“’But he will not know I am ill till I am gone; and he will come when they have laid me out, and I am senseless, cold and stiff.

“’What can my departed soul feel then?  Can it see or know what happens to the clay?  Can spirits, through any medium, communicate with living flesh?  Can the dead at all revisit those they leave?  Can they come in the elements?  Will wind, water, fire lend me a path to Moore?

“’Is it for nothing the wind sounds almost articulate sometimes—­sings as I have lately heard it sing at night—­or passes the casement sobbing, as if for sorrow to come?  Does nothing then haunt it—­nothing inspire it?’”

The awful improbability of Caroline is more striking because of its contrast with the inspired rightness of the scene of Cathy’s delirium in Wuthering Heights.  It is Charlotte feebly echoing Emily, and going more and more wrong up to her peroration.

Delirious Caroline wonders:  “’What is that electricity they speak of, whose changes make us well or ill; whose lack or excess blasts; whose even balance revives?...’

“’Where is the other world?  In what will another life consist?  Why do I ask?  Have I not cause to think that the hour is hasting but too fast when the veil must be rent for me?  Do I not know the Grand Mystery is likely to break prematurely on me?  Great Spirit, in whose goodness I confide; whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morning from early infancy, help the weak creation of Thy hands!  Sustain me through the ordeal I dread and must undergo!  Give me strength!  Give me patience!  Give me—­oh, give me FAITH!’”

Jane Eyre has done worse than that, so has Rochester; but somehow, when they were doing their worst with it, they got their passion through.  There is no live passion behind this speech of Caroline’s, with its wild stress of italics and of capitals.  What passion there was in Charlotte when she conceived Caroline was killed by Emily’s death.

And Mrs. Pryor, revealing herself to Caroline, is even more terrible.  She has all the worst vices of Charlotte’s dramatic style.  Mrs. Pryor calls to the spirit of Caroline’s dead father:  “’James, slumber peacefully!  See, your terrible debt is cancelled!  Look!  I wipe out the long, black account with my own hand!  James, your child atones:  this living likeness of you—­this thing with your perfect features—­this one good gift you gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart and tenderly called me “mother”.  Husband, rest forgiven.’”

Even Robert Moore, otherwise almost a masterpiece, becomes improbable when, in his great scene, Shirley refuses him.  When Mr. Yorke asks him what has gone wrong he replies:  “The machinery of all my nature; the whole enginery of this human mill; the boiler, which I take to be the heart, is fit to burst.”

Shirley herself is impossible with her “Lucifer, Star of the Morning, thou art fallen,” and her speech to her mercenary uncle:  “Sir, your god, your great Bell, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon.”