Shirley

"Like one who had profited well by lessons learned from yourself."

"She received me haughtily. She meted out a wide space between us, and kept me aloof by the reserved gesture, the rare and alienated glance, the word calmly civil."

"She was an excellent pupil! Having seen you distant, she at once learned to withdraw. Pray, sir, admire in her hauteur a careful improvement on your own coolness."

"Conscience, and honour, and the most despotic necessity dragged me apart from her, and kept me sundered with ponderous fetters. She was free: she might have been clement."

"Never free to compromise her self-respect, to seek where she had been shunned."

"Then she was inconsistent; she tantalized as before. When I thought I had made up my mind to seeing in her only a lofty stranger, she would suddenly show me such a glimpse of loving simplicity—she would warm me with such a beam of reviving sympathy, she would gladden an hour with converse so gentle, gay, and kindly—that I could no more shut my heart on her image than I could close that door against her presence. Explain why she distressed me so."

"She could not bear to be quite outcast; and then she would sometimes get a notion into her head, on a cold, wet day, that the schoolroom was no cheerful place, and feel it incumbent on her to go and see if you and Henry kept up a good fire; and once there, she liked to stay."

"But she should not be changeful. If she came at all, she should come oftener."

"There is such a thing as intrusion."

"To-morrow you will not be as you are to-day."

"I don't know. Will you?"

"I am not mad, most noble Berenice! We may give one day to dreaming, but the next we must awake; and I shall awake to purpose the morning you are married to Sir Philip Nunnely. The fire shines on you and me, and shows us very clearly in the glass, Miss Keeldar; and I have been gazing on the picture all the time I have been talking. Look up! What a difference between your head and mine! I look old for thirty!"

"You are so grave; you have such a square brow; and your face is sallow. I never regard you as a young man, nor as Robert's junior."

"Don't you? I thought not. Imagine Robert's clear-cut, handsome face looking over my shoulder. Does not the apparition make vividly manifest the obtuse mould of my heavy traits? There!" (he started), "I have been expecting that wire to vibrate this last half-hour."

The dinner-bell rang, and Shirley rose.

"Mr. Moore," she said, as she gathered up her silks, "have you heard from your brother lately? Do you know what he means by staying in town so long? Does he talk of returning?"

"He talks of returning; but what has caused his long absence I cannot tell. To speak the truth, I thought none in Yorkshire knew better than yourself why he was reluctant to come home."

A crimson shadow passed across Miss Keeldar's cheek.

"Write to him and urge him to come," she said. "I know there has been no impolicy in protracting his absence thus far. It is good to let the mill stand, while trade is so bad; but he must not abandon the county."

"I am aware," said Louis, "that he had an interview with you the evening before he left, and I saw him quit Fieldhead afterwards. I read his countenance, or tried to read it. He turned from me. I divined that he would be long away. Some fine, slight fingers have a wondrous knack at pulverizing a man's brittle pride. I suppose Robert put too much trust in his manly beauty and native gentlemanhood. Those are better off who, being destitute of advantage, cannot cherish delusion. But I will write, and say you advise his return."

"Do not say I advise his return, but that his return is advisable."

The second bell rang, and Miss Keeldar obeyed its call.

Back to contents

CHAPTER XXIX.

LOUIS MOORE.

Moore, sitting in the schoolroom, heard the storm roar round the other gable and along the hall-front. This end was sheltered. He wanted no shelter; he desired no subdued sounds or screened position.

"All the parlours are empty," said he. "I am sick at heart of this cell."

He left it, and went where the casements, larger and freer than the branch-screened lattice of his own apartment, admitted unimpeded the dark-blue, the silver-fleeced, the stirring and sweeping vision of the autumn night-sky. He carried no candle; unneeded was lamp or fire. The broad and clear though cloud-crossed and fluctuating beam of the moon shone on every floor and wall.

Moore wanders through all the rooms. He seems following a phantom from parlour to parlour. In the oak room he stops. This is not chill, and polished, and fireless like the salon. The hearth is hot and ruddy; the cinders tinkle in the intense heat of their clear glow; near the rug is a little work-table, a desk upon it, a chair near it.

Does the vision Moore has tracked occupy that chair? You would think so, could you see him standing before it. There is as much interest now in his eye, and as much significance in his face, as if in this household solitude he had found a living companion, and was going to speak to it.

He makes discoveries. A bag—a small satin bag—hangs on the chair-back. The desk is open, the keys are in the lock. A pretty seal, a silver pen, a crimson berry or two of ripe fruit on a green leaf, a small, clean, delicate glove—these trifles at once decorate and disarrange the stand they strew. Order forbids details in a picture—she puts them tidily away; but details give charm.

Moore spoke.

"Her mark," he said. "Here she has been—careless, attractive thing!—called away in haste, doubtless, and forgetting to return and put all to rights. Why does she leave fascination in her footprints? Whence did she acquire the gift to be heedless and never offend? There is always something to chide in her, and the reprimand never settles in displeasure on the heart, but, for her lover or her husband, when it had trickled a while in words, would naturally melt from his lips in a kiss. Better pass half an hour in remonstrating with her than a day in admiring or praising any other woman alive. Am I muttering? soliloquizing? Stop that."

He did stop it. He stood thinking, and then he made an arrangement for his evening's comfort.

He dropped the curtains over the broad window and regal moon. He shut out sovereign and court and starry armies; he added fuel to the hot but fast-wasting fire; he lit a candle, of which there were a pair on the table; he placed another chair opposite that near the workstand; and then he sat down. His next movement was to take from his pocket a small, thick book of blank paper, to produce a pencil, and to begin to write in a cramp, compact hand. Come near, by all means, reader. Do not be shy. Stoop over his shoulder fearlessly, and read as he scribbles.

"It is nine o'clock; the carriage will not return before eleven, I am certain. Freedom is mine till then; till then I may occupy her room, sit opposite her chair, rest my elbow on her table, have her little mementoes about me.

"I used rather to like Solitude—to fancy her a somewhat quiet and serious, yet fair nymph; an Oread, descending to me from lone mountain-passes, something of the blue mist of hills in her array and of their chill breeze in her breath, but much also of their solemn beauty in her mien. I once could court her serenely, and imagine my heart easier when I held her to it—all mute, but majestic.

"Since that day I called S. to me in the schoolroom, and she came and sat so near my side; since she opened the trouble of her mind to me, asked my protection, appealed to my strength—since that hour I abhor Solitude. Cold abstraction, fleshless skeleton, daughter, mother, and mate of Death!

"It is pleasant to write about what is near and dear as the core of my heart. None can deprive me of this little book, and through this pencil I can say to it what I will—say what I dare utter to nothing living—say what I dare not think aloud.

"We have scarcely encountered each other since that evening. Once, when I was alone in the drawing-room, seeking a book of Henry's, she entered, dressed for a concert at Stilbro'. Shyness—her shyness, not mine—drew a silver veil between us. Much cant have I heard and read about 'maiden modesty,' but, properly used, and not hackneyed, the words are good and appropriate words. As she passed to the window, after tacitly but gracefully recognizing me, I could call her nothing in my own mind save 'stainless virgin.' To my perception, a delicate splendour robed her, and the modesty of girlhood was her halo. I may be the most fatuous, as I am one of the plainest, of men, but in truth that shyness of hers touched me exquisitely; it flattered my finest sensations. I looked a stupid block, I dare say. I was alive with a life of Paradise, as she turned her glance from my glance, and softly averted her head to hide the suffusion of her cheek.

"I know this is the talk of a dreamer—of a rapt, romantic lunatic. I do dream. I will dream now and then; and if she has inspired romance into my prosaic composition, how can I help it?

"What a child she is sometimes! What an unsophisticated, untaught thing! I see her now looking up into my face, and entreating me to prevent them from smothering her, and to be sure and give her a strong narcotic. I see her confessing that she was not so self-sufficing, so independent of sympathy, as people thought. I see the secret tear drop quietly from her eyelash. She said I thought her childish, and I did. She imagined I despised her. Despised her! It was unutterably sweet to feel myself at once near her and above her—to be conscious of a natural right and power to sustain her, as a husband should sustain his wife.

"I worship her perfections; but it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me, that nestle her to my heart, that fold her about with my love, and that for a most selfish but deeply-natural reason. These faults are the steps by which I mount to ascendency over her. If she rose a trimmed, artificial mound, without inequality, what vantage would she offer the foot? It is the natural hill, with its mossy breaks and hollows, whose slope invites ascent, whose summit it is pleasure to gain.

"To leave metaphor. It delights my eye to look on her. She suits me. If I were a king and she the housemaid that swept my palace-stairs, across all that space between us my eye would recognize her qualities; a true pulse would beat for her in my heart, though an unspanned gulf made acquaintance impossible. If I were a gentleman, and she waited on me as a servant, I could not help liking that Shirley. Take from her her education; take her ornaments, her sumptuous dress, all extrinsic advantages; take all grace, but such as the symmetry of her form renders inevitable; present her to me at a cottage door, in a stuff gown; let her offer me there a draught of water, with that smile, with that warm good-will with which she now dispenses manorial hospitality—I should like her. I should wish to stay an hour; I should linger to talk with that rustic. I should not feel as I now do; I should find in her nothing divine; but whenever I met the young peasant, it would be with pleasure; whenever I left her, it would be with regret.

"How culpably careless in her to leave her desk open, where I know she has money! In the lock hang the keys of all her repositories, of her very jewel-casket. There is a purse in that little satin bag; I see the tassel of silver beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my brother Robert. All her little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do, to rectify—a theme for my tutor lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he does wrong—and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!—a word suffices. Often I do no more than shake my head. But the moment her minois mutin meets my eye, expostulatory words crowd to my lips. From a taciturn man I believe she would transform me into a talker. Whence comes the delight I take in that talk? It puzzles myself sometimes. The more crâne, malin, taquin is her mood, consequently the clearer occasion she gives me for disapprobation, the more I seek her, the better I like her. She is never wilder than when equipped in her habit and hat, never less manageable than when she and Zoë come in fiery from a race with the wind on the hills; and I confess it—to this mute page I may confess it—I have waited an hour in the court for the chance of witnessing her return, and for the dearer chance of receiving her in my arms from the saddle. I have noticed (again it is to this page only I would make the remark) that she will never permit any man but myself to render her that assistance. I have seen her politely decline Sir Philip Nunnely's aid. She is always mighty gentle with her young baronet, mighty tender for his feelings, forsooth, and of his very thin-skinned amour propre. I have marked her haughtily reject Sam Wynne's. Now I know—my heart knows it, for it has felt it—that she resigns herself to me unreluctantly. Is she conscious how my strength rejoices to serve her? I myself am not her slave—I declare it—but my faculties gather to her beauty, like the genii to the glisten of the lamp. All my knowledge, all my prudence, all my calm, and all my power stand in her presence humbly waiting a task. How glad they are when a mandate comes! What joy they take in the toils she assigns! Does she know it?

"I have called her careless. It is remarkable that her carelessness never compromises her refinement. Indeed, through this very loophole of character, the reality, depth, genuineness of that refinement may be ascertained. A whole garment sometimes covers meagreness and malformation; through a rent sleeve a fair round arm may be revealed. I have seen and handled many of her possessions, because they are frequently astray. I never saw anything that did not proclaim the lady—nothing sordid, nothing soiled. In one sense she is as scrupulous as, in another, she is unthinking. As a peasant girl, she would go ever trim and cleanly. Look at the pure kid of this little glove, at the fresh, unsullied satin of the bag.

"What a difference there is between S. and that pearl C. H.! Caroline, I fancy, is the soul of conscientious punctuality and nice exactitude. She would precisely suit the domestic habits of a certain fastidious kinsman of mine—so delicate, dexterous, quaint, quick, quiet—all done to a minute, all arranged to a strawbreadth. She would suit Robert. But what could I do with anything so nearly faultless? She is my equal, poor as myself. She is certainly pretty: a little Raffaelle head hers—Raffaelle in feature, quite English in expression, all insular grace and purity; but where is there anything to alter, anything to endure, anything to reprimand, to be anxious about? There she is, a lily of the valley, untinted, needing no tint. What change could improve her? What pencil dare to paint? My sweetheart, if I ever have one, must bear nearer affinity to the rose—a sweet, lively delight guarded with prickly peril. My wife, if I ever marry, must stir my great frame with a sting now and then; she must furnish use to her husband's vast mass of patience. I was not made so enduring to be mated with a lamb; I should find more congenial responsibility in the charge of a young lioness or leopardess. I like few things sweet but what are likewise pungent—few things bright but what are likewise hot. I like the summer day, whose sun makes fruit blush and corn blanch. Beauty is never so beautiful as when, if I tease it, it wreathes back on me with spirit. Fascination is never so imperial as when, roused and half ireful, she threatens transformation to fierceness. I fear I should tire of the mute, monotonous innocence of the lamb; I should ere long feel as burdensome the nestling dove which never stirred in my bosom; but my patience would exult in stilling the flutterings and training the energies of the restless merlin. In managing the wild instincts of the scarce manageable bête fauve my powers would revel.

"O my pupil! O Peri! too mutinous for heaven, too innocent for hell, never shall I do more than see, and worship, and wish for thee. Alas! knowing I could make thee happy, will it be my doom to see thee possessed by those who have not that power?

"However kindly the hand, if it is feeble, it cannot bend Shirley; and she must be bent. It cannot curb her; and she must be curbed.

"Beware, Sir Philip Nunnely! I never see you walking or sitting at her side, and observe her lips compressed, or her brow knit, in resolute endurance of some trait of your character which she neither admires nor likes, in determined toleration of some weakness she believes atoned for by a virtue, but which annoys her despite that belief; I never mark the grave glow of her face, the unsmiling sparkle of her eye, the slight recoil of her whole frame when you draw a little too near, and gaze a little too expressively, and whisper a little too warmly—I never witness these things but I think of the fable of Semele reversed.

"It is not the daughter of Cadmus I see, nor do I realize her fatal longing to look on Jove in the majesty of his god-head. It is a priest of Juno that stands before me, watching late and lone at a shrine in an Argive temple. For years of solitary ministry he has lived on dreams. There is divine madness upon him. He loves the idol he serves, and prays day and night that his frenzy may be fed, and that the Ox-eyed may smile on her votary. She has heard; she will be propitious. All Argos slumbers. The doors of the temple are shut; the priest waits at the altar.

"A shock of heaven and earth is felt—not by the slumbering city, only by that lonely watcher, brave and unshaken in his fanaticism. In the midst of silence, with no preluding sound, he is wrapped in sudden light. Through the roof, through the rent, wide-yawning, vast, white-blazing blue of heaven above, pours a wondrous descent, dread as the downrushing of stars. He has what he asked. Withdraw—forbear to look—I am blinded. I hear in that fane an unspeakable sound. Would that I could not hear it! I see an insufferable glory burning terribly between the pillars. Gods be merciful and quench it!

"A pious Argive enters to make an early offering in the cool dawn of morning. There was thunder in the night; the bolt fell here. The shrine is shivered, the marble pavement round split and blackened. Saturnia's statue rises chaste, grand, untouched; at her feet piled ashes lie pale. No priest remains; he who watched will be seen no more.

"There is the carriage! Let me lock up the desk and pocket the keys. She will be seeking them to-morrow; she will have to come to me. I hear her: 'Mr. Moore, have you seen my keys?'

"So she will say, in her clear voice, speaking with reluctance, looking ashamed, conscious that this is the twentieth time of asking. I will tantalize her, keep her with me, expecting, doubting; and when I do restore them, it shall not be without a lecture. Here is the bag, too, and the purse; the glove—pen—seal. She shall wring them all out of me slowly and separately—only by confession, penitence, entreaty. I never can touch her hand, or a ringlet of her head, or a ribbon of her dress, but I will make privileges for myself. Every feature of her face, her bright eyes, her lips, shall go through each change they know, for my pleasure—display each exquisite variety of glance and curve, to delight, thrill, perhaps more hopelessly to enchain me. If I must be her slave, I will not lose my freedom for nothing."

He locked the desk, pocketed all the property, and went.

Back to contents

CHAPTER XXX.

RUSHEDGE—A CONFESSIONAL.

It was market-day. Moore arrived in time to take his usual place at the market dinner. As something of a stranger, and as a man of note and action, the assembled manufacturers received him with a certain distinction. Some, who in public would scarcely have dared to acknowledge his acquaintance, lest a little of the hate and vengeance laid up in store for him should perchance have fallen on them, in private hailed him as in some sort their champion. When the wine had circulated, their respect would have kindled to enthusiasm had not Moore's unshaken nonchalance held it in a damp, low, smouldering state.

Mr. Yorke, the permanent president of these dinners, witnessed his young friend's bearing with exceeding complacency. If one thing could stir his temper or excite his contempt more than another, it was to see a man befooled by flattery or elate with popularity. If one thing smoothed, soothed, and charmed him especially, it was the spectacle of a public character incapable of relishing his publicity—incapable, I say. Disdain would but have incensed; it was indifference that appeased his rough spirit.

Robert, leaning back in his chair, quiet and almost surly, while the clothiers and blanket-makers vaunted his prowess and rehearsed his deeds—many of them interspersing their flatteries with coarse invectives against the operative class—was a delectable sight for Mr. Yorke. His heart tingled with the pleasing conviction that these gross eulogiums shamed Moore deeply, and made him half scorn himself and his work. On abuse, on reproach, on calumny, it is easy to smile; but painful indeed is the panegyric of those we contemn. Often had Moore gazed with a brilliant countenance over howling crowds from a hostile hustings. He had breasted the storm of unpopularity with gallant bearing and soul elate; but he drooped his head under the half-bred tradesmen's praise, and shrank chagrined before their congratulations.

Yorke could not help asking him how he liked his supporters, and whether he did not think they did honour to his cause. "But it is a pity, lad," he added, "that you did not hang these four samples of the unwashed. If you had managed that feat, the gentry here would have riven the horses out of the coach, yoked to a score of asses, and drawn you into Stilbro' like a conquering general."

Moore soon forsook the wine, broke from the party, and took the road. In less than five minutes Mr. Yorke followed him. They rode out of Stilbro' together.

It was early to go home, but yet it was late in the day. The last ray of the sun had already faded from the cloud-edges, and the October night was casting over the moorlands the shadow of her approach.

Mr. Yorke, moderately exhilarated with his moderate libations, and not displeased to see young Moore again in Yorkshire, and to have him for his comrade during the long ride home, took the discourse much to himself. He touched briefly, but scoffingly, on the trials and the conviction; he passed thence to the gossip of the neighbourhood, and ere long he attacked Moore on his own personal concerns.

"Bob, I believe you are worsted, and you deserve it. All was smooth. Fortune had fallen in love with you. She had decreed you the first prize in her wheel—twenty thousand pounds; she only required that you should hold your hand out and take it. And what did you do? You called for a horse and rode a-hunting to Warwickshire. Your sweetheart—Fortune, I mean—was perfectly indulgent. She said, 'I'll excuse him; he's young.' She waited, like 'Patience on a monument,' till the chase was over and the vermin-prey run down. She expected you would come back then, and be a good lad. You might still have had her first prize.

"It capped her beyond expression, and me too, to find that, instead of thundering home in a breakneck gallop and laying your assize laurels at her feet, you coolly took coach up to London. What you have done there Satan knows; nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and sulked. Your face was never lily fair, but it is olive green now. You're not as bonny as you were, man."

"And who is to have this prize you talk so much about?"

"Only a baronet; that is all. I have not a doubt in my own mind you've lost her. She will be Lady Nunnely before Christmas."

"Hem! Quite probable."

"But she need not to have been. Fool of a lad! I swear you might have had her."

"By what token, Mr. Yorke?"

"By every token—by the light of her eyes, the red of her cheeks. Red they grew when your name was mentioned, though of custom they are pale."

"My chance is quite over, I suppose?"

"It ought to be. But try; it is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip milk and water. And then he writes verses, they say—tags rhymes. You are above that, Bob, at all events."

"Would you advise me to propose, late as it is, Mr. Yorke—at the eleventh hour?"

"You can but make the experiment, Robert. If she has a fancy for you—and, on my conscience, I believe she has or had—she will forgive much. But, my lad, you are laughing. Is it at me? You had better grin at your own perverseness. I see, however, you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth. You have as sour a look at this moment as one need wish to see."

"I have so quarrelled with myself, Yorke. I have so kicked against the pricks, and struggled in a strait waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head by driving it against a harder wall."

"Ha! I'm glad to hear that. Sharp exercise yon! I hope it has done you good—ta'en some of the self-conceit out of you?"

"Self-conceit? What is it? Self-respect, self-tolerance even, what are they? Do you sell the articles? Do you know anybody who does? Give an indication. They would find in me a liberal chapman. I would part with my last guinea this minute to buy."

"Is it so with you, Robert? I find that spicy. I like a man to speak his mind. What has gone wrong?"

"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."

"That suld be putten i' print; it's striking. It's almost blank verse. Ye'll be jingling into poetry just e'now. If the afflatus comes, give way, Robert. Never heed me; I'll bear it this whet [time]."

"Hideous, abhorrent, base blunder! You may commit in a moment what you will rue for years—what life cannot cancel."

"Lad, go on. I call it pie, nuts, sugar-candy. I like the taste uncommonly. Go on. It will do you good to talk. The moor is before us now, and there is no life for many a mile round."

"I will talk. I am not ashamed to tell. There is a sort of wild cat in my breast, and I choose that you shall hear how it can yell."

"To me it is music. What grand voices you and Louis have! When Louis sings—tones off like a soft, deep bell—I've felt myself tremble again. The night is still. It listens. It is just leaning down to you, like a black priest to a blacker penitent. Confess, lad. Smooth naught down. Be candid as a convicted, justified, sanctified Methody at an experience meeting. Make yourself as wicked as Beelzebub. It will ease your mind."

"As mean as Mammon, you would say. Yorke, if I got off horseback and laid myself down across the road, would you have the goodness to gallop over me, backwards and forwards, about twenty times?"

"Wi' all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a coroner's inquest."

"Hiram Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes sparkle radiantly when she has found me out in a crowd; she has flushed up crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said, 'How do you do, Mr. Moore?'

"My name had a magical influence over her. When others uttered it she changed countenance—I know she did. She pronounced it herself in the most musical of her many musical tones. She was cordial to me; she took an interest in me; she was anxious about me; she wished me well; she sought, she seized every opportunity to benefit me. I considered, paused, watched, weighed, wondered. I could come to but one conclusion—this is love.

"I looked at her, Yorke. I saw in her youth and a species of beauty. I saw power in her. Her wealth offered me the redemption of my honour and my standing. I owed her gratitude. She had aided me substantially and effectually by a loan of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these things? Could I believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her, and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn and leave her? Young, graceful, gracious—my benefactress, attached to me, enamoured of me. I used to say so to myself; dwell on the word; mouth it over and over again; swell over it with a pleasant, pompous complacency, with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself, and unimpaired even by esteem for her; indeed I smiled in deep secrecy at her naïveté and simplicity in being the first to love, and to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a good heavy handle, Yorke; you can swing it about your head and knock me out of the saddle, if you choose. I should rather relish a loundering whack."

"Tak patience, Robert, till the moon rises and I can see you. Speak plain out—did you love her or not? I could like to know. I feel curious."

"Sir—sir—I say—she is very pretty, in her own style, and very attractive. She has a look, at times, of a thing made out of fire and air, at which I stand and marvel, without a thought of clasping and kissing it. I felt in her a powerful magnet to my interest and vanity. I never felt as if nature meant her to be my other and better self. When a question on that head rushed upon me, I flung it off, saying brutally I should be rich with her and ruined without her—vowing I would be practical, and not romantic."

"A very sensible resolve. What mischief came of it, Bob?"

"With this sensible resolve I walked up to Fieldhead one night last August. It was the very eve of my departure for Birmingham; for, you see, I wanted to secure Fortune's splendid prize. I had previously dispatched a note requesting a private interview. I found her at home, and alone.

"She received me without embarrassment, for she thought I came on business. I was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly know how I got the operation over; but I went to work in a hard, firm fashion—frightful enough, I dare say. I sternly offered myself—my fine person—with my debts, of course, as a settlement.

"It vexed me, it kindled my ire, to find that she neither blushed, trembled, nor looked down. She responded, 'I doubt whether I have understood you, Mr. Moore.'

"And I had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly as A B C, before she would fully take it in. And then, what did she do? Instead of faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused silence (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice fast through the room, in the way that she only does, and no other woman, and ejaculated, 'God bless me!'

"Yorke, I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantelpiece; against it I leaned, and prepared for anything—everything. I knew my doom, and I knew myself. There was no misunderstanding her aspect and voice. She stopped and looked at me.

"'God bless me!' she piteously repeated, in that shocked, indignant, yet saddened accent. 'You have made a strange proposal—strange from you; and if you knew how strangely you worded it and looked it, you would be startled at yourself. You spoke like a brigand who demanded my purse rather than like a lover who asked my heart.'

"A queer sentence, was it not, Yorke? And I knew, as she uttered it, it was true as queer. Her words were a mirror in which I saw myself.

"I looked at her, dumb and wolfish. She at once enraged and shamed me.

"'Gérard Moore, you know you don't love Shirley Keeldar.' I might have broken out into false swearing—vowed that I did love her; but I could not lie in her pure face. I could not perjure myself in her truthful presence. Besides, such hollow oaths would have been vain as void. She would no more have believed me than she would have believed the ghost of Judas, had he broken from the night and stood before her. Her female heart had finer perceptions than to be cheated into mistaking my half-coarse, half-cold admiration for true-throbbing, manly love.

"What next happened? you will say, Mr. Yorke.

"Why, she sat down in the window-seat and cried. She cried passionately. Her eyes not only rained but lightened. They flashed, open, large, dark, haughty, upon me. They said, 'You have pained me; you have outraged me; you have deceived me.'

"She added words soon to looks.

"'I did respect—I did admire—I did like you,' she said—'yes, as much as if you were my brother; and you—you want to make a speculation of me. You would immolate me to that mill, your Moloch!'

"I had the common sense to abstain from any word of excuse, any attempt at palliation. I stood to be scorned.

"Sold to the devil for the time being, I was certainly infatuated. When I did speak, what do you think I said?

"'Whatever my own feelings were, I was persuaded you loved me, Miss Keeldar.'

"Beautiful, was it not? She sat quite confounded. 'Is it Robert Moore that speaks?' I heard her mutter. 'Is it a man—or something lower?'

"'Do you mean,' she asked aloud—'do you mean you thought I loved you as we love those we wish to marry?'

"It was my meaning, and I said so.

"'You conceived an idea obnoxious to a woman's feelings,' was her answer. 'You have announced it in a fashion revolting to a woman's soul. You insinuate that all the frank kindness I have shown you has been a complicated, a bold, and an immodest manœuvre to ensnare a husband. You imply that at last you come here out of pity to offer me your hand, because I have courted you. Let me say this: Your sight is jaundiced; you have seen wrong. Your mind is warped; you have judged wrong. Your tongue betrays you; you now speak wrong. I never loved you. Be at rest there. My heart is as pure of passion for you as yours is barren of affection for me.'

"I hope I was answered, Yorke?

"'I seem to be a blind, besotted sort of person,' was my remark.

"'Loved you!' she cried. 'Why, I have been as frank with you as a sister—never shunned you, never feared you. You cannot,' she affirmed triumphantly—'you cannot make me tremble with your coming, nor accelerate my pulse by your influence.'

"I alleged that often, when she spoke to me, she blushed, and that the sound of my name moved her.

"'Not for your sake!' she declared briefly. I urged explanation, but could get none.

"'When I sat beside you at the school feast, did you think I loved you then? When I stopped you in Maythorn Lane, did you think I loved you then? When I called on you in the counting-house, when I walked with you on the pavement, did you think I loved you then?'

"So she questioned me; and I said I did.

"By the Lord! Yorke, she rose, she grew tall, she expanded and refined almost to flame. There was a trembling all through her, as in live coal when its vivid vermilion is hottest.

"'That is to say that you have the worst opinion of me; that you deny me the possession of all I value most. That is to say that I am a traitor to all my sisters; that I have acted as no woman can act without degrading herself and her sex; that I have sought where the incorrupt of my kind naturally scorn and abhor to seek.' She and I were silent for many a minute. 'Lucifer, Star of the Morning,' she went on, 'thou art fallen! You, once high in my esteem, are hurled down; you, once intimate in my friendship, are cast out. Go!'

"I went not. I had heard her voice tremble, seen her lip quiver. I knew another storm of tears would fall, and then I believed some calm and some sunshine must come, and I would wait for it.

"As fast, but more quietly than before, the warm rain streamed down. There was another sound in her weeping—a softer, more regretful sound. While I watched, her eyes lifted to me a gaze more reproachful than haughty, more mournful than incensed.

"'O Moore!' said she. It was worse than 'Et tu, Brute!'

"I relieved myself by what should have been a sigh, but it became a groan. A sense of Cain-like desolation made my breast ache.

"'There has been error in what I have done,' I said, 'and it has won me bitter wages, which I will go and spend far from her who gave them.'

"I took my hat. All the time I could not have borne to depart so, and I believed she would not let me. Nor would she but for the mortal pang I had given her pride, that cowed her compassion and kept her silent.

"I was obliged to turn back of my own accord when I reached the door, to approach her, and to say, 'Forgive me.'

"'I could, if there was not myself to forgive too,' was her reply; 'but to mislead a sagacious man so far I must have done wrong.'

"I broke out suddenly with some declamation I do not remember. I know that it was sincere, and that my wish and aim were to absolve her to herself. In fact, in her case self-accusation was a chimera.

"At last she extended her hand. For the first time I wished to take her in my arms and kiss her. I did kiss her hand many times.

"'Some day we shall be friends again,' she said, 'when you have had time to read my actions and motives in a true light, and not so horribly to misinterpret them. Time may give you the right key to all. Then, perhaps, you will comprehend me, and then we shall be reconciled.'

"Farewell drops rolled slow down her cheeks. She wiped them away.

"'I am sorry for what has happened—deeply sorry,' she sobbed. So was I, God knows! Thus were we severed."

"A queer tale!" commented Mr. Yorke.

"I'll do it no more," vowed his companion; "never more will I mention marriage to a woman unless I feel love. Henceforth credit and commerce may take care of themselves. Bankruptcy may come when it lists. I have done with slavish fear of disaster. I mean to work diligently, wait patiently, bear steadily. Let the worst come, I will take my axe and an emigrant's berth, and go out with Louis to the West; he and I have settled it. No woman shall ever again look at me as Miss Keeldar looked, ever again feel towards me as Miss Keeldar felt. In no woman's presence will I ever again stand at once such a fool and such a knave, such a brute and such a puppy."

"Tut!" said the imperturbable Yorke, "you make too much of it; but still, I say, I am capped. Firstly, that she did not love you; and secondly, that you did not love her. You are both young; you are both handsome; you are both well enough for wit and even for temper—take you on the right side. What ailed you that you could not agree?"

"We never have been, never could be at home with each other, Yorke. Admire each other as we might at a distance, still we jarred when we came very near. I have sat at one side of a room and observed her at the other, perhaps in an excited, genial moment, when she had some of her favourites round her—her old beaux, for instance, yourself and Helstone, with whom she is so playful, pleasant, and eloquent. I have watched her when she was most natural, most lively, and most lovely; my judgment has pronounced her beautiful. Beautiful she is at times, when her mood and her array partake of the splendid. I have drawn a little nearer, feeling that our terms of acquaintance gave me the right of approach. I have joined the circle round her seat, caught her eye, and mastered her attention; then we have conversed; and others, thinking me, perhaps, peculiarly privileged, have withdrawn by degrees, and left us alone. Were we happy thus left? For myself, I must say No. Always a feeling of constraint came over me; always I was disposed to be stern and strange. We talked politics and business. No soft sense of domestic intimacy ever opened our hearts, or thawed our language and made it flow easy and limpid. If we had confidences, they were confidences of the counting-house, not of the heart. Nothing in her cherished affection in me, made me better, gentler; she only stirred my brain and whetted my acuteness. She never crept into my heart or influenced its pulse; and for this good reason, no doubt, because I had not the secret of making her love me."

"Well, lad, it is a queer thing. I might laugh at thee, and reckon to despise thy refinements; but as it is dark night and we are by ourselves, I don't mind telling thee that thy talk brings back a glimpse of my own past life. Twenty-five years ago I tried to persuade a beautiful woman to love me, and she would not. I had not the key to her nature; she was a stone wall to me, doorless and windowless."

"But you loved her, Yorke; you worshipped Mary Cave. Your conduct, after all, was that of a man—never of a fortune-hunter."

"Ay, I did love her; but then she was beautiful as the moon we do not see to-night. There is naught like her in these days. Miss Helstone, maybe, has a look of her, but nobody else."

"Who has a look of her?"

"That black-coated tyrant's niece—that quiet, delicate Miss Helstone. Many a time I have put on my spectacles to look at the lassie in church, because she has gentle blue een, wi' long lashes; and when she sits in shadow, and is very still and very pale, and is, happen, about to fall asleep wi' the length of the sermon and the heat of the biggin', she is as like one of Canova's marbles as aught else."

"Was Mary Cave in that style?"

"Far grander!—less lass-like and flesh-like. You wondered why she hadn't wings and a crown. She was a stately, peaceful angel was my Mary."

"And you could not persuade her to love you?"

"Not with all I could do, though I prayed Heaven many a time, on my bended knees, to help me."

"Mary Cave was not what you think her, Yorke. I have seen her picture at the rectory. She is no angel, but a fair, regular-featured, taciturn-looking woman—rather too white and lifeless for my taste. But, supposing she had been something better than she was——"

"Robert," interrupted Yorke, "I could fell you off your horse at this moment. However, I'll hold my hand. Reason tells me you are right and I am wrong. I know well enough that the passion I still have is only the remnant of an illusion. If Miss Cave had possessed either feeling or sense, she could not have been so perfectly impassible to my regard as she showed herself; she must have preferred me to that copper-faced despot."

"Supposing, Yorke, she had been educated (no women were educated in those days); supposing she had possessed a thoughtful, original mind, a love of knowledge, a wish for information, which she took an artless delight in receiving from your lips, and having measured out to her by your hand; supposing her conversation, when she sat at your side, was fertile, varied, imbued with a picturesque grace and genial interest, quiet flowing but clear and bounteous; supposing that when you stood near her by chance, or when you sat near her by design, comfort at once became your atmosphere, and content your element; supposing that whenever her face was under your gaze, or her idea filled your thoughts, you gradually ceased to be hard and anxious, and pure affection, love of home, thirst for sweet discourse, unselfish longing to protect and cherish, replaced the sordid, cankering calculations of your trade; supposing, with all this, that many a time, when you had been so happy as to possess your Mary's little hand, you had felt it tremble as you held it, just as a warm little bird trembles when you take it from its nest; supposing you had noticed her shrink into the background on your entrance into a room, yet if you sought her in her retreat she welcomed you with the sweetest smile that ever lit a fair virgin face, and only turned her eyes from the encounter of your own lest their clearness should reveal too much; supposing, in short, your Mary had been not cold, but modest; not vacant, but reflective; not obtuse, but sensitive; not inane, but innocent; not prudish, but pure,—would you have left her to court another woman for her wealth?"

Mr. Yorke raised his hat, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"The moon is up," was his first not quite relevant remark, pointing with his whip across the moor. "There she is, rising into the haze, staring at us wi' a strange red glower. She is no more silver than old Helstone's brow is ivory. What does she mean by leaning her cheek on Rushedge i' that way, and looking at us wi' a scowl and a menace?"

"Yorke, if Mary had loved you silently yet faithfully, chastely yet fervently, as you would wish your wife to love, would you have left her?"

"Robert!"—he lifted his arm, he held it suspended, and paused—"Robert! this is a queer world, and men are made of the queerest dregs that Chaos churned up in her ferment. I might swear sounding oaths—oaths that would make the poachers think there was a bittern booming in Bilberry Moss—that, in the case you put, death only should have parted me from Mary. But I have lived in the world fifty-five years; I have been forced to study human nature; and, to speak a dark truth, the odds are, if Mary had loved and not scorned me, if I had been secure of her affection, certain of her constancy, been irritated by no doubts, stung by no humiliations—the odds are" (he let his hand fall heavy on the saddle)—"the odds are I should have left her!"

They rode side by side in silence. Ere either spoke again they were on the other side of Rushedge. Briarfield lights starred the purple skirt of the moor. Robert, being the youngest, and having less of the past to absorb him than his comrade, recommenced first.

"I believe—I daily find it proved—that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame or through strengthening peril. We err, we fall, we are humbled; then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice or from the beggar's wallet of avarice. We are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter."

"What art thou going to do now, Robert? What are thy plans?"

"For my private plans, I'll keep them to myself—which is very easy, as at present I have none. No private life is permitted a man in my position—a man in debt. For my public plans, my views are a little altered. While I was in Birmingham I looked a little into reality, considered closely and at their source the causes of the present troubles of this country. I did the same in London. Unknown, I could go where I pleased, mix with whom I would. I went where there was want of food, of fuel, of clothing; where there was no occupation and no hope. I saw some, with naturally elevated tendencies and good feelings, kept down amongst sordid privations and harassing griefs. I saw many originally low, and to whom lack of education left scarcely anything but animal wants, disappointed in those wants, ahungered, athirst, and desperate as famished animals. I saw what taught my brain a new lesson, and filled my breast with fresh feelings. I have no intention to profess more softness or sentiment than I have hitherto professed; mutiny and ambition I regard as I have always regarded them. I should resist a riotous mob just as heretofore; I should open on the scent of a runaway ringleader as eagerly as ever, and run him down as relentlessly, and follow him up to condign punishment as rigorously; but I should do it now chiefly for the sake and the security of those he misled. Something there is to look to, Yorke, beyond a man's personal interest, beyond the advancement of well-laid schemes, beyond even the discharge of dishonouring debts. To respect himself, a man must believe he renders justice to his fellow-men. Unless I am more considerate to ignorance, more forbearing to suffering, than I have hitherto been, I shall scorn myself as grossly unjust.—What now?" he said, addressing his horse, which, hearing the ripple of water, and feeling thirsty, turned to a wayside trough, where the moonbeam was playing in a crystal eddy.

"Yorke," pursued Moore, "ride on; I must let him drink."

Yorke accordingly rode slowly forwards, occupying himself as he advanced in discriminating, amongst the many lights now spangling the distance, those of Briarmains. Stilbro' Moor was left behind; plantations rose dusk on either hand; they were descending the hill; below them lay the valley with its populous parish: they felt already at home.

Surrounded no longer by heath, it was not startling to Mr. Yorke to see a hat rise, and to hear a voice speak behind the wall. The words, however, were peculiar.

"When the wicked perisheth there is shouting," it said; and added, "As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more" (with a deeper growl): "terrors take hold of him as waters; hell is naked before him. He shall die without knowledge."

A fierce flash and sharp crack violated the calm of night. Yorke, ere he turned, knew the four convicts of Birmingham were avenged.

Back to contents

CHAPTER XXXI.

UNCLE AND NIECE.

She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad—faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that in calamity waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air; in themselves they were simple and sweet. Perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well. She breathed into the feeling softness; she poured round the passion force. Her voice was fine that evening, its expression dramatic. She impressed all, and charmed one.

On leaving the instrument she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat—semi-stool, semi-cushion. The ladies were round her; none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality—so unlike a school-girl? Decidedly not. It was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.

Moreover, old Lady Nunnely eyed her stonily from her great chair by the fireside. Her gaze said, "This woman is not of mine or my daughters' kind. I object to her as my son's wife."

Her son, catching the look, read its meaning. He grew alarmed. What he so wished to win there was danger he might lose. He must make haste.

The room they were in had once been a picture-gallery. Sir Philip's father—Sir Monckton—had converted it into a saloon; but still it had a shadowy, long-withdrawing look. A deep recess with a window—a recess that held one couch, one table, and a fairy cabinet—formed a room within a room. Two persons standing there might interchange a dialogue, and, so it were neither long nor loud, none be the wiser.

Sir Philip induced two of his sisters to perpetrate a duet. He gave occupation to the Misses Sympson. The elder ladies were conversing together. He was pleased to remark that meantime Shirley rose to look at the pictures. He had a tale to tell about one ancestress, whose dark beauty seemed as that of a flower of the south. He joined her, and began to tell it.

There were mementoes of the same lady in the cabinet adorning the recess; and while Shirley was stooping to examine the missal and the rosary on the inlaid shelf, and while the Misses Nunnely indulged in a prolonged screech, guiltless of expression, pure of originality, perfectly conventional and absolutely unmeaning, Sir Philip stooped too, and whispered a few hurried sentences. At first Miss Keeldar was struck so still you might have fancied that whisper a charm which had changed her to a statue; but she presently looked up and answered. They parted. Miss Keeldar returned to the fire, and resumed her seat. The baronet gazed after her, then went and stood behind his sisters. Mr. Sympson—Mr. Sympson only—had marked the pantomime.

That gentleman drew his own conclusions. Had he been as acute as he was meddling, as profound as he was prying, he might have found that in Sir Philip's face whereby to correct his inference. Ever shallow, hasty, and positive, he went home quite cock-a-hoop.

He was not a man that kept secrets well. When elate on a subject, he could not avoid talking about it. The next morning, having occasion to employ his son's tutor as his secretary, he must needs announce to him, in mouthing accents, and with much flimsy pomp of manner, that he had better hold himself prepared for a return to the south at an early day, as the important business which had detained him (Mr. Sympson) so long in Yorkshire was now on the eve of fortunate completion. His anxious and laborious efforts were likely, at last, to be crowned with the happiest success. A truly eligible addition was about to be made to the family connections.

"In Sir Philip Nunnely?" Louis Moore conjectured.

Whereupon Mr. Sympson treated himself simultaneously to a pinch of snuff and a chuckling laugh, checked only by a sudden choke of dignity, and an order to the tutor to proceed with business.

For a day or two Mr. Sympson continued as bland as oil, but also he seemed to sit on pins, and his gait, when he walked, emulated that of a hen treading a hot girdle. He was for ever looking out of the window and listening for chariot-wheels. Bluebeard's wife—Sisera's mother—were nothing to him. He waited when the matter should be opened in form, when himself should be consulted, when lawyers should be summoned, when settlement discussions and all the delicious worldly fuss should pompously begin.

At last there came a letter. He himself handed it to Miss Keeldar out of the bag. He knew the handwriting; he knew the crest on the seal. He did not see it opened and read, for Shirley took it to her own room; nor did he see it answered, for she wrote her reply shut up, and was very long about it—the best part of a day. He questioned her whether it was answered; she responded, "Yes."

Again he waited—waited in silence, absolutely not daring to speak, kept mute by something in Shirley's face—a very awful something—inscrutable to him as the writing on the wall to Belshazzar. He was moved more than once to call Daniel, in the person of Louis Moore, and to ask an interpretation; but his dignity forbade the familiarity. Daniel himself, perhaps, had his own private difficulties connected with that baffling bit of translation; he looked like a student for whom grammars are blank and dictionaries dumb.

Mr. Sympson had been out, to while away an anxious hour in the society of his friends at De Walden Hall. He returned a little sooner than was expected. His family and Miss Keeldar were assembled in the oak parlour. Addressing the latter, he requested her to step with him into another room. He wished to have with her a "strictly private interview."

She rose, asking no questions and professing no surprise.

"Very well, sir," she said, in the tone of a determined person who is informed that the dentist is come to extract that large double tooth of his, from which he has suffered such a purgatory this month past. She left her sewing and her thimble in the window-seat, and followed her uncle where he led.

Shut into the drawing-room, the pair took seats, each in an arm-chair, placed opposite, a few yards between them.

"I have been to De Walden Hall," said Mr. Sympson. He paused. Miss Keeldar's eyes were on the pretty white-and-green carpet. That information required no response. She gave none.

"I have learned," he went on slowly—"I have learned a circumstance which surprises me."

Resting her cheek on her forefinger, she waited to be told what circumstance.

"It seems that Nunnely Priory is shut up—that the family are gone back to their place in ——shire. It seems that the baronet—that the baronet—that Sir Philip himself has accompanied his mother and sisters."

"Indeed!" said Shirley.

"May I ask if you share the amazement with which I received this news?"

"No, sir."

"Is it news to you?"

"Yes, sir."

"I mean—I mean," pursued Mr. Sympson, now fidgeting in his chair, quitting his hitherto brief and tolerably clear phraseology, and returning to his customary wordy, confused, irritable style—"I mean to have a thorough explanation. I will not be put off. I—I—shall insist on being heard, and on—on having my own way. My questions must be answered. I will have clear, satisfactory replies. I am not to be trifled with. (Silence.)

"It is a strange and an extraordinary thing—a very singular—a most odd thing! I thought all was right, knew no other; and there—the family are gone!"

"I suppose, sir, they had a right to go."

"Sir Philip is gone!" (with emphasis).

Shirley raised her brows. "Bon voyage!" said she.

"This will not do; this must be altered, ma'am."

He drew his chair forward; he pushed it back; he looked perfectly incensed, and perfectly helpless.

"Come, come now, uncle," expostulated Shirley, "do not begin to fret and fume, or we shall make no sense of the business. Ask me what you want to know. I am as willing to come to an explanation as you. I promise you truthful replies."

"I want—I demand to know, Miss Keeldar, whether Sir Philip has made you an offer?"

"He has."

"You avow it?"

"I avow it. But now, go on. Consider that point settled."

"He made you an offer that night we dined at the priory?"

"It is enough to say that he made it. Go on."

"He proposed in the recess—in the room that used to be a picture-gallery—that Sir Monckton converted into it saloon?"

No answer.

"You were both examining a cabinet. I saw it all. My sagacity was not at fault—it never is. Subsequently you received a letter from him. On what subject—of what nature were the contents?"

"No matter."

"Ma'am, is that the way in which you speak to me?"

Shirley's foot tapped quick on the carpet.

"There you sit, silent and sullen—you who promised truthful replies."

"Sir, I have answered you thus far. Proceed."

"I should like to see that letter."

"You cannot see it."

"I must and shall, ma'am; I am your guardian."

"Having ceased to be a ward, I have no guardian."

"Ungrateful being! Reared by me as my own daughter——"

"Once more, uncle, have the kindness to keep to the point. Let us both remain cool. For my part, I do not wish to get into a passion; but, you know, once drive me beyond certain bounds, I care little what I say—I am not then soon checked. Listen! You have asked me whether Sir Philip made me an offer. That question is answered. What do you wish to know next?"

"I desire to know whether you accepted or refused him, and know it I will."

"Certainly, you ought to know it. I refused him."

"Refused him! You—you, Shirley Keeldar, refused Sir Philip Nunnely?"

"I did."

The poor gentleman bounced from his chair, and first rushed and then trotted through the room.

"There it is! There it is! There it is!"

"Sincerely speaking, I am sorry, uncle, you are so disappointed."

Concession, contrition, never do any good with some people. Instead of softening and conciliating, they but embolden and harden them. Of that number was Mr. Sympson.

"I disappointed? What is it to me? Have I an interest in it? You would insinuate, perhaps, that I have motives?"

"Most people have motives of some sort for their actions."

"She accuses me to my face! I, that have been a parent to her, she charges with bad motives!"

"Bad motives I did not say."