Shirley

“‘Good morning, uncle,’ said she, addressing that personage, who paused on the threshold in a state of petrifaction.

“‘Have you been long downstairs, Miss Keeldar, and alone with Mr. Moore?’

“‘Yes, a very long time. We both came down early; it was scarcely light.’

“‘The proceeding is improper’

“‘It was at first, I was rather cross, and not civil; but you will perceive that we are now friends.’

“‘I perceive more than you would wish me to perceive.’

“‘Hardly, sir,’ said I; ‘we have no disguises. Will you permit me to intimate that any further observations you have to make may as well be addressed to me? Henceforward I stand between Miss Keeldar and all annoyance.’

“‘You! What have you to do with Miss Keeldar?’

“‘To protect, watch over, serve her.’

“‘You, sir – you, the tutor?’

“‘Not one word of insult, sir,’ interposed she; ‘not one syllable of disrespect to Mr. Moore in this house.’

“‘Do you take his part?’

“‘His part? oh yes!’

“She turned to me with a sudden fond movement, which I met by circling her with my arm. She and I both rose.

“‘Good Ged!’ was the cry from the morning-gown standing quivering at the door. Ged, I think, must be the cognomen of Mr. Sympson’s Lares. When hard pressed he always invokes this idol.

“‘Come forward, uncle; you shall hear all. – Tell him all, Louis.’

“‘I dare him to speak – the beggar! the knave! the specious hypocrite! the vile, insinuating, infamous menial! – Stand apart from my niece, sir. Let her go!’

“She clung to me with energy. ‘I am near my future husband,’ she said. ‘Who dares touch him or me?’

“‘Her husband!’ He raised and spread his hands. He dropped into a seat.

“‘A while ago you wanted much to know whom I meant to marry. My intention was then formed, but not mature for communication. Now it is ripe, sun-mellowed, perfect. Take the crimson peach – take Louis Moore!’

“‘But’ (savagely) ‘you shall not have him; he shall not have you.’

“‘I would die before I would have another. I would die if I might not have him.’

“He uttered words with which this page shall never be polluted.

“She turned white as death; she shook all over; she lost her strength. I laid her down on the sofa; just looked to ascertain that she had not fainted – of which, with a divine smile, she assured me. I kissed her; and then, if I were to perish, I cannot give a clear account of what happened in the course of the next five minutes. She has since – through tears, laughter, and trembling – told me that I turned terrible, and gave myself to the demon. She says I left her, made one bound across the room; that Mr. Sympson vanished through the door as if shot from a cannon. I also vanished, and she heard Mrs. Gill scream.

“Mrs. Gill was still screaming when I came to my senses. I was then in another apartment – the oak parlour, I think. I held Sympson before me crushed into a chair, and my hand was on his cravat. His eyes rolled in his head; I was strangling him, I think. The housekeeper stood wringing her hands, entreating me to desist. I desisted that moment, and felt at once as cool as stone. But I told Mrs. Gill to fetch the Red-House Inn chaise instantly, and informed Mr. Sympson he must depart from Fieldhead the instant it came. Though half frightened out of his wits, he declared he would not. Repeating the former order, I added a commission to fetch a constable. I said, ‘You shall go, by fair means or foul.’

“He threatened prosecution; I cared for nothing. I had stood over him once before, not quite so fiercely as now, but full as austerely. It was one night when burglars attempted the house at Sympson Grove, and in his wretched cowardice he would have given a vain alarm, without daring to offer defence. I had then been obliged to protect his family and his abode by mastering himself – and I had succeeded. I now remained with him till the chaise came. I marshalled him to it, he scolding all the way. He was terribly bewildered, as well as enraged. He would have resisted me, but knew not how. He called for his wife and daughters to come. I said they should follow him as soon as they could prepare. The smoke, the fume, the fret of his demeanour was inexpressible, but it was a fury incapable of producing a deed. That man, properly handled, must ever remain impotent. I know he will never touch me with the law. I know his wife, over whom he tyrannizes in trifles, guides him in matters of importance. I have long since earned her undying mother’s gratitude by my devotion to her boy. In some of Henry’s ailments I have nursed him – better, she said, than any woman could nurse. She will never forget that. She and her daughters quitted me today, in mute wrath and consternation; but she respects me. When Henry clung to my neck as I lifted him into the carriage and placed him by her side, when I arranged her own wrapping to make her warm, though she turned her head from me, I saw the tears start to her eyes. She will but the more zealously advocate my cause because she has left me in anger. I am glad of this – not for my own sake, but for that of my life and idol – my Shirley.”

Once again he writes, a week after – “I am now at Stilbro’. I have taken up my temporary abode with a friend – a professional man, in whose business I can be useful. Every day I ride over to Fieldhead. How long will it be before I can call that place my home, and its mistress mine? I am not easy, not tranquil; I am tantalized, sometimes tortured. To see her now, one would think she had never pressed her cheek to my shoulder, or clung to me with tenderness or trust. I feel unsafe; she renders me miserable. I am shunned when I visit her; she withdraws from my reach. Once this day I lifted her face, resolved to get a full look down her deep, dark eyes. Difficult to describe what I read there! Pantheress! beautiful forest-born! wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her chain; I see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her wild woods and pinings after virgin freedom. I wish Sympson would come again, and oblige her again to entwine her arms about me. I wish there was danger she should lose me, as there is risk I shall lose her. No; final loss I do not fear, but long delay.

“It is now night – midnight. I have spent the afternoon and evening at Fieldhead. Some hours ago she passed me, coming down the oak staircase to the hall. She did not know I was standing in the twilight, near the staircase window, looking at the frost-bright constellations. How closely she glided against the banisters! How shyly shone her large eyes upon me! How evanescent, fugitive, fitful she looked – slim and swift as a northern streamer!

“I followed her into the drawing room. Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone were both there; she has summoned them to bear her company awhile. In her white evening dress, with her long hair flowing full and wavy, with her noiseless step, her pale cheek, her eye full of night and lightning, she looked, I thought, spirit-like – a thing made of an element, the child of a breeze and a flame, the daughter of ray and raindrop – a thing never to be overtaken, arrested, fixed. I wished I could avoid following her with my gaze as she moved here and there, but it was impossible. I talked with the other ladies as well as I could, but still I looked at her. She was very silent; I think she never spoke to me – not even when she offered me tea. It happened that she was called out a minute by Mrs. Gill. I passed into the moonlit hall, with the design of getting a word as she returned; nor in this did I fail.

“‘Miss Keeldar, stay one instant,’ said I, meeting her.

“‘Why? the hall is too cold.’

“‘It is not cold for me; at my side it should not be cold for you.’

“‘But I shiver.’

“‘With fear, I believe. What makes you fear me? You are quiet and distant. Why?’

“‘I may well fear what looks like a great dark goblin meeting me in the moonlight.’

“‘Do not – do not pass! Stay with me awhile. Let us exchange a few quiet words. It is three days since I spoke to you alone. Such changes are cruel.’

“‘I have no wish to be cruel,’ she responded, softly enough. Indeed there was softness in her whole deportment – in her face, in her voice; but there was also reserve, and an air fleeting, evanishing, intangible.

“‘You certainly give me pain,’ said I. ‘It is hardly a week since you called me your future husband and treated me as such. Now I am once more the tutor for you. I am addressed as Mr. Moore and sir. Your lips have forgotten Louis.’

“‘No, Louis, no. It is an easy, liquid name – not soon forgotten.’

“‘Be cordial to Louis, then; approach him – let him approach.’

“‘I am cordial,’ said she, hovering aloof like a white shadow.

“‘Your voice is very sweet and very low,’ I answered, quietly advancing. ‘You seem subdued, but still startled.’

“‘No – quite calm, and afraid of nothing,’ she assured me.

“‘Of nothing but your votary.’

“I bent a knee to the flags at her feet.

“‘You see I am in a new world, Mr. Moore. I don’t know myself; I don’t know you. But rise. When you do so I feel troubled and disturbed.’

“I obeyed. It would not have suited me to retain that attitude long. I courted serenity and confidence for her, and not vainly. She trusted and clung to me again.

“‘Now, Shirley,’ I said, ‘you can conceive I am far from happy in my present uncertain, unsettled state.’

“‘Oh yes, you are happy!’ she cried hastily. ‘You don’t know how happy you are. Any change will be for the worse.’

“‘Happy or not, I cannot bear to go on so much longer. You are too generous to require it.’