Shirley

“Obscurest night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roared,
When such a destined wretch as I,
Washed headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home forever left.”

Here the fragment stopped, because Shirley’s song, erewhile somewhat full and thrilling, had become delicately faint.

“Go on,” said she.

“Then you go on too. I was only repeating The Castaway.”

“I know. If you can remember it all, say it all.”

And as it was nearly dark, and, after all, Miss Keeldar was no formidable auditor, Caroline went through it. She went through it as she should have gone through it. The wild sea, the drowning mariner, the reluctant ship swept on in the storm, you heard were realized by her; and more vividly was realized the heart of the poet, who did not weep for The Castaway, but who, in an hour of tearless anguish, traced a semblance to his own God-abandoned misery in the fate of that man-forsaken sailor, and cried from the depths where he struggled;

“No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone,
When, snatched from all effectual aid,
We perished – each alone!
But I – beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.”

“I hope William Cowper is safe and calm in heaven now,” said Caroline.

“Do you pity what he suffered on earth?” asked Miss Keeldar.

“Pity him, Shirley? What can I do else? He was nearly broken-hearted when he wrote that poem, and it almost breaks one’s heart to read it. But he found relief in writing it – I know he did; and that gift of poetry – the most divine bestowed on man – was, I believe, granted to allay emotions when their strength threatens harm. It seems to me, Shirley, that nobody should write poetry to exhibit intellect or attainment. Who cares for that sort of poetry? Who cares for learning – who cares for fine words in poetry? And who does not care for feeling – real feeling – however simply, even rudely expressed?”

“It seems you care for it, at all events; and certainly, in hearing that poem, one discovers that Cowper was under an impulse strong as that of the wind which drove the ship – an impulse which, while it would not suffer him to stop to add ornament to a single stanza, filled him with force to achieve the whole with consummate perfection. You managed to recite it with a steady voice, Caroline. I wonder thereat.”

“Cowper’s hand did not tremble in writing the lines. Why should my voice falter in repeating them? Depend on it, Shirley, no tear blistered the manuscript of ‘The Castaway.’ I hear in it no sob of sorrow, only the cry of despair; but, that cry uttered, I believe the deadly spasm passed from his heart, that he wept abundantly, and was comforted.”

Shirley resumed her ballad minstrelsy. Stopping short, she remarked ere long, “One could have loved Cowper, if it were only for the sake of having the privilege of comforting him.”

“You never would have loved Cowper,” rejoined Caroline promptly. “He was not made to be loved by woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. I know there is a kind of natures in the world – and very noble, elevated natures too – whom love never comes near. You might have sought Cowper with the intention of loving him, and you would have looked at him, pitied him, and left him, forced away by a sense of the impossible, the incongruous, as the crew were borne from their drowning comrade by ‘the furious blast.’”

“You may be right. Who told you this?”

“And what I say of Cowper, I should say of Rousseau. Was Rousseau ever loved? He loved passionately; but was his passion ever returned? I am certain, never. And if there were any female Cowpers and Rousseaus, I should assert the same of them.”

“Who told you this, I ask? Did Moore?”

“Why should anybody have told me? Have I not an instinct? Can I not divine by analogy? Moore never talked to me either about Cowper, or Rousseau, or love. The voice we hear in solitude told me all I know on these subjects.”

“Do you like characters of the Rousseau order, Caroline?”

“Not at all, as a whole. I sympathize intensely with certain qualities they possess. Certain divine sparks in their nature dazzle my eyes, and make my soul glow. Then, again, I scorn them. They are made of clay and gold. The refuse and the ore make a mass of weakness: taken altogether, I feel them unnatural, unhealthy, repulsive.”

“I dare say I should be more tolerant of a Rousseau than you would, Cary. Submissive and contemplative yourself, you like the stern and the practical. By the way, you must miss that Cousin Robert of yours very much, now that you and he never meet.”

“I do.”

“And he must miss you?”

“That he does not.”

“I cannot imagine,” pursued Shirley, who had lately got a habit of introducing Moore’s name into the conversation, even when it seemed to have no business there—“I cannot imagine but that he was fond of you, since he took so much notice of you, talked to you, and taught you so much.”

“He never was fond of me; he never professed to be fond of me. He took pains to prove that he only just tolerated me.”

Caroline, determined not to err on the flattering side in estimating her cousin’s regard for her, always now habitually thought of it and mentioned it in the most scanty measure. She had her own reasons for being less sanguine than ever in hopeful views of the future, less indulgent to pleasurable retrospections of the past.

“Of course, then,” observed Miss Keeldar, “you only just tolerated him in return?”

“Shirley, men and women are so different; they are in such a different position. Women have so few things to think about, men so many. You may have a friendship for a man, while he is almost indifferent to you. Much of what cheers your life may be dependent on him, while not a feeling or interest of moment in his eyes may have reference to you. Robert used to be in the habit of going to London, sometimes for a week or a fortnight together. Well, while he was away, I found his absence a void. There was something wanting; Briarfield was duller. Of course, I had my usual occupations; still I missed him. As I sat by myself in the evenings, I used to feel a strange certainty of conviction I cannot describe, that if a magician or a genius had, at that moment, offered me Prince Ali’s tube (you remember it in the Arabian Nights?), and if, with its aid, I had been enabled to take a view of Robert – to see where he was, how occupied – I should have learned, in a startling manner, the width of the chasm which gaped between such as he and such as I. I knew that, however my thoughts might adhere to him, his were effectually sundered from me.”

“Caroline,” demanded Miss Keeldar abruptly, “don’t you wish you had a profession – a trade?”

“I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often wonder what I came into the world for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill my head and hands and to occupy my thoughts.”

“Can labour alone make a human being happy?”

“No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none.”

“But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make women masculine, coarse, unwomanly.”

“And what does it signify whether unmarried and never-to-be-married women are unattractive and inelegant or not? Provided only they are decent, decorous, and neat, it is enough. The utmost which ought to be required of old maids, in the way of appearance, is that they should not absolutely offend men’s eyes as they pass them in the street; for the rest, they should be allowed, without too much scorn, to be as absorbed, grave, plain-looking, and plain-dressed as they please.”

“You might be an old maid yourself, Caroline, you speak so earnestly.”

“I shall be one. It is my destiny. I will never marry a Malone or a Sykes; and no one else will ever marry me.”

Here fell a long pause. Shirley broke it. Again the name by which she seemed bewitched was almost the first on her lips.

“Lina – did not Moore call you Lina sometimes?”

“Yes. It is sometimes used as the abbreviation of Caroline in his native country.”

“Well, Lina, do you remember my one day noticing an inequality in your hair – a curl wanting on that right side – and your telling me that it was Robert’s fault, as he had once cut therefrom a long lock?”

“Yes.”

“If he is, and always was, as indifferent to you as you say, why did he steal your hair?”