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At Christmas I left the school. As the spring advanced St. John Rivers,
who, with an icy heroism, was possessed by the idea of becoming a
missionary, urged me strongly to accompany him to India as his wife, on
the grounds that I was docile, diligent, and courageous, and would be
very useful. I felt such veneration for him that I was tempted to cease
struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf
of his existence, and there lose my own.
_V.--Reunion_
The time came when he called on me to decide. I fervently longed to do
what was right, and only that. "Show me the path, show me the path!" I
entreated of Heaven.
My heart beat fast and thick; I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still
to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through. My senses rose
expectant; ear and eye waited, while the flesh quivered on my bones. I
saw nothing; but I heard a voice, somewhere, cry "Jane! Jane! Jane!"--
nothing more.
"Oh, God! What is it?" I gasped. I might have said, "Where is it?" for
it did not seem in the room, nor in the house, nor in the garden, nor
from overhead. And it was the voice of a human being--a loved,
well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in
pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.
"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me!" I ran out into the garden; it was
void.
"Down, superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the
black yew at the gate.
I mounted to my chamber, locked myself in, fell on my knees, and seemed
to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in
gratitude at His feet.
Then I rose from the thanksgiving, took a resolve, and lay down,
unscared, enlightened, eager but for the daylight.
Thirty-six hours later I was crossing the fields to where I could see
the full front of my master's mansion, and, looking with a timorous joy,
saw--a blackened ruin.
Where, meantime, was the hapless owner?
I returned to the inn, where the host himself, a respectable middle-aged
man, brought my breakfast into the parlour. I scarcely knew how to begin
my questions.
"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?"
"No, ma'am--oh, no! No one is living there. It was burnt down about
harvest time. The fire broke out at dead of night."
"Was it known how it originated?"
"They guessed, ma'am; they guessed. There was a lady--a--a lunatic kept
in the house. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole, an
able woman but for one fault--she kept a private bottle of gin by her;
and the mad lady would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out
of her chamber, and go roaming about the house doing any wild mischief
that came into her head. Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke
out, and he went up to the attics and got the servants out of their
beds, and then went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then
they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was waving
her arms and shouting till they could hear her a mile off. She was a big
woman, and had long, black hair; and we could see it streaming against
the flames as she stood. We saw Mr. Rochester approach her and call
'Bertha!' And then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next
minute lay dead, smashed on the pavement."
"Were any other lives lost?"
"No. Perhaps it would have been better if there had. Poor Mr. Edward! He
is stone-blind."
I had dreaded he was mad.
"As he came down the great staircase it fell, and he was taken out of
the ruins with one eye knocked out and one hand so crushed that the
surgeon had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed, and he lost
the sight of that also."
"Where does he live now?"
"At Ferndean, a manor house on a farm he has--quite a desolate spot. Old
John and his wife are with him; he would have none else."
To Ferndean I came just ere dusk, walking the last mile. As I
approached, the narrow front door of the grange slowly opened, and a
figure came out into the twilight; a man without a hat. He stretched
forth his hand to feel whether it rained. It was my master, Edward
Fairfax Rochester.
He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the
door. I now drew near and knocked, and John's wife opened for me.
"Mary," I said, "how are you?"
She started as if she had seen a ghost. I calmed her, and followed her
into the kitchen, where I explained in a few words that I should stay
for the night, and that John must fetch my trunk from the turnpike
house. At this moment the parlour bell rang.
Mary proceeded to fill a glass with water and place it on a tray,
together with candles.
"Give the tray to me; I will carry it in."
The old dog Pilot pricked up his ears as I entered the room; then he
jumped up with a yelp, and bounded towards me, almost knocking the tray
from my hands.
"What is the matter?" inquired Mr. Rochester.
He put out his hand with a quick gesture. "Who is this?" he demanded
imperiously.
"Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the
glass," I said.
"What is it? Who speaks?"
"Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here," I answered.
He groped, and, arresting his wandering hand, I prisoned it in both
mine.
"Her very fingers! Her small, slight fingers! Is it Jane--Jane Eyre?" he
cried.
"My dear master, I am Jane Eyre. I have found you out; I am come back to
you!"
* * * * *
Shirley
"Shirley," Charlotte Brontė's second novel, was published two
years after "Jane Eyre"--on October 26, 1849. The writing of
it was a tragedy. When the book was begun, her brother,
Branwell, and her two sisters, Emily and Anne Brontė, were
alive. When it was finished all were dead, and Charlotte was
left alone with her aged father. In the character of Shirley
Keeldar the novelist tried to depict her sister Emily as she
would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity.
Nearly all the characters were drawn from life, and drawn so
vividly that they were recognised locally. Caroline Helstone
was sketched from Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontė's dearest
friend, who furnished later much of the material for the best
biographies of the novelist. "Shirley" fully sustained at the
time of its publication, the reputation won through "Jane
Eyre"; but under the test of time the story--owing, no doubt,
to the conditions under which it was written--has not taken
rank with that first-fruit of genius, "Jane Eyre," or that
consummation of genius, "Villette."
_I.--In the Dark Days of the War_
Released from the business yoke, Robert Moore was, if not lively
himself, a willing spectator of the liveliness of Caroline Helstone, his
cousin, a complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her
questions. Sometimes he was better than this--almost animated, quite
gentle and friendly. The drawback was that by the next morning he was
frozen up again.
To-night he stood on the kitchen hearth of Hollow's cottage, after his
return from Whinbury cloth-market, and Caroline, who had come over to
the cottage from the vicarage, stood beside him. Looking down, his
glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy, shaded with
silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Moore placed his hand a moment on his
young cousin's shoulder, stooped, and left a kiss on her forehead.
"Are you certain, Robert, you are not fretting about your frames and
your business, and the war?" she asked.
"Not just now."
"Are you positive you don't feel Hollow's cottage too small for you, and
narrow, and dismal?"
"At this moment, no."
"Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great
people forget you?"
"No more questions. I am not anxious to curry favour with rich and great
people. I only want means--a position--a career."
"Which your own talent and goodness shall win for you. You were made to
be great; you shall be great."
"Ah! You judge me with your heart; you should judge me with your head."
It was the dark days of the Napoleonic wars, when the cloth of the West
Riding was shut out from the markets of the world, and ruin threatened
the manufacturers, while the introduction of machinery so reduced the
numbers of the factory hands that desperation was born of misery and
famine.
Robert Moore, of Hollow's Mill, was one of the most unpopular of the
mill-owners, partly because he haughtily declined to conciliate the
working class, and partly because of his foreign demeanour, for he was
the son of a Flemish mother, had been educated abroad, and had only come
home recently to attempt to retrieve, by modern trading methods, the
fallen fortune of the ancient firm of his Yorkshire forefathers.
The last trade outrage of the district had been the destruction on
Stilbro' Moor of the new machines that were being brought by night to
his mill.
Caroline Helstone was eighteen years old, drawing near the confines of
illusive dreams. Elf-land behind her, the shores of Reality in front. To
herself she said that night, after Robert had walked home with her to
the rectory gate: "I love Robert, and I feel sure that he loves me. I
have thought so many a time before; to-day I felt it."
And Robert, leaning later on his own yard gate, with the hushed, dark
mill before him, exclaimed: "This won't do. There's weakness--there's
downright ruin in all this."
For Caroline Helstone was a fatherless and portionless girl, entirely
dependent on her uncle, the vicar of Briarfield.
_II.--The Master of Hollows Mill_
"Come, child, put away your books. Lock them up! Get your bonnet on; I
want you to make a call with me."
"With you, uncle?"
Thus the Rev. Matthewson Helstone, the imperious little vicar of
Briarfield, to his niece, who, obeyed his unusual request, asked where
they were going.
"To Fieldhead," replied the Rev. Matthewson Helstone. "We are going to
see Miss Shirley Keeldar."
"Miss Keeldar! Is she come to Yorkshire?"
"She is; and will reside for a time on her property."
The Keeldars were the lords of the manor, and their property included
the mill rented by Mr. Robert Moore.
The visitors were received at Fieldhead by a middle-aged nervous English
lady, to whom Caroline at once found it natural to talk with a gentle
ease, until Miss Shirley Keeldar, entering the room, introduced them to
Mrs. Pryor, who, she added, "was my governess, and is still my friend."
Shirley Keeldar was no ugly heiress. She was agreeable to the eye,
gracefully made, and her face, pale, intelligent, and of varied
expression, also possessed the charm of grace.
The interview had not proceeded far before Shirley hoped they would
often have the presence of Miss Helstone at Fieldhead; a request
repeated by Mrs. Pryor.
"You are distinguished more than you think," said Shirley, "for Mrs.
Pryor often tantalises me by the extreme caution of her judgments. I
have entreated her to say what she thinks of my gentleman-tenant, Mr.
Moore, but she evades an answer. What are Mr. Moore's politics?"
"Those of a tradesman," returned the rector; "narrow, selfish, and
unpatriotic."
"He looks a gentleman, and it pleases me to think he is such."
"And decidedly he is," joined in Caroline, in distinct tones.
"You are his friend, at any rate," said Shirley, flashing a searching
glance at the speaker.
"I am both his friend and relative."
"I like that romantic Hollow with all my heart--the old mill, and the
white cottage, and the counting-house."
"And the trade?" inquired the rector.
"Half my income comes from the works in that Hollow."
"Don't enter into partnership, that's all."
"You've put it into my head!" she exclaimed, with a joyous laugh. "It
will never get out; thank you."
Some days later, the new friends were walking together towards the
rectory when the talk turned on the qualities which prove that a man can
be trusted.
"Do you know what soothsayers I would consult?" asked Caroline.
"Let me hear."
"Neither man nor woman, elderly nor young; the little Irish beggar that
comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in
the wainscot; the bird that, in frost and snow, pecks at the window for
a crumb. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb,
against whose shoulder and cheek it loves to purr. The old dog always
comes out of his kennel and wags his tail when somebody passes."
"Is it Robert?"
"It is Robert."
"Handsome fellow!" said Shirley, with enthusiasm. "He is both graceful
and good."
"I was sure that you would see that he was. When I first looked at your
face I knew that you would."
"I was well inclined to him before I saw him; I liked him when I did see
him; I admire him now."
When they kissed each other and parted at the rectory gate, Shirley
said:
"Caroline Helstone, I have never in my whole life been able to talk to a
young lady as I have talked to you this morning."
"This is the worst passage I have come to yet," said Caroline to
herself. "Still, I was prepared for it. I gave Robert up to Shirley the
first day I heard she was come."
_III.--Caroline Finds a Mother_
The Whitsuntide school treats were being held, and it was Shirley
Keeldar who, at the head of the tea-table, kept a place for Robert
Moore, and whose temper became clouded when he was late. When he did
come he was hard and preoccupied, and presently the two girls noticed he
was shaking hands and renewing a broken friendship with a militant
rector in the playing field, and that the more vigorous of their
manufacturing neighbours had gathered in a group to talk.
"There is some mystery afloat," said Shirley. "Some event is expected,
some preparation to be made; and Robert's secrecy vexes me. See, they
are all shaking hands with emphasis, as if ratifying some league."
"We must be on the alert," said Caroline, "and perhaps we shall find a
clue."
Later, the rector came to them to mention that he would not sleep at
home that night, and Shirley had better stay with Caroline--arrangements
which they could not but connect with a glimpse of martial scarlet they
had observed on a distant moor earlier in the day, and the passage, by a
quiet route, of six cavalry soldiers.
So the girls sat up that night and watched, until, close upon midnight,
they heard the tramp of hundreds of marching feet. The mob halted by the
rectory for a muttered consultation, and then moved cautiously along
towards the Hollow's Mill.
In vain did the two watchers try to cross to the mill by fenced fields
and give the alarm. When they reached a point from which they could
overlook the mill, the attack had already begun, and the yard-gates were
being forced. A volley of stones smashed every window, but the mill
remained mute as a mausoleum.
"He cannot be alone," whispered Caroline.
"I would stake all I have that he is as little alone as he is alarmed,"
responded Shirley.
Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this
signal? It seemed so. The inert mill woke, and a volley of musketry
pealed sharp through the Hollow. It was difficult in the darkness to
distinguish what was going on now. The mill yard was full of
battle-movement; there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and shouting,
and then the rioters, who had never dreamed of encountering an organised
defence, fell back defeated, but leaving the premises a blot of
desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn.
Caroline Helstone now fell into a state of depression and physical
weakness which she tried in vain to combat.
"It is scarcely living to measure time as I do at the rectory," she
confessed one day to Mrs. Pryor, who had become her instructress and
friend. "The hours pass, and I get over them somehow, but I do not live
I endure existence, but I barely enjoy it. I want to go away from this
place and forget it."
"You know I am at present residing with Miss Keeldar in the capacity of
companion," Mrs. Pryor replied. "Should she marry, and that she will
marry ere long many circumstances induce me to conclude, I shall cease
to be necessary to her. I possess a small independency, arising partly
from my own savings and partly from a legacy. Whenever I leave Fieldhead
I shall take a house of my own. I have no relations to invite to close
intimacy. To you, my dear, I need not say I am attached. With you I am
happier than I have been with any living thing. You will come to me
then, Caroline?"
"Indeed, I love you," was the reply, "and I should like to live with
you."
"All I have I would leave to you."
"But, my dear madam, I have no claim on this generosity--"
Mrs. Pryor now displayed such agitation that it was Caroline who had to
become comforter.
The sequel to this scene appeared when Caroline sank into so weak a
state that constant nursing was needed, and Mrs. Pryor established
herself at the rectory.
One day, when the watchful nurse could not forbear to weep--her full
heart overflowing--her patient asked:
"Do you think I shall not get better? I do not feel very ill--only
weak."
"But your mind, Caroline; your mind is crushed; your heart is broken;
you have been left so desolate."
"I sometimes think if an abundant gush of happiness came on me, I could
revive yet."
"You love me, Caroline?"
"Inexpressibly. I sometimes feel as if I could almost grow to your
heart."
"Then, if you love me so, it will be neither shock nor pain for you to
know that you are my own child."
"Mrs. Pryor! That is--that means--you have adopted me?"
"It means that I am your true mother."
"But Mrs. James Helstone--but my father's wife, whom I do not remember
to have seen, she is my mother?"
"She is your mother," Mrs. Pryor assured her. "James Helstone was my
husband."
"Is what I hear true? Is it no dream? My own mother! And one I can be so
fond of! If you are my mother, the world is all changed to me."
The offspring nestled to the parent, who gathered her to her bosom,
covered her with noiseless kisses, and murmured love over her like a
cushat fostering its young.
_IV.--An Old Acquaintance_
An uncle of Shirley Keeldar, Sympson by name, now came with his family
to stay at Feidhead, and accompanying them, as tutor to a crippled son
Harry, was Louis Moore, Robert's younger brother.
"Shirley," said Caroline one day as they sat in the summer-house, "you
are a singular being. I thought I knew you quite well; I begin to find
myself mistaken. Did you know that my cousin Louis was tutor in your
uncle's family before the Sympsons came down here?"
"Yes, of course; I knew it well."
"How chanced it that you never mentioned it to me?" asked Caroline. "You
knew Mrs. Pryor was my mother, and were silent, and now here again is
another secret."
"I never made it a secret; you never asked me who Henry's tutor was, or
I would have told you."
"I am puzzled about more things than one in this matter. You don't like
poor Louis--why? Do you wish that Robert's brother were more highly
placed?"
"Robert's brother, indeed!" was the exclamation in a tone of scorn, and,
with a movement of proud impatience, Shirley snatched a rose from a
branch peeping through the open lattice. "Robert's brother! Robert's
brother is a topic on which you and I shall quarrel if we discuss it
often; so drop it henceforth and for ever."
She would have understood the meaning of that outburst better if she had
heard a conversation in the schoolroom a few days later between Louis
Moore and Shirley.
"For two years," he was saying, "I had once a pupil who grew very dear
to me. Henry is dear, but she was dearer. Henry never gives me trouble;
she--well--she did. She spilled the draught from my cup; and having
taken from me my peace of mind and ease of life, she took from me
herself, quite coolly--just as if, when she was gone, the world would be
all the same to me. At the end of two years it fell out that we
encountered again. She received me haughtily; but then she was
inconsistent: she tantalised as before. When I thought of her only as a
lofty stranger, she would suddenly show me a glimpse of loving
simplicity, warm me with such a beam of reviving sympathy that I could
no more shut my heart to her image than I could close that door against
her presence. Explain why she distressed me so."
"She could not bear to be quite outcast," was the docile reply.
Caroline would have understood still more could she have read what Louis
Moore wrote in his diary that night: "What a child she is sometimes!
What an unsophisticated, untaught thing! I worship her perfections; but
it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me. If
I were a king and she were a housemaid, my eye would recognise her
qualities."
Robert Moore had long been absent from Briarfield, and no one knew why
he stayed away. It could not be that he was afraid, for he had shown the
utmost fearlessness in bringing to justice and transportation the four
ringleaders in the attack on the mill. He had now returned, and one day
as he rode over Rushedge Moore from Stilbro' market with a bluff
neighbour, he unbosomed himself of the reason why he had remained thus
long from home.
"I certainly believed she loved me," he said. "I have seen her eyes
sparkle when she found me out in a crowd. When my name was uttered she
changed countenance; I knew she did. She was cordial to me; she took an
interest in me; she was anxious about me. I saw power in her; I owed her
gratitude. She aided me substantially and effectively with a loan of
five thousand pounds. Could I believe she loved me? With an admiration
dedicated entirely to myself I smiled at her being the first to love and
to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a good heavy handle. Knock
me out of the saddle with it if you choose, for I never felt as if
nature meant her to be my other and better self. Yet I walked up to
Fieldhead and in a hard, firm fashion offered myself--my fine person--
with all my debts, of course, as a settlement. There was no
misunderstanding her aspect and voice as she indignantly ejaculated:
'God bless me!' Her eyes lightened as she said: 'You have pained me; you
have outraged me; you have deceived me. I did respect, I did admire, I
did like you, and you would immolate me to that mill--your Moloch!' I
was obliged to say, 'Forgive me!' To which she replied, 'I could if
there was not myself to forgive too, but to mislead a sagacious man so
far I must have done wrong.' She added, 'I am sorry for what has
happened.' So was I, God knows."
It was after this talk that Moore was shot down by a concealed assassin.
_V.--Love Scenes_
On the very night that Robert Moore arrived at his cottage in the
Hollow, after being nursed back to life in the house of the neighbour
who was with him when he was shot by a fanatical revolutionist, he
scribbled a note to ask his cousin Caroline to call, as was her wont
before the days of misunderstanding.
"Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings," said Robert.
"What is the source of the sunshine I perceive about you?"
"For one thing, I am happy in mamma. I love her more tenderly every day.
And I am glad you are better, and that we are friends."
"Cary, I mean to tell you some day a thing about myself that is not to
my credit. I cannot bear that you should think better of me than I
deserve."
"But I believe I know all about it. I inferred something, gathered more
from rumour, and made out the rest by instinct."
"I wanted to marry Shirley for the sake of her money, and she refused me
scornfully; you needn't prick your fingers with your needle, that is the
plain truth--and I had not an emotion of tenderness for her."
"Then, Robert, it was very wicked in you to want to marry her."
"And very mean, my little pastor; but, Cary, I had no love to give--no
heart that I could call my own."
It is Louis who is once more speaking to Shirley in the schoolroom.
"For the first time, Shirley, I stand before you--myself. I fling off
the tutor and introduce you to the man. My pupil."
"My master," was the low answer.
"I have to tell you that for five years you have been growing into your
tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare that
you have bewitched me, in spite of sense and experience, and difference
of station and estate, and that I love you with all my life and
strength."
"Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don't care for life
unless I pass it at your side." She looked up with a sweet, open,
earnest countenance. "Teach me and help me to be good. Show me how to
sustain my part. Your judgment is well-balanced; your heart is kind; I
know you are wise. Be my companion through life, my guide where I am
ignorant, my master where I am faulty."
The Orders in Council are repealed, the blockaded ports are thrown open,
and the ringers in Briarfield belfry crack a bell that remains dissonant
to this day. Caroline Helstone is in the garden listening to this call
to be gay when a hand steals quietly round her waist.
"Caroline," says a manly voice. "I have sought you for an audience. The
repeal of the Orders in Council saves me. Now I shall not turn bankrupt,
now I shall be no longer poor, now I can pay my debts; now all the cloth
I have in my warehouses will be taken off my hands. This day lays my
fortune on a foundation on which for the first time I can securely
build."
"Your heavy difficulties are lifted?"
"They are lifted; I breathe; I can act. Now I can take more workmen,
give better wages, be less selfish. Now, Caroline, I can have a home
that is truly mine, and seek a wife. Will Caroline forget all I have
made her suffer; forget my poor ambition; my sordid schemes? Will she
let me prove I can love faithfully? Is Caroline mine?"
His hand was in hers still, and a gentle pressure answered him,
"Caroline is yours."
"I love you, Robert," she said simply, and mutely offered a kiss, an
offer of which he took unfair advantage.
* * * * *
Villette
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