Shirley
"'A beautiful sentence! Let us take it to pieces. "Conformity of rank."
He is quite above me. Compare my grange with his palace, if you please.
I am disdained by his kith and kin. "Suitability of age." We were born
in the same year; consequently he is still a boy, while I am a
woman--ten years his senior to all intents and purposes. "Contrast of
temper." Mild and amiable, is he; I--what? Tell me.'
"'Sister of the spotted, bright, quick, fiery leopard.'
"'And you would mate me with a kid--the millennium being yet millions of
centuries from mankind; being yet, indeed, an archangel high in the
seventh heaven, uncommissioned to descend? Unjust barbarian! "Harmony of
intellectual tastes." He is fond of poetry, and I hate it----'
"'Do you? That is news.'
"'I absolutely shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme
whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony,
indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as
fragments of glass? and when did I betray a belief that those
penny-beads were genuine brilliants?'
"'You might have the satisfaction of leading him to a higher standard,
of improving his tastes.'
"'Leading and improving! teaching and tutoring! bearing and forbearing!
Pah! my husband is not to be my baby. I am not to set him his daily
lesson and see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he is
good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is bad. But it is
like a tutor to talk of the "satisfaction of teaching." I suppose _you_
think it the finest employment in the world. I don't. I reject it.
Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or
else we part.'
"'God knows it is needed!'
"'What do you mean by that, Mr. Moore?'
"'What I say. Improvement is imperatively needed.'
"'If you were a woman you would school _monsieur, votre mari_,
charmingly. It would just suit you; schooling is your vocation.'
"'May I ask whether, in your present just and gentle mood, you mean to
taunt me with being a tutor?'
"'Yes, bitterly; and with anything else you please--any defect of which
you are painfully conscious.'
"'With being poor, for instance?'
"'Of course; that will sting you. You are sore about your poverty; you
brood over that.'
"'With having nothing but a very plain person to offer the woman who may
master my heart?'
"'Exactly. You have a habit of calling yourself plain. You are sensitive
about the cut of your features because they are not quite on an Apollo
pattern. You abase them more than is needful, in the faint hope that
others may say a word in their behalf--which won't happen. Your face is
nothing to boast of, certainly--not a pretty line nor a pretty tint to
be found therein.'
"'Compare it with your own.'
"'It looks like a god of Egypt--a great sand-buried stone head; or
rather I will compare it to nothing so lofty. It looks like Tartar. You
are my mastiff's cousin. I think you as much like him as a man can be
like a dog.'
"'Tartar is your dear companion. In summer, when you rise early, and
run out into the fields to wet your feet with the dew, and freshen your
cheek and uncurl your hair with the breeze, you always call him to
follow you. You call him sometimes with a whistle that you learned from
me. In the solitude of your wood, when you think nobody but Tartar is
listening, you whistle the very tunes you imitated from my lips, or sing
the very songs you have caught up by ear from my voice. I do not ask
whence flows the feeling which you pour into these songs, for I know it
flows out of your heart, Miss Keeldar. In the winter evenings Tartar
lies at your feet. You suffer him to rest his head on your perfumed lap;
you let him couch on the borders of your satin raiment. His rough hide
is familiar with the contact of your hand. I once saw you kiss him on
that snow-white beauty spot which stars his broad forehead. It is
dangerous to say I am like Tartar; it suggests to me a claim to be
treated like Tartar.'
"'Perhaps, sir, you can extort as much from your penniless and
friendless young orphan girl, when you find her.'
"'Oh could I find her such as I image her! Something to tame first, and
teach afterwards; to break in, and then to fondle. To lift the destitute
proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over and then to be
indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never
indulged before; to see her alternately irritated and subdued about
twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her
training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient
mother of about a dozen children, only now and then lending little Louis
a cordial cuff by way of paying the interest of the vast debt she owes
his father. Oh' (I went on), 'my orphan girl would give me many a kiss;
she would watch on the threshold for my coming home of an evening; she
would run into my arms; she would keep my hearth as bright as she would
make it warm. God bless the sweet idea! Find her I must.'
"Her eyes emitted an eager flash, her lips opened; but she reclosed
them, and impetuously turned away.
"'Tell me, tell me where she is, Miss Keeldar!'
"Another movement, all haughtiness and fire and impulse.
"'I must know. You _can_ tell me; you _shall_ tell me.'
"'I _never will_.'
"She turned to leave me. Could I now let her part as she had always
parted from me? No. I had gone too far not to finish; I had come too
near the end not to drive home to it. All the encumbrance of doubt, all
the rubbish of indecision, must be removed at once, and the plain truth
must be ascertained. She must take her part, and tell me what it was; I
must take mine and adhere to it.
"'A minute, madam,' I said, keeping my hand on the door-handle before I
opened it. 'We have had a long conversation this morning, but the last
word has not been spoken yet. It is yours to speak it.'
"'May I pass?'
"'No; I guard the door. I would almost rather die than let you leave me
just now, without speaking the word I demand.'
"'What dare you expect me to say?'
"'What I am dying and perishing to hear; what I _must_ and _will_ hear;
what you dare not now suppress.'
"'Mr. Moore, I hardly know what you mean. You are not like yourself.'
"I suppose I hardly was like my usual self, for I scared her--that I
could see. It was right: she must be scared to be won.
"'You _do_ know what I mean, and for the first time I stand before you
_myself_. I have flung off the tutor, and beg to introduce you to the
man. And remember, he is a gentleman.'
"She trembled. She put her hand to mine as if to remove it from the
lock. She might as well have tried to loosen, by her soft touch, metal
welded to metal. She felt she was powerless, and receded; and again she
trembled.
"What change I underwent I cannot explain, but out of her emotion passed
into me a new spirit. I neither was crushed nor elated by her lands and
gold; I thought not of them, cared not for them. They were
nothing--dross that could not dismay me. I saw only herself--her young
beautiful form, the grace, the majesty, the modesty of her girlhood.
"'My pupil,' I said.
"'My master,' was the low answer.
"'I have a thing to tell you.'
"She waited with declined brow and ringlets drooped.
"'I have to tell you that for four years you have been growing into
your tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare
that you have bewitched me, in spite of sense, and experience, and
difference of station and estate. You have so looked, and spoken, and
moved; so shown me your faults and your virtues--beauties rather, they
are hardly so stern as virtues--that I love you--love you with my life
and strength. It is out now.'
"She sought what to say, but could not find a word. She tried to rally,
but vainly. I passionately repeated that I loved her.
"'Well, Mr. Moore, what then?' was the answer I got, uttered in a tone
that would have been petulant if it had not faltered.
"'Have you nothing to say to me? Have you no love for me?'
"'A little bit.'
"'I am not to be tortured. I will not even play at present.'
"'I don't want to play; I want to go.'
"'I wonder you dare speak of going at this moment. _You_ go! What! with
my heart in your hand, to lay it on your toilet and pierce it with your
pins? From my presence you do not stir, out of my reach you do not
stray, till I receive a hostage--pledge for pledge--your heart for
mine.'
"'The thing you want is mislaid--lost some time since. Let me go and
seek it.'
"'Declare that it is where your keys often are--in my possession.'
"'You ought to know. And where are my keys, Mr. Moore? Indeed and truly
I have lost them again; and Mrs. Gill wants some money, and I have none,
except this sixpence.'
"She took the coin out of her apron pocket, and showed it in her palm. I
could have trifled with her, but it would not do; life and death were at
stake. Mastering at once the sixpence and the hand that held it, I
demanded, 'Am I to die without you, or am I to live for you?'
"'Do as you please. Far be it from me to dictate your choice.'
"'You shall tell me with your own lips whether you doom me to exile or
call me to hope.'
"'Go; I can bear to be left.'
"'Perhaps I too _can_ bear to leave you. But reply, Shirley, my pupil,
my sovereign--reply.'
"'Die without me if you will; live for me if you dare.'
"'I am not afraid of you, my leopardess. I _dare_ live for and with you,
from this hour till my death. Now, then, I have you. You are mine. I
will never let you go. Wherever my home be, I have chosen my wife. If I
stay in England, in England you will stay; if I cross the Atlantic, you
will cross it also. Our lives are riveted, our lots intertwined.'
"'And are we equal, then, sir? are we equal at last?'
"'You are younger, frailer, feebler, more ignorant than I.'
"'Will you be good to me, and never tyrannize?'
"'Will you let me breathe, and not bewilder me? You must not smile at
present. The world swims and changes round me. The sun is a dizzying
scarlet blaze, the sky a violet vortex whirling over me.'
"I am a strong man, but I staggered as I spoke. All creation was
exaggerated. Colour grew more vivid, motion more rapid, life itself more
vital. I hardly saw her for a moment, but I heard her voice--pitilessly
sweet. She would not subdue one of her charms in compassion. Perhaps she
did not know what I felt.
"'You name me leopardess. Remember, the leopardess is tameless,' said
she.
"'Tame or fierce, wild or subdued, you are _mine_.'
"'I am glad I know my keeper and am used to him. Only his voice will I
follow; only his hand shall manage me; only at his feet will I repose.'
"I took her back to her seat, and sat down by her side. I wanted to hear
her speak again. I could never have enough of her voice and her words.
"'How much do you love me?' I asked.
"'Ah! you know. I will not gratify you--I will not flatter.'
"'I don't know half enough; my heart craves to be fed. If you knew how
hungry and ferocious it is, you would hasten to stay it with a kind word
or two.'
"'Poor Tartar!' said she, touching and patting my hand--'poor fellow,
stalwart friend, Shirley's pet and favourite, lie down!'
"'But I will not lie down till I am fed with one sweet word.'
"And at last she gave it.
"'Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don't care for life
unless I may pass it at your side.'
"'Something more.'
"She gave me a change; it was not her way to offer the same dish twice.
"'Sir,' she said, starting up, 'at your peril you ever again name such
sordid things as money, or poverty, or inequality. It will be absolutely
dangerous to torment me with these maddening scruples. I defy you to do
it.'