Шарлотта Бронте
Shirley
“Yes”—Caroline smiled brightly—“you know she is mamma?”
“I have heard – Hortense told me; but that tale too I will receive from yourself. Does she add to your happiness?”
“What! mamma? She is dear to me; how dear I cannot say. I was altogether weary, and she held me up.”
“I deserve to hear that in a moment when I can scarce lift my hand to my head. I deserve it.”
“It is no reproach against you.”
“It is a coal of fire heaped on my head; and so is every word you address to me, and every look that lights your sweet face. Come still nearer, Lina; and give me your hand – if my thin fingers do not scare you.”
She took those thin fingers between her two little hands; she bent her head et les effleura de ses lèvres. (I put that in French because the word effleurer is an exquisite word.) Moore was much moved. A large tear or two coursed down his hollow cheek.
“I’ll keep these things in my heart, Cary; that kiss I will put by, and you shall hear of it again one day.”
“Come out!” cried Martin, opening the door—“come away; you have had twenty minutes instead of a quarter of an hour.”
“She will not stir yet, you hempseed.”
“I dare not stay longer, Robert.”
“Can you promise to return?”
“No, she can’t,” responded Martin. “The thing mustn’t become customary. I can’t be troubled. It’s very well for once; I’ll not have it repeated.”
“You’ll not have it repeated.”
“Hush! don’t vex him; we could not have met today but for him. But I will come again, if it is your wish that I should come.”
“It is my wish – my one wish – almost the only wish I can feel.”
“Come this minute. My mother has coughed, got up, set her feet on the floor. Let her only catch you on the stairs, Miss Caroline. You’re not to bid him good-bye”—stepping between her and Moore—“you are to march.”
“My shawl, Martin.”
“I have it. I’ll put it on for you when you are in the hall.”
He made them part. He would suffer no farewell but what could be expressed in looks. He half carried Caroline down the stairs. In the hall he wrapped her shawl round her, and, but that his mother’s tread then creaked in the gallery, and but that a sentiment of diffidence – the proper, natural, therefore the noble impulse of his boy’s heart – held him back, he would have claimed his reward; he would have said, “Now, Miss Caroline, for all this give me one kiss.” But ere the words had passed his lips she was across the snowy road, rather skimming than wading the drifts.
“She is my debtor, and I will be paid.”
He flattered himself that it was opportunity, not audacity, which had failed him. He misjudged the quality of his own nature, and held it for something lower than it was.
Chapter XXXIV
Case of Domestic Persecution – Remarkable Instance of Pious Perseverance in the Discharge of Religious Duties
Martin, having known the taste of excitement, wanted a second draught; having felt the dignity of power, he loathed to relinquish it. Miss Helstone – that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine – had once come within his sphere. It fretted him to think the visit might never be repeated.
Though a schoolboy he was no ordinary schoolboy; he was destined to grow up an original. At a few years’ later date he took great pains to pare and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, but he never succeeded; an unique stamp marked him always. He now sat idle at his desk in the grammar school, casting about in his mind for the means of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know how many commenced life-romances are doomed never to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent in the wood with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book of his imagination.
Martin harboured an irreligious reluctance to see the approach of Sunday. His father and mother, while disclaiming community with the Establishment, failed not duly, once on the sacred day, to fill their large pew in Briarfield Church with the whole of their blooming family. Theoretically, Mr. Yorke placed all sects and churches on a level. Mrs. Yorke awarded the palm to Moravians and Quakers, on account of that crown of humility by these worthies worn. Neither of them were ever known, however, to set foot in a conventicle.
Martin, I say, disliked Sunday, because the morning service was long, and the sermon usually little to his taste. This Saturday afternoon, however, his woodland musings disclosed to him a new-found charm in the coming day.
It proved a day of deep snow – so deep that Mrs. Yorke during breakfast announced her conviction that the children, both boys and girls, would be better at home; and her decision that, instead of going to church, they should sit silent for two hours in the back parlour, while Rose and Martin alternately read a succession of sermons – John Wesley’s “Sermons.” John Wesley, being a reformer and an agitator, had a place both in her own and her husband’s favour.
“Rose will do as she pleases,” said Martin, not looking up from the book which, according to his custom then and in after-life, he was studying over his bread and milk.
“Rose will do as she is told, and Martin too,” observed the mother.
“I am going to church.”
So her son replied, with the ineffable quietude of a true Yorke, who knows his will and means to have it, and who, if pushed to the wall, will let himself be crushed to death, provided no way of escape can be found, but will never capitulate.
“It is not fit weather,” said the father.
No answer. The youth read studiously; he slowly broke his bread and sipped his milk.
“Martin hates to go to church, but he hates still more to obey,” said Mrs. Yorke.
“I suppose I am influenced by pure perverseness?”
“Yes, you are.”
“Mother, I am not.”
“By what, then, are you influenced?”
“By a complication of motives, the intricacies of which I should as soon think of explaining to you as I should of turning myself inside out to exhibit the internal machinery of my frame.”
“Hear Martin! hear him!” cried Mr. Yorke. “I must see and have this lad of mine brought up to the bar. Nature meant him to live by his tongue. Hesther, your third son must certainly be a lawyer; he has the stock-in-trade – brass, self-conceit, and words – words – words.”
“Some bread, Rose, if you please,” requested Martin, with intense gravity, serenity, phlegm. The boy had naturally a low, plaintive voice, which in his “dour moods” rose scarcely above a lady’s whisper. The more inflexibly stubborn the humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He rang the bell, and gently asked for his walking-shoes.
“But, Martin,” urged his sire, “there is drift all the way; a man could hardly wade through it. However, lad,” he continued, seeing that the boy rose as the church bell began to toll, “this is a case wherein I would by no means balk the obdurate chap of his will. Go to church by all means. There is a pitiless wind, and a sharp, frozen sleet, besides the depth under foot. Go out into it, since thou prefers it to a warm fireside.”
Martin quietly assumed his cloak, comforter, and cap, and deliberately went out.
“My father has more sense than my mother,” he pronounced. “How women miss it! They drive the nail into the flesh, thinking they are hammering away at insensate stone.”
He reached church early.
“Now, if the weather frightens her (and it is a real December tempest), or if that Mrs. Pryor objects to her going out, and I should miss her after all, it will vex me; but, tempest or tornado, hail or ice, she ought to come, and if she has a mind worthy of her eyes and features she will come. She will be here for the chance of seeing me, as I am here for the chance of seeing her. She will want to get a word respecting her confounded sweetheart, as I want to get another flavour of what I think the essence of life – a taste of existence, with the spirit preserved in it, and not evaporated. Adventure is to stagnation what champagne is to flat porter.”
He looked round. The church was cold, silent, empty, but for one old woman. As the chimes subsided and the single bell tolled slowly, another and another elderly parishioner came dropping in, and took a humble station in the free sittings. It is always the frailest, the oldest, and the poorest that brave the worst weather, to prove and maintain their constancy to dear old mother church. This wild morning not one affluent family attended, not one carriage party appeared – all the lined and cushioned pews were empty; only on the bare oaken seats sat ranged the gray-haired elders and feeble paupers.
“I’ll scorn her if she doesn’t come,” muttered Martin, shortly and savagely, to himself. The rector’s shovel hat had passed the porch. Mr. Helstone and his clerk were in the vestry.
The bells ceased – the reading desk was filled – the doors were closed – the service commenced. Void stood the rectory pew – she was not there. Martin scorned her.
“Worthless thing! vapid thing! commonplace humbug! Like all other girls – weakly, selfish, shallow!”
Such was Martin’s liturgy.
“She is not like our picture. Her eyes are not large and expressive; her nose is not straight, delicate, Hellenic; her mouth has not that charm I thought it had, which I imagined could beguile me of sullenness in my worst moods. What is she? A thread-paper, a doll, a toy, a girl, in short.”
So absorbed was the young cynic he forgot to rise from his knees at the proper place, and was still in an exemplary attitude of devotion when, the litany over, the first hymn was given out. To be so caught did not contribute to soothe him. He started up red (for he was as sensitive to ridicule as any girl). To make the matter worse, the church door had reopened, and the aisles were filling: patter, patter, patter, a hundred little feet trotted in. It was the Sunday scholars. According to Briarfield winter custom, these children had till now been kept where there was a warm stove, and only led into church just before the communion and sermon.
The little ones were settled first, and at last, when the boys and the younger girls were all arranged – when the organ was swelling high, and the choir and congregation were rising to uplift a spiritual song – a tall class of young women came quietly in, closing the procession. Their teacher, having seen them seated, passed into the rectory pew. The French-gray cloak and small beaver bonnet were known to Martin; it was the very costume his eyes had ached to catch. Miss Helstone had not suffered the storm to prove an impediment. After all, she was come to church. Martin probably whispered his satisfaction to his hymn book; at any rate, he therewith hid his face two minutes.
Satisfied or not, he had time to get very angry with her again before the sermon was over. She had never once looked his way; at least he had not been so lucky as to encounter a glance.
“If,” he said—“if she takes no notice of me, if she shows I am not in her thoughts, I shall have a worse, a meaner opinion of her than ever. Most despicable would it be to come for the sake of those sheep-faced Sunday scholars, and not for my sake or that long skeleton Moore’s.”
The sermon found an end; the benediction was pronounced; the congregation dispersed. She had not been near him.
Now, indeed, as Martin set his face homeward, he felt that the sleet was sharp and the east wind cold.
His nearest way lay through some fields. It was a dangerous, because an untrodden way. He did not care; he would take it. Near the second stile rose a clump of trees. Was that an umbrella waiting there? Yes, an umbrella, held with evident difficulty against the blast; behind it fluttered a French-gray cloak. Martin grinned as he toiled up the steep, encumbered field, difficult to the foot as a slope in the upper realms of Etna. There was an inimitable look in his face when, having gained the stile, he seated himself coolly thereupon, and thus opened a conference which, for his own part, he was willing to prolong indefinitely.
“I think you had better strike a bargain. Exchange me for Mrs. Pryor.”
“I was not sure whether you would come this way, Martin, but I thought I would run the chance. There is no such thing as getting a quiet word spoken in the church or churchyard.”
“Will you agree? Make over Mrs. Pryor to my mother, and put me in her skirts?”
“As if I could understand you! What puts Mrs. Pryor into your head?”
“You call her ‘mamma,’ don’t you?”
“She is my mamma.”
“Not possible – or so inefficient, so careless a mamma; I should make a five times better one. You may laugh. I have no objection to see you laugh. Your teeth – I hate ugly teeth; but yours are as pretty as a pearl necklace, and a necklace of which the pearls are very fair, even, and well matched too.”
“Martin, what now? I thought the Yorkes never paid compliments?”
“They have not done till this generation; but I feel as if it were my vocation to turn out a new variety of the Yorke species. I am rather tired of my own ancestors. We have traditions going back for four ages – tales of Hiram, which was the son of Hiram, which was the son of Samuel, which was the son of John, which was the son of Zerubbabel Yorke. All, from Zerubbabel down to the last Hiram, were such as you see my father. Before that there was a Godfrey. We have his picture; it hangs in Moore’s bedroom; it is like me. Of his character we know nothing; but I am sure it was different to his descendants. He has long, curling dark hair; he is carefully and cavalierly dressed. Having said that he is like me, I need not add that he is handsome.”
“You are not handsome, Martin.”
“No; but wait awhile – just let me take my time. I mean to begin from this day to cultivate, to polish, and we shall see.”
“You are a very strange, a very unaccountable boy, Martin. But don’t imagine you ever will be handsome; you cannot.”
“I mean to try. But we were talking about Mrs. Pryor. She must be the most unnatural mamma in existence, coolly to let her daughter come out in this weather. Mine was in such a rage because I would go to church; she was fit to fling the kitchen brush after me.”
“Mamma was very much concerned about me; but I am afraid I was obstinate. I would go.”
“To see me?”
“Exactly; I thought of nothing else. I greatly feared the snow would hinder you from coming. You don’t know how pleased I was to see you all by yourself in the pew.”
“I came to fulfil my duty, and set the parish a good example. And so you were obstinate, were you? I should like to see you obstinate, I should. Wouldn’t I have you in good discipline if I owned you? Let me take the umbrella.”
“I can’t stay two minutes; our dinner will be ready.”
“And so will ours; and we have always a hot dinner on Sundays. Roast goose today, with apple pie and rice-pudding. I always contrive to know the bill of fare. Well, I like these things uncommonly; but I’ll make the sacrifice, if you will.”
“We have a cold dinner. My uncle will allow no unnecessary cooking on the Sabbath. But I must return; the house would be in commotion if I failed to appear.”
“So will Briarmains, bless you! I think I hear my father sending out the overlooker and five of the dyers, to look in six directions for the body of his prodigal son in the snow; and my mother repenting her of her many misdeeds towards me, now I am gone.”
“Martin, how is Mr. Moore?”
“That is what you came for, just to say that word.”
“Come, tell me quickly.”
“Hang him! he is no worse; but as ill-used as ever – mewed up, kept in solitary confinement. They mean to make either an idiot or a maniac of him, and take out a commission of lunacy. Horsfall starves him; you saw how thin he was.”
“You were very good the other day, Martin.”
“What day? I am always good – a model.”
“When will you be so good again?”
“I see what you are after; but you’ll not wheedle me – I am no cat’s-paw.”
“But it must be done. It is quite a right thing, and a necessary thing.”
“How you encroach! Remember, I managed the matter of my own free will before.”
“And you will again.”
“I won’t. The business gave me far too much trouble. I like my ease.”
“Mr. Moore wishes to see me, Martin, and I wish to see him.”
“I dare say” (coolly).
“It is too bad of your mother to exclude his friends.”
“Tell her so.”
“His own relations.”
“Come and blow her up.”
“You know that would advance nothing. Well, I shall stick to my point. See him I will. If you won’t help me, I’ll manage without help.”
“Do; there is nothing like self-reliance, self-dependence.”
“I have no time to reason with you now; but I consider you provoking. Good morning.”
Away she went, the umbrella shut, for she could not carry it against the wind.
“She is not vapid; she is not shallow,” said Martin. “I shall like to watch, and mark how she will work her way without help. If the storm were not of snow, but of fire – such as came refreshingly down on the cities of the plain – she would go through it to procure five minutes’ speech of that Moore. Now, I consider I have had a pleasant morning. The disappointments got time on; the fears and fits of anger only made that short discourse pleasanter, when it came at last. She expected to coax me at once. She’ll not manage that in one effort. She shall come again, again, and yet again. It would please me to put her in a passion – to make her cry. I want to discover how far she will go – what she will do and dare – to get her will. It seems strange and new to find one human being thinking so much about another as she thinks about Moore. But it is time to go home; my appetite tells me the hour. Won’t I walk into that goose? and we’ll try whether Matthew or I shall get the largest cut of the apple pie today.”
Chapter XXXV
Wherein Matters Make Some Progress, But Not Much
Martin had planned well. He had laid out a dexterously concerted scheme for his private amusement. But older and wiser schemers than he are often doomed to see their finest-spun projects swept to annihilation by the sudden broom of Fate, that fell housewife whose red arm none can control. In the present instance this broom was manufactured out of the tough fibres of Moore’s own stubborn purpose, bound tight with his will. He was now resuming his strength, and making strange head against Mrs. Horsfall. Each morning he amazed that matron with a fresh astonishment. First he discharged her from her valet duties; he would dress himself. Then he refused the coffee she brought him; he would breakfast with the family. Lastly, he forbade her his chamber. On the same day, amidst the outcries of all the women in the place, he put his head out of doors. The morning after, he followed Mr. Yorke to his counting house, and requested an envoy to fetch a chaise from the Red House Inn. He was resolved, he said, to return home to the Hollow that very afternoon. Mr. Yorke, instead of opposing, aided and abetted him. The chaise was sent for, though Mrs. Yorke declared the step would be his death. It came. Moore, little disposed to speak, made his purse do duty for his tongue. He expressed his gratitude to the servants and to Mrs. Horsfall by the chink of his coin. The latter personage approved and understood this language perfectly; it made amends for all previous contumacy. She and her patient parted the best friends in the world.
The kitchen visited and soothed, Moore betook himself to the parlour. He had Mrs. Yorke to appease; not quite so easy a task as the pacification of her housemaids. There she sat plunged in sullen dudgeon, the gloomiest speculations on the depths of man’s ingratitude absorbing her thoughts. He drew near and bent over her; she was obliged to look up, if it were only to bid him “avaunt.” There was beauty still in his pale, wasted features; there was earnestness and a sort of sweetness – for he was smiling – in his hollow eyes.
“Good-bye!” he said, and as he spoke the smile glittered and melted. He had no iron mastery of his sensations now; a trifling emotion made itself apparent in his present weak state.
“And what are you going to leave us for?” she asked. “We will keep you, and do anything in the world for you, if you will only stay till you are stronger.”
“Good-bye!” he again said; and added, “You have been a mother to me; give your wilful son one embrace.”
Like a foreigner, as he was, he offered her first one cheek, then the other. She kissed him.
“What a trouble – what a burden I have been to you!” he muttered.
“You are the worst trouble now, headstrong youth!” was the answer. “I wonder who is to nurse you at Hollow’s Cottage? Your sister Hortense knows no more about such matters than a child.”
“Thank God! for I have had nursing enough to last me my life.”
Here the little girls came in – Jessie crying, Rose quiet but grave. Moore took them out into the hall to soothe, pet, and kiss them. He knew it was not in their mother’s nature to bear to see any living thing caressed but herself. She would have felt annoyed had he fondled a kitten in her presence.
The boys were standing about the chaise as Moore entered it; but for them he had no farewell. To Mr. Yorke he only said, “You have a good riddance of me. That was an unlucky shot for you, Yorke; it turned Briarmains into an hospital. Come and see me at the cottage soon.”
He drew up the glass; the chaise rolled away. In half an hour he alighted at his own garden wicket. Having paid the driver and dismissed the vehicle, he leaned on that wicket an instant, at once to rest and to muse.
“Six months ago I passed out at this gate,” said he, “a proud, angry, disappointed man. I come back sadder and wiser; weakly enough, but not worried. A cold, gray, yet quiet world lies round – a world where, if I hope little, I fear nothing. All slavish terrors of embarrassment have left me. Let the worst come, I can work, as Joe Scott does, for an honourable living; in such doom I yet see some hardship but no degradation. Formerly, pecuniary ruin was equivalent in my eyes to personal dishonour. It is not so now; I know the difference. Ruin is an evil, but one for which I am prepared; the day of whose coming I know, for I have calculated. I can yet put it off six months – not an hour longer. If things by that time alter, which is not probable; if fetters, which now seem indissoluble, should be loosened from our trade (of all things the most unlikely to happen), I might conquer in this long struggle yet – I might – good God! what might I not do? But the thought is a brief madness; let me see things with sane eyes. Ruin will come, lay her axe to my fortune’s roots, and hew them down. I shall snatch a sapling, I shall cross the sea, and plant it in American woods. Louis will go with me. Will none but Louis go? I cannot tell – I have no right to ask.”
He entered the house.
It was afternoon, twilight yet out of doors – starless and moonless twilight; for though keenly freezing with a dry, black frost, heaven wore a mask of clouds congealed and fast locked. The mill-dam too was frozen. The Hollow was very still. Indoors it was already dark. Sarah had lit a good fire in the parlour; she was preparing tea in the kitchen.
“Hortense,” said Moore, as his sister bustled up to help him off with his cloak, “I am pleased to come home.”
Hortense did not feel the peculiar novelty of this expression coming from her brother, who had never before called the cottage his home, and to whom its narrow limits had always heretofore seemed rather restrictive than protective. Still, whatever contributed to his happiness pleased her, and she expressed herself to that effect.
He sat down, but soon rose again. He went to the window; he came back to the fire.
“Hortense!”
“Mon frère?”
“This little parlour looks very clean and pleasant – unusually bright, somehow.”
“It is true, brother; I have had the whole house thoroughly and scrupulously cleaned in your absence.”
“Sister, I think on this first day of your return home you ought to have a friend or so to tea, if it were only to see how fresh and spruce you have made the little place.”
“True, brother. If it were not late I might send for Miss Mann.”
“So you might; but it really is too late to disturb that good lady, and the evening is much too cold for her to come out.”
“How thoughtful in you, dear Gérard! We must put it off till another day.”
“I want someone today, dear sister – some quiet guest, who would tire neither of us.”
“Miss Ainley?”
“An excellent person, they say; but she lives too far off. Tell Harry Scott to step up to the rectory with a request from you that Caroline Helstone should come and spend the evening with you.”
“Would it not be better tomorrow, dear brother?”
“I should like her to see the place as it is just now; its brilliant cleanliness and perfect neatness are so much to your credit.”
“It might benefit her in the way of example.”
“It might and must; she ought to come.”
He went into the kitchen.
“Sarah, delay tea half an hour.” He then commissioned her to dispatch Harry Scott to the rectory, giving her a twisted note hastily scribbled in pencil by himself, and addressed “Miss Helstone.”
Scarcely had Sarah time to get impatient under the fear of damage to her toast already prepared when the messenger returned, and with him the invited guest.
She entered through the kitchen, quietly tripped up Sarah’s stairs to take off her bonnet and furs, and came down as quietly, with her beautiful curls nicely smoothed, her graceful merino dress and delicate collar all trim and spotless, her gay little work bag in her hand. She lingered to exchange a few kindly words with Sarah, and to look at the new tortoise-shell kitten basking on the kitchen hearth, and to speak to the canary-bird, which a sudden blaze from the fire had startled on its perch; and then she betook herself to the parlour.
The gentle salutation, the friendly welcome, were interchanged in such tranquil sort as befitted cousins meeting; a sense of pleasure, subtle and quiet as a perfume, diffused itself through the room; the newly-kindled lamp burnt up bright; the tray and the singing urn were brought in.
“I am pleased to come home,” repeated Mr. Moore.
They assembled round the table. Hortense chiefly talked. She congratulated Caroline on the evident improvement in her health. Her colour and her plump cheeks were returning, she remarked. It was true. There was an obvious change in Miss Helstone. All about her seemed elastic; depression, fear, forlornness, were withdrawn. No longer crushed, and saddened, and slow, and drooping, she looked like one who had tasted the cordial of heart’s ease, and been lifted on the wing of hope.
After tea Hortense went upstairs. She had not rummaged her drawers for a month past, and the impulse to perform that operation was now become resistless. During her absence the talk passed into Caroline’s hands. She took it up with ease; she fell into her best tone of conversation. A pleasing facility and elegance of language gave fresh charm to familiar topics; a new music in the always soft voice gently surprised and pleasingly captivated the listener; unwonted shades and lights of expression elevated the young countenance with character, and kindled it with animation.
“Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings,” said Moore, after earnestly gazing at her for some minutes.
“Do I?”
“I sent for you this evening that I might be cheered; but you cheer me more than I had calculated.”
“I am glad of that. And I really cheer you?”
“You look brightly, move buoyantly, speak musically.”
“It is pleasant to be here again.”
“Truly it is pleasant; I feel it so. And to see health on your cheek and hope in your eye is pleasant, Cary; but what is this hope, and what is the source of this sunshine I perceive about you?”
“For one thing, I am happy in mamma. I love her so much, and she loves me. Long and tenderly she nursed me. Now, when her care has made me well, I can occupy myself for and with her all the day. I say it is my turn to attend to her; and I do attend to her. I am her waiting-woman as well as her child. I like – you would laugh if you knew what pleasure I have in making dresses and sewing for her. She looks so nice now, Robert; I will not let her be old-fashioned. And then, she is charming to talk to – full of wisdom, ripe in judgment, rich in information, exhaustless in stores her observant faculties have quietly amassed. Every day that I live with her I like her better, I esteem her more highly, I love her more tenderly.”
“That for one thing, then, Cary. You talk in such a way about ‘mamma’ it is enough to make one jealous of the old lady.”
“She is not old, Robert.”
“Of the young lady, then.”
“She does not pretend to be young.”
“Well, of the matron. But you said ‘mamma’s’ affection was one thing that made you happy; now for the other thing.”
“I am glad you are better.”
“What besides?”
“I am glad we are friends.”
“You and I?”
“Yes. I once thought we never should be.”
“Cary, someday I mean to tell you a thing about myself that is not to my credit, and consequently will not please you.”
“Ah, don’t! I cannot bear to think ill of you.”
“And I cannot bear that you should think better of me than I deserve.”
“Well, but I half know your ‘thing;’ indeed, I believe I know all about it.”
“You do not.”
“I believe I do.”
“Whom does it concern besides me?”
She coloured; she hesitated; she was silent.
“Speak, Cary! Whom does it concern?”
She tried to utter a name, and could not.
“Tell me; there is none present but ourselves. Be frank.”
“But if I guess wrong?”
“I will forgive. Whisper, Cary.”
He bent his ear to her lips. Still she would not, or could not, speak clearly to the point. Seeing that Moore waited and was resolved to hear something, she at last said, “Miss Keeldar spent a day at the rectory about a week since. The evening came on very wintry, and we persuaded her to stay all night.”
“And you and she curled your hair together?”
“How do you know that?”
“And then you chattered, and she told you”
“It was not at curling-hair time, so you are not as wise as you think; and, besides, she didn’t tell me.”
