Shirley
"'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