The evening was still and warm; close and sultry it even promised to become. Round the sun the clouds glowed purple; summer , rather Indian than English, the horizon, and cast reflections on hillside, house-front, tree-bole, on road and undulating pasture-ground. The two girls came down from the fields slowly. By the time they reached the churchyard the bells were hushed; the multitudes were gathered into the church. The whole scene was .
"How pleasant and calm it is!" said Caroline.
"And how hot it will be in the church!" responded Shirley. "And what a long speech Dr. Boultby will make! And how the curates will hammer over their prepared ! For my part, I would rather not enter."
"But my uncle will be angry if he observes our absence."
"I will bear the brunt of his ; he will not me. I shall be sorry to miss his speech. I know it will be all sense for the church, and all for . He'll not forget the battle of Royd Lane. I shall be sorry also to deprive you of Mr. Hall's sincere friendly homily, with all its racy Yorkshireisms; but here I must stay. The gray church and grayer tombs look divine with this gleam on them. Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling before those red hills. I see her on the great steps of her altar, praying for a fair night for at sea, for travellers in deserts, for lambs on , and unfledged birds in woods. Caroline, I see her, and I will tell you what she is like. She is like what Eve was when she and Adam stood alone on earth."
"And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley."
"Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! I repeat. No, by the pure Mother of God, she is not! Cary, we are alone; we may speak what we think. Milton was great; but was280 he good? His brain was right; how was his heart? He saw heaven; he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin his daughter, and Death their horrible offspring. Angels before him their ; the long lines of adamantine shields flashed back on his blind eyeballs the unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered their legions in his sight; their dim, discrowned, and armies passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see the first woman; but, Cary, he saw her not."
"You are bold to say so, Shirley."
"Not more bold than faithful. It was his cook that he saw; or it was Mrs. Gill, as I have seen her, making custards, in the heat of summer, in the cool dairy, with rose-trees and nasturtiums about the latticed window, preparing a cold for the rectors—preserves and ' creams;' puzzled 'what choice to choose for best; what order so as not to mix tastes, not well-joined, inelegant, but bring taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change.'"
"All very well too, Shirley."
"I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother; from her sprang , Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus——"
"Pagan that you are! what does that signify?"
"I say, there were giants on the earth in those days—giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend with , the strength which could bear a thousand years of , the which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, the unexhausted life and uncorrupted , sisters to , which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and , could conceive and bring a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born. Vast was the heart whence the well-spring of the blood of nations, and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation."
"She an apple, and was cheated by a snake; but you have got such a hash of and into your head that there is no making any sense of you. You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills."
"I saw—I now see—a woman-Titan. Her robe of blue281 air spreads to the of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as an sweeps from her head to her feet, and of lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon; through its blush shines the star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture. They are clear, they are deep as lakes, they are lifted and full of worship, they tremble with the softness of love and the of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers. She reclines her on the of Stilbro' ; her hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehovah's daughter, as Adam was His son."
"She is very vague and visionary. Come, Shirley, we ought to go into church."
"Caroline, I will not; I will stay out here with my mother Eve, in these days called Nature. I love her—undying, mighty being! Heaven may have faded from her brow when she fell in paradise, but all that is glorious on earth shines there still. She is taking me to her bosom, and showing me her heart. , Caroline! You will see her and feel as I do, if we are both silent."
"I will humour your ; but you will begin talking again ere ten minutes are over."
Miss Keeldar, on whom the soft excitement of the warm summer evening seemed working with unwonted power, leaned against an upright headstone; she her eyes on the deep-burning west, and sank into a pleasurable trance. Caroline, going a little apart, paced to and fro beneath the rectory garden wall, dreaming too in her way. Shirley had mentioned the word "mother." That word suggested to Caroline's imagination not the mighty and mystical parent of Shirley's visions, but a gentle human form—the form she ascribed to her own mother, unknown, unloved, but not unlonged for.
"Oh that the day would come when she would remember her child! Oh that I might know her, and knowing, love her!"
Such was her .
The of her childhood filled her soul again. The desire which many a night had kept her awake in her crib, and which fear of its fallacy had of late years almost extinguished, relit suddenly, and glowed warm in her heart,282 that her mother might come some happy day, and send for her to her presence, look upon her fondly with loving eyes, and say to her tenderly, in a sweet voice, "Caroline, my child, I have a home for you; you shall live with me. All the love you have needed, and not tasted, from , I have saved for you carefully. Come; it shall cherish you now."
A noise on the road roused Caroline from her filial hopes, and Shirley from her Titan visions. They listened, and heard the tramp of horses. They looked, and saw a glitter through the trees. They caught through the glimpses of ; helm shone, waved. Silent and orderly, six soldiers rode softly by.
"The same we saw this afternoon," whispered Shirley. "They have been halting somewhere till now. They wish to be as little noticed as possible, and are seeking their at this quiet hour, while the people are at church. Did I not say we should see unusual things ere long?"
Scarcely were sight and sound of the soldiers lost, when another and somewhat different broke the night-hush—a child's impatient scream. They looked. A man issued from the church, carrying in his arms an infant—a , ruddy little boy of some two years old—roaring with all the power of his lungs. He had probably just awaked from a church-sleep. Two little girls, of nine and ten, followed. The influence of the fresh air, and the attraction of some flowers gathered from a grave, soon quieted the child. The man sat down with him, dandling him on his knee as tenderly as any woman; the two little girls took their places one on each side.
"Good-evening, William," said Shirley, after due of the man. He had seen her before, and was waiting to be recognized. He now took off his hat, and grinned a smile of pleasure. He was a rough-headed, hard-featured personage, not old, but very weather-beaten. His was decent and clean; that of his children singularly neat. It was our old friend Farren. The young ladies approached him.
"You are not going into the church?" he inquired, gazing at them , yet with a mixture of bashfulness in his look—a sentiment not by any means the result of of their station, but only of of their and youth. Before gentlemen—such as Moore or283 Helstone, for instance—William was often a little dogged; with proud or ladies, too, he was quite unmanageable, sometimes very resentful; but he was most sensible of, most to, good-humour and civility. His nature—a stubborn one—was by in other natures; for which reason he had never been able to like his former master, Moore; and unconscious of that gentleman's good opinion of himself, and of the service he had secretly rendered him in recommending him as gardener to Mr. Yorke, and by this means to other families in the neighbourhood, he continued to harbour a against his austerity. Latterly he had often worked at Fieldhead. Miss Keeldar's frank, manners were charming to him. Caroline he had known from her childhood; unconsciously she was his ideal of a lady. Her gentle , step, gestures, her grace of person and attire, moved some artist-fibres about his peasant heart. He had a pleasure in looking at her, as he had in examining rare flowers or in seeing pleasant landscapes. Both the ladies liked William; it was their delight to lend him books, to give him plants; and they preferred his conversation far before that of many coarse, hard, people immeasurably higher in station.
"Who was speaking, William, when you came out?" asked Shirley.
"A gentleman ye set a deal of store on, Miss Shirley—Mr. Donne."
"You look knowing, William. How did you find out my regard for Mr. Donne?"
"Ay, Miss Shirley, there's a gleg light i' your een sometimes which betrays you. You look raight down scornful sometimes when Mr. Donne is by."
"Do you like him yourself, William?"
"Me? I'm stalled o' t' curates, and so is t' wife. They've no manners. They talk to poor folk fair as if they thought they were beneath them. They're allus magnifying their office. It is a pity but their office could magnify them; but it does o' t' soart. I fair hate pride."
"But you are proud in your own way yourself," interposed Caroline. "You are what you call house-proud: you like to have everything handsome about you. Sometimes you look as if you were almost too proud to take your wages. When you were out of work, you were too proud to get anything on credit. But for your children,284 I believe you would rather have starved than gone to the shops without money; and when I wanted to give you something, what a difficulty I had in making you take it!"
"It is partly true, Miss Caroline. Ony day I'd rather give than take, especially from sich as ye. Look at t' difference between us. Ye're a little, young, slender lass, and I'm a great strong man; I'm rather more nor twice your age. It is not my part, then, I think, to tak fro' ye—to be under obligations (as they say) to ye. And that day ye came to our house, and called me to t' door, and offered me five shillings, which I doubt ye could ill spare—for ye've no fortin', I know—that day I war fair a rebel, a , an insurrectionist; and ye made me so. I thought it that, willing and able as I was to work, I suld be i' such a condition that a young cratur about the age o' my own lass suld think it needful to come and offer me her bit o' ."
"I suppose you were angry with me, William?"
"I almost was, in a way. But I forgave ye varry soon. Ye meant well. Ay, I am proud, and so are ye; but your pride and mine is t' raight mak—what we call i' Yorkshi............