Shirley (73 page)

lest a little of the hate and vengeance laid up in store for him should perchance have fallen on them, in private hailed him as in some sort their champion. When the wine had circulated, their respect would

have kindled to enthusiasm had not Moore's unshaken nonchalance held it in a damp, low,

smouldering state.

Mr. Yorke, the permanent president of these dinners, witnessed his young friend's bearing with exceeding complacency. If one thing could stir his temper or excite his contempt more than another, it

was to see a man befooled by flattery or elate with popularity. If one thing smoothed, soothed, and charmed him especially, it was the spectacle of a public character incapable of relishing his publicity

—
incapable
, I say. Disdain would but have incensed; it was indifference that appeased his rough spirit.

Robert, leaning back in his chair, quiet and almost surly, while the clothiers and blanket-makers vaunted his prowess and rehearsed his deeds—many of them interspersing their flatteries with coarse

invectives against the operative class—was a delectable sight for Mr. Yorke. His heart tingled with the

pleasing conviction that these gross eulogiums shamed Moore deeply, and made him half scorn himself and his work. On abuse, on reproach, on calumny, it is easy to smile; but painful indeed is the

panegyric of those we contemn. Often had Moore gazed with a brilliant countenance over howling crowds from a hostile hustings. He had breasted the storm of unpopularity with gallant bearing and

soul elate; but he drooped his head under the half-bred tradesmen's praise, and shrank chagrined before their congratulations.

Yorke could not help asking him how he liked his supporters, and whether he did not think they did

honour to his cause. "But it is a pity, lad," he added, "that you did not hang these four samples of the unwashed. If you had managed
that
feat, the gentry here would have riven the horses out of the coach, yoked to a score of asses, and drawn you into Stilbro' like a conquering general."

Moore soon forsook the wine, broke from the party, and took the road. In less than five minutes Mr. Yorke followed him. They rode out of Stilbro' together.

It was early to go home, but yet it was late in the day. The last ray of the sun had already faded from

the cloud-edges, and the October night was casting over the moorlands the shadow of her approach.

Mr. Yorke, moderately exhilarated with his moderate libations, and not displeased to see young Moore again in Yorkshire, and to have him for his comrade during the long ride home, took the discourse much to himself. He touched briefly, but scoffingly, on the trials and the conviction; he passed thence to the gossip of the neighbourhood, and ere long he attacked Moore on his own personal concerns.

"Bob, I believe you are worsted, and you deserve it. All was smooth. Fortune had fallen in love with you. She had decreed you the first prize in her wheel—twenty thousand pounds; she only required that

you should hold your hand out and take it. And what did you do? You called for a horse and rode a-

hunting to Warwickshire. Your sweetheart—Fortune, I mean—was perfectly indulgent. She said, 'I'll

excuse him; he's young.' She waited, like 'Patience on a monument,' till the chase was over and the vermin-prey run down. She expected you would come back then, and be a good lad. You might still

have had her first prize.

"It capped her beyond expression, and me too, to find that, instead of thundering home in a breakneck gallop and laying your assize laurels at her feet, you coolly took coach up to London.

What you have done there Satan knows; nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and sulked. Your face

was never lily fair, but it is olive green now. You're not as bonny as you were, man."

"And who is to have this prize you talk so much about?"

"Only a baronet; that is all. I have not a doubt in my own mind you've lost her. She will be Lady

Nunnely before Christmas."

"Hem! Quite probable."

"But she need not to have been. Fool of a lad! I swear you might have had her."

"By what token, Mr. Yorke?"

"By every token—by the light of her eyes, the red of her cheeks. Red they grew when your name

was mentioned, though of custom they are pale."

"My chance is quite over, I suppose?"

"It ought to be. But try; it is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip milk and water. And then he writes verses, they say—tags rhymes.
You
are above that, Bob, at all events."

"Would you advise me to propose, late as it is, Mr. Yorke—at the eleventh hour?"

"You can but make the experiment, Robert. If she has a fancy for you—and, on my conscience, I believe she has or had—she will forgive much. But, my lad, you are laughing. Is it at me? You had

better grin at your own perverseness. I see, however, you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth. You

have as sour a look at this moment as one need wish to see."

"I have so quarrelled with myself, Yorke. I have so kicked against the pricks, and struggled in a strait waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head by driving it against a harder wall."

"Ha! I'm glad to hear that. Sharp exercise yon! I hope it has done you good—ta'en some of the self-

conceit out of you?"

"Self-conceit? What is it? Self-respect, self-tolerance even, what are they? Do you sell the articles?

Do you know anybody who does? Give an indication. They would find in me a liberal chapman. I would part with my last guinea this minute to buy."

"Is it so with you, Robert? I find that spicy. I like a man to speak his mind. What has gone wrong?"

"The machinery of all my nature; the whole enginery of this human mill; the boiler, which I take to be the heart, is fit to burst."

"That suld be putten i' print; it's striking. It's almost blank verse. Ye'll be jingling into poetry just e'now. If the afflatus comes, give way, Robert. Never heed me; I'll bear it this whet [time]."

"Hideous, abhorrent, base blunder! You may commit in a moment what you will rue for years—

what life cannot cancel."

"Lad, go on. I call it pie, nuts, sugar-candy. I like the taste uncommonly. Go on. It will do you good to talk. The moor is before us now, and there is no life for many a mile round."

"I
will
talk. I am not ashamed to tell. There is a sort of wild cat in my breast, and I choose that you shall hear how it can yell."

"To me it is music. What grand voices you and Louis have! When Louis sings—tones off like a soft, deep bell—I've felt myself tremble again. The night is still. It listens. It is just leaning down to you, like a black priest to a blacker penitent. Confess, lad. Smooth naught down. Be candid as a convicted, justified, sanctified Methody at an experience meeting. Make yourself as wicked as Beelzebub. It will ease your mind."

"As mean as Mammon, you would say. Yorke, if I got off horseback and laid myself down across

the road, would you have the goodness to gallop over me, backwards and forwards, about twenty times?"

"Wi' all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a coroner's inquest."

"Hiram Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes sparkle radiantly when she

has found me out in a crowd; she has flushed up crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said,

'How do you do, Mr. Moore?'

"My name had a magical influence over her. When others uttered it she changed countenance—I know she did. She pronounced it herself in the most musical of her many musical tones. She was cordial to me; she took an interest in me; she was anxious about me; she wished me well; she sought,

she seized every opportunity to benefit me. I considered, paused, watched, weighed, wondered. I could

come to but one conclusion—this is love.

"I looked at her, Yorke. I saw in her youth and a species of beauty. I saw power in her. Her wealth offered me the redemption of my honour and my standing. I owed her gratitude. She had aided me substantially and effectually by a loan of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these things? Could

I believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her, and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn and leave

her? Young, graceful, gracious—my benefactress, attached to me, enamoured of me. I used to say so

to myself; dwell on the word; mouth it over and over again; swell over it with a pleasant, pompous

complacency, with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself, and unimpaired even by esteem for her; indeed I smiled in deep secrecy at her
naïveté
and simplicity in being the first to love, and to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a good heavy handle, Yorke; you can swing it about your

head and knock me out of the saddle, if you choose. I should rather relish a loundering whack."

"Tak patience, Robert, till the moon rises and I can see you. Speak plain out—did you love her or

not? I could like to know. I feel curious."

"Sir—sir—I say—she is very pretty, in her own style, and very attractive. She has a look, at times, of a thing made out of fire and air, at which I stand and marvel, without a thought of clasping and kissing it. I felt in her a powerful magnet to my interest and vanity. I never felt as if nature meant her to be my other and better self. When a question on that head rushed upon me, I flung it off, saying brutally I should be rich with her and ruined without her—vowing I would be practical, and not romantic."

"A very sensible resolve. What mischief came of it, Bob?"

"With this sensible resolve I walked up to Fieldhead one night last August. It was the very eve of my departure for Birmingham; for, you see, I wanted to secure Fortune's splendid prize. I had previously

dispatched a note requesting a private interview. I found her at home, and alone.

"She received me without embarrassment, for she thought I came on business.
I
was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly know how I got the operation over; but I went to work in a hard, firm fashion—frightful enough, I dare say. I sternly offered myself—my fine person—with my debts,

of course, as a settlement.

"It vexed me, it kindled my ire, to find that she neither blushed, trembled, nor looked down. She responded, 'I doubt whether I have understood you, Mr. Moore.'

"And I had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly as A B C, before she would

fully take it in. And then, what did she do? Instead of faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused silence (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice fast through the room, in the way that
she
only does, and no other woman, and ejaculated, 'God bless me!'

"Yorke, I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantelpiece; against it I leaned, and prepared for anything—everything. I knew my doom, and I knew myself. There was no misunderstanding her

aspect and voice. She stopped and looked at me.

"'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