Shirley Part 60

"I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I feared your loveliness, deeming it the stamp of perversity. They sent me your portrait, taken at eight years old; that portrait confirmed my fears. Had it shown me a sunburnt little rustic-a heavy, blunt-featured, commonplace child-I should have hastened to claim you; but there, under the silver paper, I saw blooming the delicacy of an aristocratic flower-'little lady' was written on every trait. I had too recently crawled from under the yoke of the fine gentleman-escaped galled, crushed, paralyzed, dying-to dare to encounter his still finer and most fairy-like representative. My sweet little lady overwhelmed me with dismay; her air of native elegance froze my very marrow. In my experience I had not met with truth, modesty, good principle as the concomitants of beauty. A form so straight and fine, I argued, must conceal a mind warped and cruel. I had little faith in the power of education to rectify such a mind; or rather, I entirely mis...o...b..ed my own ability to influence it. Caroline, I dared380 not undertake to rear you. I resolved to leave you in your uncle's hands. Matthewson Helstone I knew, if an austere, was an upright man. He and all the world thought hardly of me for my strange, unmotherly resolve, and I deserved to be misjudged."

"Mamma, why did you call yourself Mrs. Pryor?"

"It was a name in my mother's family. I adopted it that I might live unmolested. My married name recalled too vividly my married life; I could not bear it. Besides, threats were uttered of forcing me to return to bondage. It could not be. Rather a bier for a bed, the grave for a home. My new name sheltered me. I resumed under its screen my old occupation of teaching. At first it scarcely procured me the means of sustaining life; but how savoury was hunger when I fasted in peace! How safe seemed the darkness and chill of an unkindled hearth when no lurid reflection from terror crimsoned its desolation! How serene was solitude, when I feared not the irruption of violence and vice!"

"But, mamma, you have been in this neighbourhood before. How did it happen that when you reappeared here with Miss Keeldar you were not recognized?"

"I only paid a short visit, as a bride, twenty years ago, and then I was very different to what I am now-slender, almost as slender as my daughter is at this day. My complexion, my very features are changed; my hair, my style of dress-everything is altered. You cannot fancy me a slim young person, attired in scanty drapery of white muslin, with bare arms, bracelets and necklace of beads, and hair disposed in round Grecian curls above my forehead?"

"You must, indeed, have been different. Mamma, I heard the front door open. If it is my uncle coming in, just ask him to step upstairs, and let me hear his a.s.surance that I am truly awake and collected, and not dreaming or delirious."

The rector, of his own accord, was mounting the stairs, and Mrs. Pryor summoned him to his niece's apartment.

"She's not worse, I hope?" he inquired hastily.

"I think her better. She is disposed to converse; she seems stronger."

"Good!" said he, brus.h.i.+ng quickly into the room.-"Ha, Cary! how do? Did you drink my cup of tea? I made it for you just as I like it myself."

381"I drank it every drop, uncle. It did me good; it has made me quite alive. I have a wish for company, so I begged Mrs. Pryor to call you in."

The respected ecclesiastic looked pleased, and yet embarra.s.sed. He was willing enough to bestow his company on his sick niece for ten minutes, since it was her whim to wish it; but what means to employ for her entertainment he knew not. He hemmed-he fidgeted.

"You'll be up in a trice," he observed, by way of saying something. "The little weakness will soon pa.s.s off; and then you must drink port wine-a pipe, if you can-and eat game and oysters. I'll get them for you, if they are to be had anywhere. Bless me! we'll make you as strong as Samson before we're done with you."

"Who is that lady, uncle, standing beside you at the bed-foot?"

"Good G.o.d!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "She's not wandering, is she, ma'am?"

Mrs. Pryor smiled.

"I am wandering in a pleasant world," said Caroline, in a soft, happy voice, "and I want you to tell me whether it is real or visionary. What lady is that? Give her a name, uncle."

"We must have Dr. Rile again, ma'am; or better still, MacTurk. He's less of a humbug. Thomas must saddle the pony and go for him."

"No; I don't want a doctor. Mamma shall be my only physician. Now, do you understand, uncle?"

Mr. Helstone pushed up his spectacles from his nose to his forehead, handled his snuff-box, and administered to himself a portion of the contents. Thus fortified, he answered briefly, "I see daylight. You've told her then, ma'am?"

"And is it true?" demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. "Is she really my mother?"

"You won't cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if I answer Yes?"

"Cry! I'd cry if you said No. It would be terrible to be disappointed now. But give her a name. How do you call her?"

"I call this stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough to wear much smarter raiment, if she would-I call her Agnes Helstone. She married my brother James, and is his widow."

382"And my mother?"

"What a little sceptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor, scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and eagerness." To Caroline-"She had the trouble of bringing you into the world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting well, and repairing the waste of these cheeks.-Heigh-ho! she used to be plump. What she has done with it all I can't, for the life of me, divine."

"If wis.h.i.+ng to get well will help me, I shall not be long sick. This morning I had no reason and no strength to wish it."

f.a.n.n.y here tapped at the door, and said that supper was ready.

"Uncle, if you please, you may send me a little bit of supper-anything you like, from your own plate. That is wiser than going into hysterics, is it not?"

"It is spoken like a sage, Cary. See if I don't cater for you judiciously. When women are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to give her an edible or a wearable-be the same a roc's egg or the breastplate of Aaron, a share of St. John's locusts and honey or the leathern girdle about his loins-I can, at least, understand the demand; but when they pine for they know not what-sympathy, sentiment, some of these indefinite abstractions-I can't do it; I don't know it; I haven't got it.-Madam, accept my arm."

Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her daughter that evening. Helstone, accordingly, left them together. He soon returned, bringing a plate in his own consecrated hand.

"This is chicken," he said, "but we'll have partridge to-morrow.-Lift her up, and put a shawl over her. On my word, I understand nursing.-Now, here is the very same little silver fork you used when you first came to the rectory. That strikes me as being what you may call a happy thought-a delicate attention. Take it, Cary, and munch away cleverly."

Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her powers were so limited. He prophesied, however, great things for the future; and as she praised the morsel he had brought, and smiled gratefully in his face, he stooped over383 her pillow, kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged accent, "Good-night, bairnie! G.o.d bless thee!"

Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled by her mother's arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she forgot to wish for any other stay; and though more than one feverish dream came to her in slumber, yet, when she woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned with returning consciousness that her agitation was soothed almost as soon as felt.

As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. Till break of day she wrestled with G.o.d in earnest prayer.384

CHAPTER XXV.

THE WEST WIND BLOWS.

Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. "Spare my beloved," it may implore. "Heal my life's life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole nature. G.o.d of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!" And after this cry and strife the sun may rise and see him worsted. That opening morn, which used to salute him with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may breathe, as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and heat have quitted, "Oh! I have had a suffering night. This morning I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have troubled me."

Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is G.o.d's will his idol shall be broken, and bends his head, and subdues his soul to the sentence he cannot avert and scarce can bear.

Happy Mrs. Pryor! She was still praying, unconscious that the summer sun hung above the hills, when her child softly woke in her arms. No piteous, unconscious moaning-sound which so wastes our strength that, even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps away the oath-preceded her waking. No s.p.a.ce of deaf apathy followed. The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign to the living. Caroline evidently remembered with clearness what had happened.

"Mamma, I have slept so well. I only dreamed and woke twice."

385Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not see the joyful tears called into her eyes by that affectionate word "mamma," and the welcome a.s.surance that followed it.

For many days the mother dared rejoice only with trembling. That first revival seemed like the flicker of a dying lamp. If the flame streamed up bright one moment, the next it sank dim in the socket. Exhaustion followed close on excitement.

There was always a touching endeavour to appear better, but too often ability refused to second will; too often the attempt to bear up failed. The effort to eat, to talk, to look cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an hour pa.s.sed during which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could never more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking might be deferred.

During this s.p.a.ce the mother and daughter seemed left almost alone in the neighbourhood. It was the close of August; the weather was fine-that is to say, it was very dry and very dusty, for an arid wind had been blowing from the east this month past; very cloudless, too, though a pale haze, stationary in the atmosphere, seemed to rob of all depth of tone the blue of heaven, of all freshness the verdure of earth, and of all glow the light of day. Almost every family in Briarfield was absent on an excursion. Miss Keeldar and her friends were at the seaside; so were Mrs. Yorke's household. Mr. Hall and Louis Moore, between whom a spontaneous intimacy seemed to have arisen-the result, probably, of harmony of views and temperament-were gone "up north" on a pedestrian excursion to the Lakes. Even Hortense, who would fain have stayed at home and aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so earnestly entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to Wormwood Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings greatly aggravated by the insalubrious weather, that she felt obliged to comply; indeed, it was not in her nature to refuse a request that at once appealed to her goodness of heart, and, by a confession of dependency, flattered her amour propre. As for Robert, from Birmingham he had gone on to London, where he still sojourned.

So long as the breath of Asiatic deserts parched Caroline's lips and fevered her veins, her physical convalescence could not keep pace with her returning mental tranquillity; but there came a day when the wind ceased to sob at the386 eastern gable of the rectory, and at the oriel window of the church. A little cloud like a man's hand arose in the west; gusts from the same quarter drove it on and spread it wide; wet and tempest prevailed a while. When that was over the sun broke out genially, heaven regained its azure, and earth its green; the livid cholera-tint had vanished from the face of nature; the hills rose clear round the horizon, absolved from that pale malaria-haze.

Caroline's youth could now be of some avail to her, and so could her mother's nurture. Both, crowned by G.o.d's blessing, sent in the pure west wind blowing soft as fresh through the ever-open chamber lattice, rekindled her long-languis.h.i.+ng energies. At last Mrs. Pryor saw that it was permitted to hope: a genuine, material convalescence had commenced. It was not merely Caroline's smile which was brighter, or her spirits which were cheered, but a certain look had pa.s.sed from her face and eye-a look dread and indescribable, but which will easily be recalled by those who have watched the couch of dangerous disease. Long before the emaciated outlines of her aspect began to fill, or its departed colour to return, a more subtle change took place; all grew softer and warmer. Instead of a marble mask and gla.s.sy eye, Mrs. Pryor saw laid on the pillow a face pale and wasted enough, perhaps more haggard than the other appearance, but less awful; for it was a sick, living girl, not a mere white mould or rigid piece of statuary.

Now, too, she was not always pet.i.tioning to drink. The words, "I am so thirsty," ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did not her nurse prepare what was selected! How she watched her as she partook of it!

Nourishment brought strength. She could sit up. Then she longed to breathe the fresh air, to revisit her flowers, to see how the fruit had ripened. Her uncle, always liberal, had bought a garden-chair for her express use. He carried her down in his own arms, and placed her in it himself, and William Farren was there to wheel her round the walks, to show her what he had done amongst her plants, to take her directions for further work.