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'Margaret, I return to the old sad burden we must leave Helstone. 'Yes! I see. But when? 'I have written to the bishop I dare say I have told you so, but I forget things just now, said Mr. Hale, collapsing into his depressed manner as soon as he came to talk of hard matter-of-fact details, 'informing him of my intention to resign this vicarage.
'Why, because I made an unlucky remark, you will neither tell me what Helstone is like, nor will you say anything about your home, though I have told you how much I want to hear about both, the latter especially. 'But indeed I cannot tell you about my own home. I don't quite think it is a thing to be talked about, unless you knew it. 'Well, then' pausing for a moment 'tell me what you do there.
Blackdown is 789 feet above the sea, and the Hardy column, 70 feet high, is a conspicuous landmark over a wide circumference. This hill and its outliers are a museum of stone circles and dolmens, the best known of which is the "Helstone," or Stone of the Dead.
I shall never forget the refined and simple hospitality he showed to me that last day at Helstone. Only half mollified, and yet anxious, in order to lull certain qualms of his own conscience, to believe that Mr. Hale's conduct had a tinge of Quixotism in it, Mr. Bell growled out 'Aye! And you don't know Milton. Such a change from Helstone!
They even went the length of questioning her back again; having doubts and fears of their own, as to the solvency of a family who lived in a house of thirty pounds a-year, and yet gave themselves airs, and kept two servants, one of them so very high and mighty. Mr. Hale was no longer looked upon as Vicar of Helstone, but as a man who only spent at a certain rate.
Margaret was surprised at this last question, for at Helstone it would have been an understood thing, after the inquiries she had made, that she intended to come and call upon any poor neighbour whose name and habitation she had asked for.
'Margaret, said he, taking her by surprise, and getting sudden possession of her hand, so that she was forced to stand still and listen, despising herself for the fluttering at her heart all the time; 'Margaret, I wish you did not like Helstone so much did not seem so perfectly calm and happy here. Margaret, have I startled you too much?
Caroline Helstone was sketched from Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontë's dearest friend, who furnished later much of the material for the best biographies of the novelist.
The Orders in Council are repealed, the blockaded ports are thrown open, and the ringers in Briarfield belfry crack a bell that remains dissonant to this day. Caroline Helstone is in the garden listening to this call to be gay when a hand steals quietly round her waist. "Caroline," says a manly voice. "I have sought you for an audience. The repeal of the Orders in Council saves me.
"As an instance how the characters have been managed, take that of Mr. Helstone. If this character had an original, it was in the person of a clergyman who died some years since at the advanced age of eighty. I never saw him except once at the consecration of a church when I was a child of ten years old. I was then struck with his appearance, and stern, martial air.
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