Shirley
"My face grew hot. I did once more wish I were not so poor or she were
not so rich. She saw the transient misery; and then, indeed, she
caressed me. Blent with torment, I experienced rapture.
"'Mr. Moore,' said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest
countenance, 'teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take
off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property, but I ask you to
share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your
judgment is well balanced, your heart is kind, your principles are
sound. I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are
conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am
ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always!'
"'So help me God, I will!'"
* * * * *
Yet again a passage from the blank book if you like, reader; if you
don't like it, pass it over:--
"The Sympsons are gone, but not before discovery and explanation. My
manner must have betrayed something, or my looks. I was quiet, but I
forgot to be guarded sometimes. I stayed longer in the room than usual;
I could not bear to be out of her presence; I returned to it, and basked
in it, like Tartar in the sun. If she left the oak parlour,
instinctively I rose and left it too. She chid me for this procedure
more than once. I did it with a vague, blundering idea of getting a word
with her in the hall or elsewhere. Yesterday towards dusk I had her to
myself for five minutes by the hall fire. We stood side by side; she was
railing at me, and I was enjoying the sound of her voice. The young
ladies passed, and looked at us; we did not separate. Ere long they
repassed, and again looked. Mrs. Sympson came; we did not move. Mr.
Sympson opened the dining-room door. Shirley flashed him back full
payment for his spying gaze. She curled her lip and tossed her tresses.
The glance she gave was at once explanatory and defiant. It said: 'I
like Mr. Moore's society, and I dare you to find fault with my taste.'
"I asked, 'Do you mean him to understand how matters are?'
"'I do,' said she; 'but I leave the development to chance. There will be
a scene. I neither invite it nor fear it; only, you must be present, for
I am inexpressibly tired of facing him solus. I don't like to see him in
a rage. He then puts off all his fine proprieties and conventional
disguises, and the real human being below is what you would call
_commun, plat, bas--vilain et un peu méchant_. His ideas are not clean,
Mr. Moore; they want scouring with soft soap and fuller's earth. I
think, if he could add his imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill's
bucking-basket, and let her boil it in her copper, with rain-water and
bleaching-powder (I hope you think me a tolerable laundress), it would
do him incalculable good.'
"This morning, fancying I heard her descend somewhat early, I was down
instantly. I had not been deceived. There she was, busy at work in the
breakfast-parlour, of which the housemaid was completing the arrangement
and dusting. She had risen betimes to finish some little keepsake she
intended for Henry. I got only a cool reception, which I accepted till
the girl was gone, taking my book to the window-seat very quietly. Even
when we were alone I was slow to disturb her. To sit with her in sight
was happiness, and the proper happiness, for early morning--serene,
incomplete, but progressive. Had I been obtrusive, I knew I should have
encountered rebuff. 'Not at home to suitors' was written on her brow.
Therefore I read on, stole now and then a look, watched her countenance
soften and open as she felt I respected her mood, and enjoyed the gentle
content of the moment.
"The distance between us shrank, and the light hoar-frost thawed
insensibly. Ere an hour elapsed I was at her side, watching her sew,
gathering her sweet smiles and her merry words, which fell for me
abundantly. We sat, as we had a right to sit, side by side; my arm
rested on her chair; I was near enough to count the stitches of her
work, and to discern the eye of her needle. The door suddenly opened.
"I believe, if I had just then started from her, she would have
despised me. Thanks to the phlegm of my nature, I rarely start. When I
am well-off, _bien_, comfortable, I am not soon stirred. _Bien_ I
was--_très bien_--consequently immutable. No muscle moved. I hardly
looked to the door.
"'Good-morning, uncle,' said she, addressing that personage, who paused
on the threshold in a state of petrifaction.
"'Have you been long downstairs, Miss Keeldar, and alone with Mr.
Moore?'
"'Yes, a very long time. We both came down early; it was scarcely
light.'
"'The proceeding is improper----'
"'It was at first, I was rather cross, and not civil; but you will
perceive that we are now friends.'
"'I perceive more than you would wish me to perceive.'
"'Hardly, sir,' said I; 'we have no disguises. Will you permit me to
intimate that any further observations you have to make may as well be
addressed to me? Henceforward I stand between Miss Keeldar and all
annoyance.'
"'_You!_ What have _you_ to do with Miss Keeldar?'
"'To protect, watch over, serve her.'
"'You, sir--you, the tutor?'
"'Not one word of insult, sir,' interposed she; 'not one syllable of
disrespect to Mr. Moore in this house.'
"'Do you take his part?'
"'_His_ part? oh yes!'
"She turned to me with a sudden fond movement, which I met by circling
her with my arm. She and I both rose.
"'Good Ged!' was the cry from the morning-gown standing quivering at the
door. _Ged_, I think, must be the cognomen of Mr. Sympson's Lares. When
hard pressed he always invokes this idol.
"'Come forward, uncle; you shall hear all.--Tell him all, Louis.'
"'I dare him to speak--the beggar! the knave! the specious hypocrite!
the vile, insinuating, infamous menial!--Stand apart from my niece, sir.
Let her go!'
"She clung to me with energy. 'I am near my future husband,' she said.
'Who dares touch him or me?'
"'Her husband!' He raised and spread his hands. He dropped into a seat.
"'A while ago you wanted much to know whom I meant to marry. My
intention was then formed, but not mature for communication. Now it is
ripe, sun-mellowed, perfect. Take the crimson peach--take Louis Moore!'
"'But' (savagely) 'you _shall not_ have him; he _shall not_ have you.'
"'I would die before I would have another. I would die if I might not
have him.'
"He uttered words with which this page shall never be polluted.
"She turned white as death; she shook all over; she lost her strength. I
laid her down on the sofa; just looked to ascertain that she had not
fainted--of which, with a divine smile, she assured me. I kissed her;
and then, if I were to perish, I cannot give a clear account of what
happened in the course of the next five minutes. She has since--through
tears, laughter, and trembling--told me that I turned terrible, and gave
myself to the demon. She says I left her, made one bound across the
room; that Mr. Sympson vanished through the door as if shot from a
cannon. I also vanished, and she heard Mrs. Gill scream.
"Mrs. Gill was still screaming when I came to my senses. I was then in
another apartment--the oak parlour, I think. I held Sympson before me
crushed into a chair, and my hand was on his cravat. His eyes rolled in
his head; I was strangling him, I think. The housekeeper stood wringing
her hands, entreating me to desist. I desisted that moment, and felt at
once as cool as stone. But I told Mrs. Gill to fetch the Red-House Inn
chaise instantly, and informed Mr. Sympson he must depart from Fieldhead
the instant it came. Though half frightened out of his wits, he declared
he would not. Repeating the former order, I added a commission to fetch
a constable. I said, 'You _shall_ go, by fair means or foul.'
"He threatened prosecution; I cared for nothing. I had stood over him
once before, not quite so fiercely as now, but full as austerely. It was
one night when burglars attempted the house at Sympson Grove, and in his
wretched cowardice he would have given a vain alarm, without daring to
offer defence. I had then been obliged to protect his family and his
abode by mastering himself--and I had succeeded. I now remained with him
till the chaise came. I marshalled him to it, he scolding all the way.
He was terribly bewildered, as well as enraged. He would have resisted
me, but knew not how. He called for his wife and daughters to come. I
said they should follow him as soon as they could prepare. The smoke,
the fume, the fret of his demeanour was inexpressible, but it was a fury
incapable of producing a deed. That man, properly handled, must ever
remain impotent. I know he will never touch me with the law. I know his
wife, over whom he tyrannizes in trifles, guides him in matters of
importance. I have long since earned her undying mother's gratitude by
my devotion to her boy. In some of Henry's ailments I have nursed
him--better, she said, than any woman could nurse. She will never forget
that. She and her daughters quitted me to-day, in mute wrath and
consternation; but she respects me. When Henry clung to my neck as I
lifted him into the carriage and placed him by her side, when I arranged
her own wrapping to make her warm, though she turned her head from me, I
saw the tears start to her eyes. She will but the more zealously
advocate my cause because she has left me in anger. I am glad of
this--not for my own sake, but for that of my life and idol--my
Shirley."
Once again he writes, a week after:--"I am now at Stilbro'. I have taken
up my temporary abode with a friend--a professional man, in whose
business I can be useful. Every day I ride over to Fieldhead. How long
will it be before I can call that place my home, and its mistress mine?
I am not easy, not tranquil; I am tantalized, sometimes tortured. To see
her now, one would think she had never pressed her cheek to my shoulder,
or clung to me with tenderness or trust. I feel unsafe; she renders me
miserable. I am shunned when I visit her; she withdraws from my reach.
Once this day I lifted her face, resolved to get a full look down her
deep, dark eyes. Difficult to describe what I read there! Pantheress!
beautiful forest-born! wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her
chain; I see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her
wild woods and pinings after virgin freedom. I wish Sympson would come
again, and oblige her again to entwine her arms about me. I wish there
was danger she should lose me, as there is risk I shall lose her. No;
final loss I do not fear, but long delay----
"It is now night--midnight. I have spent the afternoon and evening at
Fieldhead. Some hours ago she passed me, coming down the oak staircase
to the hall. She did not know I was standing in the twilight, near the
staircase window, looking at the frost-bright constellations. How
closely she glided against the banisters! How shyly shone her large eyes
upon me! How evanescent, fugitive, fitful she looked--slim and swift as
a northern streamer!
"I followed her into the drawing-room. Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone
were both there; she has summoned them to bear her company awhile. In
her white evening dress, with her long hair flowing full and wavy, with
her noiseless step, her pale cheek, her eye full of night and lightning,
she looked, I thought, spirit-like--a thing made of an element, the
child of a breeze and a flame, the daughter of ray and raindrop--a thing
never to be overtaken, arrested, fixed. I wished I could avoid following
her with my gaze as she moved here and there, but it was impossible. I
talked with the other ladies as well as I could, but still I looked at
her. She was very silent; I think she never spoke to me--not even when