The Complete Works: Charlotte, Emily, Anne, Patrick & Branwell Brontë. Anne Bronte

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СКАЧАТЬ to make calls with her uncle. She never rode or walked out with him on any occasion.

      “Quick! quick! I am always busy, you know. I have no time to lose.”

      She hurriedly gathered up her materials, asking, meantime, where they were going.

      “To Fieldhead.”

      “Fieldhead! What! to see old James Booth, the gardener? Is he ill?”

      “We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar.”

      “Miss Keeldar! Is she coming to Yorkshire? Is she at Fieldhead?”

      “She is. She has been there a week. I met her at a party last night — that party to which you would not go. I was pleased with her. I choose that you shall make her acquaintance. It will do you good.”

      “She is now come of age, I suppose?”

      “She is come of age, and will reside for a time on her property. I lectured her on the subject; I showed her her duty. She is not intractable. She is rather a fine girl; she will teach you what it is to have a sprightly spirit. Nothing lackadaisical about her.”

      “I don’t think she will want to see me, or to have me introduced to her. What good can I do her? How can I amuse her?”

      “Pshaw! Put your bonnet on.”

      “Is she proud, uncle?”

      “Don’t know. You hardly imagine she would show her pride to me, I suppose? A chit like that would scarcely presume to give herself airs with the rector of her parish, however rich she might be.”

      “No. But how did she behave to other people?”

      “Didn’t observe. She holds her head high, and probably can be saucy enough where she dare. She wouldn’t be a woman otherwise. There! Away now for your bonnet at once!”

      Not naturally very confident, a failure of physical strength and a depression of spirits had not tended to increase Caroline’s presence of mind and ease of manner, or to give her additional courage to face strangers, and she quailed, in spite of self-remonstrance, as she and her uncle walked up the broad, paved approach leading from the gateway of Fieldhead to its porch. She followed Mr. Helstone reluctantly through that porch into the sombre old vestibule beyond.

      Very sombre it was — long, vast, and dark; one latticed window lit it but dimly. The wide old chimney contained now no fire, for the present warm weather needed it not; it was filled instead with willow-boughs. The gallery on high, opposite the entrance, was seen but in outline, so shadowy became this hall towards its ceiling. Carved stags’ heads, with real antlers, looked down grotesquely from the walls. This was neither a grand nor a comfortable house; within as without it was antique, rambling, and incommodious. A property of a thousand a year belonged to it, which property had descended, for lack of male heirs, on a female. There were mercantile families in the district boasting twice the income, but the Keeldars, by virtue of their antiquity, and their distinction of lords of the manor, took the precedence of all.

      Mr. and Miss Helstone were ushered into a parlour. Of course, as was to be expected in such a Gothic old barrack, this parlour was lined with oak: fine, dark, glossy panels compassed the walls gloomily and grandly. Very handsome, reader, these shining brown panels are, very mellow in colouring and tasteful in effect, but — if you know what a “spring clean” is — very execrable and inhuman. Whoever, having the bowels of humanity, has seen servants scrubbing at these polished wooden walls with beeswaxed cloths on a warm May day must allow that they are “intolerable and not to be endured;” and I cannot but secretly applaud the benevolent barbarian who had painted another and larger apartment of Fieldhead — the drawing-room, to wit, formerly also an oak-room — of a delicate pinky white, thereby earning for himself the character of a Hun, but mightily enhancing the cheerfulness of that portion of his abode, and saving future housemaids a world of toil.

      The brown-panelled parlour was furnished all in old style, and with real old furniture. On each side of the high mantelpiece stood two antique chairs of oak, solid as silvan thrones, and in one of these sat a lady. But if this were Miss Keeldar, she must have come of age at least some twenty years ago. She was of matronly form, and though she wore no cap, and possessed hair of quite an undimmed auburn, shading small and naturally young-looking features, she had no youthful aspect, nor apparently the wish to assume it. You could have wished her attire of a newer fashion. In a well-cut, well-made gown hers would have been no uncomely presence. It puzzled you to guess why a garment of handsome materials should be arranged in such scanty folds, and devised after such an obsolete mode. You felt disposed to set down the wearer as somewhat eccentric at once.

      This lady received the visitors with a mixture of ceremony and diffidence quite English. No middle-aged matron who was not an Englishwoman could evince precisely the same manner — a manner so uncertain of herself, of her own merits, of her power to please, and yet so anxious to be proper, and, if possible, rather agreeable than otherwise. In the present instance, however, more embarrassment was shown than is usual even with diffident Englishwomen. Miss Helstone felt this, sympathized with the stranger, and knowing by experience what was good for the timid, took a seat quietly near her, and began to talk to her with a gentle ease, communicated for the moment by the presence of one less self-possessed than herself.

      She and this lady would, if alone, have at once got on extremely well together. The lady had the clearest voice imaginable — infinitely softer and more tuneful than could have been reasonably expected from forty years — and a form decidedly inclined to embonpoint. This voice Caroline liked; it atoned for the formal, if correct, accent and language. The lady would soon have discovered she liked it and her, and in ten minutes they would have been friends. But Mr. Helstone stood on the rug looking at them both, looking especially at the strange lady with his sarcastic, keen eye, that clearly expressed impatience of her chilly ceremony, and annoyance at her want of aplomb. His hard gaze and rasping voice discomfited the lady more and more. She tried, however, to get up little speeches about the weather, the aspect of the country, etc.; but the impracticable Mr. Helstone presently found himself somewhat deaf. Whatever she said he affected not to hear distinctly, and she was obliged to go over each elaborately-constructed nothing twice. The effort soon became too much for her. She was just rising in a perplexed flutter, nervously murmuring that she knew not what detained Miss Keeldar, that she would go and look for her, when Miss Keeldar saved her the trouble by appearing. It was to be presumed at least that she who now came in through a glass door from the garden owned that name.

      There is real grace in ease of manner, and so old Helstone felt when an erect, slight girl walked up to him, retaining with her left hand her little silk apron full of flowers, and, giving him her right hand, said pleasantly, “I knew you would come to see me, though you do think Mr. Yorke has made me a Jacobin. Good-morning.”

      “But we’ll not have you a Jacobin,” returned he. “No, Miss Shirley; they shall not steal the flower of my parish from me. Now that you are amongst us, you shall be my pupil in politics and religion; I’ll teach you sound doctrine on both points.”

      “Mrs. Pryor has anticipated you,” she replied, turning to the elder lady. “Mrs. Pryor, you know, was my governess, and is still my friend; and of all the high and rigid Tories she is queen; of all the stanch churchwomen she is chief. I have been well drilled both in theology and history, I assure you, Mr. Helstone.”

      The rector immediately bowed very low to Mrs. Pryor, and expressed himself obliged to her.

      The ex-governess disclaimed skill either in political or religious controversy, explained that she thought such matters little adapted for female minds, but avowed herself in general СКАЧАТЬ