Shirley. Charlotte Bronte

The nameless charm of last night had left his manner: he was no longer the same man: or, at any rate, the 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 pressure; it was difficult to turn her eyes from his eyes, till his looks had expressed something more and fonder than that 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 martyrized; do not doubt that your mental stomach – if 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 mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, 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.

      Who has read the ballad of Puir Mary Lee – that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation nor by what hand? Mary had 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 ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills. Crouched under the “cauld drift,” she recalls every image of horror—“the yellow-wymed ask,” “the hairy adder,” “the auld moon-bowing tyke,” “the ghaist at e’en,” “the sour bullister,” “the milk on the taed’s back.” She hates these, but “waur she hates Robin-a-Ree.”

      “Oh, ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn—

      The warld was in love wi’ me;

      But now I maun sit ‘neath the cauld drift and mourn,

      And curse black Robin-a-Ree!

      “Then whudder awa, thou bitter biting blast,

      And sough through the scrunty tree,

      And smoor me up in the snaw fu’ fast,

      And n’er let the sun me see!

      “Oh, never melt awa, thou wreath o’ snaw,

      That’s sae kind in graving me;

      But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw

      O’ villains like Robin-a-Ree!”

      But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to Caroline Helstone’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 under 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 knotty 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, betook 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 be again 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 Moore 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 relentingly as he sat opposite her worktable 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 sew – 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 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 exulted; but the voice asking for Mr. Helstone undeceived her. That voice was an Irish voice, consequently not Moore’s, but the curate’s – Malone’s. 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, Whinbury, or Nunnely one curate dropped in to 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 Donne, for instance, sought Malone at his lodgings and found him not, he inquired whither 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 Donne followed Malone, and Sweeting followed Donne; and more wine was ordered up from the cellar into the dining room (for though old Helstone 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 stay to tea, for she had no pleasure