Shirley
"With heroes of many nations."
"What next----"
"And philosophers."
"She is mad----"
"Don't ring the bell, uncle; you will alarm my aunt."
"Your poor dear aunt, what a niece has she!"
"Once I loved Socrates."
"Pooh! no trifling, ma'am."
"I admired Themistocles, Leonidas, Epaminondas."
"Miss Keeldar----"
"To pass over a few centuries, Washington was a plain man, but I liked
him; but to speak of the actual present----"
"Ah! the actual present."
"To quit crude schoolgirl fancies, and come to realities."
"Realities! That is the test to which you shall be brought, ma'am."
"To avow before what altar I now kneel--to reveal the present idol of my
soul----"
"You will make haste about it, if you please. It is near luncheon time,
and confess _you shall_."
"Confess I must. My heart is full of the secret. It must be spoken. I
only wish you were Mr. Helstone instead of Mr. Sympson; you would
sympathize with me better."
"Madam, it is a question of common sense and common prudence, not of
sympathy and sentiment, and so on. Did you say it was Mr. Helstone?"
"Not precisely, but as near as may be; they are rather alike."
"I will know the name; I will have particulars."
"They positively _are_ rather alike. Their very faces are not
dissimilar--a pair of human falcons--and dry, direct, decided both. But
my hero is the mightier of the two. His mind has the clearness of the
deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows."
"Rant and fustian!"
"I dare say he can be harsh as a saw-edge and gruff as a hungry raven."
"Miss Keeldar, does the person reside in Briarfield? Answer me that."
"Uncle, I am going to tell you; his name is trembling on my tongue."
"Speak, girl!"
"That was well said, uncle. 'Speak, girl!' It is quite tragic. England
has howled savagely against this man, uncle, and she will one day roar
exultingly over him. He has been unscared by the howl, and he will be
unelated by the shout."
"I said she was mad. She is."
"This country will change and change again in her demeanour to him; he
will never change in his duty to her. Come, cease to chafe, uncle, I'll
tell you his name."
"You shall tell me, or----"
"Listen! Arthur Wellesley, Lord Wellington."
Mr. Sympson rose up furious. He bounced out of the room, but immediately
bounced back again, shut the door, and resumed his seat.
"Ma'am, you _shall_ tell me _this_. Will your principles permit you to
marry a man without money--a man below you?"
"Never a man below me."
(In a high voice.) "Will you, Miss Keeldar, marry a poor man?"
"What right have you, Mr. Sympson, to ask me?"
"I insist upon knowing."
"You don't go the way to know."
"My family respectability shall not be compromised."
"A good resolution; keep it."
"Madam, it is _you_ who shall keep it."
"Impossible, sir, since I form no part of your family."
"Do you disown us?"
"I disdain your dictatorship."
"Whom _will_ you marry, Miss Keeldar?"
"Not Mr. Sam Wynne, because I scorn him; not Sir Philip Nunnely, because
I _only_ esteem him."
"Whom have you in your eye?"
"Four rejected candidates."
"Such obstinacy could not be unless you were under improper influence."
"What do you mean? There are certain phrases potent to make my blood
boil. Improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"
"Are you a young lady?"
"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will
be treated."
"Do you know" (leaning mysteriously forward, and speaking with ghastly
solemnity)--"do you know the whole neighbourhood teems with rumours
respecting you and a bankrupt tenant of yours, the foreigner Moore?"
"Does it?"
"It does. Your name is in every mouth."
"It honours the lips it crosses, and I wish to the gods it may purify
them."
"Is it _that_ person who has power to influence you?"
"Beyond any whose cause you have advocated."
"Is it he you will marry?"
"He is handsome, and manly, and commanding."
"You declare it to my face! The Flemish knave! the low trader!"
"He is talented, and venturous, and resolute. Prince is on his brow, and
ruler in his bearing."
"She glories in it! She conceals nothing! No shame, no fear!"
"When we speak the name of Moore, shame should be forgotten and fear
discarded. The Moores know only honour and courage."
"I say she is mad."
"You have taunted me till my blood is up; you have worried me till I
turn again."
"That Moore is the brother of my son's tutor. Would you let the usher
call you sister?"
Bright and broad shone Shirley's eye as she fixed it on her questioner
now.
"No, no; not for a province of possession, not for a century of life."
"You cannot separate the husband from his family."
"What then?"
"Mr. Louis Moore's sister you will be."
"Mr. Sympson, I am sick at heart with all this weak trash; I will bear
no more. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, your aims are not my aims,
your gods are not my gods. We do not view things in the same light; we
do not measure them by the same standard; we hardly speak in the same
tongue. Let us part."
"It is not," she resumed, much excited--"it is not that I hate you; you
are a good sort of man. Perhaps you mean well in your way. But we cannot
suit; we are ever at variance. You annoy me with small meddling, with
petty tyranny; you exasperate my temper, and make and keep me
passionate. As to your small maxims, your narrow rules, your little
prejudices, aversions, dogmas, bundle them off. Mr. Sympson, go, offer
them a sacrifice to the deity you worship; I'll none of them. I wash my
hands of the lot. I walk by another creed, light, faith, and hope than
you."
"Another creed! I believe she is an infidel."
"An infidel to _your_ religion, an atheist to _your_ god."
"_An--atheist!!!_"
"Your god, sir, is the world. In my eyes you too, if not an infidel, are
an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship; in all things you
appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your
fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you,
have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre.
Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes
best--making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the
imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius, and fetters the dead to
the living. In his realm there is hatred--secret hatred; there is
disgust--unspoken disgust; there is treachery--family treachery; there
is vice--deep, deadly domestic vice. In his dominions children grow
unloving between parents who have never loved; infants are nursed on
deception from their very birth; they are reared in an atmosphere
corrupt with lies. Your god rules at the bridal of kings; look at your
royal dynasties! Your deity is the deity of foreign aristocracies;
analyze the blue blood of Spain! Your god is the Hymen of France; what
is French domestic life? All that surrounds him hastens to decay; all
declines and degenerates under his sceptre. _Your_ god is a masked
Death."
"This language is terrible! My daughters and you must associate no
longer, Miss Keeldar; there is danger in such companionship. Had I known
you a little earlier--but, extraordinary as I thought you, I could not
have believed----"
"Now, sir, do you begin to be aware that it is useless to scheme for me;
that in doing so you but sow the wind to reap the whirlwind? I sweep
your cobweb projects from my path, that I may pass on unsullied. I am
anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall
dispose of my hand--_they only_. Know this at last."
Mr. Sympson was becoming a little bewildered.
"Never heard such language!" he muttered again and again; "never was so
addressed in my life--never was so used!"
"You are quite confused, sir. You had better withdraw, or I will."
He rose hastily. "We must leave this place; they must pack up at once."
"Do not hurry my aunt and cousins; give them time."
"No more intercourse; she's not proper."
He made his way to the door. He came back for his handkerchief. He
dropped his snuff-box, leaving the contents scattered on the carpet; he
stumbled out. Tartar lay outside across the mat; Mr. Sympson almost fell
over him. In the climax of his exasperation he hurled an oath at the dog
and a coarse epithet at his mistress.
"Poor Mr. Sympson! he is both feeble and vulgar," said Shirley to
herself. "My head aches, and I am tired," she added; and leaning her
head upon a cushion, she softly subsided from excitement to repose. One,
entering the room a quarter of an hour afterwards, found her asleep.
When Shirley had been agitated, she generally took this natural
refreshment; it would come at her call.
The intruder paused in her unconscious presence, and said, "Miss
Keeldar."
Perhaps his voice harmonized with some dream into which she was passing.
It did not startle, it hardly roused her. Without opening her eyes, she
but turned her head a little, so that her cheek and profile, before
hidden by her arm, became visible. She looked rosy, happy, half smiling,
but her eyelashes were wet. She had wept in slumber; or perhaps, before
dropping asleep, a few natural tears had fallen after she had heard that
epithet. No man--no woman--is always strong, always able to bear up
against the unjust opinion, the vilifying word. Calumny, even from the
mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings. Shirley
looked like a child that had been naughty and punished, but was now
forgiven and at rest.
"Miss Keeldar," again said the voice. This time it woke her. She looked
up, and saw at her side Louis Moore--not close at her side, but
standing, with arrested step, two or three yards from her.
"O Mr. Moore!" she said. "I was afraid it was my uncle again: he and I
have quarrelled."
"Mr. Sympson should let you alone," was the reply. "Can he not see that
you are as yet far from strong?"
"I assure you he did not find me weak. I did not cry when he was here."
"He is about to evacuate Fieldhead--so he says. He is now giving orders
to his family. He has been in the schoolroom issuing commands in a
manner which, I suppose, was a continuation of that with which he has
harassed you."
"Are you and Henry to go?"
"I believe, as far as Henry is concerned, that was the tenor of his
scarcely intelligible directions; but he may change all to-morrow. He is
just in that mood when you cannot depend on his consistency for two
consecutive hours. I doubt whether he will leave you for weeks yet. To
myself he addressed some words which will require a little attention and
comment by-and-by, when I have time to bestow on them. At the moment he
came in I was busied with a note I had got from Mr. Yorke--so fully
busied that I cut short the interview with him somewhat abruptly. I left
him raving. Here is the note. I wish you to see it. It refers to my
brother Robert." And he looked at Shirley.
"I shall be glad to hear news of him. Is he coming home?"
"He is come. He is in Yorkshire. Mr. Yorke went yesterday to Stilbro' to
meet him."
"Mr. Moore, something is wrong----"
"Did my voice tremble? He is now at Briarmains, and I am going to see
him."
"What has occurred?"
"If you turn so pale I shall be sorry I have spoken. It might have been
worse. Robert is not dead, but much hurt."
"O sir, it is you who are pale. Sit down near me."
"Read the note. Let me open it."
Miss Keeldar read the note. It briefly signified that last night Robert
Moore had been shot at from behind the wall of Milldean plantation, at
the foot of the Brow; that he was wounded severely, but it was hoped not
fatally. Of the assassin, or assassins, nothing was known; they had