Shirley
like to sleep well. In my quiet days, when I was my own man, I never
quarrelled with the night for being long, nor cursed my bed for its
thorns. She changed all this."
"Mr. Moore----"
"And having taken from me peace of mind and ease of life, she took from
me herself--quite coolly, just as if, when she was gone, the world would
be all the same to me. I knew I should see her again at some time. At
the end of two years, it fell out that we encountered again under her
own roof, where she was mistress. How do you think she bore herself
towards me, Miss Keeldar?"
"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.
CHAPTER XXIX.
LOUIS MOORE.
Louis Moore was used to a quiet life. Being a quiet man, he endured it
better than most men would. Having a large world of his own in his own
head and heart, he tolerated confinement to a small, still corner of the
real world very patiently.
How hushed is Fieldhead this evening! All but Moore--Miss Keeldar, the
whole family of the Sympsons, even Henry--are gone to Nunnely. Sir
Philip would have them come; he wished to make them acquainted with his
mother and sisters, who are now at the priory. Kind gentleman as the
baronet is, he asked the tutor too; but the tutor would much sooner have
made an appointment with the ghost of the Earl of Huntingdon to meet
him, and a shadowy ring of his merry men, under the canopy of the
thickest, blackest, oldest oak in Nunnely Forest. Yes, he would rather
have appointed tryst with a phantom abbess, or mist-pale nun, among the
wet and weedy relics of that ruined sanctuary of theirs, mouldering in
the core of the wood. Louis Moore longs to have something near him
to-night; but not the boy-baronet, nor his benevolent but stern mother,
nor his patrician sisters, nor one soul of the Sympsons.
This night is not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The
wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and
rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but
tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight
tempest. The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she
gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch for
his goddess to-night. There are no flocks out on the mountains; and it
is well, for to-night she welcomes Æolus.
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