft cheerfulness wished him good morning, even that little man of bronze himself thought, for an instant, his niece was growing a fine girl. Generally she was quiet and timid with him, very docile, but not communicative. This morning, however, she found many things to say. Slight topics alone might be discussed between them, for with a woman, a girl, Mr. Hellstone would touch on no other. She had taken an early walk in the garden and she told him what flowers were beginning to spring there. She inquired when the gardener was to come and trim the borders. She informed him that certain starlings were beginning to build their nests in the church hour. Briarfield Church was close to Briarfield Rectory. She wondered the tolling of the bells and the belfry did not scare them. Mr. Hellstone opined that they were like other fools who had just paired, insensible to inconvenience just for the moment. Caroline made perhaps a little too courageous by her temporary good spirits. Here Hazard did a remark of a kind she had never before ventured to make on observations dropped by her revered relative. Uncle said she, whenever you speak of marriage you speak of it scornfully. Do you think people shouldn't marry? It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially for women. Are all marriages unhappy? Millions of marriages are unhappy, and if everybody confessed the truth perhaps all are more or less so. You're always vexed when you are asked to come and marry a couple, why? Because one does not like to act as accessory to the commission of a piece of pure folly. Mr. Hellstone spoke so readily he seemed rather glad of the opportunity to give his niece a peace of mind on his point. Emboldened by the impunity which had hitherto attended to her questions, she went a little further. But why, said she, should it be pure folly if two people like each other, why shouldn't they consent to live together? They tire of each other, they tire of each other in a month. A yoke-fellow is not a companion, he or she is a fellow sufferer. It was by no means naive simplicity which inspired Carolyn's next remark. It was a sense of antipathy to such opinions and of displeasure at him who held them. One would think you had never been married, Uncle. One would think you were an old bachelor. Practically I am so. But you have been married. Why were you so inconsistent as to marry? Every man is mad once or twice in his life. So you tired of my aunt and my aunt of you, and you were miserable together? Mr. Hellstone pushed out his cynical lip, wrinkled his brown forehead, and gave an inarticulate grunt. Did she not suit you? Was she not good tempered? Did you not get used to her? Were you not sorry when she died? Carolyn, said Mr. Hellstone, bringing his hand slowly down to within an inch or two of the table, and then smiting it suddenly on the mahogany. Understand this. It is vulgar and puerile to confound generals with particulars. In every case there is the rule and there are the exceptions. Your questions are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell if you have done breakfast. The breakfast was taken away, and that meal over it was the general custom of Uncle and niece to separate, and not to meet again till dinner. But today the niece, instead of quitting the room, went to the window-seat and sat down there. Mr. Hellstone looked round uneasily once or twice, as if he wished her away. But she was gazing from the window and did not seem to mind him. So he continued the perusal of his morning paper. A particularly interesting one at chance to be, as new movements had just taken place in the peninsula, and certain columns of the journal were rich and long dispatches from the general Lord Wellington. He little knew, meantime, what thoughts were busy in his niece's mind. Thoughts the conversation of the past half hour had revived, but not generated. Too multuous were they now, as to served bees in a hive. But it was years since they had first made their cells in her brain. She was reviewing his character, his disposition, repeating his sentiments on marriage. Many a time she had reviewed them before and sounded the gulf between her own mind and his. And then, on the other side of the wide and deep chasm she had seen, as she now saw another figure standing beside her uncle's, a strange shape, dim, sinister, scarce the early, the half-remembered image of her own father, James Hellstone, Matthewson Hellstone's brother. Rumours had reached her ear of what the father's character was. Old servants had dropped hints. She knew, too, that he was not a good man, and that he was never kind to her. She recollected, a dark recollection it was, some weeks that she had spent with him in a great town somewhere, when she had had no maid to dress her or take care of her, when she had been shut up day and night in a high garret room without a carpet, with a bare, uncurtained bed, and scarcely any other furniture. When he went out early every morning, and often forgot to return and give her her dinner during the day, and at night when he came back was like a madman, furious, terrible, or still more painful like an idiot, imbecile, senseless. She knew she had fallen ill in this place, and that one night when she was very sick he had come roving into the room and said he would kill her, for she was a burden to him. Her screams had brought aid, and from the moment she was then rescued from him she had never seen him, except as a dead man in his coffin. That was her father. Also she had a mother, though Mr. Hellstone never spoke to her of that mother, though she could not remember having seen her. But that she was alive she knew. This mother was then the drunkard's wife, but at their marriage been. Carolyn turning from the lattice, when she had been watching the starlings, though without seeing them, in a low voice and with a sad, bitter tone, thus broke the silence of the room. You term marriage miserable, I suppose, from what you saw of my father and mothers. If my mother suffered what I suffered when I was with Papa, she must have had a dreadful life. Her father and mother? What had put into her head to mention her father and mother of whom he had never during the twelve years she had lived with and spoken to her? That the thoughts were self-matured, that she had any recollections or speculations about her parents he could not fancy. Your father and mother? Who has been talking to you about them? Nobody. But I remember something of what Papa was, and I pity Mama. Where is she? This Where Is She? had been on Carolyn's lips a hundred of times before, but till now she had never uttered it. I hardly know, returned Mr. Hellstone. I was little acquainted with her. I have not heard from her for years, but wherever she is she thinks nothing of you. She never inquires about you. I have reason to believe she does not wish to see you. Come, it is school time. You go to your cousin at ten, don't you? The clock has struck. Perhaps Carolyn would have said more, but Fanny, coming in, informed her master that the church wardens wanted to speak to him in the vestry. He hastened to join them, and his niece presently set out for the cottage. The road from the rectory to Hollows Mill inclined downwards. She ran, therefore, almost all the way. Exorcised the fresh air, the thought of seeing Robert, at least of being on his premises, in his viscinage revived her somewhat depressed spirits quickly. Arriving inside of the White House and within hearing of the thundering mill and its rushing water-course, the first thing she saw was more at his garden gate. There he stood, in his belted Holland Blouse, a light cap covering his head, which undress costume suited him. He was looking down the lane, not in the direction of his cousin's approach. She stopped, withdrawing a little behind a willow and studied his appearance. He has not his peers, she thought. He is as handsome as he is intelligent, but a keen eye he has. What clearly cut spirited features, thin and serious, but graceful. I do like his face. I do like his aspect. I do like him so much. Better than any of those shuffling curits, for instance. Better than anybody. Bonnie Robert. She sought Bonnie Robert's presence speedily. For his part, when she challenged his sight, I believe he would have passed from before her eyes like a phantom, if he could. But being a tall fact and no fiction, he was obliged to stand the greeting. He made it brief. It was cousin-like, brother-like, friend-like, anything but lover-like. The nameless charm of last night had left his manner. It was no longer the same man, or, at any rate, same heart did not beat in his breast. Rude disappointment, sharp cross. At first the eager girl would not believe in the change, though she saw and felt it. It was difficult to withdraw her hand from his till he had bestowed at least something like a kind of pressure. It was difficult to turn her eyes from his eyes till his looks had expressed something more infonder than a cool welcome. A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation. A lover feminine can say nothing. If she did, the result would be shame and anguish. Inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt smiting, suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it. Ask no questions, utter no remonstrances. It is your best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone. Break your teeth on it and don't shriek because the nerves are modernized. Do not doubt that your mental stomach—you have such a thing—is strong as an ostrich's. The stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation. Close your fingers firmly upon the gift. Let it sting through your palm. Never mind. In time after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test—some, it is said, die under it—you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. This you are not aware of, perhaps, at the time, and so cannot borrow courage of that hope. Nature, however, as has been intimated, is an excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation—a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mean at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, and then passing away and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because it is half-bitter. Half-bitter is that wrong? No, it should be bitter. Bitterness is strength. It is a tonic, sweet, mild force, following acute suffering you find nowhere. To talk of it is delusion. There may be apathetic exhaustion after the rack. If energy remains, it will be rather a dangerous energy, deadly when confronted with injustice. Chapter 7 Part 2 The Currets at T Who has read the ballad of poor Mary Lee, that old scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation, nor by what hand? Mary has been ill-used, probably in being made to believe that truth which was falsehood. She is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snowstorm, and you hear her thoughts. They are not the thoughts of a model heroine under her circumstances, but they are those of a deeply-feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the inglenook of home to the white shrouded and icy hills. Crouched under the cold drift, she recalls every image of horror, the yellow-wimed ask, the hairy adder, the old moon-vowing tyke, the ghost at Ian, the sour-bullister, the milk on the toad's back. She hates these, but while she hates robinerie. Oh, once I lived happily by Yon Bonnie Byrne, the world was in love with me, but now I'm on-sit, neath the cold drift and mourn, and curse black robinerie. Then water away, thou bitter-biting blast, and sow through the scrunty tree, and smore me up in the snow full-fast, and ne'er let the sun me see. Oh, never melt away, thou wreath of snow, that's so kind in graving me, but hide me from the scorn and guffaw of villains like robinerie. But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to Caroline Helston's feelings, or to the state of things between her and Robert Moore. Robert had done her no wrong, he had told her no lie, it was she that was to blame if anyone was. What bitterness her mind distilled should and would be poured on her own head. She had loved without being asked to love. A natural, sometimes an inevitable chance, but big with misery. Robert indeed had sometimes seemed to be fond of her, but why? Because she had made herself so pleasing to him he could not, in spite of all his efforts, help testifying a state of feeling his judgment did not approve, nor his will sanction. He was about to withdraw decidedly from intimate communication with her, because he did not choose to have his affections inextricably entangled, nor to be drawn, despite his reason, into a marriage he believed imprudent. Now what was she to do? To give way to her feelings or to vanquish them, to pursue him or to turn upon herself. If she is weak she will try the first expedient, will lose his esteem and win his aversion. If she has sense she will be her own governor, and resolve to subdue and bring unto guidance the disturbed realm of her emotions. She will determine to look on life steadily, as it is, to begin to learn its severe truths seriously, and to study its naughty problems closely, conscientiously. It appeared she had a little sense, for she quitted Robert quietly without complaint or question, without the alteration of a muscle or the shedding of a tear, but took herself to her studies under Hortense as usual, and at dinner time went home without lingering. When she had dined and found herself in the rectory drawing-room alone, having left her uncle over his temperate glass of port wine, the difficulty that occurred to and embarrassed her was, how am I to get through this day? Last night she had hoped it would be spent, as yesterday was, that the evening would again be passed with happiness and Robert. She had learned her mistake this morning, and yet she could not settle down, convinced that no chance would occur to recall her to Hollow's cottage, or to bring more again into her society. He had walked up after tea more than once to pass an hour with her uncle. The doorbell had rung, his voice had been heard in the passage just at twilight when she little expected such a pleasure, and this had happened twice after he had treated her with peculiar reserve, and though he rarely talked to her in her uncle's presence, he had looked at her unrelentingly, as he sat opposite her work-table during his stay. The few words he had spoken to her were comforting. His manner on bidding her good night was genial. Now, he might come this evening, said false hope. She almost knew it was false hope which breathed the whisper, and yet she listened. She tried to read, her thoughts wandered. She tried to sow. Every stitch she put in was an ennui. The occupation was insufferably tedious. She opened her desk and attempted to write a French composition. She wrote nothing but mistakes. Suddenly the doorbell sharply rang. Her heart leaped. She sprang to the drawing-room door, opened it softly, peeped out through the aperture. Fanny was admitting a visitor, a gentleman, a tall man, just the height of Robert. For one second she thought it was Robert. For one second she exalted. But the voice asking for Mr. Helston undeceived her. That voice was an Irish voice, consequently not Morse, but the curates, Malones. He was ushered into the dining-room, where, doubtless, he speedily helped his rector to empty the decanters. It was a fact to be noted that at whatever house in Briarfield, Winbury, or Nunnally, one curate dropped into a meal, dinner or tea as the case might be. Another presently followed, often two more. Not that they gave each other the rendezvous, but they were usually all on the run at the same time, and when done, for instance, sought Malone at his lodgings and found him not, he inquired whether he had posted, and having learned of the landlady his destination, hastened with all speed after him. The same causes operated in the same way with Sweeting. Thus it chanced on that afternoon that Caroline's ears were three times tortured with the ringing of the bell and the advent of undesired guests, for Dunn followed Malone, and Sweeting followed Dunn. And more wine was ordered up from the cellar into the dining-room, for though old Halston chid the inferior priesthood when he found them carousing, as he called it, in their own tents, yet at his hierarchical table he ever liked to treat them to a glass of his best. And through the closed doors Caroline heard their boyish laughter and the vacant cackle of their voices. Her fear was lest they should state a tea, for she had no pleasure in making tea for that particular trio. What distinctions people draw? These three were men, young men, educated men, like more, yet for her how great the difference. Their society was a bore, his a delight. Not only was she Dustin to be favoured with their clerical company, but Fortune was at this moment bringing her four other guests, lady guests, all packed in a pony faten, now rolling somewhat heavily along the road from Winbury. An elderly lady and three of her buxom daughters were coming to see her in a friendly way, as the custom of that neighborhood was. Yes, a fourth time the bell clanged. Fanny brought the present announcement to the drawing-room. Mrs. Sykes and the three Mrs. Sykes. When Caroline was going to receive company, her habit was to wring her hands nervously, to flush a little, and come forward hurriedly, yet hesitatingly, wishing herself meantime at Jericho. She was, at such crises, sadly deficient in finished manner, though she had once been at school a year. Accordingly, on this occasion her small white hands sadly maltreated each other while she stood up, waiting the entrance of Mrs. Sykes. In stalked that lady, a tall, billious gentlewoman, who made an ample and not altogether insincere profession of piety, and was greatly given to hospitality toward the clergy. In sailed her three daughters, a showy trio, being all three well-grown, and more or less handsome. In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked, where the young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all, or almost all, have a certain expression stamped on their features, which seems to say, I know. I do not boast of it, but I know that I am the standard of what is proper. Let everyone therefore whom I approach, or who approaches me, keep a sharp look out, for wherein they differ from me, be the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle, or practice, therein they are wrong. Mrs. and Mrs. Sykes, far from being exceptions to this observation, were pointed illustrations of its truth. Ms. Mary, a well-looked, well-meant, and on the whole well-dispositioned girl, wore her complacency with some state, though without harshness. Ms. Harriet, a beauty, carried it more overbearingly. She looked high and cold. Ms. Hannah, who was conceited, dashing, pushing, flourished hers consciously and openly. The mother evinced it with the gravity proper to her age and religious fame. The reception was got through somehow. Caroline was glad to see them, an unmitigated fib. Hoped they were well. Hoped Mrs. Sykes's cough was better. Mrs. Sykes had had a cough for the last twenty years. Hoped the Mrs. Sykes had left their sisters at home well, to which inquiry the Mrs. Sykes, sitting on three chairs opposite the music-stool, whereon Caroline had undesignedly come to anchor, after wavering for some seconds between it and a large armchair into which she at length recollected she ought to induct Mrs. Sykes, and indeed that lady saved her the trouble by depositing herself therein. The Mrs. Sykes replied to Caroline by one simultaneous bow, very majestic and mighty awful. A pause followed. This bow was of a character to ensure silence for the next five minutes, and it did. Mrs. Sykes then inquired after Mr. Helston, and whether he had had any return of rheumatism, and whether preaching twice on a Sunday fatigued him, and if he was capable of taking a full service now. And on being assured he was, she and all her daughters, combining in chorus, expressed their opinion that he was a wonderful man of his years. Pause Second Mrs. Mary, getting up the steam in her turn, asked whether Caroline had attended the Bible Society meeting, which had been held at Nunnally last Thursday night. The negative answer which truth compelled Caroline to utter, for last Thursday evening she had been sitting at home reading a novel which Robert had lent her, elicited a simultaneous expression of surprise from the lips of the four ladies. We were all there, said Mrs. Mary, Mama and all of us. We even persuaded Papa to go. Hannah wouldn't insist upon it. But he fell asleep while Mr. Langweilig, the German Moravian minister, was speaking. I felt quite ashamed, he nodded so. And there was Dr. Broadbent, cried Hannah, such a beautiful speaker, you couldn't expect it of him, for he is almost a vulgar-looking man. But such a dear man, interrupted Mary. And such a good man, such a useful man, added her mother. Only, like a butcher in appearance, interposed the fair, proud Harriet. I couldn't bear to look at him. I listened with my eyes shut. Miss Helston felt her ignorance and incompetency. Not having seen Dr. Broadbent, she could not give her opinion. Pause Third came on. During its continuance Caroline was feeling at her heart's core what a dreaming fool she was, what an unpractical life she led, how little fitness there was in her for ordinary intercourse with the ordinary world. She was feeling how exclusively she had attached herself to the white cottage in the hollow, how in the existence of one inmate of that cottage she had penned all her universe. She was sensible that this would not do, and that someday she would be forced to make an alteration. It could not be said that she exactly wished to resemble the ladies before her, but she wished to become superior to her present self, so as to feel less scared by their dignity. The sole means she found of reviving the flagging discourse was by asking them if they would all stay to tea, and a cruel struggle it cost her to perform this piece of civility. Mrs. Sykes had begun, we are much obliged to you, but—when in came Fanny once more—the gentleman will stay the evening, ma'am, was the message she brought for Mr. Helston. What gentlemen have you? now inquired Mrs. Sykes. Their names were specified, she and her daughters interchanged glances. The curates were not to them what they were to Caroline. Mr. Sweeting was quite a favourite with them, even Mr. Malone rather so, because he was a clergyman. Really, since you have company already, I think we shall stay, remarked Mrs. Sykes. We shall be quite a pleasant little party. I always like to meet the clergy. And now Caroline had to usher them upstairs, to help them to one shawl smooth their hair and make themselves smart, to re-conduct them to the drawing-room, to distribute amongst them books of engravings or odd things purchased from the Jew basket. She was obliged to be a purchaser, though she was a slight contributor, and if she had possessed plenty of money she would rather, when it was brought to the rectory, an awful incubus, have purchased the whole stock than contributed a single pin-cushion. It ought to be explained in passing for the benefit of those who are not au-fait to the mysteries of the Jew basket and the missionary basket, that these murbles are willow repositories of the capacity of a good-sized family clothes basket, dedicated to the purpose of conveying from house to house a monster collection of pin-cushions, needle-books, card-racks, work-bags, articles of infant wear, etc., etc., etc. made by the willing or reluctant hands of the Christian ladies of a parish, and sold perforce to the heathenish gentleman thereof, at prices unblushingly exorbitant. The proceeds of such compulsory sales are applied to the conversion of the Jews, the seeking out of the ten missing tribes, or to the regeneration of the interesting colored population of the globe. Each lady contributor takes it in her turn to keep the basket a month, to sow for it, and to foist its contents on a shrinking male public. An exciting time it is when that turn comes round. Some active-minded women, with a good trading spirit, like it, and enjoy exceedingly the fun of making hard-handed, worsted spinners cash up to the tune of four or five hundred percent above the cost price, for articles quite useless to them. Other feebler souls object to it, and would rather see the Prince of Darkness himself at their door, any morning, than that phantom basket, brought with Mrs. Rouse's compliments, and please, ma'am, she says it's your turn now. Miss Helston's duties of hostess performed, more anxiously than cheerily, she betook herself to the kitchen to hold a brief privy council with Fanny and Eliza about the tea. What a lot on him, cried Eliza, who was cook, and I put off the baking today, because I thought there would be bread plenty to fit while morning. We shall never have enough. Are there any tea-cakes? asked the young mistress. Only three in a loaf. I wish these fine folk would stay at home till they're asked, and I want to finish trimming my hat. Bonnet, she meant. Then suggested Caroline, to whom the importance of the emergency gave a certain energy. Fanny must run down to Briarfield, and buy some muffins and crumpets and some biscuits, and don't be cross alive so we can't help it now. And which tea-things are we to have? Oh, the best, I suppose. I'll get out the silver surface. And she ran upstairs to the plate-closet, and presently brought down teapot, cream-ewar, and sugar-basin. And, Mum, we have to earn? Yes, and now get it ready as quickly as you can, for the sooner we have tea over, the sooner they will go. At least I hope so. Hey, Ho, I wish they were gone, she sighed, as she returned to the drawing-room. Still, she thought, as she paused at the door, air-opening it. If Robert would come, even now, how bright it would all be! How comparatively easy the task of amusing these people if he were present! There would be an interest in hearing him talk. Though he never says much in company. And in talking in his presence. There can be no interest in hearing any of them, or in speaking to them. How they will gavel when the currets come in, and how weary I shall grow from listening to them. But I suppose I'm a selfish fool. These are very respectable gentle-folks. I ought, no doubt, to be proud of their countenance. I don't say they are not as good as I am, far from it. But they are different from me. She went in. Yorkshire people, in those days, took their tea round the table. Sitting well into it, with their knees duly introduced under the mahogany. It was essential to have a multitude of plates of red and butter, varied in sorts and plentiful in quantity. It was thought proper, too, that on the centre plate should stand a glass dish of marmalade. Among the vines was expected to be found a small assortment of cheesecakes and tarts, if there was also a plate of thin slices of pink ham garnished with green parsley, so much the better. Eliza, the rector's cook, fortunately knew her business as provider. She had been put out of humour a little at first when the invaders came so unexpectedly in such strength. But it appeared that she regained her cheerfulness with action. For in due time the tea was spread forth in handsome style, and neither ham, tarts, nor marmalade were wanting among its accompaniments. The currets, summoned to this bounteous repast, entered joyous. But at once on seeing the ladies of whose presence they had not been forewarned, they came to a stand in the doorway. Malone headed the party. He stopped short and fell back, almost capsizing Dunn, who was behind him. Dunn, staggering three paces in retreat, sent little sweeting into the arms of old Helston, who brought up the rear. There was some expofjulation, some tittering. Malone was desired to mind what he was about and urged to push forward, which at last he did, though colouring to the top of his peaked forehead a bluish purple. Helston, advancing, sent the shy currets aside, welcomed all his fair guests, shook hands, and passed a jest with each, and seated himself snugly between the lovely Harriet and the dashing Hannah. Miss Mary he requested to move to the seat opposite him that he might see her if he couldn't be near her. Perfectly easy and gallant in his way were his manners always to young ladies, and most popular was he amongst them. Yet at heart he neither respected nor liked the sacks, and such of them as circumstances had brought into intimate relation with him had ever feared rather than loved him. The currets were left to shift for themselves. Sweeting, who was the least embarrassed of the three, took refuge beside Mrs. Sykes, who he knew was almost as fond of him as if he had been her son. Dunn, after making his general bow with a grace all his own, and saying in a high pragmatical voice, How do you do, Miss Helston? dropped into a seat Caroline's elbow to her unmitigated annoyance, for she had a peculiar antipathy to Dunn on account of his stultified and immovable self-conceit and his incurable narrowness of mind. Malone, grinning most unmeaningly, inducted himself into the corresponding seat on the other side. She was thus blessed in a pair of supporters, neither of whom she knew would be of any mortal use, whether for keeping up the conversation, handing cups, circulating the muffins, or even lifting the plate from the slop basin. Little sweeting, small and boyish as he was, would have been worth twenty of them. Malone, though a ceaseless talker when there were only men present, was usually tongue-tied in the presence of ladies. Three phrases, however, he had ready, cut, and dried, which he never failed to produce. Firstly, have you had a walk today, Miss Helston? Secondly, have you seen your cousin more lately? Thirdly, does your class at the Sunday school keep up its number? These three questions being put and responded to, between Caroline and Malone, reigned silence. With Dunn it was otherwise. He was troublesome, exasperating. He had a stock of small talk on hand, at once the most trite and perverse that can well be imagined. Abuse of the people of Breyerfield, of the natives of Yorkshire generally, complaints of the want of high society, of the backward state of civilization in these districts, murmurings against the disrespectful conduct of the lower orders in the north toward their betters, silly ridicule of the manner of living in these parts, the want of style, the absence of elegance, as if he, Dunn, had been accustomed to very great doings indeed, an insinuation which his somewhat underbred manner and aspect failed to bear out. These strictures, he seemed to think, must raise him in the estimation of Miss Helston, or of any other lady who heard him. Whereas with her, at least, they brought him to a level below contempt. Though sometimes indeed they incensed her. For, a Yorkshire girl herself, she hated to hear Yorkshire abused by such a pitiful praetor. And when wrought up to a certain pitch, she would turn and say something of which neither the matter nor the manner recommended her to Mr. Dunn's good will. She would tell him it was no proof of refinement to be ever scolding others for vulgarity, and no sign of a good pastor to be eternally censuring his flock. She would ask him what he had entered the church for, since he complained there were only cottages to visit and poor people to preach to, whether he had been ordained to the ministry merely to wear soft clothing and sit in King's houses. These questions were considered by all the curates as, to the last degree, audacious and impious. End of Chapter 7, Part 2