Shirley (78 page)

she who was to do for him, and the general conjecture now ran that she did for him accordingly.

Morning and evening MacTurk came to see him. His case, thus complicated by a new mischance,

was become one of interest in the surgeon's eyes. He regarded him as a damaged piece of clockwork,

which it would be creditable to his skill to set agoing again. Graves and young MacTurk—Moore's

sole other visitors—contemplated him in the light in which they were wont to contemplate the occupant for the time being of the dissecting-room at Stilbro' Infirmary.

Robert Moore had a pleasant time of it—in pain, in danger, too weak to move, almost too weak to

speak, a sort of giantess his keeper, the three surgeons his sole society. Thus he lay through the diminishing days and lengthening nights of the whole drear month of November.

In the commencement of his captivity Moore used feebly to resist Mrs. Horsfall. He hated the sight

of her rough bulk, and dreaded the contact of her hard hands; but she taught him docility in a trice.

She made no account whatever of his six feet, his manly thews and sinews; she turned him in his bed

as another woman would have turned a babe in its cradle. When he was good she addressed him as

"my dear" and "honey," and when he was bad she sometimes shook him. Did he attempt to speak when MacTurk was there, she lifted her hand and bade him "Hush!" like a nurse checking a forward child. If she had not smoked, if she had not taken gin, it would have been better, he thought; but she did both.

Once, in her absence, he intimated to MacTurk that "that woman was a dram-drinker."

"Pooh! my dear sir, they are all so," was the reply he got for his pains. "But Horsfall has this virtue," added the surgeon—"drunk or sober, she always remembers to obey
me
."

At length the latter autumn passed; its fogs, its rains withdrew from England their mourning and their tears; its winds swept on to sigh over lands far away. Behind November came deep winter—

clearness, stillness, frost accompanying.

A calm day had settled into a crystalline evening. The world wore a North Pole colouring; all its

lights and tints looked like the
reflets
[1]
of white, or violet, or pale green gems. The hills wore a lilac blue; the setting sun had purple in its red; the sky was ice, all silvered azure; when the stars rose, they were of white crystal, not gold; gray, or cerulean, or faint emerald hues—cool, pure, and transparent

—tinged the mass of the landscape.

What is this by itself in a wood no longer green, no longer even russet, a wood neutral tint—this

dark blue moving object? Why, it is a schoolboy—a Briarfield grammar-school boy—who has left

his companions, now trudging home by the highroad, and is seeking a certain tree, with a certain mossy mound at its root, convenient as a seat. Why is he lingering here? The air is cold and the time

wears late. He sits down. What is he thinking about? Does he feel the chaste charm Nature wears to-

night? A pearl-white moon smiles through the gray trees; does he care for her smile?

Impossible to say; for he is silent, and his countenance does not speak. As yet it is no mirror to reflect sensation, but rather a mask to conceal it. This boy is a stripling of fifteen—slight, and tall of his years. In his face there is as little of amenity as of servility, his eye seems prepared to note any incipient attempt to control or overreach him, and the rest of his features indicate faculties alert for resistance. Wise ushers avoid unnecessary interference with that lad. To break him in by severity would be a useless attempt; to win him by flattery would be an effort worse than useless. He is best let alone. Time will educate and experience train him.

Professedly Martin Yorke (it is a young Yorke, of course) tramples on the name of poetry. Talk sentiment to him, and you would be answered by sarcasm. Here he is, wandering alone, waiting duteously on Nature, while she unfolds a page of stern, of silent, and of solemn poetry beneath his attentive gaze.

Being seated, he takes from his satchel a book—not the Latin grammar, but a contraband volume of

fairy tales. There will be light enough yet for an hour to serve his keen young vision. Besides, the moon waits on him; her beam, dim and vague as yet, fills the glade where he sits.

He reads. He is led into a solitary mountain region; all round him is rude and desolate, shapeless,

and almost colourless. He hears bells tinkle on the wind. Forth-riding from the formless folds of the

mist dawns on him the brightest vision—a green-robed lady, on a snow-white palfrey. He sees her dress, her gems, and her steed. She arrests him with some mysterious question. He is spell-bound, and

must follow her into fairyland.

A second legend bears him to the sea-shore. There tumbles in a strong tide, boiling at the base of

dizzy cliffs. It rains and blows. A reef of rocks, black and rough, stretches far into the sea. All along, and among, and above these crags dash and flash, sweep and leap, swells, wreaths, drifts of snowy spray. Some lone wanderer is out on these rocks, treading with cautious step the wet, wild seaweed;

glancing down into hollows where the brine lies fathoms deep and emerald clear, and seeing there wilder and stranger and huger vegetation than is found on land, with treasure of shells—some green,

some purple, some pearly—clustered in the curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry. Looking up and

forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a tall, pale thing—shaped like man, but made of spray

—transparent, tremulous, awful. It stands not alone. They are all human figures that wanton in the rocks—a crowd of foam-women—a band of white, evanescent Nereids.

Hush! Shut the book; hide it in the satchel. Martin hears a tread. He listens. No—yes. Once more the

dead leaves, lightly crushed, rustle on the wood path. Martin watches; the trees part, and a woman issues forth.

She is a lady dressed in dark silk, a veil covering her face. Martin never met a lady in this wood

before—nor any female, save, now and then, a village girl come to gather nuts. To-night the apparition does not displease him. He observes, as she approaches, that she is neither old nor plain,

but, on the contrary, very youthful; and, but that he now recognizes her for one whom he has often

wilfully pronounced ugly, he would deem that he discovered traits of beauty behind the thin gauze of

that veil.

She passes him and says nothing. He knew she would. All women are proud monkeys, and he

knows no more conceited doll than that Caroline Helstone. The thought is hardly hatched in his mind

when the lady retraces those two steps she had got beyond him, and raising her veil, reposes her glance on his face, while she softly asks, "Are you one of Mr. Yorke's sons?"

No human evidence would ever have been able to persuade Martin Yorke that he blushed when thus

addressed; yet blush he did, to the ears.

"I am," he said bluntly, and encouraged himself to wonder, superciliously, what would come next.

"You are Martin, I think?" was the observation that followed.

It could not have been more felicitous. It was a simple sentence—very artlessly, a little timidly, pronounced; but it chimed in harmony to the youth's nature. It stilled him like a note of music.

Martin had a keen sense of his personality; he felt it right and sensible that the girl should discriminate him from his brothers. Like his father, he hated ceremony. It was acceptable to hear a lady address him as "Martin," and not Mr. Martin or Master Martin, which form would have lost her his good graces for ever. Worse, if possible, than ceremony was the other extreme of slipshod familiarity. The slight tone of bashfulness, the scarcely perceptible hesitation, was considered perfectly in place.

"I am Martin," he said.

"Are your father and mother well?" (it was lucky she did not say
papa
and
mamma
; that would have undone all); "and Rose and Jessie?"

"I suppose so."

"My cousin Hortense is still at Briarmains?"

"Oh yes."

Martin gave a comic half-smile and demi-groan. The half-smile was responded to by the lady, who

could guess in what sort of odour Hortense was likely to be held by the young Yorkes.

"Does your mother like her?"

"They suit so well about the servants they can't help liking each other."

"It is cold to-night."

"Why are you out so late?"

"I lost my way in this wood."

Now, indeed, Martin allowed himself a refreshing laugh of scorn.

"Lost your way in the mighty forest of Briarmains! You deserve never more to find it."

"I never was here before, and I believe I am trespassing now. You might inform against me if you

chose, Martin, and have me fined. It is your father's wood."

"I should think I knew that. But since you are so simple as to lose your way, I will guide you out."

"You need not. I have got into the track now. I shall be right. Martin" (a little quickly), "how is Mr.

Moore?"

Martin had heard certain rumours; it struck him that it might be amusing to make an experiment.

"Going to die. Nothing can save him. All hope flung overboard!"

She put her veil aside. She looked into his eyes, and said, "To die!"

"To die. All along of the women, my mother and the rest. They did something about his bandages

that finished everything. He would have got better but for them. I am sure they should be arrested, cribbed, tried, and brought in for Botany Bay, at the very least."

The questioner, perhaps, did nor hear this judgment. She stood motionless. In two minutes, without

another word, she moved forwards; no good-night, no further inquiry. This was not amusing, nor what Martin had calculated on. He expected something dramatic and demonstrative. It was hardly worth while to frighten the girl if she would not entertain him in return. He called, "Miss Helstone!"

She did not hear or turn. He hastened after and overtook her.

"Come; are you uneasy about what I said?"

"You know nothing about death, Martin; you are too young for me to talk to concerning such a thing."

"Did you believe me? It's all flummery! Moore eats like three men. They are always making sago

or tapioca or something good for him. I never go into the kitchen but there is a saucepan on the fire,

cooking him some dainty. I think I will play the old soldier, and be fed on the fat of the land like him."

"Martin! Martin!" Here her voice trembled, and she stopped.

"It is exceedingly wrong of you, Martin. You have almost killed me."

Again she stopped. She leaned against a tree, trembling, shuddering, and as pale as death.

Martin contemplated her with inexpressible curiosity. In one sense it was, as he would have expressed it, "nuts" to him to see this. It told him so much, and he was beginning to have a great relish for discovering secrets. In another sense it reminded him of what he had once felt when he had heard

a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which Matthew had crushed with a stone, and that was not a

pleasant feeling. Unable to find anything very appropriate to
say
in order to comfort her, he began to cast about in his mind what he could
do
. He smiled. The lad's smile gave wondrous transparency to his physiognomy.

"Eureka!" he cried. "I'll set all straight by-and-by. You are better now, Miss Caroline. Walk forward," he urged.

Not reflecting that it would be more difficult for Miss Helstone than for himself to climb a wall or

penetrate a hedge, he piloted her by a short cut which led to no gate. The consequence was he had to

help her over some formidable obstacles, and while he railed at her for helplessness, he perfectly liked to feel himself of use.

"Martin, before we separate, assure me seriously, and on your word of honour, that Mr. Moore is

better."

"How very much you think of that Moore!"

"No—but—many of his friends may ask me, and I wish to be able to give an authentic answer."

"You may tell them he is well enough, only idle. You may tell them that he takes mutton chops for

dinner, and the best of arrowroot for supper. I intercepted a basin myself one night on its way upstairs, and ate half of it."

"And who waits on him, Martin? who nurses him?"

"Nurses him? The great baby! Why, a woman as round and big as our largest water-butt—a rough,

hard-favoured old girl. I make no doubt she leads him a rich life. Nobody else is let near him. He is

chiefly in the dark. It is my belief she knocks him about terribly in that chamber. I listen at the wall sometimes when I am in bed, and I think I hear her thumping him. You should see her fist. She could

hold half a dozen hands like yours in her one palm. After all, notwithstanding the chops and jellies he

gets, I would not be in his shoes. In fact, it is my private opinion that she eats most of what goes up on the tray to Mr. Moore. I wish she may not be starving him."

Profound silence and meditation on Caroline's part, and a sly watchfulness on Martin's.

"You never see him, I suppose, Martin?"

"I? No. I don't care to see him, for my own part."

Silence again.

"Did not you come to our house once with Mrs. Pryor, about five weeks since, to ask after him?"

again inquired Martin.

"Yes."

"I dare say you wished to be shown upstairs?"

"We
did
wish it. We entreated it; but your mother declined."

"Ay! she declined. I heard it all. She treated you as it is her pleasure to treat visitors now and then.

She behaved to you rudely and harshly."

"She was not kind; for you know, Martin, we are relations, and it is natural we should take an interest in Mr. Moore. But here we must part; we are at your father's gate."

"Very well, what of that? I shall walk home with you."