"No. Perhaps it would have been better if there had. Poor Mr. Edward! He is stone-blind."
I had dreaded he was mad.
"As he came down the great staircase it fell, and he was taken out of the ruins with one eye knocked out and one hand so crushed that the surgeon had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed, and he lost the sight of that also."
"Where does he live now?"
"At Ferndean, a manor house on a farm he has--quite a desolate spot. Old John and his wife are with him; he would have none else."
To Ferndean I came just ere dusk, walking the last mile. As I approached, the narrow front door of the grange slowly opened, and a figure came out into the twilight; a man without a hat. He stretched forth his hand to feel whether it rained. It was my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester.
He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door. I now drew near and knocked, and John"s wife opened for me.
"Mary," I said, "how are you?"
She started as if she had seen a ghost. I calmed her, and followed her into the kitchen, where I explained in a few words that I should stay for the night, and that John must fetch my trunk from the turnpike house. At this moment the parlour bell rang.
Mary proceeded to fill a gla.s.s with water and place it on a tray, together with candles.
"Give the tray to me; I will carry it in."
The old dog Pilot p.r.i.c.ked up his ears as I entered the room; then he jumped up with a yelp, and bounded towards me, almost knocking the tray from my hands.
"What is the matter?" inquired Mr. Rochester.
He put out his hand with a quick gesture. "Who is this?" he demanded imperiously.
"Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in the gla.s.s," I said.
"What is it? Who speaks?"
"Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here," I answered.
He groped, and, arresting his wandering hand, I prisoned it in both mine.
"Her very fingers! Her small, slight fingers! Is it Jane--Jane Eyre?" he cried.
"My dear master, I am Jane Eyre. I have found you out; I am come back to you!"
Shirley
"Shirley," Charlotte Bronte"s second novel, was published two years after "Jane Eyre"--on October 26, 1849. The writing of it was a tragedy. When the book was begun, her brother, Branwell, and her two sisters, Emily and Anne Bronte, were alive. When it was finished all were dead, and Charlotte was left alone with her aged father. In the character of Shirley Keeldar the novelist tried to depict her sister Emily as she would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity.
Nearly all the characters were drawn from life, and drawn so vividly that they were recognised locally. Caroline Helstone was sketched from Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Bronte"s dearest friend, who furnished later much of the material for the best biographies of the novelist. "Shirley" fully sustained at the time of its publication, the reputation won through "Jane Eyre"; but under the test of time the story--owing, no doubt, to the conditions under which it was written--has not taken rank with that first-fruit of genius, "Jane Eyre," or that consummation of genius, "Villette."
_I.--In the Dark Days of the War_
Released from the business yoke, Robert Moore was, if not lively himself, a willing spectator of the liveliness of Caroline Helstone, his cousin, a complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her questions. Sometimes he was better than this--almost animated, quite gentle and friendly. The drawback was that by the next morning he was frozen up again.
To-night he stood on the kitchen hearth of Hollow"s cottage, after his return from Whinbury cloth-market, and Caroline, who had come over to the cottage from the vicarage, stood beside him. Looking down, his glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy, shaded with silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Moore placed his hand a moment on his young cousin"s shoulder, stooped, and left a kiss on her forehead.
"Are you certain, Robert, you are not fretting about your frames and your business, and the war?" she asked.
"Not just now."
"Are you positive you don"t feel Hollow"s cottage too small for you, and narrow, and dismal?"
"At this moment, no."
"Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great people forget you?"
"No more questions. I am not anxious to curry favour with rich and great people. I only want means--a position--a career."
"Which your own talent and goodness shall win for you. You were made to be great; you shall be great."
"Ah! You judge me with your heart; you should judge me with your head."
It was the dark days of the Napoleonic wars, when the cloth of the West Riding was shut out from the markets of the world, and ruin threatened the manufacturers, while the introduction of machinery so reduced the numbers of the factory hands that desperation was born of misery and famine.
Robert Moore, of Hollow"s Mill, was one of the most unpopular of the mill-owners, partly because he haughtily declined to conciliate the working cla.s.s, and partly because of his foreign demeanour, for he was the son of a Flemish mother, had been educated abroad, and had only come home recently to attempt to retrieve, by modern trading methods, the fallen fortune of the ancient firm of his Yorkshire forefathers.
The last trade outrage of the district had been the destruction on Stilbro" Moor of the new machines that were being brought by night to his mill.
Caroline Helstone was eighteen years old, drawing near the confines of illusive dreams. Elf-land behind her, the sh.o.r.es of Reality in front. To herself she said that night, after Robert had walked home with her to the rectory gate: "I love Robert, and I feel sure that he loves me. I have thought so many a time before; to-day I felt it."
And Robert, leaning later on his own yard gate, with the hushed, dark mill before him, exclaimed: "This won"t do. There"s weakness--there"s downright ruin in all this."
For Caroline Helstone was a fatherless and portionless girl, entirely dependent on her uncle, the vicar of Briarfield.
_II.--The Master of Hollows Mill_
"Come, child, put away your books. Lock them up! Get your bonnet on; I want you to make a call with me."
"With you, uncle?"
Thus the Rev. Matthewson Helstone, the imperious little vicar of Briarfield, to his niece, who, obeyed his unusual request, asked where they were going.
"To Fieldhead," replied the Rev. Matthewson Helstone. "We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar."
"Miss Keeldar! Is she come to Yorkshire?"