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Beside him, and Ambrose Catterall, and Esther Langridge, we know no young people except our cousins. Father being Squire of Brocklebank, we cannot mix with the common folks. Old Mr Digby is the Vicar, and I do not think he is far short of a hundred years old. He is an old bachelor, and has nobody to keep his house but our Sam's mother, a Scotchwoman old Elspie they call her.
Nearly all the people I see here seem to think more of what they ought to do, and at Brocklebank we think of what we like to do." I did not, somehow, like to say right out what I really meant to the one set God seemed a Friend, to the other He was a Stranger. "Do you hear, Angus, what a good character we have?" said my Uncle Drummond, smiling. "We must try to keep it, my boy."
"Where did you come from?" "From a certain place in the North, called Brocklebank." "But what brought you to London?" I cried. "What brought me to London?" he repeated, in quite a different tone, so much softer. "Well, Cary, I wanted to see something." "Have you been to see it?" I asked, more to give myself time to cool down than because I cared to know.
She took both my hands in her soft white ones, and spoke to me so kindly that before I had known her ten minutes I was almost surprised to find myself chattering away to her as if she were quite an old friend telling her all about Brocklebank, and my sisters, and Father, and my Aunt Kezia. I could not tell how it was, I felt so completely at home in that Monksburn drawing-room.
It is true that Lieutenant Jacobs does not mention the loss of Wadsworth and Brocklebank in a letter to the Governor and Council, dated at Marlboro' on the 22nd of April; but in his letter of the 24th, he refers to the subject as he might have done, had he received the intelligence when he received his authority to take the command of the fort and men at Marlboro'. And this was probably the case.
And I have not dwelt all my life at Brocklebank: though if I had, I should have seen men and women, and they are much alike all the world over." I could not keep it in, and out it came. "Please, Aunt Kezia, don't be angry, but what is become of Cecilia Osborne?" "I dare say you will know, Cary, before I do. She went to London, I believe." "Oh, I don't want to see her, Aunt Kezia."
This morning, just after I came down there were only my Aunt Kezia, Mr Keith, Flora, and me in the dining-parlour we suddenly heard the great bell of Brocklebank Church begin to toll. My Aunt Kezia set down the chocolate-pot. "It must be somebody who has died suddenly, poor soul!" cried she. "Maybe, Ellen Armathwaite's baby: it looked very bad when I saw it last, on Thursday. Hark!"
That was the clock of Brocklebank Church striking twelve. I should be ever so much too late for dinner; and what would my Aunt Kezia say?
It looked very queer to me, after Grandmamma's houseful of servants, to come home and find only four at Brocklebank, and but three of those in the house, and my Aunt Kezia doing half the work herself, and expecting us girls to help her. Grandmamma would hardly let me pick up my kerchief, if I dropped it; I had to call Willet, her woman, to give it to me.
Brocklebank, in his zeal, overdid his part, so the report on Governesses was thrown in to give the whole thing an air of seriousness and respectability. So that it is exceedingly doubtful whether, after all, it was a woman's hand that dealt the blow. If Charlotte Brontë did not feel the effect of it to the end of her life, she certainly suffered severely at the time.
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