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

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СКАЧАТЬ to whom, indeed, the notion of such a tour was not only pleasant, but gloriously reviving. Shirley rubbed her hands.

      “Come; I can bestow a benefit,” she exclaimed. “I can do a good deed with my cash. My thousand a year is not merely a matter of dirty banknotes and jaundiced guineas (let me speak respectfully of both, though, for I adore them), but, it may be, health to the drooping, strength to the weak, consolation to the sad. I was determined to make something of it better than a fine old house to live in, than satin gowns to wear, better than deference from acquaintance and homage from the poor. Here is to begin. This summer, Caroline, Mrs. Pryor and I go out into the North Atlantic, beyond the Shetland, perhaps to the Faroe Isles. We will see seals in Suderoe, and, doubtless, mermaids in Stromoe. — Caroline is laughing, Mrs. Pryor. I made her laugh; I have done her good.”

      “I shall like to go, Shirley,” again said Miss Helstone. “I long to hear the sound of waves — ocean-waves — and to see them as I have imagined them in dreams, like tossing banks of green light, strewed with vanishing and reappearing wreaths of foam, whiter than lilies. I shall delight to pass the shores of those lone rock-islets where the sea-birds live and breed unmolested. We shall be on the track of the old Scandinavians — of the Norsemen. We shall almost see the shores of Norway. This is a very vague delight that I feel, communicated by your proposal, but it is a delight.”

      “Will you think of Fitful Head now when you lie awake at night, of gulls shrieking round it, and waves tumbling in upon it, rather than of the graves under the rectory back-kitchen?”

      “I will try; and instead of musing about remnants of shrouds, and fragments of coffins, and human bones and mould, I will fancy seals lying in the sunshine on solitary shores, where neither fisherman nor hunter ever come; of rock crevices full of pearly eggs bedded in seaweed; of unscared birds covering white sands in happy flocks.”

      “And what will become of that inexpressible weight you said you had on your mind?”

      “I will try to forget it in speculation on the sway of the whole great deep above a herd of whales rushing through the livid and liquid thunder down from the frozen zone — a hundred of them, perhaps, wallowing, flashing, rolling in the wake of a patriarch bull, huge enough to have been spawned before the Flood, such a creature as poor Smart had in his mind when he said, —

      ‘Strong against tides, the enormous whale

      Emerges as he goes.’”

      “I hope our bark will meet with no such shoal, or herd as you term it, Caroline. (I suppose you fancy the sea-mammoths pasturing about the bases of the ‘everlasting hills,’ devouring strange provender in the vast valleys through and above which sea-billows roll.) I should not like to be capsized by the patriarch bull.”

      “I suppose you expect to see mermaids, Shirley?”

      “One of them, at any rate — I do not bargain for less — and she is to appear in some such fashion as this. I am to be walking by myself on deck, rather late of an August evening, watching and being watched by a full harvest moon. Something is to rise white on the surface of the sea, over which that moon mounts silent and hangs glorious. The object glitters and sinks. It rises again. I think I hear it cry with an articulate voice; I call you up from the cabin; I show you an image, fair as alabaster, emerging from the dim wave. We both see the long hair, the lifted and foam-white arm, the oval mirror brilliant as a star. It glides nearer; a human face is plainly visible — a face in the style of yours — whose straight, pure (excuse the word, it is appropriate) — whose straight, pure lineaments paleness does not disfigure. It looks at us, but not with your eyes. I see a preternatural lure in its wily glance. It beckons. Were we men, we should spring at the sign — the cold billow would be dared for the sake of the colder enchantress; being women, we stand safe, though not dreadless. She comprehends our unmoved gaze; she feels herself powerless; anger crosses her front; she cannot charm, but she will appal us; she rises high, and glides all revealed on the dark wave-ridge. Temptress-terror! monstrous likeness of ourselves! Are you not glad, Caroline, when at last, and with a wild shriek, she dives?”

      “But, Shirley, she is not like us. We are neither temptresses, nor terrors, nor monsters.”

      “Some of our kind, it is said, are all three. There are men who ascribe to ‘woman,’ in general, such attributes.”

      “My dears,” here interrupted Mrs. Pryor, “does it not strike you that your conversation for the last ten minutes has been rather fanciful?”

      “But there is no harm in our fancies; is there, ma’am?”

      “We are aware that mermaids do not exist; why speak of them as if they did? How can you find interest in speaking of a nonentity?”

      “I don’t know,” said Shirley.

      “My dear, I think there is an arrival. I heard a step in the lane while you were talking; and is not that the garden-gate which creaks?”

      Shirley stepped to the window.

      “Yes, there is some one,” said she, turning quietly away; and as she resumed her seat a sensitive flush animated her face, while a trembling ray at once kindled and softened her eye. She raised her hand to her chin, cast her gaze down, and seemed to think as she waited.

      The servant announced Mr. Moore, and Shirley turned round when Mr. Moore appeared at the door. His figure seemed very tall as he entered, and stood in contrast with the three ladies, none of whom could boast a stature much beyond the average. He was looking well, better than he had been known to look for the past twelve months. A sort of renewed youth glowed in his eye and colour, and an invigorated hope and settled purpose sustained his bearing. Firmness his countenance still indicated, but not austerity. It looked as cheerful as it was earnest.

      “I am just returned from Stilbro’,” he said to Miss Keeldar, as he greeted her; “and I thought I would call to impart to you the result of my mission.”

      “You did right not to keep me in suspense,” she said, “and your visit is well timed. Sit down. We have not finished tea. Are you English enough to relish tea, or do you faithfully adhere to coffee?”

      Moore accepted tea.

      “I am learning to be a naturalized Englishman,” said he; “my foreign habits are leaving me one by one.”

      And now he paid his respects to Mrs. Pryor, and paid them well, with a grave modesty that became his age compared with hers. Then he looked at Caroline — not, however, for the first time: his glance had fallen upon her before. He bent towards her as she sat, gave her his hand, and asked her how she was. The light from the window did not fall upon Miss Helstone; her back was turned towards it. A quiet though rather low reply, a still demeanour, and the friendly protection of early twilight kept out of view each traitorous symptom. None could affirm that she had trembled or blushed, that her heart had quaked or her nerves thrilled; none could prove emotion; a greeting showing less effusion was never interchanged. Moore took the empty chair near her, opposite Miss Keeldar. He had placed himself well. His neighbour, screened by the very closeness of his vicinage from his scrutiny, and sheltered further by the dusk which deepened each moment, soon regained not merely seeming but real mastery of the feelings which had started into insurrection at the first announcement of his name.

      He addressed his conversation to Miss Keeldar.

      “I went to the barracks,” he said, “and had an interview with Colonel Ryde. He approved my plans, and promised the aid I wanted. Indeed, he offered a more numerous force than I require — half a dozen will suffice. I don’t СКАЧАТЬ