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

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      “Whom can you not win?”

      “Perhaps not the rector; but I will make the effort.”

      “Effort! He will yield for a word — a smile.”

      “By no means. It will cost me several cups of tea, some toast and cake, and an ample measure of remonstrances, expostulations, and persuasions. It grows rather chill.”

      “I perceive you shiver. Am I acting wrongly to detain you here? Yet it is so calm — I even feel it warm — and society such as yours is a pleasure to me so rare. If you were wrapped in a thicker shawl — — “

      “I might stay longer, and forget how late it is, which would chagrin Mrs. Pryor. We keep early and regular hours at Fieldhead, Mr. Moore; and so, I am sure, does your sister at the cottage.”

      “Yes; but Hortense and I have an understanding the most convenient in the world, that we shall each do as we please.”

      “How do you please to do?”

      “Three nights in the week I sleep in the mill — but I require little rest — and when it is moonlight and mild I often haunt the Hollow till daybreak.”

      “When I was a very little girl, Mr. Moore, my nurse used to tell me tales of fairies being seen in that Hollow. That was before my father built the mill, when it was a perfectly solitary ravine. You will be falling under enchantment.”

      “I fear it is done,” said Moore, in a low voice.

      “But there are worse things than fairies to be guarded against,” pursued Miss Keeldar.

      “Things more perilous,” he subjoined.

      “Far more so. For instance, how would you like to meet Michael Hartley, that mad Calvinist and Jacobin weaver? They say he is addicted to poaching, and often goes abroad at night with his gun.”

      “I have already had the luck to meet him. We held a long argument together one night. A strange little incident it was; I liked it.”

      “Liked it? I admire your taste! Michael is not sane. Where did you meet him?”

      “In the deepest, shadiest spot in the glen, where the water runs low, under brushwood. We sat down near that plank bridge. It was moonlight, but clouded, and very windy. We had a talk.”

      “On politics?”

      “And religion. I think the moon was at the full, and Michael was as near crazed as possible. He uttered strange blasphemy in his Antinomian fashion.”

      “Excuse me, but I think you must have been nearly as mad as he, to sit listening to him.”

      “There is a wild interest in his ravings. The man would be half a poet, if he were not wholly a maniac; and perhaps a prophet, if he were not a profligate. He solemnly informed me that hell was foreordained my inevitable portion; that he read the mark of the beast on my brow; that I had been an outcast from the beginning. God’s vengeance, he said, was preparing for me, and affirmed that in a vision of the night he had beheld the manner and the instrument of my doom. I wanted to know further, but he left me with these words, ‘The end is not yet.’”

      “Have you ever seen him since?”

      “About a month afterwards, in returning from market, I encountered him and Moses Barraclough, both in an advanced stage of inebriation. They were praying in frantic sort at the roadside. They accosted me as Satan, bid me avaunt, and clamoured to be delivered from temptation. Again, but a few days ago, Michael took the trouble of appearing at the counting-house door, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves — his coat and castor having been detained at the public-house in pledge. He delivered himself of the comfortable message that he could wish Mr. Moore to set his house in order, as his soul was likely shortly to be required of him.”

      “Do you make light of these things?”

      “The poor man had been drinking for weeks, and was in a state bordering on delirium tremens.”

      “What then? He is the more likely to attempt the fulfilment of his own prophecies.”

      “It would not do to permit incidents of this sort to affect one’s nerves.”

      “Mr. Moore, go home!”

      “So soon?”

      “Pass straight down the fields, not round by the lade and plantations.”

      “It is early yet.”

      “It is late. For my part, I am going in. Will you promise me not to wander in the Hollow tonight?”

      “If you wish it.”

      “I do wish it. May I ask whether you consider life valueless?”

      “By no means. On the contrary, of late I regard my life as invaluable.”

      “Of late?”

      “Existence is neither aimless nor hopeless to me now, and it was both three months ago. I was then drowning, and rather wished the operation over. All at once a hand was stretched to me — such a delicate hand I scarcely dared trust it; its strength, however, has rescued me from ruin.”

      “Are you really rescued?”

      “For the time. Your assistance has given me another chance.”

      “Live to make the best of it. Don’t offer yourself as a target to Michael Hartley; and goodnight!”

      Miss Helstone was under a promise to spend the evening of the next day at Fieldhead. She kept her promise. Some gloomy hours had she spent in the interval. Most of the time had been passed shut up in her own apartment, only issuing from it, indeed, to join her uncle at meals, and anticipating inquiries from Fanny by telling her that she was busy altering a dress, and preferred sewing upstairs, to avoid interruption.

      She did sew. She plied her needle continuously, ceaselessly, but her brain worked faster than her fingers. Again, and more intensely than ever, she desired a fixed occupation, no matter how onerous, how irksome. Her uncle must be once more entreated, but first she would consult Mrs. Pryor. Her head laboured to frame projects as diligently as her hands to plait and stitch the thin texture of the muslin summer dress spread on the little white couch at the foot of which she sat. Now and then, while thus doubly occupied, a tear would fill her eyes and fall on her busy hands; but this sign of emotion was rare and quickly effaced. The sharp pang passed; the dimness cleared from her vision. She would re-thread her needle, rearrange tuck and trimming, and work on.

      Late in the afternoon she dressed herself. She reached Fieldhead, and appeared in the oak parlour just as tea was brought in. Shirley asked her why she came so late.

      “Because I have been making my dress,” said she. “These fine sunny days began to make me ashamed of my winter merino, so I have furbished up a lighter garment.”

      “In which you look as I like to see you,” said Shirley. “You are a ladylike little person, Caroline. — Is she not, Mrs. Pryor?”

      Mrs. Pryor never paid compliments, and seldom indulged СКАЧАТЬ