Shirley (72 page)

—
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 despised her. Despised her! It was unutterably sweet to feel myself at once near

her and above her—to be conscious of a natural right and power to sustain her, as a husband should

sustain his wife.

"I worship her perfections; but it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me, that nestle her to my heart, that fold her about with my love, and that for a most selfish but deeply-natural reason. These faults are the steps by which I mount to ascendency over her. If she rose a trimmed, artificial mound, without inequality, what vantage would she offer the foot? It is the natural hill, with its mossy breaks and hollows, whose slope invites ascent, whose summit it is pleasure to gain.

"To leave metaphor. It delights my eye to look on her. She suits me. If I were a king and she the housemaid that swept my palace-stairs, across all that space between us my eye would recognize her

qualities; a true pulse would beat for her in my heart, though an unspanned gulf made acquaintance

impossible. If I were a gentleman, and she waited on me as a servant, I could not help liking that Shirley. Take from her her education; take her ornaments, her sumptuous dress, all extrinsic advantages; take all grace, but such as the symmetry of her form renders inevitable; present her to me

at a cottage door, in a stuff gown; let her offer me there a draught of water, with that smile, with that warm good-will with which she now dispenses manorial hospitality—I should like her. I should wish

to stay an hour; I should linger to talk with that rustic. I should not feel as I
now
do; I should find in her nothing divine; but whenever I met the young peasant, it would be with pleasure; whenever I left

her, it would be with regret.

"How culpably careless in her to leave her desk open, where I know she has money! In the lock hang the keys of all her repositories, of her very jewel-casket. There is a purse in that little satin bag; I see the tassel of silver beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my brother Robert. All her

little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do, to rectify—a

theme for my tutor lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he does wrong—

and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!—a word suffices. Often I do no more than shake my head.

But the moment her
minois mutin
meets my eye, expostulatory words crowd to my lips. From a taciturn man I believe she would transform me into a talker. Whence comes the delight I take in that

talk? It puzzles myself sometimes. The more
crâne, malin, taquin
is her mood, consequently the clearer occasion she gives me for disapprobation, the more I seek her, the better I like her. She is never wilder than when equipped in her habit and hat, never less manageable than when she and Zoë

come in fiery from a race with the wind on the hills; and I confess it—to this mute page I may confess

it—I have waited an hour in the court for the chance of witnessing her return, and for the dearer chance of receiving her in my arms from the saddle. I have noticed (again it is to this page only I would make the remark) that she will never permit any man but myself to render her that assistance. I

have seen her politely decline Sir Philip Nunnely's aid. She is always mighty gentle with her young

baronet, mighty tender for his feelings, forsooth, and of his very thin-skinned
amour propre
. I have marked her haughtily reject Sam Wynne's. Now I know—my heart knows it, for it has felt it—that she

resigns herself to me unreluctantly. Is she conscious how my strength rejoices to serve her? I myself

am not her slave—I declare it—but my faculties gather to her beauty, like the genii to the glisten of

the lamp. All my knowledge, all my prudence, all my calm, and all my power stand in her presence

humbly waiting a task. How glad they are when a mandate comes! What joy they take in the toils she

assigns! Does she know it?

"I have called her careless. It is remarkable that her carelessness never compromises her refinement. Indeed, through this very loophole of character, the reality, depth, genuineness of that refinement may be ascertained. A whole garment sometimes covers meagreness and malformation;

through a rent sleeve a fair round arm may be revealed. I have seen and handled many of her possessions, because they are frequently astray. I never saw anything that did not proclaim the lady—

nothing sordid, nothing soiled. In one sense she is as scrupulous as, in another, she is unthinking. As a peasant girl, she would go ever trim and cleanly. Look at the pure kid of this little glove, at the fresh, unsullied satin of the bag.

"What a difference there is between S. and that pearl C. H.! Caroline, I fancy, is the soul of conscientious punctuality and nice exactitude. She would precisely suit the domestic habits of a certain fastidious kinsman of mine—so delicate, dexterous, quaint, quick, quiet—all done to a minute, all arranged to a strawbreadth. She would suit Robert. But what could
I
do with anything so nearly faultless?
She
is my equal, poor as myself. She is certainly pretty: a little Raffaelle head hers—

Raffaelle in feature, quite English in expression, all insular grace and purity; but where is there anything to alter, anything to endure, anything to reprimand, to be anxious about? There she is, a lily

of the valley, untinted, needing no tint. What change could improve her? What pencil dare to paint?

My
sweetheart, if I ever have one, must bear nearer affinity to the rose—a sweet, lively delight guarded with prickly peril.
My
wife, if I ever marry, must stir my great frame with a sting now and then; she must furnish use to her husband's vast mass of patience. I was not made so enduring to be

mated with a lamb; I should find more congenial responsibility in the charge of a young lioness or

leopardess. I like few things sweet but what are likewise pungent—few things bright but what are likewise hot. I like the summer day, whose sun makes fruit blush and corn blanch. Beauty is never so

beautiful as when, if I tease it, it wreathes back on me with spirit. Fascination is never so imperial as when, roused and half ireful, she threatens transformation to fierceness. I fear I should tire of the mute, monotonous innocence of the lamb; I should ere long feel as burdensome the nestling dove which never stirred in my bosom; but my patience would exult in stilling the flutterings and training

the energies of the restless merlin. In managing the wild instincts of the scarce manageable
bête fauve
my powers would revel.

"O my pupil! O Peri! too mutinous for heaven, too innocent for hell, never shall I do more than see, and worship, and wish for thee. Alas! knowing I could make thee happy, will it be my doom to

see thee possessed by those who have not that power?

"However kindly the hand, if it is feeble, it cannot bend Shirley; and she must be bent. It cannot curb her; and she must be curbed.

"Beware, Sir Philip Nunnely! I never see you walking or sitting at her side, and observe her lips compressed, or her brow knit, in resolute endurance of some trait of your character which she neither

admires nor likes, in determined toleration of some weakness she believes atoned for by a virtue, but

which annoys her despite that belief; I never mark the grave glow of her face, the unsmiling sparkle

of her eye, the slight recoil of her whole frame when you draw a little too near, and gaze a little too

expressively, and whisper a little too warmly—I never witness these things but I think of the fable of

Semele reversed.

"It is not the daughter of Cadmus I see, nor do I realize her fatal longing to look on Jove in the majesty of his god-head. It is a priest of Juno that stands before me, watching late and lone at a shrine in an Argive temple. For years of solitary ministry he has lived on dreams. There is divine madness

upon him. He loves the idol he serves, and prays day and night that his frenzy may be fed, and that the

Ox-eyed may smile on her votary. She has heard; she will be propitious. All Argos slumbers. The doors of the temple are shut; the priest waits at the altar.

"A shock of heaven and earth is felt—not by the slumbering city, only by that lonely watcher, brave and unshaken in his fanaticism. In the midst of silence, with no preluding sound, he is wrapped in sudden light. Through the roof, through the rent, wide-yawning, vast, white-blazing blue of heaven above, pours a wondrous descent, dread as the downrushing of stars. He has what he asked. Withdraw

—forbear to look—I am blinded. I hear in that fane an unspeakable sound. Would that I could not hear

it! I see an insufferable glory burning terribly between the pillars. Gods be merciful and quench it!

"A pious Argive enters to make an early offering in the cool dawn of morning. There was thunder

in the night; the bolt fell here. The shrine is shivered, the marble pavement round split and blackened.

Saturnia's statue rises chaste, grand, untouched; at her feet piled ashes lie pale. No priest remains; he who watched will be seen no more.

"There is the carriage! Let me lock up the desk and pocket the keys. She will be seeking them to-

morrow; she will have to come to me. I hear her: 'Mr. Moore, have you seen my keys?'

"So she will say, in her clear voice, speaking with reluctance, looking ashamed, conscious that this is the twentieth time of asking. I will tantalize her, keep her with me, expecting, doubting; and when I
do
restore them, it shall not be without a lecture. Here is the bag, too, and the purse; the glove—pen—

seal. She shall wring them all out of me slowly and separately—only by confession, penitence, entreaty. I never can touch her hand, or a ringlet of her head, or a ribbon of her dress, but I will make privileges for myself. Every feature of her face, her bright eyes, her lips, shall go through each change they know, for my pleasure—display each exquisite variety of glance and curve, to delight, thrill, perhaps more hopelessly to enchain me. If I must be her slave, I will not lose my freedom for

nothing."

He locked the desk, pocketed all the property, and went.

30

Chapter

RUSHEDGE—A CONFESSIONAL.

Everybody said it was high time for Mr. Moore to return home. All Briarfield wondered at his strange

absence, and Whinbury and Nunnely brought each its separate contribution of amazement.

Was it known why he stayed away? Yes. It was known twenty—forty times over, there being at least

forty plausible reasons adduced to account for the unaccountable circumstance. Business it was not

—
that
the gossips agreed. He had achieved the business on which he departed long ago. His four ringleaders he had soon scented out and run down. He had attended their trial, heard their conviction

and sentence, and seen them safely shipped prior to transportation.

This was known at Briarfield. The newspapers had reported it. The
Stilbro' Courier
had given every particular, with amplifications. None applauded his perseverance or hailed his success, though the mill-owners were glad of it, trusting that the terrors of law vindicated would henceforward paralyze

the sinister valour of disaffection. Disaffection, however, was still heard muttering to himself. He swore ominous oaths over the drugged beer of alehouses, and drank strange toasts in fiery British gin.

One report affirmed that Moore
dared
not come to Yorkshire; he knew his life was not worth an hour's purchase if he did.

"I'll tell him that," said Mr. Yorke, when his foreman mentioned the rumour; "and if
that
does not bring him home full gallop, nothing will."

Either that or some other motive prevailed at last to recall him. He announced to Joe Scott the day

he should arrive at Stilbro', desiring his hackney to be sent to the George for his accommodation; and

Joe Scott having informed Mr. Yorke, that gentleman made it in his way to meet him.

It was market-day. Moore arrived in time to take his usual place at the market dinner. As something

of a stranger, and as a man of note and action, the assembled manufacturers received him with a certain distinction. Some, who in public would scarcely have dared to acknowledge his acquaintance,