OLD MAIDS.
Time wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England began to look
pleasant: her fields grew green, her hills fresh, her gardens blooming;
but at heart she was no better. Still her poor were wretched, still
their employers were harassed. Commerce, in some of its branches, seemed
threatened with paralysis, for the war continued; England's blood was
shed and her wealth lavished--all, it seemed, to attain most inadequate
ends. Some tidings there were indeed occasionally of successes in the
Peninsula, but these came in slowly; long intervals occurred between, in
which no note was heard but the insolent self-felicitations of Bonaparte
on his continued triumphs. Those who suffered from the results of the
war felt this tedious, and, as they thought, hopeless struggle against
what their fears or their interests taught them to regard as an
invincible power, most insufferable. They demanded peace on any terms.
Men like Yorke and Moore--and there were thousands whom the war placed
where it placed them, shuddering on the verge of bankruptcy--insisted on
peace with the energy of desperation.
They held meetings, they made speeches, they got up petitions to extort
this boon; on what terms it was made they cared not.
All men, taken singly, are more or less selfish; and taken in bodies,
they are intensely so. The British merchant is no exception to this
rule: the mercantile classes illustrate it strikingly. These classes
certainly think too exclusively of making money; they are too oblivious
of every national consideration but that of extending England's--that
is, their own--commerce. Chivalrous feeling, disinterestedness, pride in
honour, is too dead in their hearts. A land ruled by them alone would
too often make ignominious submission--not at all from the motives
Christ teaches, but rather from those Mammon instils. During the late
war, the tradesmen of England would have endured buffets from the
French on the right cheek and on the left; their cloak they would have
given to Napoleon, and then have politely offered him their coat also,
nor would they have withheld their waistcoat if urged; they would have
prayed permission only to retain their one other garment, for the sake
of the purse in its pocket. Not one spark of spirit, not one symptom of
resistance, would they have shown till the hand of the Corsican bandit
had grasped that beloved purse; _then_, perhaps, transfigured at once
into British bulldogs, they would have sprung at the robber's throat,
and there they would have fastened, and there hung, inveterate,
insatiable, till the treasure had been restored. Tradesmen, when they
speak against war, always profess to hate it because it is a bloody and
barbarous proceeding. You would think, to hear them talk, that they are
peculiarly civilized--especially gentle and kindly of disposition to
their fellow-men. This is not the case. Many of them are extremely
narrow and cold-hearted; have no good feeling for any class but their
own; are distant, even hostile, to all others; call them useless; seem
to question their right to exist; seem to grudge them the very air they
breathe, and to think the circumstance of their eating, drinking, and
living in decent houses quite unjustifiable. They do not know what
others do in the way of helping, pleasing, or teaching their race; they
will not trouble themselves to inquire. Whoever is not in trade is
accused of eating the bread of idleness, of passing a useless existence.
Long may it be ere England really becomes a nation of shop-keepers!
We have already said that Moore was no self-sacrificing patriot, and we
have also explained what circumstances rendered him specially prone to
confine his attention and efforts to the furtherance of his individual
interest; accordingly, when he felt himself urged a second time to the
brink of ruin, none struggled harder than he against the influences
which would have thrust him over. What he _could_ do towards stirring
agitation in the north against the war he did, and he instigated others
whose money and connections gave them more power than he possessed.
Sometimes, by flashes, he felt there was little reason in the demands
his party made on Government. When he heard of all Europe threatened by
Bonaparte, and of all Europe arming to resist him; when he saw Russia
menaced, and beheld Russia rising, incensed and stern, to defend her
frozen soil, her wild provinces of serfs, her dark native despotism,
from the tread, the yoke, the tyranny of a foreign victor--he knew that
England, a free realm, could not _then_ depute her sons to make
concessions and propose terms to the unjust, grasping French leader.
When news came from time to time of the movements of that MAN then
representing England in the Peninsula, of his advance from success to
success--that advance so deliberate but so unswerving, so circumspect
but so certain, so "unhasting" but so "unresting;" when he read Lord
Wellington's own dispatches in the columns of the newspapers, documents
written by modesty to the dictation of truth--Moore confessed at heart
that a power was with the troops of Britain, of that vigilant, enduring,
genuine, unostentatious sort, which must win victory to the side it led,
in the end. In the end! But that end, he thought, was yet far off; and
meantime he, Moore, as an individual, would be crushed, his hopes ground
to dust. It was himself he had to care for, his hopes he had to pursue;
and he would fulfil his destiny.
He fulfilled it so vigorously that ere long he came to a decisive
rupture with his old Tory friend the rector. They quarrelled at a public
meeting, and afterwards exchanged some pungent letters in the
newspapers. Mr. Helstone denounced Moore as a Jacobin, ceased to see
him, would not even speak to him when they met. He intimated also to his
niece, very distinctly, that her communications with Hollow's Cottage
must for the present cease; she must give up taking French lessons. The
language, he observed, was a bad and frivolous one at the best, and most
of the works it boasted were bad and frivolous, highly injurious in
their tendency to weak female minds. He wondered (he remarked
parenthetically) what noodle first made it the fashion to teach women
French. Nothing was more improper for them. It was like feeding a
rickety child on chalk and water gruel. Caroline must give it up, and
give up her cousins too. They were dangerous people.
Mr. Helstone quite expected opposition to this order; he expected tears.
Seldom did he trouble himself about Caroline's movements, but a vague
idea possessed him that she was fond of going to Hollow's Cottage; also
he suspected that she liked Robert Moore's occasional presence at the
rectory. The Cossack had perceived that whereas if Malone stepped in of
an evening to make himself sociable and charming, by pinching the ears
of an aged black cat, which usually shared with Miss Helstone's feet the
accommodation of her footstool, or by borrowing a fowling-piece, and
banging away at a tool shed door in the garden while enough of daylight
remained to show that conspicuous mark, keeping the passage and
sitting-room doors meantime uncomfortably open for the convenience of
running in and out to announce his failures and successes with noisy
_brusquerie_--he had observed that under such entertaining circumstances
Caroline had a trick of disappearing, tripping noiselessly upstairs, and
remaining invisible till called down to supper. On the other hand, when
Robert Moore was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the
cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the
stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and
rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting
cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume,
no noise, no boasting during his stay--that still Caroline sat in the
room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket
pin-cushions and the knitting of missionary-basket socks.
She was very quiet, and Robert paid her little attention, scarcely ever
addressing his discourse to her; but Mr. Helstone, not being one of
those elderly gentlemen who are easily blinded--on the contrary, finding
himself on all occasions extremely wide-awake--had watched them when
they bade each other good-night. He had just seen their eyes meet
once--only once. Some natures would have taken pleasure in the glance
then surprised, because there was no harm and some delight in it. It was
by no means a glance of mutual intelligence, for mutual love secrets
existed not between them. There was nothing then of craft and
concealment to offend: only Mr. Moore's eyes, looking into Caroline's,
felt they were clear and gentle; and Caroline's eyes, encountering Mr.
Moore's, confessed they were manly and searching. Each acknowledged the
charm in his or her own way. Moore smiled slightly, and Caroline
coloured as slightly. Mr. Helstone could, on the spot, have rated them
both. They annoyed him. Why? Impossible to say. If you had asked him
what Moore merited at that moment, he would have said a "horsewhip;" if
you had inquired into Caroline's deserts, he would have adjudged her a
box on the ear; if you had further demanded the reason of such
chastisements, he would have stormed against flirtation and
love-making, and vowed he would have no such folly going on under his
roof.
These private considerations, combined with political reasons, fixed his
resolution of separating the cousins. He announced his will to Caroline
one evening as she was sitting at work near the drawing-room window. Her
face was turned towards him, and the light fell full upon it. It had
struck him a few minutes before that she was looking paler and quieter
than she used to look. It had not escaped him either that Robert Moore's
name had never, for some three weeks past, dropped from her lips; nor
during the same space of time had that personage made his appearance at
the rectory. Some suspicion of clandestine meetings haunted his mind.
Having but an indifferent opinion of women, he always suspected them. He
thought they needed constant watching. It was in a tone dryly
significant he desired her to cease her daily visits to the Hollow. He
expected a start, a look of depreciation. The start he saw, but it was a
very slight one; no look whatever was directed to him.
"Do you hear me?" he asked.
"Yes, uncle."
"Of course you mean to attend to what I say?"
"Yes, certainly."
"And there must be no letter-scribbling to your cousin Hortense--no
intercourse whatever. I do not approve of the principles of the family.
They are Jacobinical."
"Very well," said Caroline quietly. She acquiesced then. There was no
vexed flushing of the face, no gathering tears; the shadowy
thoughtfulness which had covered her features ere Mr. Helstone spoke
remained undisturbed; she was obedient.
Yes, perfectly; because the mandate coincided with her own previous
judgment; because it was now become pain to her to go to Hollow's
Cottage; nothing met her there but disappointment. Hope and love had
quitted that little tenement, for Robert seemed to have deserted its
precincts. Whenever she asked after him--which she very seldom did,
since the mere utterance of his name made her face grow hot--the answer
was, he was from home, or he was quite taken up with business. Hortense
feared he was killing himself by application. He scarcely ever took a
meal in the house; he lived in the counting-house.
At church only Caroline had the chance of seeing him, and there she
rarely looked at him. It was both too much pain and too much pleasure
to look--it excited too much emotion; and that it was all wasted emotion
she had learned well to comprehend.
Once, on a dark, wet Sunday, when there were few people at church, and
when especially certain ladies were absent, of whose observant faculties
and tomahawk tongues Caroline stood in awe, she had allowed her eye to
seek Robert's pew, and to rest awhile on its occupant. He was there
alone. Hortense had been kept at home by prudent considerations relative
to the rain and a new spring _chapeau_. During the sermon he sat with
folded arms and eyes cast down, looking very sad and abstracted. When
depressed, the very hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he
smiled, and to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober
olive. By instinct Caroline knew, as she examined that clouded
countenance, that his thoughts were running in no familiar or kindly
channel; that they were far away, not merely from her, but from all
which she could comprehend, or in which she could sympathize. Nothing
that they had ever talked of together was now in his mind: he was wrapt
from her by interests and responsibilities in which it was deemed such
as she could have no part.
Caroline meditated in her own way on the subject; speculated on his
feelings, on his life, on his fears, on his fate; mused over the mystery
of "business," tried to comprehend more about it than had ever been told
her--to understand its perplexities, liabilities, duties, exactions;
endeavoured to realize the state of mind of a "man of business," to
enter into it, feel what he would feel, aspire to what he would aspire.
Her earnest wish was to see things as they were, and not to be romantic.
By dint of effort she contrived to get a glimpse of the light of truth
here and there, and hoped that scant ray might suffice to guide her.
"Different, indeed," she concluded, "is Robert's mental condition to
mine. I think only of him; he has no room, no leisure, to think of me.
The feeling called love is and has been for two years the predominant
emotion of my heart--always there, always awake, always astir. Quite
other feelings absorb his reflections and govern his faculties. He is
rising now, going to leave the church, for service is over. Will he turn
his head towards this pew? No, not once. He has not one look for me.
That is hard. A kind glance would have made me happy till to-morrow. I
have not got it; he would not give it; he is gone. Strange that grief
should now almost choke me, because another human being's eye has failed
to greet mine."
That Sunday evening, Mr. Malone coming, as usual, to pass it with his
rector, Caroline withdrew after tea to her chamber. Fanny, knowing her
habits, had lit her a cheerful little fire, as the weather was so gusty
and chill. Closeted there, silent and solitary, what could she do but
think? She noiselessly paced to and fro the carpeted floor, her head
drooped, her hands folded. It was irksome to sit; the current of
reflection ran rapidly through her mind; to-night she was mutely
excited.
Mute was the room, mute the house. The double door of the study muffled
the voices of the gentlemen. The servants were quiet in the kitchen,
engaged with books their young mistress had lent them--books which she
had told them were "fit for Sunday reading." And she herself had another
of the same sort open on the table, but she could not read it. Its
theology was incomprehensible to her, and her own mind was too busy,
teeming, wandering, to listen to the language of another mind.
Then, too, her imagination was full of pictures--images of Moore, scenes
where he and she had been together; winter fireside sketches; a glowing
landscape of a hot summer afternoon passed with him in the bosom of
Nunnely Wood; divine vignettes of mild spring or mellow autumn moments,
when she had sat at his side in Hollow's Copse, listening to the call of
the May cuckoo, or sharing the September treasure of nuts and ripe
blackberries--a wild dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to
collect in a little basket, and cover with green leaves and fresh
blossoms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore, berry by
berry, and nut by nut, like a bird feeding its fledgling.
Robert's features and form were with her; the sound of his voice was
quite distinct in her ear; his few caresses seemed renewed. But these
joys, being hollow, were, ere long, crushed in. The pictures faded, the
voice failed, the visionary clasp melted chill from her hand, and where
the warm seal of lips had made impress on her forehead, it felt now as
if a sleety rain-drop had fallen. She returned from an enchanted region
to the real world: for Nunnely Wood in June she saw her narrow chamber;
for the songs of birds in alleys she heard the rain on her casement; for
the sigh of the south wind came the sob of the mournful east; and for
Moore's manly companionship she had the thin illusion of her own dim
shadow on the wall. Turning from the pale phantom which reflected
herself in its outline, and her reverie in the drooped attitude of its
dim head and colourless tresses, she sat down--inaction would suit the
frame of mind into which she was now declining--she said to herself, "I
have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good
health; half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to
occupy it? What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads
between me and the grave?"
She reflected.
"I shall not be married, it appears," she continued. "I suppose, as
Robert does not care for me, I shall never have a husband to love, nor
little children to take care of. Till lately I had reckoned securely on
the duties and affections of wife and mother to occupy my existence. I
considered, somehow, as a matter of course, that I was growing up to the
ordinary destiny, and never troubled myself to seek any other; but now I
perceive plainly I may have been mistaken. Probably I shall be an old
maid. I shall live to see Robert married to some one else, some rich
lady. I shall never marry. What was I created for, I wonder? Where is my
place in the world?"
She mused again.
"Ah! I see," she pursued presently; "that is the question which most old
maids are puzzled to solve. Other people solve it for them by saying,
'Your place is to do good to others, to be helpful whenever help is
wanted.' That is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine
for the people who hold it; but I perceive that certain sets of human
beings are very apt to maintain that other sets should give up their
lives to them and their service, and then they requite them by praise;
they call them devoted and virtuous. Is this enough? Is it to live? Is
there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that
existence which is given away to others, for want of something of your
own to bestow it on? I suspect there is. Does virtue lie in abnegation
of self? I do not believe it. Undue humility makes tyranny; weak
concession creates selfishness. The Romish religion especially teaches
renunciation of self, submission to others, and nowhere are found so
many grasping tyrants as in the ranks of the Romish priesthood. Each
human being has his share of rights. I suspect it would conduce to the
happiness and welfare of all if each knew his allotment, and held to it
as tenaciously as the martyr to his creed. Queer thoughts these that
surge in my mind. Are they right thoughts? I am not certain.
"Well, life is short at the best. Seventy years, they say, pass like a
vapour, like a dream when one awaketh; and every path trod by human feet
terminates in one bourne--the grave, the little chink in the surface of
this great globe, the furrow where the mighty husbandman with the scythe
deposits the seed he has shaken from the ripe stem; and there it falls,
decays, and thence it springs again, when the world has rolled round a
few times more. So much for the body. The soul meantime wings its long
flight upward, folds its wings on the brink of the sea of fire and
glass, and gazing down through the burning clearness, finds there
mirrored the vision of the Christian's triple Godhead--the sovereign
Father, the mediating Son, the Creator Spirit. Such words, at least,
have been chosen to express what is inexpressible, to describe what
baffles description. The soul's real hereafter who shall guess?"
Her fire was decayed to its last cinder; Malone had departed; and now
the study bell rang for prayers.
The next day Caroline had to spend altogether alone, her uncle being
gone to dine with his friend Dr. Boultby, vicar of Whinbury. The whole
time she was talking inwardly in the same strain--looking forwards,
asking what she was to do with life. Fanny, as she passed in and out of
the room occasionally, intent on housemaid errands, perceived that her
young mistress sat very still. She was always in the same place, always
bent industriously over a piece of work. She did not lift her head to
speak to Fanny, as her custom was; and when the latter remarked that the
day was fine, and she ought to take a walk, she only said, "It is cold."
"You are very diligent at that sewing, Miss Caroline," continued the
girl, approaching her little table.
"I am tired of it, Fanny."
"Then why do you go on with it? Put it down. Read, or do something to
amuse you."
"It is solitary in this house, Fanny. Don't you think so?"
"I don't find it so, miss. Me and Eliza are company for one another; but
you are quite too still. You should visit more. Now, be persuaded: go
upstairs and dress yourself smart, and go and take tea, in a friendly
way, with Miss Mann or Miss Ainley. I am certain either of those ladies
would be delighted to see you."
"But their houses are dismal: they are both old maids. I am certain old
maids are a very unhappy race."
"Not they, miss. They can't be unhappy; they take such care of
themselves. They are all selfish."
"Miss Ainley is not selfish, Fanny. She is always doing good. How
devotedly kind she was to her step-mother as long as the old lady lived;
and now when she is quite alone in the world, without brother or sister,
or any one to care for her, how charitable she is to the poor, as far as
her means permit! Still nobody thinks much of her, or has pleasure in
going to see her; and how gentlemen always sneer at her!"
"They shouldn't, miss. I believe she is a good woman. But gentlemen
think only of ladies' looks."
"I'll go and see her," exclaimed Caroline, starting up; "and if she asks
me to stay to tea, I'll stay. How wrong it is to neglect people because
they are not pretty, and young, and merry! And I will certainly call to
see Miss Mann too. She may not be amiable, but what has made her
unamiable? What has life been to her?"
Fanny helped Miss Helstone to put away her work, and afterwards assisted
her to dress.
"_You_'ll not be an old maid, Miss Caroline," she said, as she tied the
sash of her brown silk frock, having previously smoothed her soft, full,
and shining curls; "there are no signs of an old maid about you."
Caroline looked at the little mirror before her, and she thought there
were some signs. She could see that she was altered within the last
month; that the hues of her complexion were paler, her eyes changed--a
wan shade seemed to circle them; her countenance was dejected--she was
not, in short, so pretty or so fresh as she used to be. She distantly
hinted this to Fanny, from whom she got no direct answer, only a remark
that people did vary in their looks, but that at her age a little
falling away signified nothing; she would soon come round again, and be
plumper and rosier than ever. Having given this assurance, Fanny showed
singular zeal in wrapping her up in warm shawls and handkerchiefs, till
Caroline, nearly smothered with the weight, was fain to resist further
additions.
She paid her visits--first to Miss Mann, for this was the most difficult
point. Miss Mann was certainly not quite a lovable person. Till now,
Caroline had always unhesitatingly declared she disliked her, and more
than once she had joined her cousin Robert in laughing at some of her
peculiarities. Moore was not habitually given to sarcasm, especially on
anything humbler or weaker than himself; but he had once or twice
happened to be in the room when Miss Mann had made a call on his sister,
and after listening to her conversation and viewing her features for a
time, he had gone out into the garden where his little cousin was
tending some of his favourite flowers, and while standing near and
watching her he had amused himself with comparing fair youth, delicate
and attractive, with shrivelled eld, livid and loveless, and in
jestingly repeating to a smiling girl the vinegar discourse of a
cankered old maid. Once on such an occasion Caroline had said to him,
looking up from the luxuriant creeper she was binding to its frame, "Ah!
Robert, you do not like old maids. I, too, should come under the lash of
your sarcasm if I were an old maid."
"You an old maid!" he had replied. "A piquant notion suggested by lips
of that tint and form. I can fancy you, though, at forty, quietly
dressed, pale and sunk, but still with that straight nose, white
forehead, and those soft eyes. I suppose, too, you will keep your voice,
which has another 'timbre' than that hard, deep organ of Miss Mann's.
Courage, Cary! Even at fifty you will not be repulsive."
"Miss Mann did not make herself, or tune her voice, Robert."
"Nature made her in the mood in which she makes her briars and thorns;
whereas for the creation of some women she reserves the May morning
hours, when with light and dew she wooes the primrose from the turf and
the lily from the wood-moss."
* * * * *
Ushered into Miss Mann's little parlour, Caroline found her, as she
always found her, surrounded by perfect neatness, cleanliness, and
comfort (after all, is it not a virtue in old maids that solitude rarely
makes them negligent or disorderly?)--no dust on her polished furniture,
none on her carpet, fresh flowers in the vase on her table, a bright
fire in the grate. She herself sat primly and somewhat grimly-tidy in a
cushioned rocking-chair, her hands busied with some knitting. This was
her favourite work, as it required the least exertion. She scarcely rose
as Caroline entered. To avoid excitement was one of Miss Mann's aims in
life. She had been composing herself ever since she came down in the
morning, and had just attained a certain lethargic state of tranquillity
when the visitor's knock at the door startled her, and undid her day's
work. She was scarcely pleased, therefore, to see Miss Helstone. She
received her with reserve, bade her be seated with austerity, and when
she got her placed opposite, she fixed her with her eye.
This was no ordinary doom--to be fixed with Miss Mann's eye. Robert
Moore had undergone it once, and had never forgotten the circumstance.
He considered it quite equal to anything Medusa could do. He professed
to doubt whether, since that infliction, his flesh had been quite what
it was before--whether there was not something stony in its texture. The
gaze had had such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the
apartment and house; it had even sent him straightway up to the rectory,
where he had appeared in Caroline's presence with a very queer face, and
amazed her by demanding a cousinly salute on the spot, to rectify a
damage that had been done him.
Certainly Miss Mann had a formidable eye for one of the softer sex. It
was prominent, and showed a great deal of the white, and looked as
steadily, as unwinkingly, at you as if it were a steel ball soldered in
her head; and when, while looking, she began to talk in an indescribably
dry, monotonous tone--a tone without vibration or inflection--you felt
as if a graven image of some bad spirit were addressing you. But it was
all a figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Miss Mann's goblin grimness
scarcely went deeper than the angel sweetness of hundreds of beauties.
She was a perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed
duties in her day from whose severe anguish many a human Peri,
gazelle-eyed, silken-tressed, and silver-tongued, would have shrunk
appalled. She had passed alone through protracted scenes of suffering,
exercised rigid self-denial, made large sacrifices of time, money,
health for those who had repaid her only by ingratitude, and now her
main--almost her sole--fault was that she was censorious.
Censorious she certainly was. Caroline had not sat five minutes ere her
hostess, still keeping her under the spell of that dread and Gorgon
gaze, began flaying alive certain of the families in the neighbourhood.
She went to work at this business in a singularly cool, deliberate
manner, like some surgeon practising with his scalpel on a lifeless
subject. She made few distinctions; she allowed scarcely any one to be
good; she dissected impartially almost all her acquaintance. If her
auditress ventured now and then to put in a palliative word she set it
aside with a certain disdain. Still, though thus pitiless in moral
anatomy, she was no scandal-monger. She never disseminated really
malignant or dangerous reports. It was not her heart so much as her
temper that was wrong.
Caroline made this discovery for the first time to-day, and moved
thereby to regret divers unjust judgments she had more than once passed
on the crabbed old maid, she began to talk to her softly, not in
sympathizing words, but with a sympathizing voice. The loneliness of her
condition struck her visitor in a new light, as did also the character
of her ugliness--a bloodless pallor of complexion, and deeply worn lines
of feature. The girl pitied the solitary and afflicted woman; her looks
told what she felt. A sweet countenance is never so sweet as when the
moved heart animates it with compassionate tenderness. Miss Mann, seeing
such a countenance raised to her, was touched in her turn. She
acknowledged her sense of the interest thus unexpectedly shown in her,
who usually met with only coldness and ridicule, by replying to her
candidly. Communicative on her own affairs she usually was not, because
no one cared to listen to her; but to-day she became so, and her
confidante shed tears as she heard her speak, for she told of cruel,
slow-wasting, obstinate sufferings. Well might she be corpse-like; well
might she look grim, and never smile; well might she wish to avoid
excitement, to gain and retain composure! Caroline, when she knew all,
acknowledged that Miss Mann was rather to be admired for fortitude than
blamed for moroseness. Reader! when you behold an aspect for whose
constant gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud
exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a
canker somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply corroding because
concealed.
Miss Mann felt that she was understood partly, and wished to be
understood further; for, however old, plain, humble, desolate, afflicted
we may be, so long as our hearts preserve the feeblest spark of life,
they preserve also, shivering near that pale ember, a starved, ghostly
longing for appreciation and affection. To this extenuated spectre,
perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year, but when ahungered and
athirst to famine--when all humanity has forgotten the dying tenant of a
decaying house--Divine mercy remembers the mourner, and a shower of
manna falls for lips that earthly nutriment is to pass no more. Biblical
promises, heard first in health, but then unheeded, come whispering to
the couch of sickness; it is felt that a pitying God watches what all
mankind have forsaken. The tender compassion of Jesus is recalled and
relied on; the faded eye, gazing beyond time, sees a home, a friend, a
refuge in eternity.
Miss Mann, drawn on by the still attention of her listener, proceeded to
allude to circumstances in her past life. She spoke like one who tells
the truth--simply, and with a certain reserve; she did not boast, nor
did she exaggerate. Caroline found that the old maid had been a most
devoted daughter and sister, an unwearied watcher by lingering
deathbeds; that to prolonged and unrelaxing attendance on the sick the
malady that now poisoned her own life owed its origin; that to one
wretched relative she had been a support and succour in the depths of
self-earned degradation, and that it was still her hand which kept him
from utter destitution. Miss Helstone stayed the whole evening, omitting
to pay her other intended visit; and when she left Miss Mann it was with
the determination to try in future to excuse her faults; never again to
make light of her peculiarities or to laugh at her plainness; and, above
all things, not to neglect her, but to come once a week, and to offer
her, from one human heart at least, the homage of affection and respect.
She felt she could now sincerely give her a small tribute of each
feeling.
Caroline, on her return, told Fanny she was very glad she had gone out,
as she felt much better for the visit. The next day she failed not to
seek Miss Ainley. This lady was in narrower circumstances than Miss
Mann, and her dwelling was more humble. It was, however, if possible,
yet more exquisitely clean, though the decayed gentlewoman could not
afford to keep a servant, but waited on herself, and had only the
occasional assistance of a little girl who lived in a cottage near.
Not only was Miss Ainley poorer, but she was even plainer than the other
old maid. In her first youth she must have been ugly; now, at the age of
fifty, she was _very_ ugly. At first sight, all but peculiarly
well-disciplined minds were apt to turn from her with annoyance, to
conceive against her a prejudice, simply on the ground of her
unattractive look. Then she was prim in dress and manner; she looked,
spoke, and moved the complete old maid.
Her welcome to Caroline was formal, even in its kindness--for it was
kind; but Miss Helstone excused this. She knew something of the
benevolence of the heart which beat under that starched kerchief; all
the neighbourhood--at least all the female neighbourhood--knew something
of it. No one spoke against Miss Ainley except lively young gentlemen
and inconsiderate old ones, who declared her hideous.
Caroline was soon at home in that tiny parlour. A kind hand took from
her her shawl and bonnet, and installed her in the most comfortable seat
near the fire. The young and the antiquated woman were presently deep in
kindly conversation, and soon Caroline became aware of the power a most
serene, unselfish, and benignant mind could exercise over those to whom
it was developed. She talked never of herself, always of others. Their
faults she passed over. Her theme was their wants, which she sought to
supply; their sufferings, which she longed to alleviate. She was
religious, a professor of religion--what some would call "a saint;" and
she referred to religion often in sanctioned phrase--in phrase which
those who possess a perception of the ridiculous, without owning the
power of exactly testing and truly judging character, would certainly
have esteemed a proper subject for satire, a matter for mimicry and
laughter. They would have been hugely mistaken for their pains.
Sincerity is never ludicrous; it is always respectable. Whether
truth--be it religious or moral truth--speak eloquently and in
well-chosen language or not, its voice should be heard with reverence.
Let those who cannot nicely, and with certainty, discern the difference
between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to
laugh at all, lest they should have the miserable misfortune to laugh in
the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think they are achieving
wit.
Not from Miss Ainley's own lips did Caroline hear of her good works, but
she knew much of them nevertheless. Her beneficence was the familiar
topic of the poor in Briarfield. They were not works of almsgiving. The
old maid was too poor to give much, though she straitened herself to
privation that she might contribute her mite when needful. They were the
works of a Sister of Charity--far more difficult to perform than those
of a Lady Bountiful. She would watch by any sick-bed; she seemed to fear
no disease. She would nurse the poorest whom none else would nurse. She
was serene, humble, kind, and equable through everything.
For this goodness she got but little reward in this life. Many of the
poor became so accustomed to her services that they hardly thanked her
for them. The rich heard them mentioned with wonder, but were silent,
from a sense of shame at the difference between her sacrifices and their
own. Many ladies, however, respected her deeply. They could not help it.
One gentleman--one only--gave her his friendship and perfect confidence.
This was Mr. Hall, the vicar of Nunnely. He said, and said truly, that
her life came nearer the life of Christ than that of any other human
being he had ever met with. You must not think, reader, that in
sketching Miss Ainley's character I depict a figment of imagination. No.
We seek the originals of such portraits in real life only.
Miss Helstone studied well the mind and heart now revealed to her. She
found no high intellect to admire--the old maid was merely sensible--but
she discovered so much goodness, so much usefulness, so much mildness,
patience, truth, that she bent her own mind before Miss Ainley's in
reverence. What was her love of nature, what was her sense of beauty,
what were her more varied and fervent emotions, what was her deeper
power of thought, what her wider capacity to comprehend, compared to the
practical excellence of this good woman? Momently, they seemed only
beautiful forms of selfish delight; mentally, she trod them under foot.
It is true she still felt with pain that the life which made Miss Ainley
happy could not make her happy. Pure and active as it was, in her heart
she deemed it deeply dreary, because it was so loveless--to her ideas,
so forlorn. Yet, doubtless, she reflected, it needed only habit to make
it practicable and agreeable to any one. It was despicable, she felt, to
pine sentimentally, to cherish secret griefs, vain memories, to be
inert, to waste youth in aching languor, to grow old doing nothing.
"I will bestir myself," was her resolution, "and try to be wise if I
cannot be good."
She proceeded to make inquiry of Miss Ainley if she could help her in
anything. Miss Ainley, glad of an assistant, told her that she could,
and indicated some poor families in Briarfield that it was desirable she
should visit, giving her likewise, at her further request, some work to
do for certain poor women who had many children, and who were unskilled
in using the needle for themselves.
Caroline went home, laid her plans, and took a resolve not to swerve
from them. She allotted a certain portion of her time for her various
studies, and a certain portion for doing anything Miss Ainley might
direct her to do. The remainder was to be spent in exercise; not a
moment was to be left for the indulgence of such fevered thoughts as had
poisoned last Sunday evening.
To do her justice, she executed her plans conscientiously,
perseveringly. It was very hard work at first--it was even hard work to
the end--but it helped her to stem and keep down anguish; it forced her
to be employed; it forbade her to brood; and gleams of satisfaction
chequered her gray life here and there when she found she had done good,
imparted pleasure, or allayed suffering.
Yet I must speak truth. These efforts brought her neither health of body
nor continued peace of mind. With them all she wasted, grew more joyless
and more wan; with them all her memory kept harping on the name of
Robert Moore; an elegy over the past still rung constantly in her ear; a
funereal inward cry haunted and harassed her; the heaviness of a broken
spirit, and of pining and palsying faculties, settled slow on her
buoyant youth. Winter seemed conquering her spring; the mind's soil and
its treasures were freezing gradually to barren stagnation.