Shirley
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.
CHAPTER XXXI.
UNCLE AND NIECE.
The die was cast. Sir Philip Nunnely knew it; Shirley knew it; Mr.
Sympson knew it. That evening, when all the Fieldhead family dined at
Nunnely Priory, decided the business.
Two or three things conduced to bring the baronet to a point. He had
observed that Miss Keeldar looked pensive and delicate. This new phase
in her demeanour smote him on his weak or poetic side. A spontaneous
sonnet brewed in his brain; and while it was still working there, one of
his sisters persuaded his lady-love to sit down to the piano and sing a
ballad--one of Sir Philip's own ballads. It was the least elaborate, the
least affected--out of all comparison the best of his numerous efforts.
It chanced that Shirley, the moment before, had been gazing from a
window down on the park. She had seen that stormy moonlight which "le
Professeur Louis" was perhaps at the same instant contemplating from her
own oak-parlour lattice; she had seen the isolated trees of the
domain--broad, strong, spreading oaks, and high-towering heroic
beeches--wrestling with the gale. Her ear had caught the full roar of
the forest lower down; the swift rushing of clouds, the moon, to the
eye, hasting swifter still, had crossed her vision. She turned from
sight and sound--touched, if not rapt; wakened, if not inspired.
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