Shirley (85 page)

heard its rush—but not come. I would dally, wait, talk, and when impulse urged I would act. I am never in a hurry; I never was in a hurry in my whole life. Hasty people drink the nectar of existence

scalding hot; I taste it cool as dew. I proceeded: 'Apparently, Miss Keeldar, you are as little likely to marry as myself. I know you have refused three—nay, four—advantageous offers, and, I believe, a fifth. Have you rejected Sir Philip Nunnely?'

"I put this question suddenly and promptly.

"'Did you think I should take him?'

"'I thought you might.'

"'On what grounds, may I ask?'

"'Conformity of rank, age, pleasing contrast of temper—for
he
is mild and amiable—harmony of intellectual tastes.'

"'A beautiful sentence! Let us take it to pieces. "Conformity of rank." He is quite above me.

Compare my grange with his palace, if you please. I am disdained by his kith and kin. "Suitability of age." We were born in the same year; consequently he is still a boy, while I am a woman—ten years

his senior to all intents and purposes. "Contrast of temper." Mild and amiable, is he; I—what? Tell me.'

"'Sister of the spotted, bright, quick, fiery leopard.'

"'And you would mate me with a kid—the millennium being yet millions of centuries from mankind; being yet, indeed, an archangel high in the seventh heaven, uncommissioned to descend?

Unjust barbarian! "Harmony of intellectual tastes." He is fond of poetry, and I hate it——'

"'Do you? That is news.'

"'I absolutely shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony, indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as fragments of glass? and when did I betray a belief that those penny-beads were genuine brilliants?'

"'You might have the satisfaction of leading him to a higher standard, of improving his tastes.'

"'Leading and improving! teaching and tutoring! bearing and forbearing! Pah! my husband is not to

be my baby. I am not to set him his daily lesson and see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he is good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is bad. But it is like a tutor to talk of the

"satisfaction of teaching." I suppose
you
think it the finest employment in the world. I don't. I reject it.

Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or else we part.'

"'God knows it is needed!'

"'What do you mean by that, Mr. Moore?'

"'What I say. Improvement is imperatively needed.'

"'If you were a woman you would school
monsieur, votre mari
, charmingly. It would just suit you; schooling is your vocation.'

"'May I ask whether, in your present just and gentle mood, you mean to taunt me with being a tutor?'

"'Yes, bitterly; and with anything else you please—any defect of which you are painfully conscious.'

"'With being poor, for instance?'

"'Of course; that will sting you. You are sore about your poverty; you brood over that.'

"'With having nothing but a very plain person to offer the woman who may master my heart?'

"'Exactly. You have a habit of calling yourself plain. You are sensitive about the cut of your features because they are not quite on an Apollo pattern. You abase them more than is needful, in the faint hope

that others may say a word in their behalf—which won't happen. Your face is nothing to boast of, certainly—not a pretty line nor a pretty tint to be found therein.'

"'Compare it with your own.'

"'It looks like a god of Egypt—a great sand-buried stone head; or rather I will compare it to nothing so lofty. It looks like Tartar. You are my mastiff's cousin. I think you as much like him as a

man can be like a dog.'

"'Tartar is your dear companion. In summer, when you rise early, and run out into the fields to wet your feet with the dew, and freshen your cheek and uncurl your hair with the breeze, you always call

him to follow you. You call him sometimes with a whistle that you learned from me. In the solitude of

your wood, when you think nobody but Tartar is listening, you whistle the very tunes you imitated from my lips, or sing the very songs you have caught up by ear from my voice. I do not ask whence

flows the feeling which you pour into these songs, for I know it flows out of your heart, Miss Keeldar. In the winter evenings Tartar lies at your feet. You suffer him to rest his head on your perfumed lap; you let him couch on the borders of your satin raiment. His rough hide is familiar with

the contact of your hand. I once saw you kiss him on that snow-white beauty spot which stars his broad forehead. It is dangerous to say I am like Tartar; it suggests to me a claim to be treated like Tartar.'

"'Perhaps, sir, you can extort as much from your penniless and friendless young orphan girl, when

you find her.'

"'Oh could I find her such as I image her! Something to tame first, and teach afterwards; to break

in, and then to fondle. To lift the destitute proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over and then to be indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never indulged before; to see

her alternately irritated and subdued about twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient mother of

about a dozen children, only now and then lending little Louis a cordial cuff by way of paying the interest of the vast debt she owes his father. Oh' (I went on), 'my orphan girl would give me many a

kiss; she would watch on the threshold for my coming home of an evening; she would run into my

arms; she would keep my hearth as bright as she would make it warm. God bless the sweet idea! Find

her I must.'

"Her eyes emitted an eager flash, her lips opened; but she reclosed them, and impetuously turned

away.

"'Tell me, tell me where she is, Miss Keeldar!'

"Another movement, all haughtiness and fire and impulse.

"'I must know. You
can
tell me; you
shall
tell me.'

"'I
never will
.'

"She turned to leave me. Could I now let her part as she had always parted from me? No. I had gone

too far not to finish; I had come too near the end not to drive home to it. All the encumbrance of doubt, all the rubbish of indecision, must be removed at once, and the plain truth must be ascertained.

She must take her part, and tell me what it was; I must take mine and adhere to it.

"'A minute, madam,' I said, keeping my hand on the door-handle before I opened it. 'We have had a

long conversation this morning, but the last word has not been spoken yet. It is yours to speak it.'

"'May I pass?'

"'No; I guard the door. I would almost rather die than let you leave me just now, without speaking

the word I demand.'

"'What dare you expect me to say?'

"'What I am dying and perishing to hear; what I
must
and
will
hear; what you dare not now suppress.'

"'Mr. Moore, I hardly know what you mean. You are not like yourself.'

"I suppose I hardly was like my usual self, for I scared her—that I could see. It was right: she must be scared to be won.

"'You
do
know what I mean, and for the first time I stand before you
myself
. I have flung off the tutor, and beg to introduce you to the man. And remember, he is a gentleman.'

"She trembled. She put her hand to mine as if to remove it from the lock. She might as well have

tried to loosen, by her soft touch, metal welded to metal. She felt she was powerless, and receded; and

again she trembled.

"What change I underwent I cannot explain, but out of her emotion passed into me a new spirit. I

neither was crushed nor elated by her lands and gold; I thought not of them, cared not for them. They

were nothing—dross that could not dismay me. I saw only herself—her young beautiful form, the grace, the majesty, the modesty of her girlhood.

"'My pupil,' I said.

"'My master,' was the low answer.

"'I have a thing to tell you.'

"She waited with declined brow and ringlets drooped.

"'I have to tell you that for four years you have been growing into your tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare that you have bewitched me, in spite of sense, and experience,

and difference of station and estate. You have so looked, and spoken, and moved; so shown me your

faults and your virtues—beauties rather, they are hardly so stern as virtues—that I love you—love you with my life and strength. It is out now.'

"She sought what to say, but could not find a word. She tried to rally, but vainly. I passionately repeated that I loved her.

"'Well, Mr. Moore, what then?' was the answer I got, uttered in a tone that would have been petulant if it had not faltered.

"'Have you nothing to say to me? Have you no love for me?'

"'A little bit.'

"'I am not to be tortured. I will not even play at present.'

"'I don't want to play; I want to go.'

"'I wonder you dare speak of going at this moment.
You
go! What! with my heart in your hand, to lay it on your toilet and pierce it with your pins? From my presence you do not stir, out of my reach

you do not stray, till I receive a hostage—pledge for pledge—your heart for mine.'

"'The thing you want is mislaid—lost some time since. Let me go and seek it.'

"'Declare that it is where your keys often are—in my possession.'

"'You ought to know. And where are my keys, Mr. Moore? Indeed and truly I have lost them again;

and Mrs. Gill wants some money, and I have none, except this sixpence.'

"She took the coin out of her apron pocket, and showed it in her palm. I could have trifled with her, but it would not do; life and death were at stake. Mastering at once the sixpence and the hand that held it, I demanded, 'Am I to die without you, or am I to live for you?'

"'Do as you please. Far be it from me to dictate your choice.'

"'You shall tell me with your own lips whether you doom me to exile or call me to hope.'

"'Go; I can bear to be left.'

"'Perhaps I too
can
bear to leave you. But reply, Shirley, my pupil, my sovereign—reply.'

"'Die without me if you will; live for me if you dare.'

"'I am not afraid of you, my leopardess. I
dare
live for and with you, from this hour till my death.

Now, then, I have you. You are mine. I will never let you go. Wherever my home be, I have chosen my

wife. If I stay in England, in England you will stay; if I cross the Atlantic, you will cross it also. Our lives are riveted, our lots intertwined.'

"'And are we equal, then, sir? are we equal at last?'

"'You are younger, frailer, feebler, more ignorant than I.'

"'Will you be good to me, and never tyrannize?'

"'Will you let me breathe, and not bewilder me? You must not smile at present. The world swims

and changes round me. The sun is a dizzying scarlet blaze, the sky a violet vortex whirling over me.'

"I am a strong man, but I staggered as I spoke. All creation was exaggerated. Colour grew more vivid, motion more rapid, life itself more vital. I hardly saw her for a moment, but I heard her voice

—pitilessly sweet. She would not subdue one of her charms in compassion. Perhaps she did not know

what I felt.

"'You name me leopardess. Remember, the leopardess is tameless,' said she.

"'Tame or fierce, wild or subdued, you are
mine
.'

"'I am glad I know my keeper and am used to him. Only his voice will I follow; only his hand shall

manage me; only at his feet will I repose.'

"I took her back to her seat, and sat down by her side. I wanted to hear her speak again. I could never have enough of her voice and her words.

"'How much do you love me?' I asked.

"'Ah! you know. I will not gratify you—I will not flatter.'

"'I don't know half enough; my heart craves to be fed. If you knew how hungry and ferocious it is,

you would hasten to stay it with a kind word or two.'

"'Poor Tartar!' said she, touching and patting my hand—'poor fellow, stalwart friend, Shirley's pet and favourite, lie down!'

"'But I will not lie down till I am fed with one sweet word.'

"And at last she gave it.

"'Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don't care for life unless I may pass it at your side.'

"'Something more.'

"She gave me a change; it was not her way to offer the same dish twice.

"'Sir,' she said, starting up, 'at your peril you ever again name such sordid things as money, or poverty, or inequality. It will be absolutely dangerous to torment me with these maddening scruples. I

defy you to do it.'

"My face grew hot. I did once more wish I were not so poor or she were not so rich. She saw the

transient misery; and then, indeed, she caressed me. Blent with torment, I experienced rapture.

"'Mr. Moore,' said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest countenance, 'teach me and help me

to be good. I do not ask you to take off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property, but I ask you to share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your judgment is well balanced, your heart is kind, your principles are sound. I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always!'

"'So help me God, I will!'"

Yet again a passage from the blank book if you like, reader; if you don't like it, pass it over:—

"The Sympsons are gone, but not before discovery and explanation. My manner must have betrayed

something, or my looks. I was quiet, but I forgot to be guarded sometimes. I stayed longer in the room than usual; I could not bear to be out of her presence; I returned to it, and basked in it, like Tartar in the sun. If she left the oak parlour, instinctively I rose and left it too. She chid me for this procedure more than once. I did it with a vague, blundering idea of getting a word with her in the hall