Shirley by Charlotte Brontë Read Free Book Online

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    clergyman's mission is amongst mankind, and I remember distinctly whose servant he is, whose message he delivers, whose example he should follow; yet, with all this, if you are a parson-hater, you need not expect me to go along with you every step of your dismal, downward-tending,
    unchristian road; you need not expect me to join in your deep anathemas, at once so narrow and so
    sweeping, in your poisonous rancour, so intense and so absurd, against "the cloth;" to lift up my eyes and hands with a Supplehough, or to inflate my lungs with a Barraclough, in horror and denunciation
    of the diabolical rector of Briarfield.
    He was not diabolical at all. The evil simply was—he had missed his vocation. He should have been
    a soldier, and circumstances had made him a priest. For the rest, he was a conscientious, hard-headed,
    hard-handed, brave, stern, implacable, faithful little man; a man almost without sympathy, ungentle, prejudiced, and rigid, but a man true to principle, honourable, sagacious, and sincere. It seems to me,
    reader, that you cannot always cut out men to fit their profession, and that you ought not to curse them because their profession sometimes hangs on them ungracefully. Nor will I curse Helstone, clerical
    Cossack as he was. Yet he was cursed, and by many of his own parishioners, as by others he was adored—which is the frequent fate of men who show partiality in friendship and bitterness in enmity,
    who are equally attached to principles and adherent to prejudices.
    Helstone and Moore being both in excellent spirits, and united for the present in one cause, you would expect that, as they rode side by side, they would converse amicably. Oh no! These two men, of
    hard, bilious natures both, rarely came into contact but they chafed each other's moods. Their frequent
    bone of contention was the war. Helstone was a high Tory (there were Tories in those days), and Moore was a bitter Whig—a Whig, at least, as far as opposition to the war-party was concerned, that
    being the question which affected his own interest; and only on that question did he profess any British politics at all. He liked to infuriate Helstone by declaring his belief in the invincibility of Bonaparte, by taunting England and Europe with the impotence of their efforts to withstand him, and
    by coolly advancing the opinion that it was as well to yield to him soon as late, since he must in the
    end crush every antagonist, and reign supreme.
    Helstone could not bear these sentiments. It was only on the consideration of Moore being a sort of
    outcast and alien, and having but half measure of British blood to temper the foreign gall which corroded his veins, that he brought himself to listen to them without indulging the wish he felt to cane the speaker. Another thing, too, somewhat allayed his disgust—namely, a fellow-feeling for the dogged tone with which these opinions were asserted, and a respect for the consistency of Moore's crabbed contumacy.
    As the party turned into the Stilbro' road, they met what little wind there was; the rain dashed in their faces. Moore had been fretting his companion previously, and now, braced up by the raw breeze,
    and perhaps irritated by the sharp drizzle, he began to goad him.
    "Does your Peninsular news please you still?" he asked.
    "What do you mean?" was the surly demand of the rector.
    "I mean, have you still faith in that Baal of a Lord Wellington?"
    "And what do you mean now?"
    "Do you still believe that this wooden-faced and pebble-hearted idol of England has power to send
    fire down from heaven to consume the French holocaust you want to offer up?"
    "I believe Wellington will flog Bonaparte's marshals into the sea the day it pleases him to lift his arm."
    "But, my dear sir, you can't be serious in what you say. Bonaparte's marshals are great men, who
    act under the guidance of an omnipotent master-spirit. Your Wellington is the most humdrum of commonplace martinets, whose slow, mechanical movements