THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
 FOR THE 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM
 
 THE UAWOItm EDITION 
 
 S H I K L E Y 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLOTTE \JJR O N T E 
 
 (CURRKR BELL) 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BT 
 
 MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 HARPER it BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
 
 THE BRONTE NOVELS 
 
 Haworth Edition 
 
 JANE EYRE 
 
 SHIRLEY 
 
 VILLETTE 
 
 THE PROFESSOR AND POEMS 
 
 WUTHERING HEIGHTS 
 
 TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL 
 
 MRS. GASKELL'S LIFE OF 
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 
 
 Prefaces by Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 Illustrated Crown 8vo 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS 
 ESTABLISHED 1817 
 
 Copyright, 1890, by HARPER i BKOTHMS. 
 
 Printed in ths United States of America 
 O-B
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 I. LEVITICAL 1 
 
 II. THE WAGGONS 16 
 
 III. MB. YORKE 34 
 
 IV. MR. YORKE (continued] 44 
 
 V. HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 57 
 
 VI. CORIOLANUS 75 
 
 VII. THE CURATES AT TEA 98 
 
 VIII. NOAH AND MOSES 128 
 
 IX. BRIARMAINS 146 
 
 X. OLD MAIDS 171 
 
 XI. FlELDHEAD 191 
 
 XII. SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 211 
 
 XIII. FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 235 
 
 XIV. SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS . 204 
 XV. MR. DONNE'S EXODUS 280 
 
 XVI. WHITSUNTIDE 296 
 
 XVII. THE SCHOOL-FEAST 309 
 
 XVIII. WHICH THE GENTEEL READER is RECOM- 
 MENDED TO SKIP, Low PERSONS BEING 
 
 HERE INTRODUCED .... 327
 
 VI 
 
 SHIRLEY 
 
 CH1FTKK MOB 
 
 XIX. A SUMMER NIGHT 340 
 
 XX. TO-MORROW 3,58 
 
 XXI. MRS. PRYOR 373 
 
 XXII. Two LIVES 393 
 
 XXIII. AN EVENING OUT 404 
 
 XXIV. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 427 
 XXV. THE WEST WIND BLOWS 449 
 
 XXVI. OLD COPY-BOOKS 458 
 
 XXVII. THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING .... 479 
 
 XXVIII. PHCEBE 506 
 
 XXIX. Louis MOORE 530 
 
 XXX. RUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL .... 540 
 
 XXXI. UNCLE AND NIECE 557 
 
 XXXII. THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD- 
 NYMPH 576 
 
 XXXIII. MARTIN'S TACTICS 589 
 
 XXXIV. CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION. RE- 
 
 MARKABLE INSTANCE OF Pious PER- 
 SEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF 
 
 RELIGIOUS DUTIES 602 
 
 XXXV. WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROG- 
 RESS, BUT NOT MUCH 611 
 
 XXXVI. WRITTEN' IN THE SCHOOLROOM . . . 626 
 
 XXXVII. THE WINDING-UP . 651
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST 
 
 EDITION Page xxvii 
 
 Views of places described in the work, reproduced from photo- 
 graphs taken by Mr. W. R. Bland of Duffield, Derby, 
 in conjunction ivith Mr. C. Barrow-Keene of Derby : 
 RED HOUSE, GOMEKSAL (front} (Briar- 
 mains) Frontispiece 
 
 HARTSHEAD CHURCH (Nunnely Church) To face page 4 
 RED HOUSE, GOMERSAL (from the gar- 
 den) (Briarmains) " 150 
 
 OAKWELL HALL, NEAR BIRSTALL (the 
 
 approach) (Ficldhead) " 192 
 
 OAKWELL HALL, NEAR BIRSTALL (gen- 
 eral view) (Ficldhead) " 196 
 
 INTERIOR OF OAKWELL HALL (Fieldhead) " 200 
 
 OAKWELL HALL (interior) (Fieldhead) . " 206 
 
 OAKWELL HALL (front) (Ficldhead) . " 212 
 
 OAKWELL HALL (the garden) (Fieldhead) " 294 
 
 BIRSTALL CHURCH (Kriarfidd Church) . " 606 
 
 The tower only remain* of the church described.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ' SHIRLEY* was published in the autumn of 1849, two 
 years after the appearance of ' Jane Eyre.' No book 
 was ever written under more pathetic, more torturing 
 conditions. It was begun very soon after the publica- 
 tion of ' Jane Eyre,' amid the first rushings of the blast 
 of fame ; it was continued all through those miserable 
 and humiliating months of 1848, when the presence of 
 Branwell at the parsonage was a perpetual shadow on 
 his sisters' lives, when they never knew what a day 
 might bring forth and would lie trembling and wake- 
 ful at night, listening for sounds from their father's 
 room where Branwell slept Branwell who had often 
 threatened them in the delirium of an opium-eater and 
 a drunkard that either his father or he would be dead 
 by the morning. 
 
 'Wuthering Heights' and * Agnes Grey' had ap- 
 peared in December 1847, a few weeks after 'Jane 
 Eyre.' During 1848 they seem to have been generally 
 regarded as earlier efforts from the pen of the writer of 
 ' Jane Eyre ' ; and it was this misconception, in fact, 
 which led to the first hurried visit of Charlotte and 
 Anne to London in July, when Charlotte put into the
 
 x SHIRLEY 
 
 hands of her astonished publisher the letter from him- 
 self, addressed to Currer Bell, which had reached lia- 
 worth Parsonage the day before, and so, nine months 
 after its publication, disclosed the secret of 'Jane 
 Eyre.' 
 
 In these first interviews with her publisher thence- 
 forward her friend also she was able to tell him that 
 4 Shirley,' her second story, was well advanced. The 
 second volume, indeed, was nearly finished by Septem- 
 ber, when Bran well died. The end of the year, or the 
 beginning of the next, should have seen its publication. 
 The poor sisters may well have hoped, now that Bran- 
 well's vices and sufferings distracted them no more, to 
 pass into quieter and happier hours, hours of home peace 
 and fruitful work. 
 
 Alas ! one needs only to put down the bare dates and 
 facts of the six months that followed, to realise the havoc 
 that they made at once in Charlotte's heart, and in the 
 history of English genius. Emily, the strong, indomi- 
 table Emily who had borne with Bran well throughout 
 more patiently, more indulgently than the other two- 
 developed tuberculosis, the family scourge, at the very 
 moment of Bran well's last struggle, and she left the 
 house only once after his death. The tragic, the unbear- 
 able story of those three months, during which Emily 
 fought with death and would let no one help her, has 
 been often told. The memory of them haunts any visitor 
 to the little parsonage to-day. As one mounts the stone 
 staircase, witli one's hand on the old rail, suddenly ghosts 
 are there. Emily mounts before one, clinging to the 
 rail, dragging her wasted frame from step to step. The 
 laboured breath sounds once more through the small,
 
 xi 
 
 quiet house, and the sisters in the dining-room below 
 turn to each other in misery as they hear it. For it is 
 Emily's spirit that still holds the parsonage ; amid all 
 the memories of the house hers, fierce, passionate, in- 
 scrutable is still pre-eminent. For she is the mystery. 
 The others ' abide our question.' We can know Charlotte 
 and understand poor Anne ; we shall never either know 
 or understand Emily. 
 
 For three months she battled for her life, in her own 
 cruel way. The sisters, -vho saw her perishing, were 
 helpless. She would accept nothing at their hands, and 
 when the last whisper came ' If you send for a doctor 
 I will see him now' it was too late. The suffering of 
 the elder sister has left many piteous traces in her let- 
 ters, and in 'Shirley ' itself. 'Moments so dark as these 
 I have never known,' she writes on the very morning 
 of Emily's death 'I think Emily seems the nearest 
 thing to my heart in the world.' And when Emily 
 is gone, and Anne also has set her feet upon the road 
 that leads to the last shadow, Charlotte's poor heart is 
 crushed between longing for the dead and fear for the 
 living. She talks in March 1849 three months after 
 Emily's death, two months before Anne's of the 
 'intense attachment' with which 'our hearts clung to 
 Emily,' and then she adds : ' she was scarce buried when 
 Anne's health failed her decline is gradual and fluc- 
 tuating, but its nature is not doubtful.' Yet in these 
 spring days, between the two deaths, she has taken up 
 her pen again. And she is cheered by the praise given 
 to the early volumes of ' Shirley ' by Mr. Smith and Mr. 
 Williams. 'Oh! if Anne were well,' she cries, 'if the 
 void death has left were a little closed up, if the dreary
 
 xii SHIRLEY 
 
 word nevermore would cease sounding in my ears, I think 
 I could yet do something.' 
 
 But May comes, and Charlotte takes Anne to Scar- 
 borough, thinks no more of her book hangs day by 
 day, and hour by hour, on tne last looks and words of 
 this gentle creature, this ardent Christian, who yet is of 
 the indomitable Broiite clay like the rest of them, and 
 leaves behind her no record of soft and pious imagin- 
 ings, but a warning tale of drunkenness and profligacy, 
 steadily carried out through all its bitter truth. By the 
 end of May, Anne is in her grave, and Charlotte stays 
 on a while by the sea, waiting for the mere passage of 
 the days that may give her strength to go home and 
 take up her work again. 
 
 By the beginning of July, however, she had returned 
 to Haworth. She writes to her friend in words that 
 paint the very heart of grief : 
 
 ' All received me with an affection that should have 
 consoled. The dogs were in strange ecstasy. I am cer- 
 tain they regarded me as the harbinger of others. The 
 dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those 
 who had been so long absent were not far behind. 
 
 'I left papa soon, and went into the dining-room: 
 I shut the door I tried to be glad that I was come 
 home. . . But ... I felt that the house was all silent 
 the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the 
 three were laid in what narrow dark dwellings never 
 more to reappear on earth. . . . The agony that was to be 
 undergone, and was not to be avoided, came on. I under- 
 went it, and passed a dreary evening and night, and a 
 mournful morrow. To-day I am better.' 
 
 During the weeks that followed she resolutely set
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 herself to finish 'Shirley,' and some months later she 
 beurs passionate testimony to the supporting, stimulating 
 power of her great gift. ' The faculty of imagination,' 
 she says to Mr. Williams, 'lifted me when I was sinking, 
 three months ago (i.e. immediately after the death of 
 Anne); its active exercise has kept my head above wa- 
 ter since.' 
 
 It was at the 24th chapter of her story that she began 
 again ; it was with the description of Caroline's wrestle 
 with death, Caroline's discovery of her mother, Caroline's 
 rescue from the destroyer at the hands of Tenderness 
 and Hope, that the poor forsaken sister filled her first 
 lonely hours, cheating her grief by dreams, by ' making 
 out,' as she had often consoled the physical and moral 
 trouble of her girlhood. Mrs. Pryor's agony of nursing 
 and of dread is Charlotte's. 
 
 Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. 
 Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the 
 forehead ; the supplicant may cry for mercy with that sound- 
 less voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. 
 ' Spare my beloved/ it may implore. ' Heal my life's life. 
 Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my 
 whole nature. God of heaven bend hear be clement !' 
 And after this cry and strife, the sun may rise and see him 
 worsted. That opening morn which used to salute him 
 with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may 
 breathe as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour 
 and heat have quitted ' Oh ! I have had a suffering night. 
 This morning I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. 
 Dreams I am unused to have troubled me.* 
 
 Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and 
 sees a new and strange moulding of the familiar features,
 
 xiv SHIRLEY 
 
 feels at once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, 
 knows that it is God's will his idol shall be broken, and 
 bends his head, and subdues his soul to the sentence he 
 cannot avert, and scarce can bear. 
 
 Happy Mrs. Pryor ! She was still praying, unconscious 
 that the summer sun hung above the hills, when her child 
 softly woke in her arms. No piteous unconscious moaning 
 sound which so wastes onr strength that, even if we have 
 sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable fears sweeps away 
 the oath, preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy 
 followed. The first words spoken were not those of one 
 becoming estranged from this world, and already permitted 
 to stray at times into realms foreign to the living. Caroline 
 evidently remembered with clearness what had happened. 
 
 Thus did poor Charlotte, dreaming alone, make use of 
 her own pain for the imagining of joy ; thus, sitting in 
 her ' lonely room the clock ticking loud in a still house,' 
 did she comfort her own desolation by this exquisite and 
 tender picture of mother and daughter reunited, made 
 known to each other, after years of separation and under 
 the shadow of death. Caroline Helstone shall not be 
 left in darkness and forlorn! Charlotte will bring her 
 to the light place her in loving shelter. 
 
 Mrs. Pryor held Caroline to her bosom ; she cradled her 
 in her arms ; she rocked her softly, as if lulling a young 
 child to sleep. 
 
 ' My mother ! My own mother !' The offspring nestled 
 to the parent : that parent, feeling the endearment and hear- 
 ing the appeal, gathered her closer still. She covered her 
 with noiseless kisses : she murmured love over her, like a 
 cushat fostering its young.
 
 INTRODUCTION iv 
 
 Then from the ecstasy of mother and child, the ' maker' 
 passed on to the love-story of Shirley and Louis Moore 
 Shirley who stood in Charlotte's mind, as she herself 
 tells us, for Emity. Emily lay under the floor of the 
 old church, a stone's throw from Charlotte, as she wrote ; 
 and Charlotte, looking up at each passing sound, would 
 be clutched anew, hour after hour, by the thought of 
 Emily's pain, Emily's death-anguish, the waste of Emily's 
 genius. But as the small writing covered the advancing 
 page, Emily lived again grown rich, beautiful, happy. 
 Her dog, old Tartar, rambled beside her; the glow of 
 health is on her cheek ; she has a lover, and a wedding- 
 dress ; length of days and of joy both are secured to 
 her. One may say what one will of these last chapters 
 of ' Shirley.' Louis Moore is no favourite with any 
 reader of the Brontes ; his courting of Shirley has noth- 
 ing to do with the realities either of love or of the male 
 human being; his very creation involves a certain dull- 
 ing and weakening of Charlotte's faculty a certain 
 morbidness also. But those who recall the circumstances 
 of 'Shirley's' composition will for ever forgive him; 
 they will remember how tired and trembling was the 
 hand that drew him ; how he stood in Charlotte's sad 
 fancy for protecting strength, and passionate homage, 
 for all that Emily would never know, and all that the 
 woman in Charlotte, at that desolate moment of her life, 
 most yearned to know.
 
 xvi SHIRLEY 
 
 II 
 
 There can be no question, however, that 'Shirley,' 
 from a literary point of view, suffered seriously from the 
 tension and distraction of mind amid which it was com- 
 posed. It was neither the unity, the agreeable old- 
 fashioned unity of 'Jane Eyre,' nor, as a whole, the 
 passionate truth of ' Villette.' In the very centre of the 
 book, the story suddenly gives way. The love-story of 
 Kobert and Caroline has somehow to be delayed ; and 
 one divines that the writer --for whom life has tem- 
 porarily made impossible that fiery concentration of soul, 
 in which a year or two later she wrote ' Villette ' hesi- 
 tates as to the love-story of Shirley and Louis. She does 
 not see her way ; she gropes a little ; and that angel of 
 imagination, to which she pays so many a glowing tribute 
 in the course of her work, seems to droop its wing beside 
 her, and move listlessly through two or three chapters, 
 which do little more than mark time till the divine breath 
 returns. These are the chapters headed ' Shirley seeks 
 to be saved by works,' ' Whitsuntide,' * The School Feast.' 
 They are really scene -shifting chapters while the new 
 act is preparing ; and the interval is long and the ma- 
 chinery a little clumsy. ' Villette' also passes from one 
 motive to another, from Lucy's first love for Graham 
 Bretton, to her second love for Paul Eraanuel. But in. 
 ' Villette ' the transition is made with admirable swift- 
 ness. As Graham Bretton recedes, parri passu, Paul 
 Emanuel advances. The two themes are interwoven ; 
 the book never ceases to be an organism ; there is no 
 faltering in the writer, no uncertainty in the touch.
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 Invention full and warm flows through it in a never 
 slackening tide ; there are few or none of the cold and 
 superfluous passages that disfigure the middle region of 
 
 * Shirley.' 
 
 Signs of the same momentary failure in the artist's 
 fusing and vivifying power are numerous also in the 
 style of ' Shirley,' as compared with the style of ' Yil- 
 lette.' Commonplaces writ large; a tendency to pro- 
 duce pages of ' copy,' pages that any ' descriptive report- 
 er' could do as well ; an Extravagance which is not power, 
 but rather a kind of womanish violence ; and a humour 
 j\lso that sometimes leaves the scene on which it is turned 
 colder and more laboured than it found it these are 
 some of the faults that attach especially to the central 
 scenes of ' Shirley,' to the many pages devoted to Shirley's 
 charitable plans, to the school-treat, to the curates, to the 
 old maids. Take these sentences, for instance, from the 
 account of Miss Ainley : ' Sincerity is never ludicrous ; it 
 is always respectable. Whether truth be it religious or 
 moral truth speak eloquently and in well -chosen lan- 
 guage or not, its voice should be heard with reverence. 
 Let those who cannot nicely, and with certainty, discern 
 the difference between those of hypocrisy and those of 
 sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they should 
 have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong 
 place and commit impiety when they think they are 
 achieving wit.' 
 
 A great creative artist, an artist capable of writing a 
 
 * Villette' does not drop into surplusage of this kind, un- 
 less there is some sterilising and hostile influence over- 
 shadowing her. In her happy hour she will fall upon 
 sentences like this and sweep them from the page, or
 
 xviii SHIRLEY 
 
 rather she will never conceive them. Humble truth, 
 modest piety, the scorner to be scorned no need then 
 to talk or prate about them. She sees them in act as 
 they live, and move, and walk ; and she records the 
 vision not any personal opinion about them. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be argued, and with truth, that 
 even these slacker and more diffuse chapters of the story 
 have a real and abiding interest for the student of Eng- 
 lish manners that this clerical, middle-class, country 
 life was intimately known to Charlotte Bronte, and that 
 the portraits of Mr. Helstone, Cyril Hall, the Curates, 
 and the rest, have at least an historical interest. And 
 indeed the matter, the subject, is rich enough ; it is 
 the matter of Jane Austen, of 'Middlemareh,' and the 
 'Scenes from Clerical Life,' of Trollope and Mrs. Gaskell, 
 of half the eminent and most of the readable novels of 
 English life. Charlotte Bronte presents it with force 
 and knowledge, often with bursts of poetic or satiric ob- 
 servation, but without either the humour or the charm 
 that other English hands have been able to give it. This 
 country and clerical life, though as a human being she 
 was part of it, was not her subject in literature ; let any- 
 one compare the relative failure of 'Shirley' with the 
 unwavering power and mastery of 'Villette.' It was 
 in the play of personal passion, set amid the foreign 
 scenes of 'Villette' scenes that stirred her curiosity, 
 her wrath, her fancy, as novelty and change must al- 
 ways stir the poetic, as distinguished from the critical
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 or humorous genius, that Charlotte at last found her 
 best, her crowning opportunity. 
 
 The men, for instance, of * Shirley,' on their first ap- 
 pearance roused a protest among readers and reviewers 
 that can only be repeated now. Among them Mr. Hel- 
 stone makes, on the whole, the best impression. Miss 
 Bronte drew him from experience, or at least from a 
 germ of reality sufficient to give life and persuasiveness 
 to the creation that sprang from it. Mr. Robersou, of 
 Heald's Hall, the indomitable fighting parson of the 
 thirties, who was the original of Helstone, little knew 
 to whom he was preaching, when at the consecration of 
 a church near Haworth in 1826 he numbered among his 
 hearers a child of ten years old, small, sharp-faced, with 
 bright dreamy eyes. ' I never saw him but that once,' 
 Miss Bronte said later to Mr. Williams. But he was 
 known to her father; his character and exploits made 
 an impression in her neighbourhood ; she heard much of 
 him, and probably his truculent Tory virtues raised him 
 to hero -height in the fancy of an infant worshipper of 
 Wellington and hater of Lord Grey. This was not much 
 foundation, but it was enough. Helstone has life and 
 truth ; his hardness or violence, his courtesies and his 
 scorns, his rare tendernesses, his unconquerable reserves, 
 his smaller habits and gestures are finely studied, finely 
 rendered. But he alone and Martin Yorke have any 
 convincing veracious quality among the men of the book. 
 Mr. Yorke also was studied from life, but the writer has 
 reproduced only the incongruities and oddities of the 
 character, not the unity of the man. Robert Moore is 
 ingeniously imagined and often interesting. But at the 
 critical moment of the book the cloud of sorrow and be-
 
 XT SHIRLEY 
 
 wilderraent that descended on the mind of the writer, 
 dulling nerve and vision, blurs him also, so that he seems 
 to dissolve and break up, to be no longer a man and an 
 entity. 
 
 And Louis Moore! When her friendly critics in Corn- 
 hill, Mr. Williams and Mr. Taylor, sent her during the 
 progress of the book which they were allowed to see 
 in manuscript some 'complaints' of her heroes, Char- 
 lotte answered in much depression, that her critics were 
 probably justified. ' When I write about women I am 
 sure of my ground in the other case I am not so sure.' 
 Anrl once or twice, in meeting criticisms on 'Jane E}Te' 
 or 'Shirley,' she says with perfect frankness that it may 
 all be very true. She has seen too little of society ; 
 known too little of men. Yet all the time she had with- 
 in her that store of passionate and complete observation, 
 whence, later on, Paul Eraanuel was to rise and have his 
 being. And she was by no means meek in her general 
 estimate of the power of women to describe and pene- 
 trate men in fiction. There is a passage in ' Shirley ' 
 where Miss Keeldar, after pouring scorn on some of 
 the well-known heroines of men's novels, maintains, 
 with warmth, that in fiction women read men more 
 truly than men are able to read women ; and one hears 
 through her animated talk the voice of Charlotte her- 
 self. 
 
 That Charlotte Bronte, under adequate stimulus, could 
 draw a living man with truth, humour and variety, Paul 
 Emanuel is there to testify. No single atom of true ex- 
 perience was ever lost upon her genius. But her shyness; 
 and silence allowed her too little of this experience, and 
 in the pure play of imagination she was inferior, in deal.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxl 
 
 ing with character, to her sister Emily. Emily knew 
 less of men personally than Charlotte. But she had no 
 illusions about them, and Charlotte had many. Emily is 
 the true creator, using the most limited material in the 
 puissant, detached impersonal way that belongs only to 
 the highest gifts the way of Shakespeare. Charlotte 
 is often parochial, womanish, and morbid in her imagina- 
 tion of men and their relation to women ; Emily who has 
 known two men only, her father and her brother, and 
 derives all other knowledge of the sex from books, from 
 Tabby's talk in the kitchen, from the forms and features 
 she passes in the village street, or on the moors Emily 
 can create a Heathcliff, a Hareton Earnshaw, a Joseph, 
 an Edgar Linton, with equal force, passion, and indiffer- 
 ence. All of them up to a certain point, owing to the 
 fact that she knows nothing of certain ground-truths of 
 life, are equally false ; but beyond that point all have 
 the same magnificent, careless truth of imagination. She 
 never bowed before her creatures, in a sort of personal 
 subjection to them, as Charlotte did. 
 
 Again, nothing is more curious than to compare Char- 
 lotte Bronte's conceptions of Rochester and the two 
 Moores, her painting of the relations between these heroes 
 and the women of the piece, with the ideas and concep- 
 tions of George Sand in almost all her earlier stories. 
 To Jane Eyre, Rochester is ' my master ' from first to 
 last; Louis Moore is the tutor and the tyrant even in 
 love-making; Paul Emanuel, for all his foibles and tem- 
 pers that make him so welcome and so real, is still in 
 relation to the woman he loves, the captor, the teacher, 
 the breaker-in. And there is plenty of evidence in Miss 
 Bronte's letters, and in what is known of her married life,
 
 xxii SHIRLEY 
 
 to show that this, in fact, was her own personal ideal. 
 She had battled with the world, and she dreamed of 
 rest ; she had been forced to exercise her own will with 
 so strong and unceasing an effort, that the thought of 
 dropping the tension for ever, of handing all judgment, 
 all choice, over to another's will, became delight ; and, 
 last and most important, what she did not know she 
 glorified. But George Sand, alas! knew too much, and 
 knew too well. No schoolroom imaginations are possible 
 to her. The men she creates are handled with a large 
 indulgence, half maternal, half poetic, that may turn to 
 irony or to reproach, never to the mere woman's self- 
 surrender. In general, as M. Faguet says, 'elle aime les 
 types de femmes energiques et d'hommes faibles,' and 
 this preference is the unconscious reflection of her own 
 personal history. In her various love affairs she had 
 always found herself in the end the better man; she had 
 shaken herself free from fettering claims because the 
 artist in her was much stronger than the woman, and 
 the man of the present, seen in his actuality, had come 
 to seem to her but a poor creature. She dreamed of a 
 man of the future, and a marriage of the future. Mean- 
 while, the men she imagines and describes in so large a 
 number of her novels, the relations she draws between 
 them and the women they love, betray her own secret 
 consciousness of power and ascendency. Hence Lelia 
 and Stenio, Edrne and Mauprat, Andre, Simon, and 
 many more. 
 
 The personal contrast, indeed, between the two writers, 
 the two women, can hardly be conceived too sharply. We 
 shall realise it a little, perhaps, if we try to imagine 
 George Sand, after her early successes, and in the first
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 glow of fame, marrying a country curate, without a tinge 
 of letters, who encouraged his wife to give up the prac- 
 tice of novel-writing, and in return * often found a little 
 work for her to do ' in his study or the parish ; if we 
 endeavour to think of her as submitting without a mur- 
 mur, and finding in the quiet happiness of the simplest 
 domestic life reward enough for the suppression of her 
 gift and the taming of her soul. 
 
 IV 
 
 On the other hand in compensation could George 
 Sand have imagined or drawn a Caroline Helstone? In 
 all her work, did she ever penetrate as close to the ' very 
 pulse of the machine' as Charlotte Bronte has done in 
 this picture of Caroline? 1 think not. For delicacy, poe- 
 try, divination, charm, Caroline stands supreme among 
 the women of Miss Bronte's gallery. She is as true as 
 Lucy Snowe, but infinitely more delightful ; she has the 
 same flower-like purity and fragrance as Frances in the 
 4 Professor,' but she is more tangible, more varied ; she 
 can love with the same intensity as 'Jane Eyre,' but to 
 intensity she adds an therial and tender grace that 
 Jane must do without. The exquisite quality in her she 
 shares indeed with Paulina in ' Villette'; but Paulina is 
 a mere sketch compared to her. From the moment when 
 in her ' soft bloom ' she first enters the Moores' sitting- 
 room, to the final scene when Robert graciously rewards 
 her faith and affection with a heart far below her deserts, 
 she is all woman and all love. It is conceivable that she, 
 being what she is, should have felt no jealousy of Shirley;
 
 xxiv SHIRLEY 
 
 that she should have drooped without complaining; that 
 she should have preferred rather to die than hate ; to slip 
 out of the struggle rather than make a selfish claim. Yet 
 she is no mere bundle of virtues; hers is no insipid or 
 eclectic goodness like that of Thackeray's Lauras and 
 Amelias. What fortitude and courage even in her despair 
 what tenderness in her relation to her new-found 
 mother what daring in the dove, when the heart and 
 its rights are to be upheld ! 
 
 'Love a crime ! No, Shirley: love is a divine virtue 
 obtrusiveness is a crime ; forwardness is a crime ; and both 
 disgust : but love ! no purest angel need blnsh to love ! 
 And when I see or hear either man or woman oonple shame 
 with love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations 
 debased. . . .' 
 
 ' You sacrifice three-fourths of the world, Caroline.* 
 
 ' They are cold they are cowardly they are stupid, on 
 the subject, Shirley ! They never loved they never were 
 loved !' 
 
 ' Thou art right, Lina ! And in their dense ignorance 
 they blaspheme living fire, seraph -brought from a divine 
 altar.' 
 
 * They confound it with sparks mounting from Tophet !' 
 
 Shirley Keeldar, too, is full of charm, though, as a con- 
 ception, she has hardly the roundness, the full and deli- 
 cate truth of Caroline. But the two complete each other, 
 and Charlotte Bronte has expressed in the picture of 
 Shirley that wilder and more romantic element of her 
 own being, which found a little later far richer and 
 stronger utterance in ' Yillette.' Caroline, Shirley, Mrs. 
 Pry or delicacy, wildness, family affection these in-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 deed are the three aspects of Charlotte's personality, 
 Charlotte's genius. So that they are children of her 
 own heart's blood, spirits born of her own essence, and 
 warm with her own life. 
 
 Thus again we return once more to the central claim, 
 the redeeming spell of all Charlotte Bronte's work 
 which lies, not so much in the thing written, to speak 
 in paradoxes, as in the temper and heart of the writer. 
 If ' Shirley,' wherever the women of the story are chiefly 
 concerned, is richer even than ' Jane Eyre' in poetry and 
 unexpectedness, in a sort of fresh and sparkling charm 
 like that of a moor in sunshine, it is because Charlotte 
 Bronte herself has grown and mellowed in the interval ; 
 because she has thought more, felt more, trembled still 
 more deeply under the pain and beauty of the world. 
 Untoward circumstance indeed makes 'Shirley' less 
 than a masterpiece, distracts the thinking brain and 
 patient hand, is the parent here and there of blurs and 
 inequalities. But this is, so to speak, an accident. Grief 
 and weariness of spirit dim the clear eyes, or mar the ut- 
 terance of the story-teller from time to time. But the 
 steady growth of genius is there all the same. ' Shirley ' 
 is not so good a stor}', not so remarkable an achievement 
 as ' Jane Eyre,' but it contains none the less the promise 
 and potency of higher things than 'Jane Eyre' of the 
 brilliant, the imperishable ' Villette.' 
 
 MARY A. WAED.
 
 Facsimile of the Title-page of the First Edition 
 
 SHIRLEY. 
 
 
 
 BY 
 CURRER BELL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "JANE EYRE." 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILI* 
 
 1849.
 
 SHIRLEY 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 LEVITICAL 
 
 OP late years, an abundant shower of curates has fallen 
 upon the north of England : they lie very thick on the hills ; 
 every parish has one or more of them ; they are young enough 
 to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. 
 But not of late years are we about to speak ; we are going 
 back to the beginning of this century : late years- present 
 years are dusty, sun-burnt, hot, arid; we will evade the 
 noon, forget it in siesta, pass the mid-day in slumber, and 
 dream of dawn. 
 
 If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a 
 romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more 
 mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and 
 reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melo- 
 drama ? Calm your expectations ; reduce them to a lowly 
 standard. Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you ; 
 something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who 
 have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise 
 and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed 
 that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps 
 towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved 
 that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a 
 Catholic ay, even an Anglo-Catholic might eat on Good 
 Friday in Passion Week ; it shall be cold lentils and vinegar
 
 2 SH1BLEY 
 
 without oil ; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, 
 and no roast lamb. 
 
 Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has 
 fallen upon the north of England ; but in eighteen-hundred- 
 eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended : curates 
 were scarce then : there was no Pastoral Aid no Additional 
 Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to worn-out old 
 rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to 
 pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. 
 The present successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey 
 and tools of the Propaganda, were at that time being hatched 
 under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regeneration by nursery- 
 baptism in wash-hand-basins. You could not have guessed 
 by looking at any one of them that the Italian-ironed double 
 frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a pre-ordained, 
 specially sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or 
 St. John ; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its 
 long night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter 
 cruelly to exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely 
 to. nonplus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a 
 pulpit the shirt-like raiment which had never before waved 
 higher than the reading-desk. 
 
 Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates : 
 the precious plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain 
 favoured district in the West Biding of Yorkshire could 
 boast three rods of Aaron blossoming within a circuit of 
 twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into this 
 neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward 
 into the little parlour there they are at dinner. Allow me 
 to introduce them to you : Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury ; 
 Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield ; Mr. Sweeting, curate of 
 Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being the 
 habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne 
 has kindly invited his brethren to regale with him. You and 
 I will join the party, see what is to be seen, and hear what is 
 to be heard. At present, however, they are only eating ; 
 and while they eat we will talk aside.
 
 LEVITICAL 3 
 
 These gentlemen are in the bloom of youth ; they possess 
 all the activity of that interesting age an activity which 
 their moping old vicars would fain turn into the channel of 
 their pastoral duties, often expressing a wish to see it ex- 
 pended in a diligent superintendence of the schools, and in 
 frequent visits to the sick of their respective parishes. But 
 the youthful Levites feel this to be dull work ; they prefer 
 lavishing their energies on a course of proceeding, which, 
 though to other eyes it appear more heavy with ennui, more 
 cursed with monotony, than the toil of the weaver at his 
 loom, seems to yield them an unfailing supply of enjoyment 
 and occupation. 
 
 I allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst 
 themselves, to and from their respective lodgings : not a 
 round but a triangle of visits, which they keep up all the 
 year through, in winter, spring, summer, and autumn. 
 Season and weather make no difference ; with unintelligible 
 zeal they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, 
 to go and dine, or drink tea, or sup with each other. What 
 attracts them, it would be difficult to say. It is not friend- 
 ship ; for whenever they meet they quarrel. It is not 
 religion ; the thing is never named amongst them : theology 
 they may discuss occasionally, but piety never. It is not 
 the love of eating and drinking ; each might have as good a 
 joint and pudding, tea as potent, and toast as succulent, at 
 his own lodgings, as is served to him at his brother's. Mrs. 
 Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs. Whipp their respective land- 
 ladies affirm that ' it is just for nought else but to give folk 
 trouble.' By ' folk ' the good ladies of course mean them- 
 selves ; for indeed they are kept in a continual ' fry ' by this 
 system of mutual invasion. 
 
 Mr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner ; 
 Mrs. Gale waits on them, but a spavk of the hot kitchen fire 
 is in her eye. She considers that the privilege of inviting a 
 friend to a meal occasionally, without additional charge (a 
 privilege included in the terms on which she lets her 
 lodgings), has been quite sufficiently exercised of late. The
 
 1 SHIKLEY 
 
 present week is yet but at Thursday, and on Monday, Mr. 
 Malone, the curate of Briarfield, came to breakfast and 
 stayed dinner ; on Tuesday, Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting 
 of Nunnely, came to tea, remained to supper, occupied the 
 spare bed, and favoured her with their company to breakfast on 
 Wednesday morning ; now, on Thursday, they are both here 
 at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all night. 
 ' C'en est trop,' she would say, if she could speak French. 
 
 Mr. Sweeting is mincing the slice of roast-beef on his 
 plate, and complaining that it is very tough ; Mr. Donne 
 says the beer is flat. Ay ! that is the worst of it : if they 
 would only be civil, Mrs. Gale wouldn't mind it so much ; 
 if they would only seem satisfied with what they get, she 
 wouldn't care, but ' these young parsons is so high and so 
 scornful, they set everybody beneath their " fit : " they treat 
 her with less than civility, just because she doesn't keep a 
 servant, but does the work of the house herself, as her mother 
 did afore her : then they are always speaking against York- 
 shire ways and Yorkshire folk,' and by that very token Mrs. 
 Gale does not believe one of them to be a real gentleman, or 
 come of gentle kin. ' The old parsons is worth the whole 
 lump of college lads ; they know what belangs to good 
 manners, and is kind to high and low.' 
 
 ' More bread ! ' cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, 
 though prolonged but to utter two syllables, proclaims him 
 at once a native of the land of shamrocks and potatoes. 
 Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of the other 
 two : but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built 
 personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as 
 genuinely national : not the Milesian face not Daniel 
 O'Connell's style, but the high-featured, North-American- 
 Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a certain class of the 
 Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look, better suited 
 to the owner of an estate of slaves, than to the landlord of a 
 free peasantry. Mr. Malone's father termed himself a 
 gentleman : he was poor and in debt, and besottedly 
 arrogant ; and his son was like him.
 
 LEVITICAL 5 
 
 Mrs. Gale offered the loaf. 
 
 ' Out it, woman,' said her guest ; and the ' woman ' cut 
 it accordingly. Had she fpllowed her inclinations, she would 
 have cut the parson also ; her Yorkshire soul revolted abso- 
 lutely from his manner of command. 
 
 The curates had good appetites, and though the beef 
 was ' tough,' they ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, 
 too, a tolerable allowance of the ' flat beer,' while a dish of 
 Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of vegetables, disappeared 
 like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, received dis- 
 tinguished marks of their attention ; and a ' spice-cake,' 
 which followed by w r ay of dessert, vanished like a vision, 
 and was no more found. Its elegy was chanted in the 
 kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's son and heir, a youth of 
 six summers ; he had reckoned upon the reversion thereof, 
 and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he 
 lifted up his voice and wept sore. 
 
 The curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine ; a 
 liquor of unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. 
 Malone, indeed, would much rather have had whisky ; but 
 Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep the beverage. 
 While they sipped, they argued ; not on politics, nor on 
 philosophy, nor on literature these topics were now as ever 
 totally without interest for them not even on theology, 
 practical or doctrinal ; but on minute points of ecclesiastical 
 discipline, frivolities which seemed empty as bubbles to all 
 save themselves. Mr. Malone, who contrived to secure two 
 glasses of wine, when his brethren contented themselves 
 with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion ; that 
 is he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring 
 t jne, and laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy. 
 
 Each of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone 
 had a stock of jokes at their service, which he was accus- 
 tomed to serve out regularly on convivial occasions like the 
 present, seldom varying his wit ; for which, indeed, there 
 was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider himself 
 monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought.
 
 6 SHIRLEY 
 
 Mr. Donne, he favoured with hints about his extreme meagre- 
 ness, allusions to his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a 
 certain threadbare chocolate surtout, which that gentleman 
 was accustomed to sport whenever it rained, or seemed 
 likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney 
 phrases, and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own 
 property, and certainly deserving of remark for the elegance 
 and finish they communicated to his style. 
 
 Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature he was a 
 little man, a mere boy in height and breadth compared with 
 the athletic Malone rallied on his musical accomplish- 
 ments he played the flute and sang hymns like a seraph 
 (some young ladies of his parish thought), sneered at as 
 ' the lady's pet,' teased about his mamma and sisters ; for 
 whom poor Mr. Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of 
 whom he was foolish enough now and then to speak in the 
 presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose anatomy the 
 bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted. 
 
 The victims met these attacks each in his own way : Mr. 
 Donne with a stilted self-complacency, and half-sullen 
 phlegm, the sole props of his otherwise somewhat rickety 
 dignity ; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference of a light, easy 
 disposition, which never professed to have any dignity to 
 maintain. 
 
 When Malone's raillery became rather too offensive, 
 which it soon did, they joined in an attempt to turn the 
 tables on him, by asking him how many boys had shouted 
 ' Irish Peter ! ' after him as he came along the road that day 
 (Malone's name was Peter the Rev. Peter Augustus 
 Malone) ; requesting to be informed whether it was the 
 mode in Ireland for clergymen to carry loaded pistols in 
 their pockets, and a shillelagh in their hands, when they 
 made pastoral visits ; inquiring the signification of such 
 words as vele, firrum, helium, storrum (so Mr. Malone in- 
 variably pronounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing 
 such other methods of retaliation as the innate refinement 
 of their minds suggested.
 
 LEVITICAL 7 
 
 This, of course, would not do. Malone, being neither 
 good-natured nor phlegmatic, was presently in a towering 
 passion. He vociferated, gesticulated : Donne and Sweeting 
 laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and snobs at the very 
 top pitch of his high Celtic voice ; they taunted him with 
 being the native of a conquered land. He menaced rebellion 
 in the name of his ' counthry,' vented bitter hatred against 
 English rule ; they spoke of rags, beggary, and pestilence. 
 The little parlour was in an uproar ; you would have thought 
 a duel must follow such virulent abuse ; it seemed a wonder 
 that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not take alarm at the noise, and 
 send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were 
 accustomed to such demonstrations; they well knew that 
 the curates never dined or took tea together without a little 
 exercise of the sort, and were quite easy as to consequences ; 
 knowing that these clerical quarrels were as harmless as 
 they were noisy ; that they resulted in nothing ; and that, 
 on whatever terms the curates might part to-night, they 
 would be sure to meet the best friends in the world to-morrow 
 morning. 
 
 As the worthy pair were sitting by their kitchen fire, 
 listening to the repeated and sonorous contact of Malone's 
 fist with the mahogany plane of the parlour-table, and to the 
 consequent start and jingle of decanters and glasses following 
 each assault, to the mocking laughter of the allied English 
 disputants, and the stuttering declamation of the isolated 
 Hibernian, -as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the outer 
 door-step, and the knocker quivered to a sharp appeal. 
 
 Mr. Gale went and opened. 
 
 ' Whom have you up-stairs in the parlour ? ' asked a 
 voice ; a rather remarkable voice, nasal in tone, abrupt in 
 utterance. 
 
 ' Oh ! Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir ? I could hardly see 
 you for the darkness ; it is so soon dark now. Will you 
 walk in, sir ? ' 
 
 ' I want to know first whether it is worth my while walk- 
 ing in. Whom have you up-stairs ? '
 
 8 SHIELEY 
 
 ' The curates, sir ! ' 
 
 'What! all of them!' 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' Been dining here ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' That will do.' 
 
 With these words a person entered a middle-aged 
 man, in black. He walked straight across the kitchen to 
 an inner door, opened it, inclined his head forward, and 
 stood listening. There was something to listen to, for the 
 noise above was just then louder than ever. 
 
 ' Hey I ' he ejaculated to himself ; then turning to Mr. 
 Gale ' Have you often this sort of work ? ' 
 
 Mr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent 
 to the clergy. 
 
 ' They're young, you know, sir they're young,' said he, 
 deprecatingly. 
 
 ' Young ! They want caning. Bad boys bad boys ! and 
 if you were a Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good 
 Churchman, they'd do the like they'd expose themselves : 
 but I'll ' 
 
 By way of finish to this sentence, he passed through 
 the inner door, drew it after him, and mounted the stair. 
 Again he listened a few minutes when he arrived at the 
 upper room. Making entrance without warning, he stood 
 before the curates. 
 
 And they were silent ; they were transfixed ; and so was 
 the invader. He a personage short of stature, but straight 
 of port, and bearing on broad shoulders a hawk's head, beak, 
 and eye, the whole surmounted by a Rehoboam, or shovel- 
 hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to lift or 
 remove before the presence in which he then stood he folded 
 his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends if 
 friends they were much at his leisure. 
 
 ' What ! ' he began, delivering his words in a voice no 
 longer nasal, but deep --more than deep a voice made pur- 
 posely hollow and cavernous : ' What ! has the miracle of
 
 LEVITICAL 9 
 
 Pentecost been renewed ? Have the cloven tongues come 
 down again ? Where are they ? The sound filled the whole 
 house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full 
 action : Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in 
 Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and 
 Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of 
 Libya about Gyrene, strangers of Borne, Jews and proselytes, 
 Cretes and Arabians ; every one of these must have had its 
 representative in this room two minutes since.' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone,' began Mr. Donne ; 
 1 take a seat, pray, sir. Have a glass of wine ? ' 
 
 His civilities received no answer : the falcon in the black 
 coat proceeded : ' What do I talk about the gift of tongues ? 
 Gift, indeed ! I mistook the chapter, and book, and testament : 
 Gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the city of Jerusalem for 
 the plain of Shinar. It was no gift, but the confusion of 
 tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. You, apostles ? 
 What ! you three ? Certainly not : three presumptuous 
 Babylonish masons neither more nor less ! ' 
 
 ' I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat 
 together over a glass of wine after a friendly dinner : settling 
 the Dissenters ! ' 
 
 ' Oh 1 settling the Dissenters were you ? Was Malone 
 settling the Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like 
 settling his co-apostles. You were quarrelling together; 
 making almost as much noise you three alone as Moses 
 Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers, are 
 making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they 
 are in the thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is it is 
 yours, Malone.' 
 
 ' Mine ! sir ? ' 
 
 1 Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you 
 came, and would be quiet if you were gone. I wish when 
 you crossed the Channel you had left your Irish habits 
 behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here : the pro- 
 ceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and 
 mountain district in Connaught will, in a decent English
 
 10 SHIRLEY 
 
 pariah, bring disgrace on those who indulge in them, and, 
 what is far worse, on the sacred institution of which they are 
 merely the humble appendages.' 
 
 There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentle- 
 man's manner of rebuking these youths ; though it was not, 
 perhaps, quite the dignity most appropriate to the occasion. 
 Mr. Helstone standing straight as a ramrod looking keen 
 as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat, black coat, and 
 gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his sub- 
 alterns, than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the 
 faith. Gospel mildness apostolic benignity, never seemed 
 to have breathed their influence over that keen brown visage ; 
 but firmness had fixed the features, and sagacity had carved 
 her own lines about them. 
 
 'I met Supplehough,' he continued, 'plodding through 
 the mud this wet night, going to preach at Milldean opposi- 
 tion shop. As I told you, I heard Barraclough bellowing in 
 the midst of a conventicle like a possessed bull ; and I find 
 you, gentlemen, tarrying over your half -pint of muddy port- 
 wine, and scolding like angry old women. No wonder 
 Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a 
 day which he did a fortnight since ; no wonder Barra- 
 clough, scamp and hypocrite as he is, should attract all the 
 weaver-girls in their flowers and ribbons, to witness how 
 much harder are his knuckles than the wooden brim of his 
 tub ; as little wonder that you, when you are left to your- 
 selves, without your rectors myself, and Hall, and Boultby 
 to back you, should too often perform the holy service of 
 our church to bare walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse 
 to the clerk, and the organist, and the beadle. But enough 
 of the subject : I came to see Malone I have an errand 
 unto thee, O captain ! ' 
 
 ' What is it ? ' inquired Malone, discontentedly ; ' there 
 can be no funeral to take at this time of day.' 
 
 1 Have you any arms about you ? ' 
 
 ' Arms, sir ? yes, and legs : ' and he advanced the 
 mighty members,
 
 LEVITICAL 11 
 
 ' Bah ! weapons, I mean.' 
 
 ' I have the pistols you gave me yourself ; I never part 
 with them : I lay them ready cocked on a chair by my bed- 
 side at night. I have my blackthorn.' 
 
 ' Very good. Will you go to Hollow's-mill ? ' 
 
 ' What is stirring at Hollow's-mill ? ' 
 
 4 Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be ; but Moore is alone 
 there : he has sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro' ; 
 there are only two women left about the place. It would be 
 a nice opportunity for any of his well-wishers to pay him a 
 visit, if they knew how straight the path was made before 
 them.' 
 
 ' I am none of his well-wishers, sir : I don't care for 
 him.' 
 
 ' Soh ! Malone, you are afraid.' 
 
 ' You know me better than that. If I really thought 
 there was a chance of a row, I would go : but Moore is a 
 strange, shy man, whom I never pretend to understand; 
 and for the sake of his sweet company only, I would not stir 
 a step.' 
 
 ' But there is a chance of a row ; if a positive riot does 
 not take place of which, indeed, I see no signs yet it is 
 unlikely this night will pass quite tranquilly. You know 
 Moore has resolved to have the new machinery, and he 
 expects two waggon-loads of frames and shears from Stilbro' 
 this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men, 
 are gone to fetch them.' 
 
 'They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, 
 sir.' 
 
 ' Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody : some one, 
 however, he must have, if it were only to bear evidence in 
 case anything should happen. I call him very careless. 
 He sits in the counting-house with the shutters unclosed ; 
 he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the 
 hollow, down Fieldhead-lane, among the plantations, just as 
 if he were the darling of the neighbourhood, or being, as 
 he is, its detestation bore a "charmed life" as they say in
 
 12 SHIKLEY 
 
 talebooks. He takes no warning from the fate of Pearson, 
 nor from that of Armitage shot, one in his own house and 
 the other on the moor.' 
 
 ' But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions 
 too,' interposed Mr. Sweeting ; ' and I think he would if he 
 heard what I heard the other day.' 
 
 ' What did you hear, Davy ? ' 
 
 ' You know Mike Hartley, sir ? ' 
 
 ' The Antinomian weaver. Yes.' 
 
 ' When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, 
 he generally winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell 
 Mr. Hall a piece of his mind about his sermons, to denounce 
 the horrible tendency of his doctrine of works, and warn him 
 that he and all his hearers are sitting in outer darkness.' 
 
 ' Well, that has nothing to do with Moore.' 
 
 ' Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin 
 and Leveller, sir.' 
 
 ' I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always 
 running on regicide. Mike is not unacquainted with history, 
 and it is rich to hear him going over the list of tyrants of 
 whom, as he says, " the revenger of blood has obtained satis- 
 faction." The fellow exults strangely in murder done on 
 crowned heads, or on any head for political reasons. I have 
 already heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer 
 hankering after Moore: is that what you allude to, 
 Sweeting ? ' 
 
 1 You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike 
 has no personal hatred of Moore ; Mike says he even likes 
 to talk to him, and run after him, but he has a hankering 
 that Moore should be made an example of : he was extolling 
 him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with the 
 most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms 
 Moore should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet 
 savour. Is Mike Hartley in his right mind, do you think, 
 sir ? ' inquired Sweeting, simply. 
 
 ' Can't tell, Davy : he may be crazed or he may be only 
 crafty or, perhaps, a little of both.'
 
 LEVITICAL 13 
 
 ' He talks of seeing visions, sir.' 
 
 ' Ay ! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He 
 came just when I was going to bed, last Friday night, to 
 describe one that had been revealed to him in Nunnely Park 
 that very afternoon.' 
 
 ' Tell it, sir what was it ? ' urged Sweeting. 
 
 ' Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of Wonder in thy 
 cranium ; Malone, you see, has none ; neither murders nor 
 visions interest him : see what a big vacant Saph he looks at 
 this moment.' 
 
 1 Saph ! Who was Saph, sir ? ' 
 
 ' I thought you would not know : you may find it out ; it 
 is biblical. I know nothing more of him than his name and 
 race ; but from a boy upwards, I have always attached a 
 personality to Saph. Depend on it he was honest, heavy 
 and luckless; he met his end at Gob, by the hand of 
 Sibbechai.' 
 
 ' But the vision, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and 
 Malone yawning ; so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out 
 of work, like many others, unfortunately ; Mr. Grame, Sir 
 Philip Nunnely's steward, gave him a job about the priory : 
 according to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather late 
 in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he 
 thought was a band at a distance, bugles, fifes, and the 
 sound of a trumpet ; it came from the forest, and he wondered 
 that there should be music there. He looked up : all amongst 
 the trees he saw moving objects, red, like poppies, or white, 
 like May-blossom ; the wood was full of them, they poured 
 out and filled the park. He then perceived they were 
 soldiers thousands and tens of thousands ; but they made 
 no more noise than a swarm of midges on a summer even- 
 ing. They formed in order, he affirmed, and marched, regi- 
 ment after regiment, across the park : he followed them to 
 Nunnely Common ; the music still played soft and distant. 
 On the common he watched them go through a number of 
 evolutions, a man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and
 
 14 SHIELEY 
 
 directed them ; they extended, he declared, over fifty acres ; 
 they were in sight half an hour ; then they marched away 
 quite silently : the whole time he heard neither voice nor 
 tread nothing but the faint music playing a solemn 
 march.' 
 
 ' Where did they go, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them ; they seemed 
 passing Fieldhead, when a column of smoke, such as might 
 be vomited by a park of artillery, spread noiseless over the 
 fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he said, blue and 
 dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again 
 for the soldiers, but they were vanished ; he saw them no 
 more. Mike, like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed 
 the vision, but gave the interpretation thereof : it signifies, he 
 intimated, bloodshed and civil conflict.' 
 
 ' Do you credit it, sir ? ' asked Sweeting. 
 
 ' Do you, Davy ? But come, Malone, why are you not 
 off? 
 
 ' I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore 
 yourself : you like this kind of thing.' 
 
 ' So I should have done, had I not unfortunately happened 
 to engage Boultby to sup with me on his way home from the 
 Bible Society meeting at Nunnely. I promised to send you 
 as my substitute ; for which, by-the-by, he did not thank 
 me : he would much rather have had me than you, Peter. 
 Should there be any real need of help, I shall join you : the 
 mill-bell will give warning. Meantime, go ; unless (turning 
 suddenly to Messrs. Sweeting and Donne) unless Davy 
 Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers going. What do you say, 
 gentlemen? The commission is an honourable one, not 
 without the seasoning of a little real peril ; for the country 
 is in a queer state, as you all know, and Moore and his mill, 
 and his machinery, are held in sufficient odium. There are 
 chivalric sentiments, there is high-beating courage under 
 those waistcoats of yours, I doubt not. Perhaps I am too 
 partial to my favourite, Peter; little David shall be the 
 champion, or spotless Joseph. Malone, you are but a great
 
 LEVITICAL 15 
 
 floundering Saul after all, good only to lend your armour : 
 out with your fire-arms fetch your shillelagh ; it is there in 
 the corner.' 
 
 With a significant grin, Malone produced his pistols, 
 offering one to each of his brethren. They were not readily 
 seized on : with graceful modesty, each gentleman retired a 
 step from the presented weapon. 
 
 ' I never touch them : I never did touch anything of the 
 kind,' said Mr. Donne. 
 
 ' I am almost a stranger to Mr. Moore,' murmured 
 Sweeting. 
 
 ' If you never touched a pistol, try the feel of it now, great 
 satrap of Egypt. As to the little minstrel, he probably prefers 
 encountering the Philistines with no other weapon than his 
 flute. Get their hats, Peter ; they'll both of 'em go.' 
 
 ' No, sir ; no, Mr. Helstone ; my mother wouldn't like it,' 
 pleaded Sweeting. 
 
 ' And I make it a rule never to get mixed up in affairs of 
 the kind,' observed Donne. 
 
 Helstone smiled sardonically ; Malone laughed a horse- 
 laugh. He then replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, 
 and saying that ' he never felt more in tune for a shindy in 
 his life, and that he wished a score of greasy cloth-dressers 
 might beat up Moore's quarters that night,' he made his exit ; 
 clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the house 
 shake with the bang of the front-door behind him.
 
 CHAPTEB II 
 
 THE WAGGONS 
 
 THE evening was pitch-dark : star and moon were quenched 
 in grey rain-clouds gray they would have been by day, by 
 night they looked sable. Malone was not a man given to 
 close observation of Nature ; her changes passed, for the 
 most part, unnoticed by him : he could walk miles on the 
 most varying April day, and never see the beautiful dallying 
 of earth and heaven ; never mark when a sunbeam kissed 
 the hill-tops, making them smile clear in green light, or 
 when a shower wept over them, hiding their crests with the 
 low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He did noti 
 therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared a 
 muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the 
 east, the furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous 
 lurid shimmer on the horizon with the same sky on an 
 unclouded frosty night. He did not trouble himself to ask 
 where the constellations and the planets were gone, or to 
 regret the ' black-blue ' serenity of the air-ocean which those 
 white islets stud ; and which another ocean, of heavier and 
 denser element, now rolled below and concealed. He just 
 doggedly pursued his way, leaning a little forward as he walked, 
 and wearing his hat on the back of his head, as his Irish 
 manner was. ' Tramp, tramp,' he went along the causeway, 
 where the road boasted the privilege of such an accommo- 
 dation ; ' splash, splash,' through the mire-filled cart-ruts, 
 where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked 
 but for certain land-marks : the spire of Briarfield church ; 
 further on, the lights of ' Eedhouse. 1 This was an inn ; and
 
 THE WAGGONS 17 
 
 when he reached it, the glow of a fire through a half -curtained 
 window, a vision of glasses on a round table, and of revellers 
 on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate from 
 his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky- 
 and-water : in a strange place, he would instantly have 
 realized the dream ; but the company assembled in that 
 kitchen were Mr. Helstone's own parishioners ; they all 
 knew him. He sighed, and passed on. 
 
 The high-road was now to be quitted, as the remaining 
 distance to Hollow's-mill might be considerably reduced by a 
 short cut across fields. These fields were level and monoto- 
 nous ; Malone took a direct course through them, jumping 
 hedge and wall. He passed but one building here, and that 
 seemed large and hall-like, though irregular : you could see 
 a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick, 
 lofty stack of chimneys : there were some trees behind it. 
 It was dark ; not a candle shone from any window ; it was 
 absolutely still : the rain running from the eaves, and the 
 rather wild, but very low whistle of the wind round the 
 chimneys and through the boughs, were the sole sounds in 
 its neighbourhood. 
 
 This building passed, the fields, hitherto flat, declined in 
 a rapid descent, : evidently a vale lay below, through which 
 you could hear the water run. One light glimmered in the 
 depth : for that beacon Malone steered. 
 
 He came to a little white house you could see it was 
 white even through this dense darkness and knocked at the 
 door. A fresh-faced servant opened it ; by the candle she 
 held was revealed a narrow passage, terminating in a narrow 
 stair. Two doors covered with crimson baize, a strip of 
 crimson carpet down the steps, contrasted with light-coloured 
 walls and white floor, made the little interior look clear and 
 fresh. 
 
 ' Mr. Moore is at home, I suppose ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir, but he is not in.' 
 
 ' Not in ! Where is he then ? '
 
 18 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' At the mill in the counting-house.' 
 
 Here one of the crimson doors opened. 
 
 ' Are the waggons come, Sarah ? ' asked a female voice, 
 and a female head at the same time was apparent. It might 
 not be the head of a goddess indeed a screw of curl-paper 
 on each side the temples quite forbade that supposition but 
 neither was it the head of a Gorgon ; yet Malone seemed to 
 take it in the latter light. Big as he was, he shrank bashfully 
 back into the rain at the view thereof ; and saying, ' I'll go 
 to him,' hurried in seeming trepidation down a short lane, 
 across an obscure yard, towards a huge black mill. 
 
 The work -hours were over ; the ' hands ' were gone ; the 
 machinery was at rest ; the mill shut up. Malone walked 
 round it ; somewhere in its great sooty flank he found another 
 chink of light ; he knocked at another door, using for the 
 purpose the thick end of his shillelagh, with which he beat 
 a rousing tattoo. A key turned ; the door unclosed. 
 
 ' Is it Joe Scott ? What news of the waggons, Joe ? ' 
 
 ' No it's myself. Mr. Helstone would send me.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Mr. Malone.' The voice in uttering this name had 
 the slightest possible cadence of disappointment. After a 
 moment's pause, it continued, politely, but a little formally : 
 ' I beg you will come in, Mr. Malone. I regret extremely 
 Mr. Helstone should have thought it necessary to trouble you 
 so far ; there was no necessity : I told him so ; and on 
 such a night but walk forwards.' 
 
 Through a dark apartment, of aspect undistinguishable, 
 Malone followed the speaker into a light and bright room 
 within : very light and bright indeed it seemed to eyes which, 
 for the last hour, had been striving to penetrate the double 
 darkness of night and fog ; but except for its excellent fire, 
 and for a lamp of elegant design and vivid lustre burning on 
 a table, it was a very plain place. The boarded floor was 
 carpetless ; the three or four stiff-backed green-painted 
 chairs seemed once to have furnished the kitchen of some 
 farm-house ; a desk of strong, solid formation, the table 
 aforesaid, and some framed sheets on the stone-coloured
 
 THE WAGGONS 19 
 
 walls, bearing plans for building, for gardening, designs of 
 machinery, &c., completed the furniture of the place. 
 
 Plain as it was, it seemed to satisfy Malone ; who, when 
 he had removed and hung up his wet surtout and hat, drew 
 one of the rheumatic-looking chairs to the hearth, and set 
 his knees almost within the bars of the red grate. 
 
 ' Comfortable quarters you have here, Mr. Moore ; and all 
 snug to yourself.' 
 
 'Yes; but my sister would be glad to see you, if you 
 would prefer stepping into the house.' 
 
 ' Oh, no ! the ladies are best alone. I never was a lady's 
 man. You don't mistake me for my friend Sweeting, do you, 
 Mr. Moore ? ' 
 
 1 Sweeting ! which of them is that ? The gentleman hi 
 the chocolate overcoat, or the little gentleman ? ' 
 
 ' The little one ; he of Nunnely ; the cavalier of the 
 Misses Sykes, with the whole six of whom he is in love ha, 
 ha!' 
 
 ' Better be generally in love with all than specially with 
 one, I should think in that quarter.' 
 
 ' But he is specially in love with one besides, for when I 
 and Donne urged him to make a choice amongst the fair bevy, 
 he named which do you think ? ' 
 
 With a queer, quiet smile, Mr. Moore replied, ' Dora, of 
 course, or Harriet.' 
 
 ' Ha ! ha ! you've made an excellent guess ; but what 
 made you hit on those two ? ' 
 
 ' Because they are the tallest, the handsomest ; and Dora, 
 at least, is the stoutest ; and as your friend Mr. Sweeting is 
 but a little, slight figure, I concluded that, according to a 
 frequent rule in such cases, he preferred his contrast.' 
 
 ' You are right ; Dora it is : but he has no chance, has 
 he, Moore ? ' 
 
 ' What has Mr. Sweeting, besides his curacy ? ' 
 
 This question seemed to tickle Malone amazingly; he 
 laughed for full three minutes before he answered it. 
 
 ' What has Sweeting ? Why, David has his harp, or
 
 20 SHIKLEY 
 
 flute, which comes to the same thing. He has a sort of 
 pinchbeck watch ; ditto, ring ; ditto, eye-glass : that's what 
 he has.' 
 
 ' How would he propose to keep Miss Sykes in gowns 
 only?' 
 
 ' Ha ! ha ! Excellent ! I'll ask him that next time I see 
 him. I'll roast him for his presumption : but no doubt he 
 expects old Christopher Sykes would do something handsome. 
 He is rich, is he not ? They live in a large house.' 
 
 1 Sykes carries on an extensive concern.' 
 
 ' Therefore he must be wealthy, eh ? ' 
 
 1 Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth ; 
 and in these times would be about as likely to think of 
 drawing money from the business to give dowries to his 
 daughters as I should be to dream of pulling down the 
 cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large 
 as Fieldhead.' 
 
 ' Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day ? ' 
 
 ' No : perhaps that I was about to effect some such 
 change. Your Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that 
 or sillier things.' 
 
 I That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease I 
 thought it looked a dismal place, by-the-by, to-night, as I 
 passed it and that it was your intention to settle a Miss 
 Sykes there as mistress : to be married, in short, ha ! ha ! 
 Now, which is it ? Dora I am sure : you said she was the 
 handsomest.' 
 
 I 1 wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be 
 married since I came to Briarfield ! They have assigned me 
 every marriageable single woman by turns in the district. Now 
 it was the two Misses Wynns first the dark, then the light 
 one. Now the red-haired Miss Armitage, then the mature 
 Ann Pearson ; at present you throw on my shoulders all the 
 tribe of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests, 
 God knows. I visit nowhere I seek female society about 
 as assiduously as you do, Mr. Me lone. If ever I go to 
 "Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a call in their
 
 THE WAGGONS 21 
 
 counting-house ; where our discussions run on other topics 
 than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other 
 things than courtships, establishments, dowries : the cloth we 
 can't sell, the hands we can't employ, the mills we can't run, 
 the perverse course of events generally, which we cannot 
 alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty well at present, to the 
 tolerably complete exclusion of such figments as love- 
 making, &c.' 
 
 ' I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one 
 notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriage : I 
 mean marriage in the vulgar weak sense, as a mere matter 
 of sentiment ; two beggarly fools agreeing to unite their 
 indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling humbug 1 But 
 an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in con- 
 sonance with dignity of views, and permanency of solid 
 interests, is not so bad eh ? ' 
 
 ' No,' responded Moore, in an absent manner ; the subject 
 seemed to have no interest for him : he did not pursue it. 
 After sitting for some time gazing at the fire with a pre- 
 occupied air, he suddenly turned hig head. 
 
 ' Hark ! ' said he : ' did you hear wheels ? ' 
 
 Eising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. 
 He soon closed it. ' It is only the sound of the wind rising,' 
 he remarked, ' and the rivulet a little swollen, rushing down 
 the hollow. I expected those waggons at six ; it is near nine 
 now.' 
 
 ' Seriously, do you suppose that the putting up of this 
 new machinery will bring you into danger ? ' inquired Malone. 
 1 Helstone seems to think it will.' 
 
 ' I only wish the machines the frames were safe here, 
 and lodged within the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy 
 the frame-breakers : let them only pay me a visit, and take 
 the consequences ; my mill is my castle.' 
 
 ' One despises such low scoundrels,' observed Malone, in 
 a profound vein of reflection. ' I almost wish a party would 
 call upon you to-night ; but the road seemed extremely quiet 
 as I came along : I saw nothing astir.'
 
 22 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' You came by the Bedhouse ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' There would be nothing on that road : it is in the direc- 
 tion of Stilbro' the risk lies.' 
 
 ' And you think there is risk ? ' 
 
 ' What these fellows have done to others, they may do to 
 me. There is only this difference : most of the manu- 
 facturers seem paralyzed when they are attacked. Sykes, 
 for instance, when his dressing-shop was set on fire and 
 burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his 
 tenters and left in shreds in the field, took no steps to dis- 
 cover or punish the miscreants : he gave up as tamely as a 
 rabbit under the jaws of a ferret. Now I, if I know myself, 
 should stand by my trade, my mill, and my machinery.' 
 
 ' Helstone says these three are your gods ; that the 
 " Orders in Council " are with you another name for the 
 seven deadly sins ; that Castlereagh is your Antichrist, and 
 the war-party his legions.' 
 
 ' Yes ; I abhor all these things because they ruin me : 
 they stand in my way : I cannot get on. I cannot execute 
 my plans because of them : I see myself baffled at every turn 
 by their untoward effects.' 
 
 ' But you are rich and thriving, Moore ? ' 
 
 ' I am very rich in cloth I cannot sell : you should step 
 into my warehouse yonder, and observe how it is piled to the 
 roof with pieces. Boakes and Pearson are in the same con- 
 dition : America used to be their market, but the " Orders in 
 Council " have cut that off.' 
 
 Malone did not seem prepared to carry on briskly a con- 
 versation of this sort ; he began to knock the heels of his 
 boots together, and to yawn. 
 
 ' And then to think,' continued Mr. Moore, who seemed 
 too much taken up with the current of his own thoughts to 
 note the symptoms of his guest's ennui, ' to think that 
 these ridiculous gossips of Whinbury and Briarfield will 
 keep pestering one about being married ! As if there was 
 nothing to be done in life but to " pay attention," as they
 
 THE WAGGONS 23 
 
 say, to some young lady, and then to go to church with her, 
 and then to start on a bridal tour, and then to run through a 
 round of visits, and then, I suppose, to be " having a family." 
 Oh, que le diable emporte ! 'He broke off the aspiration 
 into which he was launching with a certain energy, and 
 added, more calmly ' I believe women talk and think only 
 of these things, and they naturally fancy men's minds 
 similarly occupied.' 
 
 ' Of course of course,' assented Malone ; ' but never 
 mind them.' And he whistled, looked impatiently round, 
 and seemed to feel a great want of something. This time 
 Moore caught, and, it appeared, comprehended his demonstra- 
 tions. 
 
 ' Mr. Malone,' said he, ' you must require refreshment 
 after your wet walk : I forget hospitality.' 
 
 1 Not at all,' rejoined Malone ; but he looked as if the 
 right nail was at last hit on the head, nevertheless. Moore 
 rose and opened a cupboard. 
 
 ' It is my fancy,' said he, ' to have every convenience 
 within myself, and not to be dependent on the feminity in 
 the cottage yonder for every mouthful I eat or every drop I 
 drink. I often spend the evening and sup here alone, and 
 sleep with Joe Scott in the mill. Sometimes I am my own 
 watchman ; I require little sleep, and it pleases me on a fine 
 night to wander for an hour or two with my musket about 
 the hollow. Mr. Malone, can you cook a mutton-chop ? ' 
 
 ' Try me : I've done it hundreds of times at college.' 
 
 ' There's a dishful, then, and there's the gridiron. Turn 
 them quickly ; you know the secret of keeping the juices 
 in?' 
 
 ' Never fear me you shall see. Hand a knife and fork, 
 please.' 
 
 The curate turned up his coat-cuffs, and applied himself 
 to the cookery with vigour. The manufacturer placed on 
 the table plates, a loaf of bread, a black bottle, and two 
 tumblers. He then produced a small copper kettle still 
 from the same well-stored recess, his cupboard filled it with
 
 24 SHIELEY 
 
 water from a large stone jar in a corner, set it on the fire 
 beside the hissing gridiron, got lemons, sugar, and a small 
 china punch-bowl ; but while he was brewing the punch, a 
 tap at the door called him away. 
 
 ' Is it you, Sarah ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir. Will you come to supper, please, sir ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I shall not be in to-night : I shall sleep in the mill. 
 So lock the doors, and tell your mistress to go to bed.' He 
 returned. 
 
 ' You have your household in proper order,' observed 
 Malone approvingly, as, with his fine face ruddy as the 
 embers over which he bent, he assiduously turned the 
 mutton-chops. 'You are not under petticoat government, 
 like poor Sweeting ; a man whew ! how the fat spits ! it 
 has burnt my hand destined to be ruled by women. Now 
 you and I, Moore there's a fine brown one for you, and full 
 of gravy you and I will have no gray mares in our stables 
 when we marry.' 
 
 ' I don't know I never think about it : if the gray mare 
 is handsome and tractable, why not ? ' 
 
 ' The chops are done : is the punch brewed ? ' 
 
 ' There is a glassful : taste it. When Joe Scott and hia 
 minions return they shall have a share of this, provided they 
 bring home the frames intact.' 
 
 Malone waxed very exultant over the supper : he laughed 
 aloud at trifles ; made bad jokes and applauded them him- 
 self ; and, in short, grew unmeaningly noisy. His host, on 
 the contrary, remained quiet as before. It is time, reader, 
 that you should have some idea of the appearance of this 
 same host : I must endeavour to sketch him as he sits at 
 table. 
 
 He is what you would probably call, at first view, rather 
 a strange-looking man ; for he is thin, dark, sallow ; very 
 foreign of aspect, with shadowy hair carelessly streaking his 
 forehead : it appears that he spends but little time at his 
 toilette, or he would arrange it with more taste. He seems 
 unconscious that his features are fine, that they have a southern
 
 THE WAGGONS 25 
 
 symmetry, clearness, regularity in their chiselling ; nor does 
 a spectator become aware of this advantage till he has ex- 
 amined him well, for an anxious countenance, and a hollow, 
 somewhat haggard, outline of face disturb the idea of beauty 
 with one of care. His eyes are large, and grave, and gray ; 
 their expression is intent and meditative, rather searching 
 than soft, rather thoughtful than genial. When he parts his 
 lips in a smile, his physiognomy is agreeable not that it is 
 frank or cheerful even then, but you feel the influence of a 
 certain sedate charm, suggestive, whether truly or delusively, 
 of a considerate, perhaps a kind nature ; of feelings that may 
 wear well at home ; patient, forbearing, possibly faithful 
 feelings. He is still young not more than thirty; his 
 stature is tall, his figure slender. His manner of speaking 
 displeases : he has an outlandish accent, which, notwith- 
 standing a studied carelessness of pronunciation and diction, 
 grates on a British, and especially on a Yorkshire ear. 
 
 Mr. Moore, indeed, was but half a Briton, and scarcely 
 that. He came of a foreign ancestry by the mother's side, 
 and was himself born and partly reared on a foreign soil. 
 
 A hybrid in nature, it is probable he had a hybrid's feeling 
 on many points patriotism for one ; it is likely that he was 
 unapt to attach himself to parties, to sects, even to climes 
 and customs ; it is not impossible that he had a tendency to 
 isolate his individual person from any community amidst 
 which his lot might temporarily happen to be thrown, and 
 that he felt it to be his best wisdom to push the interests of 
 Eobert Ge"rard Moore, to the exclusion of philanthropic con- 
 sideration for general interests : with which he regarded the 
 said G6rard Moore as in a great measure disconnected. 
 Trade was Mr. Moore's hereditary calling : the G6rards of 
 Antwerp had been merchants for two centuries back. Once 
 they had been wealthy merchants ; but the uncertainties, the 
 involvements of business had come upon them ; disastrous 
 speculations had loosened by degrees the foundations of 
 their credit ; the house had stood on a tottering base for a 
 dozen years ; and at last, in the shock of the French Eevolu-
 
 26 SHIELEY 
 
 tion, it had rushed down a total ruin. In its fall was 
 involved the English and Yorkshire firm of Moore, closely 
 connected with the Antwerp house ; and of which one of the 
 partners, resident in Antwerp, Eobert Moore, had married 
 Hortense G6rard, with the prospect of his bride inheriting 
 her father Constantine Gerard's share in the business. She 
 inherited, as we have seen, but his share in the liabilities of 
 the firm ; and these liabilities, though duly set aside by a 
 composition with creditors, some said her son Eobert 
 accepted, in his turn, as a legacy ; and that he aspired one 
 day to discharge them, and to rebuild the fallen house of 
 G6rard and Moore on a scale at least equal to its former 
 greatness. It was even supposed that he took by-past cir- 
 cumstances much to heart ; and if a childhood passed at the 
 side of a saturnine mother, under foreboding of coming evil, 
 and a manhood drenched and blighted by the pitiless descent 
 of the storm, could painfully impress the mind, his probably 
 was impressed in no golden characters. 
 
 If, however, he had a great end of restoration in view, 
 it was not in his power to employ great means for its attain- 
 ment ; he was obliged to be content with the day of small 
 things. When he came to Yorkshire, he whose ancestors 
 had owned warehouses in this seaport, and factories in that 
 inland town, had possessed their town-house and their 
 country-seat saw no way open to him but to rent a cloth- 
 mill, in an out-of-the-way nook of an out-of-the-way district ; 
 to take a cottage adjoining it for his residence, and to add 
 to his possessions, as pasture for his horse, and space for his 
 cloth-tenters, a few acres of the steep rugged land that lined 
 the hollow through which his mill-stream brawled. All this 
 he held at a somewhat high rent (for these war times were 
 hard, and everything was dear), of the trustees of the Field- 
 head estate, then the property of a minor. 
 
 At the time this history commences, Eobert Moore had 
 lived but two years in the district ; during which period he 
 had at least proved himself possessed of the quality of 
 activity. The dingy cottage was converted into a neat
 
 THE WAGGONS 27 
 
 tasteful residence. Of part of the rough land he had made 
 garden-ground, which he cultivated with singular, even with 
 Flemish, exactness and care. As to the mill, which was an 
 old structure, and fitted up with old machinery, now become 
 inefficient and out of date, he had from the first evinced the 
 strongest contempt for all its arrangements and appoint- 
 ments : his aim had been to effect a radical reform, which 
 he had executed as fast as his very limited capital would 
 allow ; and the narrowness of that capital, and consequent 
 check on his progress, was a restraint which galled his 
 spirit sorely. Moore ever wanted to push on : ' Forward ' 
 was the device stamped upon his soul ; but poverty curbed 
 him : sometimes (figuratively) he foamed at the mouth when 
 the reins were drawn very tight. 
 
 In this state of feeling, it is not to be expected that he 
 would deliberate much as to whether his advance was or 
 was not prejudicial to others. Not being a native, nor for 
 any length of time a resident of the neighbourhood, he 
 did not sufficiently care when the new inventions threw the 
 old work-people out of employ : he never asked himself 
 where those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found 
 daily bread ; and in this negligence he only resembled 
 thousands besides, on whom the starving poor of Yorkshire 
 seemed to have a closer claim. 
 
 The period of which I write was an overshadowed one in 
 British history, and especially in the history of the northern 
 provinces. War was then at its height. Europe was all in- 
 volved therein. England, if not weary, was worn with long 
 resistance : yes, and half her people were weary too, and cried 
 out for peace on any terms. National honour was become 
 a mere empty name, of no value in the eyes of many, because 
 their sight was dim with famine ; and for a morsel of meat 
 they would have sold their birthright. 
 
 The ' Orders in Council,' provoked by Napoleon's Milan 
 and Berlin decrees, and forbidding neutral powers to trade 
 with France, had, by offending America, cut off the princi- 
 pal market of the Yorkshire woollen trade, and brought it
 
 28 SHIKLEY 
 
 consequently to the verge of ruin. Minor foreign markets were 
 glutted, and would receive no more : the Brazils, Portugal, 
 Sicily, were all overstocked by nearly two years' consump- 
 tion. At this crisis, certain inventions in machinery were 
 introduced into the staple manufactures of the north, which, 
 greatly reducing the number of hands necessary to be 
 employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them 
 without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest 
 supervened. Distress reached its climax. Endurance, 
 overgoaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition. 
 The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were felt heaving 
 under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual 
 in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot 
 broke out in a manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was 
 burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer's house was attacked, 
 the furniture thrown into the streets, and the family forced 
 to flee for their lives, some local measures were or were not 
 taken by the local magistracy ; a ringleader was detected, or 
 more frequently suffered to elude detection ; newspaper 
 paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing 
 stopped. As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was 
 labour, and who had lost that inheritance who could not 
 get work, and consequently could not get wages, and conse- 
 quently could not get bread they were left to suffer on ; per- 
 haps inevitably left : it would not do to stop the progress of 
 invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; 
 the war could not be terminated, efficient relief could not be 
 raised : there was no help then ; so the unemployed underwent 
 their destiny ate the bread and drank the waters of affliction. 
 Misery generates hate : these sufferers hated the machines 
 which they believed took their bread from them : they hated 
 the buildings which contained those machines ; they hated 
 the manufacturers who owned those buildings. In the 
 parish of Briarfield, with which we have at present to do, 
 Ilollow's-mill was the place held most abominable ; Ge'rard 
 Moore, in his double character of semi-foreigner and 
 thorough-going progressist, the man most abominated. And
 
 THE WAGGONS 29 
 
 it perhaps rather agreed with Moore's temperament than 
 otherwise to be generally hated ; especially when he believed 
 the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient 
 thing ; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on 
 this night, sat in his counting-house waiting the arrival of 
 his frame-laden waggons. Malone's coming and company 
 were, it may be, most unwelcome to him : he would have 
 preferred sitting alone ; for he liked a silent, sombre, unsafe 
 solitude : his watchman's musket would have been company 
 enough for him ; the full-flowing beck in the den would 
 have delivered continuously the discourse most genial to 
 his ear. 
 
 With the queerest look in the world, had the manu- 
 facturer for some ten minutes been watching the Irish 
 curate, as the latter made free with the punch ; when 
 suddenly that steady gray eye changed, as if another vision 
 came between it and Malone. Moore raised his hand. 
 
 ' Chut ! ' he said, in his French fashion, as Malone made 
 a noise with his glass. He listened a moment, then rose, 
 put his hat on, and went out at the counting-house door. 
 
 The night was still, dark, and stagnant ; the water yet 
 rushed on full and fast : its flow almost seemed a flood in 
 the utter silence. Moore's ear, however, caught another 
 sound very distant, but yet dissimilar broken and rugged : 
 in short, a sound of heavy wheels crunching a stony road. 
 He returned to the counting-house and lit a lantern, with 
 which he walked down the mill-yard, and proceeded to open 
 the gates. The big waggons were coming on ; the dray- 
 horses' huge hoofs were heard splashing in the mud and 
 water. Moore hailed them. 
 
 1 Hey, Joe Scott ! Is all right ? ' 
 
 Probably Joe Scott was yet at too great a distance to hear 
 the inquiry ; he did not answer it. 
 
 ' Is all right, I say ? ' again asked Moore when the 
 elephant-like leader's nose almost touched his. 
 
 Some one jumped out from the foremost waggon into the
 
 30 SHIRLEY 
 
 road ; a voice cried aloud, ' Ay, ay, divil, all's raight ! We've 
 smashed 'em.' 
 
 And there was a run. The waggons stood still: they 
 were now deserted. 
 
 ' Joe Scott ! ' No Joe Scott answered. ' Murgatroyd ! 
 Pighills ! Sykes ! ' No reply. Mr. Moore lifted his lantern, 
 and looked into the vehicles ; there was neither man nor 
 machinery : they were empty and abandoned. 
 
 Now Mr. Moore loved his machinery : he had risked the 
 last of his capital on the purchase of these frames and shears 
 which to-night had been expected ; speculations most impor- 
 tant to his interests depended on the results to be wrought 
 by them : where were they ? 
 
 The words ' We've smashed 'em ! ' rang in his ears. How 
 did the catastrophe affect him ? By the light of the lantern 
 he held, were his features visible, relaxing to a singular 
 smile : the smile the man of determined spirit wears when he 
 reaches a juncture in his life where this determined spirit is 
 to feel a demand on its strength : when the strain is to be 
 made, and the faculty must bear or break. Yet he remained 
 silent, and even motionless ; for at the instant he neither 
 knew what to say nor what to do. He placed the lantern on 
 the ground, and stood with his arms folded, gazing down and 
 reflecting. 
 
 An impatient trampling of one of the horses made him 
 presently look up ; his eye in the moment caught the gleam 
 of something white attached to a part of the harness. 
 Examined by the light of the lantern, this proved to be a 
 folded paper a billet. It bore no address without ; within 
 was the superscription : 'To the Divil of Hollow's-miln.' 
 
 We will not copy the rest of the orthography, which was 
 very peculiar, but translate it into legible English. It ran 
 thus : ' Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on 
 Stilbro' Moor, and your men are lying bound hand and foot 
 in a ditch by the roadside. Take this as a warning from men 
 that are starving, and have starving wives and children to go 
 home to when they have done this deed. If you get new
 
 THE WAGGONS 31 
 
 machines, or if you otherwise go on as you have done, you 
 shall hear from us again. Beware ! ' 
 
 ' Hear from you again ? Yes ; I'll hear from you again, 
 and you shall hear from me. I'll speak to you directly : on 
 Stilbro' Moor you shall hear from me in a moment.' 
 
 Having led the waggons within the gates, he hastened 
 towards the cottage. Opening the door, he spoke a few 
 words quickly but quietly to two females who ran to meet 
 him in the passage. He calmed the seeming alarm of one 
 by a brief palliative account of what had taken place ; to 
 the other he said, ' Go into the mill, Sarah there is the key 
 and ring the mill-bell as loud as you can : afterwards you 
 will get another lantern and help me to light up the front.' 
 
 Returning to his horses, he unharnessed, fed, and stabled 
 them with equal speed and care, pausing occasionally, while 
 so occupied, as if to listen for the mill-bell. It clanged out 
 presently, with irregular but loud and alarming din : the 
 hurried agitated peal seemed more urgent than if the sum- 
 mons had been steadily given by a practised hand. On that 
 still night, at that unusual hour, it was heard a long way 
 round : the guests in the kitchen of the Redhouse were 
 startled by the clangour ; and, declaring that ' there must be 
 summat more nor common to do at Hollow's-miln,' they 
 called for lanterns, and hurried to the spot in a body. And 
 scarcely had they thronged into the yard with their gleaming 
 lights, when the tramp of horses was heaid, and a little man 
 in a shovel hat, sitting erect on the back of a shaggy pony, 
 ' rode lightly in,' followed by an aide-de-camp mounted on a 
 larger steed. 
 
 Mr. Moore, meantime, after stabling his dray-horses, had 
 saddled his hackney ; and with the aid of Sarah, the servant, 
 lit up his mill ; whose wide and long front now glared one 
 great illumination, throwing a sufficient light on the yard to 
 obviate all fear of confusion arising from obscurity. Already 
 a deep hum of voices became audible. Mr. Malone had at 
 length issued from the counting-house, previously taking the 
 precaution to dip his head and face in the stone water-jar ;
 
 32 SHIELEY 
 
 and this precaution, together with the sudden alarm, had 
 nearly restored to him the possession of those senses which 
 the punch had partially scattered. He stood with his hat on 
 the back of his head, and his shillelagh grasped in his dexter 
 fist, answering much at random the questions of the newly- 
 arrived party from the Redhouse. Mr. Moore now appeared, 
 and was immediately confronted by the shovel hat and the 
 shaggy pony. 
 
 ' Well, Moore, what is your business with us ? I thought 
 you would want us to-night : me and the hetman here 
 (patting his pony's neck), and Tom and his charger. When 
 I heard your mill-bell, I could sit still no longer, so I left 
 Boultby to finish his supper alone : but where is the enemy ? 
 I do not see a mask or a smutted face present ; and there 
 is not a pane of glass broken in your windows. Have you 
 had an attack, or do you expect one ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, not at all ! I have neither had one nor expect one,' 
 answered Moore, coolly. ' I only ordered the bell to be 
 rung because I want two or three neighbours to stay here 
 in the Hollow while I and a couple or so more go over to 
 Stilbro' Moor.' 
 
 'To Stilbro' Moor! What to do? To meet the wag- 
 gons ? ' 
 
 1 The waggons are come home an hour ago.' 
 
 ' Then all's right. What more would you have ? ' 
 
 ' They came home empty ; and Joe Scott and Company are 
 left on the moor, and so are the frames. Bead that scrawl.' 
 
 Mr. Helstone received and perused the document of 
 which the contents have before been given. 
 
 ' Hum ! They've only served you as they serve others. 
 But, however, the poor fellows in the ditch will be expecting 
 help with some impatience : this is a wet night for such a 
 berth. I and Tom will go with you ; Malone may stay 
 behind and take care of the mill : what is the matter with 
 him ? His eyes seem starting out of his head.' 
 
 ' He has been eating a mutton-chop.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! Peter Augustus, be on your guard. Eat no
 
 THE WAGGONS 33 
 
 more mutton-chops to-night. You are left here in command 
 of these premises : an honourable post ! ' 
 
 ' Is anybody to stay with me ? ' 
 
 ' As many of the present assemblage as choose. My lads, 
 how many of you will remain here, and how many will go 
 a little way with me and Mr. Moore on the Stilbro'-road, to 
 meet some men who have been waylaid and assaulted by 
 frame-breakers ? ' 
 
 The small number of three volunteered to go ; the rest 
 preferred staying behind. As Mr. Moore mounted his horse, 
 the Kector asked him in a low voice whether he had locked 
 up the mutton-chops, so that Peter Augustus could not get 
 at them ? The manufacturer nodded an affirmative, and the 
 rescue-party set out.
 
 CHAPTEB III 
 
 MB. YOKKE 
 
 CHEERFULNESS, it would appear, is a matter which depends 
 fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state 
 of things without and around us. I make this trite remark, 
 because I happen to know that Messrs. Helstone and Moore 
 trotted forth from the mill-yard gates, at the head of their 
 very small company, in the best possible spirits. When a 
 ray from a lantern (the three pedestrians of the party carried 
 each one) fell on Mr. Moore's face, you could see an unusual, 
 because a lively, spark dancing in his eyes, and a new-found 
 vivacity mantling on his dark physiognomy ; and when the 
 Rector's visage was illuminated, his hard features were 
 revealed all agrin and ashine with glee. Yet a drizzling 
 night, a somewhat perilous expedition, you would think were 
 not circumstances calculated to enliven those exposed to the 
 wet and engaged in the adventure. If any member or 
 members of the crew who had been at work on Stilbro' Moor 
 had caught a view of this party, they would have had great 
 pleasure in shooting either of the leaders from behind a wall : 
 and the leaders knew this ; and, the fact is, being both men 
 of steely nerves and steady-beating hearts, were elate with 
 the knowledge. 
 
 I am aware, reader, and you need not remind me, that it 
 is a dreadful thing for a parson to be warlike : I am aware 
 that he should be a man of peace. I have some faint outline 
 of an idea of what, a clergyman's mission is amongst man- 
 kind, and I remember distinctly whose servant he is ; whose 
 message he delivers, whose example he should follow ; yet,
 
 ME. YOEKE 35 
 
 with all this, if you are a parson-hater, you need not expect 
 me to go along with you every step of your dismal, down- 
 ward-tending unchristian road ; you need not expect me to 
 join in your deep anathemas, at once so narrow and so sweep- 
 ing in your poisonous rancour, so intense and so absurd, 
 against ' the cloth ; ' to lift up my eyes and hands with a 
 Supplehough, or to inflate my lungs with a Barraclough, in 
 horror and denunciation of the diabolical Eector of Briarfield. 
 He was not diabolical at all. The evil simply was he 
 had missed his vocation : he should have been a soldier, 
 and circumstances had made him a priest. For the rest, he 
 was a conscientious, hard-headed, hard-handed, brave, stern, 
 implacable, faithful little man : a man almost without sym- 
 pathy, ungentle, prejudiced, and rigid : but a man true to 
 principle honourable, sagacious, and sincere. It seems to 
 me, reader, that you cannot always cut out men to fit their 
 profession, and that you ought not to curse them because 
 that profession sometimes hangs on them ungracefully : nor 
 will I curse Helstone, clerical Cossack as he was. Yet he 
 was cursed, and by many of his own parishioners, as by 
 others he was adored : which is the frequent fate of men 
 who show partiality in friendship and bitterness in enmity ; 
 who are equally attached to principles and adherent to 
 prejudices. 
 
 Helstone and Moore, being both in excellent spirits, and 
 united for the present in one cause, you would expect that, 
 as they rode side by side, they would converse amicably. 
 Oh, no ! These two men, of hard bilious natures both, 
 rarely came into contact but they chafed each other's moods. 
 Their frequent bone of contention was the war. Helstone 
 was a high Tory (there were Tories in those days), and 
 Moore was a bitter Whig a Whig, at least, as far as oppo- 
 sition to the war-party was concerned : that being the question 
 which affected his own interest ; and only on that question 
 did he profess any British politics at all. He liked to in- 
 furiate Helstone by declaring his belief in the invincibility 
 of Bonaparte; by taunting England and Europe with the
 
 36 SHIKLEY 
 
 impotence of their efforts to withstand him ; and by coolly 
 advancing the opinion that it was as well to yield to him 
 soon as late, since he must in the end crush every antagonist, 
 and reign supreme. 
 
 Helstone could not bear these sentiments : it was only 
 on the consideration of Moore being a sort of outcast and 
 alien, and having but half measure of British blood to temper 
 the foreign gall which corroded his veins, that he brought 
 himself to listen to them without indulging the wish he felt 
 to cane the speaker. Another thing, too, somewhat allayed 
 his disgust ; namely, a fellow-feeling for the dogged tone 
 with which these opinions were asserted, and a respect for 
 the consistency of Moore's crabbed contumacy. 
 
 As the party turned into the Stilbro'-road, they met what 
 little wind there was ; the rain dashed in their faces. Moore 
 had been fretting his companion previously, and now, braced 
 up by the raw breeze, and perhaps irritated by the sharp 
 drizzle, he began to goad him. 
 
 'Does your Peninsular news please you still?' he 
 asked. 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' was the surly demand of the 
 Rector. 
 
 1 1 mean have you still faith in that Baal of a Lord 
 Wellington ? ' 
 
 ' And what do you mean now ? ' 
 
 ' Do you still believe that this wooden-faced and pebble- 
 hearted idol of England has power to call fire down from 
 heaven to consume the French holocaust you want to offer 
 up?' 
 
 1 1 believe Wellington will flog Bonaparte's marshals 
 into the sea the day it pleases him to lift his arm.' 
 
 ' But, my dear sir, you can't be serious in what you say. 
 Bonaparte's marshals are great men, who act under the 
 guidance of an omnipotent master-spirit ; your Wellington 
 is the most humdrum of common-place martinets, whose 
 slow mechanical movements are further cramped by an 
 ignorant home-government.'
 
 ME. YOEKE 37 
 
 ' Wellington is the soul of England. * Wellington is the 
 right champion of a good cause ; the fit representative of a 
 powerful, a resolute, a sensible, and an honest nation.' 
 
 'Your good cause, as far as I understand it, is simply 
 the restoration of that filthy, feeble Ferdinand, to a throne 
 which he disgraced ; your fit representative of an honest 
 people is a dull-witted drover, acting for a duller- witted 
 farmer ; and against these are arrayed victorious supremacy 
 and invincible genius.' 
 
 ' Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation ; against 
 modest, single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to 
 encroachment, is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, 
 and treacherous ambition to possess. God defend the right ! ' 
 
 1 God often defends the powerful.' 
 
 1 What ! I suppose the handful of Israelites standing 
 dry-shod on the Asiatic side of the Bed Sea, was more 
 powerful than the host of the Egyptians drawn up on the 
 African side ? Were they more numerous ? Were they 
 better appointed ? Were they more mighty, in a word eh ? 
 Don't speak, or you'll tell a lie, Moore ; you know you will. 
 They were a poor over- wrought band of bondsmen. Tyrants 
 had oppressed them through four hundred years ; a feeble 
 mixture of women and children diluted their thin ranks ; 
 their masters, who roared to follow . them through the 
 divided flood, were a set of pampered Ethiops, about as 
 strong and brutal as the lions of Libya. They were armed, 
 horsed, and charioted, the poor Hebrew wanderers were 
 afoot; few of them, it is likely, had better weapons than 
 their shepherds' crooks, or their masons' building-tools ; 
 their meek and mighty leader himself had only his rod. 
 But bethink you, Eobert Moore, right was with them ; the 
 God of battles was on their side. Crime and the lost arch- 
 angel generalled the ranks of Pharaoh, and which triumphed ? 
 We know that well : " The Lord saved Israel that day out 
 of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians 
 dead upon the sea-shore ; " yea, " the depths covered them, 
 they sank to the bottom as a stone." The right hand of the
 
 38 SHIRLEY 
 
 Lord became glorious in power ; the right hand of the Lord 
 dashed in pieces the enemy ! ' 
 
 ' You are all right ; only you forget the true parallel : 
 France is Israel, and Napoleon is Moses. Europe, with her 
 old over-gorged empires and rotten dynasties, is corrupt 
 Egypt ; gallant France is the Twelve Tribes, and her fresh 
 and vigorous Usurper the Shepherd of Horeb.' 
 
 ' I scorn to answer you.' 
 
 Moore accordingly answered himself ; at least he sub- 
 joined to what he had just said an additional observation in 
 a lower voice. 
 
 ' Oh, in Italy he was as great as any Moses ! He was 
 the right thing there ; fit to head and organise measures for 
 the regeneration of nations. It puzzles me to this day how 
 the conqueror of Lodi should have condescended to become 
 an emperor a vulgar, a stupid humbug ; and still more 
 how a people, who had once called themselves republicans, 
 should have sunk again to the grade of mere slaves. I 
 despise France ! If England had gone as far on the march 
 of civilisation as France did, she would hardly have retreated 
 so shamelessly.' 
 
 1 You don't mean to say that besotted imperial France 
 is any worse than bloody republican France ? ' demanded 
 Helstone fiercely. . 
 
 ' I mean to say nothing : but I can think what I please, 
 you know, Mr. Helstone, both about France and England ; 
 and about revolutions, and regicides, and restorations in 
 general ; and about the divine right of kings, which you often 
 stickle for in your sermons, and the duty of non-resistance, 
 and the sanity of war, and 
 
 Mr. Moore's sentence was here cut short by the rapid 
 rolling up of a gig, and its sudden stoppage in the middle 
 of the road ; both he and the Eector had been too much 
 occupied with their discoui-se to notice its approach till it 
 was close upon them. 
 
 ' Nab, maister, did th' waggons hit home ? ' demanded a 
 voice fi'om the vehicle.
 
 MR YOKKE 39 
 
 1 Can that be Joe Scott ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, ay ! ' returned another voice ; for the gig contained 
 two persons, as was seen by the glimmer of its lamp : the 
 men with the lanterns had now fallen into the rear, or 
 rather, the equestrians of the rescue-party had outridden the 
 pedestrians. ' Ay, Mr. Moore, it's Joe Scott. I'm bringing 
 him back to you in a bonny pickle. I fand him on the top 
 of the moor yonder, him and three others. What will you 
 give me for restoring him to you ? ' 
 
 ' Why, my thanks, I believe ; for I could better have 
 afforded to lose a better man. That is you, I suppose, Mr. 
 Yorke, by your voice ? ' 
 
 'Ay, lad, it's me. I was coming home from Stilbro' 
 market, and just as I got to the middle of the moor, 
 and was whipping on as swift as the wind (for these, they 
 say, are not safe times, thanks to a bad government !) I 
 heard a groan. I pulled up: some would have whipt on 
 faster ; but I've naught to fear, that I know of. I don't 
 believe there's a lad in these parts would harm me : at least 
 I'd give them as good as I got if they offered to do it. I 
 said, " Is there aught wrong anywhere ? " " 'Deed is there," 
 somebody says, speaking out of the ground, like. " What's 
 to do ? be sharp, and tell me," I ordered. " Nobbut four 
 on us ligging in a ditch," says Joe, as quiet as could be. I 
 tell'd 'em, more shame to 'em, and bid them get up and 
 move on, or I'd lend them a lick of the gig-whip ; for my 
 notion was, they were all fresh. " We'd ha' done that an 
 hour sin' ; but we're teed wi' a bit o' band," says Joe. So in a 
 while I got down and loosed 'em wi 1 my penknife : and Scott 
 would ride wi' me, to tell me all how it happened ; and t' 
 others are coming on as fast as their feet will bring them.' 
 
 ' Well, I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Yorke.' 
 
 ' Are you, my lad ? you know you're not. However, 
 here are the rest approaching. And here, by the Lord ! is 
 another set with lights in their pitchers, like the army of 
 Gideon ; and as we've th' parson wi' us good evening, Mr. 
 Helstoue we'se do.'
 
 40 SHIBLEY 
 
 Mr. Helstone returned the salutation of the individual in 
 the gig very stiffly indeed. That individual proceeded : 
 ' We're eleven strong men, and there's both horses and 
 chariots amang us. If we could only fall in \vi' some of 
 these starved ragamuffins of frame-breakers, we could win 
 a grand victory ; we could iv'ry one be a Wellington that 
 would please ye, Mr. Helstone ; and sich paragraphs as we 
 could contrive for t' papers ! Briarfield suld be famous : 
 but we'se hev a column and a half i' th' Stilbro' Courier 
 ower this job, as it is, I daresay : I'se expect no less.' 
 
 ' And I'll promise you no less, Mr. Yorke, for I'll write 
 the article myself,' returned the Kector. 
 
 ' To be sure ! sartainly ! And mind ye recommend weel 
 that them 'at brake t' bits o' frames, and teed Joe Scott's 
 legs wi' band, suld be hung without benefit o' clergy. It's a 
 hanging matter, or suld be ; no doubt o' that.' 
 
 ' If I judged them, I'd give them short shrift ! ' cried 
 Moore ; ' but I mean to let them quite alone this bout, to 
 give them rope enough, certain that in the end they will 
 hang themselves.' 
 
 ' Let them alone, will ye, Moore ? Do you promise 
 that ? ' 
 
 ' Promise ? No. All I mean to say is, I shall give my- 
 self no particular trouble to catch them ; but if one falls in 
 my way ' 
 
 ' You'll snap him up, of course : only you would rather 
 they would do something worse than merely stop a waggon 
 before you reckon with them. Well, we'll say no more on 
 the subject at present. Here we are at my door, gentlemen, 
 and I hope you and the men will step in : you will none of 
 you be the worse of a little refreshment.' 
 
 Moore and Helstone opposed this proposition as un- 
 necessary ; it was, however, pressed on them so courteously, 
 and the night, besides, was so inclement, and the gleam from 
 the muslin-cui'tained windows of the house before which 
 they had halted, looked so inviting, that at length they 
 yielded. Mr. Yorke, after having alighted from his gig
 
 MB. YORKE 41 
 
 which he left in charge of a man who issued from an out- 
 building on his arrival, led the way in. 
 
 It will have been remarked that Mr. Yorke varied a little 
 in his phraseology ; now he spoke broad Yorkshire, and 
 anon he expressed himself in very pure English. His 
 manner seemed liable to equal alternations; he could be 
 polite and affable, and he could be blunt and rough. His 
 station then you could not easily determine by his speech or 
 demeanour ; perhaps the appearance of his residence may 
 decide it. 
 
 The men he recommended to take the kitchen way, 
 saying that he would ' see them served wi' summat to taste 
 presently.' The gentlemen were ushered in at the front 
 entrance. They found themselves in a matted hall, lined 
 almost to the ceiling with pictures ; through this they were 
 conducted to a large parlour, with a magnificent fire in the 
 grate ; the most cheerful of rooms it appeared as a whole, 
 and when you came to examine details, the enlivening effect 
 was not diminished. There was no splendour, but there was 
 taste everywhere, unusual taste, the taste, you would have 
 said, of a travelled man, a scholar, and a gentleman. A 
 series of Italian views decked the walls ; each of these was 
 a specimen of true art ; a connoisseur had selected them : 
 they were genuine and valuable. Even by candlelight, the 
 bright clear skies, the soft distances, with blue air quivering 
 between the eye and the hills, the fresh tints, and well 
 massed lights and shadows, charmed the view. The subjects 
 were all pastoral, the scenes were all sunny. There was a 
 guitar and some music on a sofa ; there were cameos, 
 beautiful miniatures ; a set of Grecian-looking vases on the 
 mantelpiece ; there were books well arranged in two elegant 
 bookcases. 
 
 Mr. Yorke bade his guests be seated : he then rang for 
 wine ; to the servant who brought it he gave hospitable 
 orders for the refreshment of the men in the kitchen. The 
 Rector remained standing ; he seemed not to like his 
 quarters ; he would not touch the wine his host offered him.
 
 42 SHIBLEY 
 
 1 E'en aa you will,' remarked Mr. Yorke. ' I reckon 
 you're thinking of Eastern customs, Mr. Helstone, and you'll 
 not eat nor drink under my roof, feared we suld be forced to 
 be friends ; but I'm not so particular or superstitious. You 
 might sup the contents of that decanter, and you might give 
 me a bottle of the best in your own cellar, and I'd hold 
 myself free to oppose you at every turn still, in every 
 vestry-meeting and justice-meeting where we encountered 
 one another.' 
 
 ' It is just what I should expect of you, Mr. Yorke.' 
 
 ' Does it agree wi' ye now, Mr. Helstone, to be riding 
 out after rioters, of a wet night, at your age ? ' 
 
 ' It always agrees with me to be doing my duty ; and in 
 this case my duty is a thorough pleasure. To hunt down 
 vermin is a noble occupation, fit for an archbishop.' 
 
 ' Fit for ye, at ony rate : but where's t' curate ? He's 
 happen gone to visit some poor body in a sick gird, or he's 
 happen hunting down vermin in another direction.' 
 
 ' He is doing garrison-duty at Hollow's-mill.' 
 
 1 You left him a sup o* wine, I hope, Bob ' (turning to 
 Mr. Moore), ' to keep his courage up ? ' 
 
 He did not pause for an answer, but continued, quickly 
 still addressing Moore, who had thrown himself into an 
 old-fashioned chair by the fireside, ' Move it, Robert ! Get 
 up, my lad ! That place is mine. Take the sofa, or three 
 other chairs, if you will, but not this ; it belangs to me, and 
 nob'dy else.' 
 
 ' Why are you so particular to that chair, Mr. Yorke ? ' 
 asked Moore, lazily vacating the place, in obedience to 
 orders. 
 
 ' My father war afore me, and that's all t* answer I sail 
 gie thee ; and it's as good a reason as Mr. Helstone can give 
 for the main feck o' his notions.' 
 
 ' Moore, are you ready to go ? ' inquired the Eector. 
 
 ' Nay ; Robert's not ready ; or rather I'm not ready to 
 part wi' him : he's an ill lad, and wants correcting.' 
 
 ' Why, sir ? What have I done ? '
 
 ME. YOKKB 43 
 
 ' Made thyself enemies on every hand.' 
 
 1 What do I care for that ? What difference does it 
 make to me whether your Yorkshire louts hate me or like 
 me?' 
 
 1 Ay, there it is. The lad is a mak' of an alien amang 
 us : his father would never have talked i* that way. Go 
 back to Antwerp, where you were born and bred, mauvaise 
 tete!' 
 
 ' Mauvaise tete vous-m&me ; je ne fais que mon devoir : 
 quant a vos lourdauds de paysans, je m'en moque ! ' 
 
 1 En revanche, mon gargon, nos lourdauds de paysans se 
 moqueront de toi ; sois en certain,' replied Yorke, speaking 
 with nearly as pure a French accent as Gerard Moore. 
 
 ' C'est bon ! c'est bon ! Et puisque cela m'est 6gal, que 
 mes amis ne s'en inquietent pas.' 
 
 ' Tes amis ! Oil sont-ils, tes amis ? ' 
 
 1 Je fais 6cho, ou sont-ils ? et je suis fort aise que l'6cho 
 seul y repond. Au diable les amis ! Je me souviens encore 
 du moment ou mon pere et mes oncles Gerard appellerent 
 autour d'eux leurs amis, et Dieu sait si les amis se sont 
 empresses d'accourir a leur secours ! Tenez, M. Yorke, ce 
 mot, ami, m'irrite trop ; ne m'en parlez plus.' 
 
 ' Comme tu voudras.' 
 
 And here Mr. Yorke held his peace ; and while he sits 
 leaning back in his three-cornered, carved oak chair, I will 
 snatch my opportunity to sketch the portrait of this French- 
 speaking Yorkshire gentleman.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 MB. YORKE (CONTINUED) 
 
 A YORKSHIRE gentleman he was, par excellence, in every 
 point. About fifty-five years old, but looking at first sight 
 still older, for his hair was silver white. His forehead was 
 broad, not high ; his face fresh and hale ; the harshness of 
 the north was seen in his features, as it was heard in his 
 voice ; every trait was thoroughly English, not a Norman 
 line anywhere ; it was an inelegant, unclassic, unaristo- 
 cratic mould of visage. Fine people would perhaps have 
 called it vulgar ; sensible people would have termed it 
 characteristic ; shrewd people would have delighted in it for 
 the pith, sagacity, intelligence the rude, yet real originality 
 marked in every lineament, latent in every furrow. But it 
 was an indocile, a scornful, and a sarcastic face ; the face 
 of a man difficult to lead, and impossible to drive. His 
 stature was rather tall, and he was well-made and wiry, and 
 had a stately integrity of port ; there was not a suspicion of 
 the clown about him anywhere. 
 
 I did not find it easy to sketch Mr. Yorke's person, but 
 it is more difficult to indicate his mind. If you expect to be 
 treated to a Perfection, reader, or even to a benevolent, philan- 
 thropic old gentleman in him, you are mistaken. He has 
 spoken with some sense, and with some good feeling, to Mr. 
 Moore ; but you are not thence to conclude that he always 
 spoke and thought justly and kindly. 
 
 Mr. Yorke, in the first place, was without the organ of 
 Veneration a great want, and which throws a man wrong 
 on every point where veneration is required. Secondly, he
 
 ME. YOEKE 45 
 
 was without the organ of Comparison a deficiency which 
 strips a man of sympathy ; and, thirdly, he had too little of 
 the organs of Benevolence and Ideality, which took the glory 
 and softness from his nature, and for him diminished those 
 divine qualities throughout the universe. 
 
 The want of veneration made him intolerant to those 
 above him : kings and nobles and priests, dynasties and 
 parliaments and establishments, with all their doings, most 
 of their enactments, their forms, their rights, their claims, 
 were to him an abomination all rubbish ; he found no use 
 or pleasure in them, and believed it would bs clear gain, and 
 no damage to the world, if its high places were razed, and 
 their occupants crushed in the fall. The want of veneration, 
 too, made him dead at heart to the electric delight of admir- 
 ing what is admirable ; it dried up a thousand pure sources 
 of enjoyment ; it withered a thousand vivid pleasures. He 
 was not irreligious, though a member of no sect ; but his 
 religion could not be that of one who knows how to venerate. 
 He believed in God and heaven ; but his God and heaven 
 were those of a man in whom awe, imagination, and tender- 
 ness lack. 
 
 The weakness of his powers of comparison made him 
 inconsistent ; while he professed some excellent general 
 doctrines of mutual toleration and forbearance, he cherished 
 towards certain classes a bigoted antipathy : he spoke of 
 ' parsons ' and all who belonged to parsons, of ' lords ' and 
 the appendages of lords, with a harshness, sometimes an 
 insolence, as unjust as it was insufferable. He could not 
 place himself in the position of those he vituperated : he 
 could not compare their errors with their temptations, their 
 defects with their disadvantages ; he could not realise the 
 effect of such and such circumstances on himself similarly 
 situated, and he would often express the most ferocious and 
 tyrannical wishes regarding those who had acted, as he 
 thought, ferociously and tyrannically. To judge by his 
 threats, he would have employed arbitrary, even cruel, 
 means to advance the cause of freedom and equality,
 
 46 SHIRLEY 
 
 Equality yes, Mr. Yorke talked about equality, but at 
 heart he was a proud man : very friendly to his workpeople, 
 very good to all who were beneath him, and submitted 
 quietly to be beneath him, but haughty as Beelzebub to 
 whomsoever the world deemed (for he deemed no man) 
 his superior. Revolt was in his blood : he could not bear 
 control ; his father, his grandfather before him, could not 
 bear it, and his children after him never could. 
 
 The want of general benevolence made him very impatient 
 of imbecility, and of all faults which grated on his strong, 
 shrewd nature : it left no check to his cutting sarcasm. As 
 he was not merciful, he would sometimes wound and wound 
 again, without noticing how much he hurt, or caring how 
 deep he thrust. 
 
 As to the paucity of ideality in his mind, that can scarcely 
 be called a fault : a fine ear for music, a correct eye for 
 colour and form, left him the quality of taste ; and who 
 cares for imagination? Who does not think it a rather 
 dangerous, senseless attribute akin to weakness perhaps 
 partaking of frenzy a disease rather than a gift of the 
 mind? 
 
 Probably all think it so, but those who possess or fancy 
 they possess it. To hear them speak you would believe 
 that their hearts would be cold if that elixir did not flow 
 about them ; that their eyes would be dim if that flame did 
 not refine their vision ; that they would be lonely if this 
 strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose 
 that it imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm 
 to summer, some tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation 
 to winter, which you do not feel. An illusion, of course ; 
 but the fanatics cling to their dream, and would not give it 
 for gold. 
 
 As Mr. Yorke did not possess poetic imagination him- 
 self, he considered it a most superfluous quality in others. 
 Painters and musicians he could tolerate, and even en- 
 courage, because he could relish the results of their art ; he 
 could see the charm of a fine picture and feel the pleasure of
 
 ME. YORKE 47 
 
 good music ; but a quiet poet whatever force struggled, 
 whatever fire glowed, in his breast if he could not have 
 played the man in the counting-house, or the tradesman in 
 the Piece Hall, might have lived despised, and died scorned, 
 under the eyes of Hiram Yorke. 
 
 And as there are many Hiram Yorkes in the world, it is 
 well that the true poet, quiet externally though he may be, 
 has often a truculent spirit under his placidity, and is full of 
 shrewdness in his meekness, and can measure the whole 
 stature of those who look down on him, and correctly ascer- 
 tain the weight and value of the pursuits they disdain him 
 for not having followed. It is happy that he can have his 
 own bliss, his own society with his great friend and goddess, 
 Nature, quite independent of those who find little pleasure 
 in him, and in whom he finds no pleasure at all. It is just, 
 that while the world and circumstances often turn a dark, 
 cold side to him and properly, too, because he first turns a 
 dark, cold, careless side to them he should be able to main- 
 tain a festal brightness and cherishing glow in his bosom, 
 which makes all bright and genial for him ; while strangers, 
 perhaps, deem his existence a Polar winter never gladdened 
 by a sun. The true poet is not one whit to be pitied ; and 
 he is apt to laugh in his sleeve, when any misguided sym- 
 pathizer whines over his wrongs. Even when utilitarians 
 sit in judgment on him, and pronounce him and his art 
 useless, he hears the sentence with such a hard derision, such 
 a broad, deep, comprehensive, and merciless contempt of the 
 unhappy Pharisees who pronounce it, that he is rather to be 
 chidden than condoled with. These, however, are not Mr. 
 Yorke's reflections ; and it is with Mr. Yorke we have at 
 present to do. 
 
 I have told you some of his faults, reader ; as to his 
 good points, he was one of the most honourable and capable 
 men in Yorkshire : even those who disliked him were forced 
 to respect him. He was much beloved by the poor, because 
 he was thoroughly kind and very fatherly to them. To his 
 workmen he was con oiderate and cordial : when he dismissed
 
 48 SHIBLEY 
 
 them from an occupation, he would try to set them on to 
 something else ; or, if that was impossible, help them to 
 remove with their families to a district where work might 
 possibly be had. It must also be remarked that if, as some- 
 times chanced, any individual amongst his ' hands ' showed 
 signs of insubordination, Yorke who, like many who abhor 
 being controlled, knew how to control with vigour had the 
 secret of crushing rebellion in the germ, of eradicating it like 
 a bad weed, so that it never spread or developed within the 
 sphere of his authority. Such being the happy state of his 
 own affairs, he felt himself at liberty to speak with the 
 utmost severity of those who were differently situated ; to 
 ascribe whatever was unpleasant in their position entirely to 
 their own fault, to sever himself from the masters, and 
 advocate freely the cause of the operatives. 
 
 Mr. Yorke's family was the first and oldest in the district ; 
 and he, though not the wealthiest, was one of the most 
 influential men. His education had been good : in his youth, 
 before the French Kevolution, he had travelled on the con- 
 tinent : he was an adept in the French and Italian languages. 
 During a two years' sojourn in Italy, he had collected many 
 good paintings and tasteful rarities, with which his residence 
 was now adorned. His manners, when he liked, were those 
 of a finished gentleman of the old school ; his conversation! 
 when he was disposed to please, was singularly interesting 
 and original; and if he usually expressed himself in the 
 Yorkshire dialect, it was because he chose to do so, preferring 
 his native Doric to a more refined vocabulary. ' A Yorkshire 
 burr,' he affirmed, ' was as much better than a cockney's lisp, 
 as a bull's bellow than a ration's squeak.' 
 
 Mr. Yorke knew every one, and was known by every one 
 for miles round ; yet his intimate acquaintances were very 
 few. Himself thoroughly original, he had no taste for what 
 was ordinary : a racy, rough character, high or low, ever 
 found acceptance with him ; a refined, insipid personage, 
 however exalted in station, was his aversion. He would 
 spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd
 
 ME. YOEKE 49 
 
 workman of his own, or with some queer sagacious old woman 
 amongst his cottagers, when he would have grudged a moment 
 to a common-place fine gentleman, or to the most fashionable 
 and elegant, if frivolous, lady. His preferences on these 
 points he carried to an extreme, forgetting that there may 
 be amiable and even admirable characters amongst those who 
 cannot be original. Yet he made exceptions to his own rule : 
 there was a certain order of mind, plain, ingenuous, neglect- 
 ing refinement, almost devoid of intellectuality, and quite 
 incapable of appreciating what was intellectual in him ; but 
 which, at the same time, never felt disgust at his rudeness, 
 was not easily wounded by his sarcasm, did not closely 
 analyze his sayings, doings, or opinions ; with which he 
 was peculiarly at ease, and, consequently, which he peculiarly 
 preferred. He was lord amongst such characters. They, 
 while submitting implicitly to his influence, never acknow- 
 ledged, because they never reflected on, his superiority ; they 
 were quite tractable, therefore, without running the smallest 
 danger of being servile ; and their unthinking, easy, artless 
 insensibility was as acceptable, because as convenient, to Mr. 
 Yorke, as that of the chair he sat on, or of the floor he trod. 
 
 It will have been observed that he was not quite uncordial 
 with Mr. Moore ; he had two or three reasons for entertaining 
 a faint partiality to that gentleman. It may sound odd, but 
 the first of these was that Moore spoke English with a foreign, 
 and French with a perfectly pure accent ; and that his dark, 
 thin face, with its fine though rather wasted lines, had a 
 most anti-British and anti-Yorkshire look. These points 
 seem frivolous, unlikely to influence a character like Yorke's : 
 but, the fact is, they recalled old, perhaps pleasurable associa- 
 tions : they brought back his travelling, his youthful days. He 
 had seen, amidst Italian cities and scenes, faces like Moore's ; 
 he had heard, in Parisian caf6s and theatres, voices like 
 his ; he was young then, and when he looked at and listened 
 to the alien, he seemed young again. 
 
 Secondly, he had known Moore's father, and had had 
 dealings with him : that was a more substantial, though by
 
 60 SHIBLEY 
 
 no means a more agreeable tie ; for, as his firm had been 
 connected with Moore's in business, it had also, in some 
 measure, been implicated in its losses. 
 
 Thirdly, he had found Robert himself a sharp man of busi- 
 ness. He saw reason to anticipate that he would in the end, by 
 one means or another, make money ; and he respected both 
 his resolution and acuteness ; perhaps, also, his hardness. 
 A fourth circumstance which drew them together was that 
 of Mr. Yorke being one of the guardians of the minor on 
 whose estate Hollow's-mill was situated ; consequently 
 Moore, in the course of his alterations and improvements, 
 had frequent occasion to consult him. 
 
 As to the other guest now present in Mr. Yorke's parlour, 
 Mr. Helstone, between him and his host there existed a 
 double antipathy : the antipathy of nature and that of circum- 
 stances. The free-thinker hated the formalist ; the lover of 
 liberty detested the disciplinarian : besides, it was said that 
 in former years they had been rival suitors of the same lady. 
 
 Mr. Yorke, as a general rule, was, when young, noted for 
 his preference of sprightly and dashing women : a showy 
 shape and air, a lively wit, a ready tongue, chiefly seemed 
 to attract him. He never, however, proposed to any of these 
 brilliant belles whose society he sought ; and all at once he 
 seriously fell in love with, and eagerly wooed a girl who 
 presented a complete contrast to those he had hitherto 
 noticed : a girl with the face of a Madonna ; a girl of living 
 marble ; stillness personified. No matter that, when he spoke 
 to her, she only answered him in monosyllables ; no matter that 
 his sighs seemed unheard, that his glances were unreturned, 
 that she never responded to his opinions, rarely smiled at his 
 jests, paid him no respect and no attention ; no matter that 
 she seemed the opposite of everything feminine he had ever, 
 in his whole life been known to admire : for him Mary Cave 
 was perfect, because somehow, for some reason no doubt he 
 had a reason he loved her. 
 
 Mr. Helstone, at that time curate of Briarfield, loved 
 Mary too ; or, at any rate, he fancied her. Several others
 
 MB. YOKKE 51 
 
 admired her, for she was beautiful as a monumental angel ; 
 but the clergyman was preferred for his office' sake : that 
 office probably investing him with some of the illusion 
 necessary to allure to the commission of matrimony, and 
 which Miss Cave did not find in any of the young wool- 
 staplers, her other adorers. Mr. Helstone neither had, nor 
 professed to have, Mr. Yorke's absorbing passion for her : 
 he had none of the humble reverence which seemed to subdue 
 most of her suitors ; he saw her more as she really was than 
 the rest did ; he was, consequently, more master of her and 
 himself. She accepted him at the first offer, and they were 
 married. 
 
 Nature never intended Mr. Helstone to make a very good 
 husband, especially to a quiet wife. He thought, so long 
 as a woman was silent, nothing ailed her, and she wanted 
 nothing. If she did not complain of solitude, solitude, 
 however continued, could not be irksome to her. If she did 
 not talk and put herself forward, express a partiality for this, 
 an aversion to that, she had no partialities or aversions, and 
 it was useless to consult her tastes. He made no pretence 
 of comprehending women, or comparing them with men : 
 they were a different, probably a very inferior order of 
 existence ; a wife could not be her husband's companion, 
 much less his confidant, much less his stay. His wife, after 
 a year or two, was of no great importance to him in any 
 shape ; and when she one day, as he thought, suddenly 
 for he had scarcely noticed her decline but, as others 
 thought, gradually, took her leave of him and of life, and 
 there was only a still beautiful-featured mould of clay left, 
 cold and white, in the conjugal couch, he felt his bereave- 
 mentwho shall say how little ? Yet, perhaps, more than 
 he seemed to feel it ; for he was not a man from whom grief 
 easily wrung tears. 
 
 His dry-eyed and sober mourning scandalised an old 
 housekeeper, and likewise a female attendant, who had 
 waited upon Mrs. Helstone in her sickness : and who, 
 perhaps, had had opportunities of learning more of the
 
 52 SHIELEY 
 
 deceased lady's nature, of her capacity for feeling and loving, 
 than her husband knew : they gossiped together over the 
 corpse, related anecdotes, with embellishments of her lingering 
 decline, and its real or supposed cause ; in short, they worked 
 each other up to some indignation against the austere little 
 man, who sat examining papers in an adjoining room, un- 
 conscious of what opprobrium he was the object. 
 
 Mrs. Helstone was hardly under the sod when rumours 
 began to be rife in the neighbourhood that she had died of a 
 broken heart ; these magnified quickly into reports of hard 
 usage, and, finally, details of harsh treatment on the part ot 
 her husband : reports grossly untrue, but not the less eagerly 
 received on that account. Mr. Yorke heard them, partly 
 believed them. Already, of course, he had no friendly 
 feeling to his successful rival ; though himself a married 
 man now, and united to a woman who seemed a complete 
 contrast to Mary Cave in all respects, he could not forget 
 the great disappointment of his life ; and when he heard 
 that what would have been so precious to him had been 
 neglected, perhaps abused by another, he conceived for that 
 other a rooted and bitter animosity. 
 
 Of the nature and strength of this animosity, Mr. 
 Helstone was but half aware : he neither knew how much 
 Yorke had loved Mary Cave, what he had felt on losing her, 
 nor was he conscious of the calumnies concerning his treat- 
 ment of her, familiar to every ear in the neighbourhood but 
 his own. He believed political and religious differences 
 alone separated him and Mr. Yorke ; had he known how the 
 case really stood, he would hardly have been induced by any 
 persuasion to cross his former rival's threshold. 
 
 Mr. Yorke did not resume his lecture of Eobert Moore ; 
 the conversation ere long recommenced in a more general 
 form, though still in a somewhat disputative tone. The un- 
 quiet state of the country, the various depredations lately 
 committed on mill-property in the district, supplied abundant 
 matter for disagreement ; especially as each of the three
 
 ME. YOEKE 63 
 
 gentlemen present differed more or less in his views on these 
 subjects. Mr. Helstone thought the masters aggrieved, the 
 workpeople unreasonable : he condemned sweepingly the 
 wide-spread spirit of disaffection against constituted authori- 
 ties, the growing indisposition to bear with patience evils 
 he regarded as inevitable : the cures he prescribed were 
 vigorous government interference, strict magisterial vigilance; 
 when necessary, prompt military coercion. 
 
 Mr. Yorke wished to know whether this interference, 
 vigilance, and coercion would feed those who were hungry, 
 give work to those who wanted work, and whom no man 
 would hire. He scouted the idea of inevitable evils ; he said 
 public patience was a camel, on whose back the last atom 
 that could be borne had already been laid, and that resistance 
 was now a duty : the wide-spread spirit of disaffection against 
 constituted authorities he regarded as the most promising 
 sign of the times ; the masters, he allowed, were truly 
 aggrieved, but their main grievances had been heaped on 
 them by a ' corrupt, base, and bloody ' government (these 
 were Mr. Yorke's epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like 
 Castlereagh, mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the 
 tyrants, the curses of the country, the destroyers of her trade. 
 It was their infatuated perseverance in an unjustifiable, a 
 hopeless, a ruinous war, which had brought the nation to its 
 present pass. It was their monstrously oppressive taxation, 
 it was the infamous ' Orders in Council,' the originators of 
 which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever public 
 men did that hung a millstone about England's neck. 
 
 ' But where was the use of talking ? ' he demanded. 
 ' What chance was there of reason being heard in a land 
 that was king-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden where a 
 lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled debauchee 
 the real ruler ; where such an insult to common sense as 
 hereditary legislators was tolerated where such a humbug 
 as a bench of bishops such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, 
 persecuting established Church was endured and venerated 
 where a standing army was maintained, and a host of
 
 64 SHIKLEY' 
 
 lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on the fat 
 of the land ? ' 
 
 Mr. Helstone, rising up and putting on his shovel-hat, 
 ohserved in reply, ' That in the course of his life he had met 
 with two or three instances where sentiments of this sort 
 had been very bravely maintained so long as health, strength, 
 and worldly prosperity had been the allies of him who pro- 
 fessed them ; but thei'e came a time,' he said, ' to all men, 
 " when the keepers of the house should tremble ; when they 
 should be afraid of that which is high, and fear should be in 
 the way ; " and that time was the test of the advocate of 
 anarchy and rebellion, the enemy of religion and order. Ere 
 now,' he affirmed, ' he had been called upon to read those 
 prayers our Church has provided for the sick, by the miserable 
 dying-bed of one of her most rancorous foes ; he had seen 
 such a one stricken with remorse, solicitous to discover a 
 place for repentance, and unable to find any, though he 
 sought it carefully with tears. He must forewarn Mr. Yorke, 
 that blasphemy against God and the king was a deadly sin, 
 and that there was such a thing as " judgment to come." ' 
 
 Mr. Yorke ' believed fully that there was such a thing as 
 judgment to come. If it were otherwise, it would be difficult 
 to imagine how all the scoundrels who seemed triumphant 
 in this world, who broke innocent hearts with impunity, 
 abused unmerited privileges, were a scandal to honourable 
 callings, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor, brow- 
 beat the humble, and truckled meanly to the rich and proud 
 were to be properly paid off, in such coin as they had 
 earned. But,' he added, ' whenever he got low-spirited about 
 such like goings-on, and their seeming success in this mucky 
 lump of a planet, he just reached down t' owd book ' (pointing 
 to a great Bible in the bookcase), ' opened it like at a chance, 
 and he was sure to light of a verse blazing wi' a blue brim- 
 stone low that set all straight. He knew,' he said, ' where 
 some folk war bound for, just as weel as if an angel wi' great 
 white wings had come in ower t' door-stone and told him.' 
 
 ' Sir,' said Mr. Helstone, collecting all his dignity, ' Sir
 
 ME. YOEKE 65 
 
 the great knowledge of man is to know himself, and the 
 bourne whither his own steps tend.' 
 
 ' Ay, ay ! you'll recollect, Mr. Helstone, that Ignorance 
 was carried away from the very gates of heaven, home 
 through the air, and thrust in at a door in the side of the hill 
 which led down to hell.' 
 
 1 Nor have I forgotten, Mr. Yorke, that Vain-Confidence, 
 not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit, which 
 was on purpose there made by the prince of the grounds, to 
 catch vain-glorious fools withal, and was dashed to pieces 
 with his fall.' 
 
 ' Now,' interposed Mr. Moore, who had hitherto sat a 
 silent but amused spectator of this wordy combat, and whose 
 indifference to the party politics of the day, as well as to the 
 gossip of the neighbourhood, made him an impartial, if 
 apathetic, judge of the merits of such an encounter ' you 
 have both sufficiently black-balled each other, and proved 
 how cordially you detest each other, and how wicked you 
 think each other. For my part, my hate is still running in 
 such a strong current against the fellows who have broken 
 my frames, that I have none to spare for my private ac- 
 quaintance, and still less for such a vague thing as a sect or 
 a government : but really, gentlemen, you both seem very 
 bad, by your own showing ; worse than ever I suspected you 
 to be. I dare not stay all night with a rebel and blasphemer, 
 like you, Yorke ; and I hardly dare ride home with a cruel 
 and tyrannical ecclesiastic, like Mr. Helstone.' 
 
 ' I am going, however, Mr. Moore,' said the Eector sternly : 
 ' come with me or not, as you please.' 
 
 ' Nay, he shall not have the choice he shall go with 
 you,' responded Yorke. ' It's midnight, and past ; and I'll 
 have nob'dy staying up i' my house any longer. Ye mun 
 all go.' 
 
 He rang the bell. 
 
 1 Deb,' said he to the servant who answered it, ' clear 
 them folk out o' t' kitchen, and lock t' doors, and be off to 
 bed. Here is your way, gentlemen,' he continued to his
 
 56 SHIELEY 
 
 guests ; and, lighting them through the passage, he fairly 
 put them out at his front-door. 
 
 They met their party hurrying out pell-mell by the back 
 way ; their horses stood at the gate ; they mounted, and 
 rode off Moore laughing at their abrupt dismissal, Helstone 
 deeply indignant thereat.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 
 
 MOORE'S good spirits were still with him when he rose next 
 morning. He and Joe Scott had both spent the night in the 
 mill, availing themselves of certain sleeping accommodations 
 producible from recesses in the front and back counting- 
 houses : the master, always an early riser, was up somewhat 
 sooner even than usual : he awoke his man by singing a 
 French song as he made his toilet. 
 
 ' Ye're not custen dahm, then, maister ? ' cried Joe. 
 
 ' Not a stiver, mon gar<jon which moans, my lad get 
 up, and we'll take a turn through the mill before the hands 
 come in, and I'll explain my future plans. We'll have the 
 machinery yet, Joseph ; you never heard of Bruce, perhaps ? ' 
 
 ' And th' arrand (spider) ? Yes, but I hev : I've read 
 th' history o' Scotland, and happen knaw as mich on't as ye ; 
 and I understand ye to mean to say ye'll persevere.' 
 
 ' I do.' 
 
 ' Is there mony o' your mak' i' your country ? ' inquired 
 Joe, as he folded up his temporary bed, and put it away. 
 
 ' In my country ! Which is my country ? ' 
 
 ' Why, France isn't it ? ' 
 
 ' Not it, indeed ! The circumstance of the French having 
 seized Antwerp, where I was born, docs not make me a 
 Frenchman.' 
 
 ' Holland, then ? ' 
 
 ' I am not a Dutchman : now you are confounding 
 Antwerp with Amsterdam.' 
 
 ' Flanders ? '
 
 58 SHIELEY 
 
 ' I scorn the insinuation, Joe ! I, a Flamand ! Have I 
 a Flemish face ? the clumsy nose standing out the mean 
 forehead falling back the pale blue eyes " a fleur de tete " ? 
 Am I all body and no legs, like a Flamand ? But you don't 
 know what they are like those Netherlanders. Joe, I'm an 
 Anversois : my mother was an Anversoise, though she came 
 of French lineage, which is the reason I speak French.' 
 
 ' But your father war Yorkshire, which maks ye a bit 
 Yorkshire too ; and onybody may see ye're akin to us, ye're 
 so keen o' making brass, and getting forrards." 
 
 ' Joe, you're an impudent dog ; but I've always been 
 accustomed to a boorish sort of insolence from my youth 
 up : the " classe ouvriere " that is, the working people in 
 Belgium bear themselves brutally towards their employers ; 
 and by brutally, Joe, I mean brutalcment which, perhaps, 
 when properly translated, should be roughly' 
 
 1 We allus speak our minds i' this country ; and them 
 young parsons and grand folk fro' London is shocked at wcr 
 " incivility," and we like weel enough to gi'e 'em summat to 
 be shocked at, 'cause it's sport to us to watch 'em turn up 
 the whites o' their een, and spreed out their bits o' hands, 
 like as they're flayed \vi* bogards, and then to hear 'em say, 
 nipping off their words short like " Dear ! dear ! Whet 
 seveges ! How very corse ! " 
 
 ' You arc savages, Joe ; you don't suppose you're civilized, 
 do you ? ' 
 
 ' Middling, middling, maister. I reckon 'at us manu- 
 facturing lads i' th' north is a deal more intelligent, and 
 knaws a deal more nor th' farming folk i' th' south. Trade 
 sharpens wer wits ; and them that's mechanics, like me, is 
 forced to think. Ye know, what wi" looking after machinery 
 and sich like, I've getten into that way that when I see an 
 effect, I look straight out for a cause, and I oft lig hold on't 
 to purpose; and then I like reading, and I'm curious to knaw 
 what them that reckons to govern us aims to do for us and 
 wi' us : and there's many 'cuter nor me ; there's many a one 
 amang them gi'easy chaps 'at smells o' oil, and amang them
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 59 
 
 dyers wi' blue and black skins, that has a long head, and that 
 can tell what a fooil of a law is, as well as ye or old Yorke, 
 and a deal better nor soft uns like Christopher Sykes o' 
 Whinbury, and greet hectoring nowts like yond' Irish Peter, 
 Helstone's curate.' 
 
 ' You think yourself a clever fellow, I know, Scott.' 
 
 ' Ay ! I'm fairish ; I can tell cheese fro' chalk, and I'm 
 varry weel aware that I've improved sich opportunities as I 
 have had, a deal better nor some 'at reckons to be aboon me ; 
 but there's thousands i' Yorkshire that's as good as me, and 
 a two-three that's better.' 
 
 'You're a great man you're a sublime fellow: but 
 you're a prig, a conceited noodle with it all, Joe ! You need 
 not to think that because you've picked up a little knowledge 
 of practical mathematics, and because you have found some 
 scantling of the elements of chemistry at the bottom of a 
 dying vat, that therefore you're a neglected man of science ; 
 and you need not to suppose that because the course of trade 
 does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are 
 sometimes short of work and of bread, that therefore your 
 class are martyrs, and that the whole form of government 
 under which you live is wrong. And, moreover, you need 
 not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken 
 refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let 
 me tell you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, 
 because I know so well that human nature is human nature 
 everywhere, whether under tile or thatch, and that in every 
 specimen of human nature that breathes, vice and virtue are 
 ever found blended, in smaller or greater proportions, and 
 that the proportion is not determined by station. I have 
 seen villains who were rich, and I have seen villains who 
 were poor, and I have seen villains who were neither rich 
 nor poor, but who had realised Agar's wish, and lived in fair 
 and modest competency. The clock is going to strike six : 
 away with you, Joe, and ring the mill bell.' 
 
 It was now the middle of the month of February ; by six 
 o'clock, therefore, dawn was just beginning to steal on night,
 
 60 SHIRLEY 
 
 to penetrate with a pale ray its brown obscurity, and give a 
 demi-translucence to its opaque shadows. Pale enough that 
 ray was on this particular morning ; no colour tinged the 
 east, no flush warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly 
 lifted, what a wan glance she flung along the hills, you would 
 have thought the sun's fire quenched in last night's floods. 
 The breath of this morning was chill as its aspect ; a raw 
 wind stirred the mass of night-cloud, and showed, as it slowly 
 rose leaving a colourless, silver-gleaming ring all round the 
 horizon not blue sky, but a stratum of paler vapour beyond. 
 It had ceased to rain, but the earth was sodden, and the pools 
 and rivulets were full. 
 
 The mill-windows were alight, the bell still rang loud, 
 and now the little children came running in, in too great a 
 hurry, let us hope, to feel very much nipped by the inclement 
 air ; and, indeed, by contrast, perhaps the morning appeared 
 rather favourable to them than otherwise ; for they had often 
 come to their work that winter through snow-storms, through 
 heavy rain, through hard frost. 
 
 Mr. Moore stood at the entrance to watch them pass : he 
 counted them as they went by ; to those who came rather 
 late he said a word of reprimand, which was a little more 
 sharply repeated by Joe Scott when the lingerers reached the 
 work-rooms. Neither master nor overlooker spoke savagely ; 
 they were not savage men either of them, though it appeared 
 both were rigid, for they fined a delinquent who came con- 
 siderably too late : Mr. Moore made him pay his penny down 
 ere he entered, and informed him that the next repetition of 
 the fault would cost him twopence. 
 
 Rules, no doubt, are necessary in such cases, and coarse 
 and cruel masters will make coarse and cruel rules, which, at 
 the time we treat of at least, they used sometimes to enforce 
 tyrannically : but, though I describe imperfect characters 
 (every character in this book will be found to be more or less 
 imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model 
 line,) I have not undertaken to handle degraded or utte:ly 
 infamous ones. Child-torturers, slave masters and drivers,
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 61 
 
 I consign to the hands of jailers ; the novelist may be excused 
 from sullying his page with the record of their deeds. 
 
 Instead, then, of harrowing up my reader's soul, and 
 delighting his organ of Wonder with effective descriptions 
 of stripes and scourgings, I am happy to be able to inform 
 him that neither Mr. Moore nor his overlooker ever struck a 
 child in their mill. Joe had, indeed, once very severely 
 flogged a son of his own for telling a lie and persisting in 
 it ; but, like his employer, he was too phlegmatic, too calm, 
 as well as too reasonable a man, to make corporal chastise- 
 ment other than the exception to his treatment of the 
 young. 
 
 Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, 
 and his warehouse, till the sickly dawn strengthened into 
 day. The sun even rose, at least a white disk, clear, 
 tintless, and almost chill-looking as ice, peeped over the 
 dark crest of a hill, changed to silver the livid edge of the 
 cloud above it, and looked solemnly down the whole length 
 of the den, or narrow dale, to whose strait bounds we are at 
 present limited. It was eight o'clock ; the mill lights were 
 all extinguished ; the signal was given for breakfast ; the 
 children, released for half an hour from toil, betook them- 
 selves to the little tin cans which held their coffee, and to 
 the small baskets which contained their allowance of bread. 
 Let us hope they had enough to eat ; it would be a pity were 
 it otherwise* 
 
 And now, at last, Mr. Moore quitted the mill-yard, and 
 bent his steps to his dwelling-house. It was only a short 
 distance from the factory, but the hedge and high bank on 
 each side of the lane which conducted to it seemed to give 
 it something of the appearance and feeling of seclusion. It 
 was a small white-washed place, with a green porch over the 
 door ; scanty brown stalks showed in the garden soil near 
 this porch, and likewise beneath the windows, stalks 
 budless and flowerless now, but giving dim prediction of 
 trained and blooming creepers for summer days. A grass 
 plat and borders fronted the cottage ; the borders presented
 
 62 SHtRLEt 
 
 only black mould yet, except where, in sheltered nooks, the 
 first shoots of snowdrop or crocus peeped, green as emerald, 
 from the earth. The spring was late ; it had been a severe 
 and prolonged winter ; the last deep snow had but just dis- 
 appeared before yesterday's rains ; on the hills, indeed, white 
 remnants of it yet gleamed, flecking the hollows and crown- 
 ing the peaks : the lawn was not verdant, but bleached, as 
 was the grass on the bank, and under the hedge in the lane. 
 Three trees, gracefully grouped, rose beside the cottage ; they 
 were not lofty, but having no rivals near, they looked well 
 and imposing where they grew. Such was Mr. Moore's 
 home ; a snug nest for content and contemplation, but one 
 within which the wings of action and ambition could not 
 long lie folded. 
 
 Its air of modest comfort seemed to possess no particular 
 attraction for its owner; instead of entering the house at 
 once, he fetched a spade from a little shed, and began to 
 work in the garden. For about a quarter of an hour he dug 
 on uninterrupted : at length, however, a window opened, and 
 a female voice called to him : ' Eh, bien ! Tu ne dejeunes 
 pas ce matin ? ' 
 
 The answer, and the rest of the conversation, was in 
 French ; but, as this is an English book, I shall translate it 
 into English. 
 
 ' Is breakfast ready, Hortense ? ' 
 ' Certainly ; it has been ready half-an-hour.' 
 1 Then I am ready, too : I have a canine hunger.' 
 He threw down his spade and entered the house : the 
 narrow passage conducted him to a small parlour, where a 
 breakfast of coffee and bread and butter, with the somewhat 
 un-English accompaniment of stewed pears, was spread on 
 the table. Over these viands presided the lady who had 
 spoken from the window. I must describe her before I go 
 any further. 
 
 She seemed a little older than Mr. Moore, perhaps she 
 was thirty-five, tall, and proportionately stout ; she had very 
 black hair, for the present twisted up in curl-papers ; a high
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 63 
 
 colour in her cheeks, a small nose, a pair of little black eyes. 
 The lower part of her face was large in proportion to the 
 upper ; her forehead was small and rather corrugated ; she had 
 a fretful, though not an ill-natured expression of countenance ; 
 there was something in her whole appearance one felt inclined 
 to be half provoked with, and half amused at. The strangest 
 point was her dress : a stuff petticoat and a striped cotton 
 camisole. The petticoat was short, displaying well a pair 
 of feet and ankles which left much to be desired in the 
 article of symmetry. 
 
 You will think I have depicted a remarkable slattern, 
 reader ; not at all. Hortense Moore (she was Mr. Moore's 
 sister) was a very orderly, economical person ; the petticoat, 
 camisole, and curl-papers were her morning costume, in which, 
 of forenoons, she had always been accustomed to ' go .her 
 household ways ' in her own country. She did not choose 
 to adopt English fashions because she was obliged to live 
 in England ; she adhered to her old Belgian modes, quite 
 satisfied that there was a merit in so doing. 
 
 Mademoiselle had an excellent opinion of herself, an 
 opinion not wholly undeserved, for she possessed some good 
 and sterling qualities ; but she rather over-estimated the 
 kind and degree of these qualities, and quite left out of the 
 account sundry little defects which accompanied them. You 
 could never have persuaded her that she was a prejudiced 
 and narrow-minded person, that she was too susceptible on 
 the subject of her own dignity and importance, and too apt 
 to take offence about trifles ; yet all this was true. How- 
 ever, where her claims to distinction were not opposed, and 
 where her prejudices were not offended, she could be kind 
 and friendly enough. To her two brothers (for there was 
 another G6rard Moore besides Kobert) she was very much 
 attached. As the sole remaining representatives of their 
 decayed family, the persons of both were almost sacred in her 
 eyes : of Louis, however, she knew less than of Robert ; he 
 had been sent to England when a mere boy, and had 
 received his education at an English school. His education
 
 64 SHIRLEY 
 
 not being such as to adapt him for trade, pei'haps, too, his 
 natural bent not inclining him to mercantile pursuits, he 
 had, when the blight of hereditary prospects rendered it 
 necessary for him to push his own fortune, adopted the very 
 arduous and very modest career of a teacher ; he had been 
 usher in a school, and was said now to be tutor in a private 
 family. Hortense, when she mentioned Louis, described 
 him as having what she called ' desmoyens,' but as being too 
 backward and quiet : her praise of Robert was in a different 
 strain, less qualified ; she was very proud of him ; she 
 regarded him as the greatest man in Europe ; all he said 
 and did was remarkable in her eyes, and she expected others 
 to behold him from the same point of view ; nothing could 
 be more irrational, monstrous, and infamous, than opposition 
 from any quarter to Robert, unless it were opposition to 
 herself. 
 
 Accordingly, as soon as the said Robert was seated at 
 the breakfast table, and she had helped him to a portion of 
 stewed pears, and cut him a good-sized Belgian tartine, she 
 began to pour out a flood of amazement and horror at the 
 transaction of last night, the destruction of the frames. 
 
 ' Quelle id6e ! to destroy them. Quelle action honteuse ! 
 On voyait bien que les ouvriers de ce pays 6taient a la fois 
 betes et mediants. C'6 tait absolument comme les domestiques 
 Anglais, les servantes surtout : rien d'insupportable comme 
 cette Sara, par exemple ! ' 
 
 ' She looks clean and industrious/ Mr. Moore remarked. 
 
 1 Looks ! I don't know how she looks ; and I do not say 
 that she is altogether dirty or idle : mais elle est d'une 
 insolence ! She disputed with me a quarter of an hour 
 yesterday about the cooking of the beef ; she said I boiled it 
 to rags, that English people would never be able to eat such 
 a dish as our bouilli, that the bouillon \vas no better than 
 greasy warm water, and as to the choucroute, she affirms 
 she cannot touch it ! That barrel we have in the cellar 
 delightfully prepared by my own hands she termed a tub 
 of hog-wash, which means food for pigs. I am harassed with
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 65 
 
 the girl, and yet I cannot part with her lest I should get a 
 worse. You are in the same position with your workmen, 
 pauvre cher frere ! ' 
 
 'I am afraid you are not very happy in England, 
 Hortense.' 
 
 1 It is my duty to be happy where you are, brother ; but 
 otherwise, there are certainly a thousand things which 
 make me regret our native town. All the world here 
 appears to me ill-bred (mal-eleve"). I find my habits con- 
 sidered ridiculous : ii a girl out of your mill chances to come 
 into the kitchen and find me in my jupon and camisole 
 preparing dinner (for you know I cannot trust Sarah to cook 
 a single dish), she sneers. If I accept an invitation out to 
 tea, which I have done once or twice, I perceive I am put 
 quite into the background ; I have not that attention paid 
 me which decidedly is my due. Of what an excellent family 
 are the G6rards, as we know, and the Moores also ! They 
 have a right to claim a certain respect, and to feel wounded 
 when it is withheld from them. In Antwerp, I was always 
 treated with distinction ; here, one would think that when 
 I open my lips in company, I speak English with a ridiculous 
 accent, whereas I am quite assured that I pronounce it 
 perfectly.' 
 
 ' Hortense, in Antwerp we were known rich ; in England 
 we were never known but poor.' 
 
 ' Precisely, and thus mercenary are mankind. Again, 
 dear brother, last Sunday, if you recollect, was very wet ; 
 accordingly, I went to church in my neat black sabots, 
 objects one would not indeed wear in a fashionable city ; 
 but which in the country I have ever been accustomed to 
 use for walking in dirty roads. Believe me, as I paced up 
 the aisle, composed and tranquil, as I am always, four ladies, 
 and as many gentlemen, laughed and hid their faces behind 
 their prayer-books.' 
 
 ' Well, well ! don't put on the sabots again. I told you 
 before I thought they were not quite the thing for this 
 country.'
 
 66 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' But, brother, they are not common sabots, such as the 
 peasantry wear. I tell you, they are sabots noirs, tres 
 propres, tres convenables. At Mons and Leuze cities not 
 very far removed from the elegant capital of Brussels it is 
 very seldom that the respectable people wear anything else 
 for walking in winter. Let any one try to wade the mud of 
 the Flemish chauss6es in a pair of Paris brodequins, on m'en 
 dirait des nouvelles ! ' 
 
 ' Never mind Mons and Leuze, and the Flemish 
 chaussees ; do at Eome as the Romans do ; and as to the 
 camisole and jupon, I am not quite sure about them either. 
 I never see an English lady dressed in such garments. Ask 
 Caroline Helstone.' 
 
 ' Caroline ! / ask Caroline ? / consult her about my 
 dress ? It is she who on all points should consult me ; she 
 is a child.' 
 
 ' She is eighteen, or at the least seventeen ; old enough 
 to know all about gowns, petticoats, and chaussures.' 
 
 1 Do not spoil Caroline, I entreat you, brother ; do not 
 make her of more consequence than she ought to be. 
 At present she is modest and unassuming : let us keep 
 her so.' 
 
 ' With all my heart. Is she coming this morning ? ' 
 
 ' She will come at ten, as usual, to take her French 
 lesson.' 
 
 ' You don't find that she sneers at you, do you ? ' 
 
 ' She does not, she appreciates me better than any one 
 else here ; but then she has more intimate opportunities of 
 knowing me ; she sees that I have education, intelligence, 
 manner, principles ; all, in short, which belongs to a person 
 well born and well bred.' 
 
 ' Are you at all fond of her ? ' 
 
 ' For fond I cannot say : I am not one who is prone to 
 take violent fancies, and, consequently, my friendship is the 
 more to be depended on. I have a regard for her as my 
 relative ; her position also inspires interest, and her conduct 
 as my pupil lias hitherto been such as rather to enhance
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 67 
 
 than diminish the attachment that springs from other 
 causes.' 
 
 ' She behaves pretty well at lessons ? ' 
 
 ' To me she behaves very well ; but you are conscious, 
 brother, that I have a manner calculated to repel over- 
 familiarity, to win esteem, and to command respect. Yet, 
 possessed of penetration, I perceive clearly that Caroline is 
 not perfect ; that there is much to be desired in her.' 
 
 1 Give me a last cup of coffee, and while I am drinking it 
 amuse me with an account of her faults.' 
 
 ' Dear brother, I am happy to see you eat your breakfast 
 with relish, after the fatiguing night you have passed. 
 Caroline, then, is defective ; but, with my forming hand arid 
 almost motherly care, she may improve. There is about her 
 an occasional something a reserve, I think which I do 
 not quite like, because it is not sufficiently girlish and sub- 
 missive ; and there are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her 
 nature, which put me out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, 
 too dejected and thoughtful indeed sometimes. In time, I 
 doubt not, I shall make her uniformly sedate and decorous, 
 without being unaccountably pensive. I ever disapprove 
 what is not intelligible.' 
 
 ' I don't understand your account in the least ; what do 
 you mean by " unsettled hurries," for instance ? ' 
 
 ' An example will, perhaps, be the most satisfactory 
 explanation. I sometimes, you are aware, make her read 
 French poetry by way of practice in pronunciation. She 
 has, in the course of her lessons, gone through much cf 
 Corneille and Racine, in a very steady, sober spirit, such as 
 I approve. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of 
 languor in the perusal of those esteemed authors, partaking 
 rather of apathy than sobriety, and apathy is what I cannot 
 tolerate in those who have the benefit of my instructions ; 
 besides, one should not be apathetic in studying standard 
 works. The other day I put into her hands a volume of 
 short fugitive pieces. I sent her to the window to learn one 
 by heart, and when I looked up I saw her turning the leaves
 
 68 SHIRLEY 
 
 over impatiently, and curling her lip, absolutely with scorn 
 as she surveyed the little poems cursorily. I chid her. 
 ' Ma cousine,' said she, ' tout cela m'ennuie a la mort.' I 
 told her this was improper language. ' Dieu ! ' she ex- 
 claimed. ' II n'y a done pas deux lignes de po^sie dans 
 toute la litte'rature fra^aise ? ' I inquired what she meant. 
 She begged my pardon with proper submission. Erelong 
 she was still ; I saw her smiling to herself over the book ; 
 she began to learn assiduously. In half an hour she came 
 and stood before me, presented the volume, folded her hands, 
 as I always require her to do, and commenced the repetition 
 of that short thing by Ch6nier, " La Jeune Captive." If you 
 had heard the manner in which she went through this, and 
 in which she uttered a few incoherent comments when she 
 had done, you would have known what I meant by the 
 phrase "unsettled hurry." One would have thought Che'nier 
 was more moving than all Racine and all Corneille. You, 
 brother, who have so much sagacity, will discern that this 
 disproportionate preference argues an ill- regulated mind ; 
 but she is fortunate in a preceptress. I will give her a 
 system, a method of thought, a set of opinions ; I will give 
 her the perfect control and guidance of her feelings.' 
 
 ' Be sure you do, Hortense : here she comes. That was 
 her shadow passed the window, I believe.' 
 
 ' Ah ! truly. She is too early half an hour before her 
 time. My child, what brings you here before I have break- 
 fasted ? ' 
 
 This question was addressed to an individual who now 
 entered the room, a young girl, wrapped in a winter mantle, 
 the folds of which were gathered with some grace round an 
 apparently slender figure. 
 
 ' I came in haste to see how you were, Hortense, and 
 how Robert was, too. I was sure you would be both grieved 
 by what happened last night. I did not hear till this morn- 
 ing : my uncle told me at breakfast.' 
 
 ' Ah ! it is unspeakable. You sympathize with us ? 
 Your uncle sympathizes with us ? '
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 69 
 
 ' My uncle is very angry ; but he was with Robert, I 
 believe : was he not ? Did he not go with you to Stilbro' 
 Moor?' 
 
 I Yes : we set out in very martial style, Caroline : but 
 the prisoners we went to rescue met us half-way.' 
 
 ' Of course, nobody was hurt ? ' 
 
 ' Why, no ; only Joe Scott's wrists were a little galled 
 with being pinioned too tightly behind his back.' 
 
 ' You were not there ? You were not with the waggons 
 when they were attacked ? ' 
 
 ' No : one seldom has the fortune to be present at occur- 
 rences at which one would particularly wish to assist.' 
 
 ' Where are you going this morning ? I saw Murgatroyd 
 saddling your horse in the yard.' 
 
 ' To Whinbury : it is market day.' 
 
 ' Mr. Yorke is going too : I met him in his gig. Come 
 home with him.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'Two are better than one, and nobody dislikes Mr. 
 Yorke ; at least, poor people do not dislike him.' 
 
 ' Therefore he would be a protection to me, who am 
 hated?' 
 
 ' Who are misunderstood : that, probably, is the word. 
 Shall you be late ? Will he be late, cousin Hortense ? ' 
 
 ' It is too probable : he has often much business to 
 transact at Whinbury. Have you brought your exercise- 
 book, child ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. What time will you return, Robert ? ' 
 
 I 1 generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at 
 home earlier ? ' 
 
 ' Try rather to be back by six. It is not absolutely dark 
 at six now ; but by seven daylight is quite gone.' 
 
 ' And what danger is to be apprehended, Caroline, when 
 daylight is gone ? What peril do you conceive comes as the 
 companion of darkness for me ? ' 
 
 ' I am not sure that I can define my fears ; but we all 
 have a certain anxiety at present about our friends. My
 
 70 SHIELEY 
 
 uncle calls these times dangerous : he says, too, that mill- 
 owners are unpopular.' 
 
 ' And I one of the most unpopular ? Is not that the 
 fact ? You are reluctant to speak out plainly, but at heart 
 you think me liable to Pearson's fate, who was shot at 
 not, indeed, from behind a hedge, but in his own house, 
 through his staircase-window, as he was going to bed.' 
 
 ' Anne Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber- 
 door,' remarked Caroline, gravely, as she folded her mantle, 
 and arranged it and her muff on a side-table. ' You know,' 
 she continued, ' there is a hedge all the way along the road 
 from hei*e to Whinbuiy, and there are the Fieldhead planta- 
 tions to pass ; but you will be back by six or before ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly he will,' affirmed Horfcense. ' And now, my 
 child, prepare your lessons for repetition, while I put the 
 peas to soak for the pure at dinner.' 
 
 With this direction, she left the room. 
 
 ' You suspect I have many enemies, then, Caroline,' said 
 Mr. Moore ; ' and, doubtless, you know me to be destitute of 
 friends ? ' 
 
 ' Not destitute, Kobert. There is your sister, your 
 brother Louis whom I have never seen there is Mr. 
 Yorke, and there is my uncle ; besides, of course, many 
 more.' 
 
 Eobert smiled. ' You would be puzzled to name your 
 " many more," ' said he. ' But show me your exercise-book. 
 What extreme pains you take with the writing ! My sister, 
 I suppose, exacts this care : she wants to form you in all 
 things after the model of a Flemish school-girl. What life 
 are you destined for, Caroline ? What will you do with your 
 French, drawing, and other accomplishments when they arc 
 acquired ? ' 
 
 ' You may well say, when they are acquired ; for, as you 
 are aware, till Horfcense began to teach me, I knew precious 
 little. As to the life I am destined for, I cannot tell : I 
 suppose, to keep my uncle's house, till -' she hesitated. 
 
 Till what ? Till he dies ? '
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 71 
 
 I No. How harsh to say that ! I never think of his 
 dying : he is only fifty-five. But till in short, till events 
 offer other occupations for me.' 
 
 ' A remarkably vague prospect ! Are you content with 
 it?' 
 
 ' I used to be, formerly. Children, you know, have 
 little reflection, or rather their reflections run on ideal 
 themes. There are moments now when I am not quite 
 satisfied.' 
 
 Why?' 
 
 ' I am making no money earning nothing.' 
 
 ' You come to the point, Lina ; you, too, then wish to 
 make money ? ' 
 
 ' I do : I should like an occupation ; and if I were a boy, 
 it would not be so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, 
 pleasant way of learning a business, and making my way in 
 life.' 
 
 ' Go on : let us hear what way ? ' 
 
 I 1 could be apprenticed to your trade the cloth- trade : 
 I could learn it of you, as we are distant relations. I would 
 do the counting-house work, keep the books, and write the 
 letters, while you went to market. I know you greatly 
 desire to be rich, in order to pay your father's debts ; per- 
 haps I could help you to get rich.' 
 
 ' Help me? You should think of yourself.' 
 
 1 1 do think of myself ; but must one for ever think only 
 of oneself ? ' 
 
 ' Of whom else do I think ? Of whom else dare I think ? 
 The poor ought to have no large sympathies ; it is their duty 
 to be narrow.' 
 
 ' No, Kobert ' 
 
 ' Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, 
 grovelling, anxious. Now and then a poor man's heart, 
 when certain beams and dews visit it, may swell like the 
 budding vegetation in yonder garden on this spring-day, may 
 feel ripe to evolve in foliage perhaps blossom ; but he must 
 not encourage the pleasant impulse ; he must invoke
 
 72 SHIELEY 
 
 Prudence to check it, with that frosty breath of hers, which 
 is as nipping as any north wind.' 
 
 ' No cottage would be happy then.' 
 
 ' When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the 
 natural, habitual poverty of the working-man, as the em- 
 barrassed penury of the man in debt ; my grub-worm is 
 always a straitened, struggling, care-worn tradesman.' 
 
 ' Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become 
 too fixed in your mind, it may be presumptuous to say it, but 
 I have the impression that there is something wrong in your 
 notions of the best means of attaining happiness : as there is 
 in ' Second hesitation. 
 
 ' I am all ear, Caroline.' 
 
 1 In (courage ! let me speak the truth) in your manner 
 mind, I say only manner to these Yorkshire workpeople.' 
 
 ' You have often wanted to toll me that, have you not ? ' 
 
 1 Yes ; often very often.' 
 
 1 The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I 
 am not proud ; what has a man in my position to be proud of ? 
 I am only taciturn, phlegmatic, and joyless.' 
 
 1 As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like 
 your frames and shears : in your own house you seem 
 different.' 
 
 ' To those in my own house I am no alien, which I am to 
 these English clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, 
 but acting is not my forte. I find them irrational, perverse ; 
 they hinder me when I long to hurry forward. In treating 
 them justly, I fulfil my whole duty towards them.' 
 
 1 You don't expect them to love you, of course ? ' 
 
 ' Nor wish it.' 
 
 1 Ah ! ' said the monitress, shaking her head, and heaving 
 a deep sigh. With this ejaculation, indicative that she 
 perceived a screw to be loose somewhere, but that it was out 
 of her reach to set it right, she bent over her grammar, and 
 sought the rule and exercise for the day. 
 
 ' I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline ; the 
 attachment of a very few suffices me.'
 
 HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 73 
 
 1 If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two 
 before you go ? ' 
 
 ' First let me rule your book, for you always contrive to 
 draw the lines aslant. . . . There now. . . . And 
 now for the pens : you like a fine one, I think ? ' 
 
 ' Such as you generally make for me and Hortense ; not 
 your own broad points.' 
 
 ' If I were of Louis's calling, I might stay at home and 
 dedicate this morning to you and your studies : whereas I 
 must spend it in Sykes' wool-warehouse.' 
 
 ' You will be making money.' 
 
 ' More likely losing it.' 
 
 As he finished mending the pens, a horse, saddled and 
 bridled, was brought up to the garden-gate. 
 
 ' There, Fred is ready for me ; I must go. I'll take one 
 look to see what the spring has done in the south border, too, 
 first.' 
 
 He quitted the room and went out into the garden -ground 
 behind the mill. A sweet fringe of young verdure and opening 
 flowers snowdrop, crocus, even primrose bloomed in the 
 sunshine under the hot wall of the factory. Moore plucked 
 here and there a blossom and leaf, till he had collected a 
 little bouquet ; he returned to the parlour, pilfered a thread 
 of silk from his sister's work-basket, tied the flowers, and laid 
 them on Caroline's desk. 
 
 ' Now, good morning.' 
 
 ' Thank you, Robert : it is pretty ; it looks, as it lies there, 
 like sparkles of sunshine and blue sky : good-morning.' 
 
 He went to the door stopped opened his lips as if to 
 speak said nothing, and moved on. He passed through the 
 wicket, and mounted his horse : in a second he had flung 
 himself from the saddle again, transferred the reins to 
 Murgatroyd, and re-entered the cottage. 
 
 ' I forgot my gloves,' he said, appearing to take some- 
 thing from the side-table ; then, as an impromptu thought, he 
 remarked, ' You have no binding engagement at home perhaps, 
 Caroline ? '
 
 74 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I never have : some children's socks, which Mrs. 
 Eamsden has ordered, to knit for the Jew-basket : but they 
 will keep.' 
 
 ' Jew-basket be sold ! Never was utensil better 
 
 named. Anything more Jewish than it its contents, and 
 their prices cannot be conceived : but I see something, a very 
 tiny curl, at the corners of your lip, which tells me that you 
 know its merits as well as I do. Forget the Jew-basket, then, 
 and spend the day here as a change. Your uncle won't 
 break his heart at your absence ? ' 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 No.' 
 
 1 The old Cossack ! I daresay not,' muttered Moore. 
 ' Then stay and dine with Hortense ; she will be glad of your 
 company ; I shall return in good time. We will have a little 
 reading in the evening : the moon rises at half-past eight, 
 and I will walk up to the Rectory with you at nine. Do you 
 agree ? ' 
 
 She nodded her head ; and her eyes lit up. 
 
 Moore lingered yet two minutes : he bent over Caroline's 
 denk and glanced at her grammar, he fingered her pen, he 
 lifted her bouquet and played with it ; his horse stamped im- 
 patient ; Fred Murgatroyd hemmed and coughed at the gate, 
 as if he wondered what in the world his master was doing. 
 ' Good morning,' again said Moore, and finally vanished. 
 
 Hortense, coming in ten minutes after, found, to her 
 surprise, that Caroline had not yet commenced her exercise.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CORIOLANUS 
 
 MADEMOISELLE MOORE had that morning a somewhat absent- 
 minded pupil. Caroline forgot, again and again, the explana- 
 tions which were given to her ; however, she still bore with 
 unclouded mood the chidings her inattention brought upon 
 her. Sitting in the sunshine, near the window, she seemed 
 to receive with its warmth a kind influence, which made her 
 both happy and good. Thus disposed, she looked her best, 
 and her best was a pleasing vision. 
 
 To her had not been denied the gift of beauty ; it was not 
 absolutely necessary to know her in order to like her ; she 
 was fair enough to please, even at the first view. Her shape 
 suited her age, it was girlish, light, and pliant ; every curve 
 was neat, every limb proportionate : her face was expressive 
 and gentle ; her eyes were handsome, and gifted at times with 
 a winning beam that stole into the heart, with a language 
 that spoke softly to the affections. Her mouth was very 
 pretty ; she had a delicate skin, and a fine flow of brown hair, 
 which she knew how to arrange with taste ; curls became her 
 and she possessed them in picturesque profusion. Her style 
 of dress announced taste in the wearer ; very unobtrusive in 
 fashion, far from costly in material, but suitable in colour to 
 the fair complexion with which it contrasted, and in make to 
 the slight form which it draped. Her present winter garb 
 was of merino, the same soft shade of brown as her hair ; the 
 little collar round her neck lay over a pink ribbon, and was 
 fastened with a pink knot : she wore no other decoration. 
 
 So much for Carol! no Helstone's appearance; as to her
 
 76 SHIRLEY 
 
 character or intellect, if she had any, they must speak for 
 themselves in due time. 
 
 Her connections are soon explained. She was the child 
 of parents separated soon after her birth, in consequence of 
 disagreement of disposition. Her mother was the half-sister 
 of Mr. Moore's father ; thus though there was no mixture 
 of blood she was, in a distant sense, the cousin of Robert, 
 Louis, and Hortense. Her father was the brother of Mr. 
 Helstone a man of the character friends desire not to recall, 
 after death has once settled all earthly accounts. He had 
 rendered his wife unhappy : the reports which were known 
 to be true concerning him, had given an air of probability to 
 those which were falsely circulated respecting his better- 
 principled brother. Caroline had never known her mother, 
 as she was taken from her in infancy, and had not since 
 seen her ; her father died comparatively young, and her 
 uncle, the Rector, had for some years been her sole guardian. 
 He was not, as we are aware, much adapted, either by 
 nature or habits, to have the charge of a young girl : he had 
 taken little trouble about her education ; probably, he would 
 have taken none if she, finding herself neglected, had not 
 grown anxious on her own account, and asked, every now 
 and then, for a little attention, and for the means of acquir- 
 ing such amount of knowledge as could not be dispensed 
 with. Still, she had a depressing feeling that she was 
 inferior, that her attainments were fewer than were usually 
 possessed by girls of her age and station ; and very glad 
 was she to avail herself of the kind offer made by her cousin 
 Hortense, soon after the arrival of the latter at Hollow's- 
 mill, to teach her French and fine needlework. Mdlle. 
 Moore, for her part, delighted in the task, because it gave 
 her importance ; she liked to lord it a little over a docile yet 
 quick pupil. She took Caroline precisely at her own 
 estimate, as an irregularly-taught, even ignorant girl ; and 
 when she found that she made rapid and eager progress, it 
 was to no talent, no application in the scholar, she ascribed 
 the improvement, but entirely to her own superior method of
 
 CORIOLANUS 77 
 
 teaching; when she found that Caroline, unskilled in 
 routine, had a knowledge of her own desultory but varied, 
 the discovery caused her no surprise, for she still imagined 
 that from her conversation had the girl unawares gleaned 
 these treasures : she thought it even when forced to feel 
 that her pupil knew much on subjects whereof she knew 
 little : the idea was not logical, but Hortense had perfect 
 faith in it. 
 
 Mademoiselle, who prided herself on possessing 'un 
 esprit positif,' and on entertaining a decided preference for 
 dry studies, kept her young cousin to the same as closely as 
 she could. She worked her unrelentingly at the grammar 
 of the French language, assigning her, as the most im- 
 proving exercise she could devise, interminable 'analyses 
 logiques.' These ' analyses ' were by no means a source 
 of particular pleasure to Caroline ; she thought she could 
 have learned French just as well without them, and grudged 
 excessively the time spent in pondering over ' propositions 
 principales et incidentes ; ' in deciding the ' incidente deter- 
 minative,' and the ' incidente applicative ; ' in examining 
 whether the proposition was 'pleine,' ' elliptique,' or 
 'implicite.' Sometimes she lost herself in the maze, and 
 when so lost, she would, now and then (while Hortense was 
 rummaging her drawers up-stairs, an unaccountable 
 occupation in which she spent a large portion of each day, 
 arranging, disarranging, re-arrangiug and counter-arranging) 
 carry her book to Robert in the counting-house, and get 
 the rough place made smooth by his aid. j!ilr. Moore 
 possessed a clear, tranquil brain of his own ; almost as soon 
 as he looked at Caroline's little difficulties they seemed to 
 dissolve beneath his eye : in two minutes he would explain 
 all in two words give the key to the puzzle. She thought 
 if Hortense could only teach like him, how much faster she 
 might learn ! Repaying him by an admiring and grateful 
 smile, rather shed at his feet than lifted to his face, she 
 would leave the mill reluctantly to go back to the cottage, 
 and then, while she completed the exercise, or worked out
 
 78 SHIRLEY 
 
 the sum (for Mdlle. Moore taught her arithmetic, too), she 
 would wish nature had made her a boy instead of a girl, 
 that she might ask Robert to let her be his clerk, and sit 
 with him in the counting-house, instead of sitting with 
 Hortense in the parlour. 
 
 Occasionally but this happened very rarely she spent 
 the evening at Hollow's cottage. Sometimes during these 
 visits, Moore was away, attending a market ; sometimes 
 he was gone to Mr. Yorke's , often he was engaged with a 
 male visitor in another room ; but sometimes, too, he was 
 at home, disengaged, free to talk with Caroline. When this 
 was the case, the evening hours passed on wings of light ; 
 they were gone before they were counted. There was no 
 room in England so pleasant as that small parlour when the 
 three cousins occupied it. Hortense, when she was not 
 teaching, or scolding, or cooking, was far from ill-humoured ; 
 it was her custom to relax towards evening, and to be kind 
 to her young English kinswoman. There was a means, too, 
 of rendering her delightful, by inducing her to take her 
 guitar and sing and play; she then became quite good- 
 natured ; and as she played with skill, and had a well-toned 
 voice, it was not disagreeable to listen to her : it would have 
 been absolutely agreeable, except that her formal and self- 
 important character modulated her strains, as it impressed 
 her manners and moulded her countenance. 
 
 Mr. Moore, released from the business-yoke, was, if not 
 lively himself, a willing spectator of Caroline's liveliness, a 
 complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her 
 questions. He was something agreeable to sit near, to 
 hover round, to address and look at. Sometimes he was 
 better than this, almost animated, quite gentle and 
 friendly. 
 
 The drawback was, that by the next morning he was 
 sure to be frozen up again ; and however much he seemed, 
 in his quiet way, to enjoy these social evenings, he rarely 
 contrived their recurrence. This circumstance puzzled the 
 inexperienced head of his cousin. ' If I had a means of
 
 CORIOLANtIS 79 
 
 happiness at my command,' she thought, ' 1 would employ 
 that means often ; I would keep it bright with use, and not 
 let it lie for weeks aside, till it gets rusty. 1 
 
 Yet she was careful not to put in practice her own theory. 
 Much as she liked an evening visit to the cottage, she never 
 paid one unasked. Often, indeed, when pressed by Hortense 
 to come, she would refuse, because Eobert did not second, or 
 but slightly seconded the request. This morning was the 
 first time he had ever, of his own unprompted will, given 
 her an invitation ; and then he had spoken so kindly, that 
 in hearing him she had received a sense of happiness 
 sufficient to keep her glad for the whole day. 
 
 The morning passed as usual. Mademoiselle, ever 
 breathlessly busy, spent it in bustling from kitchen to 
 parlour now scolding Sarah, now looking over Caroline's 
 exercise or hearing her repetition-lesson. However fault- 
 lessly these tasks were achieved, Mademoiselle never com- 
 mended : it was a maxim with her that praise is inconsistent 
 with a teacher's dignity, and that blame, in more or less 
 unqualified measure, is indispensable to it. She thought 
 incessant reprimand, severe or slight, quite necessary to the 
 maintenance of her authority ; and if no possible error was 
 to be found in the lesson, it was the pupil's carriage, or air, 
 or dress, or mien, which required correction. 
 
 The usual affray took place about the dinner, which meal, 
 when Sarah at last brought it into the room, she almost flung 
 upon the table, with a look that expressed quite plainly ' I 
 never dished such stuff i' my life afore ; it's not fit for dogs.' 
 Notwithstanding Sarah's scorn, it was a savoury repast 
 enough. The soup was a sort of puree of dried peas, which 
 Mademoiselle had prepared amidst bitter lamentations that 
 in this desolate country of England no haricot beans were to 
 be had. Then came a dish of meat nature unknown, but 
 supposed to be miscellaneous singularly chopped up with 
 crumbs of bread, seasoned uniquely though not unpleasantly, 
 and baked in a mould ; a queer, but by no moans unpala- 
 table dish. Greens, oddly bruised, formed the accompanying
 
 80 SHIELEY 
 
 vegetable ; and a pate of fruit, conserved after a receipt 
 devised by Madame Gerard Moore's ' grand'mere,' and from 
 the taste of which it appeared probable that ' melasse ' had 
 been substituted for sugar, completed the dinner. 
 
 Caroline had no objection to this Belgian cookery : 
 indeed, she rather liked it for a change, and it was well she 
 did so, for had she evinced any disrelish thereof, such 
 manifestation would have injured her in Mademoiselle's 
 good graces for ever ; a positive crime might have been 
 more easily pardoned than a symptom of distaste for the 
 foreign comestibles. 
 
 Soon after dinner Caroline coaxed her governess-cousin 
 up-stairs to dress : this manoeuvre required management. 
 To have hinted that the jupon, camisole, and curl-papers 
 were odious objects, or indeed other than quite meritorious 
 points, would have been a felony. Any premature attempt 
 to urge their disappearance was therefore unwise, and would 
 be likely to issue in the persevering wear of them during the 
 whole day. Carefully avoiding rocks and quicksands, how- 
 ever, the pupil, on pretence of requiring a change of scene, 
 contrived to get the teacher aloft, and, once in the bed-room, 
 she persuaded her that it was not worth while returning 
 thither, and that she might as well make her toilette now ; 
 and while Mademoiselle delivered a solemn homily on her 
 own surpassing merit in disregarding all frivolities of 
 fashion, Caroline denuded her of the camisole, invested her 
 with a decent gown, arranged her collar, hair, &c., and 
 made her quite presentable. But Hortense would put the 
 finishing touches herself, and these finishing touches con- 
 sisted in a thick handkerchief tied round the throat, and a 
 large, servant-like black apron, which spoiled everything. 
 On no account would Mademoiselle have appeared in her 
 own house without the thick handkerchief and the volu- 
 minous apron : the first was a positive matter of morality 
 it was quite improper not to wear a fichu ; the second was 
 the ensign of a good housewife she appeared to think that 
 by means of it she somehow effected a large saving in her
 
 COKIOLANUS 81 
 
 brother's income. She had, with her own hands, made and 
 presented to Caroline similar equipments ; and the only 
 serious quarrel they had ever had, and which still left a 
 soreness in the elder cousin's soul, had arisen from the 
 refusal of the younger one to accept of and profit by these 
 elegant presents. 
 
 ' I wear a high dress and a collar,' said Caroline, ' and I 
 should feel suffocated with a handkerchief in addition ; and 
 my short aprons do quite as well as that very long one : I 
 would rather make no change.' 
 
 Yet Hortense, by dint of perseverance, would probably 
 have compelled her to make a change, had not Mr. Moore 
 chanced to overhear a dispute on the subject, and decided 
 that Caroline's little aprons would suffice, and that, in his 
 opinion, as she was still but a child, she might for the 
 present dispense with the fichu, especially as her curls were 
 long, and almost touched her shoulders. 
 
 There was no appeal against Robert's opinion, therefore 
 his sister was compelled to yield ; but she disapproved 
 entirely of the piquant neatness of Caroline's costume, and 
 the ladylike grace of her appearance : something more solid 
 and homely, she would have considered ' beaucoup plus 
 convenable.' 
 
 The afternoon was devoted to sewing. Mademoiselle, 
 like most Belgian ladies, was specially skilful with her 
 needle. She by no means thought it waste of time to devote 
 unnumbered hours to fine embroidery, sight-destroying lace- 
 work, marvellous netting and knitting, and, above all, to 
 most elaborate stocking-mending. She would give a day to 
 the mending of two holes in a stocking any time, and think 
 her ' mission ' nobly fulfilled when she had accomplished it. 
 It was another of Caroline's troubles to be condemned to 
 learn this foreign style of darning, which was done stitch by 
 stitch, so as exactly to imitate the fabric of the stocking 
 itself ; a wearifu* process, but considered by Hortense 
 Gerard, and by her ancestresses before her for long genera- 
 tions back, as one of the first ' duties of woman.' She her-
 
 82 SHIRLEY 
 
 self had had a needle, cotton, and a fearfully torn stocking 
 put into her hand while she yet wore a child's coif on her 
 little black head : her ' hauts faits ' in the darning line had 
 been exhibited to company ere she was six years old, and 
 when she first discovered that Caroline was profoundly 
 ignorant of this most essential of attainments, she could 
 have wept with pity over her miserably neglected youth. 
 
 No time did she lose in seeking up a hopeless pair of hose, 
 of which the heels were entirely gone, and in setting the 
 ignorant English girl to repair the deficiency : this task had 
 been commenced two years ago, and Caroline had the stock- 
 ings in her work-bag yet. She did a few rows every day, by 
 way of penance for the expiation of her sins : they were a 
 grievous burden to her ; she would much have liked to put 
 them in the fire ; and once Mr. Moore, who had observed 
 her sitting and sighing over them, had proposed a private 
 incremation in the counting-house, but to this proposal 
 Caroline knew it would have been impolitic to accede the 
 result could only be a fresh pair of hose, probably in worse 
 condition : she adhered, therefore, to the ills she knew. 
 
 All the afternoon the two ladies sat and sewed, till the 
 eyes and fingers, and even the spirits of one of them were 
 weary. The sky since dinner had darkened ; it had begun 
 to rain again, to pour fast; secret fears began to steal on 
 Caroline that Eobert would be persuaded by Mr. Sykes or 
 Mr. Yorke to remain at Whinbury till it cleared, and of that 
 there appeared no present chance. Five o'clock struck, and 
 time stole on ; still the clouds streamed : a sighing wind 
 whispered in the roof-trees of the cottage ; day seemed 
 already closing ; the parlour-fire shed on the clear hearth a 
 glow ruddy as at twilight. 
 
 1 It will not be fair till the moon rises,' pronounced 
 Mademoiselle Moore ; ' consequently, I feel assured that my 
 brother will not return till then : indeed, I should be sorry 
 if he did. We will have coffee : it would be vain to wait for 
 him.' 
 
 ' I am tired may I leave my work now, cousin ? '
 
 CORIOLANUS 83 
 
 ' You may, since it grows too dark to see to do it well. 
 Fold it up ; put it carefully in your bag ; then step into the 
 kitchen, and desire Sarah to bring in the gouter, or tea, as 
 you call it.' 
 
 ' But it has not yet struck six : he may still come.' 
 
 ' He will not, I tell you. I can calculate his movements. 
 I understand my brother.' 
 
 Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter. All the 
 world has, some time or other, felt that. Caroline, obedient 
 to orders, passed into the kitchen. Sarah was making a 
 dress for herself at the table. 
 
 ' You are to bring in coffee,' said the young lady, in a 
 spiritless tone ; and then she leaned her arm and head 
 against the kitchen mantelpiece, and hung listlessly over the 
 fire. 
 
 ' How low you seem, miss ! But it's all because your 
 cousin keeps you so close to work. It's a shame ! ' 
 
 ' Nothing of the kind, Sarah,' was the brief reply. 
 
 ' Oh ! but I know it is. You're fit to cry just this 
 minute, for nothing else but because you've sat still the 
 whole day. It would make a kitten dull to be mewed up so.' 
 
 ' Sarah, does your master often come home early from 
 market when it is wet ? ' 
 
 ' Never, hardly ; but just to-day, for some reason, he has 
 made a difference.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' He is come : I am certain I saw Murgatroyd lead his 
 horse into the yard by the back-way, when I went to get 
 some water at the pump five minutes since. He was in the 
 counting-house with Joe Scott, I believe.' 
 
 ' You are mistaken.' 
 
 ' What should I be mistaken for ? I know his horse 
 surely ? ' 
 
 ' But you did not see himself ? ' 
 
 ' I heard him speak, though. He was saying something 
 to Joe Scott about having settled all concerning ways and 
 means, and that there would be a new set of frames in the
 
 84 SHIKLEY 
 
 mill before another week passed ; and that this time ho 
 would get four soldiers from Stilbro' barracks to guard the 
 waggon.' 
 
 1 Sarah, are you making a gown ? ' 
 
 ' Yes : is it a handsome one ? ' 
 
 ' Beautiful ! Get the coffee ready. I'll finish cutting 
 out that sleeve for you ; and I'll give you some trimming 
 for it. I have some narrow satin ribbon of a colour that 
 will just match.' 
 
 1 You're very kind, miss.' 
 
 ' Be quick, there's a good girl ; but first put your master's 
 shoes on the hearth : he will take his boots off when he 
 comes in. I hear him he is coming.' 
 
 ' Miss ! you're cutting the stuff wrong.' 
 
 ' So I am ; but it is only a snip : there is no harm done.' 
 
 The kitchen-door opened ; Mr. Moore entered, very wet 
 and cold. Caroline half-turned from her dressmaking occu- 
 pation, but renewed it for a moment, as if to gain a minute's 
 time for some pui'pose. Bent over the di'ess, her face was 
 hidden ; there was an attempt to settle her features and veil 
 their expression, which failed : when she at last met Mr. 
 Moore, her countenance beamed. 
 
 ' We had ceased to expect you : they asserted you would 
 not come,' she said. 
 
 ' But I promised to return soon : you expected me, I 
 suppose ? ' 
 
 ' No, Kobert : I dared not when it rained so fast. And 
 you are wet and chilled change everything : if you took 
 cold, I should we should blame ourselves in some measure.' 
 
 ' I am not wet through : my riding-coat is water-proof. 
 Dry shoes are all I require. There .... the fire is pleasant 
 after facing the cold wind and rain for a few miles.' 
 
 He stood on the kitchen-hearth ; Caroline stood beside 
 him. Mr. Moore, while enjoying the genial glow, kept his 
 eyes directed towards the glittering brasses on the shelf 
 above. Chancing for an instant to look down, his glance 
 rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy, shaded
 
 COEIOLANUS 85 
 
 with silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Sarah was gone into the 
 parlour with the tray : a lecture from her mistress detained 
 her there. Moore placed his hand a moment on his young 
 cousin's shoulder, stooped, and left a kiss on her forehead. 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips, 
 1 1 was miserable when I thought you would not come : I 
 am almost too happy now ! Are you happy, Robert ? Do 
 you like to come home ? ' 
 
 ' I think I do ; to-night, at least.' 
 
 ' Are you certain you are not fretting about your frames, 
 and your business, and the war ? ' 
 
 ' Not just now.' 
 
 ' Are you positive you don't feel Hollow's cottage too 
 small for you, and narrow and dismal ? ' 
 
 ' At this moment, no.' 
 
 ' Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because 
 rich and great people forget you ? ' 
 
 ' No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I 
 am anxious to curry favour with rich and great people. I 
 only want means a position a career.' 
 
 ' Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. 
 You were made to be great you shall be great.' 
 
 ' I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, 
 what receipt you would give me for acquiring this same 
 greatness ; but I know it better than you know it yourself. 
 Would it be efficacious ? would it work ? Yes poverty, 
 misery, bankruptcy. Oh ! life is not what you think it, 
 Lina ! ' 
 
 ' But you are what I think you.' 
 
 1 1 am not.' 
 
 1 You are better, then ? ' 
 
 ' Far worse.' 
 
 1 No ; far better. I know you are good.' 
 
 1 How do you know it ? ' 
 
 ' You look so ; and I feel you are so.' 
 
 1 Where do you feel it ? ' 
 
 ' In iny heart.'
 
 86 SHIBLEY 
 
 1 Ah ! you judge me with your heart, Lina : you should 
 judge me with your head.' 
 
 ' I do ; and then I am quite proud of you. Kobert, you 
 cannot tell all my thoughts about you.' 
 
 Mr. Moore's dark face mustered colour ; his lips smiled, 
 and yet were compressed ; his eyes laughed, and yet he 
 resolutely knit his brow. 
 
 ' Think meanly of me, Lina,' said he. ' Men, in general, 
 are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you 
 have an idea ; I make no pretension to be better than my 
 fellows.' 
 
 ' If you did, I should not esteem you so much ; it is 
 because you are modest that I have such confidence in your 
 merit.' 
 
 ' Are you flattering me ? ' he demanded, turning sharply 
 upon her, and searching her face with an eye of acute pene- 
 tration. 
 
 ' No,' she said, softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. 
 She seemed to think it unnecessary to proffer any eager 
 disavowal of the charge. 
 
 ' You don't care whether I think you flatter me or 
 not?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' You are so secure of your own intentions ? ' 
 
 ' I suppose so.' 
 
 1 What are they, Caroline ? ' 
 
 ' Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of 
 what I think ; and then to make you better satisfied with 
 yourself.' 
 
 'By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere 
 friend?' 
 
 ' Just so ; I am your sincere friend, Robert." 
 
 1 And I am what chance and change shall make me, 
 Lina.' 
 
 ' Not my enemy, however? ' 
 
 The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress 
 entering the kitchen together in some commotion. They
 
 CORIOLANUS 87 
 
 had been improving the time which Mr. Moore and Miss 
 Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the 
 subject of ' caf6 au lait,' which Sarah said was the queerest 
 mess she ever saw, and a waste of God's good gifts, as it was 
 1 the nature of coffee to be boiled in water ; ' and which 
 Mademoiselle affirmed to be ' un breuvage royal,' a thousand 
 times too good for the mean person who objected to it. 
 
 The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into 
 the parlour. Before Hortense followed them thither, 
 Caroline had only time again to question, ' Not my enemy, 
 Robert ? ' And Moore, quaker-like, had replied with another 
 query, ' Could I be ? ' and then, seating himself at the table, 
 had settled Caroline at his side. 
 
 Caroline scarcely heard Mademoiselle's explosion of 
 wrath when she rejoined them ; the long declamation about 
 the ' conduite indigne de cette m6chante creature," sounded 
 in her ear as confusedly as the agitated rattling of the china. 
 Eobert laughed a little at it, in very subdued sort, and then, 
 politely and calmly entreating his sister to be tranquil, 
 assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she 
 should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls 
 in his mill ; only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as 
 they were most of them, he was informed, completely 
 ignorant of household work : and pert and self-willed as 
 Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the majority of 
 the women of her class. 
 
 Mademoiselle admitted the truth of this conjecture : 
 according to her, ' ces paysannes Anglaises 6taient tout in- 
 supportables.' What would she not give for some ' bonne 
 cuisinere Anversoise,' with the high cap, short petticoat, 
 and decent sabots proper to her class : something better, 
 indeed, than an insolent coquette in a flounced gown, and 
 absolutely without cap ! (for Sarah, it appears, did not par- 
 take the opinion of St. Paul, that ' it is a shame for a woman 
 to go with her head uncovered ; ' but, holding rather a 
 contrary doctrine, resolutely refused to imprison in linen or 
 mublin the plentiful tie.s-.es of her yellow hair, which it was
 
 88 SHIELEY 
 
 her wont to fasten up smartly with a comb behind, and on 
 Sundays to wear curled in front). 
 
 ' Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl ? ' asked Mr. 
 Moore, who stern in public was on the whole very kind 
 in private. 
 
 ' Merci du cadeau ! ' was the answer. ' An Antwerp girl 
 would not stay here ten days, sneered at as she would be by 
 all the young coquines in your factory ; ' then softening, 
 ' You are very good, dear brother excuse my petulance 
 but, truly my domestic trials are severe, yet they are pro- 
 bably my destiny ; for I recollect that our revered mother 
 experienced similar sufferings, though she had the choice of 
 all the best servants in Antwerp ; domestics are in all countries 
 a spoiled and unruly set.' 
 
 Mr. Moore had also certain reminiscences about the 
 trials of his revered mother. A good mother she had been 
 to him, and he honoured her memory, but he recollected 
 that she kept a hot kitchen of it in Antwerp, just as his 
 faithful sister did here in England. Thus, therefore, 
 he let the subject drop, and when the coffee service was 
 removed, proceeded to console Hortense by fetching her 
 music-book and guitar ; and having arranged the ribbon of 
 the instrument round her neck with a quiet fraternal kindness 
 he knew to be all-powerful in soothing her most ruffled 
 moods, he asked her to give him some of their mother's 
 favourite songs. 
 
 Nothing refines like affection. Family jarring vulgarizes 
 family union elevates. Hortense, pleased with her brother, 
 and grateful to him, looked, as she touched her guitar, almost 
 graceful, almost handsome ; her every-day fretful look waa 
 gone for a moment, and was replaced by a ' sourire plein de 
 bonteV She sang the songs he asked for, with feeling ; they 
 reminded her of a parent to whom she had been truly 
 attached ; they reminded her of her young days. She 
 observed, too, that Caroline listened with naive interest ; 
 this augmented her good-humour ; and the exclamation at 
 the close of the song, ' I wish I could sing and play like
 
 COEIOLANUS 89 
 
 Hortense ! ' achieved the business, and rendered her charm- 
 ing for the evening. 
 
 It is true, a little lecture to Caroline followed, on the 
 vanity of wishing and the duty of trying. ' As Rome,' it 
 was suggested, ' had not been built in a day, so neither had 
 Mademoiselle G6rard Moore's education been completed in a 
 week, or by merely wishing to be clever. It was effort that 
 had accomplished that great work : she was ever remarkable 
 for her perseverance, for her industry; her masters had 
 remarked that it was as delightful as it was uncommon to 
 find so much talent united with so much solidity, and so 
 on.' Once on the theme of her own merits, Mademoiselle 
 was fluent. 
 
 Cradled at last in blissful self-complacency, she took her 
 knitting, and sat down tranquil. Drawn curtains, a clear 
 fire, a softly shining lamp, gave now to the little parlour its 
 best its evening charm. It is probable that the three there 
 present felt this charm : they all looked happy. 
 
 ' What shall we do now, Caroline ? ' asked Mr. Moore, 
 returning to his seat beside his cousin. 
 
 ' What shall we do, Robert ? ' repeated she playfully. 
 ' You decide.' 
 
 ' Not play at chess ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 1 Nor draughts, nor backgammon ? ' 
 
 ' No no ; we both hate silent games that only keep one's 
 hands employed, don't we ? ' 
 
 ' I believe we do ; then, shall we talk scandal ? ' 
 
 ' About whom ? Are we sufficiently interested in any- 
 body to take a pleasure in pulling their character to pieces ? ' 
 
 ' A question that cornos to the point. For my part 
 unamiable as it sounds I must say, no.' 
 
 ' And I, too. But it is strange though we want no 
 third fourth, I mean (she hastily and with contrition 
 glanced at Hortense), living person among us so selfish 
 we are in our happiness though we don't want to think of 
 the present existing world, it would be pleasant to go back
 
 90 SHIRLEY 
 
 to the past ; to hear people that have slept for generations 
 in graves that are perhaps no longer graves now, but gardens 
 and fields, speak to us and tell us their thoughts, and impart 
 their ideas.' 
 
 ' Who shall be the speaker ? What language shall he 
 utter? French?' 
 
 ' Your French forefathers don't speak so sweetly, nor so 
 solemnly, nor so impressively as your English ancestors, 
 Eobert. To-night you shall be entirely English : you shall 
 read an English book.' 
 
 ' An old English book ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, an old English book, one that you like ; and I will 
 choose a part of it that is toned quite in harmony with some- 
 thing in you. It shall waken your nature, fill your mind 
 with music ; it shall pass like a skilful hand over your heart, 
 and make its strings sound. Your heart is a lyre, Eobert ; 
 but the lot of your life has not been a minstrel to sweep it, 
 and it is often silent. Let glorious William come near and 
 touch it : you will see how he will draw the English power 
 and melody out of its chords.' 
 
 ' I must read Shakspeare ? ' 
 
 ' You must have his spirit before you : you must ear his 
 voice with your mind's ear ; you must take some of his soul 
 into yours.' 
 
 ' With a view to making me better ; is it to operate like a 
 sermon ? ' 
 
 ' It is to stir you ; to give you new sensations. It is to 
 make you feel your life strongly, not only your virtues, but 
 your vicious, perverse points.' 
 
 ' Dieu ! que dit-elle ? ' cried Hortense, who hitherto had 
 been counting stitches in her knitting, and had not much 
 attended to what was said, but whose ear these two strong 
 woi'ds caught with a tweak. 
 
 ' Never mind her, sister : let her talk ; now just let her 
 say anything she pleases to-night. She likes to come down 
 hard upon your brother sometimes ; it amuses me, so let her 
 alone.'
 
 COEIOLANUS 91 
 
 Caroline, who, mounted on a chair, had been rummaging 
 the book-case, returned with a book. 
 
 1 Here's Shakspeare,' she said, ' and there's Coriolanus. 
 Now read, and discover by the feelings the reading will give 
 you at once how low and how high you are.' 
 
 ' Come then, sit near me, and correct when I mispro- 
 nounce.' 
 
 ' I am to be the teacher then, and you my pupil ? ' 
 
 ' Ainsi soit-il ! ' 
 
 ' And Shakspeare is our science, since we are going to 
 study ? ' 
 
 ' It appears so.' 
 
 1 And you are not going to be French, and sceptical, and 
 sneering ? You are not going to think it a sign of wisdom to 
 refuse to admire ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know.' 
 
 1 If you do, Eobert, I'll take Shakspeare away ; and I'll 
 shrivel up within myself, and put on my bonnet and go 
 home.' 
 
 1 Sit down ; here I begin.' 
 
 ' One minute, if you please, brother,' interrupted Made- 
 moiselle : ' when the gentleman of a family reads, the ladies 
 should always sow. Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery ; 
 you may get three sprigs done to-night.' 
 
 Caroline looked dismayed. ' I can't see by lamp-light ; 
 my eyes are tired, and I can't do two things well at once. 
 If I sew, I cannot listen ; if I listen, I cannot sew.' 
 
 1 Fi, done ! Quel enfantillage ! ' began Hortense. Mr. 
 Moore, as usual, suavely interposed. 
 
 ' Permit her to neglect the embroidery for this evening. 
 I wish her whole attention to be fixed on my accent, and to 
 ensure this, she must follow the reading with her eyes ; she 
 must look at the book.' 
 
 He placed it between them, reposed his arm on the back 
 of Caroline's chair, and thus began to read. 
 
 The very first scene in ' Coriolanus ' came with smart 
 relish to his intellectual palate, and still as he read he
 
 92 SHIBLEY 
 
 warmed. He delivered the haughty speech of Caius Marcius 
 to the starving citizens with unction ; he did not say he 
 thought his irrational pride right, but he seemed to feel it so. 
 Caroline looked up at him with a singular smile. 
 
 ' There's a vicious point hit already, 1 she said ; ' you 
 sympathize with that proud patrician who does not sym- 
 pathize with his famished fellow-men, and insults them : 
 there, go on.' He proceeded. The warlike portions did not 
 rouse him much ; he said all that was out of date, or should 
 be ; the spirit displayed was barbarous, yet the encounter 
 single-handed between Marcius and Tullus Aufidius, he 
 delighted in. As he advanced, he forgot to criticise ; it was 
 evident he appreciated the power, the truth of each portion ; 
 and, stepping out of the narrow line of private prejudices, 
 began to revel in the large picture of human nature, to feel 
 the reality stamped upon the characters who were speaking 
 from that page before him. 
 
 He did not read the comic scenes well, and Caroline, 
 taking the book out of his hand, read these parts for him. 
 From her he seemed to enjoy them, and indeed she gave 
 them with a spirit no one could have expected of her, with a 
 pithy expression with which she seemed gifted on the spot, and 
 for that brief moment only. It may be remarked, in passing, 
 that the general character of her conversation that evening, 
 whether serious or sprightly, gi*ave or gay, was as of some- 
 thing untaught, unstudied, intuitive, fitful ; when once gone, 
 no more to be reproduced as it had been, than the glancing 
 ray of the meteor, than the tints of the dew-gem, than the 
 colour or form of the sun-set cloud, than the fleeting and 
 glittering ripple varying the flow of a rivulet. 
 
 Coriolanus in glory ; Coriolanus in disaster ; Coriolanus 
 banished, followed like giant-shades one after the other. 
 Before the vision of the banished man, Moore's spirit seemed 
 to pause. He stood on the hearth of Aufidius's hall, facing 
 the image of greatness fallen, but greater than ever in that 
 low estate. He saw ' the grim appearance,' the dark face 
 1 bearing command in it,' ' the noble vessel with its tackle
 
 COEIOLANUS 93 
 
 torn.' With the revenge of Caius Marcius, Moore perfectly 
 sympathized ; he was not scandalized by it ; and again 
 Caroline whispered, ' There I see another glimpse of brother- 
 hood in error.' 
 
 The march on Rome, the mother's supplication, the long 
 resistance, the final yielding of bad passions to good, which 
 ever must be the case in a nature worthy the epithet of noble, 
 the rage of Aufidius at what he considered his ally's weak- 
 ness, the death of Coriolanus, the final sorrow of his great 
 enemy ; all scenes made of condensed truth and strength, came 
 on in succession, and earned with them in their deep, fast 
 flow, the heart and mind of reader and listener. 
 
 ' Now, have you felt Shakspeare ? ' asked Caroline, some 
 ten minutes after her cousin had closed the book. 
 ' I think so.' 
 
 ' And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you ? ' 
 ' Perhaps I have.' 
 
 1 Was he not faulty as well as great ? ' 
 Moore nodded. 
 
 ' And what was his fault ? What made him hated by the 
 citizens ? What caused him to be banished by his country- 
 men?' 
 
 ' What do you think it was ? ' 
 ' I ask again 
 
 Whether 'twas pride, 
 Which out of daily fortune ever taints 
 The happy man ? whether defect of judgment, 
 To fail in the disposing of those chances 
 Which he was lord of ? or whether nature, 
 Not to be other than one thing, not moving 
 From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace 
 Even with the same austerity and garb 
 As he controlled the war ? ' 
 
 ' Well, answer yourself, Sphinx.' 
 
 ' It was a spice of all : and you must not be proud to 
 your workpeople ; you must not neglect chances of soothing 
 them, and you must not be of an inflexible nature, uttering 
 a request as austerely as if it were a command.'
 
 94 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' That is the moral you tack to the play. What puts such 
 notions into your head ? ' 
 
 ' A wish for your good, a care for your safety, dear Robert, 
 and a fear caused by many things which I have heard lately, 
 that you will come to harm.' 
 
 1 Who tells you these things ? ' 
 
 ' I hear my uncle talk about you : he praises your hard 
 spirit, your determined cast of mind, your scorn of low 
 enemies, your resolution not " to truckle to the mob," as he 
 says.' 
 
 ' And would you have me truckle to them ? 
 
 'No, not for the world : I never wish you to lower your- 
 self ; but somehow, I cannot help thinking it unjust to include 
 all poor working people under the general and insulting 
 name of "the mob," and continually to think of them and 
 treat them haughtily.' 
 
 ' You are a little democrat, Caroline : if your uncle knew, 
 what would he say ? ' 
 
 ' I rarely talk to my uncle, as you know, and never 
 about such things : he thinks everything but sewing and 
 cooking above women's comprehension, and out of their 
 line.' 
 
 ' And do you fancy you comprehend the subjects on 
 which you advise me ? ' 
 
 ' As far as they concern you, I comprehend them. I know 
 it would be better for you to be loved by your workpeople than 
 to be hated by them, and I am sure that kindness is more likely 
 to win their regard than pride. If you were proud and cold 
 to me and Hortensc, should we love you ? When you are 
 cold to me, as you are sometimes, can I venture to be affec 
 tionate in return ? ' 
 
 ' Now, Lina, I've had my lesson both in languages and 
 ethics, with a touch on politics ; it is your turn. Hortense 
 tells me you were much taken by a little piece of poetry you 
 learned the, other day, a piece by poor Andre" Che'nier " La 
 Jeune Captive ; " do you remember it still? ' 
 
 ' I think so.'
 
 COEIOLANUS 95 
 
 ' Eepeat it, then. Take your time and mind your accent ; 
 especially let's have no English u's.' 
 
 Caroline, beginning in a low, rather tremulous voice, but 
 gaining courage as she proceeded, repeated the sweet verses 
 of Ch6nier ; the last three stanzas she rehearsed well : 
 
 Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin 1 
 Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin 
 
 J'ai passe les premiers & peine. 
 Au banquet de la vie a peine commence^ 
 Un instant seulement mes levres ont press6 
 
 La coupe en mes mains encor pleine. 
 
 Je ne suis qu'au printemps je veux voir la moisson ; 
 Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison, 
 
 Je veux achever mon annee. 
 Brillante sur ma tige et 1'honneur du jardin, 
 Je n'ai vu luire encor que les feux du matin 
 
 Je veux achever ma journ6e 1 
 
 Moore listened at first with his eyes cast down, but soon 
 he furtively raised them : leaning back in his chair, he could 
 watch Caroline without her perceiving where his gaze was 
 fixed. Her cheek had a colour, her eyes a light, her counten- 
 ance an expression, this evening, which would have made even 
 plain features striking ; but there was not the grievous defect 
 of plainness to pardon in her case. The sunshine was not 
 shed on rough barrenness ; it fell on soft bloom. Each linea- 
 ment was turned with grace ; the whole aspect was pleasing. 
 At the present moment animated, interested, touched she 
 might be called beautiful. Such a face was calculated to 
 awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant 
 one of admiration ; but some feeling more tender, genial, 
 intimate : friendship, perhaps affection, interest. When 
 she had finished, she turned to Moore and met his eye. 
 
 ' Is that pretty well repeated ? ' she inquired, smiling like 
 any happy, docile child. 
 
 ' I really don't know.' 
 
 ' Why don't you know ? Have you not listened ? '
 
 96 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' Yes and looked. You are fond of poetry, Lina ? ' 
 
 ' When I meet with real poetry, I cannot rest till I have 
 learned it by heart, and so made it partly mine.' 
 
 Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck 
 nine o'clock : Sarah entered, and said that Mr. Helstone's 
 servant was come for Miss Caroline. 
 
 ' Then the evening is gone already,' she observed ; ' and 
 it will be long, I suppose, before I pass another here.' 
 
 Hortense had been for some time nodding over her 
 knitting ; falling into a doze now, she made no response to 
 the remark. 
 
 ' You would have no objection to come here oftener of an 
 evening ? ' inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from 
 the side-table, whei*e it still lay, and carefully wrapped it 
 round her. 
 
 ' I like to come here : but I have no desire to be intrusive. 
 I am not hinting to be asked : you must understand that.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture 
 me for wishing to be rich, Lina ; but if I were rich, you 
 should live here always : at any rate, you should live with 
 me wherever my habitation might be.' 
 
 1 That would be pleasant ; and if you were poor ever so 
 poor it would still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert.' 
 
 ' I promised to walk with you up to the Rectory.' 
 
 ' I know you did ; but I thought you had forgotten, and 
 I hardly knew how to remind you, though I wished to do it. 
 But would you like to go ? It is a cold night ; and, as Fanny 
 is come, there is no necessity ' 
 
 ' Here is your muff don't wake Hortense come.' 
 
 The half-mile to the Rectory was soon traversed. They 
 parted in the garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure 
 of hands : yet Robert sent his cousin in excited and joyously 
 troubled. He had been singularly kind to her that day : not 
 in phrase, compliment, profession ; but in manner, in look, 
 and in soft and friendly tones. 
 
 For himself he came home grave, almost morose. As he 
 stood leaning on his own yard-gate, musing in the watery
 
 COKIOLANUS 97 
 
 moonlight, all alone the hushed, dark mill before him, the 
 hill-environed hollow round he exclaimed, abruptly : ' This 
 won't do ! There's weakness there's downright ruin in all 
 this. However,' he added, dropping his voice, ' the frenzy 
 is quite temporary. I know it very well : I have had it 
 before. It will be gone to-morrow.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CURATES AT TEA 
 
 CAROLINE HELSTONE was just eighteen years old ; and at 
 eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to be commenced. 
 Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvellous 
 fiction ; delightful sometimes, and sad sometimes ; almost 
 always unreal. Before that time, our world is heroic ; its 
 inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon ; its scenes are dream 
 scenes : darker woods and stranger hills ; brighter skies, 
 more dangerous waters ; sweeter flowers, more tempting 
 fruits ; wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are 
 found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a 
 moon we gaze on before that time ! How the trembling of 
 our hearts at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable 
 beauty ! As to our sun, it is a burning heaven the world 
 of gods. 
 
 At that time at eighteen, drawing near the confines of 
 illusive, void dreams, Elf-land lies behind us, the shores of 
 Reality rise in front. These shores are yet distant : they 
 look so blue, soft, gentle, we long to reach them. In sun- 
 shine we see a greenness beneath the azure, as of spring 
 meadows ; we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine 
 the roll of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we 
 think to hunger and thirst no more ; whereas many a 
 wilderness, and often the flood of Death, or some stream of 
 sorrow as cold and almost as black as Death, is to be crossed 
 ere true bliss can be tasted. Every joy that life gives must 
 be earned ere it is secured ; and how hardly earned, those
 
 THE CURATES AT TEA 99 
 
 only know who have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's 
 blood must gem with red beads the brow of the combatant, 
 before the wreath of victory rustles over it. 
 
 At eighteen, we are not aware of this. Hope, when she 
 smiles on us, and promises happiness to-morrow, is implicitly 
 believed ; Love, when he comes wandering like a lost angel 
 to our door, is at once admitted, welcomed, embraced : his 
 quiver is not seen ; if his arrows penetrate, their wound is 
 like a thrill of new life : there are no fears of poison, none 
 of the barb which no leech's hand can extract : that perilous 
 passion an agony ever in some of its phases ; with many, 
 an agony throughout is believed to be an unqualified good : 
 in short, at eighteen, the school of Experience is to be 
 entered, and her humbling, crushing, grinding, but yet 
 purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be learnt. 
 
 Alas, Experience ! No other mentor has so wasted and 
 frozen a face as yours : none wears a robe so black, none 
 bears a rod so heavy, none with hand so inexorable draws 
 the novice so sternly to his task, and forces him with 
 authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your 
 instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe 
 track through life's wilds : without it, how they stumble, 
 how they stray ! On what forbidden grounds do they 
 intrude, down what dread declivities are they hurled ! 
 
 Caroline, having been convoyed home by Robert, had no 
 wish to pass what remained of the evening with her uncle : 
 the room in which he sat was very sacred ground to her ; 
 she seldom intruded on it, and to-night she kept aloof till 
 the bell rang for prayers. Part of the evening church 
 service was the form of worship observed in Mr. Helstone's 
 household : he read it in his usual nasal voice, clear, loud, 
 and monotonous. The rite over, his niece, according to her 
 wont, stepped up to him. 
 
 ' Good-night, uncle.' 
 
 ' Hey ! You've been gadding abroad all day visiting, 
 dining out, and what not ! ' 
 
 ' Only at the cottage.'
 
 100 SHIELEY 
 
 ' And have you learnt your lessons ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 1 And made a shirt ? ' 
 
 ' Only part of one.' 
 
 ' Well, that will do : stick to the needle learn shirt- 
 making and gown-making, and pie-crust-making, and you'll 
 be a clever woman some day. Go to bed now ; I'm busy 
 with a pamphlet here.' 
 
 Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bed-room ; 
 the door bolted, her white dressing-gown assumed, her 
 long hair loosened and falling thick, soft, and wavy to her 
 waist ; and as, resting from the task of combing it out, she 
 leaned her cheek on her hand and fixed her eyes on the 
 carpet, before her rose, and close around her drew, the 
 visions we see at eighteen years. 
 
 Her thoughts were speaking with her : speaking 
 pleasantly, as it seemed, for she smiled as she listened. She 
 looked pretty, meditating thus : but a brighter thing than 
 she was in that apartment the spirit of youthful Hope. 
 According to this flattering prophet, she was to know disap- 
 pointment, to feel chill no more : she had entered on the 
 dawn of a summer day no false dawn, but the true spring 
 of morning and her sun would quickly rise. Impossible 
 for her now to suspect that she was the sport of delusion : 
 her expectations seemed warranted, the foundation on which 
 they rested appeared solid. 
 
 ' When people love, the next step is they marry,' was 
 her argument. ' Now, I love Robert, and I feel sure that 
 Bobert loves me : I have thought so many a time before ; 
 to-day I felt it. When I looked up at him after repeating 
 Chenier's poem, his eyes (what handsome eyes he has !) sent 
 the truth through my heart. Sometimes I am afraid to 
 speak to him, lest I should be too frank, lest I should seem 
 forward : for I have more than once regretted bitterly, 
 overflowing, superfluous words, and feared I had said more 
 than he expected me to say, and that he would disapprove 
 what he might deem my indiscretion ; now, to-night, I could
 
 THE CUKATES AT TEA 101 
 
 have ventured to express any thought, he was so indulgent. 
 How kind he was, as we walked up the lane ! He does not 
 flatter or say foolish things ; his love-making (friendship, I 
 mean : of course I don't yet account him my lover, hut I 
 hope he will be so some day) is not like what we read of in 
 books it is far better original, quiet, manly, sincere. I do 
 like him : I would be an excellent wife to him if he did 
 marry me : I would tell him of his faults (for he has a few 
 faults), but I would study his comfort, and cherish him, and 
 do my best to make him happy. Now, I am sure he will 
 not be cold to-morrow : I feel almost certain that to-morrow 
 evening he will either come here, or ask me to go there.' 
 
 She recommenced combing her hair, long as a mermaid's ; 
 turning her head, as she arranged it, she saw her own facv 
 and form in the glass. Such reflections are soberizing to 
 plain people : their own eyes are not enchanted with the 
 image ; they are confident then that the eyes of others can 
 see in it no fascination ; but the fair must naturally draw 
 other conclusions : the picture is charming, and must charm. 
 Caroline saw a shape, a head that, daguerreotyped in that 
 attitude and with that expression, would have been lovely : 
 she could not choose but derive from the spectacle confirma- 
 tion to her hopes : it was then in undiminished gladness she 
 sought her couch. 
 
 And in undiminished gladness she rose the next day : as 
 she entered her uncle's breakfast-room, and with soft cheer- 
 fulness wished him good morning, even that little man of 
 bronze himself thought, for an instant, his niece was growing 
 ' a fine girl.' Generally she was quiet and timid with him : 
 very docile, but not communicative ; this morning, however, 
 she found many things to say. Slight topics alone might 
 be discussed between them ; for with a woman a girl 
 Mr. Helstone would touch on no other. She had taken an 
 early walk in the garden, and she told him what flowers 
 were beginning to spring there ; she inquired when the 
 gardener was to come and trim the borders ; she informed 
 him that certain starlings were beginning '.o build their
 
 102 SHIELEY 
 
 nests in the church-tower (Briarfield church was close to 
 Briarfield rectory) ; she wondered the tolling of the bells in 
 the belfry did not scare them. 
 
 Mr. Helstone opined that ' they were like other fools who 
 had just paired ; insensible to inconvenience just for the 
 moment.' Caroline, made perhaps a little too courageous 
 by her temporary good spirits, here hazarded a i*emark of a 
 kind she had never before ventured to make on observations 
 dropped by her revered relative. 
 
 ' Uncle,' said she, ' whenever you speak of marriage, you 
 speak of it scornfully : do you think people shouldn't 
 marry ? ' 
 
 1 It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially 
 for women.' 
 
 ' Are all marriages unhappy ? ' 
 
 1 Millions of marriages are unhappy : if everybody con- 
 fessed the truth, perhaps all are more or less so.' 
 
 ' You are always vexed when you are asked to come and 
 marry a couple why ? ' 
 
 ' Because one does not like to act as accessory to the 
 commission of a piece of pure folly.' 
 
 Mr. Helstone spoke so readily, he seemed rather glad of 
 the opportunity to give his niece a piece of his mind on this 
 point. Emboldened by the impunity which had hitherto 
 attended her questions, she went a little further. 
 
 ' But why,' said she, ' should it be pure folly ? If two 
 people like each other, why shouldn't they consent to live 
 together ? ' 
 
 ' They tire of each other they tire of each other in a 
 month. A yokefellow is not a companion ; he or she is a 
 fellow-sufferer.' 
 
 It was by no means nai've simplicity which inspired 
 Caroline's next remark : it was a sense of antipathy to such 
 opinions, and of displeasure at him who held them. 
 
 ' One would think you had never been married, uncle : 
 one would think you were an old bachelor.' 
 
 ' Practically, I am so.'
 
 THE CURATES AT TEA 103 
 
 ' But you have been married. Why were you so incon- 
 sistent as to marry ? ' 
 
 ' Every man is mad once or twice in his life. 1 
 
 1 So you tired of my aunt, and my aunt of you, and you 
 were miserable together ? ' 
 
 Mr. Helstone pushed out his cynical lip, wrinkled his 
 brown forehead, and gave an inarticulate grunt. 
 
 ' Did she not suit you ? Was she not good-tempered ? 
 Did you not get used to her ? Were you not sorry when she 
 died ! ' 
 
 4 Caroline,' said Mr. Helstone, bringing his hand slowly 
 down to within an inch or two of the table, and then smiting 
 it suddenly on the mahogany, ' understand this : it is vulgar 
 and puerile to confound generals with particulars : in every 
 case, there is the rule, and there are the exceptions. Your 
 questions are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell, if you have 
 done breakfast.' 
 
 The breakfast was taken away, and that meal over, it was 
 the general custom of uncle and niece to separate, and not 
 to meet again till dinner ; but to-day the niece, instead of 
 quitting the room, went to the window-seat, and sat down 
 there. Mr. Helstone looked round uneasily once or twice, 
 as if he wished her away, but she was gazing from the window, 
 and did not seem to mind him ; so he continued the perusal 
 of his morning paper a particularly interesting one it 
 chanced to be, as new movements had just taken place in 
 the Peninsula, and certain columns of the journal were rich 
 in long despatches from General Lord Wellington. He little 
 knew, meantime, what thoughts were busy in his niece's 
 mind thoughts the conversation of the past half-hour had 
 revived, but not generated ; tumultuous were they now, as 
 disturbed bees in a hive, but it was years since they had first 
 made their cells in her brain. 
 
 She was reviewing his character, bis disposition, repeat- 
 ing his sentiments on marriage. Many a time had she 
 reviewed them before, and sounded the gulf between her own 
 mind and his ; and then, on the other side of the wide and
 
 104 SHIRLEY 
 
 deep chasm, she had seen, and she now saw, another figure 
 standing beside her uncle's a strange shape : dim, sinister, 
 scarcely earthly ; the half-remembered image of her own 
 father, James Helstone, Matthewson Helstone's brother. 
 
 Eumours had reached her ear of what that father's 
 character was ; old servants had dropped hints : she knew, 
 too, that he was not a good man, and that he was never 
 kind to her. She recollected a dark recollection it was 
 some weeks that she had spent with him in a great town 
 somewhere, when she had had no maid to dress her or take 
 care of her ; when she had been shut up, day and night, in a 
 high garret-room, without a carpet, with a bare uncurtained 
 bed, and scarcely any other furniture ; when he went out 
 early every morning, and often forgot to return and give her 
 her dinner during the day, and at night, when he came back, 
 was like a madman, furious, terrible ; or still more painful 
 like an idiot, imbecile, senseless. She knew she had 
 fallen ill in this place, and that one night when she was 
 very sick, he had come raving into the room, and said he 
 would kill her, for she was a burden to him ; her screams 
 had brought aid, and from the moment she was then rescued 
 from him she had never seen him, except as a dead man in 
 his coffin. 
 
 That was her father : also she had a mother ; though 
 Mr. Helstone never spoke to her of that mother ; though 
 she could not remember having seen her : but that she was 
 alive she knew. This mother was then the drunkard's wife : 
 what had their marriage been ? Caroline, turning from the 
 lattice whence she had been watching the starlings (though 
 without seeing them), in a low voice, and with a sad bitter 
 tone, thus broke the silence of the room : ' You term 
 marriage miserable, I suppose, from what you saw of my 
 father and mother's. If my mother suffered what I suffered 
 when I was with papa, she must have had a dreadful life.' 
 
 Mr. Helstone, thus addressed, wheeled about in his chair, 
 and looked over his spectacles at his niece : he was taken aback. 
 
 Her father and mother ! What had put it into her head
 
 THE CURATES AT TEA 105 
 
 to mention her father and mother, of whom he had never, 
 during the twelve years she had lived with him, spoken to her ? 
 That the thoughts were self-matured ; that she had any recol- 
 lections or speculations about her parents, he could not fancy. 
 
 I Your father and mother ? Who has been talking to you 
 about them ? ' 
 
 ' Nobody ; but I remember something of what papa was, 
 and I pity mamma. Where is she ? ' 
 
 This ' Where is she ? ' had been on Caroline's lips 
 hundreds of times before ; but till now she had never 
 uttered it. 
 
 I 1 hardly know,' returned Mr. Helstone ; ' I was little 
 acquainted with her. I have not heard from her for ^ jars : 
 but wherever she is, she thinks nothing of you ; she never 
 inquires about you ; I have reason to believe she does not 
 wish to see you. Come, it is schooltime : you go to your 
 cousin at ten, don't you ? The clock has struck.' 
 
 Perhaps Caroline would have said more ; but Fanny 
 coming in, informed her master that the churchwardens 
 wanted to speak to him in the vestry. He hastened to join 
 them, and his niece presently set out for the cottage. 
 
 The road from the Rectory to Hollow's-mill inclined 
 downwards ; she ran, therefore, almost all the way. Exercise, 
 the fresh air, the thought of seeing Robert, at least of being on 
 his premises, in his vicinage, revived her somewhat depressed 
 spirits quickly. Arriving in sight of the white house, and 
 within hearing of the thundering mill and its rushing water- 
 course, the first thing she saw was Moore at his garden-gate. 
 There he stood ; in his belted Holland blouse, a light cap 
 covering his head, which undress costume suited him : he 
 was looking down the lane, not in the direction of his cousin's 
 approach. She stopped, withdrawing a little behind a willow, 
 and studied his appearance. 
 
 ' He has not his peer,' she thought ; ' he is as handsome 
 as he is intelligent. What a keen eye he has ! What clearly 
 cut, spirited features thin and serious, but graceful ! 1 do like 
 his face I do like his aspect I do like him so much ! Better
 
 106 SHIELEY 
 
 than any of those shuffling curates, for instance better than 
 anybody : bonnie Bobert ! ' 
 
 She sought ' bonnie Eobert's ' presence speedily. For 
 his part, when she challenged his sight, I believe he would 
 have passed from before her eyes like a phantom, if he could ; 
 but being a tall fact, and no fiction, he was obliged to stand 
 the greeting. He made it brief : it was cousin-like, brother- 
 like, friend-like, anything but lover-like. The nameless 
 charm of last night had left his manner : he was no longer 
 the same man ; or, at any rate, the same heart did not beat 
 in his breast. Eude disappointment ! sharp cross ! At first 
 the eager girl would not believe in the change, though she 
 saw and felt it. It was difficult to withdraw her hand from 
 his, till he had bestowed at least something like a kind 
 pressure ; it was difficult to turn her eyes from his eyes, till 
 his looks had expressed something more and fonder than 
 that cool welcome. 
 
 A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge 
 explanation ; a lover feminine can say nothing ; if she did, 
 the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for 
 self-treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as 
 a rebellion against her instincts, and would vindictively 
 repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt 
 smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it : 
 ask no questions ; utter no remonstrances : it is your best 
 wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone ; 
 break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves 
 are martyrised : do not doubt that your mental stomach if 
 you have such a thing is strong as an ostrich's the stone 
 will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate 
 put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation : close your 
 fingers firmly upon the gift ; let it sting through your palm. 
 Never mind : in time, after your hand and arm have swelled 
 and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will 
 die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to 
 endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, 
 if you survive the test some, it is said, die under it you
 
 THE CURATES AT TEA 107 
 
 will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. This you are not aware 
 of, perhaps, at the time, and so cannot borrow courage of 
 that hope. Nature, however, as has been intimated, is an 
 excellent friend in such cases ; sealing the lips, interdicting 
 utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation : a dissimu- 
 lation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling 
 down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, 
 and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying 
 because it is half-bitter. 
 
 Half -bitter ! Is that wrong ? No it should be bitter : 
 bitterness is strength it is a tonic. Sweet mild force 
 following acute suffering, you find nowhere : to talk of it is 
 delusion. There may be apathetic exhaustion after the rack ; 
 if energy remains, it will be rather a dangerous ei^rgy 
 deadly when confronted with injustice. 
 
 Who has read the ballad of ' Puir Mary Lee ' ? that old 
 Scotch ballad, written I k~ ow not in what generation nor 
 by what hand. Mary had been ill used probably in being 
 made to believe that truth which was falsehood : she is not 
 complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and 
 you hear her thoughts. They are not the thoughts of a 
 model heroine under her circumstances, but they are those 
 of a deeply-feeling, strongly-resentful peasant-girl. Anguish 
 has driven her from the ingle-nook of home, to the white- 
 shrouded and icy hills : crouched under the ' cauld drift,' she 
 recalls every image of horror, ' the yellow-wymed ask,' 
 ' the hairy adder,' ' the auld moon-bowing tyke,' ' the ghaist 
 at e'en,' ' the sour bullister,' ' the milk on the taed's back : ' 
 she hates these, but ' waur she hates Robin -a-Ree ! ' 
 
 Oh ! ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn 
 
 The warld was in love wi' me ; 
 But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn, 
 
 And curse black Kobin-a-llee ! 
 
 Then whudder awa' thou bitter biting blast, 
 
 And sough through the scrunty tree, 
 And snioor me up in the snaw fu' fast, 
 
 And ne'er let the sun me see !
 
 108 SHIRLEY 
 
 Oh, never melt awa' thou wreath o' anaw, 
 
 That's sae kind in graving me ; 
 But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw 
 
 0' villains like Robin-a-Ree ! 
 
 But what has been said in the last page or two is not 
 germane to Caroline Helstone's feelings, or to the state of 
 things between her and Robert Moore. Eobert had done 
 her no wrong : he had told her no lie ; it was she that was 
 to blame, if any one was : what bitterness her mind distilled 
 should and would be poured on her own head. She had 
 loved without being asked to love, a natural, sometimes an 
 inevitable chance, but big with misery. 
 
 Eobert, indeed, had sometimes seemed to be fond of her 
 but why? Because she had made herself so pleasing to 
 him, he could not, in spite of all his efforts, help testifying a 
 state of feeling his judgment did not approve, nor his will 
 sanction. He was about to withdraw decidedly from 
 intimate communication with her, because he did not choose 
 to have his affections inextricably entangled, nor to be 
 drawn, despite his reason, into a marriage he believed 
 imprudent. Now, what was she to do ? to give way to her 
 feelings, or to vanquish them ? To pursue him, or to turn 
 upon herself ? If she is weak, she will try the first ex- 
 pedient, will lose his esteem and win his aversion : if she 
 has sense, she will be her own governor, and resolve to 
 subdue and bring under guidance the disturbed realm of her 
 emotions. She will determine to look on life steadily, as it 
 is ; to begin to learn its severe truths seriously, and to study 
 its knotty problems closely, conscientiously. 
 
 It appeared she had a little sense, for she quitted Robert 
 quietly, without complaint or question without the alteration 
 of a muscle or the shedding of a tear betook herself to her 
 studies under Hortense as usual, and at dinner-time went 
 home without lingering. 
 
 When she had dined, and found herself in the Rectory 
 drawing-room alone, having left her uncle over his tem- 
 perate glass of port wine, the difficulty that occurred to
 
 THE CUEATES AT TEA 109 
 
 and embarrassed her, was ' How am I to get through 
 this day ? ' 
 
 Last night she had hoped it would be spent as yesterday 
 was, that the evening would be again passed with Happiness 
 and Robert :' she had learned her mistake this morning, and 
 yet she could not settle down, convinced that no chance 
 would occur to recall her to Hollow's cottage, or to bring 
 Moore again into her society. 
 
 He had walked up after tea, more than once, to pass an 
 hour with her uncle : the door-bell had rung, his voice had 
 been heard in the passage just at twilight, when she little 
 expected such a pleasure ; and this had happened twice after 
 he had treated her with peculiar reserve ; and, though he 
 rarely talked to her in her uncle's presence, he had looked 
 at her relentingly, as he sat opposite her work-table during 
 his stay : the few words he had spoken to her were com- 
 forting ; his manner on bidding her good-night was genial. 
 Now, he might come this evening, said False Hope : she 
 almost knew it was False Hope which breathed the whisper, 
 and yet she listened. 
 
 She tried to read her thoughts wandered ; she tried to 
 sew every stitch she put in was an ennui, the occupation 
 was insufferably tedious ; she opened her desk, and attempted 
 to write a French composition she wrote nothing but 
 mistakes. 
 
 Suddenly the door-bell sharply rang her heart leaped 
 she sprang to the drawing-room door, opened it softly, 
 peeped through the aperture : Fanny was admitting a visitor 
 a gentleman a tall man just the height of Robert for 
 one second she thought it was Robert for one second she 
 exulted ; but the voice asking for Mr. Helstone undeceived 
 her : that voice was an Irish voice, consequently not Moore's 
 but the curate's Malone's. He was ushered into the 
 dining-room, where, doubtless, he speedily helped his Rector 
 to empty the decanters. 
 
 It was a fact to be noted, that at whatever house in 
 Briarfield, \Yhinbury, or Nunnely, one curate dropped in to
 
 110 SHIRLEY 
 
 a meal dinner or tea, as the case might be another 
 presently followed ; often two more. Not that they gave 
 each other the rendezvous, but they were usually all on the 
 run at the same time ; and when Donne, for instance, sought 
 Malone at his lodgings and found him not, he inquired 
 whither he had posted, and having learned of the landlady 
 his destination, hastened with all speed after him ; the same 
 causes operated in the same way with Sweeting. Thus it 
 chanced on that afternoon that Caroline's ears were three 
 times tortured with the ringing of the bell, and the advent 
 of undesired guests : for Donne followed Malone, and 
 Sweeting followed Donne ; and more wine was ordered up 
 from the cellar into the dining-room (for though old Helstone 
 chid the inferior priesthood when he found them 'carousing,' 
 as he called it, in their own tents, yet at his hierarchical table 
 he ever liked to treat them to a glass of his best), and through 
 the closed doors Caroline heard their boyish laughter, and 
 the vacant cackle of their voices. Her fear was lest they 
 should stay to tea ; for she had no pleasure in making tea 
 for that particular trio. What distinctions people draw ! 
 These three were men young men educated men, like 
 Moore : yet, for her, how great the difference ! Their society 
 was a bore his a delight. 
 
 Not only was she destined to be favoured w r ith their 
 clerical company, but Fortune was at this moment bringing 
 her four other guests lady-guests, all packed in a pony- 
 phaeton now rolling somewhat heavily along the road from 
 Whinbury : an elderly lady, and three of her buxom 
 daughters, were coming to see her ' in a friendly way,' as 
 the custom of that neighbourhood was. Yes, a fourth time 
 the bell clanged : Fanny brought the present announcement 
 to the drawing-room' Mrs. Sykes and the three Misses 
 Sykes.' 
 
 When Caroline was going to receive company, her habit 
 was to wring her hands very nervously, to flush a little, and 
 come forward hurriedly yet hesitatingly, wishing herself 
 meantime at Jericho. She was, at such crises, sadly
 
 THE CtJ&ATES AT TEA 111 
 
 deficient in finished manner, though she had once been at 
 school a year. Accordingly, on this occasion, her small 
 white hands sadly maltreated each other, while she stood up, 
 waiting the entrance of Mrs. Sykes. 
 
 In stalked that lady, a tall bilious gentlewoman, who 
 made an ample and not altogether insincere profession of 
 piety, and was greatly given to hospitality towards the 
 clergy ; in sailed her three daughters, a showy trio, being all 
 three well grown, and more or less handsome. 
 
 In English country ladies there is this point to be 
 remarked. Whether young or old, pretty or plain, dull or 
 sprightly, they all (or almost all) have a certain expression 
 stamped on their features, w r hich seems to say, ' I know I 
 do not boast of it but I know that I am the standard of 
 what is proper ; let every one therefore whom I approach, 
 or who approaches me, keep a sharp look-out, for wherein 
 they differ from me be the same in dress, manner, opinion, 
 principle, or practice therein they are wrong.' 
 
 Mrs. and Misses Sykes, far from being exceptions to this 
 observation, were pointed illustrations of its truth. Miss 
 Mary a well-looked, well-meant, and, on the whole, well- 
 dispositioned girl wore her complacency with some state, 
 though without harshness ; Miss Harriet a beauty carried 
 it more overbearingly : she looked high and cold ; Miss 
 Hannah, who was conceited, dashing, pushing, flourished 
 hers consciously and openly ; the mother evinced it with the 
 gravity proper to her age and religious fame. 
 
 The reception was got through somehow. Caroline 'was 
 glad to see them ' (an unmitigated fib), hoped they were 
 well, hoped Mrs. Sykes's cough was better (Mrs. Sykes bad 
 had a cough for the last twenty years), hoped the Misses 
 Sykes had left their sisters at home well; to which inquiry, 
 the Misses Sykes, sitting on three chairs opposite the music- 
 stool, whereon Caroline had undesignedly come to anchor, 
 after wavering for some seconds between it and a large arm- 
 chair, into which she at length recollected she ought to 
 induct Mrs. Sykes : and indeed that lady saved her the
 
 112 SHIKLEY 
 
 trouble by depositing herself therein ; the Misses Sykes 
 replied to Caroline by one simultaneous bow, very majestic 
 and mighty awful. A pause followed : this bow was of a 
 character to ensure silence for the next five minutes, and it 
 did. Mrs. Sykes then inquired after Mr. Helstone, and 
 whether he had had any return of rheumatism, and whether 
 preaching twice on a Sunday fatigued him, and if he was 
 capable of taking a full service now ; and on being assured 
 he was, she and all her daughters, combining in chorus, 
 expressed their opinion that he was ' a wonderful man of his 
 years.' 
 
 Pause second. 
 
 Miss Mary, getting up the steam in her turn, asked 
 whether Caroline had attended the Bible Society meeting 
 which had been held at Nunnely last Thursday night : the 
 negative answer which truth compelled Caroline to utter 
 for last Thursday evening she had been sitting at home, 
 reading a novel which Eobert had lent her elicited a 
 simultaneous expression of surprise from the lips of the four 
 ladies. 
 
 1 We were all there,' said Miss Mary ; ' mamma and all 
 of us ; we even persuaded papa to go : Hannah would insist 
 upon it; but he fell asleep while Mr. Langweilig, the German 
 Moravian minister, was speaking : I felt quite ashamed, he 
 nodded so.' 
 
 ' And there was Dr. Broadbent,' cried Hannah, ' such a 
 beautiful speaker ! You couldn't expect it of him, for he is 
 almost a vulgar-looking man.' 
 
 ' But such a dear man,' interrupted Mary. 
 
 ' And such a good man, such a useful man,' added her 
 mother. 
 
 ' Only like a butcher in appearance,' interposed the fair 
 proud Harriet. ' I couldn't bear to look at him : I listened 
 with my eyes shut.' 
 
 Miss Helstone felt her ignorance and incompetency ; not 
 having seen Dr. Broadbent, she could not give her opinion. 
 Pause third came on. During its continuance, Caroline was
 
 THE CUKATES AT TEA 113 
 
 feeling at her heart's core what a dreaming fool she was ; 
 what an unpractical life she led ; how little fitness there was 
 in her for ordinary intercourse with the ordinary world. 
 She was feeling how exclusively she" had attached herself to 
 the white cottage in the Hollow ; how in the existence of one 
 inmate of that cottage she had pent all her universe : she 
 was sensible that this would not do, and that some day she 
 would be forced to make an alteration : it could not be said 
 that she exactly wished to resemble the ladies before her, 
 but she wished to become superior to her present self, so as 
 to feel less scared by their dignity. 
 
 The sole means she found of reviving the flagging dis- 
 course was by asking them if they would all stay to tea ; 
 and a cruel struggle it cost her to perform this piece of 
 civility. Mrs. Sykes had begun ' We ai'e much obliged to 
 you, but ' when in came Fanny once more. 
 
 ' The gentlemen will stay the evening, ma'am/ was the 
 message she brought from Mr. Helstone. 
 
 ' What gentlemen have you ? ' now inquired Mrs. Sykes. 
 Their names were specified ; she and her daughters inter- 
 changed glances : the curates were not to them what they 
 were to Caroline. Mr. Sweeting was quite a favourite with 
 them ; even Mr. Malone rather so, because he was a clergy- 
 man. ' Eeally, since you have company already, I think we 
 will stay,' remarked Mrs. Sykes. ' We shall be quite a 
 pleasant little party : I always like to meet the clergy.' 
 
 And now Caroline had to usher them upstairs, to help 
 them to unshawl, smooth their hair, and make themselves 
 smart ; to re-conduct them to the drawing-room, to distri- 
 bute amongst them books of engravings, or odd things 
 purchased from the Jew-basket : she was obliged to be a 
 purchaser, though she was but a slack contributor : and if 
 she had possessed plenty of money, she would rather, when 
 it was brought to the Rectory an awful incubus ! have 
 purchased the whole stock, than contributed a single pin- 
 cushion. 
 
 It ought perhaps to be explained in passing, for the
 
 114 SHIRLEY 
 
 benefit of those who are not ' au fait ' to the mysteries of the 
 ' Jew-basket ' and ' Missionary-basket/ that these ' meubles ' 
 are willow-repositories, of the capacity of a good-sized family 
 clothes-basket, dedicated to the purpose of conveying from 
 house to house a monster collection of pincushions, needle- 
 books, card-racks, work-bags, articles of infant wear, &c. &c. 
 &c., made by the willing or reluctant hands of the Christian 
 ladies of a parish, and sold perforce to the heathenish 
 gentlemen thereof, at prices unblushingly exorbitant. The 
 proceeds of such compulsory sales are applied to the conver- 
 sion of the Jews, the seeking out of the ten missing tribes, 
 or to the regeneration of the interesting coloured population 
 of the globe. Each lady-contributor takes it in her turn to 
 keep the basket a month, to sew for it, and to foist off its 
 contents on a shrinking male public. An exciting time it is 
 when that turn comes round : some active-minded women 
 with a good trading spirit like it, and enjoy exceedingly the 
 fun of making hard-handed worsted-spinners cash up, to the 
 tune of four or five hundred per cent, above cost price, for 
 articles quite useless to them ; other feebler souls object to 
 it, and would rather see the Prince of Darkness himself at 
 their door any morning than that phantom-basket, brought 
 with ' Mrs. Rouse's compliments, and please, ma'am, she 
 says it's your turn now.' 
 
 Miss Helstone's duties of hostess performed, more 
 anxiously than cheerily, she betook herself to the kitchen, 
 to hold a brief privy -council with Fanny and Eliza about 
 the tea. 
 
 1 What a lot on 'em ! ' cried Eliza, who was cook. ' And 
 I put off the baking to-day because I thought there would 
 be bread plenty to fit while morning : we shall never have 
 enow.' 
 
 ' Are there any tea-cakes ? ' asked the young mistress. 
 
 ' Only three and a loaf. I wish these fine folk would 
 stay at home till they're asked : and I want to finish trim- 
 ming my hat ' (bonnet she meant). 
 
 ' Then,' suggested Caroline, to whom the importance of
 
 THE CUBATES AT TEA 115 
 
 the emergency gave a certain energy, ' Fanny must run 
 down to Briarfield and buy some muffins and crumpets, and 
 some biscuits : and don't be cross, Eliza, we can't help it 
 now.' 
 
 4 And which tea-things are we to have ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, the best, I suppose : I'll get out the silver service, 
 and she ran upstairs to the plate-closet, and presently brought 
 down teapot, cream-ewer, and sugar-basin. 
 
 ' And mun we have th' urn ? ' 
 
 4 Yes ; and now get it ready as quickly as you can, for 
 the sooner we have tea over, the sooner they will go at 
 least, I hope so. Heigho ! I wish they were gone,' she 
 sighed as she returned to the drawing-room. ' Still,' she 
 thought, as she paused at the door ere opening it, ' if Eobert 
 would but come even now how bright all would be ! How 
 comparatively easy the task of amusing these people, if he 
 were present ! There would be an interest in hearing him 
 talk (though he never says much in company) and in talking 
 in his presence : there can be no interest in hearing any of 
 them, or in speaking to them. How they will gabble when 
 the curates come in, and how weary I shall grow with listen- 
 ing to them ! But I suppose I am a selfish fool : these are 
 very respectable gentlefolks ; I ought no doubt to be proud 
 of their countenance : I don't say they are not as good as 1 
 am far from it but they are different from me.' 
 
 She went in. 
 
 Yorkshire people, in those days, took their tea round the 
 table ; sitting well into it, with their knees duly introduced 
 under the mahogany. It was essential to have a multitude 
 of plates of bread and butter, varied in sorts and plentiful in 
 quantity : it was thought proper, too, that on the centre-plate 
 should stand a glass dish of marmalade ; among the viands 
 was expected to be found a small assortment of cheesecakes 
 and tarts : if there was also a plate of thin slices of pink ham 
 garnished with green parsley, so much the better. 
 
 Eliza, the Rector's cook, fortunately knew her business as 
 provider: she had been put out of humour a little at 11 si,
 
 116 SHIBLEY 
 
 when the invaders came so unexpectedly in such strength ; 
 but it appeared that she regained her cheerfulness with action, 
 for in due time the tea was spread forth in handsome style ; 
 and neither ham, tarts, nor marmalade were wanting among 
 its accompaniments. 
 
 The curates, summoned to this bounteous repast, entered 
 joyous ; but at once, on seeing the ladies, of whose presence 
 they had not been forewarned, they came to a stand in the door- 
 way. Malone headed the party ; he stopped short and fell 
 back, almost capsizing Donne, who was behind him. Donne, 
 staggering three paces in retreat, sent little Sweeting into the 
 arms of old Helstone, who brought up the rear. There was 
 some expostulation, some tittering : Malone was desired to 
 mind what he was about, and urged to push forward ; which 
 at last he did, though colouring to the top of his peaked fore- 
 head a bluish purple. Helstone, advancing, set the shy 
 curates aside, welcomed all his fair guests, shook hands and 
 passed a jest with each, and seated himself snugly between 
 the lovely Harriet and the dashing Hannah ; Miss Mary he 
 requested to move to the seat opposite to him, that he might 
 see her, if he couldn't be near her. Perfectly easy and gallant, 
 in his way, were his manners always to young ladies ; and 
 most popular was he amongst them : yet, at heart, he neither 
 respected nor liked the sex, and such of them as circumstances 
 had brought into intimate relation with him had ever feared 
 rather than loved him. 
 
 The curates were left to shift for themselves. Sweeting, 
 who was the least embarrassed of the three, took refuge be- 
 side Mrs. Sykes, who, he knew, was almost as fond of him 
 as if he had been her son. Donne, after making his general 
 bow with a grace all his own, and saying in a high pragma- 
 tical voice, " How d'ye do, Miss Helstone?" dropped into a 
 seat at Caroline's elbow : to her unmitigated annoyance, for 
 she bad a peculiar antipathy to Donne, on account of his 
 stultified and unmovable self-conceit, and his incurable 
 narrowness of mind. Malone, grinning most unmeaningly, 
 inducted himself into the corresponding seat on the other
 
 THE CUBATES AT TEA 117 
 
 side : she was thus blessed in a pair of supporters ; neither 
 of whom, she knew, would be of any mortal use, whether for 
 keeping up the conversation, handing cups, circulating the 
 muffins, or even lifting the plate from the slop-basin. Little 
 Sweeting, small and boyish as he was, would have been worth 
 twenty of them. 
 
 Malone, though a ceaseless talker when there were only 
 men present, was usually tongue-tied in the presence of 
 ladies : three phrases, however, he had ready cut and dried, 
 which he never failed to produce : 
 
 Istly. ' Have you had a walk to-day, Miss Helstone ? ' 
 2ndly. ' Have you seen your cousin, Moore, lately ? ' 
 3rdly. ' Does your class at the Sunday-school keep up 
 its number ? ' 
 
 These three questions being put and responded to, between 
 Caroline and Malone reigned silence. 
 
 With Donne it was otherwise : he was troublesome, exas- 
 perating. He had a stock of small-talk on hand, at once the 
 most trite and perverse that can well be imagined : abuse of 
 the people of Briarfield ; of the natives of Yorkshire generally ; 
 complaints of the want of high society ; of the backward 
 state of civilization in these districts ; murmurings against 
 the disrespectful conduct of the lower orders in the north 
 toward their betters ; silly ridicule of the manner of living in 
 these parts, the want of style, the absence of elegance, as if 
 he, Donne, had been accustomed to very great doings indeed : 
 an insinuation which his somewhat underbred manner and 
 aspect failed to bear out. These strictures he seemed to think 
 must raise him in the estimation of Miss Helstone, or of any 
 other lady who heard him ; whereas with her, at least, they 
 brought him to a level below contempt : though sometimes, 
 indeed, they incensed her ; for a Yorkshire girl herself, she 
 hated to hear Yorkshire abused by such a pitiful prater ; and 
 when brought up to a certain pitch, she would turn and say 
 something of which neither the matter nor the manner recom- 
 mended her to Mr. Donne's good will. She would tell him 
 it was no proof of refinement to be ever scolding others for
 
 118 SHIKLEt 
 
 vulgarity : and no sign of a good pastor to be eternally cen- 
 suring his flock. She would ask him what he had entered 
 the church for, since he complained there were only 
 cotttiges to visit, and poor people to preach to? whether lie 
 had been ordained to the ministry merely to wear soft cloth- 
 ing and sit in kings' houses ? These questions were con- 
 sidered by all the curates as, to the last degree, audacious and 
 impious. 
 
 Tea was a long time in progress : all the guests gabbled, 
 as their hostess had expected they would. Mr. Helstone, 
 being in excellent spirits, when, indeed, was he ever other- 
 wise in society, attractive female society ? it being only 
 with the one lady of his own family that he maintained a 
 grim taciturnity, kept up a brilliant flow of easy prattle with 
 his right-hand and left-hand neighbours, and even with his 
 vis-d-vis, Miss Mary : though as Mary was the most sen- 
 sible, the least coquettish of the three, to her the elderly 
 widower was the least attentive. At heart, he could not abide 
 sense in women : he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, 
 as vain, as open to ridicule as possible ; because they were 
 then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to 
 be, inferior : toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and 
 to be thrown away. 
 
 Hannah was his favourite. Harriet, though beautiful, 
 egotistical, and self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for 
 him ; she had some genuine self-respect amidst much false 
 pride, and if she did not talk like an oracle, neither would 
 she babble like one crazy : she would not permit herself to be 
 treated quite as a doll, a child, a plaything : she expected to 
 be bent to like a queen. 
 
 Hannah, on the contrary, demanded no respect ; only 
 flattery : if her admirers only told her that she was an angel, 
 she would let them treat her like an idiot. So very credulous 
 and frivolous was she : so very silly did she become when be- 
 sieged with attention, flattered and admired to the proper de- 
 gree, that there were moments when Helstone actually felt 
 tempted to commit matrimony a second time, and to try the
 
 THE CURATES AT TEA 119 
 
 experiment of taking her for his second helpmeet : but, for- 
 tunately, the salutary recollection of the ennuis of his first 
 marriage, the impression still left on him of the weight of the 
 millstone he had once worn round his neck, the fixity of his 
 feelings respecting the insufferable evils of conjugal existence, 
 operated as a check to his tenderness, suppressed the sigh 
 heaving his old iron lungs, and restrained him from whisper- 
 ing to Hannah proposals it would have been high fun and 
 great satisfaction to her to hear. 
 
 It is probable she would have married him if he had asked 
 her : her parents would have quite approved the match : to 
 them his fifty-five years, his bend-leather heart, could have 
 presented no obstacles ; and, as he was a rector, held an ex- 
 cellent living, occupied a good house, and was supposed even 
 to have private property (though in that the world was 
 mistaken : every penny of the 5.000/. inherited by him from 
 his father had been devoted to the building and endowing of 
 a new church at his native village in Lancashire for 
 he could show a lordly munificence when he pleased, and if 
 the end was to his liking, never hesitated about making a 
 grand sacrifice to attain it), her parents, I say, would have 
 delivered Hannah over to his loving kindness and his tender 
 mercies without one scruple ; and the second Mrs. Hel- 
 stone, inversing the natural order of insect existence, would 
 have fluttered through the honeymoon a bright, admired 
 butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid, trampled 
 worm. 
 
 Little Mr. Sweeting, seated between Mrs. Sykes and Miss 
 Mary, both of whom were very kind to him, and having a dish 
 of tarts before him, and marmalade and crumpet upon his plate, 
 looked and felt more content than any monarch. He was 
 fond of all the Misses Sykes : they were all fond of him : he 
 thought them magnificent girls, quite proper to mate with 
 one of his inches. If he had a cause of regret at this blissful 
 moment, it was that Miss Dora happened to be absent ; Dora 
 being the one whom he secretly hoped one day to call Mrs. 
 David Sweeting, with whom he dreamt of taking stately
 
 120 SHIRLEY 
 
 walks, leading her like an empress through the village of 
 Nunnely : and an empress she would have been, if size 
 could make an empress. She was vast, ponderous: seen 
 from behind, she had the air of a very stout lady of forty ; 
 but withal she possessed a good face, and no unkindly 
 character. 
 
 The meal at last drew to a close : it would have been 
 over long ago, if Mr. Donne had not persisted in sitting with 
 his cup half full of cold tea before him, long after the rest 
 had finished and after he himself had discussed such allow- 
 ance of viands as he felt competent to swallow long, indeed, 
 after signs of impatience had been manifested all round the 
 board : till chairs were pushed back ; till the talk flagged ; 
 till silence fell. Vainly did Caroline inquire repeatedly if 
 he would have another cup ; if he would take a little hot tea, 
 as that must be cold, &c. : he would neither drink it nor leave 
 it. He seemed to think that this isolated position of his 
 gave him somehow a certain importance : that it was digni- 
 fied and stately to be the last : that it was grand to keep all 
 the others waiting. So long did he linger, that the very urn 
 died ; it ceased to hiss. At length, however, the old Hector 
 himself, who had hitherto been too pleasantly engaged with 
 Hannah to care for the delay, got impatient. 
 
 ' For whom are we waiting ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' For me, I believe,' returned Donne, complacently ; 
 appearing to think it much to his credit that a party should 
 thus be kept dependent on his movements. 
 
 ' Tut ! ' cried Helstone : then standing up, ' Let us return 
 thanks,' said he : which he did forthwith, and all quitted the 
 table. Donne, nothing abashed, still sat ten minutes quite 
 alone, whereupon Mr. Helstone rang the bell for the things 
 to be removed ; the curate at length saw himself forced to 
 empty his cup, and to relinquish the role which, he thought, 
 had given him such a felicitous distinction, drawn upon him 
 such flattering general notice. 
 
 And now, in the natural course of events (Caroline, 
 knowing how it would be, had opened the piano, and pro-
 
 THE CUKATES AT TEA 121 
 
 duced music-books in readiness), music was asked for. This 
 was Mr. Sweeting's chance for showing off: he was eager to 
 commence ; he undertook, therefore, the arduous task of 
 persuading the young ladies to favour the company with an 
 air a song. Con amore, he went through the whole busi- 
 ness of begging, praying, resisting excuses, explaining away 
 difficulties, and at last succeeded in persuading Miss Harriet 
 to allow herself to be led to the instrument. Then out came 
 the pieces of his flute (he always carried them in his pocket, 
 as unfailingly as he carried his handkerchief). They were 
 screwed and arranged ; Malone and Donne meantime 
 herding together, and sneering at him, which the little man, 
 glancing over his shoulder, saw, but did not heed at all : he 
 was persuaded their sarcasm all arose from envy : they could 
 not accompany the ladies as he could ; he was about to enjoy 
 a triumph over them. 
 
 The triumph began. Malone, much chagrined at hearing 
 him pipe up in most superior style, determined to earn dis- 
 tinction, too, if possible, and all at once assuming the 
 character of a swain (which character he had endeavoured to 
 enact once or twice before, but in which he had not hitherto 
 met with the success he doubtless opined his merits deserved), 
 approached a sofa on which Miss Helstone was seated, and 
 depositing his great Irish frame near her, tried his hand (or 
 rather tongue) at a fine speech or two, accompanied by grins 
 the most extraordinary and incomprehensible. In the 
 course of his efforts to render himself agreeable, he contrived 
 to possess himself of the two long sofa cushions and a 
 square one ; with which, after rolling them about for some 
 time with strange gestures, be managed to erect a sort of 
 barrier between himself and the object of his attentions. 
 Caroline, quite willing that they should bo sundorrd, soon 
 devised an excuse for stepping over to the opposite side of 
 the room, and taking up a position beside Mrs. Sykos ; of 
 which good lady she entreated some instruction in a new 
 stitch in ornamental knitting, a favour readily granted ; and 
 thus Peter Augustus was thrown out.
 
 122 SHIRLEY 
 
 Very sullenly did his countenance lower when he saw 
 himself abandoned, left entirely to his own resources, on a 
 large sofa, with the charge of three small cushions on his 
 hands. The fact was, he felt disposed seriously to cultivate 
 acquaintance with Miss Helstone ; because he thought, in 
 common with others, that her uncle possessed money, and 
 concluded, that since he had no children, he would probably 
 leave it to his niece. Gerard Moore was better instructed on 
 this point : he had seen the neat church that owed its origin 
 to the Rector's zeal and cash, and more than once, in his 
 inmost soul, had cursed an expensive caprice which crossed 
 his wishes. 
 
 The evening seemed long to one person in that room. 
 Caroline at intervals dropped her knitting on her lap, and 
 gave herself up to a sort of brain-lethargy closing her eyes 
 and depressing her head caused by what seemed to her the 
 unmeaning hum around her : the inharmonious, tasteless 
 rattle of the piano keys, the squeaking and gasping notes of 
 the flute, the laughter and mirth of her uncle, and Hannah, 
 and Mary, she could not tell whence originating, for she heard 
 nothing comic or gleeful in their discourse ; and more than 
 all by the interminable gossip of Mrs. Sykes murmui'ed 
 close at her ear ; gossip which rang the changes on four sub- 
 jects : her own health and that of the various members of her 
 family ; the Missionary and Jew-baskets and their contents ; 
 the late meeting at Nunnely, and one which was expected to 
 come off next week at Whinbury. 
 
 Tired at length to exhaustion, she embraced the oppor- 
 tunity of Mr. Sweeting coming up to speak to Mrs. Sykes, to 
 slip quietly out of the apartment, and seek a moment's respite 
 in solitude. She repaired to the dining-room, where the 
 clear but now low remnant of a tire still burnt in the grate. 
 The place was empty and quiet, glasses and decanters were 
 cleared from the table, the chairs were put back in their 
 places, all was orderly. Caroline sank into her uncle's 
 large easy chair, half bhut her eyes, and rested herself 
 rested at least her limbs, her senses, her hearing, her vision
 
 THE CUKATES AT TEA 123 
 
 weary with listening to nothing, and gazing on vacancy. 
 As to her mind, that flew directly to the Hollow : it stood on 
 the threshold of the parlour there, then it passed to the 
 counting-house, and wondered which spot was blessed by the 
 presence of Bobert. It so happened that neither locality had 
 that honour ; for Robert was half a mile away from both, 
 and much nearer to Caroline than her deadened spirit sus- 
 pected : he was at this moment crossing the churchyard, 
 approaching the Rectory garden -gate : not, however, coming 
 to see his cousin, but intent solely on communicating a brief 
 piece of intelligence to the Rector. 
 
 Yes, Caroline ; you hear the wire of the bell vibrate : it 
 rings again for the fifth time this afternoon : you start, 
 and you are certain now that this must be him of whom you 
 dream. Why you are so certain you cannot explain to your- 
 self, but you know it. You lean forward, listening eagerly 
 as Fanny opens the door : right ! that is the voice low with 
 the slight foreign accent, but so sweet, as you fancy : you 
 half rise : ' Fanny will tell him Mr. Helstone is with company, 
 and then he will go away.' Oil ! she cannot let him go : in 
 spite of herself in spite of her reason she walks half across 
 the room ; she stands ready to dart out in case the step 
 should retreat : but he enters the passage. ' Since your 
 master is engaged,' he says, ' just show me into the dining- 
 room ; bring me pen and ink : I will write a short note and 
 leave it for him.' 
 
 Now, having caught these words, and hearing him advance, 
 Caroline, if there was a door within the dining-room, would 
 glide through it and disappear. She feels caught, hemmed 
 in ; she dreads her unexpected presence may annoy him. 
 A second since, she would have flown to him ; that second 
 past, she would flee from him. She cannot ; there is no way 
 of escape ; the dining-room has but one door, through which 
 now enters her cousin. The look of troubled surprise 
 she expected to see in his face has appeared there, has 
 shocked her, and is gone. She has stammered a sort of 
 apology :
 
 124 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I only left the drawing-room a minute for a little 
 quiet.' 
 
 There was something so diffident and downcast in the 
 air and tone with which she said this, any one might per- 
 ceive that some saddening change had lately passed over 
 her prospects, and that the faculty of cheerful self-possession 
 had left her. Mr. Moore, probably, remembered how she 
 had formerly been accustomed to meet him with gentle 
 ardour and hopeful confidence ; he must have seen how the 
 check of this morning had operated : here was an oppor- 
 tunity for carrying out his new system with effect, if he chose 
 to improve it. Perhaps he found it easier to practise that 
 system in broad daylight, in his mill-yard, amidst busy 
 occupations, than in a quiet parlour, disengaged, at the hour 
 of eventide. Fanny lit the candles, which before had stood 
 unlit on the table, brought writing-materials, and left the 
 room : Caroline was about to follow her. Moore, to act 
 consistently, should have let her go; whereas he stood in 
 the doorway, and, holding out his hand, gently kept her 
 back ; he did not ask her to stay, but he would not let 
 her go. 
 
 1 Shall I tell my uncle you are here ? ' asked she, still in 
 the same subdued voice. 
 
 ' No : I can say to you all I had to say to him. You will 
 be my messenger.' 
 
 4 Yes, Robert.' 
 
 ' Then you may just inform him that I have got a clue 
 to the identity of one, at least, of the men who broke my 
 frames ; that he belongs to the same gang who attacked 
 Sykes and Pearson's dressing-shop ; and that I hope to have 
 him in custody to-morrow. You can remember that ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! yes.' These two monosyllables were uttered in a 
 sadder tone than ever ; and, as she said them, she shook 
 her head slightly, and sighed. ' Will you prosecute him ? ' 
 
 1 Doubtless.' 
 
 ' No, Robert.' 
 
 ' And why no, Caroline ? '
 
 THE CUEATES AT TEA- 125 
 
 ' Because it will set all the neighbourhood against you 
 more than ever.' 
 
 ' That is no reason why I should not do my duty, and 
 defend my property. This fellow is a great scoundrel, and 
 ought to be incapacitated from perpetrating further mis- 
 chief.' 
 
 ' But his accomplices will take revenge on you. You do 
 not know how the people of this country bear malice : it is 
 the boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in 
 their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, 
 keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark " at 
 last." ' 
 
 Moore laughed. 
 
 ' A most pithy vaunt,' said he ; ' one that redounds 
 vastly to the credit of your dear Yorkshire friends. But 
 don't fear for me, Lina : I am on my guard against these 
 lamb-like compatriots of yours : don't make yourself uneasy 
 about me.' 
 
 ' How can I help it ? You are my cousin. If anything 
 happened ' she stopped. 
 
 1 Nothing will happen, Lina. To speak in your own 
 language, there is a Providence above all is there not ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, dear Eobert. May He guard you ! ' 
 
 ' And if prayers have efficacy, yours will benefit me : you 
 pray for me sometimes ? ' 
 
 ' Not sometimes, Eobert : you, and Louis, and Hortense 
 are always remembered.' 
 
 ' So I have often imagined : it has occurred to me, when, 
 weary and vexed, I have myself gone to bed like a heathen, 
 that another had asked forgiveness for my day and safety 
 for my night. I don't suppose such vicarial piety will avail 
 much ; but the petitions come out of a sincere breast, from 
 innocent lips : they should be acceptable as Abel's offering ; 
 and doubtless would be, if the object deserved them.' 
 
 ' Annihilate that doubt : it is groundless.' 
 
 ' When a man has been brought up only to make money, 
 and lives to make it, and for nothing else, and scarcely
 
 126 SHIKLEY 
 
 breathes any other air than that of mills and markets, it 
 seems odd to utter his name in a prayer, or to mix his idea 
 with anything divine ; and very strange it seems, that a 
 good, pure heart should take him in and harbour him, as if 
 he had any claim to that sort of nest. If I could guide that 
 benignant heart, I believe I should counsel it to exclude 
 one who does not profess to have any higher aim in life 
 than that of patching up his broken fortune, and wiping 
 clean from his bourgeois scutcheon the foul stain of bank- 
 ruptcy.' 
 
 The hint, though conveyed thus tenderly and modestly 
 (as Caroline thought), was felt keenly and comprehended 
 clearly. 
 
 ' Indeed, I only think or I will only think of you as 
 my cousin,' was the quick answer. ' I am beginning to 
 understand things better than I did, Kobert, when you first 
 came to England : better than I did, a week a day ago. I 
 know it is your duty to try to get on, and that it won't 
 do for you to be romantic ; but in future you must not 
 misunderstand me, if I seem friendly. You misunderstood 
 me this morning, did you not ? ' 
 
 ' What made you think so ? ' 
 
 I Your look your manner. 1 
 ' But look at me now ' 
 
 ' Oh ! you are different now : at present, I dare speak to 
 you.' 
 
 ' Yet I am the same, except that I have left the trades- 
 man behind me in the Hollow : your kinsman alone stands 
 before you.' 
 
 ' My cousin Robert ; not Mr. Moore.' 
 
 ' Not a bit of Mr. Moore. Caroline ' 
 
 Here the company was heard rising in the other room ; 
 the door was opened ; the pony-carriage was ordered ; 
 shawls and bonnets were demanded ; Mr. Helstone called 
 for his niece. 
 
 I 1 must go, Robert.' 
 
 ' Yes, you must go, or they will come in, and find us
 
 THE CUEATES AT TEA 127 
 
 here ; and I, rather than meet all that host in the passage, 
 will take my departure through the window : luckily, it 
 opens like a door. One minute only put down the candle 
 an instant good night ! I kiss you because we are cousins ; 
 and, being cousins one two three kisses are allowable. 
 Caroline, good-night ! '
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 
 
 THE next day, Moore had risen before the sun, and had 
 taken a ride to Whinbury and back ere his sister had made 
 the caf6 au lait, or cut the tartines for his breakfast. What 
 business he transacted there, he kept to himself. Hortense 
 asked no questions : it was not her wont to comment on his 
 movements, nor his to render an account of them. The 
 secrets of business complicated and often dismal mysteries 
 were buried in his breast, and never came out of their 
 sepulchre, save now and then to scare Joe Scott, or give a 
 start to some foreign correspondent : indeed, a general habit 
 of reserve on whatever was important seemed bred in his 
 mercantile blood. 
 
 Breakfast over, he went to his counting-house. Henry, 
 Joe Scott's boy, brought in the letters and the daily papers ; 
 Moore seated himself at his desk, broke the seals of the 
 documents, and glanced them over. They were all short, 
 but not it seemed sweet ; probably rather sour on the 
 contrary, for as Moore laid down the last, his nostrils 
 emitted a derisive and defiant snuff; and, though he burst 
 into no soliloquy, there was a glance in his eye which seemed 
 to invoke the devil, and lay charges on him to sweep the 
 whole concern to Gehenna. However, having chosen a pen 
 and stripped away the feathered top in a brief spasm of 
 finger-fury only finger-fury, his face was placid he dashed 
 off a batch of answers, sealed them, and then went out and 
 walked through the mill : on coming back, he sat down to 
 read his newspaper.
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 129 
 
 The contents seemed not absorbingly interesting ; he 
 more than once laid it across his knee, folded his arms, and 
 gazed into the fire ; he occasionally turned his head towards 
 the window ; he looked at intervals at his watch : in short, 
 his mind appeared pre-occupied. Perhaps he was thinking 
 of the beauty of the weather for it was a fine and mild 
 morning for the season and wishing to be out in the fields 
 enjoying it. The door of his counting-house stood wide 
 open, the breeze and sunshine entered freely ; but the first 
 visitant brought no spring perfume on its wings, only an 
 occasional sulphur-puff from the soot-thick column of smoke 
 rushing sable from the gaunt mill-chimney. 
 
 A dark-blue apparition (that of Joe Scott, fresh from a 
 dyeing vat) appeared momentarily at the open door, uttered 
 the words, ' He's corned, sir,' and vanished. 
 
 Mr. Moore raised not his eyes from the paper. A large 
 man, broad-shouldered and massive-limbed,, clad in fustian 
 garments and grey-worsted stockings, entered, who was 
 received with a nod, and desired to take a seat ; which he 
 did, making the remark as he removed his hat (a very bad 
 one), stowed it away under his chair, and wiped his forehead 
 with a spotted cotton handkerchief extracted from the hat- 
 crown that it was ' raight dahn warm for Febewerry.' 
 Mr. Moore assented : at least he uttered some slight sound, 
 which, though inarticulate, might pass for an assent. The 
 visitor now carefully deposited in the corner beside him an 
 official-looking staff which he bore in his hand ; this done, 
 he whistled, probably by way of appearing at his ease. 
 
 ' You have what is necessary, I suppose ? ' said Mr. 
 Moore. 
 
 ' Ay ! ay ! all's right.' 
 
 He renewed his whistling, Mr. Moore his reading : the 
 paper apparently had become more interesting. Presently, 
 however, he turned to his cupboard, which was within reach 
 of his long arm, opened it without rising, took out a black 
 bottle the same he had produced for Malonc's benefit- a 
 tumbler, and a jug, placed them on the table, and said to
 
 130 SHIRLEY 
 
 his guest, ' Help yourself ; there's water in that jar in the 
 corner.' 
 
 ' I dunnut knaw that there's mich need, for all a body is 
 dry ' (thirsty) ' in a morning,' said the fustian gentleman, 
 rising and doing as requested. 
 
 ' Will you tak' naught yourseln, Mr. Moore ? ' he inquired, 
 as with skilled hand he mixed a portion, and, having tested 
 it by a deep draught, sank back satisfied and bland in his 
 seat. Moore chary of words replied by a negative move- 
 ment and murmur. 
 
 1 Yah'd as good,' continued his visitor ; ' it 'uld set ye up, 
 wald a sup o' this stuff. Uncommon good Hollands ! ye 
 get it fro' furrin parts, I'se think ? ' 
 
 'Ay!' 
 
 ' Tak' my advice, and try a glass on't ; them lads 'at 's 
 coming '11 keep ye talking, nob'dy knows how long : ye'll 
 need propping.' 
 
 1 Have you seen Mr. Sykes this morning ? ' inquired 
 Moore. 
 
 ' I seed him a hauf an hour nay happen a quarter of 
 an hour sin', just afore I set off: he said he aimed to come 
 here, and I sudn't wonder but ye'll have old Helstone too ; 
 I see'd 'em saddling his little nag as I passed at back o' t' 
 Rectory.' 
 
 The speaker was a true prophet, for the trot of a little 
 nag's hoofs were, five minutes after, heard in the yard ; it 
 stopped, and a well-known nasal voice cried aloud ' Boy ' 
 (probably addressing Harry Scott, who usually hung about 
 the premises from nine A.M. to five P.M.), ' take my horse and 
 lead him into the stable.' 
 
 Helstone came in marching nimbly and erect, looking 
 browner, keener, and livelier than usual. 
 
 ' Beautiful morning, Moore : how do, my boy ? Ha ! 
 Whom have we here ? ' (turning to the personage with the 
 staff). ' Sugden ! What! you're going to work directly? 
 On my word, you lose no time : but I come to ask explana- 
 tions : your message was delivered to me ; are you sure
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 131 
 
 you are on the right scent ? How do you mean to set about 
 the business ? Have you got a warrant ? ' 
 
 ' Sugden has.' 
 
 ' Then you are going to seek him now ! I'll accompany 
 you.' 
 
 ' You will be spared that trouble, sir ; he is coming 
 to seek me. I'm just now sitting in state, waiting his 
 arrival.' 
 
 ' And who is it ? One of my parishioners ? ' 
 
 Joe Scott had entered unobserved ; he now stood, a 
 most sinister phantom, half his person being dyed of the 
 deepest tint of indigo, leaning on the desk. His master's 
 answer to the Eector's question was a smile ; Joe took the 
 word ; putting on a quiet but pawky look, he said, ' It's 
 a friend of yours, Mr. Helstone ; a gentleman you often 
 speak of.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! His name, Joe ? You look well this morn- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' Only the Eev. Moses Barraclough : t' tub orator you 
 call him sometimes, I think.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said the Sector, taking out his snuff-box, and ad- 
 ministering to himself a very long pinch ' Ah ! couldn't have 
 supposed it. Why, the pious man never was a workman of 
 yours, Moore ? He's a tailor by trade.' 
 
 ' And so much the worse grudge I owe him for inter- 
 fering, and setting my discarded men against me.' 
 
 ' And Moses was actually present at the battle of Stilbro' 
 Moor ? He went there wooden leg and all ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, sir,' said Joe ; ' he went there on horseback, that 
 his leg mightn't be noticed : he was the captain and wore a 
 mask ; the rest only had their faces blacked.' 
 
 1 And how was he found out ? ' 
 
 ' I'll tell you, sir,' said Joe : t'maister's not so fond of 
 talking ; I've no objections. He courted Sarah, Mr. Moore's 
 sarvant lass, and so it seems she would have nothing to say 
 to him ; she either didn't like his wooden leg, or she'd some 
 notion about his being a hypocrite. Happen (for women is
 
 132 SHIBLEY 
 
 queer hands we may say that amang werseln when there's 
 none of 'em nigh) she'd have encouraged him, in spite of his 
 leg and his deceit just to pass time like ; I've known some 
 on 'em do as mich, and some o* t' bonniest and mimmest- 
 looking, too ay ! I've seen clean, trim young things, that 
 looked as denty and pure as daisies, and wi' time a body fun* 
 'em out to be nowt but stinging, venomed nettles.' 
 
 ' Joe's a sensible fellow,' interjected Helstone. 
 
 ' Howsiver, Sarah had another string to her bow : Fred 
 Murgatroyd, one of our lads, is for her, and as women judge 
 men by their faces and Fred has a middling face, while 
 Moses is none so handsome, as we all knaw the lass took 
 on wi' Fred. A two-three months sin', Murgatroyd and 
 Moses chanced to meet one Sunday night ; they'd both come 
 lurking about these premises wi' the notion of counselling 
 Sarah to tak' a bit of a walk wi' them ; they fell out, had a 
 tussle, and Fred was worsted : for he's young and small, and 
 Barraclough, for all he has only one leg, is almost as strong 
 as Sugden there ; indeed, anybody that hears him roaring at 
 a revival or a love-feast may be sure he's no weakling.' 
 
 ' Joe, you're insupportable,' here broke in Mr. Moore. 
 ' You spin out your explanation as Moses spins out his ser- 
 mons. The long and short of it is, Murgatroyd was jealous 
 of Barraclough ; and last night, as he and a friend took 
 shelter in a barn from a shower, they heard and saw Moses 
 conferring with some associates within. From their discourse, 
 it was plain he had been the leader, not only at Stilbro' Moor, 
 but in the attack on Sykes's property: moreover, they planned 
 a deputation to wait on me this morning, which the tailor is 
 to head, and which, in the most religious and peaceful spirit, 
 is to entreat me to put the accursed thing out of my tent. I 
 rode over to Whinbury this morning, got a constable and a 
 warrant, and I am now waiting to give my friend the re- 
 ception he deserves ; here, meantime, comes Sykes : Mr. Hel- 
 stone, you must spirit him up ; he feels timid at the thoughts 
 of prosecuting.' 
 
 A gig was heard to roll into the yard : Mr. Sykes entered ;
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 133 
 
 a tall, stout man of about fifty, comely of feature, but feeble 
 of physiognomy : he looked anxious. 
 
 ' Have they been ? Are they gone ? Have you got him ? 
 IB it over ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Not yet,' returned Moore with phlegm. ' We are waiting 
 for them.' 
 
 ' They'll not come ; it's near noon : better give it up ; it 
 will excite bad feeling make a stir cause perhaps fatal 
 consequences.' 
 
 ' You need not appear,' said Moore. ' I shall meet them 
 in the yard when they come ; you can stay here.' 
 
 ' But my name must be seen in the law proceedings : a wife 
 and family, Mr. Moore a wife and family make a man 
 cautious.' 
 
 Moore looked disgusted. ' Give way, if you please," said 
 he ; ' leave me to myself ; I have no objection to act alone : 
 only be assured you will not find safety in submission ; your 
 partner, Pearson, gave way, and conceded, and forbore 
 well, that did not prevent them from attempting to shoot 
 him in his own house.' 
 
 ' My dear sir, take a little wine and water,' recommended 
 Mr. Helstone. The wine and water was Hollands and water, 
 as Mr. Sykes discovered when he had compounded and 
 swallowed a brimming tumbler thereof : it transfigured him 
 in two minutes, brought the colour back to his face, and made 
 him at least wo? - c?-valiant. He now announced that he hoped 
 he was above being trampled on by the common people ; he 
 was determined to endure the insolence of the working- 
 classes no longer ; he had considered of it and made up his 
 mind to go all lengths ; if money and spirit could put clown 
 these rioters, they should be put down ; Mr. Moore might 
 do as he liked, but he Christie Sykes would spend his last 
 penny in law before he would be beaten : he'd settle them, or 
 he'd see. 
 
 ' Take another glass,' urged Moore. 
 
 Mr. Sykes didn't mind if he did ; this was a cold morning 
 (Sugden had found it a warm one) ; it was necessary to bo
 
 134 BHIELEY 
 
 careful at this season of the year it was proper to take 
 something to keep the damp out ; he had a little cough already 
 (here he coughed in attestation of the fact) ; something of 
 this sort (lifting the black bottle) was excellent, taken medi- 
 cinally (he poured the physic into his tumbler) ; he didn't 
 make a practice of drinking spirits in a morning, but occa- 
 sionally it really was prudent to take precautions. 
 
 1 Quite prudent, and take them by all means,' urged the 
 host. 
 
 Mr. Sykes now addressed Mr. Helstone, who stood on the 
 hearth, his shovel-hat on his head, watching him significantly 
 with his little keen eyes. 
 
 ' You, sir, as a clergyman,' said he, ' may feel it disagree- 
 able to be present amidst scenes of hurry and flurry, and, I 
 may say, peril : I daresay your nerves won't stand it ; you're 
 a man of peace, sir, but we manufacturers, living in the world, 
 and always in turmoil, get quite belligerent. Really, there's 
 an ardour excited by the thoughts of danger that makes my 
 heart pant. When Mrs. Sykes is afraid of the house being 
 attacked and broke open as she is every night I get quite 
 excited. I couldn't describe to you, sir, my feelings : really, 
 if anybody was to come thieves or anything I believe I 
 should enjoy it, such is my spirit.' 
 
 The hardest of laughs, though brief and low, and by no 
 means insulting, was the response of the Rector. Moore 
 would have pressed upon the heroic mill-owner a third tum- 
 bler, but the clergyman, who never transgressed, nor would 
 suffer others in his presence to transgress the bounds of 
 decorum, checked him. 
 
 ' Enough is as good as a feast, is it not, Mr. Sykes ? ' he 
 said, and Mr. Sykes assented ; and then sat and watched Joe 
 Scott remove the bottle at a sign from Helstone, with 
 a self-satisfied simper on his lips and a regretful glisten in 
 his eye. Moore looked as if he should have liked to fool him 
 to the top of his bent. What would a certain young kins- 
 woman of his have said could she have seen her dear, good, 
 great Robert her Coriolanus just now ? Would she have
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 135 
 
 acknowledged in that mischievous, sardonic visage the same 
 face to which she had looked up with such love, which had 
 bent over her with such gentleness last night ? Was that 
 the man who had spent so quiet an evening with his sister 
 and his cousin so suave to one, so tender to the other 
 reading Shakspeare and listening to Ch^nier ? 
 
 Yes, it was the same man, only seen on a different side ; 
 a side Caroline had not yet fairly beheld, though perhaps she 
 had enough sagacity faintly to suspect its existence. Well, 
 Caroline had, doubtless, her defective side too : she was 
 human, she must, then, have been very imperfect, and had she 
 seen Moore on his very worst side, she would probably have 
 said this to herself and excused him. Love can excuse any- 
 thing except Meanness ; but Meanness kills Love, cripples 
 even Natural Affection : without Esteem, True Love cannot 
 exist. Moore with all his faults might be esteemed ; for he 
 had no moral scrofula in his mind, no hopeless polluting taint, 
 such, for instance, as that of falsehood ; neither was he the 
 slave of his appetites ; the active life to which he had been 
 born and bred had given him something else to do than to 
 join the futile chase of the pleasure-hunter : he was a man 
 undegraded, the disciple of Eeason, not the votary of Sense. 
 The same might be said of old Helstone : neither of these two 
 would look, think, or speak a lie ; for neither of them had the 
 wretched black bottle, which had just been put away, any 
 charms ; both might boast a valid claim to the proud title of 
 ' lord of the creation,' for no animal vice was lord of them : 
 they looked and were superior beings to poor Sykes. 
 
 A sort of gathering and trampling sound was heard in the 
 yard, and then a pause. Moore walked to the window, 
 Helstone followed ; both stood on one side, the tall junior 
 behind the under-sized senior, looking forth carefully, so 
 that they might not be visible from without ; their sole com- 
 ment on what they saw was a cynical smile flashed into each 
 other's stern eyes. 
 
 A flourishing oratorical cough was now heard, followed by 
 the interjection, ' Whisht ! ' designed, as it seemed, to still the
 
 136 SHIRLEY 
 
 hum of several voices. Moore opened his casement an inch 
 or two to admit sound more freely. 
 
 ' Joseph Scott,' began a snuffling voice Scott was standing 
 sentinel at the counting-house door ' might we inquire if 
 your master be within, and is to be spoken to ? ' 
 
 ' He's within, ay ! ' said Joe, nonchalantly. 
 
 ' Would you, then, if you please ' (emphasis on ' you '), 
 1 have the goodness to tell him that twelve gentlemen wants 
 to see him.' 
 
 ' He'd happen to ax what for,' suggested Joe. ' I mught 
 as weel tell him that at t'same time.' 
 
 ' For a purpose,' was the answer. Joe entered. 
 
 4 Please, sir, there's twelve gentlemen wants to see ye, 
 " for a purpose." ' 
 
 1 Good, Joe ; I'm their man. Sugden, come when I 
 whistle.' 
 
 Moore went out, chuckling dryly. He advanced into the 
 yard, one hand in his pocket, the other in his waistcoat, his 
 cap brim over his eyes, shading in some measure their deep 
 dancing ray of scorn. Twelve men waited in the yard, some 
 in their shirt-sleeves, some in blue aprons : two figured 
 conspicuously in the van of the party. One, a little dapper 
 strutting man, with a turned-up nose ; the other, a broad- 
 shouldered fellow, distinguished no less by his demure face 
 and cat-like, trustless eyes than by a wooden leg and stout 
 crutch : there was a kind of leer about his lips, he seemed 
 laughing in his sleeve at some person or thing, his whole air 
 was anything but that of a time man. 
 
 ' Good morning, Mr. Barraclough,' said Moore debonairly, 
 for him. 
 
 ' Peace be unto you ! ' was the answer : Mr. Barraclough 
 entirely closing his naturally half-shut eyes as he delivered 
 it. 
 
 ' I'm obliged to you : peace is an excellent thing ; there's 
 nothing I more wish for myself ; but that is not all you 
 have to say to me, I suppose ? I imagine peace is not your 
 purpose ? '
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 137 
 
 'As to our purpose,' began Barraclough, 'it's one that 
 may sound strange, and perhaps foolish to ears like yours, 
 for the childer of this world is wiser in their generation than 
 the childer of light.' 
 
 ' To the point, if you please, and let me hear what it is.' 
 
 ' Ye'se hear, sir ; if I cannot get it off, there's eleven 
 hehint can help me. It is a grand purpose, and ' (changing 
 his voice from a half-sneer to a whine) ' it's the Looard's 
 own purpose, and that's better.' 
 
 ' Do you want a subscription to a new ranter's chapel, 
 Mr. Barraclough ? Unless your errand be something of that 
 sort, I cannot see what you have to do with it.' 
 
 ' I hadn't that duty on my mind, sir ; but as Providence 
 has led ye to mention the subject, I'll make it i' my way to 
 tak' ony trifle ye may have to spare ; the smallest contribu- 
 tion will be acceptable.' 
 
 With that he doffed his hat, and held it out as a begging- 
 box ; a brazen grin at the same time crossing his counte- 
 nance. 
 
 1 If I gave you sixpence, you would drink it.' 
 
 Barraclough uplifted the palms of his hands and the 
 whites of his eyes, evincing in the gesture a mere burlesque 
 of hypocrisy. 
 
 ' You seem a fine fellow,' said Moore, quite coolly and 
 dryly ; ' you don't care for showing me that you are a 
 double-dyed hypocrite, that your trade is fraud : you expect, 
 indeed, to make me laugh at the cleverness with which you 
 play your coarsely farcical part, while at the same time you 
 think you are deceiving the men behind you.' 
 
 Moses' countenance lowered ; he saw he had gone too 
 far : he was going to answer, when the second leader, 
 impatient of being hitherto kept in the background, stepped 
 forward. This man did not look like a traitor, though he 
 had an exceedingly self-confident and conceited air. 
 
 1 Mr. Moore,' commenced he, speaking also in his throat 
 and nose, and enunciating each word very slowly, as if with 
 a view to giving his audience time to appreciate fully the
 
 138 SHIRLEY 
 
 uncommon elegance of the phraseology ; ' it might, perhaps, 
 justly be said that reason rather than peace is our purpose. 
 We come, in the first place, to request you to hear reason, 
 and should you refuse, it is my duty to warn you, in very 
 decided terms, that measures will be had resort to' (he 
 meant recourse) 'which will probably terminate in in 
 bringing you to a sense of the unwisdom, of the the 
 foolishness, which seems to guide and guard your perceedings 
 as a tradesman in this manufacturing part of the country. 
 Hem ! . . . . sir, I would beg to allude that as a furriner, 
 coming from a distant coast, another quarter and hemi- 
 sphere of this globe, thrown, as I may say, a perfect outcast 
 on these shores the cliffs of Albion you have not that 
 understanding of huz and wer ways which might conduce 
 to the benefit of the working-classes. If, to come at once to 
 partic'lars, you'd consider to give up this here mi In, and go 
 without further protractions straight home to where you 
 belong, it 'ud happen be as well. I can see naught ageean 
 such a plan. What hev ye to say tull 't, lads ? ' turning 
 round to the other members of the deputation, who responded 
 unanimously, ' Hear, hear ! ' 
 
 1 Brayvo, Noah o' Tim's ! ' murmured Joe Scott, who 
 stood behind Mr. Moore. ' Moses '11 niver beat that Cliffs 
 o' Albion, and t' other hemisphere ! my certy ! Did ye 
 come fro' th' Antarctic Zone, maister ? Moses is dished.' 
 
 Moses, however, refused to be dished ; he thought he 
 would try again. Casting a somewhat ireful glance at 
 ' Noah o' Tim's,' he launched out in his turn : and now he 
 spoke in a serious tone, relinquishing the sarcasm which he 
 found had not answered. 
 
 ' Or iver you set up the pole o' your tent amang us, Mr. 
 Moore, we lived i' peace and quietness ; yea, I may say, in 
 all loving-kindness. I am not myself an aged person as yet, 
 but I can remember as far back as maybe some twenty year, 
 when hand-labour were encouraged and respected, arid no 
 mischief-maker had ventured to introduce these here 
 machines, which is so pernicious. NOW, I'm not a cloth-
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 139 
 
 dresser myself, but by trade a tailor ; howsiver, my heart is 
 of a softish natur' : I'm a very feeling man, and when I see 
 my brethren oppressed, like my great namesake of old, I 
 stand up for 'em ; for which intent, I this day speak with 
 you face to face, and advises you to part wi' your infernal 
 machinery, and tak' on more hands.' 
 
 ' What if I don't follow your advice, Mr. Barraclough ? ' 
 ' The Looard pardon you ! The Looard soften your 
 heart, sir I ' 
 
 ' Are you in connection with the Wesleyans now, Mr. 
 Barraclough ? ' 
 
 ' Praise God ! Bless His Name ! I'm a joined 
 Methody ! ' 
 
 ' Which in no respect prevents you from being at the 
 same time a drunkard and a swindler. I saw you one night 
 a week ago laid dead-drunk by the roadside, as I returned 
 from Stilbro' market ; and while you preach peace, you 
 make it the business of your life to stir up dissension. You 
 no more sympathise with the poor who are in distress than 
 you sympathise with me : you incite them to outrage for 
 bad purposes of your own ; so does the individual called 
 Noah o' Tim's. You two are restless, meddling, impudent 
 scoundrels, whose chief motive-principle is a selfish ambition, 
 as dangerous as it is puerile. The persons behind you are 
 some of them honest though misguided men ; but you two 
 I count altogether bad.' 
 
 Barraclough was going to speak. 
 
 ' Silence ! You have had your say, and now I will have 
 mine. As to being dictated to by you, or any Jack Jem, or 
 Jonathan on earth, I shall not suffer it for a moment. You 
 desire me to quit the country : you request me to part with 
 my machinery ; in case I refuse, you threaten me. I do 
 refuse point-blank ! Here I stay ; and by this mill I 
 stand; and into it will I convey the best machinery inventors 
 can furnish. What will you do ? The utmost you can do 
 and this you will never dare to do is to burn down my mill, 
 destroy its contents, and shoot me. What then ? Suppose
 
 140 SHIBLEY 
 
 that building was a ruin and I was a corpse, what then ? 
 you lads behind these two scamps, would that stop invention 
 or exhaust science ? Not for the fraction of a second of 
 time ! Another and better gig-mill would rise on the ruins 
 of this, and perhaps a more enterprising owner come in my 
 place. Hear me ! I'll make my cloth as I please, and 
 according to the best lights I have. In its manufacture 
 I will employ what means I choose. Whoever, after 
 hearing this, shall dare to interfere with me, may just 
 take the consequences. An example shall prove I'm in 
 earnest.' 
 
 He whistled shrill and loud. Sugden, his staff and 
 warrant, came on to the scene. 
 
 Moore turned sharply to Barraclough : ' You were at 
 Stilbro',' said he ; 'I have proof of that. You were on 
 the moor, you wore a mask, you knocked down one of 
 my men with your own hand, you 1 a preacher of the 
 Gospel ! Sugden, arrest him ! ' 
 
 Moses was captured. There was a cry and a rush to 
 rescue, but the right hand which all this while had lain 
 hidden in Moore's breast, re-appearing, held out a pistol. 
 
 ' Both barrels are loaded,' said he. ' I'm quite deter- 
 mined ! keep off! ' 
 
 Stepping backwards, facing the foe as he went, he 
 guarded his prey to the counting-house. He ordered Joe 
 Scott to pass in with Sugden and the prisoner, and to bolt 
 the door inside. For himself, he walked backwards and 
 forwards along the front of the mill, looking meditatively on 
 the ground, his hand hanging carelessly by his side, but 
 still holding the pistol. The eleven remaining deputies 
 watched him some time, talking under their breath to each 
 other : at length one of them approached. This man looked 
 very different from either of the two who had previously 
 spoken : he was hard-f&voured, but modest, and manly 
 looking. 
 
 ' I've not much faith i' Moses Barraclough,' said he, ' and 
 I would speak a word to you myseln, Mr. Moore. It's out o*
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 141 
 
 no ill-will that I am here, for my part ; it's just to mak' a effort 
 to get things straightened, for they're sorely a crooked. Ye 
 see we're ill off varry ill off : wer families is poor and pined. 
 We're thrown out o' work wi' these frames : we can get 
 naught to do : we can earn nought. What is to be done ? 
 Mun we say, wisht ! and lig us down and dee ? Nay : I've 
 no grand words at my tongue's end, Mr. Moore, but I feel that 
 it would be a low principle for a reasonable man to starve to 
 death like a dumb creatur' I will n't do't. I'm not for 
 shedding blood : I'd neither kill a man nor hurt a man ; and 
 I'm not for pulling down mills and breaking machines : for, 
 as ye say, that way o' going on '11 niver stop invention ; but 
 I'll talk I'll mak' as big a din as ever I can. Invention may 
 be all right, but I know it isn't right for poor folks to starve. 
 Them that governs mun find a way to help us : they mun 
 mak' fresh orderations. Ye'U say that's hard to do so 
 mich louder mun we shout out then, for so much slacker will 
 t' Parliament-men be to set on to a tough job.' 
 
 1 Worry the Parliament-men as much as you please,' said 
 Moore ; ' but to worry the mill-owners is absurd ; and I, for 
 one, won't stand it.' 
 
 ' Ye're a raight hard 'un ! ' returned the workman. ' Will 
 n't ye gie us a bit o' time ? Will n't ye consent to mak' your 
 changes rather more slowly ? ' 
 
 ' Am I the whole body of clothiers in Yorkshire ? Answer 
 me that ! ' 
 
 1 Ye're yourseln.' 
 
 ' And only myself : and if I stopped by the way an instant, 
 while others are rushing on, I should be trodden down. If 
 I did as you wish me to do, I should be bankrupt in a month, 
 and would my bankruptcy put bread into your hungry chil- 
 dren's mouths ? William Farren, neither to your dictation, 
 nor to that of any other, will I submit. Talk to me no more 
 about machinery ; I will have my own way. I shall get new 
 frames in to-morrow. If you broke these, I would still get 
 more. I'll never give in.' 
 
 Here the mill-bell rang twelve o'clock : it was the dinner-
 
 142 SHIRLEY 
 
 hour. Moore abruptly turned from the deputation and re- 
 entered his counting-house. 
 
 His last words had left a bad, harsh impression : he, at 
 least, had ' failed in the disposing of a chance he was lord of.' 
 By speaking kindly to William Farren who was a very 
 honest man, without envy or hatred of those more happily 
 circumstanced than himself ; thinking it no hardship and no 
 injustice to be forced to live by labour ; disposed to be 
 honourably content if he could but get work to do Moore 
 might have made a friend. It seemed wonderful how he 
 could turn from such a man without a conciliatory or a sym- 
 pathising expression. The poor fellow's face looked haggard 
 with want : he had the aspect of a man who had not known 
 what it was to live in comfort and plenty for weeks, perhaps 
 months past ; and yet there was no ferocity, no malignity in 
 his countenance : it was worn, dejected, austere, but still 
 patient. How could Moore leave him thus, with the words 
 ' I'll never give in,' and not a whisper of good-will, or hope, or 
 aid? 
 
 Farren, as he went home to his cottage once, in better 
 times, a decent, clean, pleasant place, but now, though still 
 clean, very dreary, because so poor asked himself this 
 question. He concluded that the foreign mill-owner was a 
 selfish, an unfeeling, and, he thought, too, a foolish man. It 
 appeared to him that emigration, had he only the means to 
 emigrate, would be preferable to service under such a master. 
 He felt much cast down almost hopeless. 
 
 On his entrance, his wife served out, in orderly sort, such 
 dinner as she had to give him and the bairns ; it was only 
 porridge, and too little of that. Some of the younger children 
 asked for more when they had done their portion an appli- 
 cation which disturbed William much : while his wife quieted 
 them as well as she could, he left his seat and went to the 
 door. He whistled a cheery stave, which did not, however, 
 prevent a broad drop or two (much more like the ' first of a 
 thunder-shower' than those which oozed from the wound of 
 the gladiator) from gathering on the lids of his grey eyes, and
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 143 
 
 plashing thence to the threshold. He cleared his vision with 
 his sleeve, and the melting mood over, a very stern one 
 followed. 
 
 He still stood brooding in silence, when a gentleman in 
 black came up a clergyman, it might be seen at once ; but 
 neither Helstone, nor Malone, nor Donne, nor Sweeting. He 
 might be forty years old ; he was plain-looking, dark- 
 complexioned, and already rather grey-haired. He stooped 
 a little in walking. His countenance, as he came on, wore 
 an abstracted and somewhat doleful air ; but, in approaching 
 Farren, he looked up, and then a hearty expression illuminated 
 the pre-occupied, serious face. 
 
 ' Is it you, William ? How are you ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Middling, Mr. Hall : how are ye ? Will ye step in and 
 rest ye ? ' 
 
 Mr. Hall, whose name the reader has seen mentioned 
 before (and who, indeed, was vicar of Nunnely, of which 
 parish Farren was a native, and from whence he had removed 
 but three years ago to reside in Briarfield, for the convenience 
 of being near Hollow's-mill, where he had obtained work), 
 entered the cottage, and, having greeted the good wife and 
 the children, sat down. He proceeded to talk very cheerfully 
 about the length of time that had elapsed since the family 
 quitted his parish, the changes which had occurred since ; he 
 answered questions touching his sister Margaret, who was 
 inquired after with much interest ; he asked questions in his 
 turn, and at last, glancing hastily and anxiously round 
 through his spectacles (he wore spectacles, for he was short- 
 sighted) at the bare room, and at the meagre and wan faces 
 of the circle about him for the children had come round 
 his knee, and the father and mother stood before him 
 he said, abruptly, ' And how are you all ? How do you 
 get on ? ' 
 
 Mr. Hall, be it remarked, though an accomplished scholar, 
 not only spoke with a strong northern accent, but, on occa- 
 sion, used freely north-country expressions. 
 
 ' We get on poorly,' said William : ' we're all out of work.
 
 144 SHIBLEY 
 
 I've selled most o' t' household stuff, as ye may see ; and 
 what we're to do next, God knows." 
 
 ' Has Mr. Moore turned you off ? ' 
 
 ' He has turned us off ; and I've sich an opinion of him 
 now, that I think, if he'd tak' me on again to-morrow, I 
 wouldn't work for him.' 
 
 'It is not like you to say so, William.' 
 
 ' I know it isn't ; but I'm getting different to mysel' : I 
 feel I am changing. I wadn't heed, if t' bairns and t' wife 
 had enough to live on; but they're pinched they're 
 pined 
 
 ' Well, my lad, and so are you ; I see you are. These are 
 grievous times ; I see suffering wherever I turn. William, 
 sit down ; Grace, sit down ; let us talk it over.' 
 
 And in order the better to talk it over, Mr. Hall 
 lifted the least of the children on to his knee, and placed his 
 hand on the head of the next least ; but when the small 
 things began to chatter to him, he bid them ' Whist ! ' and, 
 fixing his eyes on the grate, he regarded the handful of embers 
 which burnt there very gravely. 
 
 1 Sad times ! ' he said, ' and they last long. It is the wil 
 of God : His will be done ! but He tries us to the utmost.' 
 
 Again he reflected. 
 
 ' You've no money, William, and you've nothing you could 
 sell to raise a small sum ? ' 
 
 ' No : I've selled t' chest o' drawers, and t' clock, and t' 
 bit of a mahogany stand, and t' wife's bonny tea-tray and set 
 o' cheeney 'at she brought for a portion when we were wed.' 
 
 ' And if somebody lent you a pound or two, could you 
 make any good use of it ? Could you get into a new way of 
 doing something ? ' 
 
 Farren did not answer ; but his wife said quickly, ' Ay, 
 I'm sure he could, sir ; he's a very contriving chap, is our 
 William. If he'd two or three pounds, he could begin selling 
 stuff.' 
 
 ' Could you, William ? ' 
 
 ' Please God,' returned William, deliberately, ' I could
 
 NOAH AND MOSES 145 
 
 buy groceries, and bits o* tapes, and thread, and what I 
 thought would sell, and I could begin hawking at first.' 
 
 ' And you know, sir,' interposed Grace, ' you're sure 
 William would neither drink, nor idle, nor waste in any way. 
 He's my husband, and I shouldn't praise him ; but I will 
 say, there's not a soberer, honester man i' England nor he is.' 
 
 1 Well, I'll speak to one or two friends, and I think I can 
 promise to let him have 51. in a day or two : as a loan, ye 
 mind, not a gift : he must pay it back.' 
 
 ' I understand, sir : I'm quite agreeable to that.' 
 
 ' Meantime, there's a few shillings for you, Grace, just to 
 keep the pot boiling till custom comes. Now, bairns, stand 
 up in a row and say your catechism, while your mother goes 
 and buys some dinner : for you've not had much to-day, I'll 
 be bound. You begin, Ben. What is your name ? ' 
 
 Mr. Hall stayed till Grace came back ; then he hastily 
 took his leave, shaking hands with both Farren and his wife: 
 just at the door, he said to them a few brief but very 
 earnest words of religious consolation and exhortation : with 
 a mutual ' God bless you, sir ! ' ' God bless you, my friends ! ' 
 they separated.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BBIARMAINS 
 
 MESSRS. HELSTONE AND SYKES began to be extremely jocose 
 and congratulatory with Mr. Moore when he returned to 
 them after dismissing the deputation; he was so quiet, 
 however, under their compliments upon his firmness, &c., 
 and wore a countenance so like a still dark day, equally 
 beamless and breezeless, that the Eector, after glancing 
 shrewdly into his eyes, buttoned up his felicitations with his 
 coat, and said to Sykes, whose senses were not acute 
 enough to enable him to discover unassisted where his 
 presence and conversation were a nuisance : ' Come, sir : 
 your road and mine lie partly together : had we not better 
 bear each other company ? We'll bid Moore good-morning, 
 and leave him to the happy fancies he seems disposed to 
 indulge.' 
 
 1 And where is Sugden ? ' demanded Moore, looking up. 
 
 ' Ah, ha ! ' cried Helstone. ' I've not been quite idle 
 while you were busy. I've been helping you a little : I 
 flatter myself, not injudiciously. I thought it better not to 
 lose time ; so, while you were parleying with that down- 
 looking gentleman Fan-en I think his name is, I opened 
 this back window, shouted to Murgatroyd, who was in the 
 stable, to bring Mr. Sykes's gig round; then I smuggled 
 Sugden and brother Moses wooden leg and all through 
 the aperture, and saw them mount the gig (always with our
 
 BEIARMAINS 147 
 
 good friend Sykes's permission, of course). Sugden took the 
 reins he drives like Jehu, and in another quarter of an 
 hour, Barraclough will be safe in Stilbro' jail.' 
 
 ' Very good : thank you,' said Moore, ' and good-morning, 
 gentlemen,' he added, and so politely conducted them to the 
 door and saw them clear of his premises. 
 
 He was a taciturn, serious man the rest of the day : he 
 did not even bandy a repartee with Joe Scott ; who, for his 
 part, said to his master only just what was absolutely 
 necessary to the progress of business, but looked at him a 
 good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently came to 
 poke the counting-house fire for him, and once, as he was 
 locking up for the day (the mill was then working short 
 time, owing to the slackness of trade), observed that it was 
 a grand evening, and he ' could wish Mr. Moore to take a 
 bit of a walk up th' Hollow ; it would do him good.' 
 
 At this recommendation, Mr. Moore burst into a short 
 laugh, and after demanding of Joe what all this solicitude 
 meant, and whether he took him for a woman or a child, 
 seized the keys from his hand, and shoved him by the 
 shoulders out of his presence. He called him back, however, 
 ere he reached the yard-gate. 
 
 1 Joe, do you know those Farrens ? They are not well 
 off, 1 suppose ? ' 
 
 ' They cannot be well off, sir, when they've not had work 
 as a three month. Ye'd see yoursel' 'at William's sorely 
 changed, fair pared : they've selled most o' t' stuff out o' 
 th' house.' 
 
 ' He was not a bad workman ? ' 
 
 1 Ye never had a better, sir, sin' ye began trade.' 
 
 ' And decent people the whole family ? ' 
 
 ' Niver dacenter : th' wife's a raight cant body, and as 
 
 clean ! ye mught eat your porridge off th' house floor : 
 
 they're sorely corned down. I wish William could get a job 
 as gardener or summat i' that way ; he understands garden- 
 ing weel. He once lived wi' a Scotchman that tached him 
 the mysteries o' that craft, as they say.'
 
 148 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 Now, then, you can go, Joe ; you need not stand there 
 staring at me.' 
 
 ' Ye've no orders to give, sir ? ' 
 
 1 None, but for you to take yourself off/ 
 
 Which Joe did accordingly. 
 
 Spring evenings are often cold and raw, and though this 
 had been a fine day, warm even in the morning and meridian 
 sunshine, the air chilled at sunset, the ground crisped, and 
 ere dusk a hoar frost was insidiously stealing over growing 
 grass and unfolding bud. It whitened the pavement in front 
 of Briarmains (Mr. Yorke's residence), and made silent 
 havoc among the tender plants in his garden, and on the 
 mossy level of his lawn. As to that great tree, strong- 
 trunked and broad-armed, which guarded the gable nearest 
 the road, it seemed to defy a spring-night frost to harm its 
 still bare boughs ; and so did the leafless grove of walnut- 
 trees rising tall behind the house. 
 
 In the dusk of the moonless if starry night, lights from 
 windows shone vividly : this was no dark or lonely scene, 
 nor even a silent one. Briarmains stood near the highway ; 
 it was rather an old place, and had been built ere that high- 
 way was cut, and when a lane winding up through fields 
 was the only path conducting to it. Briarfield lay scarce a 
 mile off ; its hum was heard, its glare distinctly seen. 
 Briar-chapel, a large, new, raw, Wesleyan place of worship, 
 rose but a hundred yards distant ; and, as there was even 
 now a prayer-meeting being held within its walls, the 
 illumination of its windows cast a bright reflection on the 
 road, while a hymn of a most extraordinary description, 
 such as a very Quaker might feel himself moved by the 
 spirit to dance to, roused cheerily all the echoes of the 
 vicinage. The words were distinctly audible by snatches : 
 here is a quotation or two from different strains; for the 
 singers passed jauntily from hymn to hymn and from tune 
 to tune, with an ease and buoyancy all their own :
 
 BBIAEMAINS 149 
 
 Oh I who can explain 
 
 This struggle for life, 
 This travail and pain, 
 
 This trembling and strife ? 
 Plague, earthquake, and famine, 
 
 And tumult and war, 
 The wonderful coming 
 
 Of Jesus declare ! 
 
 For every fight 
 
 Is dreadful and loud, 
 The warrior's delight 
 
 Is slaughter and blood ; 
 His foes overturning, 
 
 Till all shall expire, 
 And this is with burning, 
 
 And fuel, and fire ! 
 
 Here followed an interval of clamorous prayer, accom- 
 panied by fearful groans. A shout of ' I've found liberty ! ' 
 ' Doad o' Bill's has fun' liberty ! ' rang from the chapel, and 
 out all the assembly broke again : 
 
 What a mercy is this ! 
 
 What a heaven of bliss ! 
 How unspeakably happy am I ! 
 
 Gather'd into the fold, 
 
 With thy people enroll'd, 
 With thy people to live and to die ! 
 
 Oh, the goodness of God 
 
 In employing a clod 
 His tribute of glory to raise ; 
 
 His standard to bear, 
 
 And with triumph declare 
 His unspeakable riches of grace ! 
 
 Oh, the fathomless love, 
 
 That has deign'd to approve 
 And prosper the work of my hands ; 
 
 With my pastoral crook, 
 
 I went over the brook, 
 And behold I am spread into bands !
 
 150 SH1KLM 
 
 Who, I ask in amaze, 
 
 Hath begotten me these ? 
 And inquire from what quarter they came ; 
 
 My full heart it replies, 
 
 They are born from the skies, 
 And gives glory to God and the Lamb ! 
 
 The stanza which followed this, after another and longer 
 interregnum of shouts, yells, ejaculations, frantic cries, 
 agonized groans, seemed to cap the climax of noise and 
 
 zeal : 
 
 Sleeping on the brink of sin, 
 Tophet gaped to take us in ; 
 Mercy to our rescue flew, 
 Broke the snare, and brought us through. 
 
 Here, as in a lion's den, 
 Undevour'd we still remain ; 
 Pass secure the watery flood, 
 Hanging on the arm of God. 
 
 Here 
 
 (Terrible, most distracting to the ear was the strained 
 shout in which the last stanza was given.) 
 
 Here we raise our voices higher, 
 Shout in the refiner's fire ; 
 Clap our hands amidst the flame, 
 Glory give to Jesus' name ! 
 
 The roof of the chapel did not fly off; which speaks 
 volumes in praise of its solid slating. 
 
 But if Briar-chapel seemed alive, so also did Briarmains : 
 though certainly the mansion appeared to enjoy a quieter 
 phase of existence than the temple ; some of its windows 
 too were aglow : the lower casements opened upon the 
 lawn, curtains concealed the interior, and partly obscured 
 the ray of the candles which lit it, but they did not entirely 
 muffle the sound of voice and laughter. We are privileged 
 to enter that front-door, and to penetrate to the domestic 
 sanctum.
 
 BRIARMAINS 151 
 
 It is not the presence of company which makes Mr. 
 Yorke's habitation lively, for there is none within it save his 
 own family, and they are assembled in that farthest room to 
 the right, the back parlour. 
 
 This is the usual sitting-room of an evening. Those 
 windows would be seen by daylight to be of brilliantly- 
 stained glass purple and amber the predominant hues, 
 glittering round a gravely- tinted medallion in the centre of 
 each, representing the suave head of William Shakspeare, 
 and the serene one of John Milton. Some Canadian views 
 hang on the walls green forest and blue water scenery 
 and in the midst of them blazes a night-eruption of 
 Vesuvius ; very ardently it glows, contrasted with the cool 
 foam and azure of cataracts, and the dusky depths of woods. 
 
 The fire illuminating this room, reader, is such as, if you 
 be a southern, you do not often see burning on the hearth of 
 a private apartment ; it is a clear, hot, coal fire, heaped 
 high in the ample chimney. Mr. Yorke will have such fh-es 
 even in warm summer weather : he sits beside it with a 
 book in his hand, a little round stand at his elbow support- 
 ing a candle but he is not reading, he is watching his 
 children. Opposite to him sits his lady a personage whom 
 I might describe minutely, but I feel no vocation to the task. 
 I see her, though, very plainly before me : a large woman 
 of the gravest aspect, care on her front and on her shoulders 
 but not overwhelming, inevitable care rather the sort of 
 voluntary, exemplary cloud and burden people ever carry 
 who deem it their duty to be gloomy. Ah, woll-a-day ! Mrs. 
 Yorke had that notion, and grave as Saturn she was, 
 morning, noon, and night ; and hard things she thought of 
 any unhappy wight especially of the female sex who 
 dared in her presence to show the light of a gay heart on a 
 sunny countenance. In her estimation, to be mirthful was 
 to be profane ; to be cheerful was to be frivolous : she drew 
 no distinctions. Yet she was a very good wife, a very 
 careful mother, looked after her children unceasingly, was 
 sincerely attached 10 her husband ; only, the wor^t of it was,
 
 152 SHIRLEY 
 
 if she could have had her will, she would not have permitted 
 him to have any friend in the world beside herself : all his 
 relations were insupportable to her, and she kept them at 
 arm's length. 
 
 Mr. Yorke and she agreed perfectly well ; yet he was 
 naturally a social, hospitable man an advocate for family 
 unity and in his youth, as has been said, he liked none but 
 lively, cheerful women. Why he chose her how they 
 contrived to suit each other, is a problem puzzling enough, 
 but which might soon be solved if one had time to go into 
 the analysis of the case. Suffice it here to say, that Yorke 
 had a shadowy as well as a sunny side to his character, and 
 that his shadowy side found sympathy and affinity in the 
 whole of his wife's uniformly overcast nature. For the rest, 
 she was a strong-minded woman ; never said a weak or 
 a trite thing ; took stern, democratic views of society, and 
 rather cynical ones of human nature ; considered herself 
 perfect and safe, and the rest of the world all wrong. Her 
 main fault was a brooding, eternal, immitigable suspicion of 
 all men, things, creeds, and parties : this suspicion was a 
 mist before her eyes, a false guide in her path, wherever she, 
 looked, wherever she turned. 
 
 It may be supposed that the children of such a pair were 
 not likely to turn out quite ordinary, common-place beings ; 
 and they were not. You see six of them, reader : the 
 youngest is a baby on the mother's knee ; it is all her own 
 yet and that one she has not yet begun to doubt, suspect, 
 condemn ; it derives its sustenance from her, it hangs on 
 her, it clings to her, it loves her above everything else in the 
 world : she is sure of that, because, as it lives by her, it 
 cannot be otherwise, therefore she loves it. 
 
 The next two are girls, Rose and Jessie : they are both 
 now at their father's knee ; they seldom go near their 
 mother, except when obliged to do so. Rose, the elder, ia 
 twelve years old ; she is like her father the most like him 
 of the whole group but it is a granite head copied in ivory ; 
 all is softened in colour and Iin6. Yorke himself has a
 
 BBIABMAINS 153 
 
 harsh face ; his daughter's is not harsh, neither is it quite 
 pretty ; it is simple childlike in feature ; the round cheeks 
 bloom : as to the gray eyes, they are otherwise than child- 
 like a serious soul lights them a young soul yet, but it 
 will mature, if the body lives ; aud neither father nor 
 mother have a spirit to compare with it. Partaking of the 
 essence of each, it will one day be better than either 
 stronger, much purer, more aspiring. Eose is a still, and 
 sometimes a stubborn girl now : her mother wants to make 
 of her such a woman as she is herself a woman of dark 
 and dreary duties and Eose has a mind full-set, thick- 
 sown with the germs of ideas her mother never knew. It 
 is agony to her often to have these ideas trampled on and 
 repressed. She has never rebelled yet ; but if hard driven, 
 she will rebel one day, and then it will be once for all. 
 Eose loves her father : her father does not rule her with a 
 rod of iron ; he is good to her. He sometimes fears she will 
 not live, so bright are the sparks of intelligence which, at 
 moments, flash from her glance, and gleam in her language. 
 This idea makes him often sadly tender to her. 
 
 He has no idea that little Jessie will die young, she is so 
 gay and chattering, arch original even now : passionate 
 when provoked, but most affectionate if caressed ; by turns 
 genfcle and rattling ; exacting yet generous ; fearless of her 
 mother, for instance, whose irrationally hard and strict rule 
 she has often defied yet reliant on any who will help her. 
 Jessie, with her little piquant face, engaging prattle, and 
 winning ways, is made to be a pet ; and her father's pet she 
 accordingly is. It is odd that the doll should resemble her 
 mother feature by feature, as Eose resembles her father, 
 and yet the physiognomy how different ! 
 
 Mr. Yorke, if a magic mirror were now held before you, 
 and if therein were shown you your two daughters as they 
 will be twenty years from this night, what would you 
 think ? The magic mirror is here : you shall learn their 
 destinies and first that of your little life, Jessie. 
 
 Do you know this place? No, you never saw it ; but
 
 154 SHIELEY 
 
 you recognise the nature of these trees, this foliage the 
 cypress, the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are 
 not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim garlands of ever- 
 lasting flowers. Here is the place ; gresn sod and a gray 
 marble headstone Jessie sleeps below. She lived through 
 an April day ; much loved was she, much loving. She 
 often, in her brief life, shed tears, she had frequent sorrows ; 
 she smiled between, gladdening whatever saw her. Her 
 death was tranquil and happy in Rose's guardian arms, for 
 Eose had been her stay and defence through many trials : 
 the dying and the watching English girls were at that hour 
 alone in a foreign country, and the soil of that country gave 
 Jessie a grave. 
 
 Now, behold Eose, two years later. The crosses and 
 garlands looked strange, but the hills and woods of this 
 landscape look still stranger. This, indeed, is far from 
 England ; remote must be the shores which wear that wild, 
 luxuriant aspect. This is some virgin solitude : unknown 
 birds flutter round the skirts of that forest ; no European 
 river this, on whose banks Eose sits thinking. The little 
 quiet Yorkshire girl is a lonely emigrant in some region of 
 the southern hemisphere. Will she ever come back ? 
 
 The three eldest of the family are all boys : Matthew, 
 Mark, and Martin. They are seated together in that corner, 
 engaged in some game. Observe their three heads : much 
 alike at a first glance ; at a second, different ; at a third, 
 contrasted. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, red-cheeked, are the 
 whole trio ; small English features they all possess ; all own 
 a blended resemblance to sire and mother, and yet a distinc- 
 tive physiognomy, mark of a separate character, belongs to 
 each. 
 
 I shall not say much about Matthew, the first-born of 
 the house ; though it is impossible to avoid gazing at him 
 long, and conjecturing what qualities that visage hides or 
 indie. ites. He is no plain-looking boy : that jet-black hair, 
 white brow, high-coloured cheek, those quick, dark eyes, are 
 good points iu their way. How is it that, look as long as
 
 BRIABMAINS 155 
 
 you will, there is but one object in the room, and that the 
 most sinister, to which Matthew's face seems to bear an 
 affinity, and of which, ever and anon, it reminds you 
 strangely the eruption of Vesuvius. Flame and shadow 
 seem the component parts of that lad's soul : no daylight in 
 it, and no sunshine, and no pure, cool moonbeam ever shone 
 there. He has an English frame, but, apparently, not an 
 English mind : you would say, an Italian stiletto in a 
 sheath of British workmanship. He is crossed in the game 
 look at his scowl. Mr. Yorke sees it, and what does he 
 say ? In a low voice, he pleads : ' Mark and Martin, don't 
 auger your brother." And this is ever the tone adopted by 
 both parents. Theoretically, they decry partiality ; no 
 rights of primogeniture are to be allowed in that house ; but 
 Matthew is never to be vexed, never to be opposed : they 
 avert provocation from him as assiduously as they would 
 avert fire from a barrel of gunpowder. ' Concede, con- 
 ciliate,' is their motto wherever he is concerned. The 
 republicans are fast making a tyrant of their own flesh and 
 blood. This the younger scions know and feel, and at heart 
 they all rebel against the injustice : they cannot read their 
 parents' motives ; they only see the difference of treatment. 
 The dragon's teeth are already sown amongst Mr. Yorke's 
 young olive branches : discord will one day be the harvest. 
 Mark is a bonnie -looking boy, the most regular-featured 
 of the family ; he is exceedingly calm ; his smile is 
 shrewd ; he can say the driest, most cutting things in the 
 quietest of tones. Despite his tranquillity, a somewhat 
 heavy brow speaks temper, and reminds you that the 
 smoothest waters are not always the safest. Besides, he is 
 too still, unmoved, phlegmatic, to be happy. Life will never 
 have much joy in it for Mark : by the time he is five-aud- 
 twenty, he will wonder why people ever laugh, and think all 
 fools who seem merry. Poetry will not exist for Mark, 
 either in literature or in life ; its best effusions will sound to 
 him mere rant and jargon : enthusiasm will be his aversion 
 and contempt. Mark will have no youth : while he looks
 
 156 SHIRLEY 
 
 juvenile and blooming, he will be already middle-aged in 
 inind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but his soul 
 is already thirty. 
 
 Martin, the youngest of the three, owns another nature. 
 Life may, or may not, be brief for him : but it will certainly 
 be brilliant : he will pass through all its illusions, half 
 believe in them, wholly enjoy them, then outlive them. 
 That boy is not handsome not so handsome as either of 
 his brothers : he is plain ; there is a husk upon him, a dry 
 shell, and he will wear it till he is near twenty ; then he 
 will put it off: about that period, he will make himself 
 handsome. He will wear uncouth manners till that age, 
 perhaps homely garments ; but the chrysalis will retain the 
 power of transfiguring itself into the butterfly, and such 
 transfiguration will, in due season, take place. For a space 
 he will be vain, probably a downright puppy, eager for 
 pleasure and desirous of admiration ; athirst, too, for know- 
 ledge. He will want all that the world can give him, both 
 of enjoyment and lore ; he will, perhaps, take deep draughts 
 at each fount. That thirst satisfied what next ? I know 
 not. Martin might be a remarkable man : whether he will 
 or not, the seer is powerless to predict : on that subject, 
 thore has been no open vision. 
 
 Take Mr. Yorke's family in the aggregate, there is as 
 much mental power in those six young heads, as much 
 originality, as much activity and vigour of brain, as divided 
 amongst half a dozen common-place broods would give to 
 each rather more than an average amount of sense and 
 capacity. Mr. Yorke knows this, and is proud of his race. 
 Yorkshire has such families here and there amongst her hills 
 and wolds peculiar, racy, vigorous ; of good blood and 
 strong brain ; turbulent somewhat in the piide of their 
 strength, and intractable in the force of their native powers; 
 wanting polish, wanting consideration, wanting docility, 
 hut sound, spirited, and true-bred as the eagle on the cliff or 
 the steed in the steppe. 
 
 A low tap is heard at the parlour door ; the boys have
 
 BBIAEMAINS 157 
 
 been making such a noise over their game, and little Jessie, 
 besides, has been singing so sweet a Scotch song to her 
 father who delights in Scotch and Italian songs, and has 
 taught his musical little daughter some of the best that the 
 ring at the outer door was not observed. 
 
 ' Come in ! ' says Mrs. Yorke, in that conscientiously con- 
 strained and solemnized voice of hers, which ever modulates 
 itself to a funereal dreariness of tone, though the subject it 
 is exercised upon be but to give orders for the making of a 
 pudding in the kitchen, to bid the boys hang up their caps 
 in the hall, or to call the girls to their sewing : ' Come in ! ' 
 And in came Eobert Moore. 
 
 Moore's habitual gravity, as well as his abstemiousness 
 (for the case of spirit-decanters is never ordered up when he 
 pays an evening visit), has so far recommended him to Mrs. 
 Yorke, that she has not yet made him the subject of private 
 animadversions with her husband : she has not yet found 
 out that he is hampered by a secret intrigue which prevents 
 him from marrying, or that he is a wolf in sheep's clothing ; 
 discoveries which she made at an early date after marriage 
 concerning most of her husband's bachelor friends, and 
 excluded them from her board accordingly ; which part of 
 her conduct, indeed, might be said to have its just and 
 sensible, as well as its harsh side. 
 
 ' Well, is it you ? ' she says to Mr. Moore, as he comes 
 up to her and gives his hand. ' What are you roving about 
 at this time of night for? You should be at home.' 
 
 1 Can a single man be said to have a home, madam ? ' he 
 
 1 Pooh ! ' says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional 
 smoothness quite as much as her husband does, and practises 
 it as little, and whose plain speaking, on all occasions, is 
 carried to a point calculated, sometimes, to awaken admira- 
 tion, but oftener alarm ' Pooh ! you need not talk nonsense 
 to me ; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, 
 does not your sister make a home for you ? ' 
 
 ' Not she,' joined in Mr. Yorke. ' Hortense is an honest
 
 158 
 
 lass ; but when I was Eobert's age, I had five or six sisters, 
 all as decent and proper as she is ; but you see, Hesther, for 
 all that, it did not hinder me from looking out for a wife.' 
 
 ' And sorely he has repented marrying me,' added Mrs. 
 Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against 
 matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. 
 ' He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Eobert Moore, 
 as you may well believe when you see his punishment, 
 (here she pointed to her children). ' Who would burden 
 themselves with such a set of great, rough lads, as those, if 
 they could help it ? It is not only bringing them into the 
 world, though that is bad enough, but they are all to feed, 
 to clothe, to rear, to settle in life. Young sir, when you feel 
 tempted to marry, think of our four sons and two daughters, 
 and look twice before you leap." 
 
 ' I am not tempted now, at any rate : I think these are 
 not times for marrying or giving in marriage.' 
 
 A lugubrious sentiment of this sort was sure to obtain 
 Mrs. Yorke's approbation : she nodded and groaned 
 acquiescence ; but in a minute she said : ' I make little 
 account of the wisdon of a Solomon of your age ; it will be 
 upset by the first fancy that crosses you. Meantime, sit 
 down, sir : you can talk, I suppose, as well sitting as 
 standing ? ' 
 
 This was her way of inviting her guest to take a chair : 
 he had no sooner obeyed her, than little Jessie jumped from 
 her father's knee, and ran into Mr. Moore's arms, which 
 were very promptly held out to receive her. 
 
 ' You talk of marrying him,' said she to her mother, quite 
 indignantly, as she was lifted lightly to his knee, ' and he is 
 married now, or as good : he promised that I should be his 
 wife last summer, the first time he saw me in my new white 
 frock and blue sash. Didn't he, father?' (These children 
 were not accustomed to say papa and mamma ; their mother 
 would allow no such ' namby-pamby.') 
 
 1 Ay, my little lassie, he promised ; I'll bear witness.
 
 BRIAEMAINS 159 
 
 But make him say it over again now, Jessie : such as he are 
 only false loons.' 
 
 ' He is not false : he is too bonnie to be false/ said 
 Jessie, looking up to her tall sweetheart with the fullest con- 
 fidence in his faith. 
 
 ' Bonnie ! ' cried Mr. Yorke ; ' that's the reason that he 
 should be, and proof that he is a scoundrel.' 
 
 ' But he looks too sorrowful to be false,' here interposed a 
 quiet voice from behind the father's chair. ' If he were 
 always laughing, I should think he forgot promises soon, 
 but Mr. Moore never laughs.' 
 
 ' Your sentimental buck is the greatest cheat of all, Rose,' 
 remarked Mr. Yorke. 
 
 ' He's not sentimental,' said Rose. 
 
 Mr. Moore turned to her with a little surprise, smiling 
 at the same time. 
 
 1 How do you know I am not sentimental, Rose ? ' 
 
 ' Because I heard a lady say you were not.' 
 
 'Voila, qui devient inte'ressant ! ' exclaimed Mr. Yorke, 
 hitching his chair nearer the fire. ' A lady ! That has quite 
 a romantic twang : we must guess who it is. Rosy, whisper 
 the name low to your father : don't let him hear.' 
 
 1 Rose, don't be too forward to talk,' here interrupted Mrs. 
 Yorke, in her usual kill-joy fashion ; ' nor Jessie either : it 
 becomes all children, especially girls, to be silent in the 
 presence of their elders. 1 
 
 ' Why have we tongues, then ? ' asked Jessie, pertly ; 
 while Rose only looked at her mother with an expression 
 that seemed to say, she should take that maxim in, and 
 think it over at her leisure. After two minutes' grave 
 deliberation, she asked, ' And why especially girls, mother ? ' 
 
 ' Firstly, because I say so : and, secondly, because discre- 
 tion and reserve is a girl's best wisdom.' 
 
 ' My dear madam,' observed Moore, ' what you say 
 is excellent : it reminds me, indeed, of my dear sister's 
 observations ; but really it is not applicable to these little
 
 160 SHIRLEY 
 
 ones. Let Rose and Jessie talk to me freely, or my chief 
 pleasure in coming here is gone. I like their prattle : it 
 does me good.' 
 
 ' Does it not ? ' asked Jessie. ' More good than if the 
 rough lads came round you : you call them rough, mother, 
 yourself.' 
 
 1 Yes, mignonne, a thousand times more good : I have 
 rough lads enough about me all day long, poulet.' 
 
 ' There are plenty of people,' continued she, ' who take 
 notice of the boys : all my uncles and aunts seem to think 
 their nephews better than their nieces ; and when gentlemen 
 come here to dine, it is always Matthew, and Mark, and 
 Martin, that are talked to, and never Rose and me. Mr. 
 Moore is our friend, and we'll keep him : but mind, Rose, 
 he's not so much your friend as he is mine : he is my 
 particular acquaintance ; remember that ! ' And she held 
 up her small hand with an admonitory gesture. 
 
 Rose was quite accustomed to be admonished by that 
 small hand ; her will daily bent itself to that of the impe- 
 tuous little Jessie : she was guided overruled by Jessie in a 
 thousand things. On all occasions of show and pleasure, 
 Jessie took the lead, and Rose fell quietly into the back- 
 ground ; whereas, when the disagreeables of life its work 
 and privations were in question, Rose instinctively took upon 
 her, in addition to her own share, what she could of her 
 sister's. Jessie had already settled it in her mind that she, 
 when she was old enough, was to be married ; Rose, she 
 decided, must be an old maid, to live with her, look after 
 her children, keep her house. This state of things is not 
 uncommon between two sisters, where one is plain and the 
 other pretty ; but in this case, if there was a difference in 
 external appearance, Rose had the advantage : her face was 
 more regular-featured than that of the piquant little Jessie. 
 Jessie, however, was destined to possess, along with sprightly 
 intelligence and vivacious feeling, the gift of fascination, the 
 power to charm when, where, and whom she would. Rose 
 was to ha,ve a fine, generous soul, a noble intellect profoundly
 
 BRIARMAINS 161 
 
 cultivated, a heart as true as steel, but the manner to attract 
 was not to be hers. 
 
 4 Now, Rose, tell me the name of this lady who denied 
 that I was sentimental,' urged Mr. Moore. 
 
 Rose had no idea of tantalization, or she would have 
 held him a while in doubt ; she answered, briefly : ' I can't : 
 I don't know her name.' 
 
 4 Describe her to me : what was she like ? Where did 
 you see her ? ' 
 
 ' When Jessie and I went to spend the day at Whinbury 
 with Kate and Susan Pearson, who were just come home 
 from school, there was a party at Mrs. Pearson's, and some 
 grown-up ladies were sitting in a corner of the drawing-room 
 talking about you.' 
 
 ' Did you know none of them ? ' 
 
 ' Hannah, and Harriet, and Dora, and Mary Sykes.' 
 
 4 Good. Were they abusing me, Rosy ? ' 
 
 ' Some of them were : they called you a misanthrope : I 
 remember the word I looked for it in the dictionary when 
 I came home : it means a man-hater.' 
 
 ' What besides ? ' 
 
 ' Hannah Sykes said you were a solemn puppy.' 
 
 ' Better ! ' cried Mr. Yorke, laughing. ' Oh ! excellent 1 
 Hannah that's the one with the red hair : a fine girl, but 
 half-witted.' 
 
 4 She has wit enough for me, it appears,' said Moore. ' A 
 solemn puppy, indeed ! Well, Rose, go on.' 
 
 ' Miss Pearson said she believed there was a good deal of 
 affectation about you, and that with your dark hair and pale 
 face, you looked to her like some sort of a sentimental 
 noodle." 
 
 Again Mr. Yorke laughed : Mrs. Yorke even joined in 
 this time. ' You see in what esteem you are held behind 
 your back,' said she ; ' yet I believe that Miss Pearson would 
 like to catch you : she set her cap at you when you first 
 came into the country, old as she is.' 
 
 4 And who contradicted her, Rosy ? ' inquired Moore.
 
 162 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' A lady whom I don't know, because she never visits 
 here, though I see her every Sunday at church ; she sits in 
 the pew near the pulpit. I generally look at her, instead of 
 looking at my prayer-book ; for she is like a picture in our 
 dining-room, that woman with the dove in her hand: at 
 least she has eyes like it, and a nose too, a straight nose, 
 that makes all her face look, somehow, what I call clear.' 
 
 ' And you don't know her ! ' exclaimed Jessie, in a tone 
 of exceeding surprise. ' That's so like Eose. Mr. Moore, I 
 often wonder in what sort of a world my sister lives ; I am 
 sure she does not live all her time in this : one is continually 
 finding out that she is quite ignorant of some little matter 
 which everybody else knows. To think of her going 
 solemnly to church every Sunday, and looking all service- 
 time at one particular person, and never so much as asking 
 that person's name ! She means Caroline Helstone, the 
 Rector's niece : I remember all about it. Miss Helstone 
 was quite angry with Anne Pearson : she said, " Robert 
 Mooi'e is neither affected nor sentimental ; you mistake his 
 character utterly, or rather not one of you here knows any- 
 thing about it." Now, shall I tell you what she is like ? I 
 can tell what people are like, and how they are dressed, 
 better than Rose can.' 
 
 ' Let us hear.' 
 
 ' She is nice ; she is fair ; she has a pretty white slender 
 thi-oat ; she has long curls, not stiff ones, they hang loose 
 and soft, their colour is brown but not dark ; she speaks 
 quietly, with a clear tone ; she never makes a bustle in 
 moving ; she often wears a gray silk dress ; she is neat all 
 over : her gowns, and her shoes, and her gloves always fit 
 her. She is what I call a lady, and when I am as tall as 
 she is, I mean to bo like her. Shall I suit you if I am ? 
 Will you really marry me ? ' 
 
 Moore stroked Jessie's hair : for a minute he seemed as 
 if he would draw her nearer to him, but instead he put her 
 a little farther off. 
 
 ' Oh ! you won't have me ? You push me away.'
 
 BKIABMAINS 163 
 
 I Why, Jessie, you care nothing about me : you never 
 come to see me now at the Hollow.' 
 
 ' Because you don't ask me.' 
 
 Hereupon, Mr. Moore gave both the little girls an invita- 
 tion to pay him a visit next day, promising that, as he was 
 going to Stilbro' in the morning, he would buy them each a 
 present, of what nature he would not then declare, but they 
 must come and see. Jessie was about to reply, when one of 
 the boys unexpectedly broke in : 
 
 I 1 know that Miss Helstone you have all been palavering 
 about : she's an ugly girl. I hate her ! I hate all women- 
 ites. I wonder what they were made for.' 
 
 ' Martin ! ' said his father for Martin it was the lad 
 only answered by turning his cynical young face, half-arch, 
 half-truculent, towards the paternal chair. ' Martin, my 
 lad, thou'rt a swaggering whelp, now ; thou wilt some day 
 be an outrageous puppy : but stick to those sentiments of 
 thine. See, I'll write down the words now i' my pocket- 
 book.' (The senior took out a morocco-covered book, and 
 deliberately wrote therein.) ' Ten years hence, Martin, if 
 thou and I be both alive at that day, I'll remind thee of that 
 speech.' 
 
 ' I'll say the same then : I mean always to hate women : 
 they're such dolls : they do nothing but dress themselves 
 finely, and go swimming about to be admired. I'll never 
 marry : I'll be a bachelor.' 
 
 ' Stick to it ! stick to it ! Hesther ' (addressing his wife), 
 ' I was like him when I was his age, a regular misogamist ; 
 and, behold ! by the time I was three -and-t wen ty being 
 then a tourist in France and Italy, and the Lord knows 
 where ! I curled my hair every night before I went to bed, 
 and wore a ring i' my car, and would have worn one i' my 
 nose if it had been the fashion and all that I might make 
 mysel' pleasing and charming to the ladies. Martin will do 
 the like.' 
 
 ' Will I? Never ! I've more sense. What a Guy you 
 were, father ! As to dressing, I make this vow : I'll never 
 
 7
 
 16i SHIRLEY 
 
 dress more finely than as you see me at present. Mr. 
 Moore, I'm clad in blue cloth from top to toe, and they 
 laugh at me, and call me a sailor at the grammar-school. I 
 laugh louder at them, and say they are all magpies and 
 parrots, with their coats one colour, and their waistcoats 
 another, and their trousers a third. I'll always wear blue 
 cloth, and nothing but blue cloth : it is beneath a human 
 being's dignity to dress himself in particoloured garments.' 
 
 1 Ten years hence, Martin, no tailor's shop will have 
 choice of colours varied enough for thy exacting taste ; no 
 perfumer's stores essences exquisite enough for thy fastidious 
 senses.' 
 
 Martin looked disdain, but vouchsafed no further reply. 
 Meantime Mark, who for some minutes had been rummaging 
 amongst a pile of books on a side-table, took the word. He 
 spoke in a peculiarly slow, quiet voice, and with an expres- 
 sion of still irony in his face not easy to describe. 
 
 ' Mr. Moore,' said he, ' you think perhaps it was a com- 
 pliment on Miss Caroline Helstone's part to say you were 
 not sentimental. I thought you appeared confused when 
 my sisters told you the words, as if you felt flattered : you 
 turned red, just like a certain vain little lad at our school, 
 who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in 
 the class. For your benefit, Mr. Moore, I've been looking 
 up the word " sentimental " in the dictionary, and I find it 
 to mean, " tinctured with sentiment." On examining 
 further, " sentiment " is explained to be, thought, idea, 
 notion. A sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts, 
 ideas, notions ; an unsentimental man is one destitute of 
 thought, idea, or notion.' 
 
 And Mark stopped : he did not smile, he did not look 
 round for admiration : he had said his say, and was silent. 
 
 ' Ma foi ! mon ami,' observed Mr. Moore to Yorke ; ' ce 
 sont vraiment des enfants terribles, que les votres ! ' 
 
 Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark's 
 speech, replied to him : ' There are different kinds of 
 thoughts, ideas, and notions,' said she, 'good and bad:
 
 BEIAKMAINS 165 
 
 sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone must 
 have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. 
 Moore ; she was defending him.' 
 
 ' That's my kind little advocate, ' said Moore, taking 
 Eose's hand. 
 
 ' She was defending him,' repeated Eose, ' as I should 
 have done had I been in her place, for the other ladies seemed 
 to speak spitefully.' 
 
 ' Ladies always do speak spitefully,' observed Martin ; 
 ' it is the nature of womenites to be spiteful.' 
 
 Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips : ' What 
 a fool Martin is, to be always gabbling about what he does 
 not understand.' 
 
 ' It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever 
 subject I like,' responded Martin. 
 
 ' You use it, or rather abuse it, to such an extent,' 
 rejoined the elder brother, 'that you prove you ought to have 
 been a slave.' 
 
 ' A slave ! a slave ! That to a Yorke, and from a Yorke ! 
 This fellow,' he added, standing up at the table, and pointing 
 across it to Matthew ' this fellow forgets, what every 
 cottier in Briarfield knows, that all born of our house have 
 that arched instep under which water can flow proof that 
 there has not been a slave of the blood for three hundred 
 years.' 
 
 ' Mountebank ! ' said Matthew. 
 
 ' Lads, be silent ! ' exclaimed Mr. Yorke. ' Martin, you 
 are a mischief-maker : there would have been no disturbance 
 but for you.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! Is that correct ? Did I begin, or did Matthew ? 
 Had I spoken to him when he accused me of gabbling like a 
 fool ? ' 
 
 ' A presumptuous fool ! ' repeated Matthew. 
 
 Here Mrs. Yorke commenced rocking herself rather a 
 portentous movement with her, as it was occasionally 
 followed, especially when Matthew was worsted in a conflict, 
 by a fit of hysterics,
 
 166 SHIELEY 
 
 ' I don't see why I should bear insolence from Matthew 
 Yorke, or what right he has to use bad language to me,' 
 observed Martin. 
 
 ' He has no right, my lad ; but forgive your brother until 
 seventy and seven times,' said Mr. Yorke soothingly. 
 
 ' Always alike, and theory and practice always adverse 1 ' 
 murmured Martin as he turned to leave the room. 
 
 ' Where art thou going, my son ? ' asked the father. 
 
 ' Somewhere where I shall be safe from insult : if in this 
 house I can find any such place.' 
 
 Matthew laughed very insolently : Martin threw a strange 
 look at him, and trembled through all his slight lad's frame, 
 but he restrained himself. 
 
 ' I suppose there is no objection to my withdrawing? ' he 
 inquired. 
 
 ' No ; go, my lad : but remember not to bear malice.' 
 
 Martin went, and Matthew sent another insolent laugh 
 after him. Rose, lifting her fair head from Moore's shoulder, 
 against which, for a moment, it had been resting, said, as she 
 directed a steady gaze to Matthew ' Martin is grieved, and 
 you are glad ; but I would rather be Martin than you : I 
 dislike your nature.' 
 
 Here Mr. Moore, by way of averting, or at least escaping 
 a scene which a sob from Mrs. Yorke warned him was 
 likely to come on rose, and putting Jessie off his knee, he 
 kissed her and Rose ; reminding them, at the same time, to 
 be sure and come to the Hollow in good time to-morrow 
 afternoon : then, having taken leave of his hostess, he said to 
 Mr. Yorke 'May I speak a word with you?' and was 
 followed by him from the room. Their brief conference took 
 place in the hall. 
 
 ' Have you employment for a good workman ? ' asked 
 Moore. 
 
 ' A nonsense question in these times, when you know that 
 every master has many good workmen to whom he cannot 
 give full employment.' 
 
 ' You must oblige me by taking on this man, if possible.'
 
 BRiAfcMAlNS 167 
 
 ' My lad, I can take on no more hands to oblige all Eng- 
 land.' 
 
 ' It does not signify ; I must find him a place somewhere.' 
 ' Who is he ? ' 
 1 William Farren.' 
 
 ' I know William ; a right-down honest man is William.' 
 ' He has been out of work three months ; he has a large 
 family : we are sure they cannot live without wages : he was 
 one of a deputation of cloth-dressers who came to me this 
 morning to complain and threaten. William did not threaten: 
 he only asked me to give thorn rather more time to make 
 my changes more slowly. You know I cannot do that ; 
 straitened on all sides as I am, I have nothing for it but 
 to push on. I thought it would be idle to palaver long with 
 them. I sent them away, after arresting a rascal amongst 
 them, whom I hope to transport a fellow who preaches at 
 the chapel yonder sometimes.' 
 ' Not Moses Barraclough ? ' 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 1 Ah ! you've arrested him ? Good ! Then out of a 
 scoundrel you're going to make a martyr : you've done a wise 
 thing.' 
 
 ' I've done a right thing. Well, the short and the long of 
 it is, I'm determined to get Farren a place, and I reckon on 
 you to give him one.' 
 
 ' This is cool, however ! ' exclaimed Mr. Yorke. ' What 
 right have you to reckon on me to provide for your dismissed 
 workmen? What do I know about your Farren s and your 
 Williams ? I've heard he's an honest man ; but am I to 
 support all the honest men in Yorkshire ? You may say that 
 would be no great charge to undertake ; but great or little, 
 I'll none of it.' 
 
 ' Come, Mr. Yorkc, what can you find for him to do?' 
 ' I find ! You'll make me use language I'm not accus- 
 tomed to use. I wish you would go home - here is the door 
 set off.' 
 
 Moore sat down on one of the hall chairs.
 
 168 SHIELEY 
 
 1 You can't give him work in your mill good but you 
 have land : find him some occupation on your land, Mr. 
 Yorke.' 
 
 I Bob, I thought you cared nothing about our " lourdauds 
 de paysans " ? I don't understand this change.' 
 
 I 1 do : the fellow spoke to me nothing but truth and 
 sense. I answered him just as roughly as I did the rest, who 
 jabbered mere gibberish. I couldn't make distinctions there 
 and then : his appearance told what he had gone through 
 lately, clearer than his words : but where is the use of ex- 
 plaining ? Let him have work.' 
 
 ' Let him have it yourself. If you are so very much in 
 earnest, strain a point." 
 
 1 If there was a point left in my affairs to strain, I would 
 strain it till it cracked again ; but I received letters this 
 morning which show me pretty nearly where I stand, and it 
 is not far off the end of the plank. My foreign market, at 
 any rate, is gorged. If there is no change - if there dawns 
 no prospect of peace if the Orders in Council are not, at least, 
 suspended, so as to open our way in the West I do not know 
 where I am to turn. I see no more light than if I were sealed 
 in a rock ; so that for me to pretend to offer a man a livelihood 
 would be to do a dishonest thing.' 
 
 ' Come, let us take a turn on the front : it is a starlight 
 night,' said Mr. Yorke. 
 
 They passed out, closing the front-door after them, 
 and, side by side, paced the frost-white pavement to and 
 
 fro. 
 
 ' Settle about Parren at once,' urged Mr. Moore. ' You 
 have large fruit-gardens at Yorke Mills : he is a good 
 gardener : give him work there.' 
 
 ' Well, so be it. I'll send for him to-morrow, and we'll 
 see. And now, my lad, you're concerned about the condition 
 of your affairs ? ' 
 
 ' Yes : a second failure which I may delay, but which, 
 at this moment, I see no way finally to avert would blight 
 the name of Moore completely ; and you are aware I had fine
 
 BKIAKMAINS 169 
 
 intentions of paying off every debt, and re-establishing the 
 old firm on its former basis.' 
 
 ' You want capital that's all you want.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but you might as well say that breath is all a dead 
 man wants to live.' 
 
 ' I know I know capital is not to be had for the asking ; 
 and if you were a married man, and had a family, like me, I 
 should think your case pretty nigh desperate ; but the young 
 and unencumbered have chances peculiar to themselves. I 
 hear gossip now and then about your being on the eve of 
 marriage with this miss and that ; but I suppose it is none 
 of it true ? ' 
 
 ' You may well suppose that : I think I am not in a position 
 to be dreaming of marriage. Marriage ! I cannot bear the 
 word : it sounds so silly and Utopian. I have settled it 
 decidedly that marriage and love are superfluities, intended 
 only for the rich, who live at ease, and have no need to take 
 thought for the morrow ; or desperations, the last and reck- 
 less joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of 
 the slough of their utter povei'ty.' 
 
 ' I should not think so if I were circumstanced as you are : 
 I should think I could very likely get a wife with a few thou- 
 sands, who would suit both me and my affairs.' 
 
 ' I wonder where ? ' 
 
 ' Would you try, if you had a chance ? ' 
 
 1 1 don't know : it depends on in short it depends on many 
 things.' 
 
 ' Would you take an old woman ? ' 
 
 ' I'd rather break stones on the road.' 
 
 ' So would I. Would you take an ugly one ? ' 
 
 ' Bah ! I hate ugliness and delight in beauty : my eyes 
 and heart, Yorke, take pleasure in a sweet, young, fair face, 
 as they are repelled by a grim, rugged, meagre one : soft 
 delicate lines and hues please harsh ones prejudice me. I 
 won't have an ugly wife.' 
 
 ' Not if she were rich ? ' 
 
 ' Not if she were dressed in gems. I could not love I
 
 170 SHIELEY 
 
 could not fancy I could not endure her. My taste must 
 have satisfaction, or disgust would break out in despotism 
 or worse freeze to utter iciness.' 
 
 ' What, Bob, if you married an honest, good-natured, and 
 wealthy lass, though a little hard-favoured, couldn't you put 
 up with the high cheek-bones, the rather wide mouth, and 
 reddish hair ? ' 
 
 ' I'll never try, I tell you. Grace at least I will have, and 
 youth and symmetry yes, and what I call beauty.' 
 
 ' And poverty, and a nursery full of bairns you can neither 
 clothe nor feed, and very soon an anxious faded mother- 
 and then bankruptcy, discredit a life-long struggle.' 
 
 ' Let me alone, Yorke.' 
 
 ' If you are romantic, Eobert, and especially if you are 
 already in love, it is of no use talking.' 
 
 ' I am not romantic. I am stript of romance as bare as 
 the white tenters in that field are of cloth.' 
 
 1 Always use such figures of speech, lad ; I can under- 
 stand them : and there is no love-affair to disturb your 
 judgment ? ' 
 
 ' I thought I had said enough on that subject before. 
 Love for me ? Stuff ! ' 
 
 ' Well, then ; if you are sound both in heart and head, 
 there is no reason why you should not profit by a good 
 chance if it offers : therefore, wait and see.' 
 
 ' You are quite oracular, Yorke.' 
 
 ' I think I am a bit i' that line. I promise ye naught 
 and I advise ye naught ; but I bid ye keep your heart up, 
 and be guided by circumstances.' 
 
 ' My namesake the physician's almanack could not speak 
 more guardedly.' 
 
 1 In the meantime, I care naught about ye, Eobert 
 Moore : ye are nothing akin to me or mine, and whether ye 
 lose or find a fortune it mak's no difference to me. Go 
 home, now : it has stricken ten. Miss IJortense will be 
 wondering where ye are.'
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 OLD MAIDS 
 
 TIME wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England 
 began to look pleasant : her fields grew green, her hills 
 fresh, her gardens blooming ; but at heart she was no 
 better : still her poor were wretched, still their employers 
 were harassed : commerce, in sonic of its branches, seemed 
 threatened with paralysis, for the war continued ; England's 
 blood was shed and her wealth lavished : all, it seemed, to 
 attain most inadequate ends. Some tidings there were 
 indeed occasionally of successes in the Peninsula, but these 
 came in slowly ; long intervals occurred between, in which 
 no note was heard but the insolent self-felicitations of 
 Bonaparte on his continued triumphs. Those who suffered 
 from the results of the war felt this tedious, and as they 
 thought hopeless, struggle against what their fears or their 
 interests taught them to regard as an invincible power, most 
 insufferable : they demanded peace on any terms : men like 
 Yorke and Moore and there were thousands whom the war 
 placed where it placed them, shuddering on the verge of 
 bankruptcy insisted on peace with the energy of despera- 
 tion. 
 
 They held meetings ; they made speeches ; they got up 
 petitions to extort this boon : on what terms it was made 
 they cared not. 
 
 All men, taken singly, are more or less selfish ; and 
 taken in bodies they are intensely so. The British merchant 
 is no exception to this rule : the mercantile classes illustrate
 
 172 SHIBLEY 
 
 it strikingly. These classes certainly think too exclusively 
 of making money : they are too oblivious of every national 
 consideration but that of extending England's (i.e. their 
 own) commerce. Chivalrous feeling, disinterestedness, pride 
 in honour, is too dead in their hearts. A land ruled by 
 them alone would too often make ignominious submission 
 not at all from the motives Christ teaches, but rather from 
 those Mammon instils. During the late war, the tradesmen 
 of England would have endured buffets from the French on 
 the right cheek and on the left ; their cloak they would 
 have given to Napoleon, and then have politely offered him 
 their coat also, nor would they have withheld their waist- 
 coat if urged : they would have prayed permission only tp 
 retain their one other garment, for the sake of the purse in 
 its pocket. Not one spark of spirit, not one symptom of 
 resistance would they have shown till the hand of the 
 Corsican bandit had grasped that beloved purse ; then, 
 perhaps, transfigured at once into British bull-dogs, they 
 would have sprung at the robber's throat, and there they 
 would have fastened, and there hung inveterate, insatiable, 
 till the treasure had been restored. Tradesmen, when they 
 speak against war, always profess to hate it because it is a 
 bloody and barbarous proceeding : you would think, to hear 
 them talk, that they are peculiarly civilised especially 
 gentle and kindly of disposition to their fellow-men. This 
 is not the case. Many of them are extremely narrow and 
 cold-hearted, have no good feeling for any class but their 
 own, are distant even hostile to all others ; call them 
 useless ; seem to question their right to exist ; seem to 
 grudge them the very air they breathe, and to think the 
 cii'cumstance of their eating, drinking, and living in decent 
 houses quite unjustifiable. They do not know what others 
 do in the way of helping, pleasing, or teaching their race ; 
 they will not trouble themselves to inquire ; whoever is not 
 in trade, is accused of eating the bread of idleness, of passing 
 a useless existence. Long may it be ere England really 
 becomes a nation of shopkeepers !
 
 OLD MAIDS 173 
 
 We have already said that Moore was no self-sacrificing 
 patriot, and we have also explained what circumstances 
 rendered him specially prone to confine his attention and 
 efforts to the furtherance of his individual interest ; accord- 
 ingly, when he felt himself urged a second time to the brink 
 of ruin, none struggled harder than he against the influences 
 which would have thrust him over. What he could do 
 towards stirring agitation in the north against the war, he 
 did, and he instigated others whose money and connections 
 gave them more power than he possessed. Sometimes, by 
 flashes, he felt there was little reason in the demands his 
 party made on Government : when he heard of all Europe 
 threatened by Bonaparte, and of all Europe arming to resist 
 him ; when he saw Eussia menaced, and beheld Russia 
 rising, incensed and stern, to defend her frozen soil, her 
 wild provinces of serfs, her dark native despotism, from the 
 tread, the yoke, the tyranny of a foreign victor, he knew that 
 England, a free realm, could not then depute her sons to 
 make concessions and propose terms to the unjust, grasping 
 French leader. When news came from time to time of the 
 movements of that MAN then representing England in the 
 Peninsula ; of his advance from success to success that 
 advance so deliberate but so unswerving, so circumspect but 
 so certain, so ' unhasting ' but so ' unresting ; ' when he 
 read Lord Wellington's own despatches in the columns of 
 the newspapers, documents written by Modesty to the 
 dictation of Truth Moore confessed at heart that a power 
 was with the troops of Britain, of that vigilant, enduring, 
 genuine, unostentatious sort, which must win victory to the 
 side it led, in the end. In the end ! but that end, he 
 thought, was yet far off; and meantime he, Moore, as an 
 individual, would be crushed, his hopes ground to dust : it 
 was himself he had to care for, his hopes he had to pursue, 
 and he would fulfil his destiny. 
 
 He fulfilled it so vigorously, that ere long he came to a 
 decisive rupture with his old Tory friend the Rector. They 
 quarrelled at a public meeting, and afterwards exchanged
 
 174 SHIKLEY 
 
 some pungent letters in the newspapers. Mr. Helstone 
 denounced Moore as a Jacobin, ceased to see him, would 
 not even speak to him when they met : he intimated also to 
 his niece, very distinctly, that her communications with 
 Hollow's cottage must for the present cease : she must give 
 up taking French lessons. The language, he observed, was 
 a bad and frivolous one at the best, and most of the works it 
 boasted were bad and frivolous, highly injurious in their 
 tendency to weak female minds. He wondered (he remarked 
 parenthetically) what noodle first made it the fashion to 
 teach women French : nothing was more improper for 
 them ; it was like feeding a rickety child on chalk and 
 water-gruel ; Caroline must give it up, and give up her 
 cousins too : they were dangerous people. 
 
 Mr. Helstone quite expected opposition to this order : 
 he expected tears. Seldom did he trouble himself about 
 Caroline's movements, but a vague idea possessed him that 
 she was fond of going to Hollow's cottage : also he 
 suspected that she liked Kobert Moore's occasional presence 
 at the Eectory. The Cossack had perceived that whereas 
 if Malone stepped in of an evening to make himself sociable 
 and charming, by pinching the ears of an aged black cat, 
 which usually shared with Miss Helstone's feet the ac- 
 commodation of her foot-stool, or by borrowing a fowling- 
 piece, and banging away at a tool-shed door in the garden 
 while enough of daylight remained to show that conspicuous 
 mark keeping the passage and sitting-room doors mean- 
 time uncomfortably open, for the convenience of running in 
 and out to announce his failures and successes with noisy 
 brusquerie he had observed that under such entertaining 
 circumstances, Caroline had a trick of disappearing, tripping 
 noiselessly up-stairs, and remaining invisible till called 
 down to supper. On the other hand, when Kobert Moore 
 was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the cat, 
 did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it 
 from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to 
 his shoulder and rub its head against his cheek ; though there
 
 OLD MAIDS 175 
 
 was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of 
 sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting, during 
 his stay, still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find 
 wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin- 
 cushions, and the knitting of Missionary-basket socks. 
 
 She was very quiet, and Robert paid her little attention, 
 scarcely ever addressing his discourse to her; but Mr. 
 Helstone, not being one of those elderly gentlemen who are 
 easily blinded ; on the contrary, finding himself on all occa- 
 sions extremely wide-awake, had watched them when they 
 bade each other good-night : he had just seen their eyes 
 meet once only once. Some natures would have taken 
 pleasure in the glance then surprised, because there was no 
 harm and some delight in it. It was by no means a glance 
 of mutual intelligence, for mutual love-secrets existed not 
 between them : there was nothing then of craft and conceal- 
 ment to offend ; only Mr. Moore's eyes, looking into 
 Caroline's, felt they were clear and gentle, and Caroline's 
 eyes encountering Mr. Moore's confessed they were manly 
 and searching : each acknowledged the charm in his or her 
 own way. Moore smiled slightly, and Caroline coloured as 
 slightly. Mr. Helstone could, on the spot, have rated them 
 both : they annoyed him : why ? impossible to say. If you 
 had asked him what Moore merited at that moment, he 
 would have said ' a horsewhip ; ' if you had inquired into 
 Caroline's deserts, he would have adjudged her a box on the 
 ear ; if you had further demanded the reason of such 
 chastisements, he would have stormed against flirtation and 
 love-making, and vowed he would have no such folly going 
 on under his roof. 
 
 These private considerations, combined with political 
 reasons, fixed his resolution of separating the cousins. lie 
 announced his will to Caroline one evening, as she was 
 sitting at work near the drawing-room window : her face 
 was turned towards him, and the light fell full upon it. It 
 had struck him a few minutes before that she was looking 
 paler and quieter than she used to look ; it had not escaped
 
 176 SHIRLEY 
 
 him either that Robert Moore's name had never, for some 
 three weeks past, dropped from her lips ; nor during the 
 same space of time had that personage made his appearance 
 at the Eectory. Some suspicion of clandestine meetings 
 haunted his mind; having but an indifferent opinion of 
 women, he always suspected them : he thought they 
 needed constant watching. It was in a tone dryly significant 
 he desired her to cease her daily visits to the Hollow ; he 
 expected a start, a look of deprecation : the start he saw, but 
 it was a very slight one ; no look whatever was directed to 
 him. 
 
 ' Do you hear me ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Yes, uncle.' 
 
 1 Of course, you mean to attend to what I say! : 
 
 ' Yes, certainly.' 
 
 ' And there must be no letter-scribbling to your cousin 
 Hortense : no intercourse whatever. I do not approve of 
 the principles of the family ; they are Jacobinical.' 
 
 1 Very well,' said Caroline quietly. She acquiesced then : 
 there was no vexed flushing of the face, no gathering tears : 
 the shadowy thoughtfulness which had covered her features 
 ere Mr. Helstone spoke remained undisturbed : she was 
 obedient. 
 
 Yes, perfectly ; because the mandate coincided with her 
 own previous judgment ; because it was now become pain 
 to her to go to Hollow's cottage ; nothing met her there but 
 disappointment : hope and love had quitted that little tene- 
 ment, for Robert seemed to have deserted its precincts. 
 Whenever she asked after him which she very seldom did, 
 since the mere utterance of his name made her face grow 
 hot the answer was, he was from home, or he was quite 
 taken up with business : Hortense feared he was killing 
 himself by application : be scarcely ever took a meal in the 
 house ; he lived in the counting-house. 
 
 At church only Caroline had the chance of seeing him, 
 and there she rarely looked at him : it was both too much 
 pain and too much pleasure to look: it excited too much
 
 OLD MAIDS 177 
 
 emotion ; and that it was all wasted emotion, she had learned 
 well to comprehend. 
 
 Once, on a dark, wet Sunday, when there were few people 
 at church, and when especially certain ladies were absent, 
 of whose observant faculties and tomahawk tongues Caroline 
 stood in awe, she had allowed her eye to seek Eobert's pew, 
 and to rest a while on its occupant. He was there alone : 
 Hortense had been kept at home by prudent considerations 
 relative to the rain and a new spring ' chapeau.' During 
 the sermon, he sat with folded arms and eyes cast down, 
 looking very sad and abstracted. When depressed, the very 
 hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he smiled, and 
 to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober 
 olive. By instinct Caroline knew, as she examined that 
 clouded countenance, that his thoughts were running in no 
 familiar or kindly channel ; that they were far away, not 
 merely from her, but from all which she could comprehend, 
 or in which she could sympathise. Nothing that they had 
 ever talked of together was now in his mind : he was rapt 
 from her by interests and responsibilities in which it was 
 deemed such as she could have no part. 
 
 Caroline meditated in her own way on the subject ; 
 speculated on his feelings, on his life, on his fears, on his 
 fate ; mused over the mystery of ' business,' tried to com- 
 prehend more about it than had ever been told her to 
 understand its perplexities, liabilities, duties, exactions ; 
 endeavoured to realise the state of mind of a ' man of business,' 
 to enter into it, feel what he would feel, aspire to what he 
 would aspire to. Her earnest wish was to see things as 
 they were, and not to be romantic. By dint of effort she 
 contrived to get a glimpse of the light of truth here and 
 there, and hoped that scant ray might suffice to guide her. 
 
 ' Different, indeed,' she concluded, ' is Robert's mental 
 condition to mine : I think only of him ; he has no room, no 
 leisure to think of me. The feeling called love is and lias 
 been for two years the predominant emotion of my heart ; 
 always there, always awalce, always astir : quite other feul-
 
 178 SHIELEY 
 
 ings absorb his reflections, and govern his faculties. He is 
 rising now, going to leave the church, for service is over. 
 Will he turn his head towards this pew ? no not once 
 he has not one look for me : that is hard : a kind glance 
 would have made me happy till to-morrow ; I have not got 
 it ; he would not give it ; he is gone. Strange that grief 
 should now almost choke me, because another human being's 
 eye has failed to greet mine.' 
 
 That Sunday evening, Mr. Malone coming, as usual, to 
 pass it with his Eector, Caroline withdrew after tea to her 
 chamber. Fanny, knowing her habits, had lit her a cheerful 
 little fire, as the weather was so gusty and chill. Closeted 
 there, silent and solitary, what could she do but think ? She 
 noiselessly paced to and fro the carpeted floor ; her head 
 drooped, her hands folded : it was irksome to sit : the current 
 of reflection ran rapidly through her mind : to-night she 
 was mutely excited. 
 
 Mute was the room, mute the house. The double-door 
 of the study muffled the voices of the gentlemen : the 
 servants were quiet in the kitchen, engaged with books their 
 young mistress had lent them ; books which she had told them 
 were ' fit for Sunday reading.' And she herself had another 
 of the same sort open on the table, but she could not read it : 
 its theology was incomprehensible to her, and her own mind 
 was too busy, teeming, wandering, to listen to the language 
 of another mind. 
 
 Then, too, her imagination was full of pictures : images 
 of Moore ; scenes where he and she had been together ; 
 winter fireside sketches, a glowing landscape of a hot 
 summer afternoon passed with him in the bosom of Nunnely 
 wood : divine vignettes of mild spring or mellow autumn 
 moments, when she had sat at his side in Hollow's copse, 
 listening to the call of the May cuckoo, or sharing the 
 September treasure of nuts and ripe blackberries a wild 
 dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to collect in 
 a little basket, and cover \vith green leaves and fresh blos- 
 soms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore,
 
 OLD MAIDS 179 
 
 berry by berry, and nut by nut, like a bird feeding its 
 fledgling. 
 
 Robert's features and form were with her ; the sound of 
 his voice was quite distinct in her ear ; his few caresses 
 seemed renewed. But th3se joys being hollow, were, 
 erelong, crushed in : the pictures faded, the voice failed, the 
 visionary clasp melted chill from her hand, and where the 
 warm seal of lips had made impress on her forehead, it felt 
 now as if a sleety i'ain-drop had fallen. She returned from 
 an enchanted region to the real world : for Nunnely wood 
 in June, she saw her narrow chamber; for the songs of 
 bhxls in alleys, she heard the rain on her casement ; for the 
 sigh of the south wind, came the sob of the mournful east ; 
 and for Moore's manly companionship, she had the thin 
 illusion of her own dim shadow on the wall. Turning from 
 the pale phantom which reflected herself in its outline, and 
 her reverie in the drooped attitude of its dim head and 
 colourless tresses, she sat down inaction would suit the 
 frame of mind into which she was now declining she said 
 to herself : ' I have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As 
 far as I know, I have good health : half a century of 
 existence may lie before me. How am I to occupy it? 
 What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads 
 between me and the grave ? ' 
 
 She reflected. 
 
 ' I shall not be married, it appears,' she continued. ' I 
 suppose, as Robert does not care for me, I shall never have 
 a husband to love, nor little children to take care of. Till 
 lately I had reckoned securely on the duties and affections 
 of wife and mother to occupy my existence. I considered, 
 somehow, as a matter of course, that I was growing up to 
 the ordinary destiny, and never troubled myself to seek any 
 other ; but now, I perceive plainly, I may have been mis- 
 taken. Probably I shall be an old maid. I shall live to see 
 Robert married to some one else, some rich lady : I shall 
 never marry. What was I created for, I wonder ? When; 
 is my place in the world ? '
 
 180 SHIRLEY 
 
 She mused again. 
 
 ' Ah ! I see,' she pursued presently ; ' that is the question 
 which most old maids are puzzled to solve : other people 
 solve it for them by saying, ' Your place is to do good to 
 others, to be helpful whenever help is wanted.' That is right 
 in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine for the 
 people who hold it ; but I perceive that certain sets of 
 human beings are very apt to maintain that other sets 
 should give up their lives to them and their service, and then 
 they requite them by praise : they call them devoted and 
 virtuous. Is this enough ? Is it to live ? Is there not a 
 terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that existence 
 which is given away to others, for want of something of 
 your own to bestow it on ? I suspect there is. Does virtue 
 lie in abnegation of self? I do not believe it. Undue 
 humility makes tyranny ; weak concession creates selfish- 
 ness. The Romish religion especially teaches renunciation 
 of self, submission to others, and nowhere are found so 
 many grasping tyrants as in the ranks of the Romish priest- 
 hood. Each human being has his share of rights. I suspect 
 it would conduce to the happiness and welfare of all, if each 
 knew his allotment, and held to it as tenaciously as the 
 martyr to his creed. Queer thoughts these, that surge in my 
 mind : are they right thoughts ? I am not certain. 
 
 ' Well, life is short at the best : seventy years, they say, 
 pass like a vapour, like a dream w r hen one awaketh ; and 
 every path trod by human feet terminates in one bourne 
 the grave : the little chink in the surface of this great globe 
 the furrow where the mighty husbandman with the scythe 
 deposits the seed he has shaken from the ripe stem ; and 
 thei'e it falls, decays, and thence it springs again, when the 
 world has rolled round a few times more. So much for the 
 body ; the soul meantime wings its long flight upward, folds 
 its wings on the brink of the sea of fire and glass, and 
 gazing down through the burning clearness, finds there 
 mirrored the vision of the Christian's triple Godhead : the 
 Sovereign Father ; the Mediating Ron ; the Creator Spirit.
 
 OLD MAIDS 181 
 
 Such words, at least, have been chosen to express what is 
 inexpressible : to describe what baffles description. The 
 soul's real hereafter, who shall guess ? ' 
 
 Her fire was decayed to its last cinder; Malone had 
 departed ; and now the study bell rang for prayers. 
 
 The next day Caroline had to spend altogether alone, her 
 uncle being gone to dine with his friend Dr. Boultby, vicar 
 of Whinbury. The whole time she was talking inwardly in 
 the same strain : looking forwards, asking what she was to 
 do with life. Fanny, as she passed in and out of the room 
 occasionally, intent on housemaid errands, perceived that 
 her young mistress sat very still. She was always in the 
 same place, always bent industriously over a piece of work : 
 she did not lift her head to speak to Fanny, as her custom 
 was ; and when the latter remarked that the day was 
 fine, and she ought to take a walk, she only said ' It is 
 cold.' 
 
 ' You are very diligent at that sewing, Miss Caroline,' 
 continued the girl, approaching her little table. 
 
 ' I am tired of it, Fanny.' 
 
 ' Then why do you go on with it ? Put it down : read, or 
 do something to amuse you.' 
 
 ' It is solitary in this house, Fanny : don't you think so ? ' 
 
 ' I don't find it so, miss. Me and Eliza are company for 
 one another ; but you are quite too still you should visit 
 more. Now, be persuaded ; go up- stairs and dress yourself 
 smart, and go and take tea, in a friendly way, with Miss 
 Mann or Miss Ainley ; I am certain either of those ladies 
 would be delighted to see you.' 
 
 ' But their houses are dismal : they are both old maids. 
 I am certain old maids are a very unhappy race.' 
 
 ' Not they, miss : they can't be unhappy ; they take such 
 care of themselves. They are all selfish.' 
 
 ' Miss Ainley is not selfish, Fanny : she is always doing 
 good. How devotedly kind she was to her stepmother, as 
 long as the old lady lived ; and now when she is quite alone 
 in the world, without brother or sister, or any one to care
 
 182 SHI&LEY 
 
 for her, how charitable she is to the poor, as far as her means 
 permit ! Still, nobody thinks much of her, or has pleasure 
 in going to see her : and how gentlemen always sneer at 
 her!' 
 
 ' They shouldn't, miss ; I believe she is a good woman : 
 but gentlemen think only of ladies' looks.' 
 
 ' I'll go and see her,' exclaimed Caroline, starting up : 
 ' and if she asks me to stay to tea, I'll stay. How wrong it 
 is to neglect people because they are not pretty, and young, 
 and merry ! And I will certainly call to see Miss Mann, 
 too : she may not be amiable ; but what has made her 
 unamiable ? What has life been to her ? ' 
 
 Fanny helped Miss Helstone to put away her work, and 
 afterwards assisted her to dress. 
 
 ' You'll not be an old maid, Miss Caroline,' she said, as she 
 tied the sash of her brown-silk frock, having previously 
 smoothed her soft, full, and shining curls ; ' there are no 
 signs of an old maid about you.' 
 
 Caroline looked at the little mirror before her, and she 
 thought there were some signs. She could see that she was 
 altered within the last month ; that the hues of her com- 
 plexion were paler, her eyes changed a wan shade seemed 
 to circle them, her countenance was dejected : she was not, 
 in short, so pretty or so fresh as she used to be. She dis- 
 tantly hinted this to Fanny, from whom she got no direct 
 answer, only a remark that people did vary in their looks ; 
 but that at her age a little falling away signified nothing, 
 she would soon come round again, and be plumper and rosier 
 than ever. Having given this assurance, Fanny showed 
 singular zeal in wrapping her up in warm shawls and hand- 
 kerchiefs, till Caroline, nearly smothered with the weight, 
 was fain to i-csist further additions. 
 
 She paid her visits : first to Miss Mann, for this was the 
 mo;t difficult point : Miss Mann was certainly not quite a 
 lovable person. Till now, Caroline had always unhesilat- 
 ingly declared she disliked her, and more than once she had 
 joined her cousin Robert in laughing at some of her pecu-
 
 OLD MAIDS 183 
 
 liarities. Moore was not habitually given to sarcasm, 
 especially on anything humbler or weaker than himself; but 
 he had once or twice happened to be in the room when Miss 
 Mann had made a call on his sister, and after listening to 
 her conversation and viewing her features for a time, he had 
 gone out into the garden where his little cousin was tending 
 some of his favourite flowers, and while standing near and 
 watching her, he had amused himself with comparing fair 
 youth delicate and attractive with shrivelled eld, livid and 
 loveless, and in jestingly repeating to a smiling girl the 
 vinegar discourse of a cankered old maid. Once on such 
 an occasion, Caroline had said to him, looking up from the 
 luxuriant creeper she was binding to its frame, ' Ah 1 
 Eobert, you do not like old maids. I, too, should come 
 under the lash of your sarcasm, if I were an old maid.' 
 
 ' You an old maid ! ' he had replied. ' A piquant notion 
 suggested by lips of that tint and form. I can fancy you, 
 though, at forty, quietly dressed, pale and sunk, but still with 
 that straight nose, white forehead, and those soft eyes. I 
 suppose, too, you will keep your voice, which has another 
 " timbre " than that hard, deep organ of Miss Mann's. 
 Courage, Gary ! even at fifty you will not be repulsive.' 
 
 ' Miss Mann did not make herself, or tune her voice, 
 Eobert.' 
 
 ' Nature made her in the mood in which she makes her 
 briars and thorns : whereas for the creation of some women, 
 she reserves the May morning hours, when with light and 
 dew she wooes the primrose from the turf, and the lily from 
 the wood-moss.' 
 
 Ushered into Miss Mann's little parlour, Caroline found 
 her, as she always found her, surrounded by perfect neat- 
 ness, cleanliness, and comfort (after all, is it not a virtue 
 in old maids that solitude rarely makes them negligent or 
 disorderly?) ; no dust on her polished furniture, none on her 
 carpet, fresh flowers in the vase on her table, a bright fire 
 in the grate. She herself sat primly and somewhat grimly-
 
 184 SHIELEY 
 
 tidy in a cushioned rocking-chair, her hands busied with 
 some knitting : this was her favourite work, as it required 
 the least exertion. She scarcely rose as Caroline entered ; 
 to avoid excitement was one of Miss Mann's aims in life : 
 she had been composing herself ever since she came down 
 in the morning, and had just attained a certain lethargic 
 state of tranquillity when the visitor's knock at the door 
 startled her, and undid her day's work. She was scarcely 
 pleased, therefore, to see Miss Helstone : she received her 
 with reserve, bade her be seated with austerity, and when 
 she got her placed opposite, she fixed her with her eye. 
 
 This was no ordinary doom to be fixed with Miss 
 Mann's eye. Robert Moore had undergone it once, and had 
 never forgotten the circumstance. 
 
 He considered it quite equal to anything Medusa could 
 do ; he professed to doubt whether, since that infliction, his 
 flesh had been quite what it was before whether there was 
 not something stony in its texture. The gaze had had 
 such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the 
 apartment and house ; it had even sent him straightway up 
 to the Eectory, where he had appeared in Caroline's 
 presence with a very queer face, and amazed her by 
 demanding a cousinly salute on the spot, to rectify a damage 
 that had been done him. 
 
 Certainly Miss Mann had a formidable eye for one of the 
 softer sex : it was prominent, and showed a great deal of 
 the white, and looked as steadily, as unwinkingly, at you as 
 if it were a steel ball soldered in her head ; and when, while 
 looking, she began to talk in an indescribably dry monotonous 
 tone a tone without vibration or inflection you felt as if a 
 graven image of some bad spirit were addressing you. Bu'u 
 it was all a figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Miss 
 Mann's goblin-grimness scarcely went deeper than the 
 angel-sweetness of hundreds of beauties. She was a 
 perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed 
 duties in her day* from whose severe anguish many a human 
 Peri, gazelle -eyed, silken-tressed, and silver-tongued, would
 
 OLD MAIDS 185 
 
 have shrunk appalled : she had passed alone through 
 protracted scenes of suffering, exercised rigid self-denial, 
 made large sacrifices of time, money, health, for those who 
 had repaid her only by ingratitude, and now her main 
 almost her sole fault was, that she was censorious. 
 
 Censorious she certainly was. Caroline had not sat five 
 minutes ere her hostess, still keeping her under the spell of 
 that dread and Gorgon gaze, began flaying alive certain of 
 the families in the neighbourhood. She went to work at 
 this business in a singularly cool, deliberate manner, like 
 some surgeon practising with his scalpel on a lifeless subject : 
 she made few distinctions ; she allowed scarcely any one 
 to be good; she dissected impartially almost all her 
 acquaintance. If her auditress ventured now and then to 
 put in a palliative word, she set it aside with a certain 
 disdain. Still, though thus pitiless in moral anatomy, she 
 was no scandal-monger : she never disseminated really 
 malignant or dangerous reports : it was not her heart so 
 much as her temper that was wrong. 
 
 Caroline made this discovery for the first time to-day ; 
 and, moved thereby to regret divers unjust judgments she 
 had more than once passed on the crabbed old maid, she 
 began to talk to her softly, not in sympathizing woi'ds, but 
 with a sympathizing voice. The loneliness of her condition 
 struck her visitor in a new light ; as did also the character 
 of her ugliness a bloodless pallor of complexion, and 
 deeply worn lines of feature. The girl pitied the solitary 
 and afflicted woman ; her looks told what she felt : a sweet 
 countenance is never so sweet as when the moved heart 
 animates it with compassionate tenderness. Miss Mann, 
 seeing such a countenance raised to her, was touched in her 
 turn : she acknowledged her sense of the interest thus 
 unexpectedly shown in her, who usually met with only 
 coldness and ridicule, by repl; ing to her candidly. Com- 
 municative on her own affairs she usually was not, because 
 no one cared to listen to her ; but to-day she became so, 
 and her confidant shed tears as she heard her speak : for
 
 186 SHIELEY 
 
 she told of cruel, slow-wasting, obstinate sufferings. Well 
 might she be corpse-like : well might she look grim, and 
 never smile ; well might she wish to avoid excitement, to 
 gain and retain composure ! Caroline, when she knew all, 
 acknowledged that Miss Mann was rather to be admired for 
 fortitude than blamed for moroseness. Eeader ! when you 
 behold an aspect for whose constant gloom and frown you 
 cannot account, whose unvarying cloud exasperates you by 
 its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a canker 
 somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply corroding 
 because concealed. 
 
 Miss Mann felt that she was understood partly, and 
 wished to be understood further ; for, however old, plain, 
 humble, desolate, afflicted we may be, so long as our hearts 
 preserve the feeblest spark of life, they preserve also, shiver- 
 ing near that pale ember, a starved, ghostly longing for 
 appreciation and affection. To this extenuated spectre, 
 perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year ; but when 
 ahungered and athirst to famine when all humanity has 
 forgotten the dying tenant of a decaying house Divine 
 Mercy remembers the mourner, and a shower of manna 
 falls for lips,- that earthly nutriment is to pass no more. 
 Biblical promises, heard first in health, but then unheeded, 
 come whispering to the couch of sickness : it is felt that a 
 pitying God watches what all mankind have forsaken ; the 
 tender compassion of Jesus is recalled and relied on : the 
 faded eye, gazing beyond Time, sees a Home, a Friend, a 
 Kefuge in Eternity. 
 
 Miss Mann, drawn on by the still attention of her 
 listener, proceeded to allude to circumstances in her past 
 life. She spoke like one who tells the truth simply, and 
 with a certain reserve ; she did not boast, nor did she 
 exaggerate. Caroline found that the old rnaid had been a 
 most devoted daughter and sister, an unwearied watcher by 
 lingering deathbeds ; that to prolonged and unrelaxing 
 attendance on the sick, the malady that now poisoned her 
 own life owed its origin ; that to one wretched relative she
 
 OLD MAIDS 187 
 
 had been a support and succour in the depths of self-earned 
 degradation, and that it was still her hand which kept him 
 from utter destitution, Miss Helstone stayed the whole 
 evening, omitting to pay her other intended visit ; and when 
 she left Miss Mann, it was with the determination to try in 
 future to excuse her faults, never again to make light of her 
 peculiarities or to laugh at her plainness ; and, above all 
 things, not to neglect her, but to come once a week, and to 
 offer her, from one human heart at least, the homage of 
 affection and respect : she felt she could now sincerely give 
 her a small tribute of each feeling. 
 
 Caroline, on her return, told Fanny she was very glad 
 she had gone out, as she felt much better for the visit. The 
 next day she failed not to seek Miss Ainley. This lady 
 was in narrower circumstances than Miss Mann, and her 
 dwelling was more humble : it was, however, if possible, yet 
 more exquisitely clean ; though the decayed gentlewoman 
 could not afford to keep a servant, but waited on herself, and 
 had only the occasional assistance of a little girl who lived 
 in a cottage near. 
 
 Not only was Miss Ainley poorer, but she was even 
 plainer than the other old maid. In her first youth she 
 must have been ugly ; now, at the age of fifty, she was very 
 ugly. At first sight, all but peculiarly well-disciplined 
 minds were apt to turn from her with annoyance : to 
 conceive against her a prejudice, simply on the ground of 
 her unattractive look. Then she was prim in dress and 
 manner : she looked, spoke, and moved the complete old 
 maid. 
 
 Her welcome to Caroline was formal, even in its kind- 
 ness for it was kind ; but Miss Helstone excused this. 
 She knew something of the benevolence of the heart which 
 beat under that starched kerchief ; all the neighbourhood 
 at least all the female neighbourhood knew something of 
 it: no one spoke against Miss Ainley except lively young 
 gentlemen, and inconsiderate old ones, who declared her 
 hideous.
 
 188 SHIELEY 
 
 Caroline was soon at home in that tiny parlour ; a kiud 
 hand took from her her shawl and bonnet, and installed her 
 in the most comfortable seat near the fire. The young and 
 the antiquated woman were presently deep in kindly con- 
 versation, and soon Caroline became aware of the power a 
 most serene, unselfish, and benignant mind could exercise 
 over those to whom it was developed. She talked never of 
 herself always of others. Their faults she passed over ; 
 her theme was their wants, which she sought to supply ; 
 their sufferings, which she longed to alleviate. She was 
 religious a professor of religion what some would call a 
 ' saint,' and she referred to religion often in sanctioned 
 phrase in phrase which those who possess a perception 
 of the ridiculous, without owning the power of exactly 
 testing and truly judging character, would certainly have 
 esteemed a proper subject for satire a matter for mimicry 
 and laughter. They would have been hugely mistaken for 
 their pains. Sincerity is never ludicrous ; it is always 
 respectable. Whether truth be it religious or moral truth 
 speak eloquently and in well-chosen language or not, its 
 voice should be heard with reverence. Let those who 
 cannot nicely, and with certainty, discern the difference 
 between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never 
 presume to laugh at all, lest they should have the miserable 
 misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and commit impiety 
 when they think they are achieving wit. 
 
 Not from Miss Ainley's own lips did Caroline hear of her 
 good works ; but she knew much of them nevertheless ; her 
 beneficence was the familiar topic of the poor in Briarfield. 
 They were not works of almsgiving : the old maid was too 
 poor to give much, though she straitened herself to privation 
 that she might contribute her mite when needful : they were 
 the works of a Sister of Charity, far more difficult to perform 
 than those of a Lady Bountiful. She would watch by any 
 sick-bed : she seemed to fear no disease ; she would nurse 
 the poorest whom none else would nurse : she was serene, 
 humble, kind, and equable through everything.
 
 OLD MAIDS 189 
 
 For this goodness she got but little reward in this life. 
 Many of the poor became so accustomed to her services that 
 they hardly thanked her for them : the rich heard them 
 mentioned with wonder, but were silent, from a sense of 
 shame at the difference between her sacrifices and their own. 
 Many ladies, however, respected her deeply ; they could not 
 help it ; one gentleman one only gave her his friendship 
 and perfect confidence : this was Mr. Hall, the vicar of 
 Nunnely. He said, and said truly, that her life came nearer 
 the life of Christ, than that of any other human being he had 
 ever met with. You must not think, reader, that in sketching 
 Miss Ainley's character, I depict a figment of imagination 
 no we seek the originals of such portraits in real life only. 
 
 Miss Helstone studied well the mind and heart now 
 revealed to her. She found no high intellect to admire : the 
 old maid was merely sensible ; but she discovered so much 
 goodness, so much usefulness, so much mildness, patience, 
 truth, that she bent her own mind before Miss Ainley's in 
 reverence. What was her love of natui-e, what was her sense 
 of beauty, what were her more varied and fervent emotions, 
 what was her deeper power of thought, what her wider 
 capacity to comprehend, compared to the practical excellence 
 of this good woman ? Momently, they seemed only beautiful 
 forms of selfish delight ; mentally, she trod them under foot. 
 
 It is true, she still felt with pain that the life which made 
 Miss Ainley happy could not make her happy : pure and active 
 as it was, in her heart she deemed it deeply dreary because 
 it was so loveless to her ideas, so forlorn. Yet, doubtless, 
 she reflected, it needed only habit to make it practicable and 
 agreeable to any one : it was despicable, she felt, to pine 
 sentimentally, to cherish secret griefs, vain memories ; to be 
 inert, to waste youth in aching languor, to grow old doing 
 nothing. 
 
 'I will bestir myself,' was her resolution, 'and try to bo 
 wise if I cannot be good.' 
 
 She proceeded to make inquiry of Miss Ainley, if she could 
 help her in anything. Miss Ainley, glad of an assistant, told
 
 190 SHIRLEY 
 
 her that she could, and indicated some poor families in 
 Briarfield that it was desirable she should visit ; giving her 
 likewise, at her further request, some work to do for certain 
 poor women who had many children, and who were unskilled 
 in using the needle for themselves. 
 
 Caroline went home, laid her plans, and took a resolve not 
 to swerve from them. She allotted a certain portion of her 
 time for her various studies, and a certain portion for doing 
 anything Miss Ainley might direct her to do ; the remainder 
 was to be spent in exercise ; not a moment was to be left for 
 the indulgence of such fevered thoughts as had poisoned last 
 Sunday evening. 
 
 To do her justice, she executed her plans conscientiously, 
 perse veringly. It was very hard work at first it was even 
 hard work to the end, but it helped her to stem and keep 
 down anguish : it forced her to be employed ; it forebade her 
 to brood : and gleams of satisfaction chequered her gray life 
 here and there when she found she had done good, imparted 
 pleasure, or allayed suffering. 
 
 Yet I must speak truth ; these efforts brought her 
 neither health of body nor continued peace of mind : with 
 them all, she wasted, grew more joyless and more wan ; with 
 them all, her memory kept harping on the name of Robert 
 Moore : an elegy over the past still rung constantly in her 
 ear ; a funereal inward cry haunted and harassed her : the 
 heaviness of a broken spirit, and of pining and palsying 
 faculties, settled slow on her buoyant youth. Winter seemed 
 conquering her spring : the mind's soil and its treasures were 
 freezing gradually to barren stagnation.
 
 CHAPTEE XI 
 
 FIELDHEAD 
 
 YET Caroline refused tamely to succumb : she had native 
 strength in her girl's heart, and she used it. Men and women 
 never struggle so hard as when they straggle alone, without 
 witness, counsellor, or confidant ; unencouraged, unadvised, 
 and unpitied. 
 
 Miss Helstone was in this position. Her sufferings were 
 her only spur ; and being very real and sharp, they roused 
 her spirit keenly. Bent on victory over a mortal pain, she 
 did her best to quell it. Never had she been seen so busy, 
 so studious, and, above all, so active. She took walks in all 
 weathers long walks in solitary directions. Day by day she 
 came back in the evening, pale and wearied-looking, yet 
 seemingly not fatigued ; for still, as soon as she had thrown 
 off her bonnet and shawl, she would, instead of resting, begin 
 to pace her apartment : sometimes she would not sit down till 
 she was literally faint. She said she did this to tire herself 
 well, that she might sleep soundly at night. But if that was 
 her aim it was unattained, for at night, when others slum- 
 bered, she was tossing on her pillow, or sitting at the foot of 
 her couch in the darkness, forgetful, apparently, of the 
 necessity of seeking repose. Often, unhappy girl ! she was 
 crying crying in a sort of intolerable despair, which, when 
 it rushed over her, smote down her strength, and reduced her 
 to childlike helplessness. 
 
 When thus prostrate, temptations besieged her : weak 
 suggestions whispered in her weary heart to write to Robert, 
 and say that she was unhappy because she was forbidden to 
 see him and Hortense, and that she feared he would with-
 
 192 SHIELEY 
 
 draw his friendship (not love) from her, and forget her en- 
 tii-ely, and begging him to remember her, and sometimes to 
 write to her. One or two such letters she actually indited, 
 but she never sent them : shame and good sense forbade. 
 
 At last the life she led reached the point when it seemed 
 she could bear it no longer ; that she must seek and find a 
 change somehow, or her heart and head would fail under the 
 pressure which strained them. She louged to leave Briarfield, 
 to go to some very distant place. She longed for something 
 else : the deep, secret, anxious yearning to discover and 
 know her mother strengthened daily ; but with the desire 
 was coupled a doubt, a dread if she knew her, could she 
 love her ? There was cause for hesitation, for apprehension 
 on this point : never in her life had she heard that mother 
 praised : whoever mentioned her, mentioned her coolly. Her 
 uncle seemed to regard his sister-in-law with a sort of tacit 
 antipathy : an old servant, who had lived with Mrs. James 
 Helstone for a short time after her marriage, whenever she 
 referred to her former mistress, spoke with chilling reserve : 
 sometimes she called her ' queer,' sometimes she said she did 
 not understand her. These expressions were ice to the 
 daughter's heart ; they suggested the conclusion that it was 
 perhaps better never to know her parent, than to know her 
 and not like her. 
 
 But one project could she frame whose execution seemed 
 likely to bring her a hope of relief ; it was to take a situation, 
 to be a governess she could do nothing else. A little inci- 
 dent brought her to the point, when she found courage to 
 break her design to her uncle. 
 
 Her long and late walks lay always, as has been said, on 
 lonely roads ; but in whatever direction she had rambled, 
 whether along the drear skirts of Stilbro* Moor, or over the 
 sunny stretch of Nunnely Common, her homeward path was 
 still so contrived as to lead her near the Hollow. She rarely 
 descended the den, but she visited its brink at twilight almost 
 as regularly as the stars rose over the hill-crests. Her rest- 
 ing-place was at a certain stile under a certain old thorn:
 
 OAK WELL HALL, NKAH I'.IUSTAI.L (llIK AITltOAl )l) (riKLI)HKAD).
 
 FIELDHEAD 193 
 
 thence she could look down on the cottage, the mill, the dewy 
 garden-ground, the still, deep dam ; thence was visible the 
 well-known counting-house window, from whose panes at a 
 fixed hour shot, suddenly bright, the ray of the well-known 
 lamp. Her errand was to watch for this ray : her reward to 
 catch it, sometimes sparkling bright in clear air, sometimes 
 shimmering dim through mist, and anon flashing broken 
 between slant lines of rain for she came in all weathers. 
 
 There were nights when it failed to appear : she knew 
 then that Eobert was from home, and went away doubly 
 sad ; whereas its kindling rendered her elate, as though she 
 saw in it the promise of some indefinite hope. If, while she 
 gazed, a shadow bent between the light and lattice, her 
 heart leaped that eclipse was Kobevt : she had seen him. 
 She would return home comforted, carrying in her mind a 
 clearer vision of his aspect, a distincter recollection of his 
 voice, his smile, his bearing ; and, blent with these impres- 
 sions, was often a sweet persuasion that, if she could get 
 near him, his heart might welcome her presence yet : that 
 at this moment he might be willing to extend his hand and 
 draw her to him, and shelter her at his side as he used 
 to do. That night, though she might weep as usual, she 
 would fancy her tears less scalding ; the pillow they watered 
 seemed a little softer ; the temples pressed to that pillow 
 ached less. 
 
 The shortest path from the Hollow to the Rectory wound 
 near a certain mansion, the same under whoso lone walls 
 Malone passed on that night-journey mentioned in an early 
 chapter of this work the old and tenantless dwelling yclept 
 Fieldhead. Tenantless by the proprietor it had been for ten 
 years, but it was no ruin : Mr. Yorke had seen it kept in 
 good repair, and an old gardener and his wife had lived in it, 
 cultivated the grounds, and maintained the house in habit- 
 able condition. 
 
 If Fieldhead had few other merits as a building, it might 
 at least be termed picturesque : its irregular architecture, 
 and the gray and mossy colouring communicated by time,
 
 194 SHIRLEY 
 
 gave it a just claim to this epithet. The old latticed 
 windows, the stone porch, the walls, the roof, the chimney- 
 stacks, were rich in crayon touches and sepia lights and 
 shades. The trees behind were fine, bold, and spreading ; 
 the cedar on the lawn in front was grand, and the granite 
 urns on the garden wall, the fretted arch of the gateway, 
 were, for an artist, as the very desire of the eye. 
 
 One mild May evening, Caroline passing near about 
 moonrise, and feeling, though weary, unwilling yet to go 
 home, where there was only the bed of thorns and the night 
 of gi'ief to anticipate, sat down on the mossy ground near 
 the gate, and gazed through towards cedar and mansion. It 
 was a still night calm, dewy, cloudless : the gables, turned 
 to the west, reflected the clear amber of the horizon they 
 faced ; the oaks behind were black ; the cedar was blacker ; 
 under its dense, raven boughs a glimpse of sky opened 
 gravely blue : it was full of the moon, which looked 
 solemnly and mildly down on Caroline from beneath that 
 sombre canopy. 
 
 She felt this night and prospect mournfully lovely. She 
 wished she could be happy : she wished she could know 
 inward peace : she wondered Providence had no pity on her, 
 and would not help or console her. Recollections of happy 
 trysts of lovers, commemorated in old ballads, returned on 
 her mind : she thought such tryst in such scene would be 
 blissful. Where now was Robert? she asked: not at the 
 Hollow : she had watched for his lamp long, and had not 
 seen it. She questioned within herself whether she and 
 Moore were ever destined to meet and speak again. 
 Suddenly the door within the stone porch of the Hall 
 opened, and two men came out : one elderly and white- 
 headed, the other young, dark-haired, and tall. They 
 passed across the lawn, out through a portal in the garden 
 wall : Caroline saw them cross the road, pass the stile, 
 descend the fields ; she saw them disappear. Robert Moore 
 had passed before her with his friend Mr. Yorke : neither 
 had seen her.
 
 FIELDHEAD 195 
 
 The apparition had been transient scarce seen ere gone ; 
 but its electric passage left her veins kindled, her soul 
 insurgent. It found her despairing : it left her desperate 
 two different states. 
 
 ' Oh ! had he but been alone ! Had he but seen me ! ' 
 was her cry, ' he would have said something ; he would 
 have given me his hand. He docs, he must love me a little : 
 he would have shown some token of affection : in his eye, 
 on his lips, I should have read comfort : but the chance is 
 lost. The wind the cloud's shadow does not pass more 
 silently, more emptily than he. I have been mocked, and 
 Heaven is cruel ! ' 
 
 Thus, in the utter sickness of longing and disappoint- 
 ment, she went home. 
 
 The next morning at breakfast, where she appeared 
 white-cheeked and miserable-looking as one who had seen 
 a ghost, she inquired of Mr. Helstone ' Have you any 
 objection, uncle, to my inquiring for a situation in a 
 family ? ' 
 
 Her uncle, ignorant as the table supporting his coffee-cup 
 of all his niece had undergone and was undergoing, scarcely 
 believed his ears. 
 
 'What whim now?' he asked. 'Are you bewitched? 
 What can you mean ? ' 
 
 ' I am not well, and need a change,' she said. 
 
 He examined her. He discovered she had experienced 
 a change, at any rate. Without his being aware of it, the 
 rose had dwindled and faded to a mere snow-drop : bloom 
 had vanished, flesh wasted ; she sat before him drooping, 
 colourless, and thin. But for the soft expression of her 
 brown eyes, the delicate lines of her features, and the flow- 
 ing abundance of her hair, she would no longer have 
 possessed a claim to the epithet pretty. 
 
 ' What on earth is the matter with you ? ' he asked. 
 ' What is wrong ? How are you ailing ? ' 
 
 No answer, only the brown eyes lilled, the faintly-tinted 
 lips trembled.
 
 196 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Look out for a situation, indeed ! For what situation 
 are you fit ? What have you been doing with yourself ? 
 You are not well.' 
 
 ' I should be well if I went from home.' 
 
 ' These women are incomprehensible. They have the 
 strangest knack of startling you with unpleasant surprises. 
 To-day you see them bouncing, buxom, red as cherries, and 
 round as apples ; to-morrow they exhibit themselves effete 
 as dead weeds, blanched and broken down. And the reason 
 of it all ? That's the puzzle. She has her meals, her liberty, 
 a good house to live in, and good clothes to wear, as usual : 
 a while since that sufficed to keep her handsome and cheery, 
 and there she sits now a poor, little, pale, puling chit enough. 
 Provoking ! Then comes the question, what is to be done ? 
 I suppose I must send for advice. Will you have a doctor, 
 child ? ' 
 
 ' No, uncle ; I don't want one : a doctor could do me no 
 good. I merely want change of air and scene.' 
 
 ' Well, if that be the caprice, it shall be gratified. You 
 shall go to a watering-place. I don't mind the expense : 
 Fanny shall accompany you.' 
 
 ' But, uncle, some day I must do something for myself ; 
 I have no fortune. I had better begin now.' 
 
 1 While I live, you shall not turn out as a governess, 
 Caroline. I will not have it said that my niece is a 
 governess.' 
 
 ' But the later in life one makes a change of that sort, 
 uncle, the more difficult and painful it is. I should wish to 
 get accustomed to the yoke before any habits of ease and 
 independence are formed.' 
 
 ' I beg you will not harass me, Caroline. I mean to pro- 
 vide for you. I have always meant to provide for you : I will 
 purchase an annuity. Bless me ; I am but fifty-five ; my 
 health and constitution are excellent : there is plenty of 
 time to save and take measures. Don't make yourself 
 anxious respecting the future : is that what frets you ? ' 
 
 ' No, uncle ; but I long for a change.'
 
 FIELDHEAD 197 
 
 He laughed. ' There speaks the woman ! ' cried he, ' the 
 very woman ! A change ! a change ! Always fantastical 
 and whimsical ! Well, it's in her sex.' 
 
 4 But it is not fantasy and whim, uncle.' 
 
 1 What is it then ? ' 
 
 1 Necessity, I think. I feel weaker than formerly ; I 
 believe I should have more to do.' 
 
 ' Admirable ! She feels weak, and therefore she should 
 be set to hard labour " cluir comme le jour " as Moore 
 confound Moore ! You shall go to Cliff-bridge ; and 
 there are two guineas to buy a new frock. Come, Gary, 
 never fear : we'll find balm in Gilead.' 
 
 ' Uncle, I wish you were less generous, and more 
 
 1 More what ? ' 
 
 Sympathizing was the word on Caroline's lips, but it was 
 not uttered : she checked herself in time : her uncle would 
 indeed have laughed if that namby-pamby word had escaped 
 her. Finding her silent, he said, ' The fact is, you don't 
 know precisely what you want.' 
 
 ' Only to be a governess.' 
 
 ' Pooh ! mere nonsense ! I'll not hear of governessing. 
 Don't mention it again. It is rather too feminine a fancy. 
 I have finished breakfast, ring the bell : put all crotchets 
 out of your head, and run away and amuse yourself.' 
 
 ' What with ? My doll ? ' asked Caroline to herself as 
 she quitted the room. 
 
 A week or two passed ; her bodily and mental health 
 neither grew worse nor better. She was now precisely in 
 that state when, if her constitution had contained the seeds 
 of consumption, decline, or slow fever, those diseases would 
 have been rapidly developed, and would soon have carried 
 her quietly from the world. People never die of love or 
 grief alone ; though some die of inherent maladies, which the 
 tortures of those passions prematurely force into destructive 
 action. The sound by nature undergo these tortures, and 
 are racked, shaken, shattered : their beauty and bloom 
 perish, but life remains untouched. They are brought to a
 
 198 SHIRLEY 
 
 certain point of dilapidation ; they are reduced to pallor, 
 debility, and emaciation. People think, as they see them 
 gliding languidly about, that they will soon withdraw to 
 sick-beds, perish there, and cease from among the healthy 
 and happy. This does not happen : they live on ; and 
 though they cannot regain youth and gaiety, they may 
 regain strength and serenity. The blossom which the March 
 wind nips, but fails to sweep away, may survive to hang a 
 withered apple on the tree late into autumn : having braved 
 the last frosts of spring, it may also brave the first of 
 winter. 
 
 Every one noticed the change in Miss Helstone's appear- 
 rance, and most people said she was going to die. She never 
 thought so herself : she felt in no dying case ; she had neither 
 pain nor sickness. Her appetite was diminished ; she knew 
 the reason : it was because she wept so much at night. Her 
 strength was lessened ; she could account for it ; sleep was 
 coy and hard to be won ; dreams were distressing and bale- 
 ful. In the far future she still seemed to anticipate a time 
 when this passage of misery should be got over, and when 
 she should once more be calm, though perhaps never again 
 happy. 
 
 Meanwhile her uncle urged her to visit ; to comply with 
 the frequent invitations of their acquaintance : this she 
 evaded doing ; she could not be cheerful in company ; she felt 
 she was observed there with more curiosity than sympathy. 
 Old ladies were always offering her their advice, recommend- 
 ing this or that nostrum ; young ladies looked at her in a way 
 she understood, and from which she shrank. Their eyes said 
 they knew she had been ' disappointed,' as custom phrases it : 
 by whom, they were not certain. 
 
 Commonplace young ladies can be quite as hard as 
 commonplace young gentlemen quite as worldly and selfish. 
 Those who suffer should always avoid them ; grief and 
 calamity they despise : they seem to regard them as the 
 judgments of God on the lowly. With them, to ' love ' is 
 merely to contrive a scheme for achieving a good match : to
 
 FtELDHEAft 190 
 
 be ' disappointed ' is to have their scheme seen through and 
 frustrated. They think the feelings and projects of others on 
 the subject of love similar to their own, and judge them 
 accordingly. 
 
 All this Caroline knew, partly by instinct, partly by 
 observation : she regulated her conduct by her knowledge, 
 keeping her pale face and wasted figure as much out of sight 
 as she could. Living thus in complete seclusion, she ceased 
 to receive intelligence of the little transactions of the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 One morning her uncle came into the parlour, where she 
 sat endeavouring to find some pleasure in painting a little 
 group of wild flowers, gathered under a hedge at the top of 
 the Hollow fields, and said to her in his abrupt manner : 
 ' Come, child, you are always stooping over palette, or book, 
 or sampler : leave that tinting work. By-the-by, do you put 
 your pencil to you lips when you paint ? ' 
 
 1 Sometimes, uncle, when I forget.' 
 
 1 Then it is that which is poisoning you. The paints are 
 deleterious, child : there is white lead, and red lead, and 
 verdigris, and gamboge, and twenty other poisons in those 
 colour cakes. Lock them up ! lock them up ! Get your 
 bonnet on : I want you to make a call with me.' 
 
 1 With you, uncle ? ' 
 
 This question was asked in a tone of surprise. She was 
 not accustomed to make calls with her uncle : she never rode 
 or walked out with him on any occasion. 
 
 ' Quick ! quick ! I am always busy, you know : I have no 
 time to lose.' 
 
 She hurriedly gathered up her materials, asking, mean- 
 time, where they were going. 
 
 ' To Fieldhead.' 
 
 ' Fieldhead ! What, to see old James Booth, the gar- 
 dener ? Is he ill ? ' 
 
 ' We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar.' 
 
 1 Miss Keeldar ! Is she come to Yorkshire ? Is she at 
 Fieldhead ? '
 
 200 SHIKLEY 
 
 1 She is. She has been there a week. I met her at a 
 party last night that party to which you would not go. I 
 was pleased with her : I choose that you shall make her 
 acquaintance : it will do you good.' 
 
 1 She is now come of age, I suppose ? ' 
 
 ' She is come of age, and will reside for a time on her 
 property. I lectured her on the subject : I showed her her 
 duty : she is not intractable ; she is rather a fine girl ; she 
 will teach you what it is to have a sprightly spirit : nothing 
 lackadaisical about her.' 
 
 ' I don't think she will want to see me, or to have me 
 introduced to her. What good can I do her ? How can I 
 amuse her ? ' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! Put your bonnet on.' 
 
 ' Is she proud, uncle ? ' 
 
 ' Don't know. You hardly imagine she would show her 
 pride to me, I suppose? A chit like that would scarcely 
 presume to give herself airs with the Kector of her parish, 
 however rich she might be.' 
 
 ' No but how did she behave to other people ? ' 
 
 1 Didn't observe. She holds her head high, and probably 
 can be saucy enough where she dare she wouldn't be 
 a woman otherwise. There, away now for your bonnet at 
 once ! ' 
 
 Not naturally very confident, a failure of physical 
 strength and a depression of spirits had not tended to 
 increase Caroline's presence of mind and ease of manner, or 
 to give her additional courage to face strangers, and she 
 quailed, in spite of self-remonstrance, as she and her uncle 
 walked up the broad, paved approach leading from the gate- 
 way of Fieldhead to its porch. She followed Mr. Helstone 
 reluctantly through that porch into the sombre old vestibule 
 beyond. 
 
 Very sombre it was ; long, vast, and dark : one latticed 
 window lit it but dimly ; the wide old chimney contained now 
 no tire, for the present warm we i.ther noedecl it not ; it was 
 filled instead with willow-boughs. The gallery on high,
 
 FIELDHEAD 201 
 
 opposite the entrance, was seen but in outline, so shadowy 
 became this hall towards its ceiling ; carved stags' heads, 
 with real antlers, looked down grotesquely from the walls. 
 This was neither a grand nor a comfortable house : within 
 as without it was antique, rambling, and incommodious. A 
 property of a thousand a year belonged to it ; which 
 property had descended, for lack of male heirs, on a female. 
 There were mercantile families in the district boasting twice 
 the income, but the Keeldars, by virtue of their antiquity, 
 and their distinction of lords of the manor, took the 
 precedence of all. 
 
 Mr. and Miss Helstone were ushered into a parlour : of 
 course, as was to be expected in such a gothic old barrack, 
 this parlour was lined with oak : fine dark, glossy panels 
 compassed the walls gloomily and grandly. Very hand- 
 some, reader, these shining, brown panels are : very mellow in 
 colouring and tasteful in effect, but if you know what a 
 ' Spring clean ' is very execrable and inhuman. Whoever, 
 having the bowels of humanity, has seen servants scrubbing 
 at these polished wooden walls with bees-waxed cloths on a 
 warm May day, must allow that they are ' tolerable and not 
 to be endured ; ' and I cannot but secretly applaud the 
 benevolent barbarian who had painted another and larger 
 apartment of Fieldhead the drawing-room to wit, formerly 
 also an oak-room of a delicate pinky white ; thereby earn- 
 ing for himself the character of a Hun, but mightily enhanc- 
 ing the cheerfulness of that portion of his abode, and saving 
 future housemaids a world of toil. 
 
 The brown-panelled parlour was furnished all in old 
 style, and with real old furniture. On each side of the high 
 mantelpiece stood two antique chairs of oak, solid as sylvan 
 thrones, and in one of these sat a lady. But if this were 
 Miss Keeldar, she must have come of age at least some twenty 
 years ago : she was of matronly form, and though she wore 
 no cap, and possessed hair of quite an undimmed auburn, 
 shading small and naturally young-looking features, she had 
 no youthful aspect, nor apparently the wish to assume it.
 
 202 SHIBLEY 
 
 You could have wished her attire of a newer fashion : in a 
 well-cut, well-made gown, hers would have been no un- 
 comely presence. It puzzled you to guess why a garment 
 of handsome materials should be arranged in such scanty 
 fold^, and devised after such an obsolete mode : you felt 
 disposed to set down the wearer as somewhat eccentric at 
 once. 
 
 This lady received the visitors with a mixture of 
 ceremony and diffidence quite English : no middle-aged 
 matron who was not an Englishwoman could evince 
 precisely the same manner; a manner so uncertain of her- 
 self, of her own merits, of her power to please ; and yet so 
 anxious to be proper, and if possible, rather agreeable than 
 otherwise. In the present instance, however, more em- 
 barrassment was shown than is usual even with diffident 
 Englishwomen : Miss Helstone felt this, sympathized 
 with the stranger, and, knowing by experience what was 
 good for the timid, took a seat quietly near her, and began 
 to talk to her with a gentle ease, communicated for the 
 moment by the presence of one less self-possessed than 
 herself. 
 
 She and this lady would, if alone, have at once got on 
 extremely well together. The lady had the clearest voice 
 imaginable : infinitely softer and more tuneful than could 
 have been reasonably expected from forty years, and a form 
 decidedly inclined to embonpoint. This voice Caroline 
 liked ; it atoned for the formal, if correct, accent and 
 language : the lady would soon have discovered she liked it 
 and her, and in ten minutes they would have been fi'iends. 
 But Mr. Helstone stood on the rug looking at them both ; 
 looking especially at the strange lady with his sai'castic, 
 keen eye, that clearly expressed impatience of her chilly 
 ceremony, and annoyance at her want of aplomb. His hard 
 gaze and rasping voice discomfited the lady more and more; 
 she tried, however, to get up little speeches about the 
 weather, the aspect of the country, c., but the impracti- 
 cable Mr. Helstone preseptly found himself somewhat deaf ;
 
 FIELDHEAD 203 
 
 whatever she said, he affected not to hear distinctly, and she 
 was obliged to go over each elaborately constructed nothing 
 twice. The effort soon became too much for her ; she was 
 just rising in a perplexed flutter, nervously murmuring that 
 she knew not what detained Miss Keeldar that she would go 
 and look for her, when Miss Keeldar saved her the trouble 
 by appearing : it was to be presumed at least that she who 
 now came in through a glass-door from the garden owned 
 that name. 
 
 There is real grace in ease of manner, and so old Helstone 
 felt when an erect, slight girl walked up to him, retaining 
 with her left hand her little silk apron full of flowers, and, 
 giving him her right hand, said pleasantly : ' I knew you 
 would come to see me, though you do think Mr. Yorke has 
 made me a Jacobin. Good morning.' 
 
 1 But we'll not have you a Jacobin," returned he. ' No, 
 Miss Shirley, they shall not steal the flower of my parish 
 from me : now that you are amongst us, you shall be my 
 pupil in politics and religion : I'll teach you sound doctrine 
 on both points.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Pryor has anticipated you,' she replied, turning to 
 the elder lady. Mrs. Pryor, you know, was my governess, 
 and is still my friend ; and of all the high and rigid Tories, 
 she is queen ; of all the stanch churchwomen, she is chief. 
 I have been well drilled both in theology and history, I 
 assure you, Mr. Helstone.' 
 
 The Kector immediately bowed very low to Mrs. Pryor, 
 and expressed himself obliged to her. 
 
 The ex-governess disclaimed skill either in political or 
 religious controversy, explained that she thought such 
 matters little adapted for female minds, but avowed herself 
 in general terms the advocate of order and loyalty, and, of 
 course, truly attached to the Establishment. She added, 
 she was ever averse to change under any circumstances ; and 
 something scarcely audible about the extreme danger of 
 being too ready to take up new ideas, closed her sentence. 
 ' Miss Keeldar thinks as you think, I hope, madam ? '
 
 204 SHIELEY 
 
 ' Difference of age and difference of temperament occasion 
 difference of sentiment,' was the reply. ' It can scarcely be 
 expected that the eager and young should hold the opinions 
 of the cool and middle-aged.' 
 
 ' Oh ! oh ! we are independent : we think for ourselves ! ' 
 cried Mr. Helstone. ' We are a little Jacobin, for anything 
 I know : a little freethinker, in good earnest. Let us have 
 a confession of faith on the spot.' 
 
 And he took the heiress's two hands causing her to let 
 fall her whole cargo of flowers and seated her by him on 
 the sofa. 
 
 ' Say your creed,' he ordered. 
 
 ' The Apostles' Creed ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 She said it like a child. 
 
 ' Now for St. Athanasius's : that's the test ! ' 
 
 ' Let me gather up my flowers : here is Tartar coming, he 
 will tread upon them.' 
 
 Tartar was a rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, 
 very ugly, being of a breed between mastiff and bull-dog, 
 who at this moment entered through the glass-door, and 
 posting directly to the rug, snuffed the fresh flowers 
 scattered there. He seemed to scorn them as food; but 
 probably thinking their velvety petals might be convenient 
 as litter, he was turning round preparatory to depositing his 
 tawny bulk upon them, when Miss Helstone and Miss 
 Kecldar simultaneously stooped to the rescue. 
 
 ' Thank you,' said the heiress, as she again held out her 
 little apron for Caroline to heap the blossoms into it. ' Is 
 this your daughter, Mr. Helstone ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' My niece, Caroline.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar shook hands with her, and then looked at 
 her. Caroline also looked at her hostess. 
 
 Shirley Keeldar (she had no Christian name but Shirley : 
 her parents, who had wished to have a son, finding that, 
 after eight years of marriage, Providence had granted them 
 only a daughter, bestowed on her the same masculine
 
 FIELDHEAD 205 
 
 family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with 
 a boy they had been blessed) Shirley Keeldar was no ugly 
 heiress : she was agreeable to the eye. Her height and 
 shape were not unlike Miss Helstone's : perhaps in stature 
 she might have the advantage by an inch or two ; she was 
 gracefully made, and her face, too, possessed a charm as 
 well described by the word grace as any other. It was pale 
 naturally, but intelligent, and of varied expression. She 
 was not a blonde, like Caroline : clear and dark were the 
 characteristics of her aspect as to colour : her face and brow 
 were clear, her eyes of the darkest gray : no green lights in 
 them, transparent, pure, neutral gray: and her hair of 
 the darkest brown. Her features were distinguished ; by 
 which I do not mean that they were high, bony, and Eoman, 
 being indeed rather small and slightly marked than other- 
 wise ; but only that they were, to use a few French words, 
 ' fins, gracieux, spirituels : ' mobile they were and speaking ; 
 but their changes were not to be understood, nor their 
 language interpreted all at once. She examined Caroline 
 seriously, inclining her head a little to one side, with a 
 thoughtful air. 
 
 'You see she is only a feeble chick,' observed Mr. 
 Helstone. 
 
 ' She looks young younger than I. How old are you ? ' 
 she inquired in a manner that would have been patronising 
 if it had not been extremely solemn and simple. 
 
 I Eighteen years and six months.' 
 ' And I am twenty-one.' 
 
 She said no more ; she had now placed her flowers on 
 the table, and was busied in arranging them. 
 
 ' And St. Athanasius's Creed ? ' urged the Rector ; ' you 
 believe it all don't you ? ' 
 
 I 1 can't remember it quite all. I will give you a nose- 
 gay, Mr. Helstone, when I have given your niece one.' 
 
 She had selected a little bouquet of one brilliant and two 
 or three delicate flowers, relieved by a spray of dark ver- 
 dure : she tied it with silk from her work-box, and placed
 
 206 SHIRLEY 
 
 it on Caroline's lap ; and then she put her hands behind her, 
 and stood bending slightly towards her guest, still regarding 
 her, in the attitude and with something of the aspect of a 
 grave but gallant little cavalier. This temporary expression 
 of face was aided by the style in which she wore her hair, 
 parted on one temple, and brushed in a glossy sweep above 
 the forehead, whence it fell in curls that looked natural, so 
 free were their wavy undulations. 
 
 ' Are you tired with your walk ? ' she inquired. 
 
 ' No not in the least ; it is but a short distance but a 
 mile.' 
 
 ' You look pale. Is she always so pale ? ' she asked, 
 turning to the Rector. 
 
 ' She used to be as rosy as the reddest of your flowers.' 
 
 ' Why is she altered ? What has made her pale ? Has 
 she been ill ? ' 
 
 4 She tells me she wants a change.' 
 
 ' She ought to have one : you ought to give her one : you 
 should send her to the seacoast.' 
 
 ' I will, ere summer is over. Meantime, I intend her to 
 make acquaintance with you, if you have no objection.' 
 
 1 1 am sure Miss Keeldar will have no objection,' here 
 observed Mrs. Pryor. ' I think I may take it upon me to 
 say that Miss Helstone's frequent presence at Fieldhead will 
 be esteemed a favour.' 
 
 ' You speak my sentiments precisely, ma'am,' said 
 Shirley, ' and I thank you for anticipating me. Let me tell 
 you,' she continued, turning again to Caroline, ' that you also 
 ought to thank my governess ; it is not every one she would 
 welcome as she has welcomed you : you are distinguished 
 more than you think. This morning, as soon as you are 
 gone, I shall ask Mrs. Fryer's opinion of you. I am apt to 
 rely on her judgment of character, for hitherto I have found 
 it wondrous accurate. Already I foresee a favourable 
 answer to my inquiries do I not guess rightly, Mrs. 
 Pryor?' 
 
 ' My dear you said but now you would ask my opinion
 
 OAKWELL HALL (lXTKKI< Hi) (FIKLDHKAI')-
 
 FIELDHEAD 20? 
 
 when Miss Helstone was gone ; I am scarcely likely to give 
 it in her presence.' 
 
 1 No and perhaps it will be long enough before I obtain 
 it. I am sometimes sadly tantalised, Mr. Helstone, by Mrs. 
 Pryor's extreme caution : her judgments ought to be correct 
 when they come, for they are often as tardy of delivery as a 
 lord chancellor's : on some people's characters I cannot get 
 her to pronounce sentence, entreat as I may.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor here smiled. 
 
 ' Yes,' said her pupil, ' I know what that smile means : 
 you are thinking of my gentleman-tenant. Do you know Mr. 
 Moore of the Hollow ? ' she asked Mr. Helstone. 
 
 ' Ay ! ay ! your tenant so he is : you have seen a good 
 deal of him, no doubt, since you came ? ' 
 
 ' I have been obliged to see him : there was business to 
 transact. Business ! Eeally the word makes me conscious 
 I am indeed no longer a girl, but quite a woman and some- 
 thing more. I am an esquire : Shirley Keeldar, Esquire, 
 ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man's name ; 
 I hold a man's position : it is enough to inspire me with a touch 
 of manhood ; and when I see such people as that stately 
 Anglo-Belgian that Gerard Moore before me, gravely talking 
 to me of business, really I feel quite gentlemanlike. You 
 must choose me for your churchwarden, Mr. Helstone, the 
 next time you elect new ones : they ought to make me a 
 magistrate and a captain of yeomanry : Tony Lumpkin's 
 mother was a colonel, and his aunt a justice of the peace 
 why shouldn't I be ? ' 
 
 ' With all my heart. If you choose to get up a requisi- 
 tion on the subject, I promise to head the list of signatures 
 with my name. But you were speaking of Moore ? ' 
 
 ' Ah ! yes. I find it a little difficult to understand Mr. 
 Moore to know what to think of him : whether to like him 
 or not. He seems a tenant of whom any proprietor might 
 be proud and proud of him, I am, in that sense but as a 
 neighbour, what is he ? Again and again I have entreated 
 Mrs. Pryor to say what she thinks of him, but she still
 
 208 SHIRLEY 
 
 evades returning a direct answer. I hope you will be 
 less oracular, Mr. Helstone, and pronounce at once : do you 
 like him ? ' 
 
 ' Not at all, just now : his name is entirely blotted from 
 my good books.' 
 
 1 What is the matter ? What has he done ? ' 
 
 ' My uncle and he disagree on politics,' interposed the 
 low voice of Caroline. She had better not have spoken just 
 then : having scarcely joined in the conversation before, it 
 was not apropos to do it now : she felt this, with nervous 
 acuteness as soon as she had spoken, and coloured to the 
 eyes. 
 
 ' What are Moore's politics ? ' inquired Shirley. 
 
 1 Those of a tradesman,' returned the Eector ; ' narrow, 
 selfish, and unpatriotic. The man is eternally writing and 
 speaking against the continuance of the war : I have no 
 patience with him.' 
 
 ' The war hurts his trade. I remember he remarked that 
 only yesterday. But what other objection have you to him ? ' 
 
 ' That is enough.' 
 
 'He looks the gentleman, in my sense of the term,' 
 pursued Shirley, ' and it pleases me to think he is such.' 
 
 Caroline rent the Tyrian petals of the one brilliant flower 
 in her bouquet, and answered in distinct tones ' Decidedly 
 he is.' Shirley hearing this courageous affirmation, flashed 
 an arch, searching glance at the speaker from her deep, 
 expressive eyes. 
 
 ' You are his friend, at any rate,' she said ; ' you defend 
 him in his absence.' 
 
 ' I am both his friend and his relative,' was the prompt 
 reply. ' Robert Moore is my cousin.' 
 
 ' Oh, then, you can tell me all about him. Just give me 
 a sketch of his character.' 
 
 Insuperable embarrassment seized Caroline when this 
 demand was made : she could not, and did not attempt to 
 comply with it. Her silence was immediately covered by 
 Mrs. Pryor, who proceeded to address sundry questions to
 
 FIELDHEAD 209 
 
 Mr. Helstone regarding a family or two in the neighbour- 
 hood, with whose connections in the south she said she was 
 acquainted. Shirley soon withdrew her gaze from Miss 
 Helstone's face. She did not renew her interrogations, but 
 returning to her flowers, proceeded to choose a nosegay for 
 the Rector. She presented it to him as he took leave, 
 and received the homage of a salute on the hand in return. 
 
 ' Be sure you wear it for my sake,' said she. 
 
 1 Next my heart, of course,' responded Helstone. ' Mrs. 
 Pry or, take care of this future magistrate, this churchwarden 
 in perspective, this captain of yeomanry, this young squire 
 of Briarfield, in a word : don't let him exert himself too 
 much : don't let him break his neck in hunting : especially, 
 let him mind how he rides down that dangerous hill near the 
 Hollow.' 
 
 ' I like a descent,' said Shirley ' I like to clear it rapidly ; 
 and especially I like that romantic Hollow, with all my 
 heart.' 
 
 ' Romantic with a mill in it ? ' 
 
 ' Romantic with a mill in it. The old mill and the white 
 cottage are each admirable in its way.' 
 
 ' And the counting-house, Mr. Keeldar ? ' 
 
 1 The counting-house is better than my bloom-coloured 
 drawing-room : I adore the counting-house. 
 
 ' And the trade ? The cloth the greasy wool the 
 polluting dyeing-vats ? ' 
 
 ' The trade is to be thoroughly respected.' 
 
 ' And the tradesman is a hero ? Good ! ' 
 
 ' I am glad to hear you say so : I thought the tradesman 
 looked heroic. 
 
 Mischief, spirit, and glee sparkled all over her face as she 
 thus bandied words with the old Cossack, who almost equally 
 enjoyed the tilt. 
 
 ' Captain Keeldar, you have no mercantile blood in your 
 veins : why are you so fond of trade ? ' 
 
 ' Because I am a mill-owner, of course. Half my income 
 comes from the works in that Hollow.'
 
 210 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Don't enter into partnership, that's all.' 
 
 ' You've put it into my head ! you've put it into my 
 head ! ' she exclaimed, with a joyous laugh. ' It will never 
 get out : thank you.' And waving her hand, white as a lily 
 and fine as a fairy's, she vanished within the porch, while 
 the Hector and his niece passed out through the arched 
 gateway.
 
 CHAPTEB XII 
 
 SHIELEY AND CAROLINE 
 
 OHIRLEY showed she had been sincere in saying she should 
 be glad of Caroline's society, by frequently seeking it : and, 
 indeed, if she had not sought it, she would not have had it ; 
 for Miss Helstone was slow to make fresh acquaintance. 
 She was always held back by the idea that people could not 
 want her, that she could not amuse them ; and a brilliant, 
 happy, youthful creature, like the heiress of Fieldhead, 
 seemed to her too completely independent of society so 
 uninteresting as hers, ever to find it really welcome. 
 
 Shirley might be brilliant, and probably happy likewise, 
 but no one is independent of genial society : and though in 
 about a month she had made the acquaintance of most of 
 the families round, and was on quite free and easy terms 
 with all the Misses Sykes, and all the Misses Pearson, and 
 the two superlative Misses Wynne of Walden Hall ; yet, it 
 appeared, she found none amongst them very genial : she 
 fraternized with none of them, to use her own words. If she 
 had had the bliss to be really Shirley Keeldar, Esq., Lord of 
 the Manor of Briarfield, there was not a single fair one in 
 this and the two neighbouring parishes, whom she would 
 have felt disposed to request to become Mrs. Keeldar, lady of 
 the manor. This declaration she made to Mrs. Pry or, who 
 received it very quietly, as she did most of her pupil's off- 
 hand speeches, responding, ' My dear, do not allow that 
 habit of alluding to yourself as a gentleman to be con- 
 firmed : it is a strange one. Those who do not know you, 
 hearing you speak thus, would think you affected masculine 
 manners,'
 
 212 SHIELEY 
 
 Shirley never laughed at her former governess : even the 
 little formalities and harmless peculiarities of that lady were 
 respectable in her eyes : had it been otherwise, she would 
 have proved herself a weak character at once : for it is only 
 the weak who make a butt of quiet worth ; therefore she 
 took her remonstrance in silence. She stood quietly near 
 the window, looking at the grand cedar on her lawn, watch- 
 ing a bird on one of its lower boughs. Presently she began 
 to chirrup to the bird : soon her chirrup grew clearer ; ere- 
 long she was whistling ; the whistle struck into a tune, and 
 very sweetly and deftly it was executed. 
 
 ' My dear ! ' expostulated Mrs. Pryor. 
 
 ' Was I whistling ? ' said Shirley ; ' I forgot. I beg your 
 pardon, ma'am. I had resolved to take care not to whistle 
 before you.' 
 
 ' But, Miss Keeldar, where did you learn to whistle ? 
 You must have got the habit since you came down into 
 Yorkshire. I never knew you guilty of it before.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I learned to whistle a long while ago.' 
 
 ' Who taught you ? ' 
 
 ' No one : I took it up by listening, and I had laid it 
 down again ; but lately, yesterday evening, as I was coming 
 up our lane, I heard a gentleman whistling that very tune 
 in the field on the other side of the hedge, and that reminded 
 me.' 
 
 1 What gentleman was it ? ' 
 
 ' We have only one gentleman in this region, ma'am, and 
 that is Mr. Moore ; at least he is the only gentleman who is 
 not grey-haired : my two venerable favourites, Mr. Helstone 
 and Mr. Yorke, it is true, are fine old beaux ; infinitely better 
 than any of the stupid young ones.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor was silent. 
 
 ' You do not like Mr. Helstone, ma'am ? ' 
 
 ' My dear, Mr. Helstone's office secures him from 
 criticism.' 
 
 ' You generally contrive to leave the room when he is 
 announced.'
 
 OAKWKLL HALL (FKOXI 1 ) (FlKLDUK
 
 SHIBLEY AND CAROLINE 213 
 
 ' Do you walk out this morning, my dear ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, I shall go to the Eectory, and seek and find 
 Caroline Helstone, and make her take some exercise : she 
 shall have a breezy walk over Nunnely Common.' 
 
 ' If you go in that direction, my dear, have the goodness 
 to remind Miss Helstone to wrap up well, as there is a fresh 
 wind, and she appears to me to require care.' 
 
 ' You shall be minutely obeyed, Mrs. Pryor : meantime, 
 will you not accompany us yourself ? ' 
 
 ' No, my love ; I should be a restraint upon you : I 
 am stout, and cannot walk so quickly as you would wish 
 to do.' 
 
 Shirley easily persuaded Caroline to go with her : and 
 when they were fairly out on the quiet road, traversing the 
 extensive and solitary sweep of Nunnely Common, she 
 as easily drew her into conversation. The first feelings of 
 diffidence overcome, Caroline soon felt glad to talk with 
 Miss Keeldar. The very first interchange of slight observa- 
 tions sufficed to give each an idea of what the other was. 
 Shirley said she liked the green sweep of the common turf, 
 and, better still, the heath on its ridges, for the heath 
 reminded her of moors : she had seen moors when she 
 was travelling on the borders near Scotland. She remembered 
 particularly a district traversed one long afternoon, on a 
 sultry but sunless day in summer : they journeyed from 
 noon till sunset, over what seemed a boundless waste of deep 
 heath, and nothing had they seen but wild sheep ; nothing 
 heard but the cries of wild birds. 
 
 ' I know how the heath would look on such a day,' said 
 Caroline ; ' purple black : a deeper shade of the sky-tint, and 
 that would be livid.' 
 
 1 Yes quite livid, with brassy edges to the clouds, and 
 here and there a white gleam, more ghastly than the lurid 
 tinge, which, as you looked at it, you momentarily expected 
 would kindle into blinding lightning.' 
 1 Did it thunder ? ' 
 ' It muttered distant peals, but the storai did not break
 
 214 SHIRLEY 
 
 till evening, after we had reached our inn : that inn being an 
 isolated house at the foot of a range of mountains.' 
 
 'Did you watch the clouds come down over the 
 mountains ? ' 
 
 ' I did : I stood at the window an hour watching them. 
 The hills seemed rolled in a sullen mist, and when the rain 
 fell in whitening sheets, suddenly they were blotted from 
 the prospect : they were washed from the world.' 
 
 ' I have seen such storms in hilly districts in York- 
 shire ; and at their riotous climax, while the sky was 
 all cataract, the earth all flood, I have remembered the 
 Deluge.' 
 
 ' It is singularly reviving after such hurricanes to feel 
 calm return, and from the opening clouds to receive a 
 consolatory gleam, softly testifying that the sun is not 
 quenched.' 
 
 1 Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at 
 Nunnely dale and wood.' 
 
 They both halted on the green brow of the Common : 
 they looked down on the deep valley robed in May raiment ; 
 on varied meads, some pearled with daisies, and some 
 golden with king-cups : to-day all this young verdure 
 smiled clear in sunlight ; transparent emerald and amber 
 gleams played over it. On Nunnwood the sole remnant of 
 antique British forest in a region whose lowlands were once 
 all sylvan chase, as its highlands were breast-deep heather 
 slept the shadow of a cloud ; the distant hills were dappled, 
 the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl ; 
 silvery blues, soft purples, evanescent greens and rose- 
 shades, all melting into fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury 
 snow, allured the eye as with a remote glimpse of heaven's 
 foundations. The air blowing on the brow was fresh, and 
 sweet, and bracing. 
 
 ' Our England is a bonnie island,' said Shirley, ' and 
 Yorkshire is one of her bonniest nooks.' 
 
 ' You are a Yorl< shire girl too ? ' 
 I am Yorkshire in blooJ and birth. Five generations
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 215 
 
 of my race sleep under the aisles of Briarfield Church : I 
 drew my first breath in the old black hall behind us.' 
 
 Hereupon Caroline presented her hand, which was 
 accordingly taken and shaken. 
 
 ' We are compatriots,' said she. 
 
 'Yes,' agreed Shirley, with a grave nod. 'And that/ 
 asked Miss Keeldar, pointing to the forest ' that is Nunn- 
 wood? ' 
 
 ' It is.' 
 Were you ever there ? ' 
 
 ' Many a time.' 
 
 ' In the heart of it ? ' 
 
 1 Yes.' 
 
 1 What is it like ? ' 
 
 1 It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The 
 trees are huge and old. When you stand at their roots, the 
 summits seem in another region : the trunks remain still 
 and firm as pillars, while the boughs sway to every breeze. 
 In the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed, and 
 in high wind a flood rushes a sea thunders above you.' 
 
 ' Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To 
 penetrate into Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back 
 into the dim days of eld. Can you see a break in the forest, 
 about the centre ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, distinctly.' 
 
 ' That break is a dell ; a deep, hollow cup, lined with 
 turf as green and short as the sod of this Common : the 
 very oldest of the trees, gnarled mighty oaks, crowd 
 about the brink of this dell : in the bottom lie the ruins of a 
 nunnery.' 
 
 ' We will go you and I alone, Caroline to that wood, 
 early some fine summer morning, and spend a long day 
 there. We can take pencils and sketch-books, and any 
 interesting reading-book we like ; and of course we shall 
 take something to eat. I have two little baskets, in which 
 Mrs, Gill, my housekeeper, might pack our provisions, and
 
 216 SHIRLEY 
 
 we could each carry our own. It would not tire you too 
 much to walk so far ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, no ; especially if we rested the whole day in the 
 wood, and I know all the pleasantest spots : I know where 
 we could get nuts in nutting time; I know where wild 
 strawberries abound ; I know certain lonely, quite untrodden 
 glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as if 
 gilded, some a sober grey, some gem-green. I know groups 
 of trees that ravish the eye \vdth their perfect, picture-like 
 effects : rude oak, delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered in 
 contrast; and ash trees stately as Saul, standing isolated, 
 and superannuated wood-giants clad in bright shrouds of ivy. 
 Miss Keeldar, I could guide you.' 
 
 ' You would be dull with me alone T 
 
 4 1 should not. I think we should suit : and what third 
 person is there whose presence would not spoil our 
 pleasure ? ' 
 
 4 Indeed, I know of none about our own ages no lady 
 at least, and as to gentlemen ' 
 
 4 An excursion becomes quite a different thing when 
 there are gentlemen of the party,' interrupted Caroline. 
 
 4 1 agree with you quite a different thing to what we 
 were proposing.' 
 
 4 We were going simply to see the old trees, the old ruins J 
 to pass a day in old times, surrounded by olden silence, and 
 above all by quietude.' 
 
 ' You are right ; and the presence of gentlemen dispels 
 the last charm, I think. If they are of the wrong sort, 
 like your Malones, and your young Sykes, and Wynnes, 
 irritation takes the place of serenity. If they are of the 
 right sort, there is still a change I can hardly tell what 
 change, one easy to feel, difficult to describe.' 
 
 ' We forget Nature, imprimis.' 
 
 4 And then Nature forgets us ; covers her vast calm brow 
 with a dim veil, conceals her face, and withdraws the 
 peaceful joy with which, if we had been content to worship 
 her only, she would have filled our hearts.'
 
 SHIBLEY AND CAROLINE 217 
 
 ' What does she give us instead ? ' 
 
 1 More elation and more anxiety : an excitement that steals 
 the hours away fast, and a trouble that ruffles their course.' 
 
 ' Our power of being happy lies a good deal in ourselves, 
 I believe,' remarked Caroline sagely. ' I have gone to 
 Nunnwood with a large party, all the curates and some 
 other gentry of these parts, together with sundry ladies ; 
 and I found the affair insufferably tedious and absurd : and 
 I have gone quite alone, or accompanied but by Fanny, who 
 sat in the woodman's hut and sewed, or talked to the 
 goodwife, while I roamed about and made sketches, or read ; 
 and I have enjoyed much happiness of a quiet kind all day 
 long. But that was when I was young two years ago.' 
 
 ' Did you ever go with your cousin, Eobert Moore ? ' 
 
 1 Yes ; once.' 
 
 ' What sort of a companion is he on these occasions ? ' 
 
 1 A cousin, you know, is different to a stranger.' 
 
 ' I am aware of that ; but cousins, if they are stupid, are 
 still more insupportable than strangers, because you cannot 
 so easily keep them at a distance. But your cousin is not 
 stupid ? ' 
 
 No ; but ' 
 
 Well ? ' 
 
 ' If the company of fools irritates, as you say, the society 
 of clever men leaves its own peculiar pain also. Where the 
 goodness or talent of your friend is beyond and above all 
 doubt, your own worthiness to be his associate often becomes 
 a matter of question,' 
 
 ' Oh ! there I cannot follow you : that crotchet is not one 
 I should choose to entertain for an instant. I consider 
 myself not unworthy to be the associate of the best of them 
 of gentlemen, I mean : though that is saying a great deal. 
 Where they are good, they are very good, I believe. Your 
 uncle, by-the-by, is not a bad specimen of the elderly 
 gentleman : I am always glad to see his brown, keen, 
 sensible old face, either in my own house or any other. Are 
 you fond of him ? Is he kind to you ? Now speak the truth.'
 
 218 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' He has brought me up from childhood, I doubt not, 
 precisely as he would have brought up his own daughter, if 
 he had had one ; and that is kindness ; but I am not fond of 
 him : I would rather be out of his presence than in it.' 
 
 ' Strange ! when he has the art of making himself so 
 agreeable.' 
 
 ' Yes, in company ; but he is stern and silent at home. 
 As he puts away his cane and shovel-hat in the Rectory hall, 
 so he locks his liveliness in his book-case and study-desk : 
 the knitted brow and brief word for the fire-side ; the smile, 
 the jest, the witty sally, for society.' 
 
 ' Is he tyrannical ? ' 
 
 ' Not in the least : he is neither tyrannical nor hypo- 
 critical : he is simply a man who is rather liberal than good- 
 natured, rather brilliant than genial, rather scrupulously 
 equitable than truly just, if you can understand such 
 superfine distinctions ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! yes : good -nature implies indulgence, which he 
 has not ; geniality, warmth of heart, which he does not 
 own ; and genuine justice is the offspring of sympathy and 
 considerateness, of which, I can well conceive, my bronzed 
 old friend is quite innocent.' 
 
 ' I often wonder, Shirley, whether most men resemble 
 my uncle in their domestic relations ; whether it is necessary 
 to be new and unfamiliar to them, in order to seem agree- 
 able or estimable in their eyes ; and whether it is impossible 
 to their natures to retain a constant interest and affection 
 for those they see every day.' 
 
 ' I don't know : I can't clear up your doubts. I ponder 
 over similar ones myself sometimes. But, to tell you a 
 secret, if I were convinced that they are necessarily and 
 universally different from us fickle, soon petrifying, un- 
 sympathizing I would never marry. I should not like to 
 find out that what I loved did not love me, that it was weary 
 of me, and that whatever effort I might make to please would 
 hereafter be worse than useless, since it was inevitably in 
 its nature to change and become indifferent. That discovery
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 219 
 
 once made, what should I long for ? To go away to 
 remove from a presence where my society gave no 
 pleasure.' 
 
 4 But you could not, if you were married.' 
 
 ' No, I could not there it is. I could never be my own 
 mistress more. A terrible thought ! it suffocates me ! 
 Nothing irks me like the idea of being a burden and a bore, 
 an inevitable burden, a ceaseless bore ! Now, when I 
 feel my company superfluous I can comfortably fold my 
 independence round me like a mantle, and drop my pride 
 like a veil, and withdraw to solitude. If married, that could 
 not be.' 
 
 ' I wonder we don't all make up our minds to remain 
 single,' said Caroline : ' we should if we listened to the 
 wisdom of experience. My uncle always speaks of marriage 
 as a burden ; and I believe whenever he hears of a man 
 being married, he invariably regards him as a fool, or, at any 
 rate, as doing a foolish thing.' 
 
 4 But, Caroline, men are not all like your uncle : surely 
 not I hope not.' 
 
 She paused and mused. 
 
 4 1 suppose we each find an exception in the one we love, 
 till we are married,' suggested Caroline. 
 
 ' I suppose so : and this exception we believe to be of 
 sterling materials ; we fancy it like ourselves ; we imagine a 
 sense of harmony. We think his voice gives the softest, 
 truest promise of a heart that will never harden against us : 
 we read in his eyes that faithful feeling affection. I don't 
 think we should trust to what they call passion at all, 
 Caroline. I believe it is a mere fire of dry sticks, blazing 
 up and vanishing : but we watch him, and see him kind to 
 animals, to little children, to poor people. He is kind to us 
 likewise good considerate : he does not flatter women, but 
 he is patient with them, and he seems to be easy in their 
 presence, and to find their company genial. He likes them 
 not only for vain and selfish reasons, but as we. like him 
 because we like him Then we observe that he is just that
 
 220 SHIRLEY 
 
 he always speaks the truth that he is conscientious. We 
 feel joy and peace when he comes into a room ; we feel sad- 
 ness and trouble when he leaves it. We know that this 
 man has been a kind son, that he is a kind brother : will 
 any one dare to tell me that he will not be a kind 
 husband ? ' 
 
 ' My uncle would affirm it unhesitatingly. " He will be 
 sick of you in a month," he would say." 
 
 ' Mrs. Pryor would seriously intimate the same.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Yorke and Miss Mann would darkly suggest 
 ditto.' 
 
 'If they are true oracles, it is good never to fall in 
 love.' 
 
 ' Very good, if you can avoid it.' 
 
 1 1 choose to doubt their truth.' 
 
 ' I am afraid that proves you are already caught.' 
 
 1 Not I : but if I were, do you know what soothsayers I 
 would consult ? ' 
 
 1 Let me hear.' 
 
 ' Neither man nor woman, elderly nor young : the little 
 Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door ; the mouse that 
 steals out of the cranny in the wainscot ; the bird that in 
 frost and snow pecks at my window for a crumb ; the dog 
 that licks my hand and sits beside my knee.' 
 
 ' Did you ever see any one who was kind to such 
 things ? ' 
 
 ' Did you ever see any one whom such things seemed 
 instinctively to follow, like, rely on ? ' 
 
 ' We have a black cat and an old dog at the Eectory. I 
 know somebody to whose knee that black cat loves to climb ; 
 against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr. The old 
 dog always comes out of his kennel and wags his tail, and 
 whines affectionately when somebody passes.' 
 
 ' And what does that somebody do ? ' 
 
 ' He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit while he 
 conveniently can, and when lie must disturb her by rising, 
 he puts her softly down, and never flings her from him
 
 SHIBLEY AND CAROLINE 221 
 
 roughly; he always whistles to the dog and gives him a 
 caress.' 
 
 1 Does he ? It is not Bobert ? ' 
 
 1 But it is Eoberfc.' 
 
 ' Handsome fellow ! ' said Shirley, with enthusiasm : her 
 eyes sparkled. 
 
 1 Is he not handsome ? Has he not fine eyes and well-cut 
 features, and a clear, princely forehead? ' 
 
 ' He has all that, Caroline. Bless him ! He is both 
 graceful and good.' 
 
 ' I was sure you would see that he was : when I first 
 looked at your face I knew you would.' 
 
 ' I was well inclined to him before I saw him. I liked 
 him when I did see him : I admire him now. There is 
 charm in beauty for itself, Caroline ; when it is blent with 
 goodness, there is a powerful charm.' 
 
 1 When mind is added, Shirley ? ' 
 
 ' Who can resist it ? ' 
 
 ' Eemember my uncle, Mesdames Pryor, Yorke, and 
 Mann.' 
 
 ' Eemember the croaking of the frogs of Egypt ! He is 
 a noble being. I tell you when they are good, they are the 
 lords of the creation, they are the sons of God. Moulded 
 in their Maker's image, the minutest spark of His spirit lifts 
 them almost above mortality. Indisputably, a great, good, 
 handsome man is the first of created things.' 
 
 I Above us ? ' 
 
 I 1 would scorn to contend for empire with him, I would 
 scorn it. Shall my left hand dispute for precedence with 
 my right? shall my heart quarrel with my pulse? shall 
 my veins be jealous of the blood which fills them ? ' 
 
 ' Men and women, husbands and wives quarrel horribly, 
 Shirley.' 
 
 ' Poor things ! poor, fallen, degenerate things! God 
 made them for another lot for other feelings.' 
 
 ' But are we men's equals, or are we not? ' 
 
 1 Nothing ever charms me more than when I meet my
 
 222 SHIRLEY 
 
 superior one who makes me sincerely feel that he is my 
 superior.' 
 
 ' Did you ever meet him ? ' 
 
 ' I should be glad to see him any day : the higher above 
 me, so much the better : it degrades to stoop it is glorious 
 to look up. What frets me is, that when I try to esteem, I 
 am baffled : when religiously inclined, there are but false gods 
 to adore. I disdain to be a Pagan.' 
 
 ' Miss Keeldar, will you come in ? We are here at the 
 Eectory gates.' 
 
 ' Not to-day ; but to-morrow I shall fetch you to spend 
 the evening with me. Caroline Helstone if you really are 
 what at present to me you seem you and I will suit. I 
 have never in my whole life been able to talk to a young 
 lady as I have talked to you this morning. Kiss me and 
 good-by.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor seemed as well disposed to cultivate Caroline's 
 acquaintance as Shirley. She, who went nowhere else, 
 called on an early day at the Bectory. She came in the 
 afternoon, when the Eector happened to be out. It was 
 rather a close day ; the heat of the weather had flushed her, 
 and she seemed fluttered, too, by the circumstance of 
 entering a strange house ; for it appeared her habits were 
 most retiring and secluded. When Miss Helstone went to 
 her in the dining-room, she found her seated on the sofa, 
 trembling, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and seem- 
 ing to contend with a nervous discomposure that threatened 
 to become hysterical. 
 
 Caroline marvelled somewhat at this unusual want of 
 self-command in a lady of her years, and also at the lack of 
 real strength in one who appeared almost robust : for Mrs. 
 Pryor hastened to allege the fatigue of her walk, the heat of 
 the sun, &c., as reasons for her temporary indisposition ; and 
 still as, with more hurry than coherence, she ag;iin ;md 
 again enumerated those causes of exhaustion, Caroline gently 
 sought to relieve her by opening her shawl and removing her
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 223 
 
 bonnet. Attentions of this sort, Mrs. Piyor would not have 
 accepted from evei-y one : in general, she recoiled from 
 touch or close approach, with a mixture of emharrassment 
 and coldness far from flattering to those who offered her aid : 
 to Miss Helstone's little light hand, however, she yielded 
 tractably, and seemed soothed by its contact. In a few 
 minutes she ceased to tremble, and grew quiet and tranquil. 
 
 Her usual manner being resumed, she proceeded to talk 
 of ordinary topics. In a miscellaneous company, Mrs. 
 Pryor rarely opened her lips ; or, if obliged to speak, she 
 spoke under restraint, and consequently not well ; in 
 dialogue, she was a good converser : her language, always a 
 little formal, was well chosen; her sentiments were just; 
 her information was varied and correct. Caroline felt it 
 pleasant to listen to her : more pleasant than she could have 
 anticipated. 
 
 On the wall opposite the sofa where they sat, hung three 
 pictures : the centre one, above the mantelpiece, that of a 
 lady ; the two others, male portraits. 
 
 ' That is a beautiful face,' said Mrs. Pryor, interrupting a 
 brief pause which had followed half an hour's animated 
 conversation : the features may be termed perfect ; no 
 statuary's chisel could improve them : it is a portrait from 
 the life, I presume ? ' 
 
 ' It is a portrait of Mrs. Helstone.' 
 
 ' Of Mrs. Matthewson Helstone ? Of your uncle's wife ? ' 
 
 ' It is, and is said to be a good likeness : before her 
 marriage, she was accounted the beauty of the district.' 
 
 ' I should say she merited the distinction : what accuracy 
 in all the lineaments ! It is, however, a passive face : the 
 original could not have been, what is generally termed, " a 
 woman of spirit." ' 
 
 ' I believe she was a remarkably still, silent person.' 
 
 1 One would scarcely have expected, my dear, that your 
 uncle's choice would have fallen on a partner of that 
 description. Is he not fond of being amused by lively 
 chat ? '
 
 224 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 In company he is ; but he always says he could never 
 do with a talking wife : he must have quiet at home. You 
 go out to gossip, he affirms ; you come home to read and 
 reflect.' 
 
 'Mrs. Matthewson lived but a few years after her 
 marriage, I think I have heard ? ' 
 
 1 About five years.' 
 
 ' Well, my dear,' pursued Mrs. Pry or, rising to go, ' I 
 trust it is understood that you will frequently come to 
 Fieldhead : I hope you will. You must feel lonely here, 
 having no female relative in the house : you must necessarily 
 pass much of your time in solitude.' 
 
 ' I am inured to it : I have grown up by myself. May I 
 arrange your shawl for you ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor submitted to be assisted. 
 
 ' Should you chance to require help in your studies,' she 
 said, ' you may command me.' 
 
 Caroline expressed her sense of such kindness. 
 
 'I hope to have frequent conversations with you. I 
 should wish to be of use to you.' 
 
 Again Miss Helstone returned thanks. She thought 
 what a kind heart was hidden under her visitor's seeming 
 chilliness. Observing that Mrs. Pryor again glanced with an 
 air of interest towards the portraits as she walked down the 
 room, Caroline casually explained : ' The likeness that 
 hangs near the window, you will see, is my uncle, taken 
 twenty years ago ; the other, to the left of the mantelpiece, 
 is his brother James, my father.' 
 
 1 They resemble each other in some measure,' said Mrs. 
 Pryor ; ' yet a difference of character may be traced in the 
 different mould of the brow and mouth.' 
 
 ' What difference ? ' inquired Cai'oline, accompanying her 
 to the door. ' James Helstcne that is, my father is gen- 
 erally considered the best-looking of the two : strangers, I 
 remark, always exclaim, " What a handsome man ! " Do you 
 think his picture handsome, Mrs. Pryor ? ' 
 
 ' It is much softer or finer featured than that of your uncle.'
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAKOLINE 225 
 
 'But where or what is the difference of character to 
 which you alluded ? Tell me : I wish to see if you guess 
 right.' 
 
 ' My dear, your uncle is a man of principle : his forehead 
 and his lips are firm, and his eye is steady.' 
 
 ' Well, and the other ? Do not be afraid of offending me > 
 I always like the truth.' 
 
 ' Do you like the truth ? It is well for you : adhere to 
 that preference never swerve thence. The other, my dear, 
 if he had been living now, would probably have furnished 
 little support to his daughter. It is, however, a graceful 
 head taken in youth, I should think. My dear ' (turning 
 abruptly), 'you acknowledge an inestimable value in 
 principle ? ' 
 
 ' I am sure no character can have true worth without it.' 
 
 'You feel what you say? You have considered the 
 subject ? ' 
 
 ' Often. Circumstances early forced it upon my 
 attention.' 
 
 ' The lesson was not lost, then, though it came so pre- 
 maturely. I suppose the soil is not light nor stony, otherwise 
 seed falling in that season never would have borne fruit- 
 My dear, do not stand in the air of the door, you will take 
 cold : good afternoon.' 
 
 Miss Helstone's new acquaintance soon became of value 
 to her : their society was acknowledged a privilege. She 
 found she would have been in error indeed to have let slip 
 this chance of relief to have neglected to avail herself of 
 this happy change : a turn was thereby given to her thoughts , 
 a new channel was opened for them, which, diverting a few 
 of them at least from the one direction in which all had 
 hitherto tended, abated the impetuosity of their rush, and 
 lessened the force of their pressure on one worn-down 
 point. 
 
 Soon she was content to spend whole days at Fieldhead, 
 doing by turns whatever Shirley or Mrs. Pryor wished her 
 to do : and now one would claim hor, now the other
 
 226 SHIELD 
 
 Nothing could be less demonstrative than the friendship of 
 the elder lady ; but also nothing could be more vigilant, 
 assiduous, untiring. I have intimated that she was a 
 peculiar personage ; and in nothing was her peculiarity 
 more shown than in the nature of the interest she evinced 
 for Caroline. She watched all her movements : she seemed 
 as if she would have guarded all her steps : it gave her 
 pleasure to be applied to by Miss Helstone for advice and 
 assistance ; she yielded her aid, when asked, with such 
 quiet yet obvious enjoyment, that Caroline erelong took 
 delight in depending on her. 
 
 Shirley Keeldar's complete docility with Mrs. Pryor had 
 at first surprised Miss Helstone, and not less the fact of the 
 reserved ex-governess being so much at home and at ease in 
 the residence of her young pupil, where she filled with such 
 quiet independency a very dependent post ; but she soon 
 found that it needed but to know both ladies to comprehend 
 fully the enigma. Every one, it seemed to her, must like, 
 must love, must prize Mrs. Pryor when they knew her. No 
 matter that she perseveringly wore old-fashioned gowns ; 
 that her speech was formal, and her manner cool ; that she 
 had twenty little ways such as nobody else had she was 
 still such a stay, such a counsellor, so truthful, so kind in her 
 way, that, in Caroline's idea, none once accustomed to her 
 presence could easily afford to dispense with it. 
 
 As to dependency or humiliation, Caroline did not feel it 
 in her intercourse with Shirley, and why should Mrs. 
 Pryor ? The heiress was rich very rich compared with 
 her new friend : one possessed a clear thousand a year 
 the other not a penny ; and yet there was a safe sense of 
 equality experienced in her society, never known in that of 
 the ordinary Briarfield and Whinbury gentry. 
 
 The reason was, Shirley's head ran on other things than 
 money and position. She was glad to be independent as 
 to property : by fits she was even elated at the notion of 
 being lady of the manor, and having tenants and an estate : 
 she was especially tickled witn an agreeable complacency
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 227 
 
 when reminded of ' all that property ' down in the Hollow, 
 'comprising an excellent cloth-mill, dyehouse, warehouse, 
 together with the messuage, gardens and outbuildings, termed 
 Hollow's cottage ; ' but her exultation being quite undis- 
 guised was singularly inoffensive ; and for her serious 
 thoughts, they tended elsewhere. To admire the great, 
 reverence the good, and be joyous with the genial, was 
 very much the bent of Shirley's soul ; she mused therefore 
 on the means of following this bent far oftener than she 
 pondered on her social superiority. 
 
 In Caroline, Miss Keeldar had first taken an interest 
 because she was quiet, retiring, looked delicate, and seemed 
 as if she needed some one to take care of her. Her 
 predilection increased greatly when she discovered that her 
 own way of thinking and talking w r as understood and 
 responded to by this new acquaintance. She had hardly 
 expected it. Miss Helstone, she fancied, had too pretty a 
 face, manners and voice too soft, to be anything out of the 
 common way in mind and attainments ; and she very much 
 wondered to see the gentle features light up archly to the 
 reveillee of a dry sally or two risked by herself ; and more 
 did she wonder to discover the self- won knowledge treasured, 
 and the untaught speculations working in that girlish, curl- 
 veiled head. Caroline's instinct of taste, too, was like her 
 own : such books as Miss Keeldar had read with the most 
 pleasure, were Miss Helstone's delight also. They held 
 many aversions too in common, and could have the comfort 
 of laughing together over works of false sentimentality and 
 pompous pretension. 
 
 Few, Shirley conceived, men or women have the right 
 taste in poetry : the right sense for discriminating between 
 what is real and what is false. She had again and again heard 
 very clever people pronounce this or that passage, in this or 
 that versifier, altogether admirable, which, when she read, her 
 soul refused to acknowledge as anything but cant, flourish, 
 and tinsel, or at the best, elaborate wordiness; curious, 
 clever, learned perhaps ; haply even tinged with the
 
 228 SHIRLEY 
 
 fascinating hues of fancy, but, God knows, as different from 
 real poetry as the gorgeous and massy vase of mosaic is 
 from the little cup of pure metal ; or, to give the reader a 
 choice of similes, as the milliner's artificial wreath is from 
 the fresh-gathered lily of the field. 
 
 Caroline, she found, felt the value of the true ore, and knew 
 the deception of the flashy dross. The minds of the two 
 girls being toned in harmony, often chimed very sweetly 
 together. 
 
 One evening they chanced to be alone in the oak-parlour. 
 They had passed a long wet day together without ennui ; it 
 was now on the edge of dark ; candles were not yet brought 
 in ; both, as twilight deepened, grew meditative and silent. 
 A western wind roared high round the hall, driving wild 
 clouds and stormy rain up from the far-remote ocean : all 
 was tempest outside the antique lattices, all deep peace 
 within. Shirley sat at the window, watching the rack in 
 heaven, the mist on earth, listening to certain notes of the 
 gale that plained like restless spirits notes which, had she 
 not been so young, gay, and healthy, would have swept her 
 trembling nerves like some omen, some anticipatory dirge : 
 in this her prime of existence and bloom of beauty, they but 
 subdued vivacity to pensiveness. Snatches of sweet ballads 
 haunted her ear ; now and then she sang a stanza : her 
 accents obeyed the fitful impulse of the wind ; they swelled 
 as its gusts rushed on, and died as they wandered away. 
 Caroline, withdrawn to the farthest and darkest end of the 
 room, her figure just discernible by the ruby shine of the 
 flameless fire, was pacing to and fro, murmuring to herself 
 fragments of well-remembered poetry. She spoke very low, 
 but Shirley heard her ; and while singing softly, she listened. 
 This was the strain : 
 
 Obscurest night involved the sky, 
 The Atlantic billows roar'd, 
 
 When such a destined wretch as I, 
 Washed headlonp from on board, 
 
 Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
 
 His floating homo for ever left.
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 229 
 
 Here the fragment stopped ; because Shirley's song, ere- 
 while somewhat full and thrilling, had become delicately faint. 
 
 4 Go on,' said she. 
 
 'Then you go on, too. I was only repeating "The 
 Castaway." ' 
 
 ' I know : if you can remember it all, say it all.' 
 
 And as it was nearly dark, and, after all, Miss Keeldar 
 was no formidable auditor, Caroline went through it. She 
 went through it as she should have gone through it. The 
 wild sea, the drowning mariner, the reluctant ship swept on 
 in the storm, you heard were realized by her; and more 
 vividly was realized the heart of the poet, who did not weep 
 for ' The Castaway,' but who, in an hour of tearless anguish, 
 traced a semblance to his own God-abandoned misery in the 
 fate of that man-forsaken sailor, and cried from the depths 
 where he struggled : 
 
 No voice divine the storm allayed, 
 
 No light propitious shone, 
 When, snatch' J from all effectual aid, 
 
 We perish'd each alone 1 
 But I beneath a rougher sea, 
 And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he. 
 
 ' I hope William Cowper is safe and calm in heaven now,' 
 said Caroline. 
 
 ' Do you pity what he suffered on earth ? ' asked Miss 
 Keeldar. 
 
 ' Pity him, Shirley ? What can I do else ? He was 
 nearly broken-hearted when he wrote that poem, and it 
 almost breaks one's heart to read it. But he found relief in 
 writing it I know he did; and that gift of poetry the 
 most divine bestowed on man was, I believe, granted 
 to allay emotions when their strength threatens harm. It 
 seems to me, Shirley, that nobody should write poetry to 
 exhibit intellect or attainment. Who cares for that sort of 
 poetry? Who cares for learning who cares for fine words 
 in poetry? And who does not care for feeling- real feeling 
 however simply, even rudely expressotl ? '
 
 230 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' It seems you care for it, at all events : and certainly, in 
 hearing that poem, one discovers that Cowper was under an 
 impulse strong as that of the wind which drove the ship an 
 impulse which, while it would not suffer him to stop to add 
 ornament to a single stanza, filled him with force to achieve 
 the whole with consummate perfection. You managed to recite 
 it with a steady voice, Caroline : I wonder thereat.' 
 
 1 Cowper's hand did not tremble in writing the lines : why 
 should my voice falter in repeating them? Depend on it, 
 Shirley, no tear blistered the manuscript of " The Castaway," 
 I hear in it no sob of sorrow, only the cry of despair ; but, 
 that cry uttered, I believe the deadly spasm passed from his 
 heart ; that he wept abundantly, and was comforted.' 
 
 Shirley resumed her ballad minstrelsy. Stopping short, 
 she remarked erelong : ' One could have loved Cowper if it 
 were only for the sake of having the privilege of comforting 
 him.' 
 
 ' You never would have loved Cowper,' rejoined Caroline, 
 promptly : ' he was not made to be loved by woman.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' What I say. I know there is a kind of natures in the 
 world and very noble, elevated natures, too whom love 
 never comes near. You might have sought Cowper with the 
 intention of loving him ; and you would have looked at him, 
 pitied him, and left him : forced away by a sense of the 
 impossible, the incongruous, as the crew were borne from 
 their drowning comrade by " the furious blast." ' 
 
 ' You may be right. Who told you this ? ' 
 
 1 And what I say of Cowper, I should say of Rousseau. 
 Was Eousseau ever loved ? He loved passionately ; but was 
 his passion ever returned? I am certain, never. And if 
 there were any female Cowpers and Rousseaus, I should 
 assert the same of them.' 
 
 ' Who told you this, I ask ? Did Moore ? ' 
 
 ' Why should anybody have told me ? Have I not an 
 instinct? Can I not divine by analogy? Moore never 
 talked to me either about Cowper or Rousseau, or love.
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 231 
 
 The voice we hear in solitude told me all I know on these 
 subjects.' 
 
 'Do you like characters of the Rousseau order, Caro- 
 line ? ' 
 
 ' Not at all, as a whole. I sympathise intensely with 
 certain qualities they possess : certain divine sparks in their 
 nature dazzle my eyes, and make my soul glow. Then, 
 again, I scorn them. They are made of clay and gold. 
 The refuse and the ore make a mass of weakness : taken 
 altogether, I feel them unnatural, unhealthy, repulsive.' 
 
 ' I dare say I should be more tolerant of a Rousseau than 
 you would, Gary : submissive and contemplative yourself, 
 you like the stern and the practical. By-the-way, you must 
 miss that Cousin Robert of yours very much, now that you 
 and he never meet.' 
 
 1 1 do.' 
 
 1 And he must miss you ? ' 
 
 ' That he does not.' 
 
 ' I cannot imagine,' pursued Shirley, who had lately got 
 a habit of introducing Moore's name into the conversation, 
 even when it seemed to have no business there, ' I cannot 
 imagine but that he was fond of you, since he took so much 
 notice of you, talked to you, and taught you .so much.' 
 
 ' He never was fond of me : he never professed to lv> 
 fond of me. He took pains to prove that he only just, 
 tolerated me.' 
 
 Caroline, determined not to err on the flattering side in 
 estimating her cousin's regard for her, always now habitually 
 thought of it and mentioned it in the most scanty measure. 
 She had her own reasons for being less sanguine than ever 
 in hopeful views of the future : less indulgent to pleasurable 
 retrospections of the past. 
 
 ' Of course, then,' observed Miss Keeldar, ' you only just 
 tolerated him, in return ? ' 
 
 ' Shirley, men and women arc so different : tlvy are in 
 such a different position. Women have so few things to 
 think about men so many : you may have a friendship for
 
 232 SHIRLEY 
 
 a man, while he is almost indifferent to you. Much of what 
 cheers your life may be dependent on him, while not a 
 feeling or interest of moment in his eyes may have reference 
 to you. Eobert used to be in the habit of going to London, 
 sometimes for a week or a fortnight together ; well, while he 
 was away, I found his absence a void : there was something 
 wanting ; Briarfield was duller. Of course, I had my usual 
 occupations ; still I missed him. As I sat by myself in the 
 evenings, I used to feel a strange certainty of conviction I 
 cannot describe : that if a magician or a genius had, at that 
 moment, offered me Prince Ali's tube (you remember it in 
 the Arabian Nights ?), and if, with its aid, I had been enabled 
 to take a view of Eobert to see where he was, how occupied 
 I should have learned, in a startling manner, the width of 
 the chasm which gaped between such as he and such as I. 
 I knew that, however my thoughts might adhere to him, his 
 were effectually sundered from me.' 
 
 ' Caroline,' demanded Miss Keeldar, abruptly, ' don't you 
 wish you had a profession a trade ? ' 
 
 'I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often wonder 
 what I came into the world for. I long to have something 
 absorbing and compulsory to fill my head and hands, and to 
 occupy my thoughts.' 
 
 ' Can labour alone make a human being happy ? ' 
 
 ' No ; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us 
 from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. 
 Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, 
 weary, lonely, hopeless life has none.' 
 
 But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make 
 women masculine, coarse, unwomanly.' 
 
 ' And what does it signify, whether unmarried and never- 
 to-be-married women are unattractive and inelegant, or not ? 
 provided only they are decent, decorous, and neat, it is 
 enough. The utmost which ought to be required of old 
 maids, in the way of appearance, is that they should not 
 absolutely offend men's eyes as they pass them in the 
 street; for the rest, they should be allowed, without too
 
 SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 233 
 
 much scorn, to be as absorbed, grave, plain -looking, and 
 plain-dressed as they please.' 
 
 ' You might be an old-maid yourself, Caroline, you speak 
 so earnestly.' 
 
 1 1 shall be one : it is my destiny. I will never marry a 
 Malone or a Sykes and no one else will ever marry me.' 
 
 Here fell a long pause : Shirley broke it. Again the 
 name by which she seemed bewitched was almost the first on 
 her lips. 
 
 ' Lina did not Moore call you Lina sometimes ? ' 
 
 ' Yes : it is sometimes used as the abbreviation of Caroline 
 in his native country. 1 
 
 ' Well, Lina, do you remember my one day noticing an 
 inequality in your hair a curl wanting on that right side 
 and your telling me that it was Robert's fault, as he had 
 once cut therefrom a long lock ? ' 
 
 1 Yes.' 
 
 ' If he is, and always was, as indifferent to you as you say, 
 why did he steal your hair ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know yes, I do : it was my doing, not his. 
 Everything of that sort always was my doing. He was 
 going from home to London, as usual ; and the night before 
 he went, I had found in his sister's workbox a lock of black 
 hair a short, round curl: Hortense told me it was her 
 brother's and a keepsake. He was sitting near the table ; I 
 looked at his head he has plenty of hair ; on the temples 
 were many such round curls. I thought he could spare me 
 one : I knew I should like to have it, and I asked for it. 
 He said, on condition that he might have his choice of a 
 tress from my head : so he got one of my long locks of 
 haii', and I got one of his short ones. I keep his, but, I 
 dare say, he has lost mine. It was my doing, and one of 
 those silly deeds it distresses the heart and sets the face on 
 fire to think of: one of those small but sharp recollections 
 that return, lacerating your self-respect like tiny penknives, 
 and forcing from your lips, as you sit alone, sudden, insane- 
 sounding interjections.'
 
 234 SHIELEY 
 
 ' Caroline ! ' 
 
 ' I do think myself a fool, Shirley, in some respects : I do 
 despise myself. But I said I would not make you my 
 confessor ; for you cannot reciprocate foible for foible : you 
 are not weak. How steadily you watch me now ! turn 
 aside your clear, strong, she-eagle eye ; it is an insult to fix 
 it on me thus.' 
 
 ' What a study of character you are ! Weak, certainly ; 
 but not in the sense you think. Come in ! ' 
 
 This was said in answer to a tap at the door. Miss 
 Keeldar happened to be near it at the moment, Caroline at 
 the other end of the room ; she saw a note put into Shirley's 
 hands, and heard the words ' From Mr. Moore, ma'am.' 
 
 1 Bring candles,' said Miss Keeldar. 
 
 Caroline sat expectant. 
 
 ' A communication on business,' said the heiress ; but 
 when candles were brought, she neither opened nor read it. 
 The Rector's Fanny was presently announced, and the 
 Rector's niece went home.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FUBTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 
 
 I A >I Shirley's nature prevailed at times an easy indolence : 
 there were periods when she took delight in perfect vacancy 
 of hand and eye moments when her thoughts, her simple 
 existence, the fact of the world being around and heaven 
 above her, seemed to yield her such fulness of happiness, 
 that she did not need to lift a finger to increase the joy. 
 Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny 
 afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some 
 tree of friendly umbrage : no society did she need but that 
 of Caroline, and it sufficed if she were within call ; no 
 spectacle did she ask but that of the deep blue sky, and such 
 cloudlets as sailed afar and aloft across its span ; no sound 
 but that of the bee's hum, the leaf's whisper. Her sole book 
 in such hours was the dim chronicle of memory, or the sibyl 
 page of anticipation ; from her young eyes fell on each 
 volume a glorious light to read by ; round her lips at 
 moments played a smile which revealed glimpses of the tale 
 or prophecy : it was not sad, not dark. Fate had been 
 benign to the blissful dreamer, and promised to favour her 
 yet again. In the past were sweet passages ; in her future 
 rosy hopes. 
 
 Yet one day when Caroline drew near to rouse he", 
 thinking she had lain long enough, behold, as she looked 
 down, Shirley's cheek was wet as if with dew : those fine 
 eyes of hers shone humid and brimming. 
 
 ' Shirley, \\hy do you cry ? ' asked Caroline, involuntarily 
 laying stress on you.
 
 336- 
 
 Miss Keeldar smiled, and turned her picturesque head 
 towards the questioner. ' Because it pleases me mightily to 
 cry,' she said ; ' my heart is both sad and glad : but why, 
 you good patient child why do you not bear me company ? 
 I only weep tears, delightful and soon wiped away : you 
 might weep gall, if you choose.' 
 
 ' Why should I weep gall ? ' 
 
 ' Mateless, solitary bird ! ' was the only answer. 
 
 ' And are not you, too, mateless, Shirley ? ' 
 
 ' At heart no.' 
 
 1 Oh ! who nestles there, Shirley ? ' 
 
 But Shirley only laughed gaily at this question, and 
 alertly started up. 
 
 ' I have dreamed,' she said : ' a mere day-dream ; 
 certainly bright, probably baseless ! ' 
 
 Miss Helstone was by this time free enough from 
 illusions : she took a sufficiently grave view of the future, 
 and fancied she knew pretty well how her own destiny and 
 that of some others were tending. Yet old associations 
 retained their influence over her, and it was these, and the 
 power of habit, which still frequently drew her of an evening 
 to the field-stile and the old thorn overlooking the Hollow. 
 
 One night, the night after the incident of the note, she 
 had been at her usual post, watching for her beacon 
 watching vainly ; that evening no lamp was lit. She 
 waited till the rising of certain constellations warned her of 
 lateness, and signed her away. In passing Fieldhead, on 
 her return, its moonlight beauty attracted her glance, and 
 stayed her step an instant. Tree and hall rose peaceful 
 under the night sky and clear full orb ; pearly paleness 
 gilded the building ; mellow brown gloom bosomed it round ; 
 shadows of deep green brooded above its oak-wreathed roof. 
 The broad pavement in front shone pale also ; it gleamed as 
 if some spell had transformed the dark granite to glistering 
 Parian : on the silvery space slept two sable shadows, thrown 
 sharply defined from two human figures. These figures
 
 FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 237 
 
 when first seen were motionless and mute ; presently they 
 moved in harmonious step, and spoke low in harmonious 
 key. Earnest was the gaze that scrutinized them as they 
 emerged from behind the trunk of the cedar. 'Is it 
 Mrs. Pryor and Shirley ? ' 
 
 Certainly it is Shirley. Who else has a shape so lithe, 
 and proud, and graceful ? And her face, too, is visible : her 
 countenance careless and pensive, and musing and mirthful, 
 and mocking and tender. Not fearing the dew, she has not 
 covered her head ; her curls are free : they veil her neck and 
 caress her shoulder with their tendril rings. An ornament 
 of gold gleams through the half-closed folds of the scarf she 
 has wrapped across her bust, and a large bright gem 
 glitters on the white hand which confines it. Yes, that is 
 Shirley. 
 
 Her companion then is, of course, Mrs. Pryor ? 
 
 Yes, if Mrs. Pryor owns six feet of stature, and if she 
 has changed her decent widow's weeds for masculine disguise. 
 The figure walking at Miss Keeldar's side is a man a tall, 
 young, stately man it is her tenant, Robert Moore. 
 
 The pair speak softly, their words are not distinguishable: 
 to remain a moment to gaze is not to be an eavesdropper ; 
 and as the moon shines so clearly and their countenances 
 are so distinctly apparent, who can resist the attraction 
 of such interest ? Caroline it seems cannot, for she lingers. 
 
 There was a time when, on summer nights, Moore had 
 been wont to walk with his cousin, as he was now walking 
 with the heiress. Often had she gone up the Hollow with 
 him after sunset, to scent the freshness of the earth, where 
 a growth of fragrant herbage carpeted a certain narrow 
 terrace, edging a deep ravine, from whose rifted gloom was 
 heard a sound like the spirit of the lonely watercourse, 
 moaning amongst its wet stones, and between its weedy 
 banks, and under its dark bower of alders. 
 
 ' But I used to be closer to him,' thought Caroline : ' he 
 felt no obligation to treat me with homage ; T needed only 
 kindness. He used to hold my hand : he does not touch
 
 238 SHIRLEY 
 
 hers. And yet Shirley is not proud where she loves. There 
 is no haughtiness in her aspect now, only a little in her port ; 
 what is natural to and inseparable from her : what she retains 
 in her most careless as in her most guarded moments. 
 Robert must think, as I think, that he is at this instant 
 looking down on a fine face ; and he must think it with a 
 man's brain, not with mine. She has such generous, yet 
 soft fire in her eyes. She smiles what makes her smile so 
 sweet ? I saw that Robert felt its beauty, and he must have 
 felt it with his man's heart, not with my dim woman's 
 perceptions. They look to me like two great happy spirits : 
 yonder silvered pavement reminds me of that white shore 
 we believe to be beyond the death-flood : they have reached 
 it, they walk there united. And what am I standing 
 here in shadow, shrinking into concealment, my mind 
 darker than my hiding-place ? I am one of this world, no 
 spirit a poor, doomed mortal, who asks, in ignorance and 
 hopelessness, wherefore she was born, to what end she lives ; 
 whose mind for ever runs on the question, how she shall 
 at last encounter, and by whom be sustained through 
 death ? 
 
 ' This is the worst passage I have come to yet : still I 
 was quite prepared for it. I gave Robert up, and I gave 
 him up to Shirley, the first day I heard she was come : the 
 first moment I saw her rich, youthful, and lovely. She 
 has him now : he is her lover ; she is his darling : she will 
 be far more his darling yet when they are married : the 
 more Robert knows of Shirley, the more his soul will cleave 
 to her. They will both be happy, and I do not grudge them 
 their bliss ; but I groan under my own misery : some of my 
 suffering is very acute. Truly, I ought not to have been 
 born : they should have smothered me at the first cry.' 
 
 Here, Shirley stepping aside to gather a dewy flower, 
 she and her companion turned into a path that lay nearer 
 the gate : some of their conversation became audible. Caro- 
 line would not stay to listen : she passed away noiselessly 
 and the moonlight kissed tho wall which her shadow had
 
 FtJRTHtiK COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 239 
 
 dimmed. The reader is privileged to remain, and try what 
 he can make of the discourse. 
 
 ' I cannot conceive why Nature did not give you a 
 bulldog's head, for you have all a bulldog's tenacity,' said 
 Shirley. 
 
 ' Not a flattering idea : am I so ignoble ? ' 
 
 'And something also you have of the same animal's 
 silent ways of going about its work : you give no warning ; 
 you come noiselessly behind, seize fast, and hold on.' 
 
 'This is guess-work; you have witnessed no such feat 
 on my part : in your presence I have been no bulldog.' 
 
 ' Your very silence indicates your race. How little you 
 talk in general, yet how deeply you scheme ! You are far- 
 seeing; you are calculating.' 
 
 ' I know the ways of these people. I have gathered 
 information of their intentions. My note last night informed 
 you that Barraclough's trial had ended in his conviction and 
 sentence to transportation : his associates will plot ven- 
 geance : I shall lay my plans so as to counteract, or, at least, 
 be prepared for theirs ; that is all. Having now given you as 
 clear an explanation as I can, am I to understand that for 
 what I propose doing I have your approbation ? ' 
 
 ' I shall stand by you so long as you remain on the 
 defensive. Yes.' 
 
 ' Good ! Without any aid even opposed or disapproved 
 by you I believe I should have acted precisely as I now 
 intend to act ; but in another spirit. I now feel satisfied. 
 On the whole, I relish the position.' 
 
 ' I dare say you do ; that is evident : you relish the 
 work which lies before you still better than you would relish 
 the execution of a government order for army-cloth.' 
 
 ' I certainly feel it congenial.' 
 
 ' So would old Helstone. It is true there is a shade, of 
 difference in your motives : many shades, perhaps. Shall I 
 speak to Mr. Helstone ? I will, if you like.' 
 
 ' Act as you please : your judgment, Miss Kceldar, will 
 guide you accurately. I could rely on it myself, in a more
 
 240 SHIBLEY 
 
 difficult crisis ; but I should inform you, Mr. Helstone is 
 somewhat prejudiced against me at present.' 
 
 ' I am aware, I have heard all about your differences : 
 depend upon it they will melt away : he cannot resist the 
 temptation of an alliance under present circumstances.' 
 
 ' I should be glad to have him : he is of true metal.' 
 
 1 1 think so also.' 
 
 1 An old blade, and rusted somewhat ; but the edge and 
 temper still excellent.' 
 
 1 Well, you shall have him, Mr. Moore ; that is, if I can 
 win him.' 
 
 ' Whom can you not win ? ' 
 
 1 Perhaps not the Eector ; but I will make the effort.' 
 
 1 Effort ! He will yield for a word a smile.' 
 
 1 By no means. It will cost me several cups of tea, some 
 toast and cake, and an ample measure of remonstrances, 
 expostulations, and persuasions. It grows rather chill.' 
 
 ' I perceive you shiver. Am I acting wrongly to detain 
 you here ? Yet it is so calm : I even feel it warm ; and 
 society such as yours is a pleasure to me so rare. If you 
 were wrapped in a thicker shawl 
 
 ' I might stay longer, and forget how late it is, which 
 would chagrin Mrs. Pryor. We keep early and regular 
 hours at Fieldhead, Mr. Moore ; and so, I am sure, does your 
 sister at the cottage.' 
 
 ' Yes ; but Hortense and I have an understanding the most 
 convenient in the world, that we shall each do as we please." 
 
 1 How do you please to do ? ' 
 
 ' Three nights in the week I sleep in the mill : but I require 
 little rest ; and when it is moonlight and mild, I often haunt 
 the Hollow till daybreak.' 
 
 'When I was a very little girl, Mr. Moore, my nurse 
 used to tell me tales of fairies being seen in that Hollow. 
 That was before my father built the mill, when it was a 
 perfectly solitary ravine : you will be falling under enchant- 
 ment.' 
 
 ' I fear it is done,' said iloore, in a low voice.
 
 FUETHEE COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 241 
 
 ' But there are worse things than fairies to be guarded 
 against,' pursued Miss Keeldar. 
 
 ' Things more perilous,' he subjoined. 
 
 1 Far more so. For instance, how would you like to 
 meet Michael Hartley, that mad Calvinist and Jacobin 
 weaver? They say he is addicted to poaching, and often 
 goes abroad at night with his gun." 
 
 ' I have already had the luck to meet him. We held a 
 long argument together one night. A strange little incident 
 it was : I liked it.' 
 
 ' Liked it.? I admire your taste ! Michael is not sane. 
 Where did you meet him ? ' 
 
 ' In the deepest, shadiest spot in the glen, where the 
 water runs low, under brushwood. We sat down near that 
 plank bridge. It was moonlight, but clouded, and very windy. 
 We had a talk.' 
 
 ' On politics ? ' 
 
 ' And religion. I think the moon was at the full, and 
 Michael was as near crazed as possible : he uttered strange 
 blasphemy in his Antinomian fashion.' 
 
 ' Excuse me, but I think you must have been nearly as 
 mad as he, to sit listening to him.' 
 
 ' There is a wild interest in his ravings. The man would 
 be half a poet, if he were not wholly a maniac ; and perhaps 
 a prophet, if he were not a profligate. He solemnly informed 
 me that hell was fore-ordained my inevitable portion ; that 
 he read the mark of the beast on my brow ; that I had been 
 an outcast from the beginning. God's vengeance, he said, 
 was preparing for me, and he affirmed that in a vision of the 
 night he had beheld the manner and the instrument of my 
 doom. I wanted to know further, but he left me with these 
 words, " The end is not yet." ' 
 
 ' Have you ever seen him since ? ' 
 
 ' About a month afterwards, in returning from market, I 
 encountered him and Moses Barraclough both in an advanced 
 stage of inebriation : they were praying in frantic sort at the 
 roadside. They accosted me as Satan, hid me avaunt, and
 
 242 SHIRLEY 
 
 clamoured to be delivered from temptation. Again, but a 
 few days ago, Michael took the trouble of appearing at the 
 counting-house door, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, his coat 
 and castor having been detained at the public-house in 
 pledge ; he delivered himself of the comfortable message 
 that he could wish Mr. Moore to set his house in order, as 
 his soul was likely shortly to be required of him.' 
 
 1 Do you make light of these things ? ' 
 
 1 The poor man had been drinking for weeks, and was in 
 a state bordering on delirium tremens.' 
 
 ' What then ? He is the more likely to attempt the ful- 
 filment of his own prophecies.' 
 
 ' It would not do to permit incidents of this sort to affect 
 one's nerves.' 
 
 ' Mr. Moore, go home ! ' 
 
 ' So soon ? ' 
 
 ' Pass straight down the fields, not round by the lane and 
 plantations.' 
 
 I It is early yet.' 
 
 ' It is late : for my part I am going in. Will you promise 
 me not to wander in the Hollow to-night ? ' 
 ' If you wish it.' 
 
 I 1 do wish it. May I ask whether you consider life 
 valueless ? ' 
 
 ' By no means : on the contrary, of late I regard my life 
 as invaluable.' 
 
 ' Of late ? ' 
 
 1 Existence is neither aimless nor hopeless to me now ; 
 and it was both three months ago. I was then drowning, 
 and rather wished the operation over. All at once a hand 
 was stretched to me, such a delicate hand, I scarcely dared 
 trust it its strength, however, has rescued me from ruin.' 
 
 ' Are you really rescued ? ' 
 
 1 For the time : your assistance has given me another 
 chance.' 
 
 ' Live to make the best of it. Don't offer yourself as a 
 target to Michael Hartley, and good-night ! '
 
 FUBTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 243 
 
 Miss Helstone was under a promise to spend the evening 
 of the next day at Fieldhead : she kept her promise. Some 
 gloomy hours had she spent in the interval. Most of the 
 time had been passed shut up in her own apartment ; only 
 issuing from it, indeed, to join her uncle at meals, and 
 anticipating inquiries from Fanny by telling her that she 
 was busy altering a dress, and preferred sewing up-stairs, to 
 avoid interruption. 
 
 She did sew : she plied her needle continuously, cease- 
 lessly ; but her brain worked faster than her fingers. Again, 
 and more intensely than ever, she desired a fixed occupation, 
 no matter how onerous, how irksome. Her uncle must 
 be once more entreated, but first she would consult Mrs. 
 Pryor. Her head laboured to frame projects as diligently 
 as her hands to plait and stitch the thin texture of the 
 muslin summer dress spread on the little white couch at the 
 foot of which she sat. Now and then, while thus doubly 
 occupied, a tear would fill her eyes and fall on her busy 
 hands ; but this sign of emotion was rare, and quickly 
 effaced : the sharp pang passed, the dimness cleared from 
 her vision ; she would re-thread her needle, re-arrange tuck 
 and trimming, and work on. 
 
 Late in the afternoon she dressed herself : she reached 
 Fieldhead, and appeared in the oak parlour just as tea was 
 brought in. Shirley asked her why she came so late. 
 
 4 Because I have been making my dress,' said she. 
 4 These fine sunny days began to make me ashamed of 
 my winter merino ; so I have furbished up a lighter gar- 
 ment.' 
 
 In which you look as I like to see you," said Shirley. 
 ' You are a lady-like little person, Caroline : is she not, Mrs. 
 Pryor ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor never paid compliments, and seldom indulged 
 in remarks, favourable or otherwise, on personal appearance. 
 On the present occasion she only swept Caroline's curls 
 from her cheek as she took a seat near her, caressed the 
 oval omliue, and observed, ' You get somewhat thin, my
 
 244 SHIELEY 
 
 love, and somewhat pale. Do you sleep well ? Your eyes 
 have a languid look ; ' and she gazed at her anxiously. 
 
 ' I sometimes dream melancholy dreams," answered 
 Caroline ; ' and if I lie awake for an hour or two in the 
 night, I am continually thinking of the Eectory as a dreary 
 old place. You know it is very near the churchyard : the 
 back part of the house is extremely ancient, and it is said 
 that the out-kitchens there were once enclosed in the church- 
 yard, and that there are graves under them. I rather long to 
 leave the Eectory.' 
 
 ' My dear ! You are surely not superstitious ? ' 
 
 ' No, Mrs. Pryor ; but I think I grow what is called 
 nervous. I see things under a darker aspect than I used to 
 do. I have fears I never used to have not of ghosts, but 
 of omens and disastrous events ; and I have an inexpressible 
 weight on my mind which I would give the world to shake 
 off, and I cannot do it.' 
 
 ' Strange ! ' cried Shirley. ' I never feel so.' Mrs. Pryor 
 said nothing. 
 
 ' Fine weather, pleasant days, pleasant scenes are power- 
 less to give me pleasure,' continued Caroline. ' Calm even- 
 ings are not calm to me : moonlight, which I used to think 
 mild, now only looks mournful. Is this weakness of mind, 
 Mrs. Pryor, or what is it ? I cannot help it : I often struggle 
 against it : I reason : but reason and effort make no difference.' 
 
 ' You should take more exercise,' said Mrs. Pryor. 
 
 1 Exercise ! I exercise sufficiently : I exercise till I am 
 ready to drop.' 
 
 1 My dear, you should go from home.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Pryor, I should like to go from home, but not on 
 any purposeless excursion or visit. I wish to be a governess 
 as you have been. It would oblige me greatly if you w r ould 
 speak to my uncle on the subject.' 
 
 ' Nonsense ! ' broke in Shirley. ' What an idea ! Be a 
 governess ! Better be a slave at once. Where is the 
 necessity of it ? Why should you dream of such a painful 
 step ? '
 
 ' My dear,' said Mrs. Pryor, ' you are very young to be a 
 governess, and not sufficiently robust : the duties a governess 
 undertakes are often severe.' 
 
 ' And I believe I want severe duties to occupy me.' 
 
 ' Occupy you ! ' cried Shirley. ' When are you idle ? I 
 never saw a more industrious girl than you : you are always 
 at work. Come,' she continued, 'come and sit by my 
 side, and take some tea to refresh you. You don't care 
 much for my friendship, then, that you wish to leave me ? ' 
 
 ' Indeed, I do, Shirley : and I don't wish to leave you. I 
 shall never find another friend so dear.' 
 
 At which words Miss Keeldar put her hand into Caroline's 
 with an impulsively affectionate movement, which was well 
 seconded by the expression of her face. 
 
 1 If you think so, you had better make much of me,' she 
 said, ' and not run away from me. I hate to part with those 
 to whom I am become attached. Mrs. Pryor there some- 
 times talks of leaving me, and says I might make a more 
 advantageous connection than herself. I should as soon 
 think of exchanging an old-fashioned mother for something 
 modish and stylish. As for you why I began to flatter 
 myself we were thoroughly friends ; that you liked Shirley 
 almost as well as Shirley likes you : and she does not stint 
 her regard.' 
 
 ' I do like Shirley : I like her more and more every day ; 
 but that does not make me strong or happy.' 
 
 1 And would it make you strong or happy to go and live 
 as a dependent amongst utter strangers ? It would not ; 
 and the experiment must not be tried. I tell you it would 
 fail : it is not in your nature to bear the desolate life gover- 
 nesses generally lead : you would fall ill : I won't hear 
 of it.' 
 
 And Miss Keeldar paused, having uttered this prohibition 
 very decidedly. Soon she recommenced, still looking some- 
 what ' courroucee ' : ' Why, it is my daily pleasure now to 
 look out for the little cottage bonnet and the silk scarf 
 glancing through the trees in the lane, and to know that my
 
 246 SHIRLEY 
 
 quiet, shrewd, thoughtful companion and monitress is 
 coming back to me : that I shall have her sitting in the room 
 to look at, to talk to, or to let alone, as she and I please. 
 This may be a selfish sort of language I know it is ; but it 
 is the language which naturally rises to my lips ; therefore I 
 utter it.' 
 
 1 1 would write to you, Shirley.' 
 
 1 And what are letters ? Only a sort of pis-aller. Drink 
 some tea, Caroline : eat something you eat nothing ; laugh 
 and be cheerful, and stay at home.' 
 
 Miss Helstone shook her head and sighed. She felt 
 what difficulty she would have to persuade any one to assist 
 or sanction her in making that change in her life which she 
 believed desirable. Might she only follow her own judg- 
 ment, she thought she should be able to find, perhaps a 
 harsh, but an effectual cure for her sufferings. But this 
 judgment, founded on circumstances she could fully explain 
 to none, least of all to Shirley, seemed, in all eyes but her 
 own, incomprehensible and fantastic, and was opposed 
 accordingly. 
 
 There really was no present pecuniary need for her to 
 leave a comfortable home and ' take a situation ; ' and there 
 was every probability that her uncle might in some way 
 permanently provide for her. So her friends thought, and, 
 as far as their lights enabled them to see, they reasoned 
 correctly : but of Caroline's strange sufferings, which she 
 desired so eagerly to overcome or escape, they had no idea, 
 of her racked nights and dismal days, no suspicion. It was 
 at once impossible and hopeless to explain : to wait and 
 endure was her only plan. Many that want food and 
 clothing have cheerier lives and brighter prospects than she 
 had ; many, harassed by poverty, are in a strait less afflictive. 
 
 1 Now, is your mind quieted ? ' inquired Shirley. ' Will 
 you consent to stay at home ? ' 
 
 ' I shall not leave it against the approbation of my 
 friends, 1 was the reply ; ' but I think in time they will be 
 obliged to think as I do.'
 
 During this conversation Mrs. Pryor looked far from 
 easy. Her extreme habitual reserve would rarely permit 
 her to talk freely, or to interrogate others closely. She 
 could think a multitude of questions she never ventured to 
 put ; give advice in her mind which her tongue never 
 delivered. Had she been alone with Caroline, she might 
 possibly have said something to the point : Miss Keeldar's 
 presence, accustomed as she was to it, sealed her lips. Now, 
 as on a thousand other occasions, inexplicable nervous 
 scruples kept her back from interfering. She merely showed 
 her concern for Miss Helstone in an indirect way, by asking 
 her if the fire made her too warm, placing a screen between 
 her chair and the hearth, closing a window whence she 
 imagined a draught proceeded, and often and restlessly 
 glancing at her. Shirley resumed, ' Having destroyed 
 your plan,' she said, ' which I hope I have done, I shall 
 construct a new one of my own. Every summer I make an 
 excursion. This season I propose spending two months 
 either at the Scotch lochs or the English lakes : that is, I 
 shall go there, provided you consent to accompany me : if 
 you refuse, I shall not stir a foot.' 
 
 ' You are very good, Shirley.' 
 
 ' I would be very good if you would let me : I have 
 every disposition to be good. It is my misfortune and habit, 
 I know, to think of myself paramount to anybody else : but 
 who is not like me in that respect? However, when 
 Captain Keeldar is made comfortable, accommodated with 
 all he wants, including a sensible genial comrade, it gives 
 him a thorough pleasure to devote his spare efforts to 
 making that comrade happy. And should we not be happy, 
 Caroline, in the Highlands? We will go to the Highlands. 
 We will, if you can bear a sea-voyage, go to the Isles, 
 the Hebrides, the Shetland, the Orkney Islands. Would 
 you not like that ? I see you would : Mrs. Pryor, I call 
 you to witness ; her face is all sunshine at the bare mention 
 of it.' 
 
 ' I should like it much,' returned Caroline ; to whom,
 
 248 SHIRLEY 
 
 indeed, the notion of such a tour was not only pleasant, but 
 gloriously reviving. Shirley rubbed her hands. 
 
 ' Come, I can bestow a benefit,' she exclaimed. ' I can 
 do a good deed with my cash. My thousand a year is not 
 merely a matter of dirty bank-notes and jaundiced guineas 
 (let me speak respectfully of both though, for I adore them) ; 
 but, it may be, health to the drooping, strength to the weak, 
 consolation to the sad. I was determined to make some- 
 thing of it better than a fine old house to live in, than satin 
 gowns to wear ; better than deference from acquaintance, 
 and homage from the poor. Here is to begin. This summer 
 Caroline, Mrs. Pryor, and I go out into the North 
 Atlantic, beyond the Shetland perhaps to the Faroe Isles. 
 We will see seals in Suderoe, and, doubtless, mermaids in 
 Stromoe. Caroline is laughing, Mrs. Pryor : I made her 
 laugh ; I have done her good.' 
 
 'I shall like to go, Shirley,' again said Miss Helstone. 
 1 1 long to hear the sound of waves ocean-waves, and to 
 see them as I have imagined them in dreams, like tossing 
 banks of green light, strewed with vanishing and re-appear- 
 ing wreaths of foam, whiter than lilies. I shall delight to 
 pass the shores of those lone rock-islets where the sea- 
 birds live and breed unmolested. We shall be on the track 
 of the old Scandinavians of the Norsemen: we shall 
 almost see the shores of Norway. This is a very vague 
 delight that I feel, communicated by your proposal, but it is 
 a delight.' 
 
 1 Will you think of Fitful-Head now, when you lie awake 
 at night ; of gulls shrieking round it, and waves tumbling 
 in upon it, rather than of the graves under the Rectory back- 
 kitchen '? ' 
 
 ' I will try ; and instead of musing about remnants of 
 shrouds, and fragments of coffins, and human bones and 
 mould, I will fancy seals lying in the sunshine on solitary 
 shores, where neither fisherman nor hunter ever comes : of 
 rock-crevices full of pearly eggs, bedded in sea-weed ; of 
 unscared birds covering white sands in happy flocks,'
 
 FURTHEB COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 249 
 
 I And what will become of that inexpressible weight you 
 said you had on your mind ? ' 
 
 ' I will try to forget it in speculation on the sway of the 
 whole Great Deep above a herd of whales rushing through 
 the livid and liquid thunder down from the frozen zone : a 
 hundred of them, perhaps, wallowing, flashing, rolling in 
 the wake of a patriarch bull, huge enough to have been 
 spawned before the Flood : such a creature as poor Smart 
 had in his mind when he said, 
 
 Strong against tides the enormous whale 
 Emerges as he goes.' 
 
 ' I hope our bark will meet with no such shoal, or herd, 
 as you term it, Caroline : (I suppose you fancy the sea- 
 mammoths pasturing about the bases of the " everlasting 
 hills," devouring strange provinder in the vast valleys 
 through and above which sea-billows roll). I should not 
 like to be capsized by the patriarch bull.' 
 
 I 1 suppose you expect to see mermaids, Shirley ? ' 
 
 1 One of them at any rate : I do not bargain for less : and 
 she is to appear in some such fashion as this. I am to be 
 walking by myself on deck, rather late of an August evening, 
 watching and being watched by a full harvest-moon : 
 something is to rise white on the surface of the sea, over 
 which that moon mounts silent, and hangs glorious : the 
 object glitters and sinks. It rises again. I think I hear it 
 cry with an articulate voice : I call you up from the cabin : 
 I show you an image, fair as alabaster, emerging from the 
 dim wave. We both see the long hair, the lifted and foam- 
 white arm, the oval mirror, brilliant as a star. It glides 
 nearer : a human face is plainly visible ; a face in the style. 
 of yours, whose straight, pure (excuse the word, it is appro- 
 priate), whose straight, pure lineaments, paleness does not 
 disfigure. It looks at us, but not with your eyes. I see a 
 preternatural lure in its wily glance : it beckons. Were we 
 men, we should spring at the sign, the cold billow would be 
 dared for the sake of the colder enchantress ; being women,
 
 250 SHIKLEY 
 
 we stand safe, though not dreadless. She comprehends our 
 unmoved gaze ; shef eels herself powerless ; anger crosses her 
 front ; she cannot charm, but she will appal us : she rises high, 
 and glides all revealed, on the dark wave-ridge. Temptress- 
 terror ! monstrous likeness of ourselves ! Are you not glad, 
 Caroline, when at last, and with a wild shriek, she dives ? ' 
 
 ' But, Shirley, she is not like us : we are neither temp- 
 tresses, nor terrors, nor monsters.' 
 
 ' Some of our kind, it is said, are all three. There are 
 men who ascribe to " woman," in general, such attributes.' 
 
 'My dears,' here interrupted Mrs. Pryor, 'does it not 
 strike you that your conversation for the last ten minutes 
 has been rather fanciful ? ' 
 
 ' But there is no harm in our fancies : is there, ma'am ? ' 
 
 ' We are aware that mermaids do not exist : why speak of 
 them as if they did ? How can you find interest in speaking 
 of a nonentity ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know,' said Shirley. 
 
 ' My dear, I think there is an arrival. I heard a step in 
 the lane, while you were talking ; and is not that the garden- 
 gate which creaks ? ' 
 
 Shirley stepped to the window. 
 
 ' Yes, there is some one,' said she, turning quietly away ; 
 and, as she resumed her seat, a sensitive flush animated 
 her face, while a trembling ray at once kindled and softened 
 her eye. She raised her hand to her chin, cast her gaze 
 down, and seemed to think as she waited. 
 
 The servant announced Mr. Moore, and Shirley turned 
 round when Mr. Moore appeared at the door. His figure 
 seemed very tall as he entered, and stood in contrast with 
 the three ladies, none of whom could boast a stature much 
 beyond the average. He was looking well, better than he 
 had been known to look for the past twelve months : a sort 
 of renewed youth glowed in his eye and colour, and an 
 invigorated hope and settled purpose sustained his bearing : 
 firmness his countenance still indicated, but not austerity : 
 it looked as cheerful as it was earnest.
 
 FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 251 
 
 ' I am just returned from Stilbro',' he said to Miss 
 Keeldar, as he greeted her ; ' and I thought I would call to 
 impart to you the result of my mission.' 
 
 ' You did right not to keep me in suspense,' she said ; 
 ' and your visit is well-timed. Sit down : we have not 
 finished tea. Are you English enough to relish tea ; or do 
 you faithfully adhere to coffee ? ' 
 
 Moore accepted tea. 
 
 ' I am learning to be a naturalised Englishman,' said he ; 
 ' my foreign habits are leaving me one by one.' 
 
 And now he paid his respects to Mrs. Pryor, and paid 
 them well, with a grave modesty that became his age, com- 
 pared with hers. Then he looked at Caroline not, however, 
 for the first time his glance had fallen upon her before : he 
 bent towards her as she sat, gave her his hand, and asked her 
 how she was. The light from the window did not fall upon Miss 
 Helstone, her back was turned towards it : a quiet though 
 rather low reply, a still demeanour, and the friendly protec- 
 tion of early twilight, kept out of view each traitorous 
 symptom. None could affirm that she had trembled or blushed, 
 that her heart had quaked, or her nerves thrilled : none 
 could prove emotion : a greeting showing less effusion was 
 never interchanged. Moore took the empty chair near her, 
 opposite Miss Keeldar. He had placed himself well : his 
 neighbour, screened by the very closeness of his vicinage 
 from his scrutiny, and sheltered further by the dusk which 
 deepened eacli moment, soon regained, not merely seeming, 
 but real mastery of the feelings which had started into 
 insurrection at the first announcement of his name. 
 He addressed his conversation to Miss Keeldar. 
 ' I went to the barracks,' he said, ' and had an interview 
 with Colonel Ryde : he approved my plans, and promised 
 the aid I wanted : indeed, he offered a more numerous force 
 than I require half-a-dozen will suffice. I don't intend to 
 be swamped by red-coats ; they are needed for appearance 
 rather than anything else : my main reliance is on my own 
 civilians.'
 
 252 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' And on their Captain,' intei-posed Shirley. 
 
 'What, Captain Keeldar?' inquired Moore, slightly 
 smiling, and not lifting his eyes : the tone of raillery in which 
 he said this was very respectful and suppressed. 
 
 ' No,' returned Shii'ley, answering the smile ; ' Captain 
 Gerard Moore, who trusts much to the prowess of his own 
 right arm, I believe." 
 
 ' Furnished with his counting-house ruler,' added Moore. 
 Resuming his usual gravity, he went on : ' I received by this 
 evening's post a note from the Home-Secretary in answer to 
 mine : it appears they are uneasy at the state of matters here 
 in the north ; they especially condemn the supineness and 
 pusillanimity of the mill-owners ; they say, as I have always 
 said, that inaction, under present circumstances, is criminal, 
 and that cowardice is cruelty, since both can only encourage 
 disorder, and lead finally to sanguinary outbreaks. There is 
 the note : I brought it for your perusal ; and there is a batch 
 of newspapers, containing further accounts of proceedings 
 in Nottingham, Manchester, and elsewhere.' 
 
 He produced letters and journals, and laid them before 
 Miss Keeldar. While she perused them, he took his tea 
 quietly ; but, though his tongue was still, his observant 
 faculties seemed by no means off duty. Mrs. Pryor, sitting 
 in the background, did not come within the range of his 
 glance, but the two younger ladies had the full benefit thereof. 
 
 Miss Keeldar, placed directly opposite, was seen without 
 effort : she was the object his eyes, when lifted, naturally 
 met first ; and, as what remained of daylight the gilding of 
 the west was upon her, her shape rose in relief from the 
 dark panelling behind. Shirley's clear cheek was tinted yet 
 with the colour which had risen into it a few minutes since : 
 the dark lashes of her eyes looking down as she read, the 
 dusk yet delicate line of her eyebrows, the almost sable gloss 
 of her curls, made her heightened complexion look fine as 
 the bloom of a red wild-flower, by contrast. There was 
 natural grace in her attitude, and there was artistic effect in 
 the ample and shining foils of her silk dress- an attire
 
 simply fashioned, but almost splendid from the shifting 
 brightness of its dye, warp and woof being of tints deep and 
 changing as the hue on a pheasant's neck. A glancing 
 bracelet on her arm produced the contrast of gold and ivory : 
 there was something brilliant in the whole picture. It is to 
 be supposed that Moore thought so, as his eye dwelt long on 
 it, but he seldom permitted his feelings or his opinions to 
 exhibit themselves in his face : his temperament boasted a 
 certain amount of phlegm, and he preferred an undemon- 
 strative, not ungentle, but serious aspect, to any other. 
 
 He could not, by looking straight before him, see Caroline, 
 as she was close at his side ; it was necessary, therefore, to 
 manoeuvre a little to get her well within the range of his 
 observation : he leaned back in his chair, and looked down 
 on her. In Miss Helstone, neither he nor any one else 
 could discover brilliancy. Sitting in the shade, without 
 flowers or ornaments, her attire the modest muslin dress, 
 colourless but for its narrow stripe of pale azure, her 
 complexion unflushed, unexcited, the very bvownness of her 
 hair and eyes invisible by this faint light, she was, compared 
 with the heiress, as a graceful pencil-sketch compared with 
 a vivid painting. Since Robert had seen her last, a great 
 change had been wrought in her ; whether he perceived 
 it, might not be ascertained : he said nothing to that 
 effect. 
 
 ' How is Hortense ? ' asked Caroline softly. 
 
 ' Very well ; but she complains of being unemployed ; 
 she misses you.' 
 
 1 Tell her that I miss her, and that I write and read a 
 portion of French every day.' 
 
 ' She will ask if you sent your love : she is always 
 particular on that point. You know she likes attention.' 
 
 1 My best love my very best ; and say to her, that 
 whenever she has time to write me a little note, I shall be 
 glad to hear from her.' 
 
 ' What if I forget ? I am not the surest messenger of 
 compliments.'
 
 254 
 
 ' No, don't forget, Eobert : it is no compliment it is in 
 good earnest.' 
 
 ' And must therefore be delivered punctually ? ' 
 
 ' If you please.' 
 
 ' Hortense will be ready to shed tears. She is tender- 
 hearted on the subject of her pupil ; yet she reproaches you 
 sometimes for obeying your uncle's injunctions too literally. 
 Affection, like love, will be unjust now and then.' 
 
 And Caroline made no answer to this observation ; for 
 indeed her heart was troubled, and to her eyes she would 
 have raised her handkerchief, if she had dared. If she had 
 dared, too, she would have declared how the very flowers in 
 the garden of Hollow's cottage were dear to her ; how the 
 little parlour of that house was her earthly paradise ; how 
 she longed to return to it, as much almost as the First 
 Woman, in her exile, must have longed to revisit Eden. 
 Not daring, however, to say these things, she held her peace : 
 she sat quiet at Kobert's side, waiting for him to say some- 
 thing more. It was long since this proximity had been hers 
 long since his voice had addressed her : could she, with 
 any show of probability, even of possibility, have imagined 
 that the meeting gave him pleasure, to her it would have 
 given deep bliss. Yet, even in doubt that it pleased in 
 dread that it might annoy him she received the boon of the 
 meeting as an imprisoned bird would the admission of sun- 
 shine to its cage : it was of no use arguing contending 
 against the sense of present happiness : to be near Robert 
 was to be revived. 
 
 Miss Keeldar laid down the papers. 
 
 ' And are you glad or sad for all these menacing tidings ? ' 
 she inquired of her tenant. 
 
 ' Not precisely either ; but I certainly am instructed. I 
 see that our only plan is to be firm. I see that efficient 
 preparation and a resolute attitude are the best means of 
 averting bloodshed." 
 
 He then inquired if she had observed some particular 
 paragraph, to which she replied in the negative, and he rose
 
 to show it to her : he continued the conversation standing 
 before her. From the tenor of what he said, it appeared 
 evident that they both apprehended disturbances in the 
 neighbourhood of Briarfield, though in what form they 
 expected them to break out was not specified. Neither 
 Caroline nor Mrs. Pryor asked questions : the subject did 
 not appear to be regarded as one ripe for free discussion ; 
 therefore the lady and her tenant were suffered to keep 
 details to themselves, unimportuned by the curiosity of 
 their listeners. 
 
 Miss Keeldar, in speaking to Mr. Moore, took a tone at 
 once animated and dignified, confident! aland self-respecting. 
 When, however, the candles were brought in, and the fire 
 was stirred up, and the fulness of light thus produced 
 rendered the expression of her countenance legible, you 
 could see that she was all interest, life, and earnestness : 
 there was nothing coquettish in her demeanour : whatever 
 she felt for Moore, she felt it seriously. And serious, too, 
 were his feelings, and settled were his views, apparently; 
 for he made no petty effort to attract, dazzle, or impress. 
 He contrived, notwithstanding, to command a little ; 
 because the deeper voice, however mildly modulated, the 
 somewhat harder mind, now and then, though involun- 
 tarily and unintentionally, bore down by some peremptory 
 phrase or tone the mellow accents and susceptible, if 
 high, nature of Shirley. Miss Keeldar looked happy in 
 conversing with him, and her joy seemed twofold, a joy of 
 the past and present, of memory and of hope. 
 
 What I have just said are Caroline's ideas of the pair: 
 she felt what has just been described. In thus feeling, she 
 tried not to suffer ; but suffered sharply, nevertheless. She 
 suffered, indeed, miserably : a few minutes before, her 
 famished heart had tasted a drop and crumb of nourishment 
 that, if freely given, would have brought back abundance of 
 life where life was failing ; but the generous feast was 
 snatched from her, spread before another, and she remained 
 but a bystander at the banquet.
 
 256 SHIRLEY 
 
 The clock struck nine : it was Caroline's time for going 
 home : she gathered up her work, put the embroidery, the 
 scissors, the thimble into her bag : she bade Mrs. Pryor a 
 quiet good-night, receiving from that lady a warmer pressure 
 of the hand than usual : she stepped up to Miss Keeldar. 
 
 ' Good-night, Shirley ! ' 
 
 Shirley started up. ' What 1 BO soon ? Are you going 
 already ? ' 
 
 ' It is past nine.' 
 
 'I never heard the clock. You will come again to- 
 morrow, and you will be happy to-night, will you not? 
 Remember our plans.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Caroline ; ' I have not forgotten.' 
 
 Her mind misgave her that neither those plans nor any 
 other could permanently restore her mental tranquillity. 
 She turned to Robert, who stood close behind her : as he 
 looked up, the light of the candles on the mantelpiece fell 
 full on her face : all its paleness, all its change, all its for- 
 lorn meaning were clearly revealed. Robert had good eyes, 
 and might have seen it, if he would : whether he did see it, 
 nothing indicated. 
 
 ' Good-night ! ' she said, shaking like a leaf, offering her 
 thin hand hastily, anxious to part from him quickly. 
 
 1 You are going home ? ' he asked, not touching her hand. 
 
 I Yes.' 
 
 ' Is Fanny come for you ? ' 
 'Yes.' 
 
 I 1 may as well accompany you a step of the way : not 
 up to the Rectory, though, lest my old friend, Helstone, 
 should shoot me from the window.' 
 
 He laughed and took his hat. Caroline spoke of 
 unnecessary trouble : he told her to put on her bonnet and 
 shawl. She was quickly ready, and they were soon both in 
 the open air. Moore drew her hand under his arm, just in 
 his old manner, that manner which she ever felt to be so 
 kind. 
 
 ' You may run on, Fanny,' he said to the housemaid ;
 
 FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 257 
 
 ' we shall overtake you : ' and when the girl had got a little 
 in advance, he enclosed Caroline's hand in his, and said he 
 was glad to find she was a familiar guest at Fieldhead : he 
 hoped her intimacy with Miss Keeldar would continue ; 
 such society would be both pleasant and improving. 
 
 Caroline replied that she liked Shirley. 
 
 ' And there is no doubt the liking is mutual,' said Moore : 
 ' if she professes friendship, be certain she is sincere : she 
 cannot feign ; she scorns hypocrisy. And, Caroline, are we 
 never to see you at Hollow's cottage again ? ' 
 
 'I suppose not, unless my uncle should change his 
 mind." 
 
 ' Are you much alone now ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; a good deal. I have little pleasure in any society 
 but Miss Keeldar's.' 
 
 ' Have you been quite well lately ? ' 
 
 ' Quite.' 
 
 ' You must take care of yourself. Be sure not to neglect 
 exercise. Do you know I fancied you somewhat altered ; 
 a little fallen away, and pale ? Is your uncle kind to you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, he is just as he always is.' 
 
 ' Not too tender, that is to say ; not too protective and 
 attentive. And what ails you, then ? tell me Lina.' 
 
 ' Nothing, Robert : ' but her voice faltered. 
 
 ' That is to say, nothing that you will tell me : I am not 
 to be taken into confidence. Separation is then quite to 
 estrange us, is it ? ' 
 
 ' I do not know : sometimes I almost fear it is.' 
 
 ' But it ought not to have that effect. " Should auld 
 acquaintance be forgot, and days o* lang syne ? " 
 
 ' Robert, I don't forget.' 
 
 1 It is two months, I should think, Caroline, since you 
 were at the cottage.' 
 
 ' Since I was within it yes.' 
 
 I Have you ever passed that way in your walk ? ' 
 
 I 1 have come to the top of the fields sometimes of an 
 evening, and looked down. Once I saw Hortense in the
 
 258 SHIRLEY 
 
 garden watering her flowers, and I know at what time you 
 light your lamp in the counting-house : I have waited for it 
 to shine out now and then ; and I have seen you bend 
 between it and the window : I knew it was you I could 
 almost trace the outline of your form.' 
 
 ' I wonder I never encountered you : I occasionally walk 
 to the top of the Hollow's fields after sunset.' 
 
 ' I know you do : I had almost spoken to you one night, 
 you passed so near me.' 
 
 ' Did I ? I passed near you, and did not see you ! Was 
 I alone ? ' 
 
 ' I saw you twice, and neither time were you alone.' 
 
 1 Who was my companion ? Probably no one but Joe 
 Scott, or my own shadow by moonlight.' 
 
 ' No ; neither Joe Scott nor your shadow, Robert. The 
 first time you were with Mr. Yorke ; and the second time 
 what you call your shadow was a shape with a white fore- 
 head and dark curls, and a sparkling necklace round its 
 neck ; but I only just got a glimpse of you and that fairy 
 shadow : I did not wait to hear you converse.' 
 
 ' It appears you walk invisible. I noticed a ring on 
 your hand this evening ; can it be the ring of Gygcs ? 
 Henceforth, when sitting in the counting-house by myself, 
 perhaps at dead of night, I shall permit myself to imagine 
 that Caroline may be leaning over my shoulder reading with 
 me from the same book, or sitting at my side engaged in her 
 own particular task, and now and then raising her unseen 
 eyes to my face to read there my thoughts.' 
 
 ' You need fear no such infliction : I do not come near 
 you : I only stand afar off, watching what may become of you. 
 
 ' When I walk out along the hedgerows in the evening 
 after the mill is shut- or at night, when I take the watch - 
 man's place I shall fancy the flutter of every little bird 
 over its nest, the rustle of every leaf, a movement made by 
 you ; tree-shadows will take your shape ; in the white sprays 
 of hawthorn, I shall imagine glimpses of you. Lina, you 
 will haunt me.'
 
 FUKTHEB COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 259 
 
 ' I will never be where you would not wish me to be, nor 
 see nor hear what you would wish unseen and unheard.' 
 
 ' I shall see you in my very mill in broad daylight : 
 indeed, I have seen you there once. But a week ago, I was 
 standing at the top of one of my long rooms, girls were 
 working at the other end, and amongst half a dozen of them, 
 moving to and fro, I seemed to see a figure resembling yours. 
 It was some effect of doubtful light or shade, or of dazzling 
 sunbeam. I walked up to this group ; what I sought had 
 glided away : I found myself between two buxom lasses in 
 pinafores.' 
 
 ' I shall not follow you into your mill, Robert, unless you 
 call me there.' 
 
 ' Nor is that the only occasion on which imagination has 
 played me a trick. One night, when I came home late from 
 market, I walked into the cottage parlour thinking to find 
 Hortense ; but instead of her, I thought I found you. 
 There was no candle in the room : my sister had taken the 
 light upstairs with her ; the window-blind was not drawn, 
 and broad moonbeams poured through the panes ; there you 
 were, Lina, at the casement, shrinking a little to one side in 
 an attitude not unusual with you. You were dressed in 
 white, as I have seen you dressed at an evening-party. For 
 half a second, your fresh, living face seemed turned towards 
 me, looking at me ; for half a second, my idea was to go and 
 take your hand, to chide you for your long absence, and 
 welcome your present visit. Two steps forward broke the 
 spell : the drapery of the dress changed outline ; the tints 
 of the complexion dissolved, and were formless : positively, 
 as 1 reached the spot, there was nothing left but the sweep 
 of a white muslin curtain, and a balsam plant in a 
 flower-pot, covered with a blush of bloom " sic transit," et 
 cetera.' 
 
 ' It was not my wraith, then ? I almost thought it 
 was.' 
 
 ' No ; only gauze, crockery, and pink blossom : a sample 
 of earthly illusions.'
 
 260 SHIBLEY 
 
 1 1 wonder you have time for such illusions, occupied as 
 your mind must be.' 
 
 ' So do I. But I find in myself, Lina, two natures ; one 
 for the world and business, and one for home and leisure. 
 Gerard Moore is a hard dog, brought up to mill and market : 
 the person you call your cousin Robert is sometimes a dreamer, 
 who lives elsewhere than in Cloth-hall and counting-house.' 
 
 'Your two natures agree with you: I think you are 
 looking in good spirits and health : you have quite lost that 
 harassed air which it often pained one to see in your face a 
 few months ago.' 
 
 ' Do you observe that ? Certainly, I am disentangled of 
 some difficulties : I have got clear of some shoals, and have 
 more sea-room.' 
 
 ' And, with a fair wind, you may now hope to make a 
 prosperous voyage ? ' 
 
 1 1 may Jwpe it yes but hope is deceptive : there is no 
 controlling wind or wave : gusts and swells perpetually 
 trouble the mariner's course ; he dare not dismiss from his 
 mind the expectation of tempest.' 
 
 ' But you are ready for a breeze you are a good seaman 
 an able commander : you are a skilful pilot, Robert : you 
 will weather the storm.' 
 
 ' My kinswoman always thinks the best of me, but I will 
 take her words for a propitious omen ; J will consider that 
 in meeting her to-night, I have met with one of those birds 
 whose appearance is to the sailor the harbinger of good- 
 luck.' 
 
 ' A poor harbinger of good-luck is she who can do 
 nothing who has no power. I feel my incapacity '. it is of 
 no use saying I have the will to serve you, when I cannot 
 prove it ; yet I have that will. I wish you success ; I wish 
 you high fortune and true happiness.' 
 
 ' When did you ever wish me anything else ? What is 
 Fanny waiting for I told her to walk on ? Oh ! we have 
 reached the churchyard : then, we are to part here, I 
 suppose : we might have sat a few minutes in the church-
 
 FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 261 
 
 porch, if the girl had not been with us. It is so fine a night, 
 so summer-mild and still, I have no particular wish to 
 return yet to the Hollow.' 
 
 'But we cannot sit in the porch now, Robert.' 
 
 Caroline said this because Moore was turning her round 
 towards it. 
 
 ' Perhaps not, but tell Fanny to go in ; say we are coming : 
 a few minutes will make no difference.' 
 
 The church-clock struck ten. 
 
 ' My uncle will be coming out to take his usual sentinel 
 round, and he always surveys the church and churchyard. 1 
 
 1 And if he does ? If it were not for Fanny, who knows 
 we are here, I should find pleasure in dodging and eluding 
 him. We could be under the east window when he is at the 
 porch ; as he came round to the north side, we could wheel 
 off to the south ; we might at a pinch hide behind some of 
 the monuments : that tall erection of the Wynnes would 
 screen us completely.' 
 
 1 Robert, what good spirits you have ! Go go ! ' added 
 Caroline hastily, ' I hear the front door ' 
 
 ' I don't want to go ; on the contrary, I want to stay.' 
 
 ' You know my uncle will be terribly angry : he forbade 
 me to see you because you are a Jacobin.' 
 
 ' A queer Jacobin ! ' 
 
 ' Go, Robert, he is coming ; I hear him cough.' 
 
 ' Diable 1 It is strange what a pertinacious wish I 
 feel to stay ! ' 
 
 ' You remember what he did to Fanny's ' began 
 
 Caroline, and stopped abruptly short. Sweetheart was the 
 word that ought to have followed, but she could not utter it ; 
 it seemed calculated to suggest ideas she had no intention 
 to suggest ; ideas delusive and disturbing. Moore was less 
 scrupulous ; ' Fanny's sweetheart ? ' he said at once. ' He 
 gave him a shower-bath under the pump did he not? He'd 
 do as much for me, I daresay, with pleasure. I should like to 
 provoke the old Turk- -not however against you : but he would 
 make a distinction between a cousin and a lover, would he not ?
 
 262 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 Oh ! he would not think of you in that way, of course 
 not ; his quarrel with you is entirely political ; yet I should 
 not like the breach to be widened, and he is so testy. Here 
 he is at the garden-gate for your own sake and mine, 
 Robert, go ! ' 
 
 The beseeching words were aided by a beseeching 
 gesture and a more beseeching look. Moore covered her 
 clasped hands an instant with his, answered her upward by 
 a downward gaze, said ' Good-night ! ' and went. 
 
 Caroline was in a moment at the kitchen-door behind 
 Fanny; the shadow of the shovel-hat at that very instant 
 fell on a moonlit tomb ; the Rector emerged, erect as a cane, 
 from his garden, and proceeded in slow march, his hands 
 behind him, down the cemetery. Moore was almost caught : 
 he had to ' dodge ' after all, to coast round the church, and 
 finally to bend his tall form behind the Wynnes' ambitious 
 monument. There he was forced to hide full ten minutes, 
 kneeling with one knee on the turf, his hat off, his curls bare 
 to the dew, his dark eye shining, and his lips parted with 
 inward laughter at his position : for the Rector meantime 
 stood coolly star-gazing, and taking snuff within three feet 
 of him. 
 
 It happened, however, that Mr. Helstone had no suspicion 
 whatever on his mind ; for being usually but vaguely 
 informed of his niece's movements, not thinking it worth 
 while to follow them closely, he was not aware that she had 
 been out at all that day, and imagined her then occupied 
 with book or work in her chamber : where, indeed, she was 
 by this time ; though not absorbed in the tranquil employ- 
 ment he ascribed to her, but standing at her window with 
 fast-throbbing heart, peeping anxiously from behind the 
 blind, watching for her uncle to re-enter and her cousin to 
 escape ; and at last she was gratified ; she heard Mr. Hel- 
 stone come in ; she saw Robert stride the tombs and vault 
 the wall ; she then went down to prayers. When sho 
 returned to her chamber, it was to meet the memory of 
 Robert. Slumber's visitation was long averted: long she
 
 FtJKTHEK COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 263 
 
 sat at her lattice, long gazed down on the old garden and 
 older church, on the tombs laid out all gray and calm, and 
 clear in moonlight. She followed the steps of the night, on 
 its pathway of stars, far into the ' wee sma' hours ayont the 
 twal : ' she was with Moore, in spirit, the whole time : she 
 was at his side : she heard his voice : she gave her hand into 
 his hand ; it rested warm in his fingers. When the church- 
 clock struck, when any other sound stirred, when a little 
 mouse familiar to her chamber, an intruder for which she 
 would never permit Fanny to lay a trap, came rattling 
 amongst the links of her locket chain, her one ring, and 
 another trinket or two, on the toilette-table, to nibble a bit 
 of biscuit laid ready for it, she looked up, recalled momen- 
 tarily to the real. Then she said half aloud, as if deprecating 
 the accusation of some unseen and unheard monitor, ' I am 
 not cherishing love-dreams : I am only thinking because I 
 cannot sleep ; of course, I know he will marry Shirley.' 
 
 With returning silence, with the lull of the chime, and 
 the retreat of her small untamed and unknown protg6, she 
 still resumed the dream, nestling to the vision's side, 
 listening to, conversing with it. It paled at last : as dawn 
 approached, the setting stars and breaking day dimmed the 
 creation of Fancy : the wakened song of birds hushed her 
 whispers. The tale full of fire, quick with interest, borne 
 away by the morning wind, became a vague murmur. The 
 shape that, seen in a moonbeam, lived, had a pulse, had 
 movement, wore health's glow and youth's freshness, turned 
 cold and ghostly gray, confronted with the red of sunrise. 
 It wasted. She was left solitary at last : she crept to her 
 couch, chill and dejected.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 
 
 ' OF course, I know he will marry Shirley,' were her first 
 
 words when she rose in the morning. ' And he ought to 
 
 marry her : she can help him,' she added firmly. ' But I 
 
 shall be forgotten when they are married," was the cruel 
 
 succeeding thought. ' Oh ! I shall be wholly forgotten ! 
 
 And what what shall I do when Robert is taken quite from 
 
 me? Where shall I turn? My Robert! I wish I could 
 
 justly call him mine : but I am poverty and incapacity ; 
 
 Shirley is wealth and power : and she is beauty too, and 
 
 love I cannot deny it. This is no sordid suit : she loves 
 
 him not with inferior feelings : she loves, or will love, as 
 
 he must feel proud to be loved. Not a valid objection can 
 
 be made. Let them be married then : but afterwards I shall 
 
 be nothing to him. As for being his sister, and all that stuff, 
 
 I despise it. I will either be all or nothing to a man like 
 
 Robert : no feeble shuffling, or false cant, is endurable. 
 
 Once let that pair be united, and I will certainly leave them. 
 
 As for lingering about, playing the hypocrite, and pretending 
 
 to calm sentiments of friendship, when my soul will be 
 
 wrung with other feelings, I shall not descend to such 
 
 degradation. As little could 1 fill the place of their mutual 
 
 friend as that of their deadly foe : as little could I stand 
 
 between them as trample over them. Robert is a first-rate 
 
 man in my eyes : I have loved, do love, and must love him. 
 
 I would be his wife, if I could ; as 1 cannot, 1 must go where 
 
 I shall never see him. There is but one alternative to 
 
 cleave to him as if I were a part ol him, or to be sundered
 
 SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 265 
 
 from him wide as the two poles of a sphere. Sunder me 
 then, Providence. Part us speedily.' 
 
 Some such aspirations as these were again working in 
 her mind late in the afternoon, when the apparition of one 
 of the personages haunting her thoughts passed the parlour 
 window. Miss Keeldar sauntered slowly by : her gait, her 
 countenance wearing that mixture of wistfulness and care- 
 lessness which, when quiescent, was the wonted cast of her 
 look, and character of her bearing. When animated, the 
 carelessness quite vanished, the wistfulness became blent 
 with a genial gaiety, seasoning the laugh, the smile, the 
 glance, with a unique flavour of sentiment, so that mirth 
 from her never resembled ' the crackling of thorns under 
 a pot.' 
 
 ' What do you mean by not coming to see me this after- 
 noon, as you promised ? ' was her address to Caroline as she 
 entered the room. 
 
 ' I was not in the humour,' replied Miss Helstone, very 
 truly. 
 
 Shirley had already fixed on her a penetrating eye. 
 ' No,' she said : ' I see you are not in the humour for 
 loving me : you are in one of your sunless, inclement moods, 
 when one feels a fellow-creature's presence is not welcome 
 to you. You have such moods : are you aware of it ? ' 
 ' Do you mean to stay long, Shirley ? ' 
 1 Yes : I am come to have my tea, and must have it before 
 I go. I shall take the liberty then of removing my bonnet 
 without being asked.' 
 
 And this she did, and then stood on the rug with her 
 hands behind her. 
 
 ' A pretty expression you have in your countenance,' she 
 went on, still gazing keenly, though not iniimcally, rather 
 indeed pityingly at Caroline. ' Wonderfully self-supported 
 you look, you solitude-seeking, wounded deer. Are you 
 afraid Shirley will worry you, if she discovers that you are 
 hurt, and that you bleed ? ' 
 ' I never do fear Shirley.'
 
 266 SHIRLEY 
 
 'But sometimes you dislike her: often you avoid her. 
 Shirley can feel when she is slighted and shunned. If you 
 had not walked home in the company you did last night, you 
 would have been a different girl to-day. What time did you 
 reach the Rectory ? ' 
 
 ' By ten.' 
 
 ' Humph ! You took three-quarters of an hour to walk a 
 mile. Was it you, or Moore, who lingered so ? ' 
 
 ' Shirley, you talk nonsense.' 
 
 ' He talked nonsense that I doubt not ; or he looked it, 
 which is a thousand times worse : I see the reflection of his 
 eyes on your forehead at this moment. I feel disposed to call 
 him out, if I could only get a trustworthy second : I feel 
 desperately irritated : I felt so last night, and have felt it all 
 day.' 
 
 1 You don't ask me why,' she proceeded, after a pause, 
 ' you little, silent, over-modest thing ; and you don't deserve 
 that I should pour out my secrets into your lap without an 
 invitation. Upon my word, I could have found it in my 
 heart to have dogged Moore yesterday evening with dire 
 intent : I have pistols, and can use them.' 
 
 ' Stuff, Shirley ? Which would you have shot me or 
 Robert ? ' 
 
 ' Neither, perhaps perhaps myself more likely a bat 
 or a tree-bough. He is a puppy your cousin : a quiet, 
 serious, sensible, judicious, ambitious puppy. I see him 
 standing before me, talking his half-stern, half-gentle talk, 
 bearing me down (as I am very conscious he does) with his 
 
 fixity of purpose, &c. ; and then 1 have no patience with 
 
 him ! ' 
 
 Miss Keeldar started off on a rapid walk through the 
 room, repeating energetically that she had no patience with 
 men in general, and with her tenant in particular. 
 
 ' You are mistaken,' urged Caroline, in some anxiety : 
 1 Robert is no puppy or male flirt ; I can vouch for that.' 
 
 ' You vouch for it ! Do you think I'll take your word on 
 the subject ? There is no one's testimony I would not credit
 
 SH1BLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 267 
 
 sooner than yours. To advance Moore's fortune, you would 
 cut off your right hand.' 
 
 1 But not tell lies ; and if I speak the truth, I must assure 
 you that he was just civil to me last night that was all.' 
 
 ' I never asked what he was I can guess : I saw him 
 from the window take your hand in his long fingers, just as 
 he went out at my gate.' 
 
 ' That is nothing. I am not a stranger, you know : I am 
 an old acquaintance, and his cousin.' 
 
 ' I feel indignant ; and that is the long and short of the 
 matter,' responded Miss Keeldar. ' All my comfort,' she 
 added presently, ' is broken up by his manoeuvres. He 
 keeps intruding between you and me : without him we 
 should be good friends ; but that six feet of puppyhood 
 makes a perpetually recurring eclipse of our friendship. 
 Again and again he crosses and obscures the disk I want 
 always to see clear : ever and anon he renders me to you a 
 mere bore and nuisance.' 
 
 ' No, Shirley ; no.' 
 
 ' He does. You did not want my society this afternoon, 
 and I feel it hard ; you are naturally somewhat reserved, 
 but I am a social personage, who cannot live alone. If we 
 were but left unmolested, I have that regard for you that I 
 could bear you in my presence for ever, and not for the 
 fraction of a second do I ever wish to be rid of you. You 
 cannot say as much respecting me.' 
 
 ' Shirley, I can say anything you wish : Shirley, I like 
 you.' 
 
 ' You will wish me at Jericho to-morrow, Lina.' 
 
 ' I shall not. I am every day growing more accustomed 
 to fonder of you. You know I am too English to get up a 
 vehement friendship all at once ; but you are so much 
 better than common you are so different to everyday young 
 ladies I esteem you I value you : you are never a burden 
 to me never. Do you believe what I say ? ' 
 
 ' Partly,' replied Miss Keeldar, smiling rather incredu- 
 lously ; ' but you are a peculiar personage : quiet as you
 
 268 SHIRLEY 
 
 look, there is both a force and a depth some wli ere within, 
 not easily reached or appreciated : then you certainly are 
 not happy.' 
 
 4 And unhappy people are rarely good is that what you 
 mean ? ' 
 
 ' Not at all : I mean rather that unhappy people are 
 often preoccupied, and not in the mood for discoursing with 
 companions of my nature. Moreover, there is a sort of 
 unhappiness which not only depresses, but corrodes and 
 that, I fear, is your portion. Will pity do you any good, 
 Lina ? If it will, take some from Shirley : she offers largely, 
 and warrants the article genuine.' 
 
 ' Shirley, I never had a sister you never had a sister ; 
 but it flashes on me at this moment how sisters feel towards 
 each other. Affection twined with their life, which no shocks 
 of feeling can uproot, which little quarrels only trample an 
 instant that it may spring more freshly when the pressure 
 is removed ; affection that no passion can ultimately outrival, 
 with which even love itself cannot do more than compete 
 in force and truth. Love hurts us so, Shirley : it is so 
 tormenting, so racking, and it burns away our strength with 
 its flame ; in affection is no pain and no fire, only susten- 
 ance and balm. I am supported and soothed when you 
 that is, you only are near, Shirley. Do you believe me 
 now?' 
 
 ' I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me. 
 We really are friends then, Lina, in spite of the black 
 eclipse ? ' 
 
 ' We really are,' returned the other, drawing Shirley 
 towards her, and making her sit down, ' chance what 
 may.' 
 
 ' Come, then, we will talk of something else than the 
 Troubler.' But at this moment the Eector came in, and the 
 ' something else ' of which Miss Keeldar was about to talk 
 was not again alluded to till the moment of her departure ; 
 she then delayed a few minutes in the passage to say, 
 ' Caroline, I wish to tell you that I have a great weight on
 
 SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 269 
 
 my mind : my conscience is quite uneasy, as if I had 
 committed, or was going to commit, a crime. It is not my 
 private conscience, you must understand, but my landed- 
 proprietor and lord-of-the-manor conscience. I have got 
 into the clutch of an eagle with iron talons. I have fallen 
 under a stern influence, which I scarcely approve, but can- 
 not resist. Something will be done erelong, I fear, which it 
 by no means pleases me to think of. To ease my mind, and 
 to prevent harm as far as I can, I mean to enter on a series 
 of good works. Don't be surprised, therefore, if you see me 
 all at once turn outrageously charitable. I have no idea 
 how to begin, but you must give me some advice : we will 
 talk more on the subject to-morrow ; and just ask that 
 excellent person, Miss Ainley, to step up to Fieldhead : I 
 have some notion of putting myself under her tuition won't 
 she have a precious pupil ? Drop a hint to her, Lina, that, 
 though a well-meaning, I am rather a neglected character, 
 and then she will feel less scandalized at my ignorance 
 about clothing societies, and such things.' 
 
 On the morrow, Caroline found Shirley sitting gravely 
 at her desk, with an account-book, a bundle of bank-notes, 
 and a well-filled purse before her. She was looking mighty 
 serious, but a little puzzled. She said she had been ' casting 
 an eye ' over the weekly expenditure in housekeeping at the 
 Hall, trying to find out where she could retrench ; that she 
 had also just given audience to Mrs. Gill, the cook, and had 
 sent that person away with a notion that her (Shirley's) 
 brain was certainly crazed. ' I have lectured her on the duty 
 of being careful,' said she, ' in a way quite new to her. So 
 eloquent was I on the text of economy, that I surprised 
 myself ; for, you see, it is altogether a fresh idea : I never 
 thought, much less spoke, on the subject till lately. But it 
 is all theory ; for when I came to the practical part I could 
 retrench nothing. I had not firmness to take off a single 
 pound of butter, or to prosecute to any clear result an inquest 
 into the destiny of either dripping, lard, bread, cold meat, or 
 other kitchen perquisite whatever. I know we never get up
 
 270 SHIELEY 
 
 illuminations at Fieldhead, but I could not ask the meaning 
 of sundry quite unaccountable pounds of candles : we do 
 not wash for the parish, yet I viewed in silence items of 
 soap and bleaching -powder calculated to satisfy the 
 solicitude of the most anxious inquirer after our position in 
 reference to those articles : carnivorous I am not, nor is 
 Mrs. Pryor, nor is Mrs. Gill herself, yet I only hemmed and 
 opened my eyes a little wide when I saw butchers' bills 
 whose figures seemed to prove that fact falsehood, I mean. 
 Caroline, you may laugh at me, but you can't change me. 
 I am a poltroon on certain points I feel it. There is a 
 base alloy of moral cowardice in my composition. I blushed 
 and hung my head before Mrs. Gill, when she ought to 
 have been faltering confessions to me. I found it impossible 
 to get up the spirit even to hint, much less to prove to her 
 that she was a cheat. I have no calm dignity no true 
 courage about me.' 
 
 ' Shirley, what fit of self-injustice is this ? My uncle, 
 who is not given to speak well of women, says there are not 
 ten thousand men in England as genuinely fearless as you.' 
 
 ' I am fearless, physically : I am never nervous about 
 danger. I was not startled from self-possession when Mr. 
 Wynne's great red bull rose with a bellow before my face as 
 I was crossing the cowslip-lea alone, stooped his begrimed, 
 sullen head, and made a run at me ; but I was afraid of 
 seeing Mrs. Gill brought to shame and confusion of face. 
 You have twice ten times my strength of mind on certain 
 subjects, Caroline : you, whom no persuasions can induce to 
 pass a bull, however quiet he looks, would have firmly 
 shown my housekeeper she had done wrong ; then you 
 would have gently and wisely admonished her ; and at last, 
 I daresay, provided she had seemed penitent, you would 
 have very sweetly forgiven her. Of this conduct I am 
 incapable. However, in spite of exaggerated imposition, I 
 still find we live within our means : I have money in hand, 
 and I really must do some good with it. The Briarfield 
 poor are badly off: they must be helped. What ought I to
 
 SHIBLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WOBKS 271 
 
 do, think you, Lina ? Had I not better distribute the cash 
 at once ? ' 
 
 ' No, indeed, Shirley : you will not manage properly. I 
 have often noticed that your only notion of charity is to give 
 shillings and half-crowns in a careless, free-handed sort of 
 way, which is liable to continual abuse. You must have a 
 prime minister, or you will get yourself into a series of 
 scrapes. You suggested Miss Ainley yourself : to Miss 
 Ainley I will apply ; and, meantime, promise to keep quiet, 
 and not begin throwing away your money. What a great 
 deal you have, Shirley 1 you must feel very rich with all 
 that.' 
 
 ' Yes ; I feel of consequence. It is not an immense sum, 
 but I feel responsible for its disposal ; and really this 
 responsibility weighs on my mind more heavily than I 
 could have expected. They say that there are some families 
 almost starving to death in Briarfield : some of my own 
 cottagers are in wretched circumstances : I must and will 
 help them.' 
 
 ' Some people say we shouldn't give alms to the poor, 
 Shirley.' 
 
 1 They are great fools for their pains. For those who are 
 not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of 
 charity, and so on ; but they forget the brevity of life, as 
 well as its bitterness. We have none of us long to live : let 
 us help each other through seasons of want and woe, as well 
 as we can, without heeding in the least the scruples of vain 
 philosophy.' 
 
 ' But you do help others, Shirley : you give a great deal 
 as it is.' 
 
 ' Not enough : I must give more, or, I tell you, my 
 brother's blood will some day be crying to Heaven against 
 me. For, after all, if political incendiaries come here to 
 kindle conflagration in the neighbourhood, and my property 
 is attacked, I shall defend it like a tigress I know I shall. 
 Let me listen to Mercy as long as she is near me : her voice 
 once drowned by the shout of ruffian defiance, and I shall be
 
 272 SHIBLEY 
 
 full of impulses to resist and quell. If once the poor gather 
 and rise in the form of the mob, I shall turn against them 
 as an aristocrat: if they bully me, I must defy; if they 
 attack, I must resist, and I will.' 
 
 ' You talk like Kobert.' 
 
 ' I feel like Robert, only more fierily. Let them meddle 
 with Robert, or Robert's mill, or Robert's interests, and I 
 shall hate them. At present I am no patrician, nor do I 
 regard the poor around me as plebeians ; but if once they 
 violently wrong me or mine, and then presume to dictate to 
 us, I shall quite forget pity for their wretchedness and 
 respect for their poverty, in scorn of their ignorance and 
 wrath at their insolence.' 
 
 ' Shirley how your eyes flash ! ' 
 
 ' Because my soul burns. Would you, any more than 
 me, let Robert be borne down by numbers ? ' 
 
 ' If I had your power to aid Robert, I would use it as you 
 mean to use it. If I could be such a friend to him as you 
 can be, I would stand by him as you mean to stand by him 
 till death.' 
 
 1 And now, Lina, though your eyes don't flash, they glow. 
 You drop your lids ; but I saw a kindled spark. However, 
 it is not yet come to fighting. What I want to do is to 
 prevent mischief. I cannot forget, either day or night, that 
 these embittered feelings of the poor against the rich have 
 been generated in suffering : they would neither hate nor 
 envy us if they did not deem us so much happier than them- 
 selves. To allay this suffering, and thereby lessen this hate, 
 let me, out of rny abundance, give abundantly ; and that 
 the donation may go farther, let it be made wisely. To that 
 intent, we must introduce some clear, calm, practical sense 
 into our councils : so go, and fetch Miss Ainley.' 
 
 Without another word Caroline put on her bonnet and 
 departed. It may, perhaps, appear strange that neither she 
 nor Shirley thought of consulting Mrs. Pryor on their 
 scheme; but they were wise in abstaining. To have consulted 
 her and this they knew by instinct would only have been
 
 SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 273 
 
 to involve her in painful embarrassment. She was far better 
 informed, better read, a deeper thinker than Miss Ainley, but 
 of administrative energy, of executive activity, she had none. 
 She would subscribe her own modest mite to a charitable 
 object willingly, secret almsgiving suited her ; but in public 
 plans, on a large scale, she could take no part : as to origin- 
 ating them, that was out of the question. This Shirley 
 knew, and therefore she did not trouble Mrs. Pryor by 
 unavailing conferences, which could only remind her of her 
 own deficiencies, and do no good. 
 
 It was a bright day for Miss Ainley, when she was 
 summoned to Fieldhead to deliberate on projects so con- 
 genial to her; when she was seated with all honour and 
 deference at a table with paper, pen, ink, and what was 
 best of all cash before her, and requested to draw up a 
 regular plan for administering relief to the destitute poor of 
 Briarfield. She, who knew them all, had studied their 
 wants, had again and again felt in what way they might 
 best be succoured, could the means of succour only be found, 
 was fully competent to the undertaking, and a meek exultation 
 gladdened her kind heart as she felt herself able to answer 
 clearly and promptly the eager questions put by the two 
 young girls ; as she showed them in her answers how much 
 and what serviceable knowledge she had acquired of the 
 condition of her fellow-creatures round her. 
 
 Shirley placed at her disposal 300Z., and at the sight of 
 the money Miss Ainley's eyes filled with joyful tears ; for 
 she already saw the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the 
 sick comforted thereby. She quickly drew up a simple, 
 sensible plan for its expenditure ; and she assured them 
 brighter times would now come round, for she doubted not 
 the lady of Fieldhead's example would be followed by others ; 
 she should try to get additional subscriptions, and to form a 
 fund ; but first she must consult the clergy : yes, on that 
 point, she was peremptory : Mr. Helstone, Dr. Boultby, Mr. 
 Hall, must be consulted (for not only must Briarfield be 
 relieved, but Whinbury and Nunnely) it would, she averred,
 
 274 SHIELEY 
 
 be presumption in her to take a single step unauthorized by 
 them. 
 
 The clergy were sacred beings in Miss Ainley's eyes ; no 
 matter what might be the insignificance of the individual, 
 his station made him holy. The very curates who, in their 
 trivial arrogance, were hardly worthy to tie her patten- 
 strings, or carry her cotton umbrella or check woollen shawl 
 she, in her pure, sincere enthusiasm, looked upon as 
 sucking saints. No matter how clearly their little vices and 
 enormous absurdities wei'e pointed out to her, she could not 
 see them : she was blind to ecclesiastical defects : the white 
 surplice covered a multitude of sins. 
 
 Shirley, knowing this harmless infatuation on the part of 
 her recently chosen prime minister, stipulated expressly that 
 the curates were to have no voice in the disposal of the money ; 
 that their meddling fingers were not to be inserted into the 
 pie. The rectors, of course, must be paramount, and they 
 might be trusted : they had some experience, some sagacity, 
 and Mr. Hall, at least, had sympathy and loving-kindness 
 for his fellow-men ; but as for the youth under them, they 
 must be set aside, kept down, and taught that subordination 
 and silence best became their years and capacity. 
 
 It was with some horror Miss Ainley heard this language : 
 Caroline, however, interposing with a mild word or two in 
 praise of Mr. Sweeting, calmed her again. Sweeting was, 
 indeed, her own favourite : she endeavoured to respect Messrs. 
 Malone and Donne ; but the slices of sponge-cake, and 
 glasses of cowslip or primrose wine, she had at different 
 times administered to Sweeting, when he came to see her in 
 her little cottage, were ever offered with sentiments of truly 
 motherly regard. The same innocuous collation she had 
 once presented to Malone ; but that personage evinced such 
 open scorn of the offering, she had never ventured to renew 
 it. To Donne she always served the treat, and was happy 
 to see his approbation of it proved beyond a doubt, by the 
 fact of his usually eating two pieces of cake and putting a 
 third in his pocket.
 
 SHIKLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WOKKS 275 
 
 Indefatigable in her exertions where good was to be done, 
 Miss Ainley would immediately have set out on a walk 
 of ten miles round to the three rectors in order to show her 
 plan, and humbly solicit their approval : but Miss Keeldar 
 interdicted this, and proposed as an amendment, to collect 
 the clergy in a small select reunion that evening at Field- 
 head. Miss Ainley was to meet them, and the plan was to 
 be discussed in full privy council. 
 
 Shirley managed to get the senior priesthood together 
 accordingly ; and before the old maid's arrival she had, 
 further, talked all the gentlemen into the most charming 
 mood imaginable. She herself had taken in hand Dr. 
 Boultby and Mr. Helstone. The first was a stubborn old 
 Welshman, hot, opinionated, and obstinate, but withal a man 
 who did a great deal of good, though not without making 
 some noise about it : the latter, we know. She had rather 
 a friendly feeling for both ; especially for old Helstone ; and 
 it cost her no trouble to be quite delightful to them. She 
 took them round the garden ; she gathered them flowers ; she 
 was like a kind daughter to them. Mr. Hall she left to 
 Caroline or rather, it was to Caroline's care Mr. Hall 
 consigned himself. 
 
 He generally sought Caroline in every party where she 
 and he happened to be. He was not in general a lady's man, 
 though all ladies liked him : something of a book-worm he 
 was, near-sighted, spectacled, now and then abstracted. To 
 old ladies he was kind as a son. To men of every occupation 
 and grade he was acceptable : the truth, simplicity, frankness 
 of his manners, the nobleness of his integrity, the reality and 
 elevation of his piety, won him friends in every grade : his 
 poor clerk and sexton delighted in him ; the noble patron of 
 his living esteemed him highly. It was only with young, 
 handsome, fashionable, and stylish ladies he felt a little shy : 
 being himself a plain man plain in aspect, plain in manners, 
 plain in speech he seemed to fear their dash, elegance, and 
 airs. But Miss Helstone had neither dash nor airs, and her 
 native elegance was of a very quiet order quiet as the
 
 276 SHIRLEY 
 
 beauty of a ground-loving hedge-flower. He was a fluent, 
 cheerful, agreeable talker. Caroline could talk, too, in a 
 tte-&-t&te : she liked Mr. Hall to come and take the seat 
 next her in a party, and thus secure her from Peter 
 Augustus Malone, Joseph Donne, or John Sykes ; and Mr. 
 Hall never failed to avail himself of this privilege when he 
 possibly could. Such preference shown by a single gentle- 
 man to a single lady would certainly, in ordinary cases, have 
 set in motion the tongues of the gossips ; but Cyril Hall 
 was forty-five years old, slightly bald, and slightly gray, 
 and nobody ever said or thought he was likely to be married 
 to Miss Helstone. Nor did he think so himself : he was 
 wedded already to his books and his parish : his kind sister 
 Margaret, spectacled and learned like himself, made him 
 happy in his single state ; he considered it too late to change. 
 Besides, he had known Caroline as a pretty little girl : she 
 had sat on his knee many a time ; he had bought her toys 
 and given her books ; he felt that her friendship for him was 
 mixed with a sort of filial respect ; he could not have 
 brought himself to attempt to give another colour to her 
 sentiments, and his serene mind could glass a fair image 
 without feeling its depths troubled by the reflection. 
 
 When Miss Ainley arrived, she was made kindly welcome 
 by every one : Mrs. Pryor and Margaret Hull made room 
 for her on the sofa between them ; and when the three were 
 seated, they formed a trio which the gay and thoughtless 
 would have scorned, indeed, as quite worthless and un- 
 attractive a middle-aged widow and two plain spectacled 
 old maids yet which had its own quiet value, as many a 
 suffering and friendless human being knew. 
 
 Shirley opened the business and showed the plan. 
 
 ' I know the hand which drew up that,' said Mr. Hall, 
 glancing at Miss Ainley, and smiling benignantly : his 
 approbation was won at once. Boultby heard and de- 
 liberated with bent brow and protruded under lip : his 
 consent he considered too weighty to be given in a hurry. 
 Helstone glancud sluuply round with an alert, suspicious
 
 SHIELEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WOEKS 277 
 
 expression, as if he apprehended that female craft was at 
 work, and that something in petticoats was somehow trying 
 underhand to acquire too much influence, and make itself of 
 too much importance. Shirley caught and comprehended the 
 expression : ' This scheme is nothing,' said she, carelessly ; 
 ' it is only an outline a mere suggestion ; you, gentlemen, 
 are requested to draw up rules of your own.' 
 
 And she directly fetched her writing-case, smiling queerly 
 to herself as she bent over the table where it stood : she 
 produced a sheet of paper, a new pen, drew an arm-chair to 
 the table, and presenting her hand to old Helstone, begged 
 permission to instal him in it. For a minute he was a little 
 stiff, and stood wrinkling his copper-coloured forehead 
 strangely. At last he muttered : ' Well you are neither 
 my wife nor my daughter, so I'll be led for once ; but mind 
 I know I am led : your little female manoeuvres don't blind 
 me.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Shirley, dipping the pen in the ink, and 
 putting it into his hand, ' you must regard me as Captain 
 Keeldar to-day. This is quite a gentleman's affair yours 
 and mine entirely, Doctor ' (so she had dubbed the Eector). 
 ' The ladies there are only to be our aides-de-camp, and at 
 their peril they speak, till we have settled the whole 
 business.' 
 
 He smiled a little grimly, and began to write. He soon 
 interrupted himself to ask questions, and consult his 
 brethren, disdainfully lifting his glance over the curly heads 
 of the two girls, and the demure caps of the elder ladies to 
 meet the winking glasses and gray pates of the priests. In 
 the discussion which ensued, all three gentlemen, to their 
 infinite credit, showed a thorough acquaintance with the 
 poor of their parishes, an even minute knowledge of their 
 separate wants. Each rector knew where clothing was 
 needed, where food would be most acceptable, where money 
 could be bestowed with a probability of it being judiciously 
 laid out. Wherever their memories fell short, Miss Ainley 
 or Miss Hall, if applied to, could help them out ; but both
 
 278 SHIRLEY 
 
 ladies took care not to speak unless spoken to. Neither 
 of them wanted to be foremost, but each sincerely desired to 
 be useful, and useful the clergy consented to make them : with 
 which boon they were content. 
 
 Shirley stood behind the rectors, leaning over their 
 shoulders now and then to glance at the rules drawn up, and 
 the list of cases making out, listening to all they said, and 
 still at intervals smiling her queer smile a smile not ill- 
 natured, but significant : too significant to be generally thought 
 amiable. Men rarely like such of their fellows as read their 
 inward nature too clearly and truly. It is good for women, 
 especially, to be endowed with a soft blindness : to have mild, 
 dim eyes, that never penetrate below the surface of things 
 that take all for what it seems : thousands, knowing this, 
 keep their eyelids drooped, on system ; but the most down- 
 cast glance has its loophole, through which it can, on 
 occasion, take its sentinel-survey of life. I remember once 
 seeing a pair of blue eyes, that were usually thought sleepy, 
 secretly on the alert, and I knew by their expression an 
 expression which chilled my blood, it was in that quarter so 
 wondrously unexpected that for years they had been 
 accustomed to silent soul-reading. The world called the 
 owner of these blue eyes ' bonne petite femme ' (she was 
 not an Englishwoman) : I learned her nature afterwards 
 got it off by heart studied it in its farthest, most hidden 
 recesses she was the finest, deepest, subtlest schemer in 
 Europe. 
 
 When all was at length settled to Miss Keeldar's mind, 
 and the clergy had entered so fully into the spirit of her 
 plans as to head the subscription-list with their signatures 
 for 50Z. each, she ordered supper to be served ; having 
 previously directed Mrs. Gill to exercise her utmost skill in the 
 preparation of this repast. Mr. Hall was no bon-vivant : ho 
 was naturally an abstemious man, indifferent to luxury ; but 
 Boultby and Helstone both liked good cookery ; the reciter ch6 
 supper consequently put them into excellent humour : they 
 did justice to it, though in a gentlemanly way not in the
 
 SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 279 
 
 mode Mr. Donne would have done, had he been present. A 
 glass of fine wine was likewise tasted, with discerning though 
 most decorous relish. Captain Keeldar was complimented 
 on his taste ; the compliment charmed him : it had been his 
 aim to gratify and satisfy his priestly guests : he had suc- 
 ceeded, and was radiant with glee.
 
 CHAPTEE XV 
 MB. DONNE'S EXODUS 
 
 THE next day Shirley expressed to Caroline how delighted 
 she felt that the little party had gone off so well. 
 
 ' I rather like to entertain a circle of gentlemen,' said 
 she : ' it is amusing to observe how they enjoy a judiciously 
 concocted repast ; for ourselves, you see, these choice wines 
 and these scientific dishes are of no importance to us ; but 
 gentlemen seem to retain something of the naivete of children 
 about food, and one likes to please them : that is, when they 
 show the becoming, decent self-government of our admirable 
 rectors. I watch Moore sometimes, to try and discover 
 how he can be pleased ; but he has not that child's simplicity 
 about him. Did you ever find out his accessible point, 
 Caroline ? You have seen more of him than I.' 
 
 ' It is not, at any rate, that of my uncle and Dr. Boultby,' 
 returned Caroline, smiling. She always felt a sort of shy 
 pleasure in following Miss Keeldar's lead respecting the 
 discussion of her cousin's character : left to herself, she 
 would never have touched on the subject; but when invited, 
 the temptation of talking about him of whom she was ever 
 thinking was irresistible. ' But,' she added, ' I really don't 
 know what it is ; for I never watched Eobert in my life 
 but my scrutiny was presently baffled by finding he was 
 watching me.' 
 
 ' There it is I ' exclaimed Shirley : ' you can't fix your 
 eyes on him but his presently flash on you. He is never 
 off his guard : he won't give you an advantage : even when 
 he does not look at you, his thoughts seem to be busy
 
 MB. DONNE'S EXODUS 281 
 
 amongst your own thoughts, tracing your words and actions 
 to their source, contemplating your motives at his ease. 
 Oh ! I know that sort of character, or something in the 
 same style : it is one that piques me singularly how does 
 it affect you ? ' 
 
 This question was a specimen of one of Shirley's sharp, 
 sudden turns : Caroline used to be fluttered by them at first, 
 but she had now got into the way of parrying these home- 
 thrusts like a little quakeress. 
 
 ' Pique you ? In what way does it pique you ? ' she 
 said. 
 
 ' Here he comes ! ' suddenly exclaimed Shirley, breaking 
 off, starting up and running to the window. ' Here comes 
 a diversion. I never told you of a superb conquest I have 
 made lately made at those parties to which I can never 
 persuade you to accompany me ; and the thing has been 
 done without effort or intention on my part : that I aver. 
 There is the bell and, by all that's delicious ! there are 
 two of them. Do they never hunt, then, except in couples ? 
 You may have one, Lina, and you may take your choice : 
 I hope I am generous enough. Listen to Tartar ! ' 
 
 The black-muzzled, tawny dog, a glimpse of which was 
 seen in the chapter which first introduced its mistress to the 
 reader, here gave tongue in the hall, amidst whose hollow 
 space the deep bark resounded formidably. A growl, more 
 terrible than the bark menacing as muttered thunder 
 succeeded. 
 
 ' Listen ! ' again cried Shirley, laughing. ' You would 
 think that the prelude to a bloody onslaught : they will be 
 frightened : they don't know old Tartar as I do : they are 
 not aware his uproars are all sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing. 
 
 Some bustle was heard 
 
 ' Down, sir ! down ! ' exclaimed a high-toned, imperious 
 voice, and then came a crack of a cane or whip. Im- 
 mediately there was a yell a scutter a run a positive 
 tumult.
 
 282 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' Oh ! Malone ! Malone ! ' 
 
 ' Down ! down ! down ! ' cried the high voice. 
 
 ' He really is worrying them ! ' exclaimed Shirley. ' They 
 have struck him : a blow is what he is not used to, and will 
 not take.' 
 
 Out she ran, a gentleman was fleeing up the oak stair- 
 case, making for refuge in the gallery or chambers in hot 
 haste ; another was backing fast to the stair-foot, wildly 
 flourishing a knotty stick, at the same time reiterating, 
 ' Down ! down ! down ! ' while the tawny dog bayed, 
 bellowed, howled at him, and a group of servants came 
 bundling from the kitchen. The dog made a spring : the 
 second gentleman turned tail and rushed after his comrade : 
 the first was already safe in a bed-room : he held the door 
 against his fellow ; nothing so merciless as terror ; but 
 the other fugitive struggled hard : the door was about to yield 
 to his strength. 
 
 ' Gentlemen,' was uttered in Miss Keeldar's silvery but 
 vibrating tones, ' spare my locks, if you please. Calm your- 
 selves ! come down ! Look at Tartar, he wont harm a 
 cat.' 
 
 She was caressing the said Tartar : he lay crouched 
 at her feet, his fore-paws stretched out, his tail still in 
 threatening agitation, his nostrils snorting, his bulldog eyes 
 conscious of a dull fire. He was an honest, phlegmatic, 
 stupid, but stubborn canine character : he loved his mistress, 
 and John the man who fed him, but was mostly in- 
 different to the rest of the world : quiet enough he was, 
 unless struck or threatened with a stick, and that put a 
 demon into him at once. 
 
 ' Mr. Malone, how do you do ? ' continued Shirley, lifting 
 up her mirth-lit face to the gallery. ' That is not the way 
 to the oak- parlour : that is Mrs. Pryor's apartment. Eequest 
 your friend Mr. Donne to evacuate : I shall have the greatest 
 pleasure in receiving him in a lower room. 
 
 ' Ha ! ha ! ' cried Malone, in hollow laughter, quitting 
 the door, and leaning over the massive balustrade. ' Beally
 
 MR. DONNE'S EXODUS 283 
 
 that animal alarmed Donne. He is a little timid,' he 
 proceeded, stiffening himself, and walking trimly to the 
 stairhead. ' I thought it better to follow, in order to reassure 
 him.' 
 
 ' It appears you did : well, come down, if you please. 
 John ' (turning to her man-servant), ' go up-stairs and 
 liberate Mr. Donne. Take care, Mr. Malone, the stairs are 
 slippery.' 
 
 In truth they were ; being of polished oak. The caution 
 came a little late for Malone : he had slipped already in his 
 stately descent, and was only saved from falling by a clutch 
 at the banisters, which made the whole structure creak 
 again. 
 
 Tartar seemed to think the visitor's descent effected with 
 unwarranted 6clat, and accordingly he growled once more. 
 Malone, however, was no coward : the spring of the dog 
 had taken him by surprise ; but he passed him now in 
 suppressed fury rather than fear : if a look could have 
 strangled Tartar, he would have breathed no more. - For- 
 getting politeness in his sullen rage, Malone pushed into 
 the parlour before Miss Keeldar. He glanced at Miss 
 Helstone ; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to her. 
 He glared on both the ladies : he looked as if, had either of 
 them been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband 
 at the moment : in each hand he seemed as if he would 
 have liked to clutch one and gripe her to death. 
 
 However, Shirley took pity : she ceased to laugh ; and 
 Caroline was too true a lady to smile even at any one under 
 mortification. Tartar was dismissed ; Peter Augustus was 
 soothed : for Shirley had looks and tones that might 
 soothe a very bull : he had sense to feel that, since he could 
 not challenge the owner of the dog, he had better be civil : 
 and civil he tried to be ; and his attempts being well received, 
 he grew presently very civil and quite himself again. He 
 had come, indeed, for the express purpose of making himself 
 charming and fascinating : rough portents had met him on 
 his first admission to Fieldhead ; but that passage got over,
 
 284 SHIELEY 
 
 charming and fascinating he resolved to be. Like March, 
 having come in like a lion, he purposed to go out like a 
 lamb. 
 
 For the sake of air, as it appeared, or perhaps for that of 
 ready exit in case of some new emergency arising, he took 
 his seat not on the sofa, where Miss Keeldar offered him 
 enthronization, nor yet near the fireside, to which Caroline, 
 by a friendly sign, gently invited him, but on a chair close 
 to the door. Being no longer sullen or furious, he grew, 
 after his fashion, constrained and embarrassed. He talked 
 to the ladies by fits and starts, choosing for topics whatever 
 was most intensely commonplace : he sighed deeply, 
 significantly, at the close of every sentence ; he sighed in 
 each pause ; he sighed ere he opened his mouth. At last, 
 finding it desirable to add ease to his other charms, he drew 
 forth to aid him an ample silk pocket-handkerchief. This 
 was to be the graceful toy with which his unoccupied 
 hands were to trifle. He went to work with a certain 
 energy : he folded the red and yellow square cornerwise ; he 
 whipped it open with a waft : again he folded it in narrower 
 compass : he made of it a handsome band. To what purpose 
 would he proceed to apply the ligature ? Would he wrap 
 it about his throat his head? Should it be a comforter or 
 a turban ? Neither. Peter Augustus had an inventive an 
 original genius : he was about to show the ladies graces of 
 action possessing at least the charm of novelty. He sat on 
 the chair with his athletic Irish legs crossed, and these legs, 
 in that attitude, he circled with the bandana and bound 
 firmly together. It was evident he felt this device to be 
 worth an encore : he repeated it more than once. The 
 second performance sent Shirley to the window to laugh her 
 silent but irrepressible laugh unseen : it turned Caroline's 
 head aside, that her long curls might screen the smile 
 mantling on her features. Miss Helstone, indeed, was 
 amused by more than one point in Peter's demeanour : she 
 was edified at the complete though abrupt diversion of his 
 homage from herself to the heiress : the 5,000/. he supposed
 
 MB. DONNE'S EXODUS 285 
 
 her likely one day to inherit, were not to be weighed in the 
 balance against Miss Keeldar's estate and hall. He took no 
 pains to conceal his calculations and tactics : he pretended 
 to no gradual change of views : he wheeled about at once : 
 the pursuit of the lesser fortune was openly relinquished for 
 that of the greater. On what grounds he expected to 
 succeed in his chase, himself best knew : certainly not by 
 skilful management. 
 
 From the length of time that elapsed, it appeared that 
 John had some difficulty in persuading Mr. Donne to 
 descend. At length, however, that gentleman appeared : nor, 
 as he presented himself at the oak-parlour door, did he 
 seem in the slightest degree ashamed or confused not a 
 whit. Donne, indeed, was of that coldly phlegmatic, 
 immovably complacent, densely self-satisfied nature which 
 is insensible to shame. He had never blushed in his life : 
 no humiliation could abash him : his nerves were not 
 capable of sensation enough to stir his life, and make colour 
 mount to his cheek : he had no fire in his blood, and no modesty 
 in his soul : he was a frontless, arrogant, decorous slip of the 
 commonplace ; conceited, inane, insipid : and this gentleman 
 had a notion of wooing Miss Keeldar ! He knew no more, 
 however, how to set about the business than if he had been 
 an image carved in wood : he had no idea of a taste to be 
 pleased, a heart to be reached in courtship : his notion was, 
 when he should have formally visited her a few times, to 
 write a letter proposing marriage : then he calculated she 
 would accept him for love of his office, then they would bo 
 married, then he should be master of Fieldhead, and he should 
 live very comfortably, have servants at his command, eat 
 and drink of the best, and be a great man. You would not 
 have suspected his intentions when he addressed his 
 intended bride in an impertinent, injured tone: -'A very 
 dangerous dog that, Miss Keeldar. I wonder you should 
 keep such an animal.' 
 
 ' Do you, Mr. Donne ? Perhaps you will wonder more 
 when I tell you I am very fond of him.'
 
 SHIRLM 
 
 ' I should say you are not serious in the assertion. 
 Can't fancy a lady fond of that brute 'tis so ugly a mere 
 carter's dog pray hang him.' 
 
 ' Hang what I am fond of ? ' 
 
 ' And purchase in his stead some sweetly pooty pug or 
 poodle : something appropriate to the fair sex : ladies 
 generally like lap-dogs.' 
 
 'Perhaps I am an exception. 
 
 1 Oh ! you can't be, you know. All ladies are alike in 
 those matters : that is universally allowed.' 
 
 ' Tartar frightened you terribly, Mr. Donne. I hope you 
 won't take any harm.' 
 
 'That I shall, no doubt. He gave me a turn I shall 
 not soon forget. When I sor him ' (such was Mr. Donne's 
 pronunciation) ' about to spring, I thought I should have 
 fainted.' 
 
 1 Perhaps you did faint in the bed-room you were a long 
 time there ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I bore up that I might hold the door fast : I was 
 determined not to let any one enter : I thought I would keep 
 a barrier between me and the enemy.' 
 
 ' But what if your friend Mr. Malone had been 
 worried ? ' 
 
 ' Malone must take care of himself. Your man persuaded 
 me to come out at last by saying the dog was chained up in 
 his kennel : if I had not been assured of this, I would have 
 remained all day in the chamber. But what is that ? I 
 declare the man has told a falsehood ! The dog is there 1 ' 
 
 And indeed Tartar walked past the glass-door opening to 
 the garden, stiff, tawny, and black-muzzled as ever. He 
 still seemed in bad humour ; he was growling again, and 
 whistling a half-strangled whistle, being an inheritance from 
 the bulldog side of his ancestry. 
 
 ' There are other visitors coming,' observed Shirley, with 
 that provoking coolness which the owners of formidable- 
 looking dogs are apt to show while their animals are all bristle 
 and bay. Tartar sprang down the pavement towards the
 
 ME. DONNE'S EXODUS 287 
 
 gate, bellowing 'avec explosion.' His mistress quietly 
 opened the glass-door, and stepped out chirruping to him. 
 His bellow was already silenced, and he was lifting up his 
 huge, blunt, stupid head to the new callers to be patted. 
 
 ' What Tartar, Tartar ! ' said a cheery, rather boyish 
 voice : ' don't you know us ? Good-morning, old boy ! ' 
 
 And little Mr. Sweeting, whose conscious good-nature 
 made him comparatively fearless of man, woman, child, or 
 brute, came through the gate, caressing the guardian. His 
 vicar, Mr. Hall, followed : he had no fear of Tartar either, 
 and Tartar had no ill-will to him : he snuffed both the 
 gentlemen round, and then, as if concluding that they were 
 harmless, and might be allowed to pass, he withdrew to the 
 sunny front of the hall, leaving the archway free. Mr. 
 Sweeting followed, and would have played with him, but 
 Tartar took no notice of his caresses : it was only his 
 mistress's hand whose touch gave ,him pleasure ; to all 
 others he showed himself obstinately insensible. 
 
 Shirley advanced to meet Messrs. Hall and Sweeting, 
 shaking hands with them cordially : they were come to tell 
 her of certain successes they had achieved that morning in 
 application for subscriptions to the fund. Mr. Hall's eyes 
 beamed benignantly through his spectacles : his plain face 
 looked positively handsome with goodness, and when 
 Caroline, seeing who was come, ran out to meet him, and 
 put both her hands into his, he gazed down on her with a 
 gentle, serene, affectionate expression, that gave him the 
 aspect of a smiling Melanchthon. 
 
 Instead of re-entering the house, they strayed through 
 the garden, the ladies walking one on each side of Mr. Hall. 
 It was a breezy sunny day ; the air freshened the girls' cheeks, 
 and gracefully dishevelled their ringlets : both of them 
 looked pretty, one, gay : Mr. Hall spoke oftenest to his 
 brilliant companion, looked most frequently at the quiet one. 
 Miss Keeldar gathered handfuls of the profusely blooming 
 flowers, whose perfume filled the enclosure ; she g:ive some 
 to Caroline, telling her to choose a nosegay for Mr. Hall ; and
 
 288 SHIELEY 
 
 with her lap filled with delicate and splendid blossoms, 
 Caroline sat down on tb,e steps of a summer-house : the 
 Vicar stood near her, leaning on his cane. 
 
 Shirley, who could not be inhospitable, now called out 
 the neglected pair in the oak parlour : she convoyed Donne 
 past his dread enemy Tartar, who, with his nose on his fore- 
 paws, lay snoring under the meridian sun. Donne was not 
 grateful : he never was grateful for kindness and attention ; 
 but he was glad of the safeguard. Miss Keeldar, desirous 
 of being impartial, offered the curates flowers : they accepted 
 them with native awkwardness. Malone seemed specially 
 at a loss, when a bouquet filled one hand, while his shillelagh 
 occupied the other. Donne's ' Thank you ! ' was rich to 
 hear : it was the most fatuous and arrogant of sounds 
 implying that he considered this offering an homage to his 
 merits, and an attempt on the part of the heiress to ingratiate 
 herself into his priceless affections. Sweeting alone received 
 the posy like a smart, sensible, little man, as he was ; putting 
 it gallantly and nattily into his buttonhole. 
 
 As a reward for his good manners, Miss Keeldar, beckon- 
 ing him apart, gave him some commission, which made his 
 eyes sparkle with glee. Away he flew, round by the court- 
 yard to the kitchen : no need to give him directions ; he was 
 always at home everywhere. Erelong he reappeared, carry- 
 ing a round table, which he placed under the cedar ; then 
 he collected six garden-chairs from various nooks and 
 bowers in the grounds, and placed them in a circle. The 
 parlour-maid Miss Keeldar kept no footman came out, 
 bearing a napkin -covered tray. Sweeting's nimble fingers 
 aided in disposing glasses, plates, knives and forks : he 
 assisted her too in setting forth a neat luncheon, consisting 
 of cold chicken, harn, and tarts. 
 
 This sort of impromptu regale, it was Shirley's delight to 
 offer any chance guests ; and nothing pleased her better 
 than to have an alert, obliging little friend, like Sweeting, 
 to run about her hand, cheerily receive and briskly execute 
 her hospitable hints. David and she were on the best terms
 
 MB. DONNE'S EXODUS 289 
 
 in the world ; and his devotion to the heiress was quite 
 disinterested, since it prejudiced in nothing his faithful 
 allegiance to the magnificent Dora Sykes. 
 
 The repast turned out a very rnerry one. Donne and 
 Malone, indeed, contributed but little to its vivacity, the chief 
 part they played in it being what concerned the knife, fork, and 
 wine-glass ; but where four such natures as Mr. Hall, David 
 Sweeting, Shirley, and Caroline, were assembled in health 
 and amity, on a green lawn, under a sunny sky, amidst a 
 wilderness of flowers, there could not be ungenial dulness. 
 
 In the course of conversation, Mr. Hall reminded the 
 ladies that Whitsuntide was approaching, when the grand 
 United Sunday-School tea-drinking and procession of the 
 three parishes of Briarfield, Whinbury, and Nunnely were 
 to take place. Caroline he knew would be at her post as 
 teacher, he said, and he hoped Miss Keeldar would 
 not be wanting ; he hoped she would make her first public 
 appearance amongst them at that time. Shirley was not 
 the person to miss an occasion of this sort : she liked 
 festive excitement, a gathering of happiness, a concentration 
 and combination of pleasant details, a throng of glad faces, 
 a muster of elated hearts : she told Mr. Hall they might 
 count on her with security : she did not know what she would 
 have to do, but they might dispose of her as they pleased. 
 
 ' And,' said Caroline, ' you will promise to come to my 
 table, and to sit near me, Mr. Hall ? ' 
 
 ' I shall not fail, Deo volente,' said he. ' I have occupied 
 the place on her right hand at these monster tea-drinkings 
 for the last six years,' ho proceeded, turning to Miss Keeldar. 
 ' They made her a Sunday-School teacher when she was a 
 little girl of twelve : she is not particularly self-confident by 
 nature, as you may have observed ; and the first time she 
 had to " take a tray," as the phrase is, and make tea in public, 
 there was some piteous trembling and flushing. I observed 
 the speechless panic, the cups shaking in the little hand, 
 and the overflowing tea-pot filled too full from the urn. I 
 came to her aid, took a seat near her, managed the urn and
 
 290 SHIRLEY 
 
 the slop-basin, and in fact made the tea for her like any old 
 woman.' 
 
 ' I was very grateful to you,' interposed Caroline. 
 
 1 You were : you told me so with an earnest sincerity 
 that repaid me well ; inasmuch as it was not like the 
 majority of little ladies of twelve, whom you may help and 
 caress for ever without their evincing any quicker sense of 
 the kindness done and meant than if they were made of wax 
 and wood, instead of flesh and nerves. She kept close to 
 me, Miss Keeldar, the rest of the evening, walking with me 
 over the grounds where the children were playing ; she 
 followed me into the vestry when all were summoned into 
 church : she would, I believe, have mounted with me to the 
 pulpit, had I not taken the previous precaution of conducting 
 her to the Eectory-pew.' 
 
 ' And he has been my friend ever since,' said Caroline. 
 
 ' And always sat at her table, near her tray, and handed 
 the cups, that is the extent of my services. The next 
 thing I do for her will be to marry her some day to some 
 curate or mill-owner : but mind, Caroline, I shall inquire 
 about the bridegroom's character, and if he is not a gentle- 
 man likely to render happy the little girl who walked with 
 me hand in hand over Nunnely Common, I will not officiate : 
 so take care.' 
 
 ' The caution is useless : I am not going to be married. 
 I shall live single like your sister Margaret, Mr. Hall.' 
 
 'Very well you might do worse Margaret is not 
 unhappy : she has her books for a pleasure, and her brother 
 for a care, and is content. If ever you want a home ; if the 
 day should come when Briarfield Eectory is yours no 
 longer, come to Nunnely Vicarage. Should the old maid 
 and bachelor be still living, they will make you tenderly 
 welcome.' 
 
 ' There are your flowers. Now/ said Caroline, who had 
 kept the nosegay she had selected for him till this moment, 
 ' you don't care for a bouquet, but you must give it to 
 Margaret : only to be sentimental for once keep that
 
 ME. DONNE'S EXODUS 291 
 
 little forget-me-not, which is a wild-flower I gathered from 
 the grass ; and to be still more sentimental let me take 
 two or three of the blue blossoms and put them in my 
 souvenir.' 
 
 And she took out a small book with enamelled cover and 
 silver clasp, wherein, having opened it, she inserted the 
 flowers, writing round them in pencil ' To be kept for the 
 sake of the Rev. Cyril Hall, my friend. May , 18 .' 
 
 The Eev. Cyril Hall, on his part also, placed a sprig in 
 safety between the leaves of a pocket Testament : he only 
 wrote on the margin ' Caroline.' 
 
 1 Now,' said he smiling, ' I trust we are romantic enough. 
 Miss Keeldar,' he continued (the curates, by-the-by, during 
 this conversation, were too much occupied with their own 
 jokes to notice what passed at the other end of the table), 
 ' I hope you are laughing at this trait of " exaltation " in the 
 old gray-headed Vicar ; but the fact is, I am so used to 
 comply with the requests of this young friend of yours, I 
 don't know how to refuse her when she tells me to do any- 
 thing. You would say it is not much in my way to traffic 
 with flowers and forget-me-nots : but, you see, when re- 
 quested to be sentimental, I am obedient.' 
 
 ' He is naturally rather sentimental,' remarked Caroline ; 
 ' Margaret told me so, and I know what pleases him.' 
 
 ' That you should be good and happy ? Yes ; that is one 
 of my greatest pleasures. May God long preserve to you 
 the blessings of peace and innocence ! By which phrase, I 
 mean comparative innocence ; for in His sight, I am well 
 aware, none are pure. What, to our human perceptions, 
 looks spotless as we fancy angels, is to Him but frailty, need- 
 ing the blood of His Son to cleanse, and the strength of His 
 Spirit to sustain. Let us each and all cherish humility- I, 
 as you, my young friends ; and we may well do it when we 
 look into our own hearts, and see there temptations, 
 inconsistencies, propensities, even we blush to recognise. 
 And it is not youth, nor good looks, nor grace, nor any 
 gentle outside charm which makes either beauty or goodness
 
 292 SHIRLEY 
 
 in God's eyes. Young ladies, when your mirror or men's 
 tongues flatter you, remember that, in the sight of her Maker, 
 Mary Ann Ainley a woman whom neither glass nor lips 
 have ever panegyrized is fairer and better than either of 
 you. She is, indeed,' he added, after a pause ' she is, 
 indeed. You young things wrapt up in yourselves and in 
 earthly hopes scarcely live as Christ lived : perhaps you 
 cannot do it yet, while existence is so sweet and earth so 
 smiling to you : it would be too much to expect : she, with 
 meek heart and due reverence, treads close in her Redeemer's 
 steps.' 
 
 Here the harsh voice of Donne broke in on the mild 
 tones of Mr. Hall : ' Ahem ! ' he began, clearing his throat 
 evidently for a speech of some importance. ' Ahem ! Miss 
 Keeldar, your attention an instant, if you please.' 
 
 'Well,' said Shirley, nonchalantly. 'What is it? I 
 listen : all of me is ear that is not eye.' 
 
 ' I hope part of you is hand also,' returned Donne, in his 
 vulgarly presumptuous and familiar style, ' and part purse : 
 it is to the hand and purse I propose to appeal. I came 
 here this morning with a view to beg of you -' 
 
 1 You should have gone to Mrs. Gill : she is my 
 almoner.' 
 
 1 To beg of you a subscription to a school. I and 
 Dr. Boultby intend to erect one in the hamlet of Ecclefigg, 
 which is under our vicarage of Whinbury. The Baptists 
 have got possession of it : they have a chapel there, and we 
 want to dispute the ground.' 
 
 ' But I have nothing to do with Ecclefigg : I possess no 
 property there.' 
 
 ' What does that signify ? You're a Churchwoman, 
 ain't you ? ' 
 
 ' Admirable creature ! ' muttered Shirley, under her 
 breath : ' exquisite address : fine style ! What raptures he 
 excites in me ! ' then aloud, ' I am a Churchwoman, cer- 
 tainly.' 
 
 ' Then you can't refuse to contribute in this case. The
 
 ME. DONNE'S EXODUS 293 
 
 population of Ecolefigg are a parcel of brutes we want to 
 civilise them.' 
 
 ' Who is to be the missionary ? ' 
 
 ' Myself, probably.' 
 
 ' You won't fail through lack of sympathy with your flock.' 
 
 ' I hope not I expect success ; but we must have money. 
 There is the paper pray give a handsome sum.' 
 
 When asked for money, Shirley rarely held back. She 
 put down her name for 51. : after the 300Z. she had lately 
 given, and the many smaller sums she was giving constantly, 
 it was as much as she could at present afford. Donne looked 
 at it, declared the subscription ' shabby,' and clamoi'ously 
 demanded more. Miss Keeldar flushed up with some 
 indignation and more astonishment. 
 
 ' At present, I shall give no more,' said she. 
 
 ' Not give more ! Why, I expected you to head the list 
 with a cool hundred. With your property, you should 
 never put down a signature for less.' 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 ' In the south,' went on Donne, ' a lady with a thousand 
 a year would be ashamed to give five pounds for a public 
 object.' 
 
 Shirley, so rarely haughty, looked so now. Her slight 
 frame became nerved; her distinguished face quickened 
 with scorn. 
 
 1 Strange remarks ! ' said she : ' most inconsiderate ! 
 Reproach in return for bounty is misplaced.' 
 
 ' Bounty ! Do you call five pounds bounty ? ' 
 
 ' I do : and bounty which, had I not given it to Dr. 
 Boultby's intended school, of the erection of which I 
 approve, and in no sort to his curate, who seems ill-advised 
 in his manner of applying for or rather extorting subscrip- 
 tions, bounty, I repeat, which, but for this consideration, I 
 should instantly reclaim.' 
 
 Donne was thick-skinned : he did not feel all or half that 
 the true, fair glance of the speaker expressed : he knew not 
 on what ground he stood,
 
 294 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' Wretched place this Yorkshire,' he went on. ' I could 
 never have formed an idear of the country had I not seen 
 it ; and the people rich and poor what a set ! How corse 
 and uncultivated ! They would be scouted in the south.' 
 
 Shirley leaned forwards on the table, her nostrils dilating 
 a little, her taper fingers interlaced and compressing each 
 other hard. 
 
 ' The rich,' pursued the infatuated and unconscious 
 Donne, ' are a parcel of misers never living as persons with 
 their incomes ought to live : you scarsley ' (you must 
 excuse Mr. Donne's pronunciation, reader ; it was very 
 choice ; he considered it genteel, and prided himself on his 
 southern accent ; northern ears received with singular sensa- 
 tions his utterance of certain words) ; ' you scarsley ever 
 see a fam'ly where a propa carriage or a reg'la butla is kep ; 
 and as to the poor just look at them when they come 
 crowding about the church-doors on the occasion of a 
 marriage or a funeral, clattering in clogs ; the men in their 
 shirt-sleeves and wool-combers' aprons, the women in mob- 
 caps and bed-gowns. They postively deserve that one 
 should turn a mad cow in amongst them to rout their rabble- 
 ranks he ! he ! What fun it would be ! ' 
 
 ' There, you have reached the climax,' said Shirley, 
 quietly. ' You have reached the climax,' she repeated, 
 turning her glowing glance towards him. ' You cannot go 
 beyond it, and,' she added with emphasis, ' you shall not, in 
 my house.' 
 
 Up she rose : nobody could control her now, for she 
 was exasperated ; straight she walked to her garden-gates, 
 wide she flung them open. 
 
 ' Walk through,' she said austerely, ' and pretty quickly, 
 and set foot on this pavement no more.' 
 
 Donne was astounded. He had thought all the time he 
 was showing himself off to high advantage, as a lofty-souled 
 person of the first ' ton,' he imagined he was producing a 
 crushing impression. Had lie not expressed disdain of 
 everything in Yorkshire ? What more conclusive proof
 
 OAKWELL HAI.L (fllK G.VHDKN) (VlKI.DII KAn).
 
 ME. DONNE'S EXODUS 
 
 could be given that he was better than anything there ? And 
 yet here was he about to be turned like a dog out of a 
 Yorkshire garden ! Where, under such circumstances, was 
 the ' concatenation accordingly ? ' 
 
 ' Kid me of you instantly instantly ! ' reiterated Shirley 
 as he lingered. 
 
 ' Madam a clergyman ! Turn out a clergyman ? ' 
 
 ' Off ! Were you an archbishop : you have proved 
 yourself no gentleman, and must go. Quick ! ' 
 
 She was quite resolved : there was no trifling with her : 
 besides, Tartar was again rising ; he perceived symptoms of 
 a commotion : he manifested a disposition to join in ; there 
 was evidently nothing for it but to go, and Donne made his 
 exodus ; the heiress sweeping him a deep curtsey as she 
 closed the gates on him. 
 
 ' How dare the pompous priest abuse his flock ? How 
 dare the lisping cockney revile Yorkshire ? ' was her sole 
 observation on the circumstance, as she returned to the 
 table. 
 
 Erelong the little party broke up : Miss Keeldar's ruffled 
 and darkened brow, curled lip, and incensed eye, gave no 
 invitation to further social enjoyment.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 
 
 THE fund prospered. By dint of Miss Keeldar's example, 
 the three rectors' vigorous exertions, and the efficient though 
 quiet aid of their spinster and spectacled lieutenants, Mary 
 Ann Ainley and Margaret Hall, a handsome sum was raised : 
 and this being judiciously managed, served for the present 
 greatly to alleviate the distress of the unemployed poor. The 
 neighbourhood seemed to grow calmer : for a fortnight past 
 no cloth had been destroyed ; no outrage on mill or mansion 
 had been committed in the three parishes. Shirley was 
 sanguine that the evil she wished to avert was almost 
 escaped ; that the threatened storm was passing over : with 
 the approach of summer she felt certain that trade would 
 improve it always did ; and then this weary war could 
 not last for ever ; peace must return one day : with peace 
 what an impulse would be given to commerce ! 
 
 Such was the usual tenor of her observations to her 
 tenant, Gerard Moore, whenever she met him where they 
 could converse, and Moore would listen very quietly too 
 quietly to satisfy her. She would then by her impatient 
 glance demand something more from him some explana- 
 tion, or at least some additional remark. Smiling in his way, 
 with that expression which gave a remarkable cast of sweet- 
 ness to his mouth, while his brow remained grave, he would 
 answer to the effect, that himself, too, trusted in the finite 
 nature of the war ; that it was indeed on that ground the 
 anchor of his hopes was fixed : thereon his speculations 
 depended. ' For you are aware,' he would continue, ' that
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 297 
 
 I now work Hollow's mill entirely on speculation : I sell 
 nothing ; there is no market for my goods. I manufacture 
 for a future day : I nake myself ready to take advantage of 
 the first opening that shall occur. Three months ago this 
 was impossible to me ; I had exhausted both credit and 
 capital : you well know who came to my rescue ; from what 
 hand I received the loan which saved me. It is on the 
 strength of that loan I am enabled to continue the bold 
 game which, a while since, I feared I should never play 
 more. Total ruin I know will follow loss, and I am aware 
 that gain is doubtful ; but I am quite cheerful ; so long as I 
 can be active, so long as I can strive, so long, in short, as 
 my hands are not tied, it is impossible for me to be depressed. 
 One year, nay, but six months, of the reign of the olive, and 
 I am safe ; for, as you say, peace will give an impulse to 
 commerce. In this you are right ; but as to the restored 
 tranquillity of the neighbourhood as to the permanent good 
 effect of your charitable fund I doubt. Eleemosynary 
 relief never yet tranquillized the working-classes it never 
 made them grateful ; it is not in human nature that it should. 
 I suppose, were all things ordered aright, they ought not to 
 be in a position to need that humiliating relief ; and this 
 they feel : we should feel it were we so placed. Besides, to 
 whom should they be grateful ? To you to the clergy 
 perhaps, but not to us mill-owners. They hate us worse 
 than ever. Then, the disaffected here are in correspondence 
 with the disaffected elsewhere ; Nottingham is one of their 
 head-quarters, Manchester another, Birmingham a third. 
 The subalterns receive orders from their chiefs ; they are 
 in a good state of discipline : no blow is struck without 
 mature deliberation. In sultry weather, you have seen the 
 sky threaten thunder day by day, and yet night after night 
 the clouds have cleared, and the sun has set quietly ; but 
 the danger was not gone, it was only delayed : the long- 
 threatening storm is sure to break at last. There is analogy 
 between the moral and physical atmosphere.' 
 
 1 Well, Mr. Moore ' (so these conferences always ended),
 
 298 SHIRLEY 
 
 4 take care of yourself. If you think that I have ever done 
 you any good, reward me by promising to take care of 
 yourself.' 
 
 ' I do : I will take close and watchful care. I wish to 
 live, not to die : the future opens like Eden before me ; and 
 still, when I look deep into the shades of my paradise, I see 
 a vision, that I like better than seraph or cherub, glide across 
 remote vistas.' 
 
 1 Do you ? Pray, what vision ? ' 
 
 ' I see ' 
 
 The maid came bustling in with the tea-things. 
 
 The early part of that May, as we have seen, was fine, 
 the middle was wet; but in the last week, at change of 
 moon, it cleared again. A fresh wind swept off the silver- 
 white, deep-piled rain-clouds, bearing them, mass on mass, 
 to the eastern horizon ; on whose verge they dwindled, and 
 behind whose rim they disappeared, leaving the vault behind 
 all pure blue space, ready for the reign of the summer sun. 
 That sun rose broad on Whitsuntide : the gathering of the 
 schools was signalized by splendid weather. 
 
 \Vhit-Tuesday was the great day, in preparation for 
 which the two large schoolrooms of Briarfield, built by the 
 present rector, chiefly at his own expense, were cleaned out, 
 white- washed, repainted, and decorated with flowers and 
 evergreens some from the Eectory-garden, two cart-loads 
 from Fieldhead, and a wheelbarrowful from the more stingy 
 domain of De Warden, the residence of Mr. Wynne, in 
 these schoolrooms twenty tables, each calculated to accommo- 
 date twenty guests, were laid out, surrounded with benches, 
 and covered with white cloths : above them were suspended 
 at least some twenty cages, containing as many canaries, 
 according to a fancy of the district, specially cherished by 
 Mr. Helstone's clerk, who delighted in the piercing song of 
 these birds, and knew that amidst confusion of tongues they 
 always carolled loudest. These tables, be it understood, 
 were not spread for the twelve hundred scholars to be 
 assembled from the three parishes, but only for the patrons
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 299 
 
 and teachers of the schools : the children's feast was to be 
 spread in the open air. At one o'clock the troops were to 
 come in ; at two they were to be marshalled : till four they 
 were to parade the parish ; then came the feast, and after- 
 wards the meeting, with music and speechifying in the 
 church. 
 
 Why Briarfield was chosen for the point of rendezvous 
 the scene of the fete should be explained. It was not 
 because it was the largest or most populous parish Whin- 
 bury far outdid it in that respect ; nor because it was the 
 oldest antique as were the hoary Church and Kectory, 
 Nunnely's low-roofed Temple and mossy Parsonage, buried 
 both in coeval oaks, outstanding sentinels of Nunnwood, 
 were older still : it was simply because Mr. Helstone willed 
 it so, and Mr. Helstone's will was stronger than that of 
 Boultby or Hall ; the former could not, the latter would not, 
 dispute a point of precedence with their resolute and imperious 
 brother ; they let him lead and rule. 
 
 This notable anniversary had always hitherto been a 
 trying day to Caroline Helstone, because it dragged her 
 perforce into public, compelling her to face all that was 
 wealthy, respectable, influential in the neighbourhood ; in 
 whose presence, but for the kind countenance of Mr. Hall, 
 she would have appeared unsupported. Obliged to be 
 conspicuous ; obliged to walk at the head of her regiment, 
 as the Eector's niece, and first teacher of the first class ; 
 obliged to make tea at the first table for a mixed multitude 
 of ladies and gentlemen ; and to do all this without the 
 countenance of mother, aunt, or other chaperon she, mean- 
 time, being a nervous person, who mortally feared publicity 
 it will be comprehended that, under these circumstances, 
 she trembled at the approach of Whitsuntide. 
 
 But this year Shirley was to be with her, and that 
 changed the aspect of the trial singularly it changed it 
 utterly : it was a trial no longer it was almost an enjoy- 
 ment. Miss Keeldar was better in her single self than a 
 host of ordinary friends. Quite self-possessed, and always
 
 300 SHIRLEY 
 
 spirited and easy; conscious of her social importance, yet 
 never presuming upon it, it would be enough to give one 
 courage only to look at her. The only fear was, lest the 
 heiress should not be punctual to tryst : she often had a 
 careless way of lingering behind time, and Caroline knew 
 her uncle would not wait a second for any one : at the 
 moment of the church-clock tolling two, the bells would 
 clash out and the march begin. She must look after 
 Shirley, then, in this matter, or her expected companion 
 would fail her. 
 
 Whit-Tuesday saw her rise almost with the sun. She, 
 Fanny, and Eliza were busy the whole morning arranging 
 the Rectory-parlours in first-rate company order, and setting 
 out a collation of cooling refreshments wine, fruit, cakes 
 on the dining-room side-board. Then she had to dress in 
 her freshest and fairest attire of white muslin ; the perfect 
 fineness of the day and the solemnity of the occasion 
 warranted, and even exacted, such costume. Her new sash a 
 birthday-present from Margaret Hall, which she had reason 
 to believe Cyril himself had bought, and in return for which 
 she had indeed given him a set of cambric-bands in a 
 handsome case was tied by the dexterous fingers of Fanny, 
 who took no little pleasure in arraying her fair young mistress 
 for the occasion ; her simple bonnet had been trimmed to 
 correspond with her sash ; her pretty but inexpensive scarf of 
 white crape suited her dress. When ready, she formed a 
 picture, not bright enough to dazzle, but fair enough to 
 interest; not brilliantly striking, but very delicately pleasing; 
 a picture in which sweetness of tint, purity of air, and grace 
 of mien, atoned for the absence of rich colouring and mag- 
 nificent contour. What her brown eye and clear forehead 
 showed of her mind, was in keeping with her dress and face 
 - modest, gentle, and, though pensive, harmonious. It 
 appeared that neither lamb nor dove need fear her, but 
 would welcome rather, in her look of simplicity and softness, 
 a sympathy with their own natures, or with the natures we 
 ascribe to them.
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 301 
 
 After all, she was an imperfect, faulty human being : fair 
 enough of form, hue, and array; but, as Cyril Hall said, 
 neither so good nor so great as the withered Miss Ainley. 
 now putting on her best black gown and Quaker-drab shawl 
 and bonnet in her own narrow cottage-chamber. 
 
 Away Caroline went, across some very sequestered fields 
 and through some quite hidden lanes, to Pieldhead. She 
 glided quickly under the green hedges and across the 
 greener leas. There was no dust no moisture to soil the 
 hem of her stainless garment, or to damp her slender 
 sandal : after the late rains all was clean, and under the 
 present glowing sun all was dry : she walked fearlessly 
 then, on daisy and turf, and through thick plantations ; she 
 reached Fieldhead and penetrated to Miss Keeldar's dressing- 
 room. 
 
 It was well she had come, or Shirley would have been 
 too late. Instead of making ready with all speed, she lay 
 stretched on a couch, absorbed in reading : Mrs. Pryor stood 
 near, vainly urging her to rise and dress. Caroline wasted 
 no words : she immediately took the book from her, and, 
 with her own hands, commenced the business of disrobing 
 and rerobing her. Shirley, indolent with the heat, and gay 
 with her youth and pleasurable nature, wanted to talk, 
 laugh, and linger; but Caroline, intent on being in time, 
 persevered in dressing her as fast as fingers could fasten 
 strings or insert pins. At length, as she united a final row of 
 hooks and eyes, she found leisure to chide her, saying, she 
 was very naughty to be so unpunctual ; that she looked even 
 now the picture of incorrigible carelessness : and so Shirley 
 did but a very lovely picture of that tiresome quality. 
 
 She presented quite a contrast to Caroline : there was 
 style in every fold of her dress and every line of her figure : 
 the rich silk suited her better than a simpler costume ; the 
 deep-embroidered scarf became her : she wore it negligently, 
 but gracefully ; the wreath on her bonnet crowned her well : 
 the attention to fashion, the tasteful appliance of ornament 
 in each portion oi her dress, were quite in place with her ;
 
 302 SHIRLEY 
 
 all this suited her, like the frank light in her eyes, the 
 rallying smile about her lips, like her shaft-straight carriage 
 and lightsome step. Caroline took her hand when she was 
 dressed, hurried her down-stairs, out of doors, and thus they 
 sped through the fields, laughing as they went, and looking 
 very much like a snow-white dove and gem-tinted bird-of- 
 paradise joined in social flight. 
 
 Thanks to Miss Helstone's promptitude, they arrived in 
 good time. While yet trees hid the church, they heard the 
 bell tolling a measured but urgent summons for all to 
 assemble ; the trooping in of numbers, the trampling of 
 many steps, and murmuring of many voices were likewise 
 audible. From a rising-ground they presently saw, on 
 the Whinbury-road, the Whinbury-school approaching : it 
 numbered five hundred souls. The Rector and Curate, 
 Boultby and Donne, headed it : the former, looming large in 
 full canonicals, walking as became a beneficed priest, under 
 the canopy of a shovel-hat, with the dignity of an ample cor- 
 poration, the embellishment of the squarest and vastest of black 
 coats, and the support of the stoutest of gold-headed canes. 
 As the Doctor walked, he now and then slightly flourished 
 his cane, and inclined his shovel-hat with a dogmatical wag 
 towards his aide-de-camp. That aide-de-camp Donne, to wit 
 narrow as the line of his shape was compared to the broad 
 bulk of his principal, contrived, notwithstanding, to look 
 every inch a curate : all about him was pragmatical and self- 
 complacent, from his turned-up nose and elevated chin to his 
 clerical black gaiters, his somewhat short, strapless trousers, 
 and his square-toed shoes. 
 
 Walk on, Mr. Donne ! You have undergone scrutiny. 
 You think you look well whether the white and purple 
 figures watching you from yonder hill think so, is another 
 question. 
 
 These figures come running down when the regiment has 
 marched by: the churchyard is full of children and teachers, 
 all in their very best holiday attire : and distressed as is 
 the district, bud as are the time-,-- it is wonderful to see how
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 303 
 
 respectably how handsomely even they have contrived 
 to clothe themselves. That British love of decency will 
 work miracles : the poverty which reduces an Irish girl to 
 rags is impotent to rob the English girl of the neat wardrobe 
 she knows necessary to her self-respect. Besides, the lady 
 of the manor that Shirley, now gazing with pleasure on 
 this well-dressed and happy-looking crowd has reaUy done 
 them good : her seasonable bounty consoled many a poor 
 family against the coming holiday, and supplied many a 
 child with a new frock or bonnet for the occasion ; she 
 knows it, and is elate with the consciousness : glad that her 
 money, example, and influence have really substantially 
 benefited those around her. She cannot be charitable like 
 Miss Ainley it is not in her nature : it relieves her to feel 
 that' there is another way of being charitable, practicable for 
 other characters, and under other circumstances. 
 
 Caroline, too, is pleased ; for she also has done good in her 
 small way ; robbed herself of more than one dress, ribbon, 
 or collar she could ill spare, to aid in fitting out the scholars 
 of her class ; and as she could not give money, she has 
 followed Miss Ainley's example, in giving her time and her 
 industry to sew for the children. 
 
 Not only is the churchyard full, but the Kectory-garden 
 is also thronged : pairs and parties of ladies and gentlemen 
 are seen walking amongst the waving lilacs and laburnums. 
 The house also is occupied : at the wide-open parlour- 
 windows gay groups are standing. These are the patrons and 
 teachers, who are to swell the procession. In the parson's 
 croft, behind the Eectory, are the musicians of the three parish 
 bands, with their instruments. Fanny and Eliza, in the 
 smartest of caps and gowns, and the whitest of aprons, move 
 amongst them, serving out quarts of ale ; whereof a stock 
 was brewed very sound and strong some weeks since, by the 
 Rector's orders, and under his special superintendence. 
 Whatever he had a hand in, must be managed handsomely : 
 'shabby doings,' of any description, were not endured under 
 his sanction : from the erection of a public building, a church,
 
 304 SHIBLEY 
 
 school, or court-house, to the cooking of a dinner, he still 
 advocated the lordly, liberal, and effective. Miss Keeldar 
 was like him in this respect, and they mutually approved 
 each other's arrangements. 
 
 Caroline and Shirley were soon in the midst of the 
 company ; the former met them very easily for her : instead 
 of sitting down in a retired corner, or stealing away to her 
 own room till the procession should be marshalled, according 
 to her wont, she moved through the three parlours, con- 
 versed and smiled, absolutely spoke once or twice ere she 
 was spoken to, and, in short, seemed a new creature. It was 
 Shirley's presence which thus transformed her : the view of 
 Miss Keeldar's air and manner did her a world of good. 
 Shirley had no fear of her kind ; no tendency to shrink from, 
 to avoid it. All human beings, men, women, or children, 
 whom low breeding or coarse presumption did not render 
 positively offensive, were welcome enough to her: some 
 much more so than others, of course ; but, generally speak- 
 ing, till a man had indisputably proved himself bad and a 
 nuisance, Shirley was willing to think him good and an 
 acquisition, and to treat him accordingly. This disposition 
 made her a general favourite, for it robbed her very raillery 
 of its sting, and gave her serious or smiling conversation a 
 happy charm : nor did it diminish the value of her intimate 
 friendship, which was a distinct thing from this social 
 benevolence, depending, indeed, on quite a different part of 
 her character. Miss Helstone was the choice of her affec- 
 tion and intellect ; the Misses Pearson, Sykes, Wynne, &c. 
 &c., only the profilers by her good-nature and vivacity. 
 
 Donne happened to come into the drawing-room while 
 Shirley, sitting on the sofa, formed the centre of a tolerably 
 wide circle. She had already forgotten her exasperation 
 against him, and she bowed and smiled good-humouredly. 
 The disposition of the man was then seen. He knew neither 
 how to decline the advance with dignity, as one whose just 
 pride has been wounded, nor how to meet it with frankness, 
 as one who is glad to forget and forgive ; his punishment
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 305 
 
 had impressed him with no sense of shame, and he did not 
 experience that feeling on encountering his chastiser : he 
 was not vigorous enough in evil to be actively malignant 
 he merely passed by sheepishly with a rated, scowling 
 look. Nothing could ever again reconcile him to his enemy ; 
 while no passion of resentment, for even sharper and 
 more ignominious inflictions, could his lymphatic nature 
 know. 
 
 ' He was not worth a scene ! ' said Shirley to Caroline. 
 ' What a fool I was ! To revenge on poor Donne his silly 
 spite at Yorkshire, is something like crushing a gnat for 
 attacking the hide of a rhinoceros. Had I been a gentleman, 
 I believe I should have helped him off the premises by dint 
 of physical force : I am glad now I only employed the moral 
 weapon. But he must come near me no more : I don't like 
 him : he irritates me : there is not even amusement to be had 
 out of him : Malone is better sport." 
 
 It seemed as if Malone wished to justify the preference ; 
 for the words were scarcely out of the speaker's mouth, when 
 Peter Augustus came up, all in ' grande tenue,' gloved and 
 scented, with his hair oiled and brushed to perfection, and 
 bearing in one hand a huge bunch of cabbage-roses, five or 
 six in full blow : these he presented to the heiress with a 
 grace to which the most cunning pencil could do but defec- 
 tive justice. And who, after this, could dare to say that 
 Peter was not a lady's man ? he had gathered and he had 
 given flowers : he had offered a sentimental a poetic tribute 
 at the shrine of Love or Mammon. Hercules holding the 
 distaff was but a faint type of Peter bearing the roses. He 
 must have thought this himself, for he seemed amazed at 
 what he had done : he backed without a word ; he was going 
 away with a husky chuckle of self-felicitation ; then he be- 
 thought himself to stop and turn, to ascertain by ocular 
 testimony that he really had presented a bouquet : yes 
 there were the six red cabbages on the purple satin lap, a 
 very white hand, with some gold rings on the fingers, 
 slightly holding them together, and streaming ringlets, half
 
 306 SHIRLEY 
 
 hiding a laughing face, drooped over them : only 7iaZ/-hiding : 
 Peter saw the laugh it was unmistakable he was made a 
 joke of his gallantry, his chivalry were the subject of a jest 
 for a petticoat for two petticoats Miss Helstone too was 
 smiling. Moreover, he felt he was seen through, and Peter 
 grew black as a thunder-cloud. When Shirley looked up, a 
 fell eye was fastened on her : Malone, at least, had energy 
 enough in hate : she saw it in his glance. 
 
 'Peter is worth a scene, and shall have it, if he likes, one 
 day,' she whispered to her friend. 
 
 And now solemn and sombre as to their colour, though 
 bland enough as to their faces appeared at the dining-room 
 door the three rectors : they had hitherto been busy in the 
 church, and were now coming to take some little refreshment 
 for the body, ere the march commenced. The large 
 morocco-covered easy-chair had been left vacant for Dr. 
 Boultby ; he was put into it, and Caroline, obeying the in- 
 stigations of Shirley, who told her now was the time to play 
 the hostess, hastened to hand to her uncle's vast, revered, 
 and, on the whole, worthy friend, a glass of wine and a plate 
 of macaroons. Boultby's churchwardens, patrons of the 
 Sunday-school both, as he insisted on their being, were 
 already beside him ; Mrs. Sykes and the other ladies of his 
 congregation were on his right hand and on his left, express- 
 ing their hopes that he was not fatigued, their fears that the 
 day would be too warm for him. Mrs. Boultby, who held 
 an opinion that when her lord dropped to sleep after a good 
 dinner his face became as the face of an angel, was bending 
 over him, tenderly wiping some perspiration, real or 
 imaginary, from his brow : Boultby, in short, was in his 
 glory, and in a round sound ' voix de poitrine,' he I'umbled 
 out thanks for attentions, and assurances of his tolerable 
 health. Of Caroline he took no manner of notice as she 
 came near, save to accept what she offered : he did not see 
 her, he never did see her : he hardly knew that such a person 
 existed. He saw the macaroons, however, and being fond 
 of sweets, possessed himself of a small handful thereof.
 
 WHITSUNTIDE 307 
 
 The wine, Mrs. Boultby insisted on mingling with hot water, 
 and qualifying with sugar and nutmeg. 
 
 Mr. Hall stood near an open window, breathing the 
 fresh air and scent of flowers, and talking like a brother to 
 Miss Ainley. To him Caroline turned her attention with 
 pleasure. ' What should she bring him ? He must not 
 help himself he must be served by her; ' and she provided 
 herself with a little salver, that she might offer him variety. 
 Margaret Hall joined them ; so did Miss Keeldar : the four 
 ladies stood round their favourite pastor : they also had an 
 idea that they looked on the face of an earthly angel : Cyril 
 Hall was their pope, infallible to them as Dr. Thomas 
 Boultby to his admirers. A throng, too, enclosed the 
 Rector of Briarfield : twenty or more pressed round him ; 
 and no parson was ever more potent in a circle than old 
 Helstone. The curates herding together after their manner, 
 made a constellation of three lesser planets : divers young 
 ladies watched them afar off, but ventured not nigh. 
 
 Mr. Helstone produced his watch. ' Ten minutes to two,' 
 he announced aloud. ' Time for all to fall into line. Come.' 
 He seized his shovel-hat and marched away ; all rose and 
 followed en masse. 
 
 The twelve hundred children were drawn up in three 
 bodies of four hundred souls each : in the rear of each regi- 
 ment was stationed a band ; between every twenty there 
 was an interval, wherein Helstone posted the teachers in 
 pairs : to the van of the armies he summoned : ' Grace 
 Boultby and Mary Sykes lead out Whinbury.' 
 
 ' Margaret Hall and Mary Ann Ainley conduct Nunnely.' 
 
 4 Caroline Ht-lstone and Shirley Keeldar head Briarfield.' 
 
 Then again he gave command : ' Mr. Donne to Whin- 
 bury ; Mr. Sweeting to Nunnely ; Mr. Malone to Briar- 
 field.' 
 
 And these gentlemen stepped up before the lady-generals. 
 
 The rectors passed to the full front - the parish clerks 
 fell to the extreme rear ; Helstone lifted his shovel-hat ; in 
 an instant out clashed the eight bells in the tower, loud
 
 308 SHIRLEY 
 
 swelled the sounding bands, flute spoke and clarion answered, 
 deep rolled the drums, and away they marched. 
 
 The broad white road unrolled before the long procession, 
 the sun and sky surveyed it cloudless, the wind tossed the 
 tree-boughs above it, and the twelve hundred children, and 
 one hundred and forty adults, of which it was composed, 
 trod on in time and tune, with gay faces and glad hearts. 
 It was a joyous scene, and a scene to do good : it was a day 
 of happiness for rich and poor : the work, first of God, and 
 then of the clergy. Let England's priests have their due : 
 they are a faulty set in some respects, being only of common 
 flesh and blood, like us all ; but the land would be badly off 
 without them : Britain would miss her church, if that church 
 fell. God save it t God also reform it !
 
 CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 
 
 NOT on combat bent, nor of foemen in search, was this 
 priest-led and woman-officered company : yet their music 
 played martial tunes, and to judge by the eyes and carriage 
 of some, Miss Keeldar, for instance these sounds awoke, if 
 not a martial, yet a longing spirit. Old Helstone, turning by 
 chance, looked into her face, and he laughed, and she laughed 
 at him. 
 
 ' There is no battle in prospect,' he said ; ' our country 
 does not want us to fight for it : no foe or tyrant is 
 questioning or threatening our liberty : there is nothing to 
 be done : we are only taking a walk. Keep your hand on 
 the reins, captain, and slack the fire of that spirit : it is not 
 wanted ; the more's the pity.' 
 
 ' Take your own advice, Doctor,' was Shirley's response. 
 To Caroline, she murmured, ' I'll borrow of imagination 
 what reality will not give me. We are not soldiers blood- 
 shed is not my desire ; or if we are, we are soldiers of the 
 Cross. Time has rolled back some hundreds of years, and 
 we are bound on a pilgrimage to Palestine. But no, that 
 is too visionary. I need a sterner dream : we are Lowlanders 
 of Scotland, following a covenanting captain up into the 
 hills to hold a meeting out of the reach of persecuting 
 troopers. We know that battle may follow prayer ; and, as 
 we believe that in the worst issue of battle, heaven must be 
 our reward, we are ready and willing to redden the peat-moss 
 with our blood. That music stirs my soul ; it wakens all 
 my life ; it makes my heart beat : not with its temperate
 
 310 SHIRLEY 
 
 daily pulse, but with a new, thrilling vigour. I almost long 
 for danger; for a faith a land or, at least, a lover to 
 defend.' 
 
 1 Look Shirley ! ' interrupted Caroline. ' What is that 
 red speck above Stilbro' Brow ? You have keener sight than 
 I ; just turn your eagle eye to it.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar looked. 
 
 ' I see,' she said : then added, presently, ' There is a line 
 of red. They are soldiers cavalry soldiers,' she subjoined 
 quickly : ' they ride fast : there are six of them : they will 
 pass us : no they have turned off to the right : they saw 
 our procession, and avoid it by making a circuit. Where 
 are they going ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps they are only exercising their horses.' 
 
 ' Perhaps so. We see them no more now.' 
 
 Mr. Helstone here spoke. 
 
 ' W T e shall pass through Boyd-lane, to reach Nunnely 
 Common by a short cut,' said he. 
 
 And into the straits of Eoyd-lane they accordingly defiled. 
 It was very narrow, so narrow that only two could walk 
 abreast without falling into the ditch which ran along each 
 side. They had gained the middle of it, when excitement 
 became obvious in the clerical commanders : Boultby's spec- 
 tacles and Helstone's Eehoboam were agitated : the curates 
 nudged each other : Mr. Hall turned to the ladies and 
 smiled. 
 
 ' What is the matter ? ' was the demand. 
 
 He pointed with his staff to the end of the lane before 
 them. Lo and behold ! another, an opposition procession 
 was there entering, headed also by men in black, and 
 followed also, as they could now hear, by music. 
 
 ' Is it our double ? ' asked Shirley : ' our manifold wraith ? 
 Here is a card turned up.' 
 
 ' If you wanted a battle, you are likely to get one, at 
 least of looks,' whispered Caroline, laughing. 
 
 ' They shall not pass us ! ' cried the curates, unanimously : 
 ' we'll not give way ! '
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 311 
 
 1 Give way ! ' retorted Helstone, sternly, turning round ; 
 ' who talks of giving way ? You, boys, mind what you are 
 about : the ladies, I know, will be firm ; I can trust them. 
 There is not a churchwoman here but will stand her ground 
 against these folks, for the honour of the Establishment. 
 What does Miss Keeldar say? ' 
 
 1 She asks what is it ? ' 
 
 'The Dissenting and Methodist schools, the Baptists, 
 Independents, and Wesleyans, joined in unholy alliance, 
 and turning purposely into this lane with the intention of 
 obstructing our march and driving us back.' 
 
 ' Bad manners ! ' said Shirley ; ' and I hate bad manners. 
 Of course, they must have a lesson.' 
 
 ' A lesson in politeness,' suggested Mr. Hall, who was 
 ever for peace : ' not an example of rudeness.' 
 
 Old Helstone moved on. Quickening his step, he marched 
 some yards in advance of his company. He had nearly 
 reached the other sable leaders, when he who appeared to 
 act as the hostile commander-in-chief a large, greasy man, 
 with black hair combed flat on his forehead called a halt. 
 The procession paused ; he drew forth a hymn-book, gave 
 out a verse, set a tune, and they all struck up the most 
 dolorous of canticles. 
 
 Helstone signed to his bands : they clashed out with 
 all the power of brass. He desired them to play ' Eule, 
 Britannia,' and ordered the children to join in vocally, which 
 they did with enthusiastic spirit. The enemy was sung and 
 stormed down ; his psalm quelled : as far as noise went, 
 he was conquered. 
 
 ' Now, follow me ! ' exclaimed Helstone ; ' not at a run, 
 but at a firm, smart pace. Be steady, every child and 
 woman of you : keep together : hold on by each other's 
 skirts, if necessary.' 
 
 And he strode on with such a determined and deliberate 
 gait, and was, besides, so well seconded by his scholars and 
 teachers who did exactly as he told them, neither running 
 nor faltering, but marching with cool, solid impetus; the
 
 312 SHIRLEY 
 
 curates, too, being compelled to do the same, as they were 
 between two fires, Helstone and Miss Keeldar, both of 
 whom watched any deviation with lynx-eyed vigilance, and 
 were ready, the one with his cane, the other with her 
 parasol, to rebuke the slightest breach of orders, the least 
 independent or irregular demonstration, that the body of 
 Dissenters were first amazed, then alarmed, then borne 
 down and pressed back, and at last forced to turn tail and 
 leave the outlet from Eoyd-lane free. Boultby suffered in 
 the onslaught, but Helstone and Malone, between them, 
 held him up, and brought him through the business, whole 
 in limb, though sorely tried in wind. 
 
 The fat Dissenter who had given out the hymn was left 
 sitting in the ditch. He was a spirit-merchant by trade, 
 a leader of the Nonconformists, and, it was said, drank 
 more water in that one afternoon than he had swallowed 
 for a twelvemonth before. Mr. Hall had taken care of 
 Caroline, and Caroline of him : he and Miss Ainley made 
 their own quiet comments to each other afterwards on the 
 incident. Miss Keeldar and Mr. Helstone shook hands 
 heartily when they had fairly got the whole party through 
 the lane. The curates began to exult, but Mr. Helstone 
 presently put the curb on their innocent spirits : he remarked 
 that they never had sense to know what to say, and had 
 better hold their tongues : and he reminded them that the 
 business was none of their managing. 
 
 About half-past three the procession turned back, and 
 at four once more regained the starting-place. Long lines 
 of benches were arranged in the close-shorn fields round 
 the school : there the children were seated, and huge baskets, 
 covered up with white cloths, and great smoking tin vessels, 
 were brought out. Ere the distribution of good things 
 commenced, a brief grace was pronounced by Mr. Hall, and 
 sung by the children : their young voices sounded melodious, 
 even touching, in the open air. Large currant buns, and 
 hot, well-sw r eetened tea, were then administered in the 
 proper spidt of liberality ; no stinting was permitted on this
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 313 
 
 day, at least ; the rule for each child's allowance being that 
 it was to have about twice as much as it could possibly eat, 
 thus leaving a reserve to be carried home for such as age, 
 sickness, or other impediment, prevented from coming to 
 the feast. Buns and beer circulated, meantime, amongst 
 the musicians and church -singers : afterwards the benches 
 were removed, and they were left to unbend their spirits in 
 licensed play. 
 
 A bell summoned the teachers, patrons, and patronesses 
 to the schoolroom ; Miss Keeldar, Miss Helstone, and many 
 other ladies were already there, glancing over the arrange- 
 ment of their separate trays and tables. Most of the female 
 servants of the neighbourhood, together with the clerks', the 
 singers', and the musicians' wives, had been pressed into the 
 service of the day as waiters : each vied with the other in 
 smartness and daintiness of dress, and many handsome 
 forms were seen amongst the younger ones. About half 
 a score were cutting bread-and-butter ; another half-score 
 supplying hot water, brought from the coppers of the Rector's 
 kitchen. The profusion of flowers and evergreens decorating 
 the white walls, the show of silver teapots and bright 
 porcelain on the tables, the active figures, blithe faces, gay 
 dresses, flitting about everywhere, formed altogether a 
 refreshing and lively spectacle. Everybody talked, not very 
 loudly, but merrily, and the canary birds sang shrill in 
 their high-hung cages. 
 
 Caroline, as the Rector's niece, took her place at one of 
 the first three tables ; Mrs. Boultby and Margaret Hall 
 officiated at the others. At these tables the e"lite of the com- 
 pany were to be entertained ; strict rules of equality not being 
 more in fashion at Briarfield than elsewhere. Miss Hel- 
 stone removed her bonnet and scarf, that she might be 
 less oppressed with the heat ; her long curls, falling on her 
 neck, served almost in place of a veil, and for the rest, her 
 muslin dress was fashioned modestly as a nun's robe 
 enabling her thus to dispense with the encumbrance of a 
 shawl.
 
 3U SHIELEY 
 
 The room was filling : Mr. Hall had taken his post beside 
 Caroline, who now, as she re-arranged the cups and spoons 
 before her, whispered to him in a low voice remarks on the 
 events of the day. He looked a little grave about what had 
 taken place in Koyd-lane, and she tried to smile him out of 
 his seriousness. Miss Keeldar sat near; for a wonder, 
 neither laughing nor talking ; on the contrary, very still, and 
 gazing round her vigilantly : she seemed afraid lest some 
 intruder should take a seat she apparently wished to 
 reserve next her own : ever and anon she spread her satin 
 dress over an undue portion of the bench, or laid her gloves 
 or her embroidered handkerchief upon it. Caroline noticed 
 this manege at last, and asked her what friend she expected. 
 Shirley bent towards her, almost touched her ear with her 
 rosy lips, and whispered with a musical softness that often 
 characterized her tones when what she said tended even 
 remotely to stir some sweet secret source of feeling in her 
 heart : ' I expect Mr. Moore : I saw him last night, and I 
 made him promise to come with his sister, and to sit at our 
 table : he won't fail me, I feel certain, but I apprehend his 
 coming too late, and being separated from us. Here is a 
 fresh batch arriving ; every place will be taken : provoking ! ' 
 
 In fact Mr. Wynne the magistrate, his wife, his son, and 
 his two daughters, now entered in high state. They were 
 Briariield gentry : of course their place was at the first 
 table, and being conducted hither, they filled up the whole 
 remaining space. For Miss Keeldar's comfort, Mr. Sam 
 Wynne inducted himself into the very vacancy she had 
 kept for Moore, planting himself solidly on her gown, her 
 gloves, and her handkerchief. Mr. Sam was one of the 
 objects of her aversion : and the more so because he showed 
 serious symptoms of an aim at her hand. The old gentle- 
 man, too, had publicly declared that the Fieldhead estate 
 and the De Walden estate were delightfully contagious a 
 malapropism which rumour had not failed to repeat to 
 Shirley. 
 
 Caroline's ears yet ruug with that thrilling whisper, ' I
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 315 
 
 expect Mr. Moore,' her heart yet beat and her cheek yet 
 glowed with it, when a note from the organ pealed above 
 the confused hum of the place. Dr. Boultby, Mr. Helstone, 
 and Mr. Hall rose, so did all present, and gr-ace was sung 
 to the accompaniment of the music : and then tea began. 
 She was kept too busy with her office for a while to have 
 leisure for looking round, but the last cup being filled, she threw 
 a restless glance over the room. There were some ladies 
 and several gentlemen standing about yet unaccommodated 
 with seats ; amidst a group she recognised her spinster friend, 
 Miss Mann, whom the fine w r eather had tempted, or some 
 urgent friend had persuaded, to leave her drear solitude for 
 one hour of social enjoyment. Miss Mann looked tired of 
 standing : a lady in a yellow bonnet brought her a chair. 
 Caroline knew well that ' chapeau en satin jaune; ' she 
 knew the black hair, and the kindly, though rather 
 opinionated and froward-looking face under it ; she knew 
 that ' robe de soie noire ; ' she knew even that ' schal gris de 
 lin ; ' she knew, in short, Hortense Moore, and she wanted to 
 jump up and run to her and kiss her to give her one 
 embrace for her own sake, and two for her brother's. She 
 half rose, indeed, with a smothered exclamation, and perhaps 
 for the impulse w r as very strong she would have run across 
 the room, and actually saluted her, but a hand replaced 
 her in her seat, and a voice behind her whispered : ' Wait 
 till after tea, Lina, and then I'll bring her to you.' 
 
 And when she could look up she did, and there was 
 Robert himself close behind, smiling at her eagerness, looking 
 better than she had ever seen him look looking, indeed, to 
 her partial eyes, so very handsome, that she dared not trust 
 herself to hazard a second glance ; for his image struck on 
 her vision with painful brightness, and pictured itself on her 
 memory as vividly as if there daguerreotyped by a pencil of 
 keen lightning. 
 
 He moved on, and spoke to Miss Keeldar. Shirley, 
 irritated by some unwelcome attentions from Sam Wynne, 
 and by the fact of that gentleman being still seated on her
 
 316 SHIRLEY 
 
 gloves and handkerchief and probably, also, by Moore's 
 want, of punctuality was by no means in good humour. She 
 first shrugged her shoulders at him, and then she said a bitter 
 word or two about his ' insupportable tardiness.' Moore 
 neither apologized nor retorted; he stood near her quietly, 
 as if waiting to see whether she would recover her temper ; 
 which she did in little more than three minutes, indicating 
 the change by offering him her hand. Moore took it with a 
 smile, half-corrective, half-grateful : the slightest possible 
 shake of the head delicately marked the former quality ; it 
 is probable a gentle pressure indicated the latter. 
 
 ' You may sit where you can, now, Mr. Moore,' said 
 Shirley, also smiling : ' you see there is not an inch of room 
 for you here ; but I discern plenty of space at Mrs. Boultby's 
 table, between Miss Armitage and Miss Birtwhistle ; go : John 
 Sykes will be your vis-a-vis, and you will sit with your back 
 towards us.' 
 
 Moore, however, preferred lingering about where he was : 
 he now and then took a turn down the long room, pausing 
 in his walk to interchange greetings with other gentlemen 
 in his own placeless predicament ; but still he came back to 
 the magnet, Shirley, bringing with him, each time he re- 
 turned, observations it was necessary to whisper in her ear. 
 
 Meantime, poor Sam Wynne looked far from comfortable : 
 his fair neighbour, judging from her movements, appeared 
 in a mood the most unquiet and unaccommodating : she would 
 not sit still two seconds : she was hot ; she fanned herself ; 
 complained of want of air and space. She remarked that, 
 in her opinion, when people had finished their tea they ought 
 to leave the tables, and announced distinctly that she 
 expected to faint if the present state of things continued. 
 Mr. Sarn offered to accompany her into the open air ; just 
 the way to give her her death of cold, she alleged : in short, 
 his post became untenable ; and having swallowed his 
 quantum of tea, he judged it expedient to evacuate. 
 
 Moore should have been at hand, whereas he was quite 
 at the other extremity of the room, deep in conference with
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST? 317 
 
 Christopher Sykes. A large corn-factor, Timothy Ramsden, 
 Esq., happened to be nearer, and feeling himself tired of 
 standing, he advanced to fill the vacant seat. Shirley's 
 expedients did not fail her : a sweep of her scarf upset her 
 teacup, its contents were shared between the bench and her 
 own satin dress. Of course, it became necessary to call a 
 waiter to remedy the mischief : Mr. Ramsden, a stout, puffy 
 gentleman, as large in person as he was in property, held 
 aloof from the consequent commotion. Shirley, usually 
 almost culpably indifferent to slight accidents affecting dress, 
 &c., now made a commotion that might have become the 
 most delicate and nervous of her sex ; Mr. Ramsden opened 
 his mouth, withdrew slowly, and, as Miss Keeldar again 
 intimated her intention to ' give way ' and swoon on the spot, 
 he turned on his heel, and beat a heavy retreat. 
 
 Moore at last returned : calmly suveying the bustle, and 
 somewhat quizzically scanning Shirley's enigmatical-looking 
 countenance, he remarked, that in truth this was the hottest 
 end of the room ; that he found a climate there calculated 
 to agree with none but cool temperaments like his own ; 
 and, putting the waiters, the napkins, the satin robe, the 
 whole turmoil, in short, to one side, he installed himself 
 where destiny evidently decreed he should sit. Shirley 
 subsided ; her features altered their lines : the raised knit 
 brow and inexplicable curve of the mouth became straight 
 again : wilfulness and roguery gave place to other ex- 
 pressions ; and all the angular movements with w r hich she 
 had vexed the soul of Sam Wynne were conjured to rest as 
 by a charm. Still, no gracious glance was cast on Moore : 
 on the contrary, he was accused of giving her a world of 
 trouble, and roundly charged with being the cause of de- 
 priving her of the esteem of Mr. Ramsden, and the invaluable 
 friendship of Mr. Samuel Wynne. 
 
 ' Wouldn't have offended either gentleman for the 
 world,' she averred : ' I have always been accustomed to 
 treat both with the most respectful consideration, and there, 
 owing to you, how they have been used ! I shall not be
 
 318 SHiRLM 
 
 liappy till I have made it up : I never am happy till I ani 
 friends with my neighbours ; so to-morrow I must make a 
 pilgrimage to Eoyd corn-mill, soothe the miller, and praise 
 the grain ; and next day I must call at De Walden where 
 I hate to go and carry in my reticule half an oat-cake to 
 give to Mr. Sam's favourite pointers.' 
 
 1 You know the surest path to the heart of each swain, I 
 doubt not,' said Moore quietly. He looked very content to 
 have at last secured his present place ; but he made no fine 
 speech expressive of gratification, and offered no apology for 
 the trouble he had given. His phlegm became him wonder- 
 fully : it made him look handsomer, he was so composed : 
 it made his vicinage pleasant, it was so peace-restoring. 
 You would not have thought, to look at him, that he was a 
 poor, struggling man seated beside a rich woman ; the 
 calm of equality stilled his aspect : perhaps that calm, too, 
 reigned in his soul. Now and then, from the way in which 
 he looked down on Miss Keeldar as he addressed her, you 
 would have fancied his station towered above hers as much 
 as his stature did. Almost stern lights sometimes crossed 
 his brow and gleamed in his eyes : their conversation had 
 become animated, though it was confined to a low key : she 
 was urging him with questions evidently, he refused to her 
 curiosity all the gratification it demanded. She sought his 
 eye once with hers : you read, in its soft yet eager ex- 
 pression, that it solicited clearer replies. Moore smiled 
 pleasantly, but his lips continued sealed. Then she was 
 piqued and turned away, but he recalled her attention in two 
 minutes : he seemed making promises, which he soothed her 
 into accepting, in lieu of information. 
 
 It appeared that the heat of the room did not suit Miss 
 Helstone : she grew paler and paler as the process of tea- 
 making was protracted. The moment thanks were returned, 
 she quitted the table, and hastened to follow her cousin 
 llortense, who, with Miss Mann, had already sought the 
 open air. Robert Moore had risen when she did perhaps 
 he meant to speak to her ; but there was yet a parting word
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 319 
 
 to exchange with Miss Keeldar, and while it was being 
 uttered, Caroline had vanished 
 
 Hortense received her former pupil with a demeanour of 
 more dignity than warmth : she had been seriously offended 
 by Mr. Helstone's proceedings, and had all along considered 
 Caroline to blame, in obeying her uncle too literally. 
 
 ' You are a very great stranger,' she said, austerely, as 
 her pupil held and pressed her hand. The pupil knew her 
 too well to remonstrate or complain of coldness ; she let 
 the punctilious whim pass, sure that her natural bontd (I 
 use this French word, because it expresses just what I 
 mean ; neither goodness nor good nature, but something 
 between the two) would presently get the upper-hand. It 
 did : Hortense had no sooner examined her face well, and 
 observed the change its somewhat wasted features betrayed, 
 than her mien softened. Kissing her on both cheeks, she 
 asked anxiously after her health : Caroline answered gaily. 
 It would, however, have been her lot to undergo a long cross- 
 examination, followed by an endless lecture on this head, 
 had not Miss Mann called off the attention of the questioner, 
 by requesting to be conducted home. The poor invalid was 
 already fatigued : her weariness made her cross too cross 
 almost to speak to Caroline : and besides, that young 
 person's white dress and lively look were displeasing in the 
 eyes of Miss . Mann : the everyday garb of brown stuff or 
 gray gingham, and the everyday air of melancholy, suited 
 the solitary spinster better : she would hardly know her 
 young friend to-night and quitted her with a cool nod. 
 Hortense having promised to accompany her home, they 
 departed together. 
 
 Caroline now looked round for Shirley. She saw the 
 rainbow scarf and purple dress in the centre of a throng of 
 ladies, all well known to herself, but all of the order whom 
 she systematically avoided whenever avoidance was possible. 
 Shyer at some moments than at others, she felt just now no 
 courage at all to join this company : she could not, however, 
 stand alone where all others went in pairs or parties, so
 
 320 , SHIRLEY 
 
 she approached a group of her own scholars, great girls, or 
 rather young women, who were standing watching some 
 hundreds of the younger children playing at blind-man's- 
 buff. 
 
 Miss Helstone knew these girls liked her, yet she was shy 
 even with them out of school : they were not more in awe 
 of her than she of them : she drew near them now, rather to 
 find protection in their company than to patronize them with 
 her presence. By some instinct they knew her weakness, 
 and with natural politeness they respected it. Her know- 
 ledge commanded their esteem when she taught them ; her 
 gentleness attracted their regard ; and because she was 
 what they considered wise and good when on duty they 
 kindly overlooked her evident timidity when off: they did 
 not take advantage of it. Peasant girls as they were, they 
 had too much of her own English sensibility to be guilty of 
 the coarse error : they stood round her still, civil, friendly, 
 receiving her slight smiles, and rather hurried efforts to 
 converse, with good feeling and good breeding : the last 
 quality being the result of the first, which soon set her at her 
 ease. 
 
 Mr. Sam Wynne coming up with great haste to insist on 
 the elder girls joining in the game as well as the younger 
 ones, Caroline was again left alone. She was meditating a 
 quiet retreat to the house, when Shirley, perceiving from afar 
 her isolation, hastened to her side. 
 
 ' Let us go to the top of the fields,' she said : ' I know 
 you don't like crowds, Caroline.' 
 
 ' But it will be depriving you of a pleasure, Shirley, to 
 take you from all these fine people, who court your society 
 so assiduously, and to whom you can, without art or effort, 
 make yourself so pleasant.' 
 
 ' Not quite without effort : I am already tired of the 
 exertion : it is but insipid barren work, talking and laughing 
 with the good gentlefolks of Briarfield. I have been looking 
 out for your white dress for the last ten minutes : I like to 
 watch those I love in a crowd, and to compare them with
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 321 
 
 others : I have thus compared you. You resemble none of 
 the rest, Lina : there are some prettier faces than yours 
 here ; you are not a model-beauty like Harriet Sykes, for 
 instance ; beside her, your person appears almost insignifi- 
 cant ; but you look agreeable you look reflective you look 
 what I call interesting.' 
 
 ' Hush, Shirley ! You flatter me.' 
 ' I don't wonder that your scholars like you.' 
 'Nonsense, Shirley : talk of something else.' 
 ' We will talk of Moore, then, and we will watch him : I 
 see him even now.' 
 
 ' Where ? ' And as Caroline asked the question, she 
 looked not over the fields, but into Miss Keeldar's eyes, as 
 was her wont whenever Shirley mentioned any object she 
 descried afar. Her friend had quicker vision than herself ; 
 and Caroline seemed to think that the secret of her eagle 
 acuteness might be read in her dark gray irids : or rather, 
 perhaps, she only sought guidance by the direction of those 
 discriminating and brilliant spheres. 
 
 1 There is Moore,' said Shirley, pointing right across the 
 wide field where a thousand children were playing, and now 
 nearly a thousand adult spectators walking about. ' There 
 can you miss the tall stature and straight port ? He looks 
 amidst the set that surround him like Eliab amongst 
 humbler shepherds like Saul in a war-council : and a war- 
 council it is, if I am not mistaken.' 
 
 ' Why so, Shirley ? ' asked Caroline, whose eye had at last 
 caught the object it sought. ' Robert is just now speaking 
 to my uncle, and they are shaking hands ; they are then 
 reconciled.' 
 
 ' Reconciled not without good reason, depend on it : 
 making common cause against some common foe. And 
 why, think you, are Messrs. Wynne and Sykes, and 
 Armitage and Ramsden, gathered in such a close circle 
 round them? And why is Malone beckoned to join them? 
 Where he is summoned, be sure a strong arm is needed.' 
 Shirley, as she watched, grew restless : her eyes flashed.
 
 322 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' They won't trust me,' she said : ' that is always the 
 way when it comes to the point.' 
 
 ' What about ? ' 
 
 1 Cannot you feel ? There is some mystery afloat : some 
 event is expected ; some preparation is to be made, I am 
 certain : I saw it all in Mr. Moore's manner this evening : 
 he was excited, yet hard.' 
 
 ' Hard to you, Shirley ! ' 
 
 'Yes, to me. He often is hard to me. We seldom 
 converse tete-a-tete, but I am made to feel that the basis of 
 his character is not of eider-down.' 
 
 1 Yet he seemed to talk to you softly.' 
 
 ' Did he not ? Very gentle tones and quiet manner ; 
 yet the man is peremptory and secret : his secrecy vexes 
 me.' 
 
 ' Yes Robert is secret.' 
 
 ' Which he has scarcely a right to be with me ; especially 
 as he commenced by giving me his confidence. Having 
 done nothing to forfeit that confidence, it ought not to be 
 withdrawn : but I suppose I am not considered iron-souled 
 enough to be trusted in a crisis.' 
 
 1 He fears, probably, to occasion you uneasiness.' 
 
 ' An unnecessary precaution : I am of elastic materials, 
 not soon crushed ; he ought to know that : but the man is 
 proud : he has his faults, say what you will, Lina. Observe 
 how engaged that group appear : they do not know we are 
 watching tliein.' 
 
 ' If we keep on the alert, Shirley, we shall perhaps find 
 the clue to their secret. 
 
 ' There will be some unusual movements erelong 
 perhaps to-morrow possibly to-night. But my eyes and 
 ears are wide open : Mr. Moore, you shall be under surveil- 
 lance. Be you vigilant also, Lina.' 
 
 ' I will : Robert is going, I saw him turn I believe he 
 noticed us they are shaking hands.' 
 
 ' Shaking hands, with emphasis,' added Shirley ; ' as if 
 they were ratifying some solemn league and covenant.'
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 323 
 
 They saw Robert quit the group, pass through a gate, 
 and disappear. 
 
 1 And he has not bid us good-by,' murmured Caroline. 
 
 Scarcely had the words escaped her lips, when she tried 
 by a smile to deny the confession of disappointment they 
 seemed to imply. An unbidden suffusion for one moment 
 both softened and brightened her eyes. 
 
 ' Oh, that is soon remedied ! ' exclaimed Shirley. ' We'll 
 make him bid us good-by.' 
 
 ' Make him ! That is not the same thing,' was the 
 answer. 
 
 ' It shall be the same thing.' 
 
 ' But he is gone : you can't overtake him.' 
 
 ' I know a shorter way than that he has taken : we will 
 intercept him.' 
 
 ' But, Shirley, I would rather not go.' 
 
 Caroline said this as Miss Keeldar seized her arm, and 
 hurried her down the fields. It was vain to contend : 
 nothing was so wilful as Shirley, when she took a whim into 
 her head : Caroline found herself out of sight of the crowd 
 almost before she was aware, and ushered into a narrow 
 shady spot, embowered above with hawthorns, and enamelled 
 under foot with daisies. She took no notice of the evening 
 sun chequering the turf, nor was she sensible of the pure 
 incense exhaling at this hour from tree and plant ; she only 
 heard the wicket opening at one end, and knew Kobert was 
 approaching. The long sprays of the hawthorns, shooting 
 out before them, served as a screen ; they saw him before 
 he observed them. At a glance Caroline perceived that his 
 social hilarity was gone : he had left it behind him in the 
 joy-echoing fields round the school ; what remained now 
 was his dark, quiet, business countenance. As Shirley had 
 said, a certain hardness characterised his air, while his eye 
 was excited, but austere. So much the worse-timed was 
 the present freak of Shirley's : if he had looked disposed 
 for holiday mirth, it would not have mattered much, but 
 
 now 
 
 s
 
 324 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I told you not to come,' said Caroline, somewhat 
 bitterly, to her friend. She seemed truly perturbed : to be 
 intruded on Eobert thus, against her will and his expecta- 
 tion, and when he evidently would rather not be delayed, 
 keenly annoyed her. It did not annoy Miss Keeldar in the 
 least : she stepped forward and faced her tenant, barring 
 his way : ' You omitted to bid us good-by,' she said. 
 
 ' Omitted to bid you good-by ! Where did you come 
 from ? Are you fairies ? I left two like you, one in purple 
 and one in white, standing at the top of a bank, four fields 
 off, but a minute ago.' 
 
 'You left us there and find us here. We have been 
 watching you; and shall watch you still: you must be 
 questioned one day, but not now : at present, all you have 
 to do is to say good-night, and then pass.' 
 
 Moore glanced from one to the other, without unbending 
 his aspect. ' Days of fete have their privileges, and so have 
 days of hazard,' observed he, gravely. 
 
 ' Come don't moralize : say good-night, and pass,' urged 
 Shirley. 
 
 ' Must I say good -night to you, Miss Keeldar ? 
 
 'Yes, and to Caroline likewise. It is nothing new, I 
 hope : you have bid us both good-night before.' 
 
 He took her hand, held it in one of his, and covered it 
 with the other : he looked down at her gravely, kindly, yet 
 cornmandingly. The heiress could not make this man her 
 subject : in his gaze on her bright face there was no 
 servility, hardly homage ; but there was interest and affec- 
 tion, heightened by another feeling : something in his tone 
 when he spoke, as well as in his words, marked that last 
 sentiment to be gratitude. 
 
 ' Your debtor bids you good-night ! May you rest 
 safely and serenely till morning.' 
 
 ' And you, Mr. Moore, what are you going to do ? 
 What have you been saying to Mr. Helstone, with whom I 
 saw you shake hands ? Why did all those gentlemen gather 
 round you ? Put away reserve for once : be frank with me.'
 
 THE SCHOOL-FEAST 325 
 
 1 Who can resist you ? I will be frank : to-morrow, if 
 there is anything to relate, you shall hear it.' 
 
 'Just now,' pleaded Shirley : ' don't procrastinate.' 
 
 1 But I could only tell half a tale ; and my time is 
 limited, I have not a moment to spare: hereafter I will 
 make amends for delay by candour.' 
 
 ' But are you going home ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Not to leave it any more to-night ? ' 
 
 1 Certainly not. At present, farewell to both of you ! ' 
 
 He would have taken Caroline's hand and joined it in 
 the same clasp in which he held Shirley's, but somehow it 
 was not ready for him ; she had withdrawn a few steps 
 apart : her answer to Moore's adieu was only a slight bend 
 of the head, and a gentle, serious smile. He sought no more 
 cordial token : again he said ' Farewell ! ' and quitted them 
 both. 
 
 ' There ! it is over 1 ' said Shirley, when he was gone. 
 'We have made him bid us good-night, and yet not lost 
 ground in his esteem, I think, Gary.' 
 
 ' I hope not,' was the brief reply. 
 
 ' I consider you very timid and undemonstrative/ re- 
 marked Miss Keeldar. ' Why did you not give Moore your 
 hand when he offered you his ? He is your cousin : you like 
 him. Are you ashamed to let him perceive your affection ? ' 
 
 ' He perceives all of it that interests him : no need to 
 make a display of feeling.' 
 
 ' You are laconic : you would be stoical if you could. Is 
 love, in your eyes, a crime, Caroline ? ' 
 
 1 Love, a crime ! ' No, Shirley love is a divine virtue ; 
 but why drag that word into the conversation ? It is 
 singularly irrelevant ! ' 
 
 ' Good ! ' pronounced Shirley. 
 
 The two girls paced the green lane in silence. Caroline 
 first resumed. 
 
 ' Obtrusiveness is a crime ; forwardness is a crime ; and 
 both disgust : but love ! no purest angel need blush to love I
 
 326 SHIRLEY 
 
 And when I see or hear either man or woman couple shame 
 with love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations 
 debased. Many who think themselves refined ladies and 
 gentlemen, and on whose lips the word "-vulgarity " is for 
 ever hovering, cannot mention " love " without betraying 
 their own innate and imbecile degradation : it is a low feel- 
 ing in their estimation, connected only with low ideas for 
 them.' 
 
 ' You describe three-fourths of the world, Caroline.' 
 ' They are cold they are cowardly they are stupid on 
 the subject, Shirley ! They never loved they never were 
 loved ! ' 
 
 ' Thou art right, Lina ! And in their dense ignorance 
 they blaspheme living fire, seraph-brought from a divine 
 altar.' 
 
 1 They confound it with sparks mounting from Tophet ! ' 
 The sudden and joyous clash of bells here stopped the 
 dialogue by summoning all to the church.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, 
 LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED 
 
 THE evening was still and warm ; close and sultry it even 
 promised to become. Round the descending sun the clouds 
 glowed purple : summer tints, rather Indian than English, 
 suffused the horizon, and cast rosy reflections on hill-side, 
 house-front, tree-bole ; on winding road, and undulating 
 pasture-ground. The two girls came down from the fields 
 slowly : by the time they reached the churchyard the bells 
 were hushed ; the multitudes were gathered into the church : 
 the whole scene was solitary. 
 
 ' How pleasant and calm it is ! ' said Caroline. 
 
 ' And how hot it will be in the church ! ' responded 
 Shirley ; ' and what a dreary long speech Dr. Boultby will 
 make ! and how the curates will hammer over their prepared 
 orations ! For my part, I would rather not enter.' 
 
 ' But my uncle will be angry, if he observes our 
 absence.' 
 
 ' I will bear the brunt of his wrath : he will not devour 
 me. I shall be sorry to miss his pungent speech. I know 
 it will bo all sense for the Church, and all causticity for 
 Schism : he'll not forget the battle of Royd-lane. I shall be 
 sorry also to deprive you of Mr. Hall's sincere friendly 
 homily, with all its racy Yorkshireisms ; but here I must 
 stay. The gray church and grayer tombs look divine with 
 this crimson gleam on them. Nature is now at her evening 
 prayers : she is kneeling before those red hills. I see her 
 prostrate on the great steps of her altar, praying for a fair
 
 328 SHIRLEY 
 
 night for mariners at sea, for travellers in deserts, for lambs 
 on moors, and unfledged birds in woods. Caroline, I see 
 her ! and I will tell you what she is like : she is like what 
 Eve was when she and Adam stood alone on earth.' 
 ' And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley.' 
 ' Milton's Eve ! Milton's Eve ! I repeat. No, by the 
 pure Mother of God, she is not ! Gary, we are alone : we 
 may speak what we think. Milton was great ; but was he 
 good? His brain was right; how was his heart ? He saw 
 heaven : he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin 
 his daughter, and Death their horrible offspring. Angels 
 serried before him their battalions : the long lines of 
 adamantine shields flashed back on his blind eyeballs the 
 unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered their 
 legions in his sight : their dim, discrowned, and tarnished 
 armies passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see 
 the first woman ; but, Gary, he saw her not.' 
 ' You are bold to say so, Shirley.' 
 
 ' Not more bold than faithful. It was his cook that he 
 saw ; or it was Mrs. Gill, as I have seen her, making custards, 
 in the heat of summer, in the cool dairy, with rose-trees and 
 nasturtiums about the latticed window, preparing a cold 
 collation for the rectors, preserves, and " dulcet creams " 
 puzzled 
 
 What choice to choose for delicacy best ; 
 What order so contrived as not to mil 
 Tastes, not well-joined, inelegant ; but bring 
 Taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change.' 
 
 ' All very well too, Shirley.' 
 
 ' I would beg to remind him that the first men of the 
 earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother : from 
 her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus ; she bore Prome- 
 theus ' 
 
 ' Pagan that you are ! what does that signify ? ' 
 
 ' I say, there were giants on the earth in those days : 
 giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast 
 that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which
 
 LOW PERSONS INTRODUCED 329 
 
 could contend with Omnipotence : the strength which could 
 bear a thousand years of bondage, the vitality which could 
 feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, the un- 
 exhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to im- 
 mortality, which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, 
 and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. The 
 first woman was heaven-born : vast was the heart whence 
 gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations ; and grand 
 the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of 
 creation.' 
 
 ' She coveted an apple, and was cheated by a snake : but 
 you have got such a hash of Scripture and mythology into 
 your head that there is no making any sense of you. You 
 have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills.' 
 
 ' I saw I now see a woman-Titan : her robe of blue 
 air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock 
 is grazing ; a veil white as an avalanche sweeps from her 
 head to her feet, and arabesques of lightning flame on its 
 borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that 
 horizon : through its blush shines the star of evening. Her 
 steady eyes I cannot picture ; they are clear they ave deep 
 as lakes they are lifted and full of worship they tremble 
 with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her 
 forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the 
 early moon, risen long before dark gathers : she reclines her 
 bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor ; her mighty hands are 
 joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with 
 God. That Eve is Jehovah's daughter, as Adam was his son.' 
 
 ' She is very vague and visionary ! Come, Shirley, we 
 ought to go into church.' 
 
 ' Caroline, I will not : I will stay out here with my 
 mother Eve, in these days called Nature. I love her 
 undying, mighty being ! Heaven may have faded from her 
 brow when she fell in paradise ; but all that is glorious on 
 earth shines there still. She is taking me to her bosom, and 
 showing me her heart. Hush, Caroline ! you will see her 
 and feel as I do, if we are both silent.'
 
 330 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I will humour your whim ; but you will begin talking 
 again, ere ten minutes are over.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar, on whom the soft excitement of the warm 
 summer evening seemed working with unwonted power, 
 leaned against an upright headstone : she fixed her eyes on 
 the deep-burning west, and sank into a pleasurable trance. 
 Caroline, going a little apart, paced to and fro beneath the 
 Rectory garden-wall, dreaming, too, in her way. Shirley 
 had mentioned the word ' mother : ' that word suggested to 
 Caroline's imagination not the mighty and mystical parent 
 of Shirley's visions, but a gentle human form the form she 
 ascribed to her own mother ; unknown, unloved, but not 
 unlonged for. 
 
 ' Oh, that the day would come when she would remem- 
 ber her child ! Oh, that I might know her, and knowing, 
 love her ! ' 
 
 Such was her aspiration. 
 
 The longing of her childhood filled her soul again. The 
 desire which many a night had kept her awake in her crib, 
 and which fear of its fallacy had of late years almost 
 extinguished, relit suddenly, and glowed warm in her heart : 
 that her mother might come some happy day, and send for 
 her to her presence look upon her fondly with loving eyes, 
 and say to her tenderly in a sweet voice : ' Caroline, my 
 child, I have a home for you : you shall live with me. All 
 the love you have needed, and not tasted, from infancy, 
 I have saved for you carefully. Come ! it shall cherish you 
 now.' 
 
 A noise on the road roused Caroline from her filial 
 hopes, and Shirley from her Titan visions. They listened, 
 and heard the tramp of horses : they looked, and saw a 
 glitter through the trees : they caught through the foliage 
 glimpses of martial scarlet ; helm shone, plume waved. Silent 
 and orderly, six soldiers rode softly by. 
 
 ' The same we saw this afternoon,' whispered Shirley : 
 ' they have been halting somewhere till now. They wish 
 to be as little noticed as possible, and are seeking their
 
 LOW PEESONS INTBODUCED 331 
 
 rendezvous at this quiet hour, while the people are at 
 church. Did I not say we should see unusual things ere 
 long ? ' 
 
 Scarcely were sight and sound of the soldiers lost, when 
 another and somewhat different disturbance broke the night- 
 hush a child's impatient scream. They looked : a man 
 issued from the church, carrying in his arms an infant 
 a robust, ruddy little boy, of some two years old roaring 
 with all the power of his lungs : he had probably just 
 awaked from a church-sleep : two little girls, of nine and ten, 
 followed. The influence of the fresh air, and the attraction 
 of some flowers gathered from a grave, soon quieted the 
 child ; the man sat down with him, dandling him on his knee 
 as tenderly as any woman ; the two girls took their places 
 one on each side. 
 
 ' Good-evening, William,' said Shirley, after due scrutiny 
 of the man. He had seen her before, and apparently was 
 waiting to be recognised ; he now took off his hat, and 
 grinned a smile of pleasure. He was a rough-headed, hard- 
 featured personage, not old, but very weather-beaten ; his 
 attire was decent and clean, that of his children singularly 
 neat ; it was our old friend Farren. The young ladies 
 approached him. 
 
 ' You are not going into the church ? ' he inquired, gazing 
 at them complacently, yet with a mixture of bashfulness in 
 his look : a sentiment not by any means the result of awe 
 of their station, but only of appreciation of their elegance 
 and youth. Before gentlemen such as Moore or Helstone, 
 for instance William was often a little dogged ; with 
 proud or insolent ladies, too, he was quite unmanageable, 
 sometimes very resentful ; but he was most sensible of, most 
 tractable to, good-humour and civility. His nature a 
 stubborn one was repelled by inflexibility in other natures ; 
 for which reason, he had uever been able to like his former 
 master, Moore ; and, unconscious of that gentleman's good 
 opinion of himself, and of the service he had secretly 
 rendered him in recommending him as gardener to Mr.
 
 332 SHIRLEY 
 
 Yorke, and by this means to other families in the neighbour- 
 hood, he continued to harbour a grudge against his austerity. 
 Latterly, he had often worked at Fieldhead ; Miss Keeldar's 
 frank, hospitable manners were perfectly charming to him. 
 Caroline he had known from her childhood : unconsciously, 
 she was his ideal of a lady. Her gentle mien, step, gestures, 
 her grace of person and attire, moved some artist fibres 
 about his peasant-heart : he had a pleasure in looking at 
 her, as he had in examining rare flowers, or in seeing 
 pleasant landscapes. Both the ladies liked William : it was 
 their delight to lend him books, to give him plants ; and they 
 preferred his conversation far before that of many coarse, 
 hard, pretentious people, immeasurably higher in station. 
 
 1 Who was speaking, William, when you came out ? ' 
 asked Shirley. 
 
 ' A gentleman ye set a deal of store on, Miss Shirley Mr. 
 Donne.' 
 
 ' You look knowing, William. How did you find out my 
 regard for Mr. Donne ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, Miss Shirley, there's a gleg light i' your een some- 
 times which betrays you. You look raight down scornful 
 sometimes, when Mr. Donne is by.' 
 
 ' Do you like him yourself, William ? ' 
 
 ' Me ? I'm stalled o' t' curates, and so is t' wife : they've 
 no manners ; they talk to poor folk fair as if they thought 
 they were beneath them. They're allus magnifying their 
 office : it is a pity but their office could magnify them ; but 
 it does nought o' t' soart. I fair hate pride.' 
 
 ' But you are proud in your own way yourself,' interposed 
 Caroline : ' you are what you call house-proud ; you like to 
 have everything handsome about you : sometimes you look 
 as if you were almost too proud to take your wages. When 
 you were out of work, you were too proud to get anything on 
 credit ; but for your children, I believe you would rather 
 have starved than gone to the shops without money ; and 
 when I wanted to give you something, what a difficulty I 
 had in making you take it I '
 
 LOW PEESONS INTRODUCED 333 
 
 ' It is partly true, Miss Caroline : ony day I'd rather give 
 than take, especially from sich as ye. Look at t' difference 
 between us : ye're a little, young, slender lass, and I'm a 
 great strong man : I'm rather more nor twice your age. It 
 is not my part then, I think, to tak* fro' ye to be under 
 obligations (as they say) to ye ; and that day ye came to our 
 house, and called me to t' door, and offered me five shillings, 
 which I doubt ye could ill spare, for ye've no fortin', I 
 know, that day I war fair a rebel a radical an insurrec- 
 tionist ; and ye made me so. I thought it shameful that, 
 willing and able as I was to work, I suld be i' such a condi- 
 tion that a young cratur about the age o' my own eldest lass 
 Buld think it needful to come and offer me her bit o* brass.' 
 
 ' I suppose you were angry with me, William ? ' 
 
 ' I almost was, in a way ; but I forgave ye varry soon : 
 ye meant well. Ay, I am proud, and so are ye ; but your 
 pride and mine is t' raight mak' what we call i' Yorkshire, 
 clean pride such as Mr. Malone and Mr. Donne knows 
 nought about : theirs is mucky pride. Now, I shall teach my 
 lasses to be as proud as Miss Shirley there, and my lads to 
 be as proud as mysel'n ; but I dare ony o' 'em to be like t' 
 curates : I'd lick little Michael, if I seed him show any signs 
 o 1 that feeling.' 
 
 1 What is the difference, William ? ' 
 
 ' Ye know t' difference weel enow, but ye want me to get 
 agate o' talking. Mr. Malone and Mr. Donne is almost too 
 proud to do aught for theirsel'n ; ive are almost too proud to 
 let anybody do aught for us. T' curates can hardly bide to 
 speak a civil word to them they think beneath them ; ice can 
 hardly bide to tak' an uncivil word fro' them that thinks 
 themsel'n aboon us.' 
 
 ' Now, William, be humble enough to tell me truly how 
 you are getting on in the world ? Are you well off ? ' 
 
 'Miss Shirley I am varry well off. Since I got into t' 
 gardening line, wi' Mr. Yorke's help, and since Mr. Hall 
 (another o' t' raight sort) helped my wife to set up a bit of a 
 shop, I've nought to complain of. My family has plenty to
 
 334 SHIELEY 
 
 eat and plenty to wear : my pride makes me find means to 
 save an odd pound now and then against rainy days ; for I 
 think I'd die afore I'd come to t' parish : and me and mine is 
 content ; but th' neighbours is poor yet : I see a great deal 
 of distress.' 
 
 ' And, consequently, there is still discontent, I suppose ? ' 
 inquired Miss Keeldar. 
 
 ' Consequently ye say right consequently. In course, 
 starving folk cannot be satisfied or settled folk. The 
 country's not in a safe condition ; I'll say so mich ! ' 
 
 ' But what can be done ? What more can I do, for 
 instance ? ' 
 
 ' Do ? ye can do naught mich, poor young lass ! Ye've 
 gi'en your brass : ye've done well. If ye could transport 
 your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay, ye'd happen do 
 better. Folks hate him.' 
 
 ' William, for shame ! ' exclaimed Caroline, warmly. ' If 
 folks do hate him, it is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore 
 himself hates nobody ; he only wants to do his duty, and 
 maintain his rights : you are wrong to talk so ! ' 
 
 ' I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, youd' 
 Moore.' 
 
 ' But,' interposed Shirley, ' supposing Moore was driven 
 from the country, and his mill razed to the ground, would 
 people have more work ? ' 
 
 ' They'd have less. I know that, and they know that ; 
 and there is many an honest lad driven desperate by the 
 certainty that whichever way he turns, he cannot better 
 himself, and there is dishonest men plenty to guide them to 
 thedevil : scoundrels that reckons to be the " people's friends," 
 and that knows naught about the people, and is as insincere, 
 as Lucifer. I've lived aboon forty year in the world, and I 
 believe that " the people " will never have any true friends 
 but theirsel'n, and them two or three good folk i' different 
 stations, that is friends to all the world. Human natur', 
 taking it i' th' lump, is naught but selfishness. It is but 
 excessive few ; it is but just an exception here and there, now
 
 LOW PEBSONS INTBODUCED 335 
 
 and then, sich as ye two young uns and me, that being in a 
 different sphere, can understand t' one t' other, and be 
 friends wi'out slavishness o' one hand, or pride o' t' other. 
 Them that reckons to be friends to a lower class than their 
 own fro' political motives is never to be trusted : they always 
 try to make their inferiors tools. For my own part, I will 
 neither be patronized nor misled for no man's pleasure. 
 I've had overtures made to me lately that I saw were 
 treacherous, and I flung 'em back i' the faces o' them that 
 offered 'em.' 
 
 ' You won't tell us what overtures ? ' 
 
 ' I will not : it would do no good ; it would mak' no 
 difference : them they concerned can look after theirsel'n.' 
 
 ' Ay, we'se look after wersel'n,' said another voice. Joe 
 Scott had sauntered forth from the church to get a breath of 
 fresh air, and there he stood. 
 
 1 I'll warrant ye, Joe,' observed William, smiling. 
 
 ' And I'll warrant my maister,' was the answer. ' Young 
 ladies,' continued Joe, assuming a lordly air, 'ye'd better go 
 into th' house.' 
 
 ' I wonder what for ? ' inquired Shirley, to whom the 
 overlooker's somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, 
 and who was often at war with him ; for Joe, holding super- 
 cilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in 
 his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master's mill 
 being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had 
 felt as wormwood and gall, certain business-visits of the 
 heiress to the Hollow's counting-house. 
 
 ' Because there is naught agate that fits women to be 
 consarned in.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! There is prayer and preaching agate in that 
 church ; are we not concerned in that ? ' 
 
 ' Ye have been present neither at the prayer nor preaching, 
 ma'am, if I have observed aright. What I alluded to was 
 politics : William Fairen, here, was touching on that subject, 
 if I'm not mista'en.' 
 
 ' Well, what then ? Politics are our habitual study, Joe.
 
 336 SHIRLEY 
 
 Do you know I see a newspaper every day, and two of a 
 Sunday ? ' 
 
 ' I should think you'll read the marriages, probably, Miss, 
 and the murders, and the accidents, and sich like ? ' 
 
 ' I read the leading articles, Joe, and the foreign intelli- 
 gence, and I look over the market prices : in short, I read 
 just what gentlemen read.' 
 
 Joe looked as if he thought this talk was like the chatter- 
 ing of a pie. He replied to it by a disdainful silence. 
 
 ' Joe,' continued Miss Keeldar, ' I never yet could ascer- 
 tain properly, whether you are a Whig or a Tory : pray 
 which party has the honour of your alliance ? ' 
 
 ' It is rayther difficult to explain where you are sure not 
 to be understood,' was Joe's haughty response ; ' but, as to 
 being a Tory, I'd as soon be an old woman, or a young one, 
 which is a more flimsier article still. It is the Tories that 
 carries on the war and ruins trade ; and, if I be of any 
 party though political parties is all nonsense I'm of that 
 which is most favourable to peace, and, by consequence, to 
 the mercantile interests of this here land.' 
 
 1 So am I, Joe,' replied Shirley, who had rather a pleasure 
 in teasing the overlooker, by persisting in talking on subjects 
 with which he opined she as a woman had no right to 
 meddle : ' partly, at least. I have rather a leaning to the 
 agricultural interest, too ; as good reason is, seeing that I 
 don't desire England to be under the feet of France, and 
 that if a share of my income comes from Hollow's mill, a 
 larger share comes from the landed estate around it. It 
 would not do to take any measures injurious to the farmers, 
 Joe, I think ? ' 
 
 ' The dews at this hour is unwholesome for females,' 
 observed Joe. 
 
 ' If you make that remark out of interest in me, I 
 have merely to assure you that I am impervious to cold. 
 I should not mind taking my turn to watch the mill 
 one of these summer nights, armed with your musket, 
 Joe.'
 
 LOW PEESONS INTRODUCED 337 
 
 Joe Scott's chin was always rather prominent : he poked 
 it out, at this speech, some inches farther than usual. 
 
 ' But to go back to my sheep,' she proceeded ' clothier 
 and mill-owner as I am, besides farmer, I cannot get out of 
 my head a certain idea that we manufacturers and persons 
 of business are sometimes a little a very little selfish and 
 shortsighted in our views, and rather too regardless of human 
 suffering, rather heartless in our pursuit of gain : don't you 
 agree with me, Joe ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot argue, where I cannot be comprehended,' was 
 again the answer. 
 
 1 Man of mystery ! Your master will argue with me 
 sometimes, Joe . he is not so stiff as you are.' 
 
 ' Maybe not . we've all our own ways.' 
 
 ' Joe, do you seriously think all the wisdom in the world 
 is lodged in male skulls ? ' 
 
 ' I think that women are a kittle and a froward genera- 
 tion ; and I've a great respect for the doctrines delivered in 
 the second chapter of St. Paul's first Epistle to Timothy.' 
 
 ' What doctrines, Joe ? ' 
 
 ' " Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. 
 I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over 
 the man ; but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, 
 then Eve." ' 
 
 ' What has that to do with the business ? ' interjected 
 Shirley : ' that smacks of rights of primogeniture. I'll bring 
 it up to Mr. Yorke the first time he inveighs against those 
 rights.' 
 
 ' And,' continued Joe Scott, ' Adam was not deceived ; 
 but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.' 
 
 ' More shame to Adam to sin with his eyes open ! ' cried 
 Miss Keeldar. ' To confess the honest truth, Joe, I never 
 was easy in my mind concerning that chapter : it puzzles me.' 
 
 ' It is very plain, Miss : he that runs may read.' 
 
 1 He may read it in his own fashion,' remarked Caroline, 
 now joining in the dialogue for the first time. ' You allow 
 the right of private judgment, I suppose, Joe ? '
 
 338 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 My certy, that I do ! I allow and claim it for every 
 line of the holy Book.' 
 
 ' Women may exercise it as well as men ? ' 
 
 ' Nay : women is to take their husbands' opinion, both in 
 politics and religion : it's wholesomest for them.' 
 
 ' Oh ! oh ! ' exclaimed both Shirley and Caroline. 
 
 ' To be sure ; no doubt on't,' persisted the stubborn over- 
 looker. 
 
 1 Consider yourself groaned down, and cried shame over, 
 for such a stupid observation,' said Miss Keeldar. ' You 
 might as well say, men are to take the opinions of their 
 priests without examination. Of what value would a 
 religion so adopted be ? It would be mere blind, besotted 
 superstition.' 
 
 ' And what is your reading, Miss Helstone, o' these 
 words o' St. Paul's ? ' 
 
 ' Hem ! I I account for them in this way : he wrote 
 that chapter for a particular congregation of Christians, 
 under peculiar circumstances ; and besides, I dare say, if I 
 could read the original Greek, I should find that many of 
 the words have been wrongly translated, perhaps misappre- 
 hended altogether. It would be possible, I doubt not, with 
 a little ingenuity, to give the passage quite a contrary turn : 
 to make it say, " Let the woman speak out whenever she 
 sees fit to make an objection ; " " it is permitted to a woman 
 to teach and to exercise authority as much as may be. Man, 
 meantime, cannot do better than hold his peace," and 
 so on.' 
 
 1 That willn't wash, Miss.' 
 
 ' I dare say it will. My notions are dyed in faster colours 
 than yours, Joe. Mr. Scott, you are a thoroughly dogmatical 
 person, and always were : I like William better than you.' 
 
 ' Joe is well enough in his own house,' said Shirley : ' I 
 have seen him as quiet as a lamb at home. There is not a 
 better nor a kinder husband in Briarfield. He does not 
 dogmatize to his wife.' 
 
 ' My wife is a hard-working, plain woman : time and
 
 LOW PERSONS INTRODUCED 339 
 
 trouble has ta'en all the conceit out of her ; but that is not 
 the case with you, young misses. And then you reckon to 
 have so much knowledge; and i' my thoughts it's only 
 superficial sort o' vanities you're acquainted with. I can 
 tell happen a year sin' one day Miss Caroline coming 
 into our counting-house when I war packing up summut 
 behind t' great desk, and she didn't see me, and she brought 
 a slate wi' a sum on it to t' maister : it were only a bit of a 
 sum in practice, that our Harry would have settled i' two 
 minutes. She couldn't do it ; Mr. Moore had to show her 
 how ; and when he did show her, she couldn't understand 
 him.' 
 
 1 Nonsense, Joe ! ' 
 
 ' Nay, it's no nonsense : and Miss Shirley, there, reckons 
 to hearken to t' maister when he's talking ower trade, so 
 attentive like, as if she followed him word for word, and all 
 war as clear as a lady's looking-glass to her een ; and all t' 
 while she's peeping and peeping out o' t' window to see if 
 t' mare stands quiet ; and then looking at a bit of a splash 
 on her riding-skirt ; and then glancing glegly round at wer 
 counting-house cobwebs and dust, and thinking what mucky 
 folk we are, and what a grand ride she'll have just i' now 
 ower Nunnely-common. She hears no more o' Mr. Moore's 
 talk nor if he spake Hebrew.' 
 
 1 Joe, you are a real slanderer. I would give you your 
 answer, only the people are coming out of church : we must 
 leave you. Man of prejudice, good-by : William, good-by. 
 Children, come up to Fieldhead to-morrow, and you shall 
 choose what you like best out of Mrs. Gill's store-room.'
 
 CHAPTEE XIX 
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 
 
 THE hour was now that of dusk. A clear air favoured the 
 kindling of the stars. 
 
 ' There will be just light enough to show me the way 
 home,' said Miss Keeldar, as she prepared to take leave of 
 Caroline at the Eectory garden-door. 
 
 ' You must not go alone, Shirley. Fanny shall accom- 
 pany you.' 
 
 ' That she shall not. Of what need I be afraid in my 
 own parish ? I would walk from Fieldhead to the church 
 any fine midsummer night, three hours later than this, for 
 the mere pleasure of seeing the stars, and the chance of 
 meeting a fairy.' 
 
 ' But just wait till the crowd is cleared away.' 
 
 ' Agreed. There are the five Misses Armitage streaming 
 by. Here comes Mrs. Sykes's phaeton, Mr. Wynne's close 
 carriage, Mrs. Birtwhistle's car : I don't wish to go through 
 the ceremony of bidding them all good -by, so we will step 
 into the garden and take shelter amongst the laburnums for 
 an instant.' 
 
 The rectors, their curates and their churchwardens, now 
 issued from the church-porch. There was a great confabu- 
 lation, shaking of hands, congratulation on speeches, recom- 
 mendation to be careful of the night air, &c. By degrees 
 the throng dispersed ; the carriages drove off. Miss Keeldar 
 was just emerging from her flowery refuge, when Mr. 
 Helstone entered the garden and met her. 
 
 ' Oh ! I want you ! ' he said : ' I was afraid you were 
 already gone. Caroline, come here ! '
 
 A SUMMEE NIGHT 841 
 
 Caroline came, expecting, as Shirley did, a lecture on 
 not having been visible at church. Other subjects, how- 
 ever, occupied the Eector's mind. 
 
 ' I shall not sleep at home to-night/ he continued. ' I 
 have just met with an old friend, and promised to accom- 
 pany him. I shall return probably about noon to-morrow. 
 Thomas, the clerk, is engaged, and I cannot get him to 
 sleep in the house, as I usually do when I am absent for a 
 night ; now ' 
 
 ' Now,' interrupted Shirley, ' you want me as a gentle- 
 man the first gentleman in Briarfield, in short, to supply 
 your place, be master of the Eectory, and guardian of your 
 niece and maids while you are away ? ' 
 
 I Exactly, captain : I thought the post would suit you. 
 Will you favour Caroline so far as to be her guest for one 
 night ? Will you stay here instead of going back to Field- 
 head?' 
 
 ' And what will Mrs. Pryor do ? She expects me home.' 
 
 I 1 will send her word. Come, make up your mind to 
 stay. It grows late ; the dew falls heavily : you and Caroline 
 will enjoy each other's society, I doubt not.' 
 
 1 1 promise you then to stay with Caroline,' replied 
 Shirley. ' As you say, we shall enjoy each other's society : 
 we will not be separated to-night. Now, rejoin your old 
 friend, and fear nothing for us.' 
 
 ' If there should chance to be any disturbance in the 
 night, captain if you should hear the picking of a lock, the 
 cutting out of a pane of glass, a stealthy tread of steps 
 about the house (and I need not fear to tell you, who bear a 
 well-tempered, mettlesome heart under your girl's ribbon- 
 sash, that such little incidents are very possible in the 
 present time), what would you do ? ' 
 
 ' Don't know faint, perhaps fall down, and have to be 
 picked up again. But, Doctor, if you assign me the post of 
 honour, you must give me arms. What weapons are there 
 your stronghold ? ' 
 
 ' You could not wield a sword ? '
 
 342 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' No ; I could manage the carving-knife better.' 
 
 ' You will find a good one in the dining-room sideboard : 
 a lady's knife, light to handle, and as sharp-pointed as a 
 poniard.' 
 
 1 It will suit Caroline ; but you must give me a brace of 
 pistols ; I know you have pistols.' 
 
 ' I have two pairs ; one pair I can place at your disposal. 
 You will find them suspended over the mantelpiece of my 
 study in cloth cases.' 
 
 1 Loaded ? 
 
 ' Yes, but not on the cock. Cock them before you go to 
 bed. It is paying you a great compliment, captain, to lend 
 you these : were you one of the awkward squad you should 
 not have them.' 
 
 ' I will take care. You need delay no longer, Mr. 
 Helstone : you may go now. He is gracious to me to lend 
 me his pistols,' she remarked, as the Eector passed out at 
 the garden-gate. ' But come, Lina,' she continued ; ' let us 
 go in and have some supper : I was too much vexed at tea 
 with the vicinage of Mr. Sam Wynne to be able to eat, and 
 now I am really hungry.' 
 
 Entering the house, they repaired to the darkened dining- 
 room, through the open windows of which apartment stole 
 the evening air, bearing the perfume of flowers from the 
 garden, the very distant sound of far-retreating steps from 
 the road, and a soft vague murmur, whose origin Caroline 
 explained by the remark, uttered as she stood listening at 
 the casement : ' Shirley, I hear the beck in the Hollow.' 
 
 Then she rang the bell, asked for a candle and some 
 bread and milk Miss Keeldar's usual supper and her own. 
 Fanny, when she brought in the tray, would have closed 
 the windows and the shutters, but was requested to desist 
 for the present : the twilight was too calm, its breath too 
 balmy to be yet excluded. They took their meal in silence : 
 Caroline rose once, to remove to the window-sill a glass of 
 flowers which stood on the sideboard ; the exhalation from 
 the blossoms being somewhat too powerful for the sultry
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 343 
 
 room : in returning, she half opened a drawer, and took from 
 it something that glittered clear and keen in her hand. 
 
 ' You assigned this to me, then, Shirley did you ? It is 
 bright, keen-edged, finely-tapered : it is dangerous-looking, 
 I never yet felt the impulse which could move me to direct 
 this against a fellow-creature. It is difficult to fancy what 
 circumstances could nerve my arm to strike home with this 
 long knife.' 
 
 1 1 should hate to do it,' replied Shirley ; ' but I think I 
 could do it, if goaded by certain exigencies which I can 
 imagine.' And Miss Keeldar quietly sipped her glass of new 
 milk, looking somewhat thoughtful, and a little pale : though, 
 indeed, when did she not look pale ? She was never florid. 
 
 The milk sipped and the bread eaten, Fanny was again 
 summoned : she and Eliza were recommended to go to bed, 
 which they were quite willing to do, being weary of the 
 day's exertions, of much cutting of currant-buns, and filling 
 of urns and teapots, and running backwards and forwards 
 with trays. Ere long the maids' chamber-door was heard to 
 close ; Caroline took a candle, and went quietly all over the 
 house, seeing that every window was fast, and every door 
 barred. She did not even evade the haunted back-kitchen, 
 nor the vault-like cellars. These visited, she returned. 
 
 1 There is neither spirit nor flesh in the house at present,' 
 she said, which should not be there. It is now near eleven 
 o'clock, fully bed-time, yet I would rather sit up a little 
 longer, if you do not object, Shirley. Here,' she continued, 
 ' I have brought the brace of pistols from my uncle's study : 
 you may examine them at your leisure." 
 
 She placed them on the table before her friend. 
 
 ' Why would you rather sit up longer ? ' asked Miss 
 Keeldar, taking up the firearms, examining them, and again 
 laying them down. 
 
 ' Because I have a strange, excited feeling in my heart.' 
 
 ' So have I.' 
 
 1 Is this state of sleeplessness and restlessness caused by 
 something electrical in the air, I wonder ? '
 
 344 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' No : the aky is clear, the stars numberless : it is a fine 
 night.' 
 
 ' But very still. I hear the water fret over its stony bed 
 in Hollow's Copse as distinctly as if it ran below the church- 
 yard wall.' 
 
 ' I am glad it is so still a night : a moaning wind or 
 rushing rain would vex me to fever just now.' 
 
 1 Why, Shirley ? ' 
 
 ' Because it would baffle my efforts to listen.' 
 
 ' Do you listen towards the Hollow ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; it is the only quarter whence we can hear a sound 
 just now.' 
 
 ' The only one, Shirley.' 
 
 They both sat near the window, and both leaned their 
 arms on the sill, and both inclined their heads towards the 
 open lattice. They saw each other's young faces by the 
 starlight, and that dim June twilight which does not wholly 
 fade from the west till dawn begins to break in the east, 
 
 ' Mr. Helstone thinks we have no idea which way he is 
 gone,' murmured Miss Keeldar, ' nor on what errand, nor 
 with what expectations, nor how prepared ; but I guess much 
 do not you ? ' 
 
 ' I guess something.' 
 
 1 All those gentlemen your cousin Moore included 
 think that you and I are now asleep in our beds, uncon* 
 scious.' 
 
 ' Caring nothing about them hoping and fearing nothing 
 for them,' added Cai'oline. 
 
 Both kept silence for full half an hour. The night was 
 silent, too ; only the church-clock measured its course by 
 quarters. Some words were interchanged about the chill 
 of the air ; they wrapped their scarves closer round them, 
 resumed their bonnets which they had removed, and again 
 watched. 
 
 Towards midnight the teasing monotonous bark of the 
 house-dog disturbed the quietude of their vigil. Caroline 
 rose, and made her way noiselessly through the dark pas-
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 345 
 
 sages to the kitchen, intending to appease him with a piece 
 of bread ; she succeeded. On returning to the dining-room, 
 she found it all dark, Miss Keeldar having extinguished the 
 candle : the outline of her shape was visible near the still 
 open window, leaning out. Miss Helstone asked no ques- 
 tions : she stole to her side. The dog recommenced barking 
 furiously ; suddenly he stopped, and seemed to listen. The 
 occupants of the dining-room listened too, and not merely 
 now to the flow of the mill-stream : there was a nearer, 
 though a muffled sound on the road below the churchyard ; 
 a measured, beating, approaching sound ; a dull tramp of 
 marching feet. 
 
 It drew near. Those who listened, by degrees compre- 
 hended its extent. It was not the tread of two, nor of a 
 dozen, nor of a score of men : it was the tread of hundreds. 
 They could see nothing : the high shrubs of the garden 
 formed a leafy screen between them and the road. To hear, 
 however, was not enough ; and this they felt as the troop 
 trod forwards, and seemed actually passing the Rectory. 
 They felt it more when a human voice though that voice 
 spoke but one word broke the hush of the night. 
 
 'Halt!' 
 
 A halt followed : the march was arrested. Then came 
 a low conference, of which no word was distinguishable from 
 the dining-room. 
 
 ' We must hear this,' said Shirley. 
 
 She turned, took her pistols from the table, silently passed 
 out through the middle window of the dining-room, which 
 was, in fact, a glass-door, stole down the walk to the garden- 
 wall, and stood listening under the lilacs. Caroline would 
 not have quitted the house had she been alone, but where 
 Shirley went she would go. She glanced at the weapon on 
 the sideboard, but left it behind her, and presently stood at 
 her friend's side. They dared not look over the wall, for 
 fear of being seen : they were obliged to crouch behind it : 
 they heard these words : ' It looks a rambling old building. 
 Who lives in it besides the damned parson ? '
 
 346 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' Only three women : his niece and two servants.' 
 
 4 Do you know where they sleep ? ' 
 
 ' The lasses behind : the niece in a front room.' 
 
 ' And Helstone ? ' 
 
 1 Yonder is his chamber. He uses burning a light ; but 
 I see none now.' 
 
 ' Where would you get in ? ' 
 
 ' If I were ordered to do his job and he desarves it I'd 
 try yond' long window : it opens to the dining-room : I 
 could grope my way up-stairs, and I know his chamber.' 
 
 ' How would you manage about the women folk ? ' 
 
 ' Let 'em alone, except they shrieked, and then I'd soon 
 quieten 'em. I could wish to find the old chap asleep : if he 
 waked, he'd be dangerous.' 
 
 1 Has he arms ? ' 
 
 ' Fire-arms, allus, and allus leadened.' 
 
 ' Then you're a fool to stop us here ; a shot would give 
 the alarm : Moore would be on us before we could turn 
 round. We should miss our main object.' 
 
 'You might go on, I tell you. I'd engage Helstone 
 alone.' 
 
 A pause. One of the party dropped some weapon which 
 rang on the stone causeway : at this sound the Eectory dog 
 barked again furiously fiercely. 
 
 ' That spoils all ! ' said the voice ; ' he'll awake : a noise 
 like that might rouse the dead. You did not say that there 
 was a dog. Damn you ! Forward ! ' 
 
 Forward they went, tramp, tramp, with mustering, 
 manifold, slow-filing tread. They were gone. 
 
 Shirley stood erect ; looked over the wall, along the 
 road. 
 
 ' Not a soul remains,' she said. 
 
 She stood and mused. ' Thank God ! ' was the next 
 observation. 
 
 Caroline repeated the ejaculation, not in so steady a tone : 
 she was trembling much ; her heart was beating fast and 
 thick : her face was cold ; her forehead damp.
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 347 
 
 1 Thank God for us ! ' she reiterated ; ' but what will 
 happen elsewhere ? They have passed us by that they may 
 make sure of others.' 
 
 1 They have done well,' returned Shirley with composure : 
 ' the others will defend themselves, they can do it, they 
 are prepared for them : with us it is otherwise. My finger 
 was on the tiigger of this pistol. I was quite ready to give 
 that man, if he had entered, such a greeting as he little 
 calculated on ; but behind him followed three hundred : I 
 had neither three hundred hands nor three hundred weapons. 
 I could not have effectually protected either you, myself, or 
 the two poor women asleep under that roof ; therefore I 
 again earnestly thank God for insult and peril escaped.' 
 
 After a second pause, she continued : ' What is it my 
 duty and wisdom to do next ? Not to stay here inactive, I 
 am glad to say, but of course to walk over to the Hollow.' 
 
 ' To the Hollow, Shirley ? ' 
 
 ' To the Hollow. Will you go with me ? ' 
 
 ' Where those men are gone ? ' 
 
 1 They have taken the highway : we should not encounter 
 them : the road over the fields is as safe, silent, and solitary 
 as a path through the air would be. Will you go ? ' 
 
 1 Yes,' was the answer, given mechanically, not because 
 the speaker wished, or was prepared to go ; or, indeed, was 
 otherwise than scared at the prospect of going, but because 
 she felt she could not abandon Shirley. 
 
 ' Then we must fasten up these windows, and leave all 
 as secure as we can behind us. Do you know what we are 
 going for, Gary ? ' 
 
 ' Yes no because you wish it.' 
 
 1 Is that all ? And are you so obedient to a mere caprice 
 of mine ? What a docile wife you would make to a stern 
 husband ? The moon's face is not whiter than yours at this 
 moment ; and the aspen at the gate does not tremble more 
 than your busy fingers ; and so tractable and terror-struck, 
 and dismayed and devoted, you would follow me into the 
 thick of real danger ! Gary, let me give your fidelity a
 
 348 SHIRLEY 
 
 motive : we are going for Moore's sake ; to see if we can be 
 of use to him : to make an effort to warn him of what is 
 coming.' 
 
 ' To be sure ! I am a blind, weak fool, and you are acute 
 and sensible, Shirley ! I will go with you ! I will gladly go 
 with you ! ' 
 
 ' I do not doubt it. You would die blindly and meekly 
 for me, but you would intelligently and gladly die for Moore : 
 but in truth there is no question of death to-night, we run 
 no risk at all.' 
 
 Caroline rapidly closed shutter and lattice. ' Do not fear 
 that I shall not have breath to run as fast as you can pos- 
 sibly run, Shirley. Take my hand : let us go straight across 
 the fields.' 
 
 ' But you cannot climb walls ? ' 
 
 ' To-night I can.' 
 
 ' You are afraid of hedges, and the beck which we shall 
 be forced to cross ? ' 
 
 ' I can cross it.' 
 
 They started : they ran. Many a wall checked but did 
 not baffle them. Shirley was surefooted and agile : she 
 could spring like a deer when she chose. Caroline, more 
 timid, and less dexterous, fell once or twice, and bruised 
 herself; but she rose again directly, saying she was not 
 hurt. A quickset hedge bounded the last field : they lost 
 time in seeking a gap in it : the aperture, when found, was 
 narrow, but they worked their way through : the long hair, 
 the tender skin, the silks and the muslins suffered ; but what 
 was chiefly regretted was the impediment this difficulty had 
 caused to speed. On the other side they met the beck, flow- 
 ing deep in a rough bed : at this point a narrow plank formed 
 the only bridge across it. Shirley had trodden the plank 
 successfully and fearlessly many a time before : Caroline 
 had never yet dared to risk the transit. 
 
 ' J will carry you across,' said Miss Keeldar : ' you are 
 light, and I am not weak : let me try." 
 
 ' If I fall in, you may fish me out,' was the answer, as a
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 349 
 
 grateful squeeze compressed her hand. Caroline, without 
 pausing, trod forward on the trembling plank as if it were 
 a continuation of the firm turf : Shirley, who followed, did 
 not cross it more resolutely or safely. In their present 
 humour, on their present errand, a strong and foaming 
 channel would have been a barrier to neither. At the 
 moment they were above the control either of fire or water : 
 all Stilbro' Moor, alight and aglow with bonfires, would not 
 have stopped them, nor would Calder or Aire thundering in 
 flood. Yet one sound made them pause. Scarce had they 
 set foot on the solid opposite bank, when a shot spHt the air 
 from the north. One second elapsed. Further off, burst a 
 like note in the south. Within the space of three minutes, 
 similar signals boomed in the east and west. 
 
 ' I thought we were dead at the first explosion,' observed 
 Shirley, drawing a long breath. ' I felt myself hit in the 
 temples, and I concluded your heart was pierced ; but the 
 reiterated voice was an explanation : those are signals it is 
 their way the attack must be near. We should have had 
 wings : our feet have not borne us swiftly enough.' 
 
 A portion of the copse was now to clear : when they 
 emerged from it, the mill lay just below them : they could 
 look down upon the buildings, the yard ; they could see the 
 road beyond. And the first glance in that direction told 
 Shirley she was right in her conjecture : they were already 
 too late to give warning : it had taken more time than they 
 calculated on to overcome the various obstacles which 
 embarrassed the short cut across the fields. 
 
 The road, which should have been white, was dark with 
 a moving mass : the rioters were assembled in front of the 
 closed yard gates, and a single figure stood within, appa- 
 rently addressing them : the mill itself was perfectly black 
 and still ; there was neither life, light, nor motion around it. 
 
 ' Surely he is prepared : surely that is not Moore meeting 
 them alone ? ' whispered Shirley. 
 
 ' It is we must go to him ! I will go to him.' 
 
 ' That you will not.'
 
 350 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' Why did I come, then ? I came only for him. I shall 
 join him.' 
 
 ' Fortunately, it is out of your power : there is no entrance 
 to the yard.' 
 
 ' There is a small entrance at the back, besides the gates 
 in front : it opens by a secret method which I know I will 
 try it.' 
 
 ' Not with my leave.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar clasped her round the waist with both arms 
 and held her back. 
 
 ' Not one step shall you stir,' she went on authoritatively. 
 ' At this moment, Moore would be both shocked and embar- 
 rassed, if he saw either you or me. Men never want women 
 near them in time of real danger.' 
 
 ' I would not trouble I would help him,' was the reply. 
 
 ' How ? By inspiring him with heroism? Pooh ! These 
 are not the days of chivalry : it is not a tilt at a tournament 
 we are going to behold, but a struggle about money, and 
 food, and life.' 
 
 1 It is natural that I should be at his side." 
 
 1 As queen of his heart ? His mill is his lady-love, Gary ! 
 Backed by his factory and his frames, he has all the 
 encouragement he wants or can know. It is not for love or 
 beauty, but for ledger and broadcloth, he is going to break a 
 spear. Don't be sentimental ; Robert is not so.' 
 
 ' I could help him I will seek him.' 
 
 ' Off then I let you go seek Moore : you'll not find 
 him.' 
 
 She loosened her hold. Caroline sped like levelled shaft 
 from bent bow ; after her rang a jesting, gibing laugh. 
 
 ' Look well there is no mistake ! ' was the warning 
 given. 
 
 But there was a mistake. Miss Helstone paused, hesi- 
 tated, gazed. The figure had suddenly retreated from the 
 gate, and was running back hastily to the mill. 
 
 ' Make haste, Lina ! ' cried Shirley : ' meet him before he 
 enters.'
 
 A SUMMEE NIGHT 351 
 
 Caroline slowly returned. 
 
 1 It is not Eobert,' she said : ' it has neither his height, 
 form, nor bearing.' 
 
 ' I saw it was not Robei't when I let you go. How could 
 you imagine it ? It is a shabby little figure of a private 
 soldier : they had posted him as sentinel. He is safe in the 
 mill now : I saw the door open and admit him. My mind 
 grows easier : Robert is prepared ; our warning would have 
 been superfluous, and now I am thankful we came too late 
 to give it : it has saved us the trouble of a scene. How fine 
 to have entered the counting-house " toute 6perdue," and to 
 have found oneself in presence of Messrs. Armitage and 
 Ramsden smoking, Malone swaggering, your uncle sneering, 
 Mr. Sykes sipping a cordial, and Moore himself in his cold 
 man-of -business vein : I am glad we missed it all.' 
 
 ' I wonder if there are many in the mill, Shirley ! ' 
 
 ' Plenty to defend it. The soldiers we have twice seen 
 to-day were going there, no doubt, and the group we noticed 
 surrounding your cousin in the fields will be with him.' 
 
 ' What are they doing now, Shirley ? What is that 
 noise ? ' 
 
 ' Hatchets and crow-bars against the yard-gates : they 
 are forcing them. Are you afraid ? ' 
 
 4 No ; but my heart throbs fast ; I have a difficulty in 
 standing : I will sit down. Do you feel unmoved ? ' 
 
 ' Hardly that but I am glad I came : we shall see what 
 transpires with our own eyes : we are here on the spot, and 
 none know it. Instead of amazing the curate, the clothier, 
 and the corndealer with a romantic rush on the stage, we 
 stand alone with the friendly night, its mute stars, and these 
 whispering trees, whose report our friends will not come to 
 gather.' 
 
 ' Shirley Shirley, the gates are down ! That crash was 
 like the felling of great trees. Now they are pouring 
 through. They will break down the mill-doors as they have 
 broken the gate : what can Robert do against so many ? 
 Would to God I were a little nearer him could hear him
 
 352 SHIRLEY 
 
 speak could speak to him ! With my will my longing to 
 serve him I could not be a useless burden in his way : I 
 could be turned to some account.' 
 
 1 They come on ! ' cried Shirley. ' How steadily they 
 march in ! There is discipline in their ranks I will not say 
 there is courage : hundreds against tens are no proof of that 
 quality ; but ' (she dropped her voice) ' there is suffering and 
 desperation enough amongst them these goads will urge 
 them forwards.' 
 
 1 Forwards against Robert and they hate him. Shirley, 
 is there much danger they will win the day ? ' 
 
 ' We shall see. Moore and Helstone are of " earth's first 
 blood " no bunglers no cravens ' 
 
 A crash smash shiver stopped their whispers. A 
 simultaneously-hurled volley of stones had saluted the broad 
 front of the mill, with all its windows ; and now every pane 
 of every lattice lay in shattered and pounded fragments. A 
 yell followed this demonstration a rioters' yell a North- 
 of-England a Yorkshire a West Riding a West-Riding- 
 clothing-district-of-Yorkshire rioters' yell. You never heard 
 that sound, perhaps, reader ? So much the better for your 
 ears perhaps for your heart ; since, if it rends the air in 
 hate to yourself, or to the men or principles you approve, 
 the interests to which you wish well, Wrath wakens to the 
 cry of Hate : the Lion shakes his mane, and rises to the 
 howl of the Hyena : Caste stands up, ireful, against Caste ; 
 and the indignant, wronged spirit of the Middle Rank bears 
 down in zeal and scorn on the famished and furious mass of 
 the Operative Class. It is difficult to be tolerant difficult 
 to be just in such moments. 
 
 Caroline rose ; Shirley put her arm round her : they 
 stood together as still as the straight stems of two trees. 
 That yell was a long one, and when it ceased, the night was 
 yet full of the swaying and murmuring of a crowd. 
 
 ' What next ? ' was the question of the listeners. Nothing 
 came yet. The mill remained mule as a mausoleum. 
 
 ' He cannot be alone ! ' whispered Caroline.
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 353 
 
 ' I would stake all I have, that he is as little alone as he 
 is alarmed,' responded Shirley. 
 
 Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders 
 waited for this signal ? It seemed so. The hitherto inert 
 and passive mill woke : fire flashed from its empty window- 
 frames ; a volley of musketry pealed sharp through the 
 Hollow. 
 
 ' Moore speaks at last ! ' said Shirley, ' and he seems to 
 have the gift of tongues ; that was not a single voice.' 
 
 ' He has been fovbeaiing ; no one can accuse him of rash- 
 ness,' alleged Caroline : ' their discharge preceded his ; they 
 broke his gates and his windows ; they fired at his garrison 
 before he repelled them.' 
 
 What was going on now ? It seemed difficult, in the 
 darkness, to distinguish, but something terrible, a still-renew- 
 ing tumult, was obvious ; fierce attacks, desperate repulses ; 
 the mill-yard, the mill itself, was full of battle-movement : 
 there was scarcely any cessation now of the discharge of 
 firearms ; and there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and 
 shouting between. The aim of the assailants seemed to be 
 to enter tho mill, that of the defendants to beat them off. 
 They heard the rebel leader cry, ' To the back, lads ! ' They 
 heard a voice retort, ' Come round, we will meet you ! ' 
 
 ' To the counting-house ! ' was the order again. 
 
 ' Welcome ! We shall have you there ! ' was the 
 response. And accordingly, the fiercest blaze that had jet 
 glowed, the loudest rattle that had yet been heard, burst 
 from the counting-house front, when the mass of rioters 
 rushed up to it. 
 
 The voice that had spoken was Moore's own voice. They 
 could tell by its tones that his soul was now warm with the 
 conflict : they could guess that the fighting animal was 
 roused in every one of those men there struggling together, 
 and was for the time quite paramount above the rational 
 human being. 
 
 Both the girls felt their faces glow and their pulses throb : 
 both knew they would do no good by rushing down into the
 
 354 SHIRLEY 
 
 m6lec : they desired neither to deal nor to receive blows ; but 
 they could not have run away Caroline no more than 
 Shirley ; they could not have fainted ; they could not have 
 taken their eyes from the dim, terrible scene from the mass 
 of cloud, of smoke the musket-lightning for the world. 
 
 ' How and when would it end ? ' was the demand throb- 
 bing in their throbbing pulses. ' Would a juncture arise in 
 which they could be useful ? ' was what they waited to see ; 
 for, though Shirley put off their too-late arrival with a jest, 
 and was ever ready to satirize her own or any other person's 
 enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land 
 for a chance of rendering good service. 
 
 The chance was not vouchsafed her ; the looked-for 
 juncture never came : it was not likely. Moore had expected 
 this attack for days, perhaps weeks : he was prepared for it 
 at every point. He had fortified and garrisoned his mill, 
 which in itself was a strong building : he was a cool, brave 
 man : he stood to the defence with unflinching firmness ; 
 those who were with him caught his spirit, and copied his 
 demeanour. The rioters had never been so met before. At 
 other mills they had attacked, they had found no resistance ; 
 an organised, resolute defence was what they never dreamed 
 of encountering. When their leaders saw the steady fire 
 kept up from the mill, witnessed the composure and deter- 
 mination of its owner, heard themselves coolly defied and 
 invited on to death, and beheld their men falling wounded 
 round them, they felt that nothing was to be done here. In 
 haste, they mustered their forces, drew them away from the 
 building : a roll was called over, in which the men answered 
 to figures instead of names : they dispersed wide over the 
 fields, leaving silence and ruin behind them. The attack, 
 from its commencement to its termination, had not occupied 
 an hour. 
 
 Day was by this time approaching : the west was dim, 
 the east beginning to gleam. It would have seemed that the 
 girls who had watched this conflict would now wish to hasten 
 to the victors, on whose side all their interest had been
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 355 
 
 enlisted ; but they only very cautiously approached the now 
 battered mill, and, when suddenly a number of soldiers and 
 gentlemen appeared at the great door opening into the yard, 
 they quickly stepped aside into a shed, the deposit of old 
 iron and timber, whence they could see without being seen. 
 
 It was no cheering spectacle : these premises were now 
 a mere blot of desolation on the fresh front of the summer- 
 dawn. All the copse up the Hollow was shady and dewy 
 the hill at its head was green ; but just here in the centre of 
 the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the night from 
 control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and 
 left it waste and pulverised. The mill yawned all ruinous 
 with unglazed frames ; the yard was thickly bestrewn with 
 stones and brickbats, and, close under the mill, with the 
 glittering fragments of the shattered windows ; muskets and 
 other weapons lay here and there ; more than one deep 
 crimson stain was visible on the gravel ; a human body lay 
 quiet on its face near the gates ; and five or six wounded 
 men writhed and moaned in the bloody dust. 
 
 Miss Keeldar's countenance changed at this view : it was 
 the aftertaste of the battle, death and pain replacing excite- 
 ment and exertion : it was the blackness the bright fire 
 leaves when its blaze is sunk, its warmth failed, and its 
 glow faded. 
 
 1 This is what I wished to prevent/ she said, in a voice 
 whose cadence betrayed the altered impulse of her heart. 
 
 ' But you could not prevent it ; you did your best ; it was 
 in vain,' said Caroline, comfortingly. ' Don't grieve, Shirley.' 
 
 ' I am sorry for those poor fellows,' was the answer, 
 while the spark in her glance dissolved to dew. ' Are any 
 within the mill hurt, I wonder ? Is that your uncle ? ' 
 
 ' It is, and there is Mr. Malone, and oh, Shirley ! there 
 is Robert ! ' 
 
 1 Well ' (resuming her former tone), ' don't squeeze your 
 fingers quite into my hand : I see, there is nothing wonderful 
 in that. We knew he, at least, was here, whoever might be 
 absent.'
 
 356 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' He is coming here towards us, Shirley ! ' 
 
 ' Towards the purnp, that is to say, for the purpose of 
 washing his hands and his forehead, which has got a scratch, 
 I perceive.' 
 
 ' He bleeds, Shirley : don't hold me ; I must go.' 
 
 ' Not a step.' 
 
 1 He is hurt, Shirley ! ' 
 
 ' Fiddlestick ! ' 
 
 ' But I must go to him : I wish to go so much : I cannot 
 bear to be restrained.' 
 
 1 What for ? ' 
 
 ' To speak to him, to ask how he is, and what I can do 
 for him ? ' 
 
 ' To tease and annoy him ; to make a spectacle of your- 
 self and him before those soldiers, Mr. Malone, your uncle, 
 et cetera. Would he like it, think you ? Would you like 
 to remember it a week hence ? ' 
 
 ' Am I always to be curbed and kept down ? ' demanded 
 Caroline, a little passionately. 
 
 ' For his sake, yes. And still more for your own. I tell 
 you, if you showed yourself now, you would repent it an 
 hour hence, and so would Robert.' 
 
 ' You think he would not like it, Shirley ? ' 
 
 ' Far less than he would like our stopping him to say 
 good-night, which you were so sore about.' 
 
 ' But that was all play ; there was no danger.' 
 
 ' And this is serious work : he must be unmolested.' 
 
 ' I only wish to go to him because he is my cousin you 
 understand ? ' 
 
 ' I quite understand. But now, watch him. He has 
 bathed his forehead, and the blood has ceased trickling : his 
 hurt is really a mere graze : I can see it from hence : he is 
 going to look after the wounded men.' 
 
 Accordingly Mr. Moore and Mr. Helstone went round the 
 yard, examining each prostrate form. They then gave 
 directions to have the wounded taken up and carried into 
 the mill. This duty being performed, Joe Scott was ordered
 
 A SUMMER NIGHT 357 
 
 to saddle his master's horse, and Mr. Ht Istone's pony, and 
 the two gentlemen rode away full gallop, to seek surgical 
 aid in different directions. 
 
 Caroline was not yet pacified. 
 
 ' Shirley, Shirley, I should have liked to speak one word 
 to him before he went,' she murmured, while the tears 
 gathered glittering in her eyes. 
 
 1 Why do you cry, Lina ? ' asked Miss Keeldar a little 
 sternly. ' You ought to be glad instead of sorry. Robert 
 has escaped any serious harm ; he is victorious ; he has been 
 cool and brave in combat ; he is now considerate in triumph : 
 is this a time are these causes for weeping ? ' 
 
 'You do not know what I have in my heart,' pleaded the 
 other : ' what pain, what distraction ; nor whence it arises. 
 I can understand that you should exult in Robert's greatness 
 and goodness ; so do I, in one sense, but, in another, I feel 
 so miserable. I am too far removed from him : I used to be 
 nearer. Let me alone, Shirley : do let me cry a few minutes ; 
 it relieves me.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar, feeling her tremble in every limb, ceased 
 to expostulate with her : she went out of the shed, and left 
 her to weep in peace. It was the best plan : in a few 
 minutes Caroline rejoined her, much calmer : she said with 
 her natural, docile, gentle manner ' Come, Shirley, we will 
 go home now. I promise not to try to see Robert again till 
 he asks for me. I never will try to push myself on him. I 
 thank you for restraining me just now.' 
 
 ' I did it with a good intention,' returned Miss Keeldar. 
 ' Now, dear Lina,' she continued ; ' let us turn our faces to 
 the cool morning breeze, and walk very quietly back to the 
 Rectory. We will steal in as we stole out : none shall know 
 where we have been, or what we have seen to-night : neither 
 taunt nor misconstruction can consequently molest us. To- 
 morrow we will see Robert, and be of good cheer ; but I will 
 say no more, lest I should begin to cry too. I seem hard 
 towards you, but I am uot so.'
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 TO-MORROW 
 
 THE two girls met no living soul on their way back to the 
 Rectory ; they let themselves in noiselessly ; they stole up- 
 stairs unheard : the breaking morning gave them what light 
 they needed. Shirley sought her couch immediately ; and, 
 though the room was strange for she had never slept at the 
 Rectory before and though the recent scene was one un- 
 paralleled for excitement and terror by any it had hitherto 
 been her lot to witness, yet, scarce was her head laid on the 
 pillow, ere a deep, refreshing sleep closed her eyes, and 
 calmed her senses. 
 
 Perfect health was Shirley's enviable portion ; though 
 warm-hearted and sympathetic, she was not nervous : power- 
 ful emotions could rouse and sway, without exhausting, her 
 spirit : the tempest troubled and shook her while it lasted ; 
 but it left her elasticity unbent, and her freshness quite 
 unblighted. As every day brought her stimulating emotion, 
 so every night yielded her recreating rest. Caroline now 
 watched her sleeping, and read the serenity of her mind in 
 the beauty of her happy countenance. 
 
 For herself, being of a different temperament, she could 
 not sleep. The common-place excitement of the tea-drinking 
 and school-gathering, would alone have sufficed to make her 
 restless all night : the effect of the terrible drama which had 
 ust been enacted before her eyes was not likely to quit her 
 for days. It was vain even to try to retain a recumbent 
 posture : she sat up by Shirley's side, counting the slow 
 uiinutes, and watching the June sun mount the heavens.
 
 TO-MOBROW 359 
 
 Life wastes fast in such vigils as Caroline had of late but 
 too often kept ; vigils during which the mind having no 
 pleasant food to nourish it no manna of hope no hivecl- 
 honcy of joyous memories tries to live on the meagre diet 
 of wishes, and failing to derive thence either delight or sup- 
 port, and feeling itself ready to perish with craving want, 
 turns to philosophy, to resolution, to resignation ; calls on 
 all these gods for aid, calls vainly is unheard, unhelped, 
 and languishes. 
 
 Caroline was a Christian ; therefore in trouble she framed 
 many a prayer after the Christian creed ; preferred it with 
 deep earnestness ; begged for patience, strength, relief. This 
 world, however, we all know, is the scene of trial and pro- 
 bation ; and, for any favourable result her petitions had yet 
 wrought, it seemed to her that they were unheard and 
 unaccepted. She believed, sometimes, that God had turned 
 His face from her. At moments she was a Calvinist, and, 
 sinking into the gulf of religious despair, she saw darkening 
 over her the doom of reprobation. 
 
 Most people have had a period or periods in their lives 
 when they have felt thus forsaken ; when, having long hoped 
 against hope, and still seen the day of fruition deferred, their 
 hearts have truly sickened within them. This is a terrible 
 hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the 
 rise of day ; that turn of the year when the icy January 
 wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing 
 winter, and the prophecy of coming spring. The perishing 
 birds, however, cannot thus understand the blast before 
 which they shiver ; and as little can the suffering soul 
 recognise, in the climax of its affliction, the dawn of its 
 deliverance. Yet let whoever grieves still cling fast to love 
 and faith in God : God will never deceive, never finally 
 desert him. ' Whom He loveth, He chasteneth.' These 
 words are true, and should not be forgotten. 
 
 The household was astir at last : the servants were up ; 
 the shutters were opened below. Caroline, as she quitted 
 the couch, which had been but a thorny one to her, felt that
 
 360 SHIRLEY 
 
 revival of spirits which the return of day, of action, gives to 
 all but the wholly despairing or actually dying : she dressed 
 herself, as usual, carefully, trying so to arrange her hair and 
 attire that nothing of the forlornness she felt at heart should 
 be visible externally : she looked as fresh as Shirley when 
 both were dressed, only that Miss Keeldar's eyes were lively, 
 and Miss Helstone's languid. 
 
 ' To-day, I shall have much to say to Moore,' were 
 Shirley's first words : and you could see in her face that life 
 was full of interest, expectation, and occupation for her. 
 ' He will have to undergo cross-examination,' she added : ' I 
 daresay he thinks he has outwitted me cleverly. And this is 
 the way men deal with women : still concealing danger from 
 them : thinking, I suppose, to spare them pain. They 
 imagined we little knew where they were to-night ; we know 
 they little conjectured where we were. Men, I believe, fancy 
 women's minds something like those of children. Now, that 
 is a mistake.' 
 
 This was said as she stood at the glass, training her 
 naturally waved hair into curls, by twining it round her 
 fingers. She took up the theme again five minutes after, as 
 Caroline fastened her dress and clasped her girdle. 
 
 ' If men could see us as we really are, they would be a 
 little amazed ; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often 
 under an illusion about women : they do not read them in a 
 true light : they misapprehend them, both for good and evil : 
 their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel ; their 
 bad woman almost always a fiend. Then to hear them fall 
 into ecstasies with each other's creations, worshipping the 
 heroine of such a poem novel drama, thinking it fine 
 divine ! Fine and divine ib may be, but often quite artificial 
 false as the rose in my best bonnet there. If I spoke 
 all I think on this point ; if I gave my real opinion of some 
 first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should 
 I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half-au- 
 hour.' 
 
 1 Shirley, you chatter so, I can't fasten you : be still.
 
 TO-MORROW 361 
 
 And after all, author's heroines are almost as good as 
 authoress's heroes.' 
 
 4 Not at all : women read men more truly than men read 
 women. I'll prove that in a magazine paper some day when 
 I've time ; only it will never be inserted : it will be " de- 
 clined with thanks," and left for me at the publisher's.' 
 
 ' To be sure : you could not write cleverly enough ; you 
 don't know enough ; you are not learned, Shirley.' 
 
 ' God knows, I can't contradict you, Gary : I'm as 
 ignorant as a stone. There's one comfort, however, you are 
 not much better.' 
 
 They descended to breakfast. 
 
 ' I wonder how Mrs. Pryor and Hortense Moore have 
 passed the night,' said Caroline, as she made the coffee. 
 ' Selfish being that I am ! I never thought of either of them 
 till just now : they will have heard all the tumult, Pieldhead 
 and the cottage are so near ; and Hortense is timid in such 
 matters : so no doubt is Mrs. Pryor.' 
 
 ' Take my word for it, Lina, Moore will have contrived to 
 get his sister out of the way : she went home with Miss 
 Mann ; he will have quartered her there for the night. As 
 to Mrs. Pryor, I own I am uneasy about her ; but in another 
 half-hour we will be with her.' 
 
 By this time the news of what had happened at the 
 Hollow was spread all over the neighbourhood. Fanny, 
 who had been to Fieldhead to fetch the milk, returned in 
 panting haste, with tidings that there had been a battle in 
 the night at Mr. Moore's mill, and that some said twenty 
 men were killed. Eliza, during Fanny's absence, had been 
 apprised by the butcher's boy that the Mill was burnt to the 
 ground. Both women rushed into the parlour to announce 
 these terrible facts to the ladies, terminating their clear and 
 accurate narrative by the assertion that they were sure 
 master must have been in it all : lie and Thomas, the clerk, 
 they were confident, must have gone last night to join Mr 
 Moore and the soldiers : Mr. Malone, too, had not been 
 heard of at his lodgings since yesterday afternoon ; and Joe
 
 362 SHIRLEY 
 
 Scott's wife and family were in the greatest distress, 
 wondering what had become of their head. 
 
 Scarcely was this information imparted when a knock at 
 the kitchen-door announced the Fieldhead errand-boy, 
 arrived in hot haste, bearing a billet from Mrs. Pryor. It 
 was hurriedly written, and urged Miss Keeldar to return 
 directly, as the neighbourhood and the house seemed likely 
 to be all in confusion, and orders would have to be given 
 which the mistress of the hall alone could regulate. In a 
 postscript it was entreated that Miss Helstone might not be 
 left alone at the Eectory : she had better, it was suggested > 
 accompany Miss Keeldar. 
 
 ' There are not two opinions on that head,' said Shirley, 
 as she tied on her own bonnet, and then ran to fetch 
 Caroline's. 
 
 ' But what will Fanny and Eliza do ? And if my uncle 
 returns ? ' 
 
 1 Your uncle will not return yet ; he has other fish to fry ; 
 he will be galloping backwards and forwards from Briar- 
 field to Stilbro' all day, rousing the magistrates in the court- 
 house, and the officers at the barracks ; and Fanny and 
 Eliza can have in Joe Scott's and the clerk's wives to bear 
 them company. Besides, of course, there is no real danger 
 to be apprehended now : weeks will elapse before the rioters 
 can again rally, or plan any other attempt ; and I am much 
 mistaken if Moore and Mr. Helstone will not take advantage 
 of last night's outbreak to quell them altogether : they will 
 fi'ighten the authorities of Stilbro' into energetic measures. 
 I only hope they will not be too severe not pursue the 
 discomfited too relentlessly.' 
 
 1 Robert will not be cruel ; we saw that last night,' said 
 Caroline. 
 
 ' But he will be hard,' retorted Shirley ; ' and so will your 
 uncle.' 
 
 As they hurried along the meadow and plantation -path 
 to Fieldhead, they saw the distant highway already alive 
 with an unwonted flow of equestrians arid pedestrians,
 
 TO-MOKKOW 363 
 
 tending in the direction of the usually solitary Hollow. On 
 reaching the hall, they found the backyard gates open, and 
 the court and kitchen seemed crowded with excited milk- 
 f etchers men, women, and children, whom Mrs. Gill, the 
 housekeeper, appeared vainly persuading to take their milk- 
 cans and depart. (It is, or was, by-the-by, the custom in the 
 north of England for the cottagers on a country squire's 
 estate to receive their supplies of milk and butter from the 
 dairy of the Manor-House, on whose pastures a herd of 
 milch-kine was usually fed for the convenience of the neigh- 
 bourhood. Miss Keeldar owned such a herd all deep- 
 dewlapped, Craven cows, reared on the sweet herbage and 
 clear waters of bonnie Airedale ; and very proud she was of 
 their sleek aspect and high condition.) Seeing now the state 
 of matters, and that it was desirable to effect a clearance oi 
 the premises, Shirley stepped in amongst the gossiping 
 groups. She bade them good-morning with a certain frank, 
 tranquil ease the natural characteristic of her manner when 
 she addressed numbers ; especially if those numbers belonged 
 to the working-class : she was cooler amongst her equals, 
 and rather proud to those above her. She then asked them 
 if they had all got their milk measured out, and understand- 
 ing that they had, she further observed that she ' wondered 
 what they were waiting for, then.' 
 
 ' We're just talking a bit over this battle there has been 
 at your mill, Mistress,' replied a man. 
 
 ' Talking a bit ! Just like you ! ' said Shirley. ' It is a 
 queer thing all the world is so fond of talking over events : 
 you talk if anybody dies suddenly ; you talk if a fire breaks 
 out ; you talk if a mill-owner fails ; you talk if he's 
 murdered. What good does your talking do ? ' 
 
 There is nothing the lower orders like better than a little 
 downright good-humoured rating. Flattery they scorn very 
 much : honest abuse they enjoy. They call it speaking 
 plainly, and take a sincere delight in being the objects thereof. 
 The homely harshness of Miss Keeldar's salutation won her 
 the ear of the whole throng in a second.
 
 364 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' We're no war nor some 'at is aboon us ; are we ? ' asked 
 a man, smiling. 
 
 ' Nor a whit better : you that should be models of industry 
 are just as gossip-loving as the idle. Fine, rich people that 
 have nothing to do, may be partly excused for trifling their 
 time away : you who have to earn your bread with the 
 sweat of your brow are quite inexcusable.' 
 
 ' That's queer, Mistress : suld we never have a holiday 
 because we work hard ? ' 
 
 ' Never,' was the prompt answer ; ' unless,' added the 
 ' mistress ' with a smile that half-belied the severity of her 
 speech ' unless you knew how to make a better use of it 
 than to get together over rum and tea, if you are women or 
 over beer and pipes, if you are men, and talk scandal at your 
 neighbour's expense. Come, friends,' she added, changing 
 at once from bluntness to courtesy, ' oblige me by taking 
 your cans and going home. I expect several persons to call 
 to-day, and it will bs inconvenient to have the avenues to 
 the house crowded.' 
 
 Yorkshire people are as yielding to persuasion as they 
 are stubborn against compulsion : the yard was clear in five 
 minutes. 
 
 ' Thank you, and good -by to you, friends,' said Shirley, 
 as she closed the gates on a quiet court. 
 
 Now, let me hear the most refined of Cockneys presume 
 to find fault with Yorkshire manners ! Taken as they ought 
 to be, the majority of the lads and lasses of the West-Biding 
 are gentlemen and ladies, every inch of them : it is only 
 against the weak affectation and futile pomposity of a would- 
 be aristocrat they turn mutinous. 
 
 Entering by the back-way, the young ladies passed 
 through the kitchen (or house, as the inner kitchen is called) 
 to the hall. Mrs. Pryor came running down the oak stair- 
 case to meet them. She was all unnerved : her naturally 
 sanguino complexion was pale ; her usually placid, though 
 timid, blue eye was wandering, unsettled, alarmed. She did 
 nob, however, break out into any exclamations, or hurried
 
 TO-MOEBOW 365 
 
 narrative of what had happened. Her predominant feeling 
 had been in the course of the night, and was now this 
 morning, a sense of dissatisfaction with herself that she 
 could not feel firmer, cooler, more equal to the demands of 
 the occasion. 
 
 ' You are aware,' she began with a trembling voice, and 
 yet the most conscientious anxiety to avoid exaggeration in 
 what she was about to say, 'that a body of rioters has 
 attacked Mr. Moore's mill to-night : we heard the firing and 
 confusion very plainly here : we none of us slept : it was a 
 sad night : the house has been in great bustle all the morning 
 with people coming and going : the servants have applied to 
 me for orders and directions, which I really did not feel 
 warranted in giving. Mr. Moore has, I believe, sent up for 
 refreshments for the soldiers and others engaged in the 
 defence ; for some conveniences also for the wounded. I 
 could not undertake the responsibility of giving orders or 
 taking measures. I fear delay may have been injurious in 
 some instances ; but this is not my house : you were absent, 
 my dear Miss Keeldar what could I do ? ' 
 
 ' Were no refreshments sent ? ' asked Shirley, while her 
 countenance, hitherto so clear, propitious, and quiet, even 
 while she was rating the milk-fetchers, suddenly turned dark 
 and warm. 
 
 ' I think not, my dear.' 
 
 ' And nothing for the wounded ? no linen no wine no 
 bedding ? ' 
 
 ' I think not. I cannot tell what Mrs. Gill did : but it 
 seemed impossible to me, at the moment, to venture to 
 dispose of your property by sending supplies to soldiers 
 provisions for a company of soldiers sounds formidable : how 
 many there are I did not ask ; but I could not think of 
 allowing them to pillage the house as it were. I intended to 
 do what was right ; yet I did not see the case quite clearly, 
 I own.' 
 
 ' It lies in a nutshell, notwithstanding. These soldiers 
 have risked their lives in defence of my property I suppose
 
 366 SHIRLEY 
 
 they have a right to my gratitude: the wounded are our 
 fellow-creatures I suppose we should aid them. Mrs. 
 Gill ! ' 
 
 She turned, and called in a voice more clear than soft. 
 It rang through the thick oak of the hall and kitchen doors 
 more effectually than a bell's summons. Mr s. Gill, who was 
 deep in bread-making, came with hands and apron in 
 culinary case, not having dared to stop to rub the dough 
 from the one, or to shake the flour from the other. Her 
 mistress had never called a servant in that voice, save once 
 before, and that was when she had seen from the window 
 Tartar in full tug with two carriers' dogs, each of them a 
 match for him in size, if not in courage, and their masters 
 standing by, encouraging their animals, while hers was 
 unbefriended : then, indeed, she had summoned John as if 
 the Day of Judgment were at hand : nor had she waited for 
 the said John's coming, but had walked out into the lane 
 bonnetless ; and after informing the carriers that she held 
 them far less of men than the three brutes whirling and 
 worrying in the dust before them, had put her hands round 
 the thick neck of the largest of the curs and given her whole 
 strength to the essay of choking it from Tartar's torn and 
 bleeding eye, just above and below which organ the vengeful 
 fangs were inserted. Five or six men were presently on the 
 spot to help her, but she never thanked one of them : ' They 
 might have come before, if their will had been good,' she 
 said. She had not a word for anybody during the rest of 
 the day ; but sat near the hall fire till evening, watching and 
 tending Tartar, who lay all gory, stiff, and swelled, on a mat 
 at her feet. She wept furtively over him sometimes, and 
 murmured the softest words of pity and endearment, in tones 
 whose music the old, scarred, canine warrior acknowledged 
 by licking her hand or her sandal alternately with his own 
 red wounds. As to John, his lady turned a cold shoulder 
 on him for a week afterwards. 
 
 Mrs. Gill, remembering this little episode, came ' all of a 
 tremble,' as she said herself. In a firm, brief voice, Miss
 
 TO-MOKfcOW 367 
 
 Keeldar proceeded to put questions and give orders. That 
 at such a time Fieldhead should have evinced the inhospitality 
 of a miser's hovel, stung her haughty spirit to the quick ; 
 and the revolt of its pride was seen in the heaving of her 
 heart ; stirred stormily under the lace and silk which 
 veiled it. 
 
 ' How long is it since that message came from the 
 mill ? ' 
 
 ' Not an hour yet, ma'am,' answered the housekeeper, 
 soothingly. 
 
 ' Not an hour ! You might almost as well have said not 
 a day. They will have applied elsewhere by this time. Send 
 a man instantly down to tell them that everything this house 
 contains is at Mr. Moore's, Mr. Helstone's, and the soldiers' 
 service. Do that first ! ' 
 
 While the order was being executed, Shirley moved away 
 from her friends, and stood at the hall-window, silent, un- 
 approachable. When Mrs. Gill came back, she turned : the 
 purple flush which painful excitement kindles on a pale 
 cheek, glowed on hers : the spark which displeasure lights 
 in a dark eye fired her glance. 
 
 ' Let the contents of the larder and the wine-cellar be 
 brought up, put into the hay-carts, and driven down to tho 
 Hollow. If there does not happen to be much bread or 
 much meat in the house, go to the butcher and baker, and 
 desire them to send what they have : but I will see for 
 myself.' 
 
 She moved off. 
 
 ' All will be right soon : she will get over it in an hour,' 
 whispered Caroline to Mrs. Pryor. ' Go up-stairs, dear 
 madam,' she added, affectionately, ' and try to be as calm 
 and easy as you can. The truth is, Shirley will blame her- 
 self more than you before the day is over.' 
 
 By dint of a few more gentle assurances and persuasions, 
 Miss Helstone contrived to soothe the agitated lady. Having 
 accompanied her to her apartment, and promised to rejoin 
 her there when things were settled, Caroline left her to see,
 
 368 SHIELEY 
 
 as she said, ' if she could be useful.' She presently found 
 that she could be very useful ; for the retinue of servants at 
 Fieldhead was by no means numerous, and just now their 
 mistress found plenty of occupation for all the hands at her 
 command, and for her own also. The delicate good-nature 
 and dexterous activity which Caroline brought to the aid of 
 the housekeeper and maids, all somewhat scared by their 
 lady's unwonted mood did a world of good at once : it 
 helped the assistants and appeased the directress. A chance 
 glance and smile from Caroline moved Shirley to an answer- 
 ing smile directly. The former was carrying a heavy basket 
 up the cellar-stairs. 
 
 1 This is a shame ! ' cried Shirley, running to her. ' It 
 will strain your arm. 1 
 
 She took it from her, and herself bore it out into the 
 yard. The cloud of temper was dispelled when she came 
 back ; the flash in her eye was melted ; the shade on her 
 forehead vanished :' she resumed her usual cheerful and 
 cordial manner to those about her, tempering her revived 
 spirits with a little of the softness of shame at her previous 
 unjust anger. 
 
 She was still superintending the lading of the cart when 
 a gentleman entered the yard and approached her ere she 
 was aware of his presence. 
 
 ' I hope I see Miss Keeldar well this morning ? ' he said, 
 examining with rather a significant scrutiny her still flushed 
 face. 
 
 She gave him a look, and then again bent to her employ- 
 ment, without reply. A pleasant enough smile played on her 
 lips, but she hid it. The gentleman repeated his salutation, 
 stooping, that it might reach her ear with more facility. 
 
 ' Well enough, if she be good enough,' was the answer ; 
 ' and so is Mr. Moore, too, I daresay. To speak truth, I am 
 not anxious about him ; some slight mischance would be 
 only his just, due : his conduct has been we will say strange, 
 just now, till we have time to characterise it by a more 
 exact epithet. Meantime, may I ask what brings him here ? '
 
 TO-MORROW 369 
 
 ' Mr. Helstone and I have just received your message 
 that everything at Fieldhead was at our service. We judged, 
 by the unlimited wording of the gracious intimation, that 
 you would be giving yourself too much trouble : I perceive, 
 our conjecture was correct. We are not a regiment, remem- 
 ber : only about half-a-dozen soldiers, and as many civilians. 
 Allow me to retrench something from these too abundant 
 supplies.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar blushed, while she laughed at her own over- 
 eager generosity, and most disproportionate calculations. 
 Moore laughed too very quietly, though ; and as quietly, 
 he ordered basket after basket to be taken from the cart, 
 and remanded vessel after vessel to the cellar. 
 
 ' The Rector must hear of this,' he said : ' he will make a 
 good story of it. What an excellent army contractor Miss 
 Keeldar would have been ! ' again he laughed, adding ' It 
 is precisely as I conjectured.' 
 
 1 You ought to be thankful,' said Shirley, ' and not mock 
 me. What could I do ? How could I gauge your appetites, 
 or number your band ? For aught I knew, there might have 
 been fifty of you at least to victual. You told me nothing ; 
 and then, an application to provision soldiers naturally 
 suggests large ideas.' 
 
 ' It appears so,' remarked Moore, levelling another of his 
 keen, quiet glances at the discomfited Shirley. ' Now,' he 
 continued, addressing the carter, ' I think you may take 
 what remains to the Hollow. Your load will be somewhat 
 lighter than the one Miss Keeldar destined you to carry.' 
 
 As the vehicle rumbled out of the yard, Shirley, rallying 
 her spirits, demanded what had become of the wounded. 
 
 'There was not a single man hurt on our side,' was the 
 answer. 
 
 ' You were hurt yourself, on the temples,' interposed a 
 quick, low voice that of Caroline, who, having withdrawn 
 within the shade of the door, and behind the large person of 
 Mrs. Gill, had till now escaped Moore's notice : when she 
 spoke, his eye searched the obscurity of her retreat.
 
 370 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' Are you much hurt ? ' she inquired. 
 
 'As you might scratch your finger with a needle in 
 sewing.' 
 
 1 Lift your hair, and let us see.' 
 
 He took his hat off, and did as he was bid, disclosing 
 only a narrow slip of court-plaster. Caroline indicated, by 
 a slight movement of the head, that she was satisfied, and 
 disappeared within the clear obscure of the interior. 
 
 ' How did she know I was hurt ? ' asked Moore. 
 
 'By rumour, no doubt. But it is too good in her to 
 trouble herself about you. For my part, it was of your 
 victims I was thinking when I inquired after the wounded : 
 what damage have your opponents sustained ? ' 
 
 ' One of the rioters, or victims, as you call them, was 
 killed, and six were hurt.' 
 
 1 What have you done with them ? ' 
 
 ' What you will perfectly approve. Medical aid was pro- 
 cured immediately ; and as soon as we can get a couple of 
 covered waggons, and some clean straw, they will be removed 
 to StilbroV 
 
 ' Straw ! you must have beds and bedding. I will send 
 my waggon directly, properly furnished ; and Mr. Yorke, I 
 am sure, will send his.' 
 
 ' You guess correctly : he has volunteered already ; and 
 Mrs. Yorke who, like you, seems disposed to regard the 
 rioters as martyrs, and me, and especially Mr. Helstone, as 
 murderers is at this moment, I believe, most assiduously 
 engaged in fitting it up with feather-beds, pillows, bolsters, 
 blankets, &c. The victims lack no attentions I promise 
 you. Mr. Hall your favourite parson has been with 
 them ever since six o'clock, exhorting them, praying with 
 them, and even waiting on them like any nurse ; and 
 Caroline's good friend, Miss Ainley, that very plain old 
 maid, sent in a stock of lint and linen, something in 
 the proportion of another lady's allowance of beef and 
 wine.' 
 
 ' That will do. Where is your sister ? '
 
 TO-MORROW 371 
 
 1 Well cared for. I had her securely domiciled with Miss 
 Mann. This very morning, the two set out for Wormwood 
 Wells (a noted watering-place), and will stay there some 
 weeks.' 
 
 ' So Mr. Helstone domiciled me at the Rectory ! Mighty 
 clever you gentlemen think you are ! I make you heartily 
 welcome to the idea, and hope its savour, as you chew the 
 cud of reflection upon it, gives you pleasure. Acute and 
 astute, why are you not also omniscient ? How is it that 
 events transpire, under your very noses, of which you have 
 no suspicion? It should be so, otherwise the exquisite 
 gratification of out-manoeuvring you would be unknown. 
 Ah ! friend, you may search my countenance, but you cannot 
 read it." 
 
 Moore, indeed, looked as if he could not. 
 
 ' You think me a dangerous specimen of my sex. Don't 
 you, now ? ' 
 
 ' A peculiar one, at least.' 
 
 ' But Caroline is she peculiar ? ' 
 
 ' In her way yes.' 
 
 1 Her way ! What is her way ? ' 
 
 ' You know her as well as I do.' 
 
 1 And knowing her I assert that she is neither eccentric 
 nor difficult of control : is she ? ' 
 
 ' That depends ' 
 
 1 However, there is nothing masculine about her ? ' 
 
 1 Why lay such emphasis on her ? Do you consider her 
 a contrast, in that respect, to yourself ? ' 
 
 ' You do, no doubt : but that does not signify. Caroline 
 is neither masculine, nor of what they call the spirited order 
 of women.' 
 
 ' I have seen her flash out.' 
 
 ' So have I but not with manly fire : it was a short, 
 vivid, trembling glow, that shot up, shone, vanished 
 
 1 And left her scared at her own daring. You describe 
 others besides Caroline.' 
 
 ' The point I wish to establish is, that Miss Helstone,
 
 372 SHIBLEY 
 
 though gentle, tractable, and candid enough, is still perfectly 
 capable of defying even Mr. Moore's penetration.' 
 
 ' What have you and she been doing ? ' asked Moore, 
 suddenly. 
 
 1 Have you had any breakfast ? ' 
 
 1 What is your mutual mystery ? ' 
 
 ' If you are hungry, Mrs. Gill will give you something to 
 eat here. Step into the oak-parlour, and ring the bell you 
 will be served as if at an inn ; or, if you like better, go back 
 to the Hollow.' 
 
 ' The alternative is not open to me : I must go back. 
 Good morning : the first leisure I have, I will see you 
 again.'
 
 CHAPTEK XXI 
 
 MBS. PBYOB 
 
 WHILE Shirley was talking with Moore, Caroline rejoined 
 Mrs. Pryor upstairs. She found that lady deeply depressed. 
 She would not say that Miss Keeldar's hastiness had hurt 
 her feelings ; but it was evident an inward wound galled her. 
 To any but a congenial nature, she would have seemed 
 insensible to the quiet, tender attentions by which Miss 
 Helstone sought to impart solace ; but Caroline knew that, 
 unmoved or slightly moved as she looked, she felt, valued, 
 and was healed by them. 
 
 ' I am deficient in self-confidence and decision,' she said 
 at last. ' I always have been deficient in those qualities : 
 yet I think Miss Keeldar should have known my character 
 well enough by this time, to be aware that I always feel an 
 even painful solicitude to do right, to act for the best. The 
 unusual nature of the demand on my judgment puzzled me, 
 especially following the alarms of the night. I could not 
 venture to act promptly for another : but I trust no serious 
 harm will result from my lapse of firmness.' 
 
 A gentle knock was here heard at the door: it was half- 
 opened. 
 
 ' Caroline, come here,' said a low voice. 
 
 Miss Helstone went out : there stood Shirley in the 
 gallery, looking contrite, ashamed, sorry as any repentant 
 child. 
 
 ' How is Mrs. Pryor ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Bather out of spirits,' said Caroline. 
 
 1 1 have behaved very shamefully, very ungenerously,
 
 374 SHIRLEY 
 
 very ungratefully to her,' said Shirley. ' How insolent in 
 me to turn on her thus, for what after all was no fault, only 
 an excess of conscientiousness on her part. But I regret 
 my error most sincerely : tell her so, and ask if she will 
 forgive me.' 
 
 Caroline discharged the errand with heartfelt pleasure. 
 Mrs. Pryor rose, came to the door : she did not like scenes ; 
 she dreaded them as all timid people do : she said falteringly 
 ' Come in, my dear.' 
 
 Shirley did come in with some impetuosity : she threw 
 her arms round her governess, and while she kissed her 
 heartily, she said ' You know you must forgive me, Mrs. 
 Pryor. I could not get on at all if there was a misunder- 
 standing between you and me.' 
 
 1 1 have nothing to forgive,' was the reply. ' We will 
 pass it over now, if you please. The final result of the 
 incident is, that it proves more plainly than ever how 
 unequal I am to certain crises.' 
 
 And that was the painful feeling which would remain on 
 Mrs. Pryor's mind : no effort of Shirley's or Caroline's 
 could efface it thence : she could forgive her offending pupil, 
 not her innocent self. 
 
 Miss Keeldar, doomed to be in constant request during 
 the morning, was presently summoned down-stairs again. 
 The Rector called first : a lively welcome and livelier 
 reprimand were at his service ; he expected both, and, being 
 in high spirits, took them in equally good part- 
 
 In the course of his brief visit, he quite forgot to ask 
 after his niece : the riot, the rioters, the mill, the magistrates, 
 the heiress, absorbed all his thoughts to the exclusion of 
 family ties. He alluded to the part himself and curate had 
 taken in the defence of the Hollow. 
 
 ' The vials of pharisaical wrath will be emptied on our 
 heads, for our share in this business,' he said ; ' but I defy 
 every calumniator. I was there only to support the law, to 
 play my part as a man and a Briton ; which characters I 
 deem quite compatible with those of the priest and Levite,
 
 MRS. PRYOR 375 
 
 in their highest sense. Your tenant, Moore,' he went on, 
 ' has won my approbation. A cooler commander I would 
 not wish to see, nor a more determined. Besides, the man 
 has shown sound judgment and good sense ; first, in being 
 thoroughly prepared for the event which has taken place, 
 and subsequently, when his well-concerted plans had secured 
 him success, in knowing how to use without abusing his 
 victory. Some of the magistrates are now well frightened, 
 and, like all cowards, show a tendency to be cruel ; Moore 
 restrains them with admirable prudence. He has hitherto 
 been very unpopular in the neighbourhood ; but, mark my 
 words, the tide of opinion will now take a turn in his favour : 
 people will find out that they have not appreciated him, 
 and will hasten to remedy their error ; and he, when he 
 perceives the public disposed to acknowledge his merits, will 
 show a more gracious mien than that with which he has 
 hitherto favoured us.' 
 
 Mr. Helstone was about to add to this speech some 
 half -jesting, half -serious warnings to Miss Keeldar, on the 
 subject of her rumoured partiality for her talented tenant, 
 when a ring at the door, announcing another caller, checked 
 his raillery ; and as that other caller appeared in the form 
 of a white-haired, elderly gentleman, with a rather truculent 
 countenance and disdainful eye in short, our old acquaint- 
 ance, and the Rector's old enemy, Mr. Yorke the priest 
 and Levite seized his hat, and with the briefest of adieux to 
 Miss Keeldar, and the sternest of nods to her guest, took an 
 abrupt leave. 
 
 Mr. Yorke was in no mild mood, and in no measured 
 terms did he express his opinion on the transaction of the 
 night : Moore, the magistrates, the soldiers, the mob-leaders, 
 each and all came in for a share of his invectives ; but he 
 reserved his strongest epithets and real racy Yorkshire 
 Doric adjectives they were for the benefit of the fighting 
 parsons, the ' sanguinary, demoniac ' rector and curate. 
 According to him, the cup of ecclesiastical guilt was now 
 full indeed.
 
 376 SHIELEY 
 
 1 The Church/ he said, ' was in a bonnie pickle now : it 
 was time it came down when parsons took to swaggering 
 amang soldiers, blazing away wi' bullet and gunpowder, 
 taking the lives of far honester men than themselves.' 
 
 ' What would Moore have done, if nobody had helped 
 him ? ' asked Shirley. 
 
 ' Drunk as he'd brewed eaten as he'd baked.' 
 
 1 Which means, you would have left him by himself to 
 face that mob. Good. He lias plenty of courage ; but the 
 greatest amount of gallantry that ever garrisoned one human 
 breast could scarce avail against two hundred.' 
 
 ' He had the soldiers ; those poor slave's who hire out 
 their own blood and spill other folks' for money.' 
 
 ' You abuse soldiers almost as much as you abuse clergy- 
 men. All who wear red coats are national refuse in your 
 eyes, and all who wear black are national swindlers. Mr. 
 Moore, according to you, did wrong to get military aid, and 
 he did still worse to accept of any other aid. Your way of 
 talking amounts to this : he should have abandoned hia 
 mill and his life to the rage of a set of misguided madmen, 
 and Mr. Helstone and every other gentleman in the parish 
 should have looked on, and seen the building razed and its 
 owner slaughtered, and never stirred a finger to save either,' 
 
 ' If Moore had behaved to his men from the beginning 
 as a master ought to behave, they never would have enter- 
 tained their present feelings towards him.' 
 
 ' Easy for you to talk,' exclaimed Miss Keeldar, who was 
 beginning to wax warm in her tenant's cause : ' you, whose 
 family have lived at Briarmains for six generations, to whose 
 person the people have been accustomed for fifty years, who 
 know all their ways, prejudices, and preferences. Easy, 
 indeed, for you to act so as to avoid offending them ; but 
 Mr. Moore came a stranger into the district : he came here 
 poor and friendless, with nothing but his own energies to 
 back him ; nothing but his honour, his talent, and his 
 industry to make his way for him. A monstrous crime 
 indeed that, under such circumstances, he could not
 
 MBS. I>BYO 377 
 
 popularise his naturally grave, quiet manners, all at once : 
 could not be jocular, and free, and cordial with a strange 
 peasantry, as you are with your fellow-townsmen ! An 
 unpardonable transgression, that when he introduced im- 
 provements he did not go about the business in quite the 
 most politic way ; did not graduate his changes as delicately 
 as a rich capitalist might have done ! For errors of this sort 
 is he to be the victim of mob-outrage ? Is he to be denied 
 even the privilege of defending himself? Are those who 
 have the hearts of men in their breasts (and Mr. Helstone 
 say what you will of him has such a heart) to be reviled 
 like malefactors because they stand by him because they 
 venture to espouse the cause of one against two hundred ? ' 
 
 ' Come come now be cool,' said Mr. Yorke, smiling at 
 the earnestness with which Shirley multiplied her rapid 
 questions. 
 
 ' Cool ! Must I listen coolly to downright nonsense to 
 dangerous nonsense ? No. I like you very well, Mr. Yorke, 
 as you know ; but I thoroughly dislike some of your 
 principles. All that cant excuse me, but I repeat the 
 word all that cant about soldiers and parsons is most 
 offensive in my ears. All ridiculous, irrational crying up of 
 one class, whether the same be aristocrat or democrat all 
 howling down of another class, whether clerical or military 
 all exacting injustice to individuals, whether monarch or 
 mendicant is really sickening to me : all arraying of ranks 
 against 'ranks, all party hatreds, all tyrannies disguised as 
 liberties, I reject and wash my hands of. You think you 
 are a philanthropist ; you think you are an advocate of 
 liberty ; but I will tell you this Mr. Hall, the parson of 
 Nunnely, is a better friend both of man and freedom, than 
 Hiram Yorke, the Eeformer of Briarfield.' 
 
 From a man, Mr. Yorke would not have borne this 
 language very patiently, nor would he have endured it from 
 some women ; but he accounted Shirley both honest and 
 pretty, and her plain-spoken ire amused him : besides he 
 took a secret pleasure in hearing her defend her tenant, for
 
 378 SHIRLEY 
 
 we have already intimated he had Robert Moore's interest 
 very much at heart : moreover, if he wished to avenge him- 
 self for her severity, he knew the means lay in his power : 
 a word, he believed, would suffice to tame and silence her, 
 to cover her frank forehead with the rosy shadow of shame, 
 and veil the glow of her eye under down-drooped lid and 
 lash. 
 
 ' What more hast thou to say ? ' he inquired, as she 
 paused, rather it appeared to take breath, than because her 
 subject or her zeal was exhausted. 
 
 ' Say, Mr. Yorke ! ' was the answer, the speaker mean- 
 time walking fast from wall to wall of the oak -parlour. ' Say ? 
 I have a great deal to say, if I could get it out in lucid order 
 which I never can do. I have to say that your views, and 
 those of most extreme politicians, are such as none but men 
 in an irresponsible position can advocate ; that they are 
 purely opposition views, meant only to be talked about, and 
 never intended to be acted on. Make you prime minister of 
 England to-morrow, and you would have to abandom them. 
 You abuse Moore for defending his mill : had you been in 
 Moore's place you could not with honour or sense have 
 acted otherwise than he acted. You abuse Mr. Helstone 
 for everything he does : Mr. Helstone has his faults : he 
 sometimes does wrong, but oftener right. Were you ordained 
 vicar of Briarfiold, you would find it no easy task to sustain 
 all the active schemes for the benefit of the parish planned 
 and persevered in by your predecessor. I wonder people can- 
 not judge more fairly of each other and themselves. When I 
 hear Messrs. Malone and Donne chatter about the authority 
 of the Church, the dignity and claims of the priesthood, the 
 deference due to them as clergymen ; when I hear the out- 
 breaks of their small spite against Dissenters ; when I 
 witness their silly narrow jealousies and assumptions ; when 
 their palaver about forms, and traditions, and superstitions, 
 is sounding in my ear ; when I behold their insolent 
 carnage to the poor, their often base servility to the rich, I 
 think the Establishment is indeed in a poor way, and both
 
 MRS. PBYOB 379 
 
 she and her sons appear in the utmost need of reformation. 
 Turning away distressed from minster-tower and village- 
 spire ay, as distressed as a churchwarden who feels the 
 exigence of whitewash, and has not wherewithal to purchase 
 lime I recall your senseless sarcasms on the " fat bishops," 
 the " pampered parsons," " old mother church," &c. I 
 remember your strictures on all who differ from you, your 
 sweeping condemnation of classes and individuals, without 
 the slightest allowance made for circumstances or tempta- 
 tions ; and then, Mr. Yorke, doubt clutches my inmost heart 
 as to whether men exist clement, reasonable, and just enough 
 to be intrusted with the task of reform. I don't believe you 
 are of the number.' 
 
 1 You have an ill opinion of me, Miss Shirley : you never 
 told me so much of your mind before.' 
 
 ' I never had an opening : but I have sat on Jessie's stool 
 by your chair in the back-parlour at Briarmains, for evenings 
 together, listening excitedly to your talk, half-admiring what 
 you said, and half-rebelling against it. I think you a fine 
 old Yorkshireman, sir : I am proud to have been born in the 
 same county and parish as yourself truthful, upright, inde- 
 pendent you ai'e, as a rock based below seas ; but also you 
 are harsh, rude, narrow, and merciless.' 
 
 4 Not to the poor, lass nor to the meek of the earth 
 only to the proud and high-minded.' 
 
 4 And what right have you, sir, to make such distinctions ? 
 A prouder a higher-minded man than yourself does not 
 exist. You find it easy to speak comfortably to your 
 inferiors you are too haughty, too ambitious, too jealous to 
 be civil to those above you. But you are all alike. Helstone 
 also is proud and prejudiced. Moore, though juster and 
 more considerate than either you or the Rector, is still 
 haughty, stern, and, in a public sense, selfish. It is well 
 there are such men as Mr. Hall to be found occasionally : 
 men of large and kind hearts, who can love their whole race, 
 who can forgive others for being richer, more prospei'ous, or 
 more powerful than they are. Such men may have less
 
 380 SHIKLEY 
 
 originality, less force of character than you, but they are 
 better friends to mankind.' 
 
 ' And when is it to be ? ' said Mr. Yorke, now rising. 
 
 ' When is what to be ? ' 
 
 ' The wedding.' 
 
 1 Whose wedding ? ' 
 
 ' Only that of Eobert Gerard Moore, Esq., of Hollow's 
 Cottage, with Miss Keeldar, daughter and heiress of the late 
 Charles Cave Keeldar, of Fieldhead Hall.' 
 
 Shirley gazed at the questioner with rising colour ; but 
 the light iu her eye was not faltering : it shone steadily yea 
 it burned deeply. 
 
 ' That is your revenge,' she said, slowly : then added : 
 ' Would it be a bad match, unworthy of the late Charles 
 Cave Keeldar 's representative ? ' 
 
 1 My lass, Moore is a gentleman : his blood is pure and 
 ancient as mine or thine." 
 
 ' And we too set store by ancient blood ? We have 
 family pride, though one of us at least is a Republican? ' 
 
 Yorke bowed as he stood before her. His lips were mute, 
 but his eye confessed the impeachment. Yes he had family 
 pride you saw it in his whole bearing. 
 
 ' Moore is a gentleman,' echoed Shirley, lifting her head 
 with glad grace. She checked herself words seemed crowd-, 
 ing to her tongue, she would not give them utterance ; but 
 
 her look spoke much at the moment : what Yorke tried 
 
 to read, but could not the language was there visible, 
 
 but untranslatable a poem a fervid lyric in an unknown 
 tongue. It was not a plain storj , however no simple gush 
 of feeling no ordinary love -confession that was obvious ; 
 it was something other, deeper, more intricate than he 
 guessed at : he felt his revenge had not struck home ; he felt 
 that Shirley triumphed she held him at fault, baffled, 
 puzzled ; she enjoyed the moment not he. 
 
 ' And if Moore is a gentleman, you can be only a lady, 
 therefore 
 
 ' Therefore there would be no inequality in our union ? '
 
 MES. PKYOR 381 
 
 ' None.' 
 
 ' Thank you for your approbation. Will you give me 
 away when I relinquish the name of Keeldar for that of 
 Moore ? ' 
 
 Mr. Yorke, instead of replying, gazed at her much puzzled. 
 He could not divine what her look signified ; whether she 
 spoke in earnest or in jest : there was purpose and feeling, 
 banter and scoff playing, mingled, on her mobile lineaments. 
 
 1 1 don't understand thee,' he said, turning away. 
 
 She laughed : ' Take courage, sir : you are not singular 
 in your ignorance : but I suppose if Moore understands me 
 that will do will it not ? ' 
 
 ' Moore may settle his own matters henceforward for me ; 
 I'll neither meddle nor make with them further.' 
 
 A new thought crossed her: her countenance changed 
 magically : with a sudden darkening of the eye, and austere 
 fixing of the features, she demanded,' Have you been asked 
 to interfere ? Are you questioning me as another's proxy ? ' 
 
 1 The Lord save us ! Whoever weds thee must look 
 about him ! Keep all your questions for Eobert ; I'll answer 
 no more on 'em. Good-day, lassie ! ' 
 
 The day being fine, or at least fair for soft clouds 
 curtained the sun, and a dim but not chill or waterish haze 
 slept blue on the hills Caroline, while Shirley was engaged 
 with her callers, had persuaded Mrs. Pryor to assume her 
 bonnet and summer shawl, and to take a walk with her up 
 towards the narrow end of the Hollow. 
 
 Here, the opposing sides of the glen approaching each 
 other, and becoming clothed with brushwood and stunted 
 oaks, formed a wooded ravine ; at the bottom of which ran 
 the mill-stream, in broken unquiet course, struggling with 
 many stones, chafing against rugged banks, fretting with 
 gnarled tree-roots, foaming, gurgling, battling as it went. 
 Here, when you had wandered half a mile from the mill, 
 you found a sense of deep solitude : found it in the 
 shade of unmolested trees ; received it in the singing of
 
 382 SHtKLEY 
 
 many birds, for which that shade made a home. This was 
 no trodden way : the freshness of the woodflowers attested 
 that foot of man seldom pressed them : the abounding wild- 
 roses looked as if they budded, bloomed, and faded under 
 the watch of solitude, as in a sultan's harem. Here you saw 
 the sweet azure of blue-bells, and recognised in pearl-white 
 blossoms, spangling the grass, an humble type of some star- 
 lit spot in space. 
 
 Mrs. Pryor liked a quiet walk : she ever shunned high- 
 roads, and sought byways and lonely lanes : one companion 
 she preferred to total solitude, for in solitude she was nervous : 
 a vague fear of annoying encounters broke the enjoyment of 
 quite lonely rambles ; but she feared nothing with Caroline : 
 when once she got away from human habitations, and entered 
 the still demesne of Nature, accompanied by this one youth- 
 ful friend, a propitious change seemed to steal over her 
 mind and beam in her countenance. When with Caroline 
 and Caroline only her heart, you would have said, shook 
 off a burden, her brow put aside a veil, her spirits too escaped 
 from a restraint : with her she was cheerful ; with her, at 
 times, she was tender : to her she would impart her know- 
 ledge, I'eveal glimpses of her experience, give her oppor- 
 tunities for guessing what life she had lived, what cultivation 
 her mind had received, of what calibre was her intelligence, 
 how and where her feelings were vulnerable. 
 
 To-day, for instance, as they walked along, Mrs. Pryor 
 talked to her companion about the various birds singing in 
 the trees, discriminated their species, and said something 
 about their habits and peculiarities. English natural history 
 seemed familiar to her. All the wild flowers round their 
 path were recognised by her : tiny plants springing near 
 stones and peeping out of chinks in old walls plants such 
 as Caroline had scarcely noticed before received a name 
 and an intimation of their properties : it appeared that she 
 had minutely studied the botany of English fields and woods. 
 Having reached the head of the ravine, they sat down together 
 on a ledge of gray and mossy rock jutting from the base of a
 
 MES. PRYOR 383 
 
 steep green hill, which towered above them : Mrs. Pryor 
 looked round her, and spoke of the neighbourhood as she 
 had once before seen it long ago. She alluded to its changes, 
 and compared its aspect with that of other parts of England ; 
 revealing in quiet, unconscious touches of description, a 
 sense of the pictm*esque, an appreciation of the beautiful or 
 common-place, a power of comparing the wild with the 
 cultured, the grand with the tame, that gave to her discourse 
 a graphic charm as pleasant as it was unpretending. 
 
 The sort of reverent pleasure with which Caroline listened 
 so sincere, so quiet, yet so evident, stirred the elder lady's 
 faculties to gentle animation. Rarely, probably, had she, 
 with her chill, repellent outside her diffident mien and 
 incommunicative habits, known what it was to excite in one 
 whom she herself could love, feelings of earnest affection 
 and admiring esteem. Delightful, doubtless, was the con- 
 sciousness that a young girl towards whom it seemed 
 judging by the moved expression of her eyes and features 
 her heart turned with almost a fond impulse, looked up to 
 her as an instructor, and clung to her as a friend. With a 
 somewhat more marked accent of interest than she often 
 permitted herself to use, she said, as she bent towards her 
 youthful companion, and put aside from her forehead a pale 
 brown curl which had strayed from the confining comb 
 ' I do hope this sweet air blowing from the hill will do you 
 good, my dear Caroline : I wish I could see something more 
 of colour in these cheeks but perhaps you were never 
 florid ? ' 
 
 ' I had red cheeks once,' returned Miss Helstone, smiling. 
 ' I remember a year two years ago, when I used to look in 
 the glass, I saw a different face there to what I see now 
 rounder and rosier. But when \ve are young,' added the 
 girl of eighteen, ' our minds are careless and our lives easy.' 
 
 ' Do you ' continued Mrs. Pryor, mastering by an effort 
 that tyrant timidity which made it difficult for her, even 
 under present circumstances, to attempt the scrutiny of 
 another's heart ' Do you, at your age, fret yourself with
 
 384 SHIBLEY 
 
 cares for the future ? Believe me, you had better not : let 
 the morrow take thought for the things of itself.' 
 
 ' True, dear madam : it is not over the future I pine. 
 The evil of the day is sometimes oppressive too oppressive, 
 and I long to escape it.' 
 
 ' That is the evil of the day that is your uncle perhaps 
 is not you find it difficult to understand he does not 
 appreciate 
 
 Mrs. Pryor could not complete her broken sentences : 
 she could not manage to put the question whether Mr. 
 Helstone was too harsh with his niece, but Caroline com- 
 prehended. 
 
 ' Oh, that is nothing,' she replied ; ' my uncle and I get 
 on very well : we never quarrel I don't call him harsh he 
 never scolds me. Sometimes I wish somebody in the world 
 loved me ; but I cannot say that I particularly wish him to 
 have more affection for me than he has. As a child, I should 
 perhaps have felt the want of attention, only the servants 
 were very kind to me ; but when people are long indifferent 
 to us, we grow indifferent to their indifference. It is my 
 uncle's way not to care for women and girls unless they be 
 ladies that he meets in company : he could not alter, and I 
 have no wish that he should alter, as far as I am concerned. 
 I believe it would merely annoy and frighten me were he to 
 be affectionate towards me now. But you know, Mrs. Pryor, 
 it is scarcely living to measure time as I do at the Eectory. 
 The hours pass, and I get them over somehow, but I do not 
 live. I endure existence, but I rarely enjoy it. Since Miss 
 Keeldar and you came, I have been I was going to say 
 happier, but that would be untrue.' She paused. 
 
 ' How untrue ? You are fond of Miss Keeldar, are you 
 not, my dear ? ' 
 
 ' Very fond of Shirley : I both like and admire her : but 
 I am painfully circumstanced : for a reason I cannot explain, 
 I want to go away from this place, and to forget it.' 
 
 ' You told me before you wished to be a governess : but, 
 my dear, if you remember, I did not encourage the idea.
 
 MRS. PBYOR 385 
 
 I have been a governess myself great part of my life. In 
 Miss Keeldar's acquaintance, I esteem myself most fortunate : 
 her talents and her really sweet disposition have rendered 
 my office easy to me ; but when I was young, before I 
 married, my trials were severe, poignant. I should not like 
 
 a . I should not like you to endure similar ones. It 
 
 was my lot to enter a family of considerable pretensions to 
 good birth and mental superiority, and the members of 
 which also believed that "on them was perceptible" an 
 unusual endowment of the " Christian graces : " that all their 
 hearts were regenerate, and their spirits in a peculiar state 
 of discipline. I was early given to understand, that " as I 
 was not their equal," so I could not expect " to have their 
 sympathy." It was in no sort concealed from me that I was 
 held a " burden and a restraint in society." The gentlemen, 
 I found, regarded me as a " tabooed woman," to whom " they 
 were interdicted from granting the usual privileges of the 
 sex," and yet who " annoyed them by frequently crossing 
 their path." The ladies too made it plain that they thought 
 me " a bore." The servants, it was signified, " detested me : " 
 why, I could never clearly comprehend. My pupils, I was 
 told, " however much they might love me, and how deep 
 soever the interest I might take in them, could not be my 
 friends." It was intimated, that I must " live alone, and 
 never transgress the invisible but rigid line which established 
 the difference between me and my employers." My life in 
 this house was sedentary, solitary, constrained, joyless, toil- 
 some. The dreadful crushing of the animal spirits, the ever 
 prevailing sense of friendlessness ami homelessness consequent 
 on this state of things, began ere long to produce mortal 
 effects on my constitution I sickened. The lady of the 
 house told me coolly I was the victim of " wounded vanity." 
 She hinted, that if I did not make an effort to quell my 
 "ungodly discontent," to cease " murmuring against God's 
 appointment," and to cultivate the profound humility befit- 
 ting my station, my mind would very likely "go to pieces" 
 on the rock that wrecked most of my sisterhood morbid
 
 386 SHIRLEY 
 
 self-esteem ; and that I should die an inmate of a lunatic 
 asylum. 
 
 ' I said nothing to Mrs. Hardman ; it would have been 
 useless : but to her eldest daughter I one day dropped a few 
 observations, which were answered thus : 
 
 1 There were hardships, she allowed, in the position of a 
 governess : " doubtless they had their trials : but," she 
 averred, with a manner it makes me smile now to recall 
 " but it must be so. She (Miss H.) had neither view, hope, 
 nor wish to see these things remedied ; for, in the inherent 
 constitution of English habits, feelings and prejudices, there 
 was no possibility that they should be. Governesses," she 
 observed, " must ever be kept in a sort of isolation : it is the 
 only means of maintaining that distance which the reserve 
 of English manners and the decorum of English families 
 exact." 
 
 ' I remember I sighed as Miss Hardman quitted my 
 bedside : she caught the sound, and turning, said severely, 
 " I fear, Miss Grey, you have inherited in fullest measure 
 the worst sin of our fallen nature the sin of pride. You 
 are proud, and therefore you are ungrateful too. Mamma 
 pays you a handsome salary ; and, if you had average sense, 
 you would thankfully put up with much that is fatiguing to 
 do and irksome to bear, since it is so well made worth your 
 while." 
 
 ' Miss Hardman, my love, was a very strong-minded 
 young lady, of most distinguished talents : the aristocracy 
 are decidedly a very superior class, you know both phy- 
 sically, and morally, and mentally as a high Tory I 
 acknowledge that I could not describe the dignity of her 
 voice and mien as she addressed me thus : still, I fear, she 
 was selfish, my dear. I would never wish to speak ill of 
 my superiors in rank ; but I think she was a little selfish. 
 
 ' I remember,' continued Mrs. Pryor, after a pause, 
 1 another of Mh;s H.'s observations, which she would utter 
 with quite a grand air. " WE," she would say," WE need 
 the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes, and crimes of a
 
 MRS. PKYOB 387 
 
 certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE 
 reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of trades- 
 people, however well educated, must necessarily be under- 
 bred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or 
 guardians of OUR children's minds and persons. WE shall 
 ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring, who have 
 been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement 
 
 as OURSELVES." ' 
 
 ' Miss Hardman must have thought herself something 
 better than her fellow-creatures, ma'am, since she held 
 that their calamities, and even crimes, were necessary to 
 minister to her convenience. You say she was religious : 
 her religion must have been that of the Pharisee, who 
 thanked God that he was not as other men are, nor even 
 as that publican.' 
 
 ' My dear, we will not discuss the point : I should be 
 the last person to wish to instil into your mind any feeling 
 of dissatisfaction with your lot in life, or any sentiment of 
 envy or insubordination towards your superiors. Implicit 
 submission to authorities, scrupulous deference to our 
 betters (under which term I, of course, include the higher 
 classes of society) are, in my opinion, indispensable to the 
 wellbeing of every community. All I mean to say, my dear, 
 is, that you had better not attempt to be a governess, as 
 the duties of the position would be too severe for your 
 constitution. Not one word of disrespect would I breathe 
 towards either Mrs. or Miss Hardman ; only, recalling 
 my own experience, I cannot but feel that, were you to fall 
 under auspices such as theirs, you would contend a while 
 courageously with your doom : then you would pine and 
 grow too weak for your work : you would come home if you 
 still had a home broken down. Those languishing years 
 would follow, of which none but the invalid and her imme- 
 diate friends feel the heart-sickness and know the burden : 
 consumption or decline would close the chapter. Such is 
 the history of many a life : I \vould not have it yours. My 
 dear, we will now walk about a little, if you please.' 
 
 *4
 
 388 SHIBLEY 
 
 They both rose and slowly paced a green natural 
 terrace bordering the chasm. 
 
 ' My dear,' erelong again began Mrs. Pryor, a sort of 
 timid, embarrassed abruptness marking her manner as she 
 spoke, ' the young, especially those to whom nature has been 
 favourable often frequently anticipate look forward to 
 to marriage as the end, the goal of their hopes.' 
 
 And she stopped. Caroline came to her relief with 
 promptitude, showing a great deal more self-possession 
 and courage than herself on the formidable topic now 
 broached. 
 
 ' They do ; and naturally,' she replied, with a calm em- 
 phasis that startled Mrs. Pryor. 'They look forward to 
 marriage with some one they love as the brightest, the 
 only bright destiny that can await them. Are they wrong ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, my dear ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Pryor, clasping her 
 hands : and again she paused. Caroline turned a searching, 
 an eager eye on the face of her friend : that face was much 
 agitated. ' My dear,' she murmured, ' life is an illusion.' 
 
 ' But not love ! Love is real : the most real, the most 
 lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know. 1 
 
 ' My dear it is very bitter. It is said to be strong 
 strong as death. Most of the cheats of existence are strong. 
 As to its sweetness nothing is so transitory : its date is a 
 moment, the twinkling of an eye : the sting remains for 
 ever : it may perish with the dawn of eternity, but it tortures 
 through time into its deepest night.' 
 
 ' Yes, it tortures through time,' agreed Caroline, ' except 
 when it is mutual love.' 
 
 ' Mutual love ! My dear, romances are pernicious. You 
 do not read them, I hope ? ' 
 
 'Sometimes whenever I can get them, indeed; but 
 romance-writers might know nothing of love, judging by 
 the way in which they treat of it.' 
 
 ' Nothing whatever, my dear ! ' assented Mrs. Pryor, 
 eagerly ; ' nor of marriage ; and the false pictures they give 
 of those subjects cannot be too strongly condemned. They
 
 MRS. PEYOE 389 
 
 are not like reality : they show you only the green tempting 
 surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or truthful 
 hint of the slough underneath.' 
 
 ' But it is not always slough,' objected Caroline : ' there 
 are happy marriages. Where affection is reciprocal and 
 sincere, and minds are harmonious, marriage must be 
 happy.' 
 
 'It is never wholly happy. Two people can never 
 literally be as one : there is, perhaps, a possibility of con- 
 tent under peculiar circumstances, such as are seldom com- 
 bined ; but it is as well not to run the risk : you may make 
 fatal mistakes. Be satisfied, my dear : let all the single be 
 satisfied with their freedom.' 
 
 ' You echo my uncle's words ! ' exclaimed Caroline, in a 
 tone of dismay : ' you speak like Mrs. Yorke, in her most 
 gloomy moments like Miss Mann, when she is most 
 sourly and hypochondriacally disposed. This is terrible ! ' 
 
 ' No, it is only true. Oh, child ! you have only lived the 
 pleasant morning time of life : the hot, weary noon, the sad 
 evening, the sunless night, are yet to come for you ! Mr. 
 Helstone, you say, talks as 1 talk ; and I wonder how Mrs. 
 Matthewson Helstone would have talked had she been 
 living. She died ! she died ! ' 
 
 ' And, alas ! my own mother and father. ..." exclaimed 
 Caroline, struck by a sombre recollection. 
 
 1 What of them ? ' 
 
 ' Did I never tell you that they were separated ? ' 
 
 ' I have heard it.' 
 
 ' They must then have been very miserable. . 
 
 ' You see all facts go to prove what I say.' 
 
 'In thia case there ought to be no such thing as 
 marriage.' 
 
 ' There ought, my dear, were it only to prove that this 
 life is a mere state of probation, wherein neither rest nor 
 recompence is to be vouchsafed.' 
 
 ' But your own marriage, Mrs. Pryor ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor shrunk and shuddered as if a rude finger had
 
 390 SHIRLEY 
 
 pressed a naked nerve : Caroline felt she had touched what 
 would not bear the slightest contact. 
 
 ' My marriage was unhappy,' said the lady, summoning 
 courage at last ; ' but yet ' she hesitated. 
 
 'But yet,' suggested Caroline, ' not immitigably wretched ?' 
 
 ' Not in its results, at least. No, she added, in a softer 
 tone, ' God mingles something of the balm of mercy even in 
 vials of the most corrosive woe. He can so turn events, 
 that from the very same blind, rash act whence sprang the 
 curse of half our life, may flow the blessing of the remainder. 
 Then, I am of a peculiar disposition, I own that : far from 
 facile, without address, in some points eccentric. I ought 
 never to have married : mine is not the nature easily to find 
 a duplicate, or likely to assimilate with a contrast. I was 
 quite aware of my own ineligibility : and if I had not been 
 so miserable as a governess, I never should have married ; 
 and then ' 
 
 Caroline's eyes asked her to proceed : they entreated her 
 to break the thick cloud of despair, which her previous words 
 had seemed to spread over life. 
 
 ' And then, my dear, Mr. , that is, the gentleman I 
 
 married, was, perhaps, rather an exceptional than an average 
 character. I hope, at least, the experience of few has been 
 such as mine was, or that few have felt their sufferings as I 
 felt mine. They nearly shook my mind : relief was so hope- 
 less, redress so unattainable : but, my dear, I do not wish to 
 dishearten, I only wish to warn you, and to prove that the 
 single should not be too anxious to change their state, as 
 they may change for the worse.' 
 
 ' Thank you, my dear madam, I quite understand your 
 kind intentions ; but there is no fear of my falling into the 
 error to which you allude. I, at least, have no thoughts of 
 marriage, and, for that reason, I want to make myself a 
 position by some other means.' 
 
 ' My dear, listen to me. On what I am going to say, I 
 have carefully deliberated ; having, indeed, revolved the 
 subject in my thoughts ever since you first mentioned your
 
 MBS. PfeYOB 391 
 
 wish to obtain a situation. You know I at present reside 
 with Miss Keeldar in the capacity of companion : should she 
 marry (and that she will marry erelong, many circumstances 
 induce me to conclude), I shall cease to be necessary to her 
 in that capacity. I must tell you that I possess a small 
 independency, arising partly from my own savings, and 
 partly from a legacy left me some years since ; whenever I 
 leave Fieldhead, I shall take a house of my own : I could 
 not endure to live in solitude : I have no relations whom I 
 care to invite to close intimacy ; for, as you must have 
 observed, and as I have already avowed, my habits and 
 tastes have their peculiarities : to you, my dear, I need not 
 say I am attached ; with you I am happier than I have ever 
 been with any living thing ' (this was said with marked 
 emphasis). ' Your society I should esteem a very dear 
 privilege an inestimable privilege, a comfort, a blessing. 
 You shall come to me then. Caroline, do you refuse me ? 
 1 hope you can love me ? ' 
 
 And with these two abrupt questions she stopped. 
 
 ' Indeed, I do love you,' was the reply. ' I should like to 
 live with you : but you are too kind.' 
 
 ' All I have,' went on Mrs. Pryor, ' I would leave to you : 
 you should be provided for, but never again say I am too 
 kind. You pierce my heart, child ! ' 
 
 ' But, my dear madam this generosity I have no 
 claim ' 
 
 ' Hush ! you must not talk about it : there are some 
 things we cannot bear to hear. Oh ! it is late to begin, 
 but I may yet live a few years : I can never wipe out the 
 pant, but perhaps a brief space in the future may yet be 
 mine ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor seemed deeply agitated : large tears trembled 
 in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Caroline kissed her, 
 in her gentle caressing way, saying softly ' I love you 
 dearly. Don't cry.' 
 
 But the lady's whole frame seemed shaken : she sat down, 
 bent her head to her knee, and wept aloud. Nothing could
 
 392 SHIRLEY 
 
 console her till the inward storm had had its way. At last 
 the agony subsided of itself. 
 
 ' Poor thing ! ' she murmured, returning Caroline's kiss : 
 ' poor lonely lamb ! But come,' she added abruptly ; ' come, 
 we must go home.' 
 
 For a short distance Mrs. Pryor walked very fast : by 
 degrees, however, she calmed down to her wonted manner, 
 fell into her usual characteristic pace a peculiar one, like 
 all her movements and by the time they reached Fieldhead, 
 she had re-entered into herself : the outside was, as usual, 
 still and shy.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 TWO LIVES 
 
 ONLY half of Moore's activity and resolution had been seen 
 in his defence of the mill : he showed the other half (and a 
 terrible half it was) in the indefatigable, the relentless 
 assiduity with which he pursued the leaders of the riot. The 
 mob, the mere followers, he let alone : perhaps an innate 
 sense of justice told him that men misled by false counsel, 
 goaded by privations, are not fit objects of vengeance, and 
 that he who would visit an even violent act on the bent head 
 of suffering, is a tyrant, not a judge. At all events, though 
 he knew many of the number, having recognised them during 
 the latter part of the attack when day began to dawn, he let 
 them daily pass him on street and road without notice or 
 threat. 
 
 The leaders he did not know. They were strangers : 
 emissaries from the large towns. Most of them were not 
 members of the operative class : they were chiefly ' down- 
 draughts,' bankrupts, men always in debt and often in drink 
 men who had nothing to lose, and much in the way of 
 character, cash, and cleanliness to gain. These persons 
 Moore hunted like any sleuth-hound ; and well he liked the 
 occupation : its excitement was of a kind pleasant to his 
 nature : he liked it better than making cloth. 
 
 His horse must have hated these times, for it was ridden 
 both hard and often : he almost lived on the road, and the 
 fresh air was as welcome to his lungs as the policeman's 
 quest to his mood : he preferred it to the steam of dye- 
 houses. The magistrates of the district must have dreaded 
 him : they were slow, timid men ; he liked both to frighten
 
 394 SHIRLEY 
 
 and to rouse them. He liked to force them to betray a 
 certain fear, which made them alike falter in resolve and 
 recoil in action the fear, simply, of assassination. This, 
 indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered every 
 manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. 
 Helstone alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew 
 well he might be shot : he knew there was risk ; but such a 
 death had for his nerves no terrors : it would have been his 
 chosen might he have had a choice. 
 
 Moore likewise knew his danger : the result was an un- 
 quenchable scorn of the quarter whence such danger was to 
 be apprehended. The consciousness that he hunted assassins 
 was the spur in his high-mettled temper's flank. As for fear, 
 he was too proud too hard-natured (if you will) too 
 phlegmatic a man to fear. Many a time he rode belated 
 over moors, moonlit or moonless as the case might be, with 
 feelings far more elate, faculties far better refreshed, than 
 when safety and stagnation environed him in the counting- 
 house. Four was the number of the leaders to be accounted 
 for : two, in the course of a fortnight, were brought to bay 
 near Stilbro' ; the remaining two it was necessaiy to seek 
 further off : their haunts were supposed to lie near Birming- 
 ham. 
 
 Meantime, the clothier did not neglect his battered mill : 
 its reparation was esteemed a light task ; carpenters' and 
 glaziers' work alone being needed. The rioters not having 
 succeeded in effecting an entrance, his grim, metal darlings 
 the machines had escaped damage. 
 
 Whether, during this busy life whether, while stern 
 justice and exacting business claimed his energies and 
 harassed his thoughts he now and then gave one moment, 
 dedicated one effort, to keep alive gentler fires than those 
 which smoulder in the fane of Nemesis, it was not easy to 
 discover. He seldom went near Fieldhead ; if he did, his 
 visits were brief : if he called at the Rectory, it was only to 
 hold conferences with the Rector in his study. He main- 
 tained his rigid course very steadily. Meantime, the history
 
 TWO LIVES 395 
 
 of the year continued troubled : there was no lull in the 
 tempest of war ; her long hurricane still swept the Continent. 
 There was not the faintest sign of serene weather : no opening 
 amid ' the clouds of battle-dust and smoke ; ' no fall of pure 
 dews genial to the olive ; no cessation of the red rain which 
 nourishes the baleful and glorious laurel. Meantime, Kuin 
 had her sappers and miners at work under Moore's feet, 
 and whether he rode or walked whether he only crossed 
 his counting-house hearth, or galloped over sullen Bushedge 
 he was aware of a hollow echo, and felt the ground shake 
 to his tread. 
 
 While the summer thus passed with Moore, how did it 
 lapse with Shirley and Caroline ? Let us first visit the 
 heiress. How does she look ? Like a love-lorn maiden, 
 pale and pining for a neglectful swain ? Does she sit the 
 day long bent over some sedentary task ? Has she for ever 
 a book in her hand, or sewing on her knee, and eyes only for 
 that, and words for nothing, and thoughts unspoken ? 
 
 By no means. Shirley is all right. If her wistful cast 
 of physiognomy is not gone, no more is her careless smile. 
 She keeps her dark old manor-house light and bright with 
 her cheery presence : the gallery, and the low-ceiled 
 chambers that open into it, have learned lively echoes from 
 her voice : the dim entrance-hall, with its one window, has 
 grown pleasantly accustomed to the frequent rustle of a silk 
 dress, as its wearer sweeps across from room to room, now 
 carrying flowers to the barbarous peach-bloom salon, now 
 entering the dining-room to open its casements and let in the 
 scent of mignonette and sweetbrier, anon bringing plants 
 from the staircase-window to place in the sun at the open 
 porch-door. 
 
 She takes her sewing occasionally : but, by some fatality, 
 she is doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five minutes 
 at a time : her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce 
 threaded, when a sudden thought calls her up-stairs : perhaps 
 she goes to seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed 
 needle-book, or older china-topped workbox, quite unneeded,
 
 396 SHIBLEY 
 
 but which seems at the moment indispensable ; perhaps to 
 arrange her hair, or a drawer which she recollects to have 
 seen that morning in a state of curious confusion ; perhaps 
 only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular 
 view, whence Briarfield Church and Eectory are visible, 
 pleasantly bowered in trees. She has scarcely returned, 
 and again taken up the slip of cambric, or square of half- 
 wrought canvas, when Tartar's bold scrape and strangled 
 whistle are heard at the porch-door, and she must run to 
 open it for him; it is a hot day; he comes in panting ; she 
 must convoy him to the kitchen, and see with her own eyes 
 that his water-bowl is replenished. Through the open 
 kitchen-door the court is visible, all sunny and gay, and 
 peopled with turkeys and their poults, peahens and their 
 chicks, pearl-flecked guinea-fowls, and a bright variety of 
 pure white, and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon- 
 plumed pigeons. Irresistible spectacle to Shirley ! She 
 runs to the pantry for a roll, and she stands on the doorstep 
 scattering crumbs : around her throng her eager, plump, 
 happy, feathered vassals. John is about the stables, and 
 John must be talked to, and her mare looked at. She is 
 still petting and patting it, when the cows came in to be 
 milked : this is important ; Shirley must stay and take a 
 review of them all. There are perhaps some little calves, 
 some little new-yeaned lambs it may be twins, whose 
 mothers have rejected them : Miss Keeldar must be intro- 
 duced to them by John must permit herself the treat of 
 feeding them with her own hand, under the direction of her 
 careful foreman. Meantime, John moots doubtful questions 
 about the farming of certain ' crofts,' and ' ings,' and ' holms,' 
 and his mistress is necessitated to fetch her garden-hat a 
 gipsy-straw and accompany him, over stile and along 
 hedge-row, to hear the conclusion of the whole agricultural 
 matter on the spot, and with the said ' crofts,' ' ings,' and 
 ' holms ' under her eye. Bright afternoon thus wears into 
 soft evening, and she comes home to a late tea, and after 
 tea she never sews.
 
 TWO LIVES 397 
 
 After tea Shirley reads, and she is just about as tenacious 
 of her book as she is lax of her needle. Her study is the 
 rug, her seat a footstool, or perhaps only the carpet at Mrs. 
 Pryor's feet there she always learned her lessons when a 
 child, and old habits have a strong power over her. The 
 tawny and lion-like bulk of Tartar is ever stretched beside 
 her ; his negro muzzle laid on his fore paws, straight, strong, 
 and shapely as the limbs of an Alpine wolf. One hand of 
 the mistress generally reposes on the loving sei'f's rude 
 head, because if she takes it away he groans and is dis- 
 contented. Shirley's mind is given to her book ; she lifts 
 not her eyes ; she neither stirs nor speaks ; unless, indeed, 
 it be to return a brief respectful answer to Mrs. Pryor, who 
 addresses deprecatory phrases to her now and then. 
 
 4 My dear, you had better not have that great dog so near 
 you : he is crushing the border of your dress.' 
 
 ' Oh, it is only muslin : I can put a clean one on to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 ' My dear, I wish you could acquire the habit of sitting 
 to a table when you read.' 
 
 4 1 will try, ma'am, some time ; but it is so comfortable 
 to do as one has always been accustomed to do.' 
 
 ' My dear, let me beg of you to put that book down : you 
 are trying your eyes by the doubtful firelight.' 
 
 4 No, ma'am, not at all : my eyes are never tired.' 
 
 At last, however, a pale light falls on the page from the 
 window : she looks, the moon is up ; she closes the volume, 
 rises, and walks through the room. Her book has perhaps 
 been a good one ; it has refreshed, refilled, re warmed her 
 heart ; it has set her brain astir, furnished her mind with 
 pictures. The still parlour, the clean hearth, the window 
 opening on the twilight sky, and showing its ' sweet regent,' 
 new throned and glorious, suffice to make earth an Eden, 
 life a poem, for Shirley. A still, deep, inborn delight glows in 
 her young veins ; unmingled untroubled ; not to be reached 
 or ravished by human agency, because by no human agency 
 bestowed : the pure gift of God to His creature, the free
 
 398 SHIRLEY 
 
 dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her experience 
 of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all 
 verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than 
 that whence angels looked down on the dreamer of Beth-el, 
 and her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life 
 as she wishes it. No not as she wishes it ; she has not 
 time to wish : the swift glory spreads out, sweeping and 
 kindling, and multiplies its splendours faster than Thought 
 can effect his combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter 
 her longings. Shirley says nothing while the trance is upon 
 her she is quite mute ; but if Mrs. Pry or speaks to her now, 
 she goes out quietly, and continues her walk up-stairs in the 
 dim gallery. 
 
 If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant 
 being, she would take a pen at such moments ; or at least 
 while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her 
 spirit : she would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the 
 vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of 
 acquisitiveness in her head a little more of the love of 
 property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet 
 of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear 
 and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song 
 that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was 
 enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and 
 most ignorant, for she does not know her dreams are rare 
 her feelings peculiar: she does not know, has never known, 
 and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring 
 whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green. 
 
 Shirley takes life easily : is not that fact written in her 
 eye ? In her good-tempered moments, is it not as full of 
 la/y softness as in her brief fits of anger it is fulgent with 
 quick-flashing fire ? Her nature is in her eye : so long as 
 she is calm, indolence, indulgence, humour, and tenderness 
 possess that large gray sphere : incense her, a red ray 
 pierces the dew, it quickens instantly to flame. 
 
 Ere the month of July was passed, Miss Keeldar would 
 probably have started with Caroline on that northern tour
 
 TWO LIVES 390 
 
 they had planned ; but just at that epoch an invasion befell 
 Fieldhead : a genteel foraging party besieged Shirley in her 
 castle, and compelled her to surrender at discretion. An 
 uncle, an aunt, and two cousins from the south, a Mr., Mrs., 
 
 and two Misses Sympson, of Sympson Grove, shire, 
 
 came down upon her in state. The laws of hospitality 
 obliged her to give in, which she did with a facility which 
 somewhat surprised Caroline, who knew her to be prompt 
 in action and fertile in expedient, where a victory was to be 
 gained for her will. Miss Helstone even asked her how it 
 was she submitted so readily ? she answered, old feelings 
 had their power : she had passed two years of her early 
 youth at Sympson Grove. 
 
 ' How did she like her relatives ? ' 
 
 She had nothing in common with them, she replied : 
 little Harry Sympson, indeed, the sole son of the family, 
 was very unlike his sisters, and of him she had formerly 
 been fond ; but he was not coming to Yorkshire : at least, 
 not yet. 
 
 The next Sunday the Fieldhead pew in Briarfield church 
 appeared peopled with a prim, trim, fidgety, elderly gentle- 
 man, who shifted his spectacles and changed his position 
 every three minutes ; a patient, placid-looking elderly lady, 
 in brown satin, and two pattern young ladies, in pattern 
 attire, with pattern deportment. Shirley had the air of a 
 black swan, or a white crow, in the midst of this party ; and 
 very forlorn was her aspect. Having brought her into 
 respectable society, we will leave her there awhile, and look 
 after Miss Helstone. 
 
 Separated from Miss Keeldar for the present, as she 
 could not seek her in the midst of her fine relatives ; scaredj 
 away from Fieldhead by the visiting commotion which the 
 new arrivals occasioned in the neighbourhood, Caroline was 
 limited once more to the gray Rectory ; the solitary morning 
 walk in remote bypaths, the long, lonely afternoon sitting in 
 a quiet parlour which the sun forsook at noon, or in the 
 garden alcove where it shone bright, yet sad, on the ripening
 
 400 SHIELEi 
 
 red currants trained over the trellis, and on the fair monthly 
 roses entwined between, and through them fell chequered on 
 Caroline sitting in her white summer dress, still as a garden 
 statue. There she read old books, taken from her uncle's 
 library : the Greek and Latin were of no use to her ; and its 
 collection of light literature was chiefly contained on a shelf 
 which had belonged to her aunt Mary : some venerable 
 Lady's Magazines, that had once performed a sea-voyago 
 with their owner, and undergone a sfcorm, and whose pages 
 were stained with salt water ; some mad Methodist Maga- 
 zines, full of miracles and apparitions, of preternatural 
 warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism ; the 
 equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead 
 to the Living ; a few old English Classics : from these 
 faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the 
 honey, they were tasteless to her now. By way of change, 
 and also of doing good, she would sew : make garments for 
 the poor, according to good Miss Ainley's direction. Some- 
 times as she felt and saw her tears fall slowly on her work, 
 she would wonder how the excellent woman who had cut it 
 out and arranged it for her, managed to be so equably serene 
 in her solitude. 
 
 ' I never find Miss Ainley oppressed with despondency, 
 or lost in grief,' she thought ; ' yet her cottage is a still, dim 
 little place, and she is without a bright hope or near friend 
 in the world. I remember, though, she told me once, she 
 had tutored her thoughts to tend upwards to Heaven. She 
 allowed there was, and ever ha'l been, little enjoyment in 
 this world for her, and she looks, I suppose, to the bliss of 
 the world to come. So do nuns with their close cell, their 
 iron lamp, their robe straight as a shroud, their bed 
 narrow as a coffin. She says, often, she has no fear of death 
 no dread of the grave : no more, doubtless, had St. Simeon 
 Stylites, lifted up terrible on his wild column in the wilder- 
 ness : no more has the Hindoo votary stretched on his 
 couch of iron spikes. Both these having violated nature, 
 their natural likinga and antipathies are reversed: they
 
 TWO LIVES 401 
 
 grow altogether morbid. I do fear death as yet, but I 
 believe it is because I am young : poor Miss Ainley would 
 cling closer to life, if life had more charms for her. God 
 surely did not create us, and cause us to Jive, with the sole 
 end of wishing always to die. I believe in my heart we 
 were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain 
 it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, 
 blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, 
 and is becoming to me among the rest. 
 
 ' Nobody,' she went on ' nobody in particular is to 
 blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are : 
 and I cannot tell, however much I puzzle over it, how they 
 are to be altered for the better ; but I feel there is something 
 wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have 
 more to do better chances of interesting and profitable 
 occupation than they possess now. And when I speak thus, 
 I have no impression that I displease God by my words : 
 that I am either impious or impatient, irreligious or sacri- 
 legious. My consolation is, indeed, that God hears many a 
 groan, and compassionates much grief which man stops his 
 ears against, or frowns on with impotent contempt. I say 
 impotent, for I observe that to such grievances as society 
 cannot readily cure, it usually forbids utterance, on pain of 
 its scorn : this scorn being only a sort of tinselled cloak to 
 its deformed weakness. People hate to be reminded of ills 
 they are unable or unwilling to remedy : such reminder, in 
 forcing on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more 
 painful sense of an obligation to make some unpleasant 
 effort, troubles their ease and shakes their self-complacency. 
 Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should 
 not ask for a place and an occupation in the world : the 
 demand disturbs the happy and rich : it di.sturbs parents. 
 Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbour- 
 hood : the Armitages, the Birtwhisties, the Sykeses. The 
 brothers of these girls are every one in business or in pro- 
 fessions ; they have something to do: their sisters have 
 no earthly employment, but household work and sewing;
 
 402 SHIELEY 
 
 no earthly pleasure, but an unprofitable visiting ; and no 
 hope, in all their life to come, of anything better. This 
 stagnant state of things makes them decline in health : they 
 are never well ; and their minds and views shrink to wondrous 
 narrowness. The great wish the sole aim of every one of 
 them is to be married, but the majority will never marry : 
 they will die as they now live. They scheme, they plot, 
 they dress to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them 
 into ridicule : they don't want them ; they hold them very 
 cheap : they say I have heard them say it with sneering 
 laughs many a time the matrimonial market is overstocked. 
 Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters 
 when they observe their manoeuvres : they order them to 
 stay at home. What do they expect them to do at home ? 
 If you ask, they would answer, sew and cook. They expect 
 them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, 
 uncomplainingly all their lives long, as if they had no germs 
 of faculties for anything else : a doctrine as reasonable to 
 hold, as it would be that the fathers have no faculties but 
 for eating what their daughters cook, or for wearing what 
 they sew. Could men live so themselves ? Would they not 
 be very weary ? And, when there came no relief to their 
 weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifesta- 
 tion, would not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy. 
 Lucretia, spinning at midnight in the midst of her maidens, 
 and Solomon's virtuous woman, are often quoted as patterns 
 of what " the sex " (as they say) ought to be. I don't know : 
 Lucretia, I daresay, was a most worthy sort of person, much 
 like my cousin Hortense Moore ; but she kept her servants 
 up very late. I should not have liked to be amongst the 
 number of the maidens. Hortense would just work me and 
 Sarah in that fashion, if she could, and neither of us would 
 bear it. The " virtuous woman," again, had her household 
 up in the very middle of the night ; she " got breakfast 
 over " (as Mrs. Sykes says) before one o'clock A.M. ; but she 
 had something more to do than spin and give out portions : 
 she was a manufacturer- she made fine linen and sold it :
 
 TWO LIVES 403 
 
 she was an agriculturist she bought estates and planted 
 vineyards. That woman was a manager : she was what the 
 matrons hereabouts call " a clever woman." On the whole, 
 I like her a good deal better than Lucretia; but I don't 
 believe either Mr. Armitage or Mr. Sykes could have got 
 the advantage of her in a bargain : yet I like her. " Strength 
 and honour wei'e her clothing : the heart of her husband 
 safely trusted in her. She opened her mouth with wisdom ; 
 in her tongue was the law of kindness : her children rose up 
 and called her blessed; her husband also praised her.'' 
 King of Israel ! your model of a woman is a worthy model ! 
 But are we, in these days, brought up to be like her ? Men 
 of Yorkshire ! do your daughters reach this royal standard ? 
 Can they reach it ? Can you help them to reach it ? Can 
 you give them a field in which their faculties may be 
 exercised and grow ? Men of England ! look at your poor 
 girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off in con- 
 sumption or decline ; or, what is worse, degenerating to 
 sour old maids, envious, backbiting, wretched, because life 
 is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to 
 strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to 
 gain that position and consideration by marriage, which to 
 celibacy is denied. Fathers ! cannot you alter these things ? 
 Perhaps not all at once ; but consider the matter well when 
 it is brought before you, receive it as a theme worthy of 
 thought : do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an unmanly 
 insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters and 
 not to blush for them then seek for them an interest and 
 an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the 
 manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your 
 girls' minds narrow and fettered they will still be a plague 
 and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you : cultivate them - 
 give them scope and work they will be your gayest com- 
 panions in health ; your tenderest nurses in sickness ; your 
 most faithful props in age.'
 
 CHAPTEB XXIII 
 
 AN EVENING OUT 
 
 ONE fine summer day that Caroline had spent entirely alone 
 (her uncle being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, 
 noiseless, breezeless, cloudless hours (how many they 
 seemed since sunrise !) had been to her as desolate as if 
 they had gone over her head in the shadowless and trackless 
 wastes of Zahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an 
 English home, she was sitting in the alcove, her task of 
 work on her knee, her fingers assiduously plying the needle, 
 her eyes following and regulating their movements, her 
 brain working restlessly, when Fanny came to the door, 
 looked round over the lawn and borders, and not seeing her 
 whom she sought, called out, ' Miss Caroline ! ' 
 
 A low voice answered ' Fanny 1 ' It issued from the 
 alcove, and thither Fanny hastened a note in her hand, 
 which she delivered to fingers that hardly seemed to have 
 nerve to hold it. Miss Helstone did not ask whence it came, 
 and she did not look at it : she let it drop amongst the folds 
 of her work. 
 
 ' Joe Scott's son, Harry, brought it,' said Fanny. 
 
 The girl was no enchantress, and knew no magic-spell, 
 yet what she said took almost magical effect on her young 
 mistress : she lifted her head with the quick motion of revived 
 sensation ; she shot not a languid, but a life-like, question- 
 ing glance at Fanny. 
 
 ' Hariy Scott ! Who sent him ? ' 
 
 1 He came from the Hollow.'
 
 AN EVENING OUT 405 
 
 The dropped note was snatched up eagerly the seal 
 was broken : it was read in two seconds. An affectionate 
 billet from Hortense, informing her young cousin that she 
 was returned from Wormwood Wells ; that she was alone 
 to-day, as Kobert was gone to Whinbury market; that 
 nothing would give her greater pleasure than to have 
 Caroline's company to tea ; and the good lady added she 
 was sure such a change would be most acceptable and 
 beneficial to Caroline, who must be sadly at a loss both for 
 safe guidance and improving society since the misunder- 
 standing between Kobert and Mr. Helstone had occasioned 
 a separation from her ' meilleure amie, Hortense Gerard 
 Moore.' In a postscript, she was urged to put on her bonnet 
 and run down directly. 
 
 Caroline did not need the injunction : glad was she to 
 lay by the child's brown holland slip she was trimming with 
 braid for the Jews' basket, to hasten up-stairs, cover her 
 curls with her straw bonnet, and throw round her shoulders 
 the black silk scarf, whose simple drapery suited as well her 
 shape as its dark hue set off the purity of her dress and the 
 fairness of her face ; glad was she to escape for a few hours 
 the solitude, the sadness, the nightmare of her life ; glad to 
 run down the green lane sloping to the Hollow, to scent the 
 fragrance of hedge-flowers sweeter than the perfume of moss- 
 rose or lily. True, she knew Robert was not at the cottage ; 
 but it was delight to go where he had lately been : so long, 
 so totally separated from him, merely to see his home, to 
 enter the room where he had that morning sat, felt like a 
 reunion. As such it revived her; and then Illusion was 
 again following her in Perimask : the soft agitation of wings 
 caressed her cheek, and the air, breathing from the blue 
 summer sky, bore a voice which whispered ' Eobert may 
 come home while you are in his house ; and then, at least, 
 you may look in his face at least, you may give him your 
 hand ; perhaps, for a minute, you may sit beside him.' 
 
 ' Silence ! ' was her austere response : but she loved the 
 comforter and the consolation.
 
 406 SHIBLEY 
 
 Miss Moore probably caught from the window the gleam 
 and flutter of Caroline's white attire through the branchy 
 garden-shrubs, for she advanced from the cottage-porch to 
 meet her. Straight, unbending, phlegmatic as usual, she 
 came on : no haste or ecstacy was ever permitted to disorder 
 the dignity of Jicr movements ; but she smiled, well pleased 
 to mark the delight of her pupil, to feel her kiss, and the 
 gentle, genial strain of her embrace. She led her tenderly 
 in half deceived and wholly flattered. Half deceived ! had 
 it not been so, she would in all probability have put her to 
 the wicket, and shut her out. Had she known clearly to 
 whose account the chief share of this child-like joy was to be 
 placed, Hortense would most likely have felt both shocked 
 and incensed. Sisters do not like young ladies to fall in 
 love with their brothers : it seems, if not presumptuous, 
 silly, weak, a delusion, an absurd mistake. TJiey do not 
 love these gentlemen whatever sisterly affection they may 
 cherish towards them and that others should, repels them 
 with a sense of crude romance. The first movement, in 
 short, excited by such discovery (as with many parents on 
 finding their children to be in love), is one of mixed 
 impatience and contempt. Eeason if they be rational 
 people corrects the false feeling in time ; but if they be 
 irrational, it is never corrected, and the daughter or sister- 
 in-law is disliked to the end. 
 
 ' You would expect to find me alone, from what I said in 
 my note,' observed Miss Moore, as she conducted Caroline 
 towards the parlour ; but it was written this morning : since 
 dinner, company has come in.' 
 
 And, opening the door, she made visible an ample spread 
 of crimson skirts overflowing the elbow-chair at the fireside, 
 and above them, presiding with dignity, a cap more awful 
 than a crown. That cap had never come to the cottage 
 under a bonnet : no, it had been brought, in a vast bag, 
 or rather a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide 
 with whalebone. Tbe screed, or frill of the cap, stood a 
 quarter of a yard broad round the face of the wearer : the
 
 AN EVENING OUT 407 
 
 ribbon, flourishing in puffs and bows about the head, was of 
 the sort called love-ribbon : there was a good deal of it, I 
 may say, a very great deal. Mrs. Yorke wore the cap it 
 became her : she wore the gown also it suited her no less. 
 That great lady was come in a friendly way to take tea 
 with Miss Moore. It was almost as great and as rare a 
 favour as if the Queen were to go uninvited to share pot-luck 
 with one of her subjects : a higher mark of distinction she 
 could not show, she who, in general, scorned visiting and 
 tea-drinking, and held cheap, and stigmatised as ' gossips,' 
 every maid and matron of the vicinage. 
 
 There was no mistake, however ; Miss Moore was a 
 favourite with her : she had evinced the fact more than 
 once ; evinced it by stopping to speak to her in the church- 
 yard on Sundays ; by inviting her, almost hospitably, to 
 come to Briarmains ; evinced it to-day by the grand conde- 
 scension of a personal visit. Her reasons for the preference, 
 as assigned by herself, were, that Miss Moore was a 
 woman of steady deportment, without the least levity of 
 conversation or carriage ; also, that, being a foreigner, she 
 must feel the want of a friend to countenance her. She 
 might have added, that her plain aspect, homely precise 
 dress, and phlegmatic unattractive manner were, to her, 
 so many additional recommendations. It is certain, at 
 least, that ladies remarkable for the opposite qualities of 
 beauty, lively bearing, and elegant taste in attire, were not 
 often favoured with her approbation. Whatever gentlemen 
 are apt to admire in women, Mrs. Yorke condemned ; and 
 what they overlook or despise, she patronised. 
 
 Caroline advanced to the mighty matron with some 
 sense of diffidence : she knew little of Mrs. Yorke ; and, as 
 a parson's niece, was doubtful what sort of a reception she 
 might get. She got a very cool one, and was glad to hide 
 her discomfiture by turning away to take off her bonnet. 
 Nor, upon sitting down, was she displeased to be im- 
 mediately accosted by a little personage in a blue frock and 
 sash, who started up like some fairy from the side of the
 
 408 SHIRLEY 
 
 great dame's chair, where she had been sitting on a foot- 
 stool, screened from view by the folds of the wide red gown, 
 and running to Miss Helstone, unceremoniously threw her 
 arms round her neck and demanded a kiss. 
 
 1 My mother is not civil to you,' said the petitioner, as 
 she received and repaid a smiling salute ; ' and Rose, there, 
 takes no notice of you : it is their way. If, instead of you, 
 a white angel, with a crown of stars, had come into the 
 room, mother would nod stiffly, and Rose never lift her 
 head at all ; but I will be your friend : I have always liked 
 you ! ' 
 
 ' Jessie, curb that tongue of yours, and repress your 
 forwardness ! ' said Mrs. Yorke. 
 
 ' But, mother, you are so frozen ! ' expostulated Jessie. 
 ' Miss Helstone has never done you any harm : why can't 
 you be kind to her ? You sit so stiff, and look so cold, and 
 speak so dry what for ? That's just the fashion in which 
 you treat Miss Shirley Keeldar, and every other young lady 
 who comes to our house. And Rose, there, is such an aut 
 
 aut I have forgotten the word, but it means a machine 
 
 in the shape of a human being. However, between you, you 
 will drive every soul away from Briarmains Martin often 
 says so ! ' 
 
 ' I am an automaton ? Good ! Let me alone then,' said 
 Rose, speaking from a corner where she was sitting on the 
 carpet at the foot of a bookcase, with a volume spread open 
 on her knee. ' Miss Helstone how do you do ? ' she added, 
 directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then 
 again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book, 
 and returning to the study of its pages. 
 
 Caroline stole a quiet gaze towards her, dwelling on her 
 young, absorbed countenance, and observing a certain 
 unconscious movement of the mouth as she read a move- 
 ment full of character. Caroline had tact, and she had fine 
 instinct : she felt that Rose Yorke was a peculiar child- -one 
 of the unique ; she knew how to treat her. Approaching 
 quietly, she knelt on the carpet at her side, and looked over
 
 AN EVENING OUT 400 
 
 her little shoulder at her book. It was a romance of Mrs. 
 Radcliffe's The Italian. 
 
 Caroline read on with her, making no remark : presently 
 Kose showed her the attention of asking, ere she turned a 
 leaf ' Are you ready ? ' 
 
 Caroline only nodded. 
 
 ' Do you like it ? ' inquired Rose, erelong. 
 
 ' Long since, when I read it as a child, I was wonderfully 
 taken with it.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 ' It seemed to open with such promise such foreboding 
 of a most strange tale to be unfolded.' 
 
 ' And in reading it, you feel as if you were far away from 
 England really in Italy under another sort of sky that 
 blue sky of the south which travellers describe.' 
 
 ' You are sensible of that, Eose ? ' 
 
 ' It makes me long to travel, Miss Helstone.' 
 
 ' When you are a woman, perhaps, you may be able to 
 gratify your wish.' 
 
 ' I mean to make a way to do so, if one is not made for 
 mo. I cannot live always in Briarfield. The whole world 
 is not very large compared with creation : I must see the 
 outside of our own round planet at least.' 
 
 ' How much of its outside ? ' 
 
 ' First this hemisphere where we live ; then the other. 
 I am resolved that my life shall bo a life : not a black trance 
 like the toad's, buried in marble ; nor a long, slow death like 
 yours in Briarfield Rectory.' 
 
 ' Like mine ! What can you mean, child ? ' 
 
 ' Might you not as well be tediously dying, as for ever 
 shut up in that glebe-house- a place that, when I pass it, 
 always reminds me of a windowed grave ? I never see any 
 movement about the door : I never hear a sound from tho 
 wall : I believe smoke never issues from the chimneys. 
 What do you do there ? ' 
 
 ' I sew, I road, I learn lessons.' 
 
 ' Are you happy ? '
 
 410 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Should I be happier wandering alone in strange countries 
 as you wish to do ? ' 
 
 ' Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. 
 Remember, however, that I shall have an object in view : 
 but if you only went on and on, like some enchanted lady in 
 a fairy tale, you might be happier than now. In a day's 
 wandering, you would pass many a hill, wood, and water- 
 course, each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone 
 out or was overcast ; as the weather was wet or fair, dark 
 or bright. Nothing changes in Briarfield Rectory : the 
 plaster of the parlour-ceilings, the paper on the walls, the 
 curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same.' 
 
 ' Is change necessary to happiness ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 I Is it synonymous with it ? ' 
 
 I 1 don't know ; but I feel monotony and death to be 
 almost the same.' 
 
 Here Jessie spoke. 
 
 ' Isn't she mad ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' But, Rose,' pursued Caroline, ' I fear a wanderer's life, 
 for me at least, would end like that tale you are reading in 
 disappointment, vanity, and vexation of spirit.' 
 
 1 Does TJie Italian so end ? ' 
 
 ' 1 thought so when I read it." 
 
 ' Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try 
 nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to 
 commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin 
 despicable sluggard ! ' 
 
 'Rose,' observed Mrs. Yorke, ' solid satisfaction is only to 
 be realized by doing one's duty.' 
 
 ' Right, mother ! And if my Master has given me ten 
 talents, my duty is to trade with them, and make them ten 
 talents more. Not in the dust of household drawers shall 
 the coin be interred. I will not deposit it in a broken -spouted 
 teapot, and shut it up in a china-closet among tea-things. 
 I \vill not commit it to your work-table to be smothered in 
 piles of woollen hose. I will not prison it in the linen-press
 
 AN EVENING OUT 411 
 
 to find shrouds among the sheets : and least of all, mother ' 
 (she got up from the floor) ' least of all will I hide it in a 
 tureen of cold potatoes, to be ranged with bread, butter, 
 pastry, and ham on the shelves of the larder.' 
 
 She stopped then went on : ' Mother, the Lord who 
 gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and 
 will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old 
 stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen, will 
 yield up their barren deposit in many a house : suffer your 
 daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that 
 they may be enabled at the Master's coming to pay him his 
 own with usury.' 
 
 ' Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told 
 you?' 
 
 ' Yes, mother.' 
 
 ' Sit down, and do a line of marking.' 
 
 Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. 
 After a busy pause of ten minutes, her mother asked ' Do 
 you think yourself oppressed now ? A victim ? ' 
 
 1 No, mother.' 
 
 1 Yet, as far as I understand your tirade, it was a protest 
 against all womanly and domestic employment.' 
 
 ' You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not 
 to learn to sew : you do right to teach me, and to make me 
 work.' 
 
 1 Even to the mending of your brother's stockings and the 
 making of sheets.' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 1 Where is the use of ranting and spouting about it 
 then ? ' 
 
 ' Am I to do nothing but that ? I will do that, and then I 
 will do more. Now, mother, I have said my say. I am 
 twelve years old at present, and not till I am sixteen will I 
 speak again about talents : for four years, I bind myself an 
 industrious apprentice to all you can teach me.' 
 
 ' You see what my daughters are, Miss Helstone,' observed 
 Mrs. Yorke : ' how precociously wise in their own conceits !
 
 412 SHIRLEY 
 
 " I would rather this I prefer that ; " such is Jessie's cuckoo 
 song : while Rose utters the bolder cry, " I will, and I will 
 not ! " 
 
 ' I render a reason, mother : besides, if my cry is bold, it 
 is only heard once in a twelvemonth. About each birthday, 
 the spirit moves me to deliver one oracle respecting my own 
 instruction and management : I utter it and leave it ; it is 
 for you, mother, to listen or not.' 
 
 ' I would advise all young ladies,' pursued Mrs. Yorke, ' to 
 study the characters of such children as they chance to meet 
 with, before they marry, and have any of their own ; to 
 consider well how they would like the responsibility of guid- 
 ing the careless, the labour of persuading the stubborn, the 
 constant burden and task of training the best.' 
 
 ' But with love it need not be so very difficult,' inter- 
 posed Caroline. ' Mothers love their children most dearly 
 almost better than they love themselves.' 
 
 ' Fine talk ! Very sentimental ! There is the rough, 
 practical part of life yet to come for you, young Miss I ' 
 
 ' But, Mrs. Yorke, if I take a little baby into my arms 
 any poor woman's infant for instance, I feel that I love that 
 helpless thing quite peculiarly, though I am not its mother. 
 I could do almost anything for it willingly, if it were de- 
 livered over entirely to my care if it were quite dependent 
 on me.' 
 
 ' You feel ! Yes ! yes ! I daresay, now : you are led a 
 great deal by your feelings, and you think yourself a very 
 sensitive, refined personage, no doubt. Are you aware that, 
 with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to train 
 your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, 
 better suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to 
 make her way in the real world, by dint of common sense ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke.' 
 
 ' Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face 
 you soe there with that of any early-rising, hard-working 
 milkmaid.' 
 
 ' My face is a pale one, but it is not sentimental, and most
 
 AN EVENING OUT 413 
 
 milkmaids, however red and robust they may be, are 
 more stupid and less practically fitted to make their way in 
 the world than I am. I think more and more correctly 
 than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they 
 would often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of 
 reflection, should act judiciously.' 
 
 ' Oh, no ! you would be influenced by your feelings. You 
 would be guided by impulse.' 
 
 ' Of course, I should often be influenced by my feelings : 
 they were given me to that end. Whom my feelings teach 
 me to love, I must and shall love ; and I hope, if ever I have 
 a husband and children, my feelings will induce me to love 
 them. I hope, in that case, all my impulses will be strong 
 in compelling me to love.' 
 
 Caroline had a pleasure in saying this with emphasis : 
 she had a pleasure in daring to say it in Mrs. Yorke's presence. 
 She did not care what unjust sarcasm might be hurled at her 
 in reply : she flushed, not with anger, but excitement, when 
 the ungenial matron answered, coolly, ' Don't waste your 
 dramatic effects. That was well said, it was quite fine ; but 
 it is lost on two women an old wife and an old maid : there 
 should have been a disengaged gentleman present. Is Mr. 
 Eobert nowhere hid behind the curtains, do you think Miss 
 Moore?' 
 
 Hortense, who during the chief part of the conversa- 
 tion had been in the kitchen superintending the preparations 
 for tea, did not yet quite comprehend the drift of the dis- 
 course. She answered, with a puzzled air, that Robert was 
 at Whinbury. Mrs. Yorke laughed her own peculiar short 
 laugh. 
 
 'Straightforward Miss Moore!' said she patronizingly. 
 1 It is like you to understand my question so literally, and 
 answer it so simply. Your mind comprehends nothing of 
 intrigue. Strange things might go on around you without 
 your being the wiser : you are not of the class the world calls 
 sharp-witted.' 
 
 These equivocal compliments did not seem to please
 
 4U SHlBLE? 
 
 Hortense. She drew herself up, puckered her black eyebrows, 
 but still looked puzzled. 
 
 ' I have ever been noted for sagacity and discernment from 
 childhood,' she returned : for, indeed, on the possession of 
 these qualities, she peculiarly piqued herself. 
 
 ' You never plotted to win a husband, I'll be bound,' 
 pursued Mrs. Yorke ; and you have not the benefit of pre- 
 vious experience to aid you in discovering when others plot.' 
 
 Caroline felt this kind language where the benevolent 
 speaker intended she should feel it in her very heart. She 
 could not even parry the shafts : she was defenceless for the 
 present : to answer would have been to avow that the cap 
 fitted. Mrs. Yorke, looking at her as she sat with troubled 
 downcast eyes, and cheek burning painfully, and figure 
 expressing in its bent attitude and unconscious tremor all the 
 humiliation and chagrin she experienced, felt the sufferer 
 was fair game. The strange woman had a natural antipathy 
 to a shrinking, sensitive character a nervous temperament : 
 nor was a pretty, delicate, and youthful face a passport to her 
 affections. It was seldom she met with all these obnoxious 
 qualities combined in one individual : still more seldom she 
 found that individual at her mercy, under circumstances in 
 which she could crush her well. She happened, this after- 
 noon, to be specially bilious and morose : as much disposed 
 to gore as any vicious " mother of the herd : " lowering her 
 large hrad, she made a new charge. 
 
 'Your cousin Hortense is an excellent sister, Miss Hol- 
 s' one: such ladies as come to try their life's luck here, at 
 Hollow's cottage, may, by a very little clever female artifice, 
 cajole the mistress of the house, and have the game all in 
 their own hands. You are fond of your cousin's society, I 
 dare say, Miss ? ' 
 
 1 Of which cousin's ? ' 
 
 'Oh, of t.he lady's, of course.' 
 
 1 Hortense is, and always has been, most kind to me.' 
 
 ' Every sister, with an eligible single brother, is considered 
 most kind by her spinster friends.'
 
 AN EVENING OUT 415 
 
 ' Mrs. Yorke,' said Caroline, lifting her eyes slowly, their 
 blue orbs at the same time clearing from trouble, and shining 
 steady and full, while the glow of shame left her cheek, and 
 its hue turned pale and settled : Mrs. Yorke, may I ask what 
 you mean ? ' 
 
 ' To give you a lesson on the cultivation of rectitude : to 
 disgust you with craft and false sentiment.' 
 1 Do I need this lesson ? ' 
 
 1 Most young ladies of the present day need it. You are 
 quite a modern young lady morbid, delicate, professing to 
 like retirement ; which implies, I suppose, that you find little 
 worthy of your sympathies in the ordinary world. The 
 ordinary world every-day, honest folks are better than you 
 think them : much better than any bookish, romancing chit 
 of a girl can be, who hardly ever puts her nose over her uncle, 
 the parson's, garden-wall.' 
 
 ' Consequently, of whom you know nothing. Excuse 
 me, indeed, it does not matter whether you excuse me or 
 not you have attacked me without provocation : I shall 
 defend myself witl.out apology. Of my relations with my 
 two cousins, you are ignorant : in a fit of ill-humour you 
 have attempted to poison them by gratuitous insinuations, 
 which are far more crafty and false than anything with 
 which you can justly charge me. That I happen to be pale, 
 and sometimes to look diffident, is no business of yours. 
 That I am fond of books, and indisposed for common gossip, 
 is still less your business. That I am a " romancing chit of 
 a girl," is a mere conjecture on your part : I never romanced 
 to you, nor to anybody you know. That I am the parson's 
 niece is not a crime, though you may be narrow-minded 
 enough to think it so. You dislike me : you have no just 
 reason for disliking me ; therefore keep the expression of 
 your aversion to yourself. If at any time, in future, you 
 evince it annoyingly, I shall answer even less scrupulously 
 than I have done now.' 
 
 She ceased, and sat in white and still excitement. She 
 had spoken in the clearest of tones, neither fast nor loud ;
 
 416 SHIELEY 
 
 but her silver accents thrilled the ear. The speed of the 
 current in her veins was just then as swift as it was 
 viewless. 
 
 Mrs. Yorke was not irritated at the reproof, worded with 
 a severity so simple, dictated by a pride so quiet. Turning 
 coolly to Miss Moore, she said, nodding her cap approvingly 
 ' She has spirit in her, after all. Always speak as 
 honestly as you have done just now,' she continued, ' and 
 you'll do.' 
 
 ' I repel a recommendation so offensive,' was the answer, 
 delivered in the same pure key, with the same clear look, 
 ' I reject counsel poisoned by insinuation. It is my right to 
 speak as I think proper : nothing binds me to converse as 
 you dictate. So far from always speaking as I have done 
 just now, I shall never address any one in a tone so stern, 
 or in language so harsh, unless in answer to unprovoked 
 insult.' 
 
 ' Mother, you have found your match,' pronounced little 
 Jessie, whom the scene appeared greatly to edify. 
 
 Eose had heard the whole with an unmoved face. She 
 now said, ' No : Miss Helstone is not my mother's match 
 for she allows herself to be vexed : my mother would 
 wear her out in a few weeks. Shirley Keeldar manages 
 better. Mother, you have never hurt Miss Keeldar's 
 feelings yet. She wears armour under her silk dress that 
 you cannot penetrate.' 
 
 Mrs. Yorke often complained that her children were 
 mutinous. It was strange, that with all her strictness, with 
 all her ' strong-mindedness,' she could gain no command 
 over them : a look from their father had more influence with 
 them than a lecture from her. 
 
 Miss Moore to whom the position of witness to an 
 altercation in which she took no part was highly displeas- 
 ing, as being an unimportant secondary post now, rallying 
 her dignity, prepared to utter a discourse which was to 
 prove both parties in the wrong, and to make it clear to 
 each disputant that she had reason to be ashamed of herself,
 
 AN EVENING OUT 417 
 
 and ought to submit humbly to the superior sense of the 
 individual then addressing her. Fortunately for her 
 audience, she had not harangued above ten minutes, when 
 Sarah's entrance with the tea-tray called her attention, first, 
 to the fact of that damsel having a gilt comb in her hair, 
 and a red necklace round her throat, and secondly, and 
 subsequently to a pointed remonstrance, to the duty of 
 making tea. After the meal, Rose restored her to good 
 humour by bringing her guitar and asking for a song, and 
 afterwards engaging her in an intelligent and sharp cross- 
 examination about guitar-playing and music in general. 
 
 Jessie, meantime, directed her assiduities to Caroline. 
 Sitting on a stool at her feet, she talked to her, first 
 about religion, and then about politics. Jessie was accus- 
 tomed at home to drink in a great deal of what her father 
 said on these subjects, and afterwards in company to retail, 
 with more wit and fluency than consistency or discretion, 
 his opinions, antipathies, and preferences. She rated 
 Caroline soundly for being a member of the Established 
 Church, and for having an uncle a clergyman. She informed 
 her that she li ved on the country, and ought to work for her 
 living honestly, instead of passing a useless life, and eating 
 the bread of idleness in the shape of tithes. Thence Jessie 
 passed to a review of the Ministry at that time in oilice, and a 
 consideration of its deserts. She made familiar mention of 
 the names of Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Perceval. Each of 
 these personages she adorned with a character that might 
 have separately suited Moloch and Belial. She denounced 
 the war as wholesale murder, and Lord Wellington as a 
 ' hired butcher.' 
 
 Her auditress listened with exceeding edification. Jessie 
 had something of the genius of humour in her nature : it 
 was inexpressibly comic to hear her repeating her sire's 
 denunciations in her nervous northern Doric ; as hearty a 
 little Jacobin as ever pent a free mutinous spirit in a muslin 
 frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language 
 was not so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little
 
 418 SHIRLEY 
 
 face gave a piquancy to every phrase which held a beholder's 
 interest captive. 
 
 Caroline chid her when she abused Lord Wellington ; 
 but she listened delighted to a subsequent tirade against the 
 Prince Eegent. Jessie quickly read in the sparkle of her 
 hearer's eye, and the laughter hovering round her lips, that 
 at last she had hit on a topic that pleased. Many a time 
 had she heard the fat ' Adonis of fifty ' discussed at her 
 father's breakfast-table, and she now gave Mr. Yorke's 
 comments on the theme genuine as uttered by his York- 
 shire lips. 
 
 But, Jessie, I will write about you no more. This is an 
 autumn evening, wet and wild. There is only one cloud in 
 the sky; but it curtains it from pole to pole. The wind 
 cannot rest : it hurries sobbing over hills of sullen outline, 
 colourless with twilight and mist. Eain has boat all day on 
 that church tower : it rises dark from the stony enclosure of 
 its graveyard : the nettles, the long grass, and the tombs all 
 drip with wet. This evening reminds me too forcibly of 
 another evening some years ago : a howling, rainy autumn 
 evening too when certain who had that day performed a 
 pilgrimage to a grave new-made in a heretic cemetery, sat 
 near a wood-fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They 
 were merry and social, but they each knew that a gap, never 
 to be filled, had been made in their circle. They knew they 
 had lost something whose absence could never be quite 
 atoned for so long as they lived : and they knew that heavy 
 falling rain was soaking into the wet earth which covered 
 their lost darling ; and that the sad, sighing gale was 
 mourning above her buried head. The fire warmed them ; 
 Life and Friendship yet blessed them ; but Jessie lay cold, 
 coffined, solitary only the sod screening her from the 
 storm. 
 
 Mrs. Yorke folded up her knitting, cut short the music- 
 lesson and the lecture on politics, and concluded her visit to
 
 AN EVENING OUT 419 
 
 the cottage, at an hour early enough to ensure her return to 
 Briarmains before the blush of sunset should quite have 
 faded in heaven, or the path up the fields have become 
 thoroughly moist with evening dew. 
 
 The lady and her daughters being gone, Caroline felt 
 that she also ought to resume her scarf, kiss her cousin's 
 cheek, and trip away homeward. If she lingered much 
 later, dusk would draw on, and Fanny would be put to the 
 trouble of coming to fetch her : it was both baking and 
 ironing-day at the Eectory, she remembered Fanny would 
 be busy. Still, she could not quit her seat at the little parlour- 
 window. From no point of view could the West look so 
 lovely as from that lattice with the garland of jessamine 
 round it, whose white stars and green leaves seemed now 
 but gray pencil outlines graceful in form, but colourless in 
 tint against the gold incarnadined of a summer evening 
 against the fire-tinged blue of an August sky, at eight 
 o'clock P.M. 
 
 Caroline looked at the wicket-gate, beside which holly- 
 hocks spired up tall ; she looked at the close hedge of privet 
 and laurel fencing in the garden ; her eyes longed to see 
 something more than the shrubs, before they turned from 
 that limited prospect : they longed to see a human figure, 
 of a certain mould and height, pass the hedge and enter the 
 gate. A human figure she at last saw nay, two : Frederick 
 Murgatroyd went by, carrying a pail of water ; Joe Scott 
 followed, dangling on his forefinger the keys of the mill. 
 They were going to lock up mill and stables for the night, 
 and then betake themselves home. 
 
 ' So must I,' thought Caroline, as she half rose and 
 sighed. 
 
 ' This is all folly- heart-breaking folly,' she added. ' In 
 the first place, though I should stay till dark, there will be 
 no arrival ; because I feel in my heart, Fate has written it 
 down in to-day's page of her eternal book, that I am not to 
 have the pleasure I long for. In the second place, if he 
 stepped in this moment, my presence here would be a 
 
 15
 
 420 SHIELEY 
 
 chagrin to him, and the consciousness that it must be so 
 would turn half my blood to ice. His hand would, perhaps, 
 be loose and chill, if I put mine into it : his eye would be 
 clouded if I sought its beam. I should look up for that 
 kindling something I have seen in past days, when my face, 
 or my language, or my disposition had at some happy 
 moment pleased him I should discover only darkness. I 
 had better go home.' 
 
 She took her bonnet from the table where it lay, and 
 was just fastening the ribbon, when Hortense, directing her 
 attention to a splendid bouquet of flowers in a glass on the 
 same table, mentioned that Miss Keeldar had sent them 
 that morning from Fieldhead ; and went on to comment on 
 the guests that lady was at present entertaining, on the 
 bustling life she had lately been leading ; adding divers 
 conjectures that she did not very well like it, and much 
 wonderment that a person who was so fond of her own way 
 as the heiress, did not find some means of sooner getting rid 
 of this cortege of relatives. 
 
 ' But they say she actually will not let Mr. Sympson 
 and his family go,' she added : ' they wanted much to 
 return to the south last week, to be ready for the reception 
 of the only son, who is expected home from a tour. She 
 insists that her cousin Henry shall come and join his friends 
 here in Yorkshire. I daresay she partly does it to oblige 
 Bobert and myself." 
 
 ' How to oblige Eobert and you ? ' inquired Caroline. 
 
 ' Why, my child, you are dull. Don't you know you 
 must often have heard ' 
 
 ' Please, ma'am,' said Sarah, opening the door, ' the 
 preserves that you told me to boil in treacle the congfiters, 
 as you call them is all burnt to the pan.' 
 
 ' Les confitures 1 Elles sont brulees ? Ah, quelle 
 negligence coupable ! Coquine de cuisiniere fille insup- 
 portable.' 
 
 And Mademoiselle, hastily taking from a drawer a large 
 linen apron, and tying it over her black apron, rushed
 
 AN EVENING OUT 421 
 
 ' e'perdue ' into the kitchen, whence to speak truth 
 exhaled an odour of calcined sweets rather strong than 
 savoury. 
 
 The mistress and maid had been in full feud the whole 
 day, on the subject of preserving certain black cherries, 
 hard as marbles, sour as sloes. Sarah held that sugar was 
 the only orthodox condiment to be used hi that process ; 
 Mademoiselle maintained and proved it by the practice 
 and experience of her mother, grandmother, and great- 
 grandmother that treacle, ' melasse,' was infinitely prefer- 
 able. She had committed an imprudence in leaving Sarah 
 in charge of the preserving-pan, for her want of sympathy 
 in the nature of its contents had induced a degree of care- 
 lessness in watching their confection, whereof the result 
 was dark and cindery ruin. Hubbub followed : high 
 upbraiding, and sobs rather loud than deep or real. 
 
 Caroline, once more turning to the little mirror, was 
 shading her ringlets from her cheek to smooth them under 
 her cottage bonnet, certain that it would not only be useless 
 but unpleasant to stay longer ; when, on the sudden open- 
 ing of the back-door, there fell an abrupt calm in the 
 kitchen : the tongues were checked, pulled up as with bit 
 and bridle. ' Was it \vas it Robert ? ' He often almost 
 always entered by the kitchen-way on his return from 
 market. No : it was only Joe Scott, who, having hemmed 
 significantly thrice every hem being meant as a lofty 
 rebuke to the squabbling womankind said, ' Now, I thowt 
 I heerd a crack ? ' 
 
 None answered. 
 
 ' And,' he continued, pragmatically, ' as t' maister's 
 corned, and as he'll enter through this hoyle, I considered it 
 desirable to step in and let ye know. A household o' 
 women is nivver fit to be corned on wi'out warning. Here 
 he is : walk forrard, sir. They war playing up queerly, but 
 I think I've quieted 'em.' 
 
 Another person it was now audible -entered- Joe 
 Scott proceeded with his rebukes.
 
 422 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' What d'ye mean by being all i' darkness ? Sarah, 
 thou quean, canst t' not light a candle ? It war sundown 
 an hour syne. He'll brak' his shins agean some o' yer 
 pots, and tables, and stuff. Tak' tent o' this baking-bowl, 
 sir ; they've set it i' yer way, fair as if they did it i' 
 malice.' 
 
 To Joe's observations succeeded a confused sort of 
 pause, which Caroline, though she was listening with both 
 her ears, could not understand. It was very brief : a cry 
 broke it a sound of surprise, followed by the sound of a 
 kiss : ejaculations, but half articulate, succeeded. 
 
 ' Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! Est-ce que je m'y attendais? ' 
 were the words chiefly to be distinguished. 
 
 ' Et tu te portes toujours bieu, bonne soeur ? ' inquired 
 another voice Robert's, certainly. 
 
 Caroline was puzzled. Obeying an impulse, the wisdom 
 of which she had not time to question, she escaped from the 
 little parlour, by way of leaving the coast clear, and running 
 upstairs took up a position at the head of the banisters, 
 whence she could make further observations ere presenting 
 herself. It was considerably past sunset now : dusk filled 
 the passage, yet not such deep dusk but that she could 
 presently see Robert and Hortense traverse it. 
 
 ' Caroline ! Caroline ! ' called Hortense, a moment after- 
 wards, ' venez voir mon frere ! ' 
 
 ' Strange ! ' commented Miss Helstone, ' passing 
 strange ! What does this unwonted excitement about such 
 an everyday occurrence as a return from market portend ? 
 She has not lost her senses, has she ? Surely the burnt 
 treacle has not crazed her ? ' 
 
 She descended in a subdued flutter : yet more was she 
 fluttered when Hortense seized her hand at the parlour- 
 door, and leading her to Robert, who stood in bodily 
 presence, tall and dark against the one window, presented 
 her with a mixture of agitation and formality, as though they 
 had been utter strangers, and this was their first mutual 
 introduction.
 
 AN EVENING OUT 423 
 
 Increasing puzzle ! He bowed rather awkwardly, and 
 turning from her with a stranger's embarrassment, he met 
 the doubtful light from a window : it fell on his face, and 
 the enigma of the dream (a dream it seemed) was at its 
 height : she saw a visage like and unlike Bobert, and no 
 Robert. 
 
 ' What is the matter ? ' said Caroline. ' Is my sight 
 wrong ? Is it my cousin ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly, it is your cousin,' asserted Hortense. 
 Then who was this now coming through the passage, now 
 entering the room ? Caroline, looking round, met a new 
 Robert, the real Robert, as she felt at once. 
 
 ' Well,' said he, smiling at her questioning, astonished 
 face, which is which ? ' 
 
 ' Ah ! this is you ! ' was the answer. 
 He laughed. ' I believe it is me ; and do you know who 
 he is ? You never saw him before ; but you have heard of 
 him.' 
 
 She had gathered her senses now. 
 
 ' It can be only one person : your brother, since it is so 
 like you : my other cousin, Louis.' 
 
 ' Clever little CEdipus ! you would have baffled the 
 Sphinx ! but now, see us together. Change places. 
 Change again, to confuse her, Louis. Which is the old love 
 now, Lina ? ' 
 
 ' As if it were possible to make a mistake when you 
 speak ! You should have told Hortense to ask. But you 
 are not so much alike : it is only your height, your figure, 
 and complexion that are so similar.' 
 
 ' And I am Robert, am I not ? ' asked the new comer, 
 making a first effort to overcome what seemed his natural 
 shyness. 
 
 Caroline shook her head gently. A soft, expressive 
 ray from her eye beamed on the real Robert : it said 
 much. 
 
 She was not permitted to quit her cousins soon : Robert 
 himself was peremptory in obliging her to remain. Glad,
 
 424 SHIRLEY 
 
 simple, and affable in her demeanour (glad for this night, at 
 least), in light, bright spirits for the time, she was too 
 pleasant an addition to the cottage circle to be willingly 
 parted with by any of them. Louis seemed naturally rather 
 a grave, still, retiring man, but the Caroline of this evening, 
 which was not (as you know, reader) the Caroline of every 
 day, thawed his reserve, and cheered his gravity soon. He 
 sat near her, and talked to her. She already knew his 
 vocation was that of tuition ; she learned now he had for 
 some years been the tutor of Mr. Sympson's son ; that he 
 had been travelling with him, and had accompanied him to 
 the north. She inquired if he liked his post, but got a look 
 in reply which did not invite or license further question. 
 The look woke Caroline's ready sympathy : she thought it a 
 very sad expression to pass over so sensible a face as 
 Louis's ; for he had a sensible face, though not handsome, 
 she considered, when seen near Robert's. She turned to 
 make the comparison. Robert was leaning against the wall, 
 a little behind her, turning over the leaves of a book of 
 engravings, and probably listening, at the same time, to the 
 dialogue between her and Louis. 
 
 'How could I think them alike?' she asked herself: 
 ' I see now it is Hortense, Louis resembles, not Robert.' 
 
 And this was in part true : he had the shorter nose and 
 longer upper-lip of his sister, rather than the tine traits of 
 his brother : he had her mould of mouth and chin all less 
 decisive, accurate, and clear than those of the young mill- 
 owner. His air, though deliberate and reflective, could 
 scarcely be called prompt and acute. You felt, in sitting 
 near and looking up at him, that a slower and probably a 
 more benignant nature than that of the elder Moore shed 
 calm on your impressions. 
 
 Robert - perhaps aware that Caroline's glance had 
 wandered towards and dwelt upon him, though he had 
 neither met nor answered itput down the book of engrav- 
 ings, and approaching, took a seat at her side. She resumed 
 her conversation with Louis, but, while she talked to him,
 
 AN EVENING OUT 425 
 
 her thoughts were elsewhere : her heart beat on the side 
 from which her face was half-averted. She acknowledged 
 a steady, manly, kindly air in Louis ; but she bent before 
 the secret power of Robert. To be so near him though he 
 was silent though he did not touch so much as her scarf- 
 fringe, or the white hem of her dress affected her like a 
 spell. Had she been obliged to speak to him only, it would 
 have quelled but, at liberty to address another, it excited 
 her. Her discourse flowed freely : it was gay, playful, 
 eloquent. The indulgent look and placid manner of her 
 auditor encouraged her to ease ; the sober pleasure expressed 
 by his smile drew out all that was brilliant in her nature. 
 She felt that this evening she appeared to advantage, and, 
 as Robert was a spectator, the consciousness contented her : 
 had he been called away, collapse would at once have 
 succeeded stimulus. 
 
 But her enjoyment was not long to shine full-orbed : a 
 cloud soon crossed it. 
 
 Hortense, who for some time had been on the move 
 ordering supper, and was now clearing the little table of 
 some books, &c., to make room for the tray, called Robert'^ 
 attention to the glass of flowers, the carmine, and snow, 
 and gold of whose petals looked radiant indeed by candle- 
 light. 
 
 ' They came from Fieldhead,' she said, ' intended as a 
 gift to you, no doubt : we know who is the favourite there 
 not I, I'm sure.' 
 
 It was a wonder to hear Hortense jest ; a sign that her 
 spirits were at high-water mark indeed. 
 
 ' We are to understand, then, that Robert is the 
 favourite ? ' observed Louis. 
 
 'Mon cher,' replied Hortense, ' Robert c'est tout ce 
 qu'il y a de plus precieux au monde : & cote de lui, le reste 
 du genre humain n'est que du rebut. N'ai-je pas raison, 
 mon enfant ? ' she added, appealing to Caroline. 
 
 Caroline was obliged to reply, ' Yes 'and her beacon 
 was quenched : her star withdrew as she spoke.
 
 426 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 Et toi, Robert ? ' inquired Louis. 
 
 1 When you shall have an opportunity, ask herself,' was 
 the quiet answer. Whether he reddened or paled Caroline 
 did not examine : she discovered it was late, and she must 
 go home. Home she would go: not even Robert could 
 detain her now.
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV 
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 
 
 THE future sometimes seems to sob a low warning of the 
 events it is bringing us, like some gathering though yet 
 remote storm, which, in tones of the wind, in flushings of 
 the firmament, in clouds strangely torn, announces a blast 
 strong to strew the sea with wrecks ; or commissioned to 
 bring in fog the yellow taint of pestilence, covering white 
 Western isles with the poisoned exhalations of the East, 
 dimming the lattices of English homes with the breath of 
 Indian plague. At other times this Future bursts suddenly, 
 as if a rock had rent, and in it a grave had opened, whence 
 issues the body of one that slept. Ere you are aware you 
 stand face to face with a shrouded and unthought-of Calamity 
 a new Lazarus. 
 
 Caroline Helstone went home from Hollow's cottage in 
 good health, as she imagined. On waking the next morning 
 she felt oppressed with unwonted languor : at breakfast, at 
 each meal of the following day, she missed all sense of 
 appetite : palatable food was as ashes and sawdust to her. 
 
 ' Am I ill ? ' she asked, and looked at herself in the 
 glass. Her eyes were bright, their pupils dilated, her 
 cheeks seemed rosier and fuller than usual. ' I look well ! 
 Why can I not eat ? ' 
 
 She felt a pulse beat fast in her temples : she felt, too, 
 her brain in strange activity : her spirits were raised ; 
 hundreds of busy and broken, but brilliant thoughts engaged 
 her mind : a glow rested on them, such as tinged her 
 complexion.
 
 428 SHIRLEY 
 
 Now followed a hot, parched, thirsty, restless night 
 Towards morning one terrible dream seized her like a tiger- 
 When she woke, she felt and knew she was ill. 
 
 How she had caught the fever (fever it was), she could 
 not tell. Probably in her late walk home, some sweet, 
 poisoned breeze, redolent of honey-dew and miasma, had 
 passed into her lungs and veins, and finding there already a 
 fever of mental excitement, and a languor of long conflict 
 and habitual sadness, had fanned the spark of flame, and 
 left a well-lit fire behind it. 
 
 It seemed, however, but a gentle fire : after two hot days 
 and worried nights, there was no violence in the symptoms, 
 and neither her uncle, nor Fanny, nor the doctor, nor Miss 
 Keeldar, when she called, had any fear for her : a few days 
 would restore her, every one believed. 
 
 The few days passed, and though it was still thought 
 it could not long delay the revival had not begun. Mrs. 
 Pryor, who had visited her daily being present in her 
 chamber one morning when she had been ill a fortnight 
 watched her very narrowly for some minutes : she took her 
 hand, and placed her finger on her wrist ; then, quietly 
 leaving the chamber, she went to Mr. Helstone's study. 
 With him she remained closeted a long time half the 
 morning. On returning to her sick young friend, she laid 
 aside shawl and bonnet : she stood a while at the bedside, 
 one hand placed in the other, gently rocking herself to and 
 fro, in an attitude and with a movement habitual to her. 
 At last she said ' I have sent Fanny to Fieldhead to fetch 
 a few things for me, such as I shall want during a short 
 stay here : it is my wish to remain with you till you are 
 better. Your uncle kindly permits my attendance : will it 
 to youi'self be acceptable, Caroline ? ' 
 
 ' I am sorry you should take such needless trouble. I 
 do not feel very ill, but I cannot refuse resolutely : it will be 
 such comfort to know you are in the house, to see you 
 sometimes in the room ; but don't confine yourself on my 
 account, dear Mrs. Pryor. Fanny nurses me very well.'
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 429 
 
 Mrs. Pryor bending over the pale little sufferer was 
 now smoothing the hair under her cap, and gently raising 
 her pillow. As she performed these offices, Caroline, 
 smiling, lifted her face to kiss her. 
 
 ' Are you free from pain ? Are you tolerably at ease ? ' 
 was inquired in a low, earnest voice, as the self -elected nurse 
 yielded to the caress. 
 
 ' I think I am almost happy.' 
 
 ' You wish to drink ? Your lips are parched.' 
 
 She held a glass filled with some cooling beverage to her 
 mouth. 
 
 ' Have you eaten anything to-day, Caroline ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot eat.' 
 
 ' But soon your appetite will return : it must return : that 
 is, I pray God it may ! ' 
 
 In laying her again on the couch, she encircled her in her 
 arms ; and while so doing, by a movement which seemed 
 scarcely voluntary, she drew her to her heart, and held her 
 close gathered an instant. 
 
 ' I shall hardly wish to get well, that I may keep you 
 always,' said Caroline. 
 
 Mrs. Pryor did not smile at this speech : over her features 
 ran a tremor, which for some minutes she was absorbed in 
 repressing. 
 
 ' You are more used to Fanny than to me,' she remarked, 
 erelong. ' I should think my attendance must seem strange, 
 officious ? ' 
 
 ' No : quite natural, and very soothing. You must have 
 been accustomed to wait on sick people, ma'am. You move 
 about the room so softly, and you speak so quietly, and touch 
 me so gently.' 
 
 ' I am dexterous in nothing, my dear. You will often find 
 me awkward, but never negligent.' 
 
 Negligent, indeed, she was not. From that hour Fanny 
 and Eliza became ciphers in the sick-room : Mrs. Pryor made 
 it her domain : she performed all its duties ; she lived in it 
 day and night. The patient remonstrated faintly, however,
 
 430 SHIRLEY 
 
 from the first, and not at all erelong ; loneliness and gloom 
 were now banished from her bedside ; protection and solace 
 sat there instead. She and her nurse coalesced in wondrous 
 union. Caroline was usually pained to require or receive 
 much attendance : Mrs. Pryor, under ordinary circumstances, 
 had neither the habit nor the art of performing little offices 
 of service ; but all now passed with such ease so naturally, 
 that the patient was as willing to be cherished as the nurse 
 was bent on cherishing : no sign of weariness in the latter 
 ever reminded the former that she ought to be anxious. 
 There was, in fact, no very hard duty to perform ; but a 
 hireling might have found it hard. 
 
 With all this care, it seemed strange the sick girl did not 
 get well ; yet such was the case : she wasted like any snow- 
 wreath in thaw ; she faded like any flower in drought. Miss 
 Keeldar, on whose thoughts danger or death seldom intruded, 
 had at first entertained no fears at all for her friend ; but 
 seeing her change and sink from time to time when she paid 
 her visits, alarm clutched her heart. She went to Mr. 
 Helstone and expressed herself with so much energy that 
 that gentleman was at last obliged, however unwillingly, to 
 admit the idea that his niece was ill of something more than 
 a migraine ; and when Mrs. Pryor came and quietly demanded 
 a physician, he said she might send for two if she liked. One 
 came, but that one was an oracle : he delivered a dark saying 
 of which the future was to solve the mystery, wrote some 
 prescriptions, gave some directions the whole with an air of 
 crushing authority pocketed his fee, and went. Probably, 
 lie knew well enough he could do no good : but didn't like to 
 say so. 
 
 Still, no rumour of serious illness got wind in the neigh- 
 bourhood. At Hollow's-cottage it was thought that Caroline 
 had only a severe cold, she having written a note to Hortense 
 to that effect ; and Mademoiselle contented herself with send- 
 ing two pots of currant jam, a receipt for a tisane, and a note 
 of advice. 
 
 Mrs. Yorke being told that a physician had been
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 431 
 
 summoned, sneered at the hypochondriac fancies of the rich 
 and idle, who, she said, have nothing but themselves to think 
 about, and must needs send for a doctor if only so much as 
 their little finger ached. 
 
 The ' rich and idle ' represented in the person of Caroline 
 were meantime falling fast into a condition of prostration, 
 whose quickly consummated debility puzzled all who 
 witnessed it, except one ; for that one alone reflected how 
 liable is the undermined structure to sink in sudden ruin. 
 
 Sick people often have fancies inscrutable to ordinary 
 attendants, and Caroline had one which even her tender nurse 
 could not at first explain. On a certain day in the week, at 
 a certain hour, she would whether worse or better entreat 
 to be taken up and dressed, and suffered to sit in her chair 
 near the window. This station she would retain till noon was 
 past : whatever degree of exhaustion or debility her wan 
 aspect betrayed, she still softly put off all persuasion to seek 
 repose until the church-clock had duly tolled mid-day : the 
 twelve strokes sounded, she grew docile, and would meekly 
 lie down. Returned to the couch, she usually buried her 
 face deep in the pillow, and drew the coverlets close 
 round her, as if to shut out the world and sun, of which 
 she was tired : more than once, as she thus lay, a slight 
 convulsion shook the sick-bed, and a faint sob broke thu 
 silence round it. These things were not unnoted by 
 Mrs. Pry or. 
 
 One Tuesday morning, as usual, she had asked leave to rise, 
 and now she sat wrapped in her white dressing-gown, loaning 
 forward in the easy-chair, gazing steadily and patiently from 
 the lattice. Mrs. Pryor was seated a little behind, knitting, 
 as it seemed, but, in truth, watching her. A change crossed 
 her pale mournful brow, animating its languor ; a light shot 
 into her faded eyes, reviving their lustre ; she half rose and 
 looked earnestly out. Mrs. Pryor, drawing softly near, 
 glanced over her shoulder. From this window was visible 
 the churchyard, beyond it the road, and there, riding sharply 
 by appeared a horseman. The figure was not yet too remote
 
 432 SHIRLEY 
 
 for recognition : Mrs. Pryor had long sight ; she knew Mr. 
 Moore. Just as an intercepting rising ground concealed him 
 from view, the clock struck twelve. 
 
 ' May I lie down again ? ' asked Caroline. 
 
 Her nurse assisted her to bed: having laid her down and 
 drawn the curtain, she stood listening near. The little couch 
 trembled, the suppressed sob stirred the air. A contraction as 
 of anguish altered Mrs. Pryor's features ; she wrung her 
 hands ; half a groan escaped her lips. She now remembered 
 that Tuesday was Whinbury market-day : Mr. Moore must 
 always pass the Rectory on his way thither, just ere noon of 
 that day. 
 
 Caroline wore continually round her neck a slender braid 
 of silk, attached to which was some trinket. Mrs. Pryor had 
 seen the bit of gold glisten ; but had not yet obtained a fair 
 view of it. Her patient never parted with it : when dressed 
 it was hidden in her bosom ; as she lay in bed she always held 
 it in her hand. That Tuesday afternoon the transient doze 
 more like lethargy than sleep which sometimes abridged 
 the long days, had stolen over her : the weather was hot ; 
 while turning in febrile restlessness, she had pushed the 
 coverlets a little aside ; Mrs. Pryor bent to replace them ; 
 the small, wasted hand lying nerveless on the sick girl's 
 breast, clasped as usual her jealously-guarded treasure : those 
 lingers whose attenuation it gave pain to see, were now 
 relaxed in sleep : Mrs. Pryor gently disengaged the braid, 
 drawing out a tiny locket a slight thing it was, such as it 
 suited her small purse to purchase : under its crystal face 
 appeared a curl of black hair too short and crisp to have 
 been severed from a female head. 
 
 Some agitated movement occasioned a twitch of the silken 
 chain : the sleeper started and woke. Her thoughts were 
 usually now somewhat scattered on waking ; her look gene- 
 rally wandering. Half-rising, as if in terror, she exclaimed : 
 ' Don't take it from me, Robert ! Don't ! It is my last 
 comfort let me keep it. I never tell any one whose hair it 
 is I never show it.'
 
 THE VALLEY OP THE SHADOW OF DEATH 433 
 
 Mrs. Pryor had already disappeai'ed behind the curtain : 
 reclining far back in a deep arm-chair by the bedside, she was 
 withdrawn from view. Caroline looked abroad into the cham- 
 ber : she thought it empty. As her stray ideas returned 
 slowly, each folding its weak wings on the mind's sad shore, 
 like birds exhausted, beholding void, and perceiving silence 
 round her, she believed herself alone. Collected, she was not 
 yet : perhaps healthy self-possession and self-control were to 
 be hers no more ; perhaps that world the strong and pro- 
 sperous live in had already rolled from beneath her feet for 
 ever : so, at least, it often seemed to herself. In health, she 
 had never been accustomed to think aloud ; but now words 
 escaped her lips unawares. 
 
 1 Oh ! I sJiould see him once more before all is over : 
 Heaven might favour me thus far ! ' she cried. ' God grant 
 me a little comfort before I die ! ' was her humble petition. 
 
 ' But he will not know I am ill till I am gone ; and he 
 will come when they have laid me out, and I am senseless, 
 cold, and stiff. 
 
 1 What can my departed soul feel then ? Can it see or 
 know what happens to the clay ? Can spirits, through any 
 medium, communicate with living flesh? Can the dead at all 
 revisit those they leave ? Can they come in the elements ? 
 Will wind, water, fire, lend me a path to Moore ? 
 
 ' Is it for nothing the wind sounds almost articulately 
 sometimes sings as I have lately heard it sing at night or 
 passes the casement sobbing, as if for sorrow to come ? Does 
 nothing, then, haunt it nothing inspire it ? 
 
 ' Why, it suggested to me words one night : it poured a 
 strain which I could have written down, only I was appalled, 
 and dared not rise to seek pencil and paper by the dim 
 watchlight. 
 
 ' What is that electricity they speak of, whose changes 
 make us well or ill ; whose lack or excess blasts ; whose 
 even balance revives ? What are all those influences that 
 are about us in the atmosphere, that keep playing over our 
 nerves like fingers on stringed instruments, and call forth
 
 434 SHIRLEY 
 
 now a sweet note, and now a wail now an exultant swell, 
 and, anon, the saddest cadence? 
 
 1 WJtere is the other world ? In what will another life 
 consist ? Why do I ask ? Have I not cause to think that 
 the hour is hasting but too fast when the veil must be rent 
 for me ? Do I not know the Grand Mystery is likely to 
 burst prematurely on me ? Great Spirit ! in whose good- 
 ness I confide ; whom, as my Father, I have petitioned 
 night and morning from early infancy, help the weak 
 creation of thy hands ! Sustain me through the ordeal I 
 dread and must undergo ! Give me strength ! Give me 
 patience ! Give me oh ! give me FAITH ! ' 
 
 She fell back on her pillow. Mrs. Pryor found means 
 to steal quietly from the room : she re-entered it soon after, 
 apparently as composed as if she had really not overheard 
 this strange soliloquy. 
 
 The next day several callers came. It had become 
 known that Miss Helstone was worse. Mr. Hall and his 
 sister Margaret arrived ; both, after they had been in the 
 sick-room, quitted it in tears ; they had found the patient 
 more altered than they expected. Hortense Moore came. 
 Caroline seemed stimulated by her presence : she assured 
 her, smiling, she was not dangerously ill ; she talked to her 
 in a low voice, but cheerfully : during her stay, excitement 
 kept up the flush of her complexion : she looked better. 
 
 ' How is Mr. Robert ? ' asked Mrs. Pryor, as Hortense 
 was preparing to take leave. 
 
 ' He was very well when he left.' 
 
 ' Left ! Is he gone from home ? ' 
 
 It was then explained that some police intelligence 
 about the rioters of whom he was in pursuit, had, that 
 morning, called him away to Birmingham, and probably a 
 fortnight might elapse ere he returned. 
 
 ' He is not aware that Miss Helstone is very ill ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! no. He thought, like me, that she had only a bad 
 cold.' 
 
 After this visit, Mrs. Pryor took care not to approach
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OP DEATH 435 
 
 Caroline's couch for above an hour : she heard her weep, 
 and dared not look on her tears. 
 
 As evening closed in, she brought her some tea. Caroline, 
 opening her eyes from a moment's slumber, viewed her nurse 
 with an unrecognising glance. 
 
 'I smelt the honeysuckles in the glen this summer 
 morning,' she said, ' as I stood at the counting-house 
 window.' 
 
 Strange words like these from pallid lips pierce a loving 
 listener's heart more poignantly than steel. They sound 
 romantic, perhaps, in books : in real life, they are harrowing. 
 
 ' My darling, do you know me ? ' said Mrs. Pryor. 
 
 ' I went in to call Robert to breakfast : I have been 
 with him in the garden : he asked me to go : a heavy dew 
 has refreshed the flowers : the peaches are ripening.' 
 
 1 My darling ! my darling ! ' again and again repeated the 
 nurse. 
 
 ' I thought it was daylight long after sunrise : it looks 
 dark is the moon now set?' 
 
 That moon, lately risen, was gazing full and mild 
 upon her : floating in deep blue space, it watched her un- 
 clouded. 
 
 ' Then it is not morning ? I am not at the cottage ? 
 Who is this? I see a shape at my bedside.' 
 
 ' It is myself it is your friend your nurse your . 
 
 Lean your head on my shoulder : collect yourself.' (In a 
 lower tone.) ' Oh God, take pity ! Give /w?r life, and me 
 strength ! Send me courage teach me words ! ' 
 
 Some minutes passed in silence. The patient lay mute 
 and passive in the trembling arms on the throbbing bosom 
 of the nurse. 
 
 ' I am better now,' whispered Caroline, at last, ' much 
 better I feel where I am : this is Mrs. Fryor near me : I 
 was dreaming I talk when I wake up from dreams : people 
 often do in illness. How fast your heart beats, ma'am ! Do 
 not be afraid.' 
 
 'It is not fear, child ; only a little anxiety, which will
 
 436 SHIELEY 
 
 pass. I have brought you some tea, Gary ; your uncle made 
 it himself. You know he says he can make a better cup 
 of tea than any housewife can. Taste it. He is concerned 
 to hear that you eat so little : he would be glad if you had a 
 better appetite.' 
 
 ' I am thirsty : let me drink.' 
 
 She drank eagerly. 
 
 ' What o'clock is it, ma'am ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Past nine.' 
 
 1 Not later ? Oh ! I have yet a long night before me : 
 but the tea has made me strong : I will sit up.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor raised her, and arranged her pillows. 
 
 ' Thank Heaven ! I am not always equally miserable, 
 and ill, and hopeless. The afternoon has been bad since 
 Hortense went : perhaps the evening may be better. It is a 
 fine night, I think? The moon shines clear.' 
 
 ' Very fine : a perfect summer night. The old church- 
 tower gleams white almost as silver.' 
 
 ' And does the churchyard look peaceful ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, and the garden also : dew glistens on the foliage.' 
 
 ' Can you see many long weeds and nettles amongst the 
 graves, or do they look turfy and flowery ? ' 
 
 ' I see closed daisy-heads, gleaming like pearls on some 
 mounds. Thomas has mown down the dock-leaves and rank 
 grass, and cleared all away.' 
 
 ' I always like that to be done : it soothes one's mind to 
 see the place in order : and, I dare say, within the church 
 just now that moonlight shines as softly as in my room. It 
 will fall through the east window full on the Helstone 
 monument. When I close my eyes I seem to see poor 
 papa's epitaph in black letters on the white marble. There 
 is plenty of room for other inscriptions underneath.' 
 
 ' William Farren carne to look after your flowers this 
 morning : he was afraid, now you cannot tend them yourself, 
 they would be neglected. He has taken two of your 
 favourite plants home to nurse for you.' 
 
 ' Jf I were to make a will, I would leave William all my
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OP DEATH 437 
 
 plants ; Shirley my trinkets except one, which must not 
 be taken off my neck ; and you, ma'am, my books.' (After 
 a pause.) 'Mrs. Pryor, I feel a longing wish for some- 
 thing.' 
 
 1 For what, Caroline ? ' 
 
 ' You know I always delight to hear you sing ; sing me 
 a hymn just now : sing that hymn which begins, 
 
 Our God, our help in ages past, 
 
 Our hope for years to come ; 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast ; 
 
 Our refuge, haven, home I ' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor at once complied. 
 
 No wonder Caroline liked to hear her sing : her voice, 
 even in speaking, was sweet and silver clear ; in song, it 
 was almost divine : neither flute nor dulcimer has tones so 
 pure. But the tone was secondary compared to the ex- 
 pression which trembled through : a tender vibration from 
 a feeling heart. 
 
 The servants in the kitchen, hearing the strain, stole to 
 the stair-foot to listen : even old Helstone, as he walked in 
 the garden, pondering over the unaccountable and feeble 
 nature of women, stood still amongst his borders to catch 
 the mournful melody more distinctly. Why it reminded 
 him of his forgotten dead wife, he could not tell ; nor why 
 it made him more concerned than he had hitherto been for 
 Caroline's fading girlhood. He was glad to recollect that, 
 he had promised to pay Wynne, the magistrate, a visit that 
 evening. Low spirits and gloomy thoughts were very much 
 his aversion : when they attacked him he usually found 
 means to make them inarch in double-quick time. The 
 hymn followed him faintly as he crossed the fields : he 
 hastened his customary sharp pace, that ho might get beyond 
 its reach. 
 
 Thy word commands our flesh to dust, 
 
 4 Return, ye sons of men ; ' 
 All nations rose from earth at first, 
 And turn to earth again.
 
 438 SHIELEY 
 
 A thousand ages in thy sight 
 
 Are like an evening gone ; 
 Short as the watch that ends the night 
 
 Before the rising sun. 
 
 Time, like an ever-rolling stream, 
 
 Bears all its sons away ; 
 They fly, forgotten, as a dream 
 
 Dies at the opening day. 
 
 Like flowery fields, the nations stand, 
 
 Fresh in the morning light ; 
 The flowers beneath the mower's hand 
 
 Lie withering ere 'tis night. 
 
 Our God, our help in ages past, 
 
 Our hope for years to come ; 
 Be thou our guard while troubles last, 
 
 O Father, be our home ! 
 
 1 Now sing a song a Scottish song,' suggested Caroline 
 when the hymn was over, ' " Ye banks and braes o' bonny 
 Doon." ' 
 
 Again Mrs. Pryor obeyed, or essayed to obey. At the 
 close of the first stanza she stopped : she could get no 
 further : her full heart flowed over. 
 
 1 You are weeping at the pathos of the air : come here, 
 and I will comfort you,' said Caroline, in a pitying accent. 
 Mrs. Pryor came : she sat down on the edge of her patient's 
 bed, and allowed the wasted arms to encircle her. 
 
 ' You often soothe me, let me soothe you,' murmured the 
 young girl, kissing her cheek. ' I hope,' she added, ' it is 
 not for me you weep.' 
 
 No answer followed. 
 
 ' Do you think I shall not get better ? I do not feel very 
 ill only weak.' 
 
 ' But your mind, Caroline : your mind is crushed ; your 
 heart is almost broken : you have been so neglected, so 
 repulsed, left so desolate.' 
 
 ' I believe grief is, and always has been, my worst ail-
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 439 
 
 ment. I sometimes think, if an abundant gush of happi- 
 ness came on me, I could revive yet." 
 
 ' Do you wish to live ? ' 
 
 ' I have no object in life.' 
 
 ' You love me, Caroline ? ' 
 
 ' Very much, very truly, inexpressibly sometimes : 
 just now I feel as if I could almost grow to your heart.' 
 
 ' I will return directly, dear,' remarked Mrs. Pryor, as 
 she laid Caroline down. 
 
 Quitting her, she glided to the door, softly turned the 
 key in the lock, ascertained that it was fast, and came 
 back. She bent over her. She threw back the curtain to 
 admit the moonlight more freely. She gazed intently on 
 her face. 
 
 ' Then, if you love me,' said she, speaking quickly, with 
 an altered voice : ' if you feel as if to use your own words 
 you could " grow to my heart," it will be neither shock nor 
 pain for you to know that that heart is the source whence 
 yours was filled : that from my veins issued the tide which 
 flows in yours ; that you are mine my daughter my own 
 child.' 
 
 1 Mrs. Pryor ! ' 
 
 ' My own child ! ' 
 
 'That is that means you have adopted me? ' 
 
 ' It means that, if I have given you nothing else, I at 
 least gave you life ; that I bore you nursed you ; that I am 
 your true mother : no other woman can claim the title it is 
 mine.' 
 
 'But Mrs. James Helstoiie but my father's wife whom 
 I do not remember ever to have seen, she is my niother ? ' 
 
 ' She is your mother : James Helstone was nnj husband. 
 I say you are mine. I have proved it. I thought perhaps 
 you were all his, which would have been a cruel dispensa- 
 tion for me : I find it is not so. God permitted me to be the 
 parent of my child's mind : it belongs to me : it is my 
 property my right. These features are James's own. He 
 had a fine face when he was young, and not altered by
 
 440 SHIELEY 
 
 error. Papa, my darling, gave you your blue eyes and soft 
 brown bair : he gave you the oval of your face and the 
 regularity of your lineaments : the outside he conferred ; 
 but the heart and the brain are mine : the germs are from 
 me, and they are improved, they are developed to excellence. 
 I esteem and approve my child as highly as I do most 
 fondly love her.' 
 
 1 Is what I hear true ? Is it no dream ? ' 
 
 ' I wish it were as true that the substance and colour of 
 health were restored to your cheek.' 
 
 1 My own mother ! is she one I can be so fond of as I 
 can of you ? People generally did not like her, so I have 
 been given to understand.' 
 
 ' They told you that ? Well, your mother now tells you, 
 that, not having the gift to please people generally, for their 
 approbation she does not care : her thoughts are centered in 
 her child : does that child welcome or reject her ? ' 
 
 ' But if you are my mother, the world is all changed to 
 me. Surely I can live I should like to recover ' 
 
 ' You must, recover. You drew life and strength from 
 my breast when you were a tiny, fair infant, over whose blue 
 eyes I used to weep, fearing I beheld in your very beauty 
 the sign of qualities that had entered my heart like iron, 
 and pierced through my soul like a sword. Daughter 1 we 
 have been long parted : I return now to cherish you again.' 
 
 She held her to her bosom : she cradled her in her 
 arms : she rocked her softly, as if lulling a young child to 
 sleep. 
 
 ' My mother ! My own mother 1 ' 
 
 The offspring nestled to the parent : that parent, feeling 
 the endearment and hearing the appeal, gathered her closer 
 still. She covered her with noiseless kisses : she murmured 
 love over her, like a cushat fostering its young. 
 
 There was silence in the room for a Ion" while. 
 
 ' Does my uncle know ? '
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 441 
 
 ' Your uncle knows : I told him when I first came to stay 
 with you here.' 
 
 ' Did you recognise me when we first met at Fieldhead ? ' 
 
 ' How could it be otherwise ? Mr. and Miss Helstone 
 being announced, I was prepared to see my child.' 
 
 ' It was that then which moved you : I saw you 
 disturbed.' 
 
 ' You saw nothing, Caroline, I can cover my feelings. 
 You can never tell what an age of strange sensation I lived, 
 during the two minutes that elapsed between the report of 
 your name and your entrance. You can never tell how your 
 look, mien, carriage, shook me.' 
 
 ' Why ? Were you disappointed ? ' 
 
 ' What will she be like ? I had asked myself ; and when 
 I saw what you were like, I could have dropped.' 
 
 ' Mamma, why? ' 
 
 ' I trembled in your presence. I said I will never own 
 her ; she shall never know me.' 
 
 ' But I said and did nothing remarkable. I felt a little 
 diffident at the thought of an introduction to strangers, that 
 was all.' 
 
 ' I soon saw you wore diffident ; that was the first thing 
 which re-assured me : had you been rustic, clownish, 
 awkward, I should have been content.' 
 
 ' You puzzle me.' 
 
 ' I had reason to dread a fair outside, to mistrust a 
 popular bearing, to shudder before distinction, grace, and 
 courtesy. Beauty and affability had come in my way when 
 I was recluse, desolate, young, and ignorant: a toil-worn 
 governess perishing of uncheerecl labour, breaking down 
 before her time. These, Caroline, when they smiled on me, 
 I mistook for angels! I followed them home, and when 
 into their hands I had given without reserve my whole 
 chance of future happiness, it was my lot to witness a trans- 
 figuration on the domestic hearth : to see the white mask 
 lifted, the bright disguise put away, and opposite me sat 
 down oh God ! I Jtavc suffered ! '
 
 442 SHIRLEY 
 
 She sank on the pillow. 
 
 ' I have suffered ! None saw none knew : there was no 
 sympathy no redemption no redress ! ' 
 
 ' Take comfort, mother : it is over now.' 
 
 1 It is over, and not fruitlessly. I tried to keep the word 
 of His patience : He kept me in the days of my anguish. I 
 was afraid with terror I was troubled : through great 
 tribulation He brought me through to a salvation revealed 
 in this last time. My fear had torment He has cast it 
 out : He has given me in its stead perfect love. . . . But, 
 Caroline ' 
 
 Thus she invoked her daughter after a pause. 
 
 ' Mother ! ' 
 
 ' I charge you, when you next look on your father's 
 monument, to respect the name chiselled there. To you he 
 did only good. On you he conferred his whole treasure of 
 beauties ; nor added to them one dark defect. All you 
 derived from him is excellent. You owe him gratitude. 
 Leave, between him and me, the settlement of our mutual 
 account: meddle not : God is the arbiter. This world's laws 
 never came near us never ! They were powerless as a 
 rotten bulrush to protect me ! impotent as idiot babblings 
 to restrain him ! As you said, it is all over now : the grave 
 lies between us. There he sleeps in that church ! To his 
 dust I say this night, what I never said before, " James, 
 slumber peacefully ! See ! your terrible debt is cancelled ! 
 Look ! I wipe out the long, black account with my own 
 hand ! James, your child atones : this living likeness of you 
 this thing with your perfect features this one good gift 
 you gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart, and 
 tenderly called me ' mother.' Husband ! rest forgiven ! " 
 
 ' Dearest mother, that is right ! Can papa's spirit hear 
 us ? Is he comforted to know that we still love him ? ' 
 
 ' I said nothing of love : I spoke of forgiveness. Mind 
 the truth, child I said nothing of love ? On the threshold 
 of eternity, should he be there to see me enter, will I 
 maintain that.'
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 443 
 
 ' Oh, mother ! you must have suffered ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, child ! the human heart can suffer. It can hold 
 more tears than the ocean holds waters. We never know 
 how deep how wide it is, till misery begins to unbind her 
 clouds, and fill it with rushing blackness.' 
 
 ' Mother, forget.' 
 
 ' Forget ! ' she said, with the strangest spectre of a 
 laugh. 'The north pole will rush to the south, and the 
 headlands of Europe be locked into the bays of Australia ere 
 I forget.' 
 
 ' Hush, mother ! rest ! be at peace ! ' 
 
 And the child lulled the parent, as the parent had erst 
 lulled the child. At last Mrs. Pryor wept : she then grew 
 calmer. She resumed those tender cares agitation had for a 
 moment suspended. Eeplacing her daughter on the couch, 
 she smoothed the pillow and spread the sheet. The soft 
 hair whose locks were loosened, she rearranged ; the damp 
 brow she refreshed with a cool, fragrant essence. 
 
 1 Mamma, let them bring a candle, that I may see you ; 
 and tell my uncle to come into this room by-and-by: I 
 want to hear him say that I am your daughter : and, 
 mamma, take your supper here; don't leave me for one 
 minute to-night.' 
 
 ' Oh, Caroline ! it is well you are gentle. You will say 
 to me go, and I shall go ; come, and I shall come ; do this, 
 and I shall do it. You inherit a certain manner as well as 
 certain features. It will be always " mamma " prefacing a 
 mandate : softly spoken though from you, thank God ! 
 Well' (she added, under her breath), 'he spoke softly too, 
 once, like a flute breathing tenderness ; and then, when 
 the world was not by to listen, discords that split the nerves 
 and curdled the blood sounds to inspire insanity.' 
 
 ' It seems so natural, mamma, to ask you for this and 
 that. I shall want nobody but you to be near me, or to do 
 anything for me ; but do not let me be troublesome : check 
 me, if I encroach.' 
 
 1 You must not depend on me to check you : you must
 
 444 SHIELEY 
 
 keep guard over yourself. I have little moral courage : the 
 want of it is my bane. It is that which has made me an 
 unnatural parent which has kept me apart from my child 
 during the ten years which have elapsed since my husband's 
 death left me at liberty to claim her : it was that which first 
 unnerved my arms and permitted the infant I might have 
 retained a while longer, to be snatched prematurely from 
 their embrace.' 
 
 ' How, mamma ? ' 
 
 ' I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I 
 feared your loveliness ; deeming it the stamp of perversity. 
 They sent me your portrait, taken at eight years old ; that 
 portrait confirmed my fears. Had it shown me a sunburnt 
 little rustic a heavy, blunt-featured, commonplace child 
 I should have hastened to claim you ; but there, under the 
 silver paper, I saw blooming the delicacy of an aristocratic 
 flower " little lady " was written on every trait. I had too 
 recently crawled from under the yoke of the fine gentleman 
 escaped, galled, crushed, paralyzed, dying to dare to 
 encounter his still finer and most fairy-like representative. 
 My sweet little lady overwhelmed me with dismay : her air 
 of native elegance froze my very marrow. In my experience 
 I had not met with truth, modesty, good principle as the 
 concomitants of beauty. A form so straight and fine, I 
 argued, must conceal a mind warped and cruel. I had little 
 faith in the power of education to rectify such a mind ; or 
 rather, I entirely misdoubted my own ability to influence it. 
 Caroline, I dared not undertake to rear you : I resolved to 
 leave you in your uncle's hands. Matthewson Helstone, I 
 knew, if an austere, was an upright man. He and all the 
 world thought hardly of me for my strange, unmotherly 
 resolve, and I deserved to be misjudged.' 
 
 ' Mamma, why did you call yourself Mrs. Pryor ? ' 
 
 ' It was a name in my mother's family. I adopted it 
 that I might live unmolested. My married name recalled 
 too vividly my married life : I could not bear it. Besides, 
 threats were uttered of forcing me to return to bondage : it
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 445 
 
 could not be ; rather a bier for a bed the grave for a home. 
 My new name sheltered me : I resumed under its screen my 
 old occupation of teaching. At first, it scarcely procured 
 me the means of sustaining life ; but how savoury was 
 hunger when I fasted in peace ! How safe seemed the 
 darkness and chill of an unkindled hearth, when no lurid 
 reflection from terror crimsoned its desolation ! How 
 serene was solitude, when I feared not the irruption of 
 violence and vice ! ' 
 
 'But, mamma, you have been in this neighbourhood 
 before. How did it happen, that when you reappeared here 
 with Miss Keeldar, you were not recognised ? ' 
 
 ' I only paid a short visit, as a bride, twenty years ago ; 
 and then I was very different to what I am now slender, 
 almost as slender as my daughter is at this day : my com- 
 plexion my very features are changed ; my hair, my style 
 of dress everything is altered. You cannot fancy me a 
 slim young person, attired in scanty drapery of white muslin, 
 with bare arms, bracelets and necklace of beads, and hair 
 disposed in round Grecian curls above my forehead ? ' 
 
 ' You must, indeed, have been different. Mamma, I heard 
 the front door open : if it is my uncle coming in, just ask 
 him to step up-stairs, and let me hear his assurance that I 
 am truly awake and collected, and not dreaming or delirious.' 
 
 The Rector, of his own accord, was mounting the stairs ; 
 and Mrs. Pryor summoned him to his niece's apartment. 
 
 ' She's not worse, I hope ? ' he inquired hastily. 
 
 ' I think her better ; she is disposed to converse she 
 seems stronger.' 
 
 ' Good ! ' said he, brushing quickly into the room. ' Ha, 
 Gary ! how do ? Did you drink my cup of tea ? I made it 
 for you just as I like it myself.' 
 
 ' I drank it every drop, uncle : it did me good it has made 
 me quite alive. I have a wish for company, so I begged 
 Mrs. Pryor to call you in.' 
 
 The respected ecclesiastic looked pleased, and yet embar- 
 rassed. He was willing enough to bestow his company on his
 
 446 
 
 sick niece for ten minutes, since it was her whim to wish it ; 
 but what means to employ for her entertainment, he knew 
 not : he hemmed he fidgeted. 
 
 1 You'll be up in a trice,' he observed, by way of saying 
 something. ' The little weakness will soon pass off ; and then 
 you must drink port- wine a pipe, if you can and eat game 
 and oysters : I'll get them for you, if they are to be had any- 
 where. Bless me ! we'll make you as strong as Samson 
 before we've done with you.' 
 
 ' Who is that lady, uncle, standing beside you at the bed- 
 foot ? ' 
 
 ' Good God ! ' he ejaculated. ' She's not wandering is 
 she, ma'am?' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor smiled. 
 
 ' I am wandering in a pleasant world,' said Caroline, in a 
 soft, happy voice, ' and I want you to tell me whether it is 
 real or visionary. What lady is that ? Give her a name 
 uncle ? ' 
 
 ' We must have Dr. Kile again, ma'am, or better still, 
 MacTurk : he's less of a humbug. Thomas must saddle the 
 pony, and go for him.' 
 
 ' No : I don't want a doctor ; mamma shall be my only 
 physician. Now, do you understand, uncle ? ' 
 
 Mr. Helstonc pushed up his spectacles from his 
 nose to his forehead, handled his snuff-box, and administered 
 to himself a portion of the contents. Thus fortified, he 
 answered briefly : ' I see daylight. You've told her then, 
 ma'am ? ' 
 
 ' And is it true ? ' demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. 
 ' Is she really my mother ? ' 
 
 ' You won't cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if 
 I answer Yes? ' 
 
 ' Cry ? I'd cry if you s:iid No. It would be terrible to l>o 
 disappointed now. But give her a name : how do you c;ill 
 her ? ' 
 
 ' I call thio stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks 
 youn^ r enough to wear much smarter raiment, if she would
 
 THE VALLEY OP THE SHADOW OF DEATH 447 
 
 I call her Agnes Helstone : she married my brother James, 
 and is his widow.' 
 
 ' And my mother ? ' 
 
 ' What a little sceptic it is ! Look at her small face, Mrs. 
 Pryor, scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with 
 acuteness and eagerness.' (To Caroline.) ' She had the 
 trouble of bringing you into the world at any rate : mind you 
 show your duty to her by quickly getting well, and repairing 
 the waste of these cheeks. Heigho ! she used to be plump : 
 what she has done with it all, I can't, for the life of me, 
 divine.' 
 
 ' If wishing to get well will help me, I shall not be long 
 sick. This morning, I had no reason and no strength to 
 wish it.' 
 
 Fanny here tapped at the door, and said that supper was 
 ready. 
 
 ' Uncle, if you please, you may send me a little bit of 
 supper anything you like, from your own plate. That is 
 wiser than going into hysterics, is it not ? ' 
 
 ' It is spoken like a sage, Gary : see if I don't cater for 
 you judiciously. When women are sensible and, above all, 
 intelligible I can get on with them. It is only the vague, 
 superfine sensations, and extremely wire-drawn notions, that 
 put me about. Let a woman ask me to give her an edible or 
 a wearable be the same a roc's egg or the breastplate of 
 Aaron, a share of St. John's locusts and honey or the 
 leathern girdle about his loins I can, at least, understand 
 the demand : but when they pine for they know not what 
 sympathy sentiment some of these indefinite abstractions 
 I can't do it ; I don't know it ; I haven't get it. Madam, 
 accept my arm.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her 
 daughter that evening. Ilelstone, accordingly, left tlic.ni to- 
 gether. He soon returned, bringing a plate in his own 
 consecrated hand. 
 
 ' This is chicken,' he said ; ' but we'll have partridge to- 
 morrow. Lift her up, and put a shawl over her. On uiy
 
 448 SHIRLEY 
 
 word, I understand nursing. Now, here is the very same little? 
 silver fork you used when you first came to the Eectory : 
 that strikes me as being what you may call a happy thought 
 a delicate attention. Take it, Gary, and munch away 
 cleverly.' 
 
 Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her 
 powers were so limited : he prophesied, however, great things 
 for the future ; and as she praised the morsel he had brought, 
 and smiled gratefully in his face, he stooped over her pillow, 
 kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged accent, ' Good- 
 night, bairnie ! God bless thee ! ' 
 
 Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled 
 by her mother's arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she 
 forgot to wish for any other stay ; and though more than 
 one feverish dream came to her in slumber, yet, when she 
 woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned 
 with returning consciousness, that her agitation was soothed 
 almost as soon as felt. 
 
 As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. 
 Till break of day, she wrestled with God in earnest prayer.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE WEST 'WIND BLOWS 
 
 NOT always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. 
 Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the 
 forehead ; the supplicant may cry for mercy with that sound- 
 less voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. 
 ' Spare my beloved,' it may implore. ' Heal my life's life. 
 Bend not from me what long affection entwines with my 
 whole nature. God of heaven bend hear be clement ! ' 
 And after this cry and strife, the sun may rise and see him 
 worsted. That opening morn, which used to salute him with 
 the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may breathe, as 
 its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and heat 
 have quitted, ' Oh ! I have had a suffering night. This morn- 
 ing I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I 
 am unused to have troubled me.' 
 
 Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees 
 a new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at 
 once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it 
 is God's will his idol shall be broken, and bends his head, and 
 subdues his soul to the sentence he cannot avert, and scarce 
 can bear. 
 
 Happy Mrs. Pryor ! She was still praying, unconscious 
 that the summer sun hung above the hills, when her child 
 softly woke in her arms. No piteous, unconscious moaning 
 sound which so wastes our strength that, even if we havo 
 sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps away 
 the oath preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy 
 followed. The first words spoken were not those of one
 
 450 SHIRLEY 
 
 becoming estranged from this world, and already permitted to 
 stray at times into realms foreign to the living. Caroline 
 evidently remembered with clearness what had happened. 
 
 ' Mamma, I have slept so well. I only dreamed and woke 
 twice.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not 
 see the joyful tears called into her eyes by that affectionate 
 word ' mamma,' and the welcome assurance that followed it. 
 
 For many days the mother dared rejoice only with 
 trembling. That first revival seemed like the flicker of a 
 dying lamp : if the flame streamed up bright one moment, the 
 next it sank dim in the socket. Exhaustion followed close 
 on excitement. 
 
 There was always a touching endeavour to appear better, 
 but too often ability refused to second will ; too often the 
 attempt to bear up failed : the effort to eat, to talk, to look 
 cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an hour passed, during 
 which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could never 
 more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking 
 might be deferred. 
 
 During this space the mother and daughter seemed left 
 almost alone in the neighbourhood. It was the close of 
 August : the weather was fine that is to say, it was very 
 dry and very dusty, for an arid wind had been blowing from 
 the east this month past : very cloudless, too, though a pale 
 haze, stationary in the atmosphere, seemed to rob of all 
 depth of tone the blue of heaven, of all freshness the verdure 
 of earth, and of all glow the light of day. Almost every 
 family in Briarficld was absent on an excursion. Miss 
 Keeldar and her friends were at the sea-side ; so were Mrs. 
 Yoike's household. Mr. Hall and Louis Moore, between 
 whom a spontaneous intimacy seemed to have arisen, the 
 result, probably, of harmony of views and temperament, 
 were gone ' up north ' on a pedestrian excursion to the Lakes. 
 Even Hortense, who would fain have stayed at home and 
 aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so earnestly 
 entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to
 
 THE WEST WIND BLOWS 451 
 
 Wormwood Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings 
 greatly aggravated by the insalubrious weather, that she felt 
 obliged to comply ; indeed, it was not in her nature to refuse 
 a request that at once appealed to her goodness of heart, 
 and by a confession of dependency flattered her amour- 
 propre. As for Robert, from Birmingham he had gone on to 
 London, where he still sojourned. 
 
 So long as the breath of Asiatic deserts parched Caroline's 
 lips and fevered her veins, her physical convalescence could 
 not keep pace with her returning mental tranquillity : but 
 there came a day when the wind ceased to sob at the 
 eastern gable of the Rectory, and at the oriel window of the 
 church. A little cloud like a man's hand arose in the west; 
 gusts from the same quarter drove it on and spread it wide ; 
 wet and tempest prevailed a while. When that was over 
 the sun broke out genially, heaven regained its azure, and 
 earth its green : the livid cholera-tint had vanished from the 
 face of nature : the hills rose clear round the horizon, ab- 
 solved from that pale malaria-haze. 
 
 Caroline's youth could now be of some avail to her, and 
 so could her mother's nurture : both crowned by God's 
 blessing, sent in the pure west wind blowing soft as fresh 
 through the ever-open chamber lattice rekindled her long- 
 languishing energies. At last Mrs. Pryor saw that it was 
 permitted to hope a genuine, material convalescence had 
 commenced. It was not merely Caroline's smile which was 
 brighter, or her spirits which were cheered, but a certain look 
 had passed from her face and eye a look dread and unde- 
 scribable, but which will easily be recalled by those who 
 have watched the couch of dangerous disease. Long before 
 the emaciated outlines of her aspect began to fill, or its de- 
 parted colour to return, a more subtle change took place : all 
 grew softer and warmer. Instead of a marble mask and 
 glassy eye, Mrs. Pryor saw laid on the pillow a face pale 
 and wasted enough, perhaps more haggard than the other 
 appearance, but less awful ; for it was a sick, living girl- 
 not a mere white mould, or rigid piece of statuary. 
 
 16
 
 452 SHIRLEY 
 
 Now, too, she was not always petitioning to drink. The 
 words ' I am so thirsty,' ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, 
 when she had swallowed a morsel, she would say it had re- 
 vived her : all descriptions of food were no longer equally 
 distasteful ; she could be induced, sometimes, to indicate a 
 preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care 
 did not her nurse prepare what was selected ! How she 
 watched her as she partook of it ! 
 
 Nourishment brought strength. She could sit up. Then 
 she longed to breathe the fresh air, to revisit her flowers, to see 
 how the fruit had ripened. Her uncle, always liberal, had 
 bought a garden-chair for her express use : he carried her 
 down in his own arms, and placed her in it himself, and 
 William Farren was there to wheel her round the walks, to 
 show her what he had done amongst her plants, to take her 
 directions for further work. 
 
 William and she found plenty to talk about : they had a 
 dozen topics in common ; interesting to them, unimportant 
 to the rest of the world. They took a similar interest 
 in animals, birds, insects, and plants : they held similar 
 doctrines about humanity to the lower creation ; and had a 
 similar turn for minute observation on points of natural 
 history. The nest and proceedings of some ground-bees, 
 which had burrowed in the turf under an old cherry-tree, 
 was one subject of interest : the haunts of certain hedge- 
 sparrows, and the welfare of certain pearly eggs and callow 
 fledglings, another. 
 
 Had Chambcrs's Journal existed in those days, it would 
 certainly have formed Miss Helstone's and Farren's favourite 
 periodical. She would have subscribed for it ; and to him 
 each number would duly have been lent : both would have 
 put implicit faith, and found great savour in its marvellous 
 anecdotes of animal sagacity. 
 
 This is a digression ; but it suffices to explain why 
 Caroline would have no other hand than William's to guide 
 her chair, and why his society and conversation sufficed to 
 give interest to her garden-airings.
 
 THE WEST WIND BLOWS 453 
 
 Mrs. Pryor, walking near, wondered how her daughter 
 could be so much at ease with a ' man of the people.' She 
 found it impossible to speak to him otherwise than stiffly. 
 She felt as if a great gulf lay between her caste and his ; 
 and that to cross it, or meet him half-way, would be to de- 
 grade herself. She gently asked Caroline ' Are you not 
 afraid, my dear, to converse with that person so unre- 
 servedly ? He may presume, and become troublesomely 
 garrulous.' 
 
 ' William presume, mamma ? You don't know him. He 
 never presumes : he is altogether too proud and sensitive to 
 do so. William has very fine feelings.' 
 
 And Mrs. Pryor smiled sceptically at the naive notion of 
 that rough-handed, rough-headed, fustian-clad clown having 
 ' fine feelings.' 
 
 Farren, for his part, showed Mrs. Pryor only a very sulky 
 brow. He knew when he was misjudged, and was apt to 
 turn unmanageable with such as failed to give him his due. 
 
 The evening restored Caroline entirely to her mother, 
 and Mrs. Pryor liked the evening ; for then, alone with her 
 daughter, no human shadow came between her and what she 
 loved. During the day she would have her stiff demeanour 
 and cool moments, as was her wont. Between her and Mr. 
 Helstone a very respectful but most rigidly ceremonious 
 intercourse was kept up : anything like familiarity would 
 have bred contempt at once in one or both these personages ; 
 but by dint of strict civility and well-maintained distance, 
 they got on very smoothly. 
 
 Towards the servants, Mrs. Pryor's bearing was not 
 uncourteous, but shy, freezing, ungenial. Perhaps it was 
 diffidence rather than pride which made her appear so 
 haughty ; but, as was to be expected, Fanny and Eliza 
 failed to make the distinction, and she was unpopular with 
 them accordingly. She felt the effect produced : it rendered 
 her at times dissatisfied with herself for faults she could 
 not help ; and with all else, dejected, chill, and taciturn. 
 This mood changed to Caroline's influence, and to that
 
 454 SHIELEY 
 
 influence alone. The dependent fondness of her nursling, 
 the natural affection of her child, came over her suavely : her 
 frost fell away ; her rigidity unbent : she grew smiling and 
 pliant. Not that Caroline made any wordy profession of 
 love that would ill have suited Mrs. Pryor: she would 
 have read therein the proof of insincerity ; but she hung on 
 her with easy dependence ; she confided in her with fearless 
 reliance : these things contented the mother's heart. 
 
 She liked to hear her daughter say ' Mamma, do this.' 
 1 Please, mamma, fetch me that.' ' Mamma, read to me.' 
 1 Sing a little, mamma.' 
 
 Nobody else not one living thing had ever so claimed 
 her services, so looked for help at her hand. Other people 
 were always more or less reserved and stiff with her, as she 
 was reserved and stiff with them ; other people betrayed 
 consciousness of, and annoyance at her weak points : Caroline 
 no more showed such wounding sagacity or reproachful 
 sensitiveness now, than she had done when a suckling of 
 three mouths old. 
 
 Yet Caroline could find fault. Blind to the constitu- 
 tional defects that were incurable, she had her eyes wide 
 open to the acquired habits that were susceptible of remedy. 
 On certain points she would quite artlessly lecture her 
 parent ; and that parent, instead of being hurt, felt a sensa- 
 tion of pleasure in discovering that the girl dared lecture her ; 
 that she was so much at home with her. 
 
 ' Mamma, I am determined you shall not wear that old 
 gown any more ; its fashion is not becoming : it is too 
 straight in the skirt. You shall put on your black silk every 
 afternoon ; in that you look nice : it suits you ; and you 
 shall have a black satin dress for Sundays a real satin- 
 not a satinet or any of the shams. And, mamma, when 
 you get the new one, mind you must wear it.' 
 
 ' My dear, I thought of the black silk serving me as a 
 b.;st dress for many years yet, and I wished to buy you 
 several things.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, mamma : my uncle gives me cash to get
 
 THE WEST WIND BLOWS 455 
 
 what I want : you know he is generous enough ; and I 
 have set my heart on seeing you in a black satin. Get it 
 soon, and let it be made by a dressmaker of my recommend- 
 ing ; let me choose the pattern. You always want to 
 disguise yourself like a grandmother : you would persuade 
 one that you are old and ugly, not at all ! On the con- 
 trary, when well dressed and cheerful, you are very comely 
 indeed. Your smile is so pleasant, your teeth are so white, 
 your hair is still such a pretty light colour. And then you 
 speak like a young lady, with such a clear, fine tone, and 
 you sing better than any young lady I ever heard. Why 
 do you wear such dresses and bonnets, mamma, such as 
 nobody else ever wears ? ' 
 
 ' Does it annoy you, Caroline ? ' 
 
 ' Very much : it vexes me even. People say you are 
 miserly ; and yet you are not, for you give liberally to the 
 poor and to religious societies : though your gifts are 
 conveyed so secretly and quietly, that they are known to 
 few except the receivers. But I will be your maid myself : 
 when I get a little stronger I will set to work, and you must 
 be good, mamma, and do as I bid you.' 
 
 And Caroline, sitting near her mother, re-arranged her 
 muslin handkerchief, and re-smoothed her hair. 
 
 ' My own mamma,' then she went on, as if pleasing 
 herself with the thought of their relationship, ' who belongs 
 to me, and to whom I belong ! I am a rich girl now : I 
 have something I can love well, and not be afraid of loving. 
 Mamma, who gave you this little brooch? Let me unpin 
 it and look at it.' 
 
 Mrs. Pryor, who usually shrank from meddling fingers 
 and near approach, allowed the licence complacently. 
 
 ' Did papa give you this, mamma? ' 
 
 ' My sister gave it me my only sister, Gary. Would 
 that your aunt Caroline had lived to see her niece ! ' 
 
 'Have you nothing of papa's? no trinket, no gift 
 of his ? ' 
 
 ' I have one thing.'
 
 456 SHIELEY 
 
 ' That you prize ? ' 
 
 ' That I prize.' 
 
 1 Valuable and pretty ? ' 
 
 ' Invaluable and sweet to me.' 
 
 ' Show it, mamma. Is it here or at Fieldhead ? ' 
 
 ' It is talking to me now,- leaning on me : its arms are 
 round me." 
 
 ' Ah, mamma ! you mean your teasing daughter, who 
 will never let you alone ; who, when you go into your room, 
 cannot help running to seek for you ; who follows you 
 up-stairs and down, like a dog.' 
 
 ' Whose features still give me such a strange thrill some- 
 times. I half fear your fair looks yet, child.' 
 
 ' You don't ; you can't. Mamma, I am sorry papa was 
 not good : I do so wish he had been. Wickedness spoils 
 and poisons all pleasant things : it kills love. If you and I 
 thought each other wicked, we could not love each other, 
 could we ? ' 
 
 ' And if we could not brust each other, Gary ? ' 
 
 1 How miserable we should be ! Mother, before I knew 
 you, I had an apprehension that you were not good, that I 
 could not esteem you : that dread damped my wish to see 
 you ; and now my heart is elate because I find you perfect, 
 almost ; kind, clever, nice. Your sole fault is that you 
 are old-fashioned, and of that I shall cure you. Mamma, 
 put your work down : read to me. I like your southern 
 accent : it is so pure, so soft. It has no rugged burr, no nasal 
 twang, such as almost every one's voice here in the north 
 has. My uncle and Mr. Hall say that you are a fine reader, 
 mamma. Mr. Hall said he never heard any lady read with 
 such propriety of expression, or purity of accent.' 
 
 ' I wish I could reciprocate the compliment, Gary ; but 
 really, the first time I heard your truly excellent friend read 
 and preach, I could not understand his broad, northern 
 tongue.' 
 
 ' Could you understand me, mamma? Did I seem to 
 speak roughly ? '
 
 THE WEST WIND BLOWS 457 
 
 ' No : I almost wished you had, as I wished you had 
 looked unpolished. Your father, Caroline, naturally spoke 
 well ; quite otherwise than your worthy uncle : correctly, 
 gently, smoothly. You inherit the gift.' 
 
 ' Poor papa I When he was so agreeable, why was he 
 not good ? ' 
 
 'Why, he was as he was and, happily, of that you, 
 child, can form no conception I cannot tell : it is a deep 
 mystery. The key is in the hands of his Maker : there I 
 leave it.' 
 
 ' Mamma, you will keep stitching, stitching away : put 
 down the sewing ; I am an enemy to it. It cumbers your 
 lap, and I want it for my head : it engages your eyes, and I 
 want them for a book. Here is your favourite Cowper.' 
 
 These importunities were the mother's pleasure. If 
 ever she delayed compliance, it was only to hear them 
 repeated, and to enjoy her child's soft, half-playful, half- 
 petulant urgency. And then, when she yielded, Caroline 
 would say, archly, ' You will spoil me, mamma. I always 
 thought I should like to be spoiled, and I find it very 
 sweet.' 
 
 So did Mrs. Pryor.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 
 
 BY the time the Fieldhead party returned to Briarfield, 
 Caroline was nearly well. Miss Keeldar, who had received 
 news by post of her fz'iend's convalescence, hardly suffered 
 an hour to elapse between her arrival at home and her first 
 call at the Rectory. 
 
 A shower of rain was falling gently, yet fast, on the late 
 flowers and russet autumn shrubs, when the garden-wicket 
 was heard to swing open, and Shirley's well-known form 
 passed the window. On her entrance, her feelings were 
 evinced in her own peculiar fashion. When deeply moved, 
 by serious fears or joys, she was not garrulous. The strong 
 emotion was rarely suffered to influence her tongue ; and 
 even her eye refused it more than a furtive and fitful 
 conquest. She took Caroline in her arms, gave her one 
 look, one kiss, then said ' You are better.' 
 
 And a minute after ' I see you are safe now, but take 
 care. God grant your health may be called on to sustain 
 no more shocks ! ' 
 
 She proceeded to talk fluently about the journey. In 
 the midst of vivacious discourse, her eye still wandered to 
 Caroline : there spoke in its light a deep solicitude, some 
 trouble, and some amaze. 
 
 ' She may be better,' it said ; ' but how weak she still is ! 
 What peril she has come through ! ' 
 
 Suddenly her glance reverted to Mrs. Pryor : it pierced 
 her through. 
 
 ' When will my governess return to me ? ' she asked.
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 459 
 
 ' May I tell her all ? ' demanded Caroline of her mother. 
 Leave being signified by a gesture, Shirley was presently 
 enlightened on what had happened in her absence. 
 
 ' Very good ! ' was the cool comment. ' Very good ! But 
 it is no news to me.' 
 
 ' What ! Did you know ? ' 
 
 ' I guessed long since the whole business. I have heard 
 somewhat of Mrs. Pryor's history not from herself, but 
 from others. With every detail of Mr. James Helstone's 
 career and character I was acquainted : an afternoon's sitting 
 and conversation with Miss Mann had rendered me familiar 
 therewith : also he is one of Mrs. Yorke's warning-examples 
 one of the blood-red lights she hangs out to scare young 
 ladies from matrimony. I believe I should have been scep- 
 tical about the truth of the portrait traced by such fingers 
 both these ladies take a dark pleasure in offering to view the 
 dark side of life but I questioned Mr. Yorke on the subject, 
 and he said " Shirley, my woman, if you want to know 
 aught about yond' James Helstone, I can only say he was a 
 man-tiger. He was handsome, dissolute, soft, treacherous, 
 courteous, cruel Don't cry, Gary ; we'll say no more 
 
 about it.' 
 
 ' I am not crying, Shirley; or if I am, it is nothing go 
 on : you are no friend if you withhold from me the truth : I 
 hate that false plan of disguising, mutilating the truth.' 
 
 ' Fortunately, I have said pretty nearly all that I have to 
 pay, except that your uncle himself confirmed Mr. Yorke's 
 words : for he too scorns a lie, and deals in none of those 
 conventional subterfuges that are shabbier than lies.' 
 
 4 But papa is dead : they should let him alone now.' 
 
 ' They should and we will let him alone. Cry away, 
 Cary, it will do you good : it is wrong to check natural tears ; 
 besides, I choose to please myself by sharing an idea that at 
 this moment beams in your mother's eye while she looks at 
 you : every drop blots out a sin. Weep your tears have the 
 virtue which the rivers of Damascus lacked : like Jordan, they 
 can cleanse a leprous memory.'
 
 460 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Madam,' she continued, addressing Mrs. Pryor, ' did you 
 think I could be daily in the habit of seeing you and your 
 daughter together marking your marvellous similarity in 
 many points observing, pardon me your irrepressible 
 emotions in the presence, and still more in the absence of 
 your child, and not form my own conjectures ? I formed 
 them, and they are literally correct. I shall begin to think 
 myself shrewd.' 
 
 ' And you said nothing ? ' observed Caroline, who soon 
 regained the quiet control of her feelings. 
 
 ' Nothing. I had no warrant to breathe a word on the 
 subject. My business it was not : I abstained from making 
 it such.' 
 
 ' You guessed so deep a secret, and did not hint that you 
 guessed it ? ' 
 
 'Is that so difficult?' 
 
 1 It is not like you.' 
 
 ' How do you know ? ' 
 
 I You are not reserved. You are frankly communicative.' 
 
 I 1 may be communicative, yet know where to stop. In 
 showing my treasure, I may withhold a gem or two a curious, 
 unbought, graven stone an amulet, of whose mystic glitter 
 I rarely permit even myself a glimpse. Good-day.' 
 
 Caroline thus seemed to get a view of Shirley's character 
 under a novel aspect. Erelong, the prospect was renewed : 
 it opened upon her. 
 
 No sooner had she regained sufficient strength to bear a 
 change of scene the excitement of a little society than Miss 
 Keeldar sued daily for her presence at Fieldhead. Whether 
 Shirley had become wearied of her honoured relatives is not 
 known : she did not say she was ; but she claimedand retained 
 Caroline with an eagerness which proved that an addition to 
 that worshipful company was not unwelcome. 
 
 The Sympsons were Church people : of course, the Rec- 
 tor's niece was received by them with courtesy. Mr. Sympson 
 proved to be a man of spotless respectability, worrying temper, 
 pious principles, and worldly views ; his lady was a very
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 461 
 
 good woman, patient, kind, well-bred. She had been brought 
 up on a narrow system of views starved on a few prejudices : 
 a mere handful of bitter herbs ; a few preferences, soaked till 
 their natural flavour was extracted, and with no seasoning 
 added in the cooking ; some excellent principles, made up in 
 a stiff raised-crust of bigotry, difficult to digest : far too sub- 
 missive was she to complain of this diet, or to ask for a crumb 
 beyond it. 
 
 The daughters were an example to their sex. They were 
 tall, with a Roman nose a-piece. They had been educated 
 faultlessly. All they did was well done. History, and the 
 most solid books, had cultivated their minds. Principles and 
 opinions they possessed which could not be mended. More 
 exactly-regulated lives, feelings, manners, habits, it would 
 have been difficult to find anywhere. They knew by heart 
 a certain young-ladies'-school-roora code of laws on language, 
 demeanour, &c.; themselves never deviated from its curious 
 little pragmatical provisions ; and they regarded with secret, 
 whispered horror, all deviations in others. The Abomination 
 of Desolation was no mystery to them : they had discovered 
 that unutterable Thing in the characteristic others call Origi- 
 nality. Quick were they to recognise the signs of this evil ; 
 and wherever they saw its trace whether in look, word, or 
 deed ; whether they read it in the fresh, vigorous style of a 
 book, or listened to it in interesting, unhackneyed, pure, ex- 
 pressive language they shuddered they recoiled : danger 
 was above their heads peril about their steps. What was 
 this strange thing? Being unintelligible, it must be bad. 
 Let it be denounced and chained up. 
 
 Henry Sympson the only son, and youngest child of the 
 family was a boy of fifteen. He generally kept with hia 
 tutor ; when he left him, he sought his cousin Shirley. This 
 boy differed from his sisters ; he was little, lame, and pale ; 
 his large eyes shone somewhat languidly in a wan orbit : they 
 were, indeed, usually rather dim but they were capable of 
 illumination : at times, they could not only shine, but blaze : 
 inward emotiou qould likewise give colour to his cheek and
 
 462 SHIRLEY 
 
 decision to his crippled movements. Henry's mother loved 
 him ; she thought his peculiarities were a mark of election : 
 he was not like other children, she allowed ; she believed him 
 regenerate a new Samuel called of God from his birth : 
 he was to be a clergyman. Mr. and the Misses Sympson, 
 not understanding the youth, let him much alone. Shirley 
 made him her pet ; and he made Shirley his playmate. 
 
 In the midst of this family-circle or rather outside it 
 moved the tutor the satellite. 
 
 Yes : Louis Moore was a satellite of the house of Symp- 
 son : connected, yet apart ; ever attendant ever distant. 
 Each member of that correct family treated him with proper 
 dignity. The father was austerely civil, sometimes irritable ; 
 the mother, being a kind woman, was attentive, but formal ; 
 the daughters saw in him an abstraction, not a man. It 
 seemed, by their manner, that their brother's tutor did not 
 live for them. They were learned : so was he but not for them. 
 They were accomplished : he had talents too, imperceptible 
 to their senses. The most spirited sketch from his fingers 
 was a blank to their eyes ; the most original observation from 
 his lips fell unheard on their ears. Nothing could exceed the 
 propriety of their behaviour. 
 
 I should have said, nothing could have equalled it ; but I 
 remember a fact which strangely astonished Caroline Hel- 
 stone. It was to discover that her cousin had absolutely 
 no sympathizing friend at Fieldhead : that to Miss Keeldar 
 he was as much a mere teacher, as little a gentleman, as little 
 a man, as to the estimable Misses Sympson. 
 
 What had befallen the kind-hearted Shirley that she 
 should be so indifferent to the dreary position of a fellow- 
 creature thus isolate.! under her roof ? She was not, perhaps, 
 haughty to him, but she never noticed him : she let him alone. 
 He came and went, spoke or was silent, and she rarely 
 recognised his existence. 
 
 As to Louis Moore himself, he had the air of a man used 
 to this life, and who had made up his mind to bear it for a 
 time. His faculties seemed walled up in him, and were
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 463 
 
 Unmurmuring in their captivity. He never laughed ; he 
 seldom smiled, he was uncomplaining. He fulfilled the 
 round of his duties scrupulously. His pupil loved him ; he 
 asked nothing more than civility from the rest of the world. 
 It even appeared that he would accept nothing more : in that 
 abode at least ; for when his cousin Caroline made gentle 
 overtures of friendship, he did not encourage them ; he 
 rather avoided than sought her. One living thing alone, 
 besides his pale, crippled scholar, he fondled in the house, and 
 that was the ruffianly Tartar ; who, sullen and impracticable 
 to others, acquired a singular partiality for him : a partiality 
 so marked that sometimes, when Moore, summoned to a meal, 
 entered the room and sat down unwelcomed, Tartar would 
 rise from his lair at Shirley's feet, and betake himself to the 
 taciturn tutor. Once but once she noticed the desertion ; 
 and holding out her white hand, and speaking softly, tried to 
 coax him back. Tartar looked, slavered, and sighed, as his 
 manner was, but yet disregarded the invitation, and coolly 
 settled himself on his haunches at Louis Moore's side. That 
 gentleman drew the dog's big, black-muzzled head on to his 
 knee, patted him, and smiled one little smile to himself. 
 
 An acute observer might have remarked, in the course of 
 the same evening, that after Tartar had resumed his allegi- 
 ance to Shirley, and was once more couched near her foot- 
 stool, the audacious tutor by one word and gesture fascinated 
 him again. He pricked up his ears at the word ; he started 
 erect at the gesture, and came, with head lovingly depressed, 
 to receive the expected caress : as it was given, the signi- 
 ficant smile again rippled across Moore's quiet face. 
 
 ' Shirley,' said Caroline, one day, as they two were 
 sitting alone in the summer-house, ' did you know th.it my 
 cousin Louis was tutor in your uncle's family before the 
 Sympsons came down here ? ' 
 
 Shirley's reply was not so prompt as her responses usually
 
 464 SHIRLEY 
 
 were, but at last she answered, ' Yes, of course : I knew it 
 well.' 
 
 'I thought you must have been aware of the circum- 
 stance.' 
 
 ' Well ! what then ? ' 
 
 ' It puzzles me to guess how it chanced that you never 
 mentioned it to me.' 
 
 1 Why should it puzzle you ? ' 
 
 ' It seems odd. I cannot account for it. You talk a 
 great deal, you talk freely. How was that circumstance 
 never touched on ? ' 
 
 ' Because it never was/ and Shirley laughed. 
 
 ' You are a singular being ! ' observed her friend : ' I 
 thought I knew you quite well : I begin to find myself mis- 
 taken. You were silent as the grave about Mrs. Pryor ; 
 and now, again, here is another secret. But why you made 
 it a secret is the mystery to me.' 
 
 ' I never made it a secret : I had no reason for so doing. 
 If you had asked me who Henry's tutor was, I would have 
 told you : besides, I thought you knew.' 
 
 ' I am puzzled about more things than one in this matter : 
 you don't like poor Louis, why? Are you impatient at 
 what you perhaps consider his servile position? Do 
 you wish that Robert's brother were more highly placed ? ' 
 
 ' Robert's brother, indeed ! ' was the exclamation, uttered 
 in a tone like the accents of scorn ; and, with a movement of 
 proud impatience, Shirley snatched a rose from a branch 
 peeping through the open lattice. 
 
 ' Yes,' repeated Caroline, with mild firmness ; ' Robert's 
 brother. He is thus closely related to Gerard Moore of the 
 Hollow, though nature has not given him features so 
 handsome, or an air so noble as his kinsman ; but his 
 blood is as good, and he is as much a gentleman, were he 
 free.' 
 
 ' Wise, humble, pious Caroline ! ' exclaimed Shirley, 
 ironically. ' Men and angels, hear her ! We should not 
 despise plain features, nor a laborious yet honest occupation,
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 465 
 
 should we? Look at the subject of your panegyric, he is 
 there in the garden,' she continued, pointing through an 
 aperture in the clustering creepers ; and by that aperture 
 Louis Moore was visible, coming slowly down the walk. 
 
 ' He is not ugly, Shirley,' pleaded Caroline ; ' he is not 
 ignoble ; he is sad : silence seals his mind ; but I believe 
 him to be intelligent, and be certain, if he had not something 
 very commendable in his disposition, Mr. Hall would never 
 seek his society as he does.' 
 
 Shirley laughed : she laughed again ; each time with a 
 slightly sarcastic sound. 
 
 ' Well, well,' was her comment. ' On the plea of the 
 man being Cyril Hall's friend and Eobert Moore's brother, 
 we'll just tolerate his existence won't we, Gary? You 
 believe him to be intelligent, do you ? Not quite an idiot 
 eh ? Something commendable in his disposition ! id est, 
 not an absolute ruffian. Good ! Your representations have 
 weight with me ; and to prove that they have, should he come 
 this way I will speak to him.' 
 
 He approached the summer-house : unconscious that it 
 was tenanted, he sat down on the step. Tartar, now his 
 customary companion, had followed him, and he crouched 
 across his feet. 
 
 ' Old boy ! ' said Louis, pulling his tawny ear, or rather 
 the mutilated remains of that organ, torn and chewed in a 
 hundred battles, ' the autumn sun shines as pleasantly on us 
 as on the fairest and richest. This garden is none of ours, 
 but we enjoy its greenness and perfume, don't we? ' 
 
 He sat silent, still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with 
 exceeding affection. A faint twittering commenced among 
 the trees round : something fluttered down as light as 
 leaves : they were little birds, which, lighting on the sward 
 at shy distance, hopped as if expectant. 
 
 ' The small brown elves actually remember that I fed 
 them the other day,' again soliloquized Louis. ' They want 
 some more biscuit : to-day, I forgot to save a fragment. 
 Eager little sprites, I have not a crumb for you.'
 
 466 SHIRLEY 
 
 He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out empty. 
 
 ' A want easily supplied,' whispered the listening Miss 
 Keeldar. 
 
 She took from her reticule a morsel of sweet-cake : for 
 that repository was never destitute of something available to 
 throw to the chickens, young ducks, or sparrows ; she 
 crumbled it, and bending over his shoulder, put the crumbs 
 into his hand. 
 
 ' There,' said she ; ' there is a Providence for the impro- 
 vident.' 
 
 ' This September afternoon is pleasant,' observed Louis 
 Moore, as not at all discomposed he calmly cast the 
 crumbs on to the grass. 
 
 ' Even for you ? ' 
 
 1 As pleasant for me as for any monarch.' 
 
 ' You take a sort of harsh, solitary triumph in drawing 
 pleasure out of the elements, and the inanimate and lower 
 animate creation.' 
 
 ' Solitary, but not harsh. With animals I feel I am 
 Adam's son ; the heir of him to whom dominion was given 
 over " every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
 Your dog likes and follows me ; when I go into that yard, 
 the pigeons from your dove-cot flutter at my feet; your 
 mare in the stable knows me as well as it knows you, and 
 obeys me better.' 
 
 ' And my roses smell sweet to you, and my trees give you 
 shade.' 
 
 ' And,' continued Louis, ' no caprice can withdraw these 
 pleasures from me : they are mine.' 
 
 He walked off: Tartar followed him, as if in duty and 
 affection bound, and Shirley remained standing on the 
 summer-house step. Caroline saw her face as she looked 
 after the rude tutor : it was pale, as if her pride bled 
 inwardly. 
 
 ' You see,' remarked Caroline, apologetically, ' his feelings 
 are so often hurt, it makes him morose.' 
 
 ' You see,' retorted Shirley, with ire, ' he is a topic on
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 467 
 
 which you and I shall quarrel if we discuss it often ; so drop 
 it henceforward and for ever.' 
 
 ' I suppose he has more than once behaved in this way,' 
 thought Caroline to herself ; ' and that renders Shirley so 
 distant to him : yet I wonder she cannot make allowance 
 for character and circumstances : I wonder the general 
 modesty, manliness, sincerity of his nature, do not plead 
 with her in his behalf. She is not often so inconsiderate 
 so irritable.' 
 
 The verbal testimony of two friends of Caroline's to her 
 cousin's character augmented her favourable opinion of him. 
 William Farren, whose cottage he had visited in company 
 with Mr. Hall, pronounced him a ' real gentleman : ' there 
 was not such another in Briarfield : he William ' could 
 do aught for that man. And then to see how t' bairns liked 
 him, and how t' wife took to him first minute she saw him : 
 he never went into a house but t' childer wor about him 
 directly : them little things wor like as if they'd a keener 
 sense nor grown-up folks i' finding out folk's natures.' 
 
 Mr. Hall, in answer to a question of Miss Helstone's, as 
 to what he thought of Louis Moore, replied promptly, that 
 he was the best fellow he had met with since he left 
 Cambridge. 
 
 ' But he is so grave,' objected Caroline. 
 
 ' Grave ! The finest company in the world ! Full of 
 odd, quiet, out-of-the-way humour. Never enjoyed an 
 excursion so much in my life as the one I took with him to 
 the Lakes. His understanding and tastes are so superior, it 
 does a man good to be within their influence ; and as to 
 his temper and nature, I call them fine.' 
 
 ' At Fieldhead he looks gloomy, and, I believe, has the 
 character of being misanthropical.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I fancy he is rather out of place there in a false 
 position. The Sympsons are most estimable people, but 
 not the folks to comprehend him : they think a great deal
 
 468 SHIELEY 
 
 about form and ceremony, which are quite out of Louis's 
 way.' 
 
 1 1 don't think Miss Keeldar likes him.' 
 
 1 She doesn't know him she doesn't know him ; other- 
 wise, she has sense enough to do justice to his merits.' 
 
 ' Well, I suppose she doesn't know him,' mused Caroline 
 to herself, and by this hypothesis she endeavoured to 
 account for what seemed else unaccountable. But such 
 simple solution of the difficulty was not left her long : she 
 was obliged to refuse Miss Keeldar even this negative excuse 
 for her prejudice. 
 
 One day she chanced to be in the school-room with 
 Henry Sympson, whose amiable and affectionate disposition 
 had quickly recommended him to her regard. The boy was 
 busied about some mechanical contrivance : his lameness 
 made him fond of sedentary occupation : he began to 
 ransack his tutor's desk for a piece of wax, or twine, 
 necessary to his work. Moore happened to be absent. Mr. 
 Hall, indeed, had called for him to take a long walk. Henry 
 could not immediately find the object of his search : he 
 rummaged compartment after compartment ; and, at last 
 opening an inner drawer, he came upon not a ball of cord, 
 or a lump of bees'-wax but a little bundle of small marole- 
 coloured cahiers, tied with tape. Henry looked at them. 
 
 ' What rubbish Mr. Moore stores up in his desk ! ' he 
 said : ' I hope he won't keep my old exercises so carefully.' 
 
 ' What is it ? ' 
 
 ' Old copy-books.' 
 
 He threw the bundle to Caroline. The packet looked so 
 neat externally, her curiosity was excited to see its contents. 
 If they are only copy-books, I suppose I may open 
 them ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! yes ; quite freely. Mr. Moore's desk is half mine 
 for he lets me keep all sorts of things in it and I give 
 you leave.' 
 
 On scrutiny they proved to be French compositions, 
 written in a hand peculiar but compact, and exquisitely
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 469 
 
 clean and clear. The writing was recognisable : she 
 scarcely needed the further evidence of the name signed at 
 the close of each theme, to tell her whose they were. Yet 
 that name astonished her : ' Shirley Keeldar, Sympson 
 
 Grove, shire ' (a southern county), and a date four 
 
 years back. 
 
 She tied up the packet, and held it in her hand, medi- 
 tating over it. She half felt as if, in opening it, she had 
 violated a confidence. 
 
 ' They are Shirley's, you see,' said Henry, carelessly. 
 
 ' Did you give them to Mr. Moore ? She wrote them 
 with Mrs. Pryor, I suppose ? ' 
 
 I She wrote them in my school-room at Sympson Grove, 
 when she lived with us there. Mr. Moore taught her 
 French : it is his native language.' 
 
 I 1 know .... Was she a good pupil, Henry ? ' 
 
 1 She was a wild, laughing thing, but pleasant to have 
 in the room : she made lesson-time charming. She learned 
 fast you could hardly tell when or how. French was 
 nothing to her : she spoke it quick quick ; as quick as 
 Mr. Moore himself.' 
 
 ' Was she obedient ? Did she give trouble ? ' 
 
 ' She gave plenty of trouble in a way : she was giddy, 
 but I liked her. I'm desperately fond of Shirley.' 
 
 ' Desperately fond you small simpleton ! You don't 
 know what you say.' 
 
 ' I am desperately fond of her : she is the light of my 
 eyes : I said so to Mr. Moore last night.' 
 
 ' He would reprove you for speaking with exaggeration.' 
 
 ' He didn't. He never reproves and reproves, as girls' 
 governesses do. He was reading, and he only smiled into 
 his book, and said that if Miss Keeldar was no more than 
 that, she was less than he took her to be ; for I was but a 
 dim-eyed, short-sighted little chap. I'm afraid I am a poor 
 unfortunate, Miss Caroline Helstone. 1 am a cripple, you 
 know.' 
 
 ' Never mind, Henry, you are a very nice little fellow ;
 
 470 SHIKLEY 
 
 and if God has not given you health and strength, He has 
 given you a good disposition, and an excellent heart and 
 brain.' 
 
 ' I shall be despised. I sometimes think both Shirley 
 and you despise me." 
 
 ' Listen, Henry. Generally, I don't like school-boys : I 
 have a great horror of them. They seem to me little 
 ruffians, who take an unnatural delight in killing and 
 tormenting birds, and insects, and kittens, and whatever is 
 weaker than themselves ; but you are so different, I am 
 quite fond of you. You have almost as much sense as a 
 man (far more, God wot,' she muttered to herself, ' than 
 many men) ; you are fond of reading, and you can talk 
 sensibly about what you read.' 
 
 ' I am fond of reading. I know I have sense, and I know 
 I have feeling.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar here entered. 
 
 ' Henry,' she said, ' I have brought your lunch here : I 
 shall prepare it for you myself.' 
 
 She placed on the table a glass of new milk, a plate of 
 something which looked not unlike leather, and a utensil 
 which resembled a toasting-fork. 
 
 ' What are you two about,' she continued, ' ransacking 
 Mr. Moore's desk ? ' 
 
 ' Looking at your old copy-books,' returned Caroline. 
 
 ' My old copy-books ? ' 
 
 1 French exercise-books. Look here ! They must be held 
 precious : they are kept carefully.' 
 
 She showed the bundle. Shirley snatched it up : ' Did 
 not know one was in existence,' she said. ' I thought the 
 whole lot had long since lit the kitchen-fire, or curled the 
 maid's hair at Sympson Grove. What made you keep them, 
 Henry ? ' 
 
 ' It is not my doing : I should not have thought of it : 
 it never entered my head to suppose copy-books of value. 
 Mr. Moore put them by in the inner drawer of his desk : 
 perhaps he forgot them.'
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 471 
 
 1 C'est cela : he forgot them, no doubt,' echoed Shirley. 
 ' They are extremely well written,' she observed, com- 
 placently. 
 
 ' What a giddy girl you were, Shirley, in those days ! I 
 remember you so well : a slim, light creature whom, though 
 you were so tall, I could lift off the floor. I see you with 
 your long, countless curls on your shoulders, and your 
 streaming sash. You used to make Mr. Moore lively, that 
 is, at first : I believe you grieved him after a while.' 
 
 Shirley turned the closely written pages and said 
 nothing. Presently she observed, ' That was written one 
 winter afternoon. It was a description of a snow-scene.' 
 
 ' I remember,' said Henry ; ' Mr. Moore, when he read 
 it, cried " Voila le Francais gagn6 ! " He said it was well 
 done. Afterwards, you made him draw, in sepia, the land- 
 scape you described.' 
 
 ' You have not forgotten then, Hal ? ' 
 
 ' Not at all. We were all scolded that day for not 
 coming down to tea when called. I can remember my tutor 
 sitting at his easel, and you standing behind him, holding 
 the candle, and watching him draw the snowy cliff, the 
 pine, the deer couched under it, and the half-moon hung 
 above.' 
 
 ' Where are his drawings, Henry ? Caroline should see 
 them.' 
 
 ' In his portfolio : but it is padlocked : he has the key.' 
 
 ' Ask him for it when he comes in.' 
 
 ' You should ask him, Shirley ; you are shy of him now : 
 you are grown a proud lady to him, I notice that.' 
 
 ' Shirley, you are a real enigma,' whispered Caroline in 
 her ear. ' What queer discoveries I make day by day 
 now ! I, who thought I had your confidence. Inexplicable 
 creature ! even this boy reproves you.' 
 
 'I have forgotten " Auld Langsyne," you see, Harry,' 
 said Miss Keeldar, answering young Sympson, and not 
 heeding Caroline. 
 
 ' Which you never should have done. You don't
 
 472 SHIELEY 
 
 deserve to be a man's morning star, if you have so short 
 a memory.' 
 
 ' A man's morning star, indeed ! and by " a man " is 
 meant your worshipful self, I suppose ? Come, drink your 
 new milk while it is warm.' 
 
 The young cripple rose and limped towards the fire ; he 
 had left his crutch near the mantel-piece. 
 
 ' My poor lame darling ! ' murmured Shirley, in her 
 softest voice, aiding him. 
 
 ' Whether do you like me or Mr. Sam Wynne best, 
 Shirley ? ' inquired the boy, as she settled him in an arm- 
 chair. 
 
 ' Oh, Harry ! Sam Wynne is my aversion : you are my 
 pet.' 
 
 ' Me or Mr. Malone ? ' 
 
 ' You again, a thousand times.' 
 
 1 Yet, they are great whiskered fellows, six feet high 
 each.' 
 
 ' Whereas, as long as you live, Harry, you will never be, 
 anything more than a little pale lameter.' 
 
 ' Yes, I know.' 
 
 ' You need not be sorrowful. Have I not often told, 
 you who was almost as little, as pale, as suffering as you, 
 and yet potent as a giant, and brave as a lion ? ' 
 
 ' Admiral Horatio ? ' 
 
 1 Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson, and Duke of Bronti ; 
 great at heart as a Titan ; gallant and heroic as all the 
 world and age of chivalry ; leader of the might of England ; 
 commander of her strength on the deep; hurler of her 
 thunder over the flood.' 
 
 ' A great man : but I am not warlike, Shirley : and yet 
 my mind is so restless, I burn day and night for what I 
 can hardly tell to be to do to suffer, I think.' 
 
 1 Harry, it is your mind, which is stronger and older 
 than your frame, that troubles you. It is a captive. It lies 
 in physical bondage. But it will work its own redemption 
 yet. Study carefully, not only books but the world. You
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 473 
 
 love nature ; love her without fear. Be patient wait the 
 course of time. You will not be a soldier or a sailor, 
 Henry : but, if you live, you will be listen to my prophecy 
 you will be an author perhaps, a poet.' 
 
 ' An author ! It is a flash a flash of light to me ! I 
 will I will ! I'll write a book that I may dedicate it to 
 you.' 
 
 ' You will write it, that you may give your soul its 
 natural release. Bless me ! what am I saying ? more than 
 I understand, I believe, or can make good. Here, Hal ; 
 here is your toasted oat-cake eat and live ! ' 
 
 ' Willingly ! ' here cried a voice outside the open 
 window, ' I know that fragrance of meal bread. Miss 
 Keeldar, may I come in and partake ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. Hall ' (it was Mr. Hall, and with him was Louis 
 Moore, returned from their walk), ' there is a proper 
 luncheon laid out in the dining-room, and there are proper 
 people seated round it : you may join that society and share 
 that fare if you please ; but if your ill-regulated tastes lead 
 you to prefer ill-regulated proceedings, step in here, and do 
 as we do.' 
 
 ' I approve the perfume, and therefore shall suffer myself 
 to be led by the nose,' returned Mr. Hall, who presently 
 entered, accompanied by Louis Moore. That gentleman's 
 eye fell on his desk, pillaged. 
 
 ' Burglars ! ' said he. ' Henry, you merit the ferule.' 
 
 ' Give it to Shirley and Caroline they did it,' was alleged 
 with more attention to effect than truth. 
 
 ' Traitor and false witness ! ' cried both the girls. ' We 
 never laid hands on a thing, except in the spirit of laudable 
 inquiry.' 
 
 ' Exactly so,' said Moore, with his rare smile. ' And 
 what have you ferreted out, in your " spirit of laudable 
 inquiry " ? ' 
 
 He perceived the inner drawer open. 
 
 1 This is empty/ said he. ' Who has taken 
 
 'Here! here!' Caroline hastened to say; and she
 
 474 SHIRLEY 
 
 restored the little packet to its place. He shut it up ; he 
 locked it in with a small key attached to his watch-guard ; 
 he restored the other papers to order, closed the repository, 
 and sat down without further remark. 
 
 1 1 thought you would have scolded much more, sir/ 
 said Henry. ' The girls deserve reprimand.' 
 
 ' I leave them to their own consciences.' 
 
 'It accuses them of crimes intended as well as per- 
 petrated, sir. If I had not been here, they would have treated 
 your portfolio as they have done your desk ; but I told 
 them it was padlocked.' 
 
 ' And will you have lunch with us ? ' here interposed 
 Shirley, addressing Moore, and desirous, as it seemed, to 
 turn the conversation. 
 
 ' Certainly, if I may.' 
 
 ' You will be restricted to new milk and Yorkshire oat- 
 cake.' 
 
 ' Va pour le lait frais ! ' said Louis. ' But for your oat- 
 cake ! ' and he made a grimace. 
 
 ' He cannot eat it,' said Henry : ' he thinks it is like 
 bran, raised with sour yeast.' 
 
 ' Come, then, by special dispensation, we will allow him 
 a few cracknels ; but nothing less homely.' 
 
 The hostess rang the bell and gave her frugal orders, 
 which were presently executed. She herself measured out 
 the milk and distributed the bread round the cozy circle 
 now enclosing the bright little school-room fire. She then 
 took the post of toaster-general ; and kneeling on the rug, 
 fork in hand, fulfilled her office with dexterity. Mr. Hall, 
 who relished any homely innovation on ordinary usages, 
 and to whom the husky oat-cake was from custom suave as 
 manna seemed in his best spirits. He talked and laughed 
 gleefully now with Caroline, whom he had fixed by his 
 side, now with Shirley, and again with Louis Moore. And 
 Louis met him in congenial spirit : he did not laugh much, 
 but he uttered in the quietest tone the wittiest things. 
 Gravely spoken sentences, marked by unexpected turns and
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 475 
 
 a quite fresh flavour and poignancy, fell easily from his lips. 
 He proved himself to be what Mr. Hall had said he was 
 excellent company. Caroline marvelled at his humour, but 
 still more at his entire self-possession. Nobody there 
 present seemed to impose on him a sensation of unpleasant 
 restraint : nobody seemed a bore a check a chill to him ; 
 and yet there was the cool and lofty Miss Keeldar kneeling 
 before the fire, almost at his feet. 
 
 But Shirley was cool and lofty no longer at least not at 
 this moment. She appeared unconscious of the humility of 
 her present position or if conscious, it was only to taste a 
 charm in its lowliness. It did not revolt her pride that the 
 group to whom she voluntarily officiated as handmaid should 
 include her cousin's tutor : it did not scare her that while 
 she handed the bread and milk to the rest, she had to offer 
 it to him also ; and Moore took his portion from her hand 
 as calmly as if he had been her equal. 
 
 ' You are overheated now,' he said, when she had 
 retained the fork for some time : ' let me relieve you.' 
 
 And he took it from her with a sort of quiet authority, 
 to which she submitted passively neither resisting him nor 
 thanking him. 
 
 1 1 should like to see your pictures, Louis,' said Caroline, 
 when the sumptuous luncheon was discussed. ' Would not 
 you, Mr. Hall ? ' 
 
 ' To please you, I should ; but, for rny own part, I have 
 cut him as an artist. I had enough of him in that capacity 
 in Cumberland and Westmoreland. Many a wetting we got 
 amongst the mountains because he would persist in sitting 
 on a camp-stool, catching effects of rain-clouds, gathering 
 mists, fitful sunbeams, and what not.' 
 
 ' Here is the portfolio,' said Henry, bringing it in one 
 hand, and leaning on his crutch with the other. 
 
 Louis took it, but he still sat as if he wanted another to 
 speak. It seemed as if he would not open it unless the 
 proud Shirley deigned to show herself interested in the 
 exhibition.
 
 476 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' He makes us wait to whet our curiosity/ she said. 
 
 ' You understand opening it,' observed Louis, giving her 
 the key. ' You spoiled the lock for me once try now.' 
 
 He held it : she opened it ; and, monopolizing the 
 contents, had the fii'st view of every sketch herself. She 
 enjoyed the treat if treat it were in silence, without a 
 single comment. Moore stood behind her chair and looked 
 over her shoulder, and when she had done, and the others 
 were still gazing, he left his post and paced through the 
 room. 
 
 A carriage was heard in the lane the gate-bell rang : 
 Shirley started. 
 
 ' There are callers,' she said, ' and I shall be summoned 
 to the room. A pretty figure as they say I am to receive 
 company : I and Henry have been in the garden gathering 
 fruit half the morning. Oh, for rest under my own vine 
 and my own fig-tree ! Happy is the slave wife of the 
 Indian chief, in that she has no drawing-room duty to 
 perform, but can sit at ease weaving mats, and stringing 
 beads, and peacefully flattening her pickaninny's head in an 
 unmolested corner of her wigwam. I'll emigrate to the 
 western woods.' 
 
 Louis Moore laughed. 
 
 ' To marry a White Cloud or a Big Buffalo ; and after 
 wedlock to devote yourself to the tender task of digging 
 your lord's maize field, while he smokes his pipe or drinks 
 fire-water.' 
 
 Shirley seemed about to reply, but here the school-room 
 door unclosed, admitting Mr. Sympson. That personage 
 stood aghast when he saw the group around the fire. 
 
 ' I thought you alone, Miss Keeldar,' he said. ' I find 
 quite a party.' 
 
 And evidently from his shocked, scandalized air had he 
 not recognised in one of the party a clergyman he would 
 have delivered an extempore philippic on the extraordinary 
 habits of his niece : respect for the cloth arrested him. 
 
 ' I merely wished to announce,' he proceeded, coldly, ' that
 
 OLD COPY-BOOKS 477 
 
 the family from De Waldcn Hall, Mr., Mrs., the Misses, and 
 Mr. Sam Wynne, are in the drawing-room.' And he bowed 
 and withdrew. 
 
 'The family from De Walden Hall! Couldn't he a 
 worse set,' murmured Shirley. 
 
 She sat still, looking a little contumacious and very 
 much indisposed to stir. She was flushed with the fire : her 
 dark hair had been more than once dishevelled by the 
 morning wind that day ; her attire was a light, neatly 
 fitting, but amply flowing dress of muslin ; the shawl she 
 had worn in the garden was still draped in a careless fold 
 round her. Inrlolent, wilful, picturesque, and singularly 
 pretty was her aspect prettier than usual, as if some soft 
 inward emotion stirred who knows how? had given new 
 bloom and expression to her features. 
 
 'Shirley Shirley, you ought to go,' whispered Caroline. 
 
 ' I wonder why ? ' 
 
 She lifted her eyes, and saw in the glass over the 
 fireplace both Mr. Hall and Louis Moore gazing at her 
 gravely. 
 
 ' If,' she said, with a yielding smile ' if a majority of 
 the present company maintain that the De Walden Hall 
 people have claims on my civility, I will subdue my inclina- 
 tions to my duty. Let those who think I ought to go, hold 
 up their hands.' 
 
 Again consulting the mirror it reflected an unanimous 
 vote against her. 
 
 ' You must go,' said Mr. Hall, ' and behave courteously, 
 too. You owe many duties to society. It is not permitted 
 you to please only yourself.' 
 
 Louis Moore assented with a low ' I Fear ! hoar ! ' 
 
 Caroline, approaching her, smoothed her wavy curls, gave 
 to her attire a less artistic and more domestic grace, and 
 Shirley was put oxit of the room, protesting still, by a 
 pouting lip, against her dismissal. 
 
 'There is a curious charm about her/ observed Mr. Hall, 
 when she was gone. ' And now,' he added, ' I must away,
 
 478 SHIKLEY 
 
 for Sweeting is off to see his mother and there are two 
 funerals.' 
 
 ' Henry, get your books ; it is lesson-time,' said Moore, 
 sitting down to his desk. 
 
 ' A curious charm ! ' repeated the pupil, when he and his 
 master were left alone. ' True. Is she not a kind of white 
 witch ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Of whom are you speaking, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Of my cousin, Shirley.' 
 
 ' No irrelevant questions. Study in silence.' 
 
 Mr. Moore looked and spoke sternly sourly. Henry 
 knew this mood : it was a rare one with his tutor ; but when 
 it came he had an awe of it : he obeyed.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 
 
 Miss KEELDAR and her uncle had characters that would not 
 harmonize, that never had harmonized. He was irritable, 
 and she was spirited : he was despotic, and she liked 
 freedom ; he was worldly, and she, perhaps, romantic. 
 
 Not without purpose had he come down to Yorkshire : 
 his mission was clear, and he intended to discharge it 
 conscientiously : he anxiously desired to have his niece 
 married ; to make for her a suitable match ; give her in 
 charge to a proper husband, and wash his hands of her for 
 ever. 
 
 The misfortune was, from infancy upwards, Shirley and 
 he had disagreed on the meaning of the words ' suitable ' 
 and ' proper.' She never yet had accepted his definition ; 
 and it was doubtful whether, in the most important step of 
 her life, she would consent to accept it. 
 
 The trial soon came. 
 
 Mr. Wynne proposed in form for his sou, Samuel 
 Fawthrop Wynne. 
 
 ' Decidedly suitable ! Most proper ! ' pronounced Mr. 
 Sympson. ' A fine unencumbered estate : real substance ; 
 good connections. It must be done ! ' 
 
 He sent for his niece to the oak parlour ; he shut him- 
 self up there with her alone ; he communicated the offer ; 
 he gave his opinion ; he claimed her consent. 
 
 It was withheld. 
 
 1 No : I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.'
 
 480 SHIELEY 
 
 ' I ask why ? I must have a reason. In all respects he 
 is more than worthy of you.' 
 
 She stood on the hearth ; she was pale as the white 
 marble slab and cornice behind her ; her eyes flashed large, 
 dilated, unsmiling. 
 
 ' And I ask in what sense that young man is worthy of 
 me ? ' 
 
 ' He has twice your money, twice your common sense ; 
 equal connections, equal respectability.' 
 
 1 Had he my money counted five score times, I would 
 take no vow to love him.' 
 
 ' Please to state your objections.' 
 
 ' He has run a course of despicable, commonplace 
 profligacy. Accept that as the first reason why I spurn 
 him.' 
 
 ' Miss Keeldar, you shock me ! ' 
 
 ' That conduct alone sinks him in a gulf of immeasurable 
 inferiority. His intellect reaches no standard I can esteem : 
 there is a second stumbling-block ; his views are narrow ; 
 his feelings are blunt ; his tastes are coarse ; his manners 
 vulgar.' 
 
 ' The man is a respectable, wealthy man. To refuse him 
 is presumption on your part.' 
 
 ' I refuse, point-blank ! Cease to annoy me with the 
 subject : I forbid it ! ' 
 
 ' Is it your intention ever to marry, or do you prefer 
 celibacy ? ' 
 
 ' I deny your right to claim an answer to that question.' 
 
 1 May I ask if you expect some man of title some peer 
 of the realm to demand your hand ? ' 
 
 ' I doubt if the peer breathes on whom I would confer 
 it.' 
 
 ' Were there insanity in the family, I should believe you 
 mad. Your eccentricity and conceit touch the verge of 
 frenzy.' 
 
 ' Perhaps, ere I have finished, you will see me over- 
 leap it.'
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 481 
 
 ' I anticipate no less. Frantic and impracticable girl ! 
 Take warning ! I dare you to sully our name by a 
 mesalliance ! ' 
 
 ' Our name ! Am I called Sympson ? ' 
 
 ' God be thanked that you are not ! But be on your 
 guard ! I will not be trifled with ! ' 
 
 ' What, in the name of common law and common sense, 
 would you, or could you do, if my pleasure led me to a 
 choice you disapproved ? ' 
 
 ' Take care ! take care ! ' (warning her with voice and 
 hand that trembled alike). 
 
 ' Why ? What shadow of power have you over me ? 
 Why should I fear you ? ' 
 
 ' Take care, madam ! ' 
 
 ' Scrupulous care I will take, Mr. Sympson. Before I 
 marry, I am resolved to esteem to admire to love' 
 
 ' Preposterous stuff ! indecorous unwomanly ! ' 
 
 ' To love with my whole heart. I know I speak in an 
 unknown tongue ; but I feel indifferent whether I am com- 
 prehended or not.' 
 
 ' And if this love of yours should fall on a beggar ? ' 
 
 ' On a beggar it will never fall. Mendicancy is not 
 estimable.' 
 
 ' On a low clerk, a play-actor, a play- writer, or or 
 
 ' Take courage, Mr. Sympson ! Or what ? ' 
 
 1 Any literary scrub, or shabby, whining artist.' 
 
 ' For the scrubby, shabby, whining, I have no taste : for 
 literature and the arts, I have. And there I wonder how 
 your Fawthrop Wynne would suit me ? He cannot write a 
 note without orthographical errors ; he reads only a sporting 
 paper : he was the booby of Stilbro* grammar school ! ' 
 
 ' Unladylike language ! Great God !- to what will she 
 come ? ' He lifted hands and eyes. 
 
 ' Never to the altar of Hymen with Sain Wynne.' 
 
 ' To what will she come? Why are not the laws more 
 stringent, that I might compel her to hear reason ? ' 
 
 ' Console yourself, uncle. Were Britain a serfdom, and
 
 482 SHIBLEY 
 
 you the Czar, you could not compel me to this step. I will 
 write to Mr. Wynne. Give yourself no further trouble on 
 the subject.' 
 
 Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice 
 often takes the form of repeating again and again a similar 
 stroke of luck in the same quarter. It appeared that Miss 
 Keeldar or her fortune had by this time made a sensation 
 in the district, and produced an impression in quarters by 
 her unthought of. No less than three offers followed Mr. 
 Wynne's all more or less eligible. All were in succession 
 pressed on her by her uncle, and all in succession she 
 refused. Yet amongst them was more than one gentleman 
 of unexceptionable character, as well as ample wealth. 
 Many besides her uncle asked what she meant, and whom 
 she expected to entrap, that she was so insolently fas- 
 tidious. 
 
 At last the gossips thought they had found the key to 
 her conduct, and her uncle was sure of it; and, what is 
 more, the discovery showed his niece to him in quite a 
 new light, and he changed his whole deportment to her 
 accordingly. 
 
 Fieldhead had, of late, been fast growing too hot to hold 
 them both : the suave aunt could not reconcile them ; the 
 daughters froze at the view of their quarrels : Gertrude and 
 Isabella whispered by the hour together in their dressing- 
 room, and became chilled with decorous dread if they 
 chanced to be left alone with their audacious cousin. But, 
 as I have said, a change supervened : Mr. Sympson was 
 appeased and his family tranquillized. 
 
 The village of Nunnely has been alluded to : its old 
 church, its forest, its monastic ruins. It had also its Hall, 
 called the Priory an older, a larger, a more lordly abode 
 than any Briarfield or Whinbury owned ; and, what is 
 more, it had its man of title its baronet, which neither 
 Briarfield nor Whinbury could boast. This possession its
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 483 
 
 proudest and most prized had for years been nominal 
 only : the present baronet, a young man hitherto resident 
 in a distant province, was unknown on his Yorkshire estate. 
 
 During Miss Keeldar's stay at the fashionable watering- 
 place of Cliffbridge, she and her friends had met with and 
 been introduced to Sir Philip Nunnely. They encountered 
 him again and again on the sands, the cliffs, in the various 
 walks, sometimes at the public balls of the place. He 
 seemed solitary ; his manner was very unpretending too 
 simple to be termed affable ; rather timid than proud : he 
 did not condescend to their society he seemed glad of it. 
 
 With any unaffected individual, Shirley could easily and 
 quickly cement an acquaintance. She walked and talked 
 with Sir Philip ; she, her aunt, and cousins, sometimes took 
 a sail in his yacht. She liked him because she found him 
 kind and modest, and was charmed to feel she had the 
 power to amuse him. 
 
 One slight drawback there was where is the friendship 
 without it ? Sir Philip had a literary turn : he wrote poetry, 
 sonnets, stanzas, ballads. Perhaps Miss Keeldar thought 
 him a little too fond of reading and reciting these composi- 
 tions ; perhaps she wished the rhyme had possessed more 
 accuracy the measure more music the tropes more fresh- 
 ness the inspiration more fire ; at any rate, she always 
 winced when he recurred to the subject of his poems, and 
 usually did her best to divert the conversation into another 
 channel. 
 
 He would beguile her to take moonlight walks with him 
 on the bridge, for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of pouring 
 into her ear the longest of his ballads : he would lead her 
 away to sequestered rustic seats, whence the rush of the surf 
 to the sands was heard soft and soothing ; and when he had 
 her all to himself, and the sea lay before them, and the 
 scented shade of gardens spread round, and the tall 
 shelter of cliffs rose behind them, he would pull out his last 
 batch of sonnets, and read them in a voice tremulous with 
 emotion. He did not seem to know, that though they might
 
 484 SHIRLEY 
 
 be rhyme, they were not poetry. It appeared by Shirley's 
 downcast eye and disturbed face that she knew it, and felt 
 heartily mortified by the single foible of this good and 
 amiable gentleman. 
 
 Often she tried, as gentle as might be, to wean him from 
 this fanatic worship of the Muses : it was his monomania 
 on all ordinary subjects he was sensible enough ; and fain 
 was she to engage him in ordinary topics. He questioned 
 her sometimes about his place at Nunnely ; she was but too 
 happy to answer his interrogatories at length : she never 
 wearied of describing the antique Priory, the wild sylvan 
 park, the hoary church and hamlet ; nor did she fail to 
 counsel him to come down and gather his tenantry about 
 him in his ancestral halls. 
 
 Somewhat to her surprise Sir Philip followed her advice 
 to the letter ; and actually, towards the close of September, 
 arrived at the Priory. 
 
 He soon made a call at Fieldhead, and his first visit was 
 not his last : he said when he had achieved the round of 
 the neighbourhood that under no roof had he found such 
 pleasant shelter as beneath the massive oak beams of the 
 grey manor-house of Briarfield : a cramped, modest dwelling 
 enough, compared with his own but he liked it. 
 
 Presently, it did not suffice to sit with Shirley in her 
 panelled parlour, where others came and went, and where 
 he could rarely find a quiet moment to show her the latest 
 production of his fertile muse ; he must have her out 
 amongst, the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the still 
 waters. Tete-a-tete ramblings she shunned ; so he mado 
 parties for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest ; to 
 remoter scenes woods severed by the Wharfe, vales watered 
 by the Aire. 
 
 Such assiduity covered Miss Keeldar with distinction. 
 Her uncle's prophetic soul anticipated a splendid future : he 
 already scented the time afar off when, with nonchalant air, 
 and left foot nursed on his right knee, he should be able 
 to make dashingly familiar allusion to his ' nephew the
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 485 
 
 baronet. 1 Now his niece dawned upon Lira no longer ' a 
 mad girl,' but a ' most sensible woman.' He termed her, in 
 confidential dialogues with Mrs. Sympson, ' a truly superior 
 person : peculiar, but very clever.' He treated her with 
 exceeding deference ; rose reverently to open and shut doors 
 for her ; reddened his face, and gave himself headaches, with 
 stooping to pick up gloves, handkerchief.-;, and other loose 
 property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. 
 He would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of 
 woman's wit over man's wisdom ; commence obscure 
 apologies for the blundering mistake he had committed 
 respecting the generalship, the tactics, of ' a personage not 
 a hundred miles from Fieldhead : ' in short, he seemed elate 
 as any ' midden-cock on pattens.' 
 
 His niece viewed his manoeuvres, and received his 
 innuendoes, with phlegm : apparently, she did not above half 
 comprehend to what aim they tended. When plainly 
 charged with being the preferred of the baronet, she said, 
 she believed he did like her, and for her part she liked him : 
 she had never thought a man of rank the only son of a 
 proud, fond mother the only brother of doting sisters 
 could have so much goodness, and, on the whole, so much 
 sense. 
 
 Time proved, indeed, that Sir Philip liked her. Perhaps 
 he had found in her that ' curious charm ' noticed by Mr, 
 Hall, He sought her presence more and more ; and, at last, 
 with a frequency that attested it had beoome to him an 
 indispensable stimulus. About this time strange feelings 
 hovered round Fieldhead ; restless hopes and haggard 
 anxieties haunted some of its rooms. There was an unquiut 
 wandering of some of the inmates among the still lields 
 round the mansion ; there was a sense of expectancy that 
 kept the nerves strained. 
 
 One thing seemed clear. Sir Philip w:is not a man to 
 be despised : lie was amiable ; if not highly intellectual, he 
 was intelligent. Miss Keeldav could not allinn of him 
 what she had so bitterly afiiimed of Sam \Vynno that his
 
 486 SHIELEY 
 
 feelings were blunt, his tastes coarse, and his manners 
 vulgar. There was sensibility in his nature ; there was a 
 very real, if not a very discriminating, love of the arts ; 
 there was the English gentleman in all his deportment : as 
 to his lineage and wealth, both were, of course, far beyond 
 her claims. 
 
 His appearance had at first elicited some laughing, 
 though not ill-natured, remarks from the merry Shirley. It 
 was boyish : his features were plain and slight ; his hair 
 sandy ; his stature insignificant. But she soon checked her 
 sarcasm on this point ; she would even fire up if any one 
 else made uncomplimentary allusion thereto. He had ' a 
 pleasing countenance,' she affirmed ; ' and there was that in 
 his heart which was better than three Roman noses, than 
 the locks of Absalom, or the proportions of Saul.' A spare 
 and rare shaft she still reserved for his unfortunate poetic 
 propensity : but, even here, she would tolerate no irony save 
 her own. 
 
 In short, matters had reached a point which seemed fully 
 to warrant an observation made about this time by Mr. 
 Yorke to the tutor, Louis. 
 
 1 Yond' brother Bobert of yours seems to me to be either 
 a fool or a madman. Two months ago, I could have sworn 
 he had the game all in his own hands ; and there he runs 
 the country, and quarters himself up in London for weeks 
 together, and by the time he comes back he'll find himself 
 checkmated. Louis, " There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
 which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; " but, once 
 let slip, never returns again. I'd write to Robert, if I were 
 you, and remind him of that.' 
 
 ' Robert had views on Miss Keeldar ? ' inquired Louis, 
 as if the idea were new to him. 
 
 ' Views I suggested to him myself, and views he might 
 have realized, for she liked him.' 
 
 ' As a neighbour ? ' 
 
 ' As more than that. I have seen her change counten- 
 ance and colour at the mere mention of his name. Write
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 487 
 
 to the lad, I say, and tell him to come home. He is a finer 
 gentleman than this bit of a baronet, after all.' 
 
 ' Does it not strike you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere 
 penniless adventurer to aspire to a rich woman's hand is 
 presumptuous contemptible ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! if you are for high notions, and double-refined 
 sentiment, I've naught to say. I'm a plain, practical man 
 myself ; and if Robert is willing to give up that royal 
 prize to a lad-rival a puling slip of aristocracy I am quite 
 agreeable. At his age, in his place, with his inducements, I 
 would have acted differently. Neither baronet, nor duke, 
 nor prince, should have snatched my sweetheart from me 
 without a struggle. But you tutors are such solemn chaps : 
 it is almost like speaking to a parson to consult with you.' 
 
 Flattered and fawned upon as Shirley was just now, it 
 appeared she was not absolutely spoiled that her better 
 nature did not quite leave her. Universal report hat! 
 indeed ceased to couple her name with that of Moore, and 
 this silence seemed sanctioned by her own apparent oblivion 
 of the absentee ; but that she had not quite forgotten him 
 that she still regarded him, if not with love yet with interest 
 -seemed proved by the increased attention which at this 
 juncture of affairs a sudden attack of illness induced her to 
 show that tutor-brother of Robert's to whom she habitually 
 bore herself with strange alternations of cool reserve and 
 docile respect : now sweeping past him in all the dignity of 
 the moneyed heiress and prospective Lady Nunnely, and 
 anon accosting him as abashed school-girls are wont to 
 accost their stern professors : bridling her neck of ivory, and 
 curling her lip of carmine, if he encountered her glance, one 
 minute ; and the next submitting to the grave rebuke of his 
 eye, with as much contrition as if he had the power to inflict 
 penalties in case of contumacy. 
 
 Louis Moore had perhaps caught the fever, which for a 
 few days laid him low, in one of the poor cottages of the
 
 488 SHIRLEY 
 
 district, which he, his lame pupil, and Mr. Hall, were in the 
 habit of visiting together. At any rate he sickened, and 
 after opposing to the malady a taciturn resistance for a day 
 or two, was obliged to keep his chamber. 
 
 He lay tossing on his thorny bed one evening, Henry, 
 who would not quit him, watching faithfully beside him, 
 when a tap too light to be that of Mrs. Gill or the house- 
 maid summoned young Sympson to the door. 
 
 ' How is Mr. Moore to-night ? ' asked a low voice from 
 the dark gallery. 
 
 ' Come in and see him yourself.' 
 
 ' Is he asleep ? ' 
 
 ' I wish he could sleep. Come and speak to him, 
 Shirley.' 
 
 ' He would not like it.' 
 
 But the speaker stepped in, and Henry, seeing her 
 hesitate on the threshold, took her hand and drew her to the 
 couch. 
 
 The shaded light showed Miss Keeldar's form but 
 imperfectly, yet it revealed her in elegant attire. There was 
 a party assembled below, including Sir Philip Nunnely ; the 
 ladies were now in the drawing-room, and their hostess had 
 stolen from them to visit Henry's tutor. Her pure white 
 dress, her fair arms and neck, the trembling chainlet of gold 
 circling her throat, and quivering on her breast, glistened 
 strangely amid the obscurity of the sick-room. Her mien 
 was chastened and pensive : she spoke gently. 
 
 ' Mr. Moore, how are you to-night? ' 
 
 ' I have not been very ill, and am now better.' 
 
 ' I heard that you complained of thirst : I have brought 
 you some grapes : can you taste one ? ' 
 
 1 No : but I thank you for remembering me.' 
 
 ' Just one.' 
 
 From the rich cluster that filled a small basket held in 
 her hand, she severed a berry and offered it to his lips. He 
 shook his head, and turned aside his flushed face. 
 
 ' But what then can I bring you instead ? You have no
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 489 
 
 wish for fruit ; yet I see that your lips are parched. What 
 beverage do you prefer ? ' 
 
 ' Mrs. Gill supplies me with toast-and-water : I like it 
 best.' 
 
 Silence fell for some minutes. 
 
 ' Do you suffer ? Have you pain ? ' 
 
 1 Very little.' 
 
 ' What made you ill ? ' 
 
 Silence. 
 
 ' I wonder what caused this fever ? To what do you 
 attribute it ? ' 
 
 ' Miasma, perhaps malaria. This is autumn, a season 
 fertile in fevers.' 
 
 ' I hear you often visit the sick in Briarfield, and 
 Nunnely too, with Mr. Hall : you should be on your guard : 
 temerity is not wise.' 
 
 ' That reminds me, Miss Keeldar, that perhaps you had 
 better not enter this chamber or come near this couch. I 
 do not believe my illness is infectious : I scarcely fear ' 
 (with a sort of smile) ' you will take it ; but why should you 
 run even the shadow of a risk ? Leave me.' 
 
 ' Patience : I will go soon ; but I should like to do some- 
 thing for you before I depart any little service ' 
 
 ' They will miss you below.' 
 
 ' No, the gentlemen are still at table.' 
 
 ' They will not linger long : Sir Philip Nunnely is no 
 wine-bibber, and I hear him just now pass from the dining- 
 room to the drawing-room.' 
 
 ' It is a servant.' 
 
 ' It is Sir Philip, I know his step.' 
 
 1 Your hearing is acute.' 
 
 ' It is never dull, and the sense seems sharpened at 
 present. Sir Philip was here to tea last night. I heard 
 you sing to him some song which he had brought you. I 
 heard him, when he took his departure at eleven o'clock, 
 call you out on to the pavement, to look at the evening 
 star.'
 
 490 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' You must be nervously sensitive.' 
 
 ' I heard him kiss your hand.' 
 
 ' Impossible ! ' 
 
 4 No ; my chamber is over the hall, the window just 
 above the front door, the sash was a little raised, for I felt 
 feverish : you stood ten minutes with him on the steps : I 
 heard your discourse, every word, and I heard the salute. 
 Henry, give me some water.' 
 
 ' Let me give it him.' 
 
 But he half rose to take the glass from young Sympson, 
 and declined her attendance. 
 
 ' And can I do nothing ? ' 
 
 1 Nothing : for you cannot guarantee me a night's peace- 
 ful rest, and it is all I at present want.' 
 
 4 You do not sleep well ? ' 
 
 ' Sleep has left me.' 
 
 ' Yet you said you were not very ill ? ' 
 
 ' I am often sleepless when in high health.' 
 
 4 If I had power, I would lap you in the most placid 
 slumber ; quite deep and hushed, without a dream.' 
 
 ' Blank annihilation ! I do not ask that.' 
 
 ' With dreams of all you most desire.' 
 
 4 Monstrous delusions ! The sleep would be delirium, 
 the waking death.' 
 
 4 Your wishes are not so chimerical : you are no 
 visionary ? ' 
 
 4 Miss Keeldar, I suppose you think so ; but my character 
 is not, perhaps, quite as legible to you as a page of the last 
 new novel might be.' 
 
 ' That is possible. . . . But this sleep : I should like to 
 woo it to your pillow to win for you its favour. If I took 
 
 a book and sat down, and read some pages ? I can 
 
 well spare half-an-hour.' 
 
 ' Thank you, but I will not detain you.' 
 
 4 1 would read softly.' 
 
 ' It would not do. I am too feverish and excitable to
 
 THE FIKST BLUE-STOCKING 491 
 
 bear a soft, cooing, vibrating voice close at my ear. You 
 had better leave me. 1 
 
 ' Well, I will go.' 
 
 1 And no good-night ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, sir, yes. Mr. Moore, good-night.' (Exit Shirley.) 
 
 1 Henry, my boy, go to bed now : it is time you had 
 some repose.' 
 
 ' Sir, it would please me to watch at your bed-side all 
 night.' 
 
 ' Nothing less called for : I am getting better : there, go.' 
 
 ' Give me your blessing, sir.' 
 
 ' God bless you, my best pupil ! ' 
 
 ' You never call me your dearest pupil ! ' 
 
 ' No, nor ever shall.' 
 
 Possibly Miss Keeldar resented her former teacher's 
 rejection of her courtesy : it is certain she did not repeat the 
 offer of it. Often as her light step traversed the gallery in 
 the course of a day, it did not again pause at his door ; nor 
 did her ' cooing, vibrating voice ' disturb a second time the 
 hush of the sick-room. A sick-room, indeed, it soon ceased 
 to be ; Mr. Moore's good constitution quickly triumphed 
 over his indisposition : in a few days he shook it off, and 
 resumed his duties as tutor. 
 
 That ' Auld Langsyne ' had still its authority both with 
 preceptor and scholar, was proved by the manner in which 
 he sometimes promptly passed the distance she usually 
 maintained between them, and put down her high reserve 
 with a firm, quiet hand. 
 
 One afternoon the Sympson family were gone out to 
 take a carriage airing. Shirley, never sorry to snatch a 
 reprieve from their society, had remained behind, detained 
 by business, as she said. The business a little letter- 
 writingwas soon despatched after the yard-gates had 
 closed on the carriage : Miss Keeldar betook herself to the 
 garden.
 
 492 SHIRLEY 
 
 It was a peaceful autumn day. The gilding of the Indian 
 summer mellowed the pastures far and wide. The russet 
 woods stood ripe to be stript, but were yet full of leaf. The 
 purple of heath-bloom, faded but not withered, tinged the 
 hills. The beck wandered down to the Hollow, through a 
 silent district ; no wind followed its course, or haunted its 
 woody borders. Fieldhcad gardens bore the seal of gentle 
 decay. On the walks, swept that morning, yellow leaves 
 had fluttered down again. Its time of flowers, and even of 
 fruits, was over; but a scantling of apples enriched the 
 trees ; only a blossom here and there expanded pale and 
 delicate amidst a knot of faded leaves. 
 
 These single flowers the last of their race Shirley 
 culled as she wandered thoughtfully amongst the beds. She 
 was fastening into her girdle a hueless and scentless nosegay, 
 when Henry Sympson called to her as he came limping from 
 the house. 
 
 ' Shirley, Mr. Moore would be glad to see you in the 
 school-room and to hear you read a little French, if you 
 have no more urgent occupation.' 
 
 The messenger delivered his commission very simply, as 
 if it were a mere matter of course. 
 
 ' Did Mr. Moore tell you to say that ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly : why not ? And now, do come, and let us 
 once more be as we were at Sympson -grove. We used to 
 have pleasant school-hours in those days.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar, perhaps, thought that circumstances were 
 changed since then ; however, she made no remark, but 
 after a little reflection quietly followed Henry. 
 
 Entering the school-room, she inclined her head with a 
 decent obeisance, as had been her wont in former times ; 
 she removed her bonnet, and hung it up beside Henry's cap. 
 Louis Moore sat at his desk, turning the leaves of a book, 
 open before him, and marking passages with his pencil ; he 
 just moved, in acknowledgment of her curtsey, but did not 
 rise. 
 
 ' You proposed to read to me a few nights ago," said he.
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 493 
 
 ' I could not hear you then ; my attention is now at your 
 service. A little renewed practice in French may not be 
 unprofitable : your accent, I have observed, begins to 
 rust.' 
 
 1 What book shall I take ? ' 
 
 ' Here are the posthumous works of St. Pierre. Read a 
 few pages of the " Fragments de 1'Amazone." ' 
 
 She accepted the chair which he had placed in readiness 
 near his own the volume lay on his desk there was but 
 one between them, her sweeping curls drooped so low as to 
 hide the page from him. 
 
 ' Put back your hair,' he said. 
 
 For one moment, Shirley looked not quite certain 
 whether she would obey the request or disregard it : a 
 flicker of her eye beamed furtive on the professor's face ; 
 perhaps if he had been looking at her harshly or timidly, or 
 if one undecided line had marked his countenance, she would 
 have rebelled, and the lesson had ended there and then ; 
 but he was only awaiting her compliance as calm as 
 marble, and as cool. She threw the veil of tresses behind 
 her ear. It was well her face owned an agreeable outline, 
 and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness 
 of early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the con- 
 tours might have lost their grace. But what mattered that 
 in the present society ? Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared 
 to fascinate Mentor. 
 
 She began to read. The language had become strange 
 to her tongue ; it faltered : the lecture flowed unevenly, 
 impeded by hurried breath, broken by Anglicised tones. She 
 stopped. 
 
 ' I can't do it. Read me a paragraph, if you please, Mr. 
 Moore.' 
 
 What lie read, she repeated : she caught his accent in 
 three minutes. 
 
 ' Tres bien,' was the approving comment at the close of 
 the piece. 
 
 ' C'est presque le Fran^ais rattrape 1 , n'est-ce pas ? '
 
 494 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' You could not write French as you once could, I dare- 
 
 say ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! no. I should make strange work of my concords 
 now.' 
 
 ' You could not compose the devoir of " La Premiere 
 Femme Savante ? ' 
 
 ' Do you still remember that rubbish ? ' 
 
 ' Every line.' 
 
 ' I doubt you.' 
 
 ' I will engage to repeat it word for word.' 
 
 ' You would stop short at the first Hue.' 
 
 ' Challenge me to the experiment.' 
 
 ' I challenge you.' 
 
 He proceeded to recite the following : he gave it in 
 French, but we must translate, on pain of being unintelligible 
 to some readers. 
 
 And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the 
 earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw 
 the daughters of men that they were fair ; and they took them wives of 
 all which they chose.' 
 
 This was in the dawn of time, before the morning stars 
 were set, and while they yet sang together. 
 
 The epoch is so remote, the mists and dewy grey of 
 matin twilight veil it with so vague an obscurity, that all 
 distinct feature of custom, all clear line of locality, evade 
 perception and baffle research. It must suffice to know that 
 the world then existed ; that men peopled it ; that man's 
 nature, with its passions, sympathies, pains, and pleasures, 
 informed the planet and gave it soul. 
 
 A certain tribe colonized a certain spot on the globe ; of 
 what race this tribe unknown : in what region that spot 
 untold. We usually think of the East when we refer to 
 transactions of that date ; but who shall declare that there 
 was no life in the West, the South, the North ? What is to 
 disprove that this tribe, instead of camping under palm-
 
 THE FIKST BLUE-STOCKING 495 
 
 groves in Asia, wandered beneath island oak-woods rooted 
 in our own seas of Europe ? 
 
 It is no sandy plain, nor any circumscribed and scant 
 oasis I seem to realize. A forest valley, with rocky sides 
 and brown profundity of shade, formed by tree crowding on 
 tree, descends deep before me. Here, indeed, dwell human 
 beings, but so few, and in alleys so thick-branched and over- 
 arched, they are neither heard nor seen. Are they savage ? 
 doubtless. They live by the crook and the bow : half 
 shepherds, half hunters, their flocks wander wild as their 
 prey. Are they happy ? no : not more happy than we are 
 at this day. Are they good ? no : not better than our- 
 selves : their nature is our nature human both. There is 
 one in this tribe too often miserable a child bereaved of 
 both parents. None cares for this child : she is fed some- 
 times, but oftener forgotten : a hut rarely receives her : the 
 hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, 
 and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird 
 than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades : 
 sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Un- 
 heeded and unvalued, she should die : but she both lives 
 and grows : the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes 
 to her a mother : feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine 
 root and nut. 
 
 There is something in the air of this clime which fosters 
 life kindly : there must be something, too, in its dews, which 
 heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate 
 no passion, no sense ; its temperature tends to haiTnony ; its 
 breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ 
 of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely 
 fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage ; not violently 
 vivid the colouring of flower and bird : in all the grandeur 
 of these forests there is repose ; in all their freshness there 
 is tenderness. 
 
 The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, 
 bestowed on deer and dove, has not been denied to the 
 human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight
 
 496 SHIBLEY 
 
 and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould ; 
 they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, un- 
 altered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has 
 dealt rudely with the surface of her frame ; no burning sun 
 has crisped or withered her tresses : her form gleams ivory- 
 white through the trees ; her hair flows plenteous, long, and 
 glossy ; her eyes not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the 
 shade large and open, and full and dewy : above those eyes, 
 when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair 
 and ample, a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, 
 should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. 
 You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or 
 vacant ; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful : 
 though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to 
 divine. 
 
 On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, 
 being utterly alone for she had lost all trace of her tribe, 
 who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, she 
 went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night 
 arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station : the 
 oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat : the oak-boughs, 
 thick-leaved, wove a canopy. 
 
 Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple 
 fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from 
 the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death : the 
 wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held 
 happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in 
 their lair. 
 
 The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir ; occupied, how- 
 ever, rather in feeling than in thinking, in wishing, than 
 hoping, -in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, 
 the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself 
 seemed to herself the centre, a small, forgotten atom of life, 
 a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative 
 source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of 
 a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and 
 perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 4S7 
 
 needed, a star in an else starless firmament, which nor 
 shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a 
 guide, or read as a prophecy ? Could this be, she demanded, 
 when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid ; when 
 her life beat so true, and real, and potent ; when something 
 within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God- 
 given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise? 
 
 She gazed abroad on Heaven and Evening : Heaven and 
 Evening gazed back on her. She bent down, searching 
 bank, hill, river, spread dim below. All she questioned re- 
 sponded by oracles : she heard, she was impressed ; but she 
 could not understand. Above her head she raised her hands 
 joined together. 
 
 ' Guidance help comfort come ! ' was her cry. 
 
 There was no voice, nor any that answered. 
 
 She waited, kneeling, steadfastly looking up. Yonder 
 sky was sealed : the solemn stars shone alien and remote. 
 
 At last, one over-stretched chord of her agony slacked : 
 she thought Something above relented : she felt as if Some- 
 thing far round drew nigher : she heard as if Silence spoke. 
 There was no language, no word, only a tone. 
 
 Again -a fine, full, lofty tone, a deep, soft sound, like a 
 storm whispering, made twilight undulate. 
 
 Once more, profounder, nearer, clearer, it rolled har- 
 monious. 
 
 Yet, again a distinct voice passed between Heaven 
 
 and Earth. 
 
 ' Eva ! ' 
 
 If Eva were not this woman's name, she had none. She 
 rose. 
 
 ' Here am I.' 
 
 1 Eva ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, Night ! (it can be but Night that speaks) I am here ! ' 
 
 The voice, descending, reached Earth. 
 
 ' Eva ! ' 
 
 ' Lord ! ' she cried, ' behold thine handmaid ! ' 
 
 She had her religion : all tribes held some creed.
 
 498 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I come : a Comforter 1 ' 
 
 ' Lord, come quickly ! ' 
 
 The Evening flushed full of hope : the Air panted ; the 
 Moon rising before ascended large, but her light showed 
 no shape. 
 
 1 Lean towards me, Eva. Enter my arms ; repose thus. 1 
 
 1 Thus I lean, O Invisible, but felt ! And what art thou?' 
 
 1 Eva, I have brought a living draught from heaven. 
 Daughter of Man, drink of my cup ! ' 
 
 ' I drink it is as if sweetest dew visited my lips in a full 
 current. My arid heart revives : my affliction is lightened : 
 my strait and struggle ai*e gone. And the night changes ! 
 the wood, the hill, the moon, the wide sky all change ! ' 
 
 ' All change, and for ever. I take from thy vision, dark- 
 ness : I loosen from thy faculties, fetters ! I level in thy 
 path, obstacles : I, with my presence, fill vacancy : I claim 
 as mine the lost atom of life : I take to myself the spark of 
 soul burning, heretofore, forgotten ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, take me ! Oh, claim me ! This is a god.' 
 
 1 This is a son of God : one who feels himself in the 
 portion of life that stirs you : he is suffered to reclaim his 
 own, and so to foster and aid that it shall not perish 
 hopeless.' 
 
 ' A Son of God ! Am I indeed chosen ? ' 
 
 1 Thou only in this land. I saw thee that thou wert fair : 
 I knew thee that thou wert mine. To me it is given to 
 rescue, to sustain, to cherish, mine own. Acknowledge in 
 me that Seraph on earth, named Genius." 
 
 ' My glorious Bridegroom ! True Dayspring from on 
 high ! All I would have, at last I possess. I receive a 
 revelation. The dark hint, the obscure whisper, which have 
 haunted me from childhood, are interpreted. Thou art He I 
 sought. God-born, take me, thy bride ! ' 
 
 1 Unhumblwl, I can take what is mine. Did I not give 
 from the altar the very flame which lit Eva's being ? Come 
 again into the heaven whence thou wert sent.' 
 
 That Presence, invisible, but mighty, gathered her in like
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 499 
 
 a lamb to the fold; that voice, soft, but all-pervading, 
 vibrated through her heart like music. Her eye received 
 no image : and yet a sense visited her vision and her brain 
 as of the serenity of stainless air, the power of sovereign 
 seas, the majesty of marching stars, the energy of colliding 
 elements, the rooted endurance of hills wide based, and, 
 above all, as of the lustre of heroic beauty rushing victorious 
 on the Night, vanquishing its shadows like a diviner sun. 
 
 Such was the bridal-hour of Genius and Humanity. 
 Who shall rehearse the tale of their after-union ? Who 
 shall depict its bliss and bale ? Who shall tell how He, 
 between whom and the Woman God put enmity, forged 
 deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who 
 shall record the long strife between Serpent and Seraph? 
 How still the Father of Lies insinuated evil into Good 
 pride into wisdom grossness into glory pain into bliss 
 poison into passion ? How the ' dreadless Angel ' defied, 
 resisted, and repelled ? How, again and again, he refined 
 the polluted cup, exalted the debased emotion, rectified the 
 perverted impulse, detected the lurking venom, baffled the 
 frontless temptation purified, justified, watched, arid with- 
 stood? How, by his patience, by his strength, by that 
 unutterable excellence he held from God his Origin this 
 faithful Seraph fought for Humanity a good fight through 
 time ; and, when Time's course closed, and Death was 
 encountered at the end, barring with fleshless arm the 
 portals of Etci'nity, how Genius still held close his dying 
 bride, sustained her through the agony of the passage, bore 
 her triumphant into his own home Heaven ; restored her, 
 redeemed, to Jehovah her Maker; and at last, before Angel 
 and Archangel, crowned her with the crown of Immortality. 
 
 Who shall, of these things, write the chronicle ? 
 
 'I never could correct that composition/ observed Shirley, 
 as Moore concluded. ' Your censor-pencil scored it with 
 condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to 
 fathom,'
 
 500 SHIRLEY 
 
 She had taken a crayon from the tutor's desk, and was 
 drawing little leaves, fragments of pillars, broken crosses, 
 on the margin of the book. 
 
 1 French may be half -forgotten, but the habits of the 
 French lesson are retained, I see,' said Louis : ' my books 
 would now, as erst, be unsafe with you. My newly bound 
 St. Pierre would soon be like my Eacine : Miss Keeldar, 
 her mark traced on every page.' 
 
 Shirley dropped her crayon as if it burned her fingers. 
 
 'Tell me what were the faults of that devoir?' she asked. 
 ' Were they grammatical errors, or did you object to the 
 substance ? ' 
 
 ' I never said that the lines I drew were indications of 
 faults at all. You would have it that such was the case, 
 and I refrained from contradiction.' 
 
 ' What else did they denote ? ' 
 
 ' No matter now.' 
 
 1 Mr. Moore,' cried Henry, ' make Shirley repeat some of 
 the pieces she used to say so well by heart.' 
 
 ' If I ask for any, it will be " Le Cheval DompteV' ' said 
 Moore, trimming with his penknife the pencil Miss Keeldar 
 had worn to a stump. 
 
 She turned aside her head ; the neck, the clear cheek, 
 forsaken by their natural veil, were seen to flush warm. 
 
 ' Ah ! she has not forgotten, you see, sir,' said Henry, 
 exultant. ' She knows how naughty she was.' 
 
 A smile, which Shirley would not permit to expand, 
 made her lip tremble ; she bent her face, and hid it half 
 with her arms, half in her curls, which, as she stooped fell 
 loose again. 
 
 ' Certainly, I was a rebel ! ' she answered. 
 
 ' A rebel ! ' repeated Henry. ' Yes : you and papa had 
 quarrelled terribly, and you set both him and mamma, and 
 Mrs. Pryor, and everybody, at defiance : you said he had 
 insulted you 
 
 ' He had insulted me,' interposed Shirley. 
 
 ' And you wanted to leave Sympson Grove directly,
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 501 
 
 You packed your things up, and papa threw them out of 
 your trunk ; mamma cried Mrs. Pryor cried ; they both 
 stood wringing their hands, begging you to be patient, and 
 you knelt on the floor with your things and your upturned box 
 before you, looking, Shirley looking why, in one of your 
 passions. Your features, in such passions, are not distorted : 
 they are fixed, but quite beautiful : you scarcely look angry, 
 only resolute, and in a certain haste ; yet one feels that, at 
 such times, an obstacle cast across your path would be split 
 as with lightning. Papa lost heart, and called Mr. Moore. 1 
 
 ' Enough, Henry.' 
 
 ' No : it is not enough. I hardly know how Mr. Moore 
 managed, except that I recollect he suggested to papa that 
 agitation would bring on his gout ; and then he spoke quietly 
 to the ladies, and got them away ; and afterwards he said to 
 you, Miss Shirley, that it was of no use talking or lecturing 
 now, but that the tea-things were just brought into the 
 school-room, and he was very thirsty, and he would be glad 
 if you would leave your packing for the present and come 
 and make a cup of tea for him and me. You came : you 
 would not talk at first ; but soon you softened and grew 
 cheerful. Mr. Moore began to tell us about the Continent, 
 the war, and Buonaparte ; subjects we were both fond of 
 listening to. After tea he said we should neither of us leave 
 him that evening : he would not let us stray out of his sight, 
 lest we should again get into mischief. We sat one on each 
 side of him : we were so happy. I never passed so pleasant 
 an evening. The next day he gave you, missy, a lecture of 
 an hour, and wound it up by marking you a piece to learn in 
 Bossuet as a punishment-lesson, " Le Cheval Dompte." 
 You learned it instead of packing up, Shirley. \\c heard no 
 more of your running away. Mr. Moore used to tease you 
 on the subject for a year afterwards.' 
 
 'She never said a lesson with greater spirit,' subjoined 
 Moore. 'She then, for the first time, gave me the treat of 
 hearing my native tongue spoken without accent by an 
 English girl.'
 
 502 SHIRLEY 
 
 I She was as sweet as summer-cherries for a month after- 
 wards,' struck in Henry: 'a, good hearty quarrel always left 
 Shirley's temper better than it found it. 1 
 
 ' You talk of me as if I were not present,' observed Miss 
 Keeldar, who had not yet lifted her face. 
 
 ' Are you sure you arc present ? ' asked Moore : ' there 
 have been moments since my arrival here, when I have been 
 tempted to inquire of the lady of Fieldhead if she knew what 
 had become of my former pupil ? ' 
 
 ' She is here now.' 
 
 ' I see her, and humble enough ; but I would neither 
 advise Harry, nor others, to believe too implicitly in the 
 humility which one moment can hide its blushing face like a 
 modest little child, and the next lift it pale and lofty as a 
 marble Juno.' 
 
 ' One man in times of old, it is said, imparted vitality to 
 the statue he had chiselled. Others may have the contrary 
 gift of turning life to stone.' 
 
 Moore paused on this observation before he replied to it. 
 His look, at once struck and meditative, said, ' A strange 
 phrase : what may it mean ? ' He turned it over in his mind, 
 with thought deep and slow, as some German pondering 
 metaphysics. 
 
 ' You mean,' he said, at last, ' that some men inspire 
 repugnance, and so chill the kind heart. 1 
 
 ' Ingenious ! ' responded Shirley. ' If the interpretation 
 pleases you, you are welcome to hold it valid. 7 don't care.' 
 
 And with that she raised her head, lofty in look, and 
 statue-like in hue, as Louis had described it. 
 
 ' Behold the metamorphosis ! ' he said : ' scarce imagined 
 ere it is realized : a lowly nymph develops to an inacces- 
 sible goddess. But Henry must not be disappointed of his 
 recitation, and Olympia will deign to oblige him. Let us 
 begin." 
 
 I 1 have forgotten the very first line.' 
 
 1 Which I have not. My memory, if a slow, is a retentive 
 one. I acquire deliberately both knowledge and liking : the
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 603 
 
 acquisition grows into my brain, and the sentiment into my 
 breast ; and it is not as the rapid springing produce which, 
 having no root in itself, flourishes verdurous enough for a 
 time, but too soon falls withered away. Attention, Henry ! 
 Miss Keeldar consents to favour you. "Voyez ce Cheval 
 ardent et impe'tueux," so it commences.' 
 
 Miss Keeldar did consent to make the effort ; but she 
 soon stopped. 
 
 ' Unless I heard the whole repeated, I cannot continue 
 it,' she said. 
 
 ' Yet it was quickly learned, " soon gained, soon gone," ' 
 moralized the tutor. He recited the passage deliberately, 
 accurately, with slow, impressive emphasis. 
 
 Shirley, by degrees, inclined her ear as he went on. Her 
 face, before turned from him, returned towards him. When 
 he ceased, she took the word up as if from his lips : she took 
 his very tone ; she seized his very accent ; she delivered the 
 periods as he had delivered them : she reproduced his man- 
 ner, his pronunciation, his expression. 
 
 It was now her turn to petition. 
 
 ' Recall " Le Songe d'Alhalie," ' she entreated, ' and 
 say it.' 
 
 He said it for her ; she took it from him ; she found 
 lively excitement in the pleasure of making his language her 
 own : she asked for further indulgence ; all the old school- 
 pieces were revived, and with them Shirley's old school- 
 days. 
 
 He had gone through some of the best passages of Racine 
 and Corneille, and then had heard the echo of his own deep 
 tones in the girl's voice, that modulated itself faithfully, on 
 his : ' Le Chene et le Roseau,' that most beautiful of 
 La Fontaine's fables, had been recited, well recited by the 
 tutor, and the pupil had animatedly availed herself of the 
 lesson. Perhaps a simultaneous feeling seized them now, 
 that their enthusiasm had kindled to a glow, which the 
 slight fuel of French poetry no longer sufficed to feed ; 
 perhaps they longed for a trunk of English oak to be
 
 504 SHIRLEY 
 
 thrown as a Yule log to the devouring flame. Moore ob- 
 served, ' And these are our best pieces ! And we have 
 nothing more dramatic, nervous, natural ! ' 
 
 And then he smiled and was silent. His w r hole nature 
 seemed serenely alight : he stood on the hearth, leaning his 
 elbow on the mantel-piece, musing not unblissfully. 
 
 Twilight was closing on the diminished autumn day : 
 the school-room windows darkened with creeping plants, 
 from which no high October winds had as yet swept the 
 sere foliage admitted scarce a gleam of sky ; but the fire 
 gave light enough to talk by. 
 
 And now Louis Moore addressed his pupil in French ; 
 and she answered, at first, with laughing hesitation and in 
 broken phrase : Moore encouraged while he corrected her ; 
 Henry joined in the lesson ; the two scholars stood opposite 
 the master, their arms round each other's waists : Tartar, 
 who long since had craved and obtained admission, sat 
 sagely in the centre of the rug, staring at the blaze which 
 burst fitful from morsels of coal among the red cinders : the 
 group were happy enough, but 
 
 ' Pleasures are like poppies spread ; 
 You seize the flower its bloom is shed.' 
 
 The dull, rumbling sound of wheels was heard on the pave- 
 ment in the yard. 
 
 ' It is the carriage returned,' said Shirley ; ' and dinner 
 must be just ready, and I am not dressed.' 
 
 A servant came in with Mr. Moore's candle and tea : for 
 the tutor and his pupil usually dined at luncheon time. 
 
 . ' Mr. Sympson and the ladies are returned,' she said, 
 1 and Sir Philip Nunnely is with them. 1 
 
 ' How you did start, and how your hand trembled, 
 Shirley ! ' said Henry, when the maid had closed the shutter 
 and was gone. ' But I know why don't you, Mr. Moore? 
 I know what papa intends. He is a little ugly man, that 
 Sir Philip : I wish he had not come : I wish sisters and all 
 of them had stayed at De Walden Hall to dine. Shirley
 
 THE FIRST BLUE-STOCKING 505 
 
 should once more have made tea for you and me, Mr. 
 Moore, and we would have had a happy evening of it.' 
 
 Moore was locking up his desk, and putting away his 
 St. Pierre ' That was your plan was it, my boy ? ' 
 
 ' Don't you approve it, sir ? ' 
 
 ' I approve nothing Utopian. Look Life in its iron 
 face : stare Keality out of its brassy countenance. Make 
 the tea, Henry ; I shall be back in a minute.' 
 
 He left the room : so did Shirley, by another door.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 PH<EBE 
 
 SHIRLEY probably got on pleasantly with Sir Philip that 
 evening, for the next morning she came down in one of her 
 best moods. 
 
 ' Who will take a walk with me ? ' she asked, after break- 
 fast. ' Isabella and Gertrude will you ? ' 
 
 So rare was such an invitation from Miss Keeldar to her 
 female cousins that they hesitated before they accepted it. 
 Their mamma, however, signifying acquiescence in the 
 project, they fetched their bonnets, and the trio set out. 
 
 It did not suit these three young persons to be thrown 
 much together : Miss Keeldar liked the society of few 1 idies : 
 indeed, she had a cordial pleasure in that of none except 
 Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone. She was civil, kind, 
 attentive even to her cousins ; but still she usually had little 
 to say to them. In the sunny mood of this particular 
 morning, she contrived to entertain even the Misses 
 Sympson. Without deviating from her wonted rule of dis- 
 cussing with them only ordinary themes, she imparted to 
 these themes an extraordinary interest : the sparkle of her 
 spirit glanced along her phrases. 
 
 What made her so joyous ? All the cause must have 
 been in herself. The day was not bright ; it was dim a 
 pale, waning autumn day : the walks through the dun 
 woods were damp ; the atmosphere was heavy, the sky 
 overcast ; and yet, it seemed that in Shirley's heart lived all 
 the light and azure of Italy, as all its fervour laughed in her 
 grey English eye. 
 
 Some directions necessary to be given to her foreman,
 
 PHCEBE 507 
 
 John, delayed her behind her cousins as they neared Field- 
 head on their return ; perhaps an interval of twenty minutes 
 elapsed between her separation from them and her re- 
 entrance into the house : in the meantime she had spoken 
 to John, and then she had lingered in the lane at the gate. 
 A summons to luncheon called her in : she excused herself 
 from the meal, and went upstairs. 
 
 ' Is not Shirley coming to luncheon ? ' asked Isabella : 
 ' she said she was not hungry.' 
 
 An hour after, as she did not quit her chamber, one of 
 her cousins went to seek her there. She was found sitting 
 at the foot of the bed, her head resting on her hand : she 
 looked quite pale, very thoughtful, almost sad. 
 
 ' You are not ill ? ' was the question put. 
 
 ' A little sick,' replied Miss Keeldar. 
 
 Certainly she was not a little changed from what she 
 had been two hours before. 
 
 This change, accounted for only by those three words, 
 explained no otherwise ; this change w r hencesoever spring- 
 ing, effected in a brief ten minutes passed like no light 
 summer cloud. She talked when she joined her friends at 
 dinner, talked as usual ; she remained with them during the 
 evening ; when again questioned respecting her health, she 
 declared herself perfectly recovered : it had been a mere 
 passing faintness : a momentary sensation, not worth a 
 thought : yet it was felt there was a difference in Shirley. 
 
 The next day the day the week the fortnight after 
 this new and peculiar shadow lingered on the countenance, 
 in the manner of Miss Keeldar. A strange quietude settled 
 over her look, her movements, her very voice. The 
 alteration was not so marked as to court or permit frequent 
 questioning, yet it was there, and it would not pass away: 
 it hung over her like a cloud which no breeze could stir or 
 disperse. Soon it became evident that to notice this change 
 was to annoy her. First she shrunk from remark ; and, if 
 persisted in, she, with her own peculiar hauteur, repelled it. 
 ' Was she ill ? ' The reply came with decision.
 
 508 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' I am tiot.' 
 
 'Did anything weigh on her mind? Had. anything 
 happened to affect her spirits ? ' 
 
 She scornfully ridiculed the idea. 
 
 1 What did they mean by spirits ? She had no spirits, 
 black or white, blue or grey, to affect.' 
 
 ' Something must be the matter she was so altered.' 
 
 ' She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She 
 knew she was plainer : if it suited her to grow ugly, why 
 need others fret themselves on the subject.' 
 
 ' There must be a cause for the change what was it ? ' 
 
 She peremptorily requested to be let alone. 
 
 Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, 
 and she seemed indignant at herself that she could not 
 perfectly succeed : brief, self-spurning epithets burst from 
 her lips when alone. ' Fool ! Coward ! ' she would term 
 herself. ' Poltroon ! ' she would say : ' if you must tremble 
 tremble in secret ! Quail where no eye sees you ! ' 
 
 ' How dare you ' she would ask herself ' how dare yon 
 show your weakness and betray your imbecile anxieties? 
 Shake them off : rise above them : if you cannot do this, 
 hide them.' 
 
 And to hide them she did her best. She once more 
 became resolutely lively in company. When weary of effort 
 and forced to relax, she sought solitude : not the solitude of 
 her chamber she refused to mope, shut up between four 
 walls but that wilder solitude which lies out of doors, 
 and which she could chase, mounted on Zoe, her mare. 
 She took long rides of half a day. Her uncle disapproved, 
 but he dared not remonstrate : it was never pleasant to 
 face Shirley's anger, even when she was healthy and gay ; 
 but now that her face showed thin, and her large eye 
 looked hollow, there was something in the darkening of 
 that face and kindling of that eye which touched as well as 
 alarmed. 
 
 To all comparative strangers who, unconscious of the 
 alteration in her spirits, commented on the alteration in her
 
 PHCEBE 609 
 
 looks, she had one reply : ' I am perfectly well : I have not 
 an ailment.' 
 
 And health, indeed, she must have had, to be able to 
 bear the exposure to the weather she now encountered. 
 Wet or fair, calm or storm, she took her daily ride over 
 Stilbro' Moor, Tartar keeping up at her side, with his wolf- 
 like gallop, long and untiring. 
 
 Twice three times, the eyes of gossips those eyes 
 which are everywhere : in the closet and on the hill-top 
 noticed that instead of turning on Rushedge, the top-ridge 
 of Stilbro' Moor, she rode forwards all the way to the town. 
 Scouts were not wanting to mark her destination there ; it 
 was ascertained that she alighted at the door of one Mr. 
 Pearson Hall, a solicitor, related to the Vicar of Nunnely : 
 this gentleman and his ancestors had been the agents rf the 
 Keeldar family for generations back : some people affirmed 
 that Miss Keeldar was become involved in business specula- 
 tions connected with Hollow's-mill ; that she had lost money, 
 and was constrained to mortgage her land : others con- 
 jectured that she was going to be married, and that the 
 settlements were preparing. 
 
 Mr. Moore and Henry Sympson were together in the 
 school-room : the tutor was waiting for a lesson which the 
 pupil seemed busy in preparing. 
 
 1 Henry, make haste ! the afternoon is getting on.' 
 
 ' Is it, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly. Are you nearly ready with that lesson ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Not nearly ready ? ' 
 
 ' I have not construed a line." 
 
 Mr. Moore looked up : the boy's tone was rather 
 peculiar. 
 
 ' The task presents no difficulties, Henry ; or, if it does, 
 bring them to me : we will work together.' 
 
 ' Mr. Moore, I can do no work.'
 
 510 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' My boy, you are ill.' 
 
 ' Sir, I am not worse in bodily health than usual, but my 
 heart is full.' 
 
 ' Shut the book. Come hither, Harry. Come to the 
 fireside.' 
 
 Harry limped forward ; his tutor placed him in a chair : 
 his lips were quivering, his eyes brimming. He laid his 
 crutch on the floor, bent down his head, and wept. 
 
 1 This distress is not occasioned by physical pain, you 
 say, Harry? You have a grief : tell it me.' 
 
 1 Sir, I have such a grief as I never had before. I wish 
 it could be relieved in some way : I can hardly bear it.' 
 
 ' Who knows but, if we talk it over, we may relieve it ? 
 What is the cause ? Whom docs it concern ? ' 
 
 1 The cause, sir, is Shirley : it concerns Shirley.' 
 
 ' Does it? . . . You think her changed?' 
 
 ' All who know her think her changed : you too, Mr. 
 Moore.' 
 
 ' Not seriously, no. I see no alteration but such as a 
 favourable turn might repair in a few weeks : besides, her 
 own word must go for something : she says she is well.' 
 
 ' There it is, sir : as long as she maintained she was well, 
 I believed her. When I was sad out of her sight, I soon 
 recovered spirits in her presence. Now . . .' 
 
 ' Well, Harry, now . . . ? Has she said anything to 
 you ? You and she were together in the garden two hours 
 this morning : I saw her talking, and you listening. Now, 
 my dear Harry ! if Miss Keeldar had said she is ill, and 
 enjoined you to keep her secret, do not obey her. For her 
 life's sake, avow everything. Speak, my boy ! ' 
 
 ' Slic say she is ill ! I believe, sir, if she were dying, she 
 would smile, and aver " Nothing ails me." ' 
 
 'What have you learned, then? What new circum- 
 stance . . . ? ' 
 
 ' I have learned that she has just made her will.' 
 
 ' Made her will ? ' 
 
 The tutor and the pupil were silent.
 
 PHGEBE 511 
 
 ' She told you that ? ' asked Moore, when some minutes 
 had elapsed. 
 
 ' She told me quite cheerfully : not as an ominous circum- 
 stance, which I felt it to be. She said I was the only person 
 besides her solicitor, Pearson Hall, and Mr. Helstone and 
 Mr. Yorke, who knew anything about it ; and to me, she 
 intimated, she wished specially to explain its provisions.' 
 
 ' Go on, Harry.' 
 
 ' " Because," ' she said, looking down on me with her 
 beautiful eyes, oh ! they are beautiful, Mr. Moore ! I love 
 them, I love her ! She is my star ! Heaven must not 
 claim her ! She is lovely in this world, and fitted for this 
 world. Shirley is not an angel ; she is a woman, and she 
 shall live with men. Seraphs shall not have her ! Mr. 
 Moore if one of the " sons of God," with wings wide and 
 bright as the sky, blue and sounding as the sea, having seen 
 that she was fair, descended to claim her, his claim should 
 be withstood withstood by me boy and cripple as I 
 am ! ' 
 
 ' Henry Sympson, go on, when I tell you.' 
 
 ' " Because," she said, " if I made no will, and died before 
 you, Harry, all my property would go to you ; and I do not 
 intend that it should be so, though your father would like it. 
 But you," she said, " will have his whole estate, which is 
 large larger than Fieldhead ; your sisters will have nothing, 
 so I have left them some money : though I do not love them, 
 both together, half so much as I love one lock of your fair 
 hair." She said these words, and she called me her 
 " darling," and let me kiss her. She went on to tell me that 
 she had left Caroline Helstone some money too ; that this 
 manor-house, with its furniture and books, she had be- 
 queathed to me, as she did not choose to take the old family 
 place from her own blood ; and that all the rest of her 
 property, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, 
 exclusive of the legacies to my sisters and Miss Helstone, she 
 had willed, not to me, seeing I was already rich, but to a 
 good man, who would make the best use of it that any
 
 512 SHIRLEY 
 
 human being could do : a man, she said, that was both 
 gentle and brave, strong and merciful ; a man that might 
 not profess to be pious, but she knew he had the secret of 
 religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of love 
 and peace was with him : he visited the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from 
 the world. Then she asked, " Do you approve what I have 
 done, Harry?" I could not answer, my tears choked me, 
 as they do now.' 
 
 Mr. Moore allowed his pupil a moment to contend with 
 and master his emotion : he then demanded : ' What else 
 did she say? ' 
 
 1 When I had signified my full consent to the conditions 
 of her will, she told me I was a generous boy, and she was 
 proud of me : " And now," she added, " in case anything 
 should happen, you will know what to say to Malice when 
 she comes whispering hard things in your ear, insinuating 
 that Shirley has wronged you ; that she did not love you. 
 You will know that I did love you, Harry ; that no sister 
 could have loved you better, my own treasure." Mr. Moore, 
 sir, when I remember her voice, and recall her look, my 
 heart beats as if it would break its strings. She may go to 
 heaven before me if God commands it, she must; but the 
 rest of my life and my life will not be long I am glad of 
 that now shall be a straight, quick, thoughtful journey in 
 the path her step has pressed. I thought to enter the vault 
 of the Keeldars before her : should it be otherwise, lay my 
 coffin by Shirley's side.' 
 
 Moore answered him with a weighty calm, that offered a 
 strange contrast to the boy's perturbed enthusiasm. 
 
 ' You are wrong, both of you you harm each other. If 
 youth once falls under the influence of a shadowy terror, it 
 imagines there will never be full sunlight again its first 
 calamity it fancies will last a lifetime? What more did she 
 say ? Anything more ? ' 
 
 ' We settled one or two family points between ourselves.' 
 
 ' I should rather like to know what '
 
 PHCEBE 513 
 
 ' But, Mr. Moore, you smile I could not smile to see 
 Shirley in such a mood.' 
 
 1 My boy, I am neither nervous, nor poetic, nor inexperi- 
 enced. I see things as they are : you don't as yet. Tell 
 me these family points.' 
 
 'Only, sir, she asked me whether I considered myself 
 most of a Keeldar or a Sympson ; and I answered I was 
 Keeldar to the core of the heart, and to the marrow of the 
 bones. She said she was glad of it ; for, besides her, I was 
 the only Keeldar left in England : and then we agreed on 
 some matters.' 
 
 Well ? ' 
 
 ' Well, sir, that if I lived to inherit my father's estate, 
 and her house, I was to take the name of Keeldar, and to 
 make Fieldhead my residence. Henry Shirley Keeldar I 
 said I would be called : and I will. Her name and her 
 manor-house are ages old, and Sympson and Sympson-grove 
 are of yesterday.' 
 
 ' Come, you are neither of you going to heaven yet. I 
 have the best hopes of you both, with your proud distinctions 
 a pair of half -fledged eaglets. Now, what is your infer- 
 ence from all you have told me? put it into words.' 
 
 ' That Shirley thinks she is going to die.' 
 
 ' She referred to her health ? ' 
 
 ' Not once ; but I assure you she is wasting : her hands 
 are growing quite thin, and so is her cheek.' 
 
 ' Do3S she ever complain to your mother or sisters ? ' 
 
 1 Never. She laughs at them when they question her. 
 Mr. Moore, she is a strange being so fair and girlish : not 
 a man-like woman at all not an Amazon, and yet lifting her 
 head above both help and sympathy.' 
 
 ' Do you know where she is now, Henry ? Is she in 
 the house, or riding out ? ' 
 
 ' Surely not out, sir it rains fast.' 
 
 'True: which, however, is no guarantee that she is not 
 at this moment cantering over Kushedge. Of late she has 
 never permitted weather to be a hindrance to her rides.'
 
 514 SHIELEY 
 
 1 You remember, Mr. Moore, how wet and stormy it was 
 last Wednesday? so wild, indeed, that she would not per- 
 mit Zoe to be saddled ; yet the blast she thought too tem- 
 pestuous for her mare, she herself faced on foot ; that 
 afternoon she walked nearly as far as Nunnely. I asked 
 her, when she came in, if she was not afraid of taking cold. 
 " Not I," she said, " it would be too much good luck for me. I 
 don't know, Harry ; but the best thing that could happen to 
 me would be to take a good cold and fever, and so pass off 
 like other Christians." She is reckless, you see, sir.' 
 
 ' Reckless indeed ! Go and find out where she is ; and 
 if you can get an opportunity of speaking to her, without 
 attracting attention, request her to come here a minute.' 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 He snatched his crutch, and started up to go. 
 
 ' Harry ! ' 
 
 He returned. 
 
 ' Do not deliver the message formally. Word it as, in 
 former days, you would have worded an ordinary summons 
 to the school -room.' 
 
 ' I see, sir ; she will be more likely to obey.' 
 
 ' And Harry ' 
 
 'Sir?' 
 
 ' I will call you when I want you : till then, you are 
 dispensed from lessons.' 
 
 He departed. Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk. 
 
 'I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry,' 
 he said. ' I can seem to make light of his apprehensions, 
 and look down " du haut de ma grandeur " on his youthful 
 ardour. To him I can speak as if, in my eyes, they were 
 both children. Let me sec if I can keep up the same role 
 with her. I have known the moment when I seemed about 
 to forget it : when Confusion and Submission seemed about 
 to crush me with their soft tyranny ; when my tongue 
 faltered, and I have almost, let the mantle drop, and stood in 
 her presence, not master no but something else. I trust 
 I shall never so play the fool : it is well for a Sir Philip
 
 PHCEBE 515 
 
 Nunnely to redden when he meets her eye : he may permit 
 himself the indulgence of submission he may even without 
 disgrace suffer his hand to tremble when it touches hers ; 
 but if one of her farmers were to show himself susceptible 
 and sentimental, he would merely prove his need of a strait- 
 waistcoat. So far I have always done very well. She has 
 sat near me, and I have not shaken more than my desk. 
 I have encountered her looks and smiles like why, like 
 a tutor, as I am. Her hand I never yet touched never 
 underwent that test. Her farmer or her footman I am not 
 no serf nor servant of hers have I ever been : but I am 
 poor, and it behoves me to look to my self-respect not to 
 compromise an inch of it. What did she mean by that allusion 
 to the cold people who petrify flesh to marble ? It pleased 
 me I hardly know why I would not permit myself to 
 inquire I never do indulge in scrutiny either of her language 
 or countenance ; for if I did, I should sometimes forget 
 Common Sense and believe in Eomance. A strange, secret 
 ecstasy steals through my veins at moments : I'll not 
 encourage I'll not remember it. I am resolved, as long 
 as may be, to retain the right to say with Paul " I am not 
 mad, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness." ' 
 
 He paused listening. 
 
 1 Will she come, or will she not come ? ' he inquired. 
 ' How will she take the message ? naively or disdainfully ? 
 like a child or like a queen ? Both characters are in her 
 nature. 
 
 ' If she comes, what shall I say to her ? How account, 
 firstly, for the freedom of the request ? Shall I apologize to 
 her ? I could in all humility ; but would an apology tend 
 to place us in the positions we ought relatively to occupy in 
 this matter? I must keep up the professor, otherwise I 
 hear a door ' 
 
 He waited. Many minutes passed. 
 
 1 She will refuse me. Henry is entreating her to come : 
 she declines. My petition is presumption in her eyes : let 
 her only come, I can teach her to the contrary. I would 
 
 18
 
 516 SHIELEY 
 
 rather she were a little perverse it will steel me. I prefer 
 her, cuirassed in pride, armed with a taunt. Her scorn 
 startles me from my dreams I stand up myself. A 
 sarcasm from her eyes or lips puts strength into every 
 nerve and sinew I have. Some step approaches, and not 
 Henry's. . . .' 
 
 The door unclosed ; Miss Keeldar came in. The message, 
 it appeared, had found her at her needle : she brought her 
 work in her hand. That day she had not been riding out : 
 she had evidently passed it quietly. She wore her neat in- 
 door dress and silk apron. This was no Thalestris from the 
 fields, but a quiet domestic character from the fireside. 
 Mr. Moore had her at advantage : he should have addressed 
 her at once in solemn accents, and with rigid mien ; perhaps 
 he would, had she looked saucy ; but her air never showed 
 less of cranerie ; a soft kind of youthful shyness depressed 
 her eyelid and mantled on her cheek. The tutor stood 
 silent. 
 
 She made a full stop between the door and his desk. 
 
 ' Did you want me, sir ? ' she asked. 
 
 1 1 ventured, Miss Keeldar, to send for you that is, to 
 ask an interview of a few minutes.' 
 
 She waited : she plied her needle. 
 
 ' Well, sir ' (not lifting her eyes) ' what about ? ' 
 
 ' Be seated first. The subject I would broach is one of 
 some moment : perhaps I have hardly a right to approach 
 it : it is possible I ought to frame an apology : it is possible 
 no apology can excuse me. The liberty I have taken arises 
 from a conversation with Henry. The boy is unhappy aboufc 
 your health : all your friends are unhappy on that subject. 
 Jt is of your health I would speak.' 
 
 ' I am quite well,' she said briefly. 
 
 ' Yet changed.' 
 
 ' That matters to none but myself. We all change.' 
 
 ' Will you sit down ? Formerly, Miss Keeldar, I had 
 some influence with you have I any now? May I feel that 
 what I am saying is not accounted positive presumption ? '
 
 PHCEBE 517 
 
 ' Let me read some French, Mr. Moore, or I will even 
 take a spell at the Latin grammar, and let us proclaim a 
 truce to all sanitary discussions.' 
 
 ' No no : it is time there were discussions.' 
 
 ' Discuss away, then, but do not choose me for your text; 
 I am a healthy subject.' 
 
 ' Do you not think it wrong to affirm and reaffirm what 
 is substantially untrue ? ' 
 
 ' I say I am well : I have neither cough, pain, nor fever.' 
 
 ' Is there no equivocation in that assertion ? Is it the 
 direct truth ? ' 
 
 1 The direct truth.' 
 
 Louis Moore looked at her earnestly. 
 
 ' I can myself/ he said, ' trace no indications of actual 
 disease ; but why, then, are you altered ? ' 
 
 ' Am I altered ? ' 
 
 ' We will try : we will seek a proof.' 
 
 1 How ? ' 
 
 ' I ask, in the first place, do you sleep as you used to?' 
 
 ' I do not : but it is not because I am ill.' 
 
 1 Have you the appetite you once had ? ' 
 
 ' No : but it is not because I am ill.' 
 
 1 You remember this little ring fastened to my watch- 
 chain ? It was my mother's, and is too small to pass the 
 joint of my little finger. You have many a time sportively 
 purloined it : it fitted your forefinger. Try now.' 
 
 She permitted the test : the ring dropped from the wasted 
 little hand. Louis picked it up, and re-attached it to the 
 chain. An uneasy flush coloured his brow. Shirley again 
 said : ' It is not because I am ill.' 
 
 ' Not only have you lost sleep, appetite, and flesh,' pro- 
 ceeded Moore, ' but your spirits are always at ebb : besides, 
 there is a nervous alarm in your eye a nervous disquiet in 
 your manner : these peculiarities were not formerly yours.' 
 
 ' Mr. Moore, we will pause here. You have exactly hit 
 it : I am nervous. Now, talk of something else. What wet 
 weather we have ! Steady, pouring rain t '
 
 518 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' You nervous ! Yes : and if Miss Keeldar is nervous, 
 it is not without a cause. Let me reach it. Let me look 
 nearer. The ailment is not physical : I have suspected that. 
 It came in one moment. I know the day. I noticed the 
 change. Your pain is mental.' 
 
 ' Not at all : it is nothing so dignified merely nervous. 
 Oh ! dismiss the topic.' 
 
 ' When it is exhausted : not till then. Nervous alarms 
 should always be communicated, that they may be dissipated. 
 I wish I had the gift of persuasion, and could incline you to 
 speak willingly. I believe confession, in your case, would 
 be half equivalent to cure.' 
 
 ' No,' said Shirley, abruptly : ' I wish that were at all 
 probable ; but I am afraid it is not.' 
 
 She suspended her work a moment. She was now seated. 
 Besting her elbow on the table, she leaned her head on her 
 hand. Mr. Moore looked as if he felt he had at last gained 
 some fool-ing in this difficult path. She was serious, and in 
 her wish was implied an important admission ; after that, 
 she could no longer affirm that nothing ailed her. 
 
 The tutor allowed her some minutes for repose and 
 reflection, ere he returned to the charge : once, his lips 
 moved to speak ; but he thought better of it, and prolonged 
 the pause. Shirley lifted her eye to his : had he betrayed 
 injudicious emotion, perhaps obstinate persistence in silence 
 would have been the result; but he looked calm, strong, 
 trustworthy. 
 
 ' I had better tell you than my aunt,' she said, ' or than 
 my cousins, or my uncle : they would all make such a bustle 
 and it is that very bustle I dread ; the alarm, the flurry, 
 the &clat : in short, I never liked to be the centre of a small 
 domestic whirlpool. You can bear a little shock eh ? ' 
 
 ' A great one, if necessary.' 
 
 Not a muscle of the man's frame moved, and yet his 
 large heart beat fast in his deep chest. What was she going 
 to tell him ? Was irremediable mischief done ? 
 
 ' Had I thought it right tc go to you, I would never have
 
 519 
 
 tnade a secret of the matter one moment,' she continued : 
 ' I would have told you at once, and asked advice.' 
 
 ' Why was it not right to come to me ? ' 
 
 1 It might be right I do not mean that ; but I could not 
 do it. I seemed to have no title to trouble you : the mishap 
 concerned me only I wanted to keep it to myself, and 
 people will not let me. I tell you, I hate to be an object of 
 worrying attea^ion, or a theme for village gossip. Besides, 
 it may pass away without result God knows ! ' 
 
 Moore, though tortured with suspense, did not demand a 
 quick explanation ; he suffered neither gesture, glance, nor 
 word, to betray impatience. His tranquillity tranquillized 
 Shirley ; his confidence reassured her. 
 
 ' Great effects may spring from trivial causes,' she re- 
 marked, as she loosened a bracelet from her wrist ; then, 
 unfastening her sleeve, and partially turning it up, ' Look 
 here, Mr. Moore.' 
 
 She showed a mark in her white arm ; rather a deep 
 though healed-up indentation : something between a burn 
 and a cut. 
 
 ' I would not show that to anyone in B rial-field but you, 
 because you can take it quietly.' 
 
 ' Certainly there is nothing in the little mark to shock : 
 its history will explain.' 
 
 ' Small as it is, it has taken my sleep away, and made 
 me nervous, thin, and foolish ; because, on account of that 
 little mark, I am obliged to look forward to a possibility that 
 has its terrors.' 
 
 The sleeve w r as readjusted ; the bracelet replaced. 
 
 'Do you know that you try me?' he said smiling. 
 'I am a patient sort of man, but my pulse is quicken- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' Whatever happens, you will befriend me, Mr. Moore. 
 You will give me the benefit of your self-possession, and 
 not leave me at the mercy of agitated cowards? ' 
 
 ' T make no promise now. Tell me the tale, and then 
 exact \vhnt pledge you will.'
 
 520 SHIBLEY 
 
 1 Ifc is a very shoi t tale. I took a walk with Isabella and 
 Gertrude one day, about three weeks ago. They reached 
 home before me : I stayed behind to speak to John. 
 After leaving him, I pleased myself with lingering in the 
 lane, where all was very still and shady : I was tired of 
 chattering to the girls, and in no hurry to rejoin them. As 
 I stood leaning against the gate-pillar, thinking some very 
 happy thoughts about my future life for that morning I 
 imagined that events were beginning to turn as I had long 
 wished them to turn ' 
 
 ' Ah ! Nunnely had been with her the evening before ! ' 
 thought Moore, parenthetically. 
 
 ' I heard a panting sound ; a dog came running up the 
 lane. I know most of the dogs in this neighbourhood ; it 
 was Phoebe, one of Mr. Sam Wynne's pointers. The poor 
 creature ran with her head clown, her tongue hanging out; 
 she looked as if bruised and beaten all over. I called her ; 
 I meant to coax her into the house, and give her some water 
 and dinner ; I felt sure she had been ill-used : Mr. Sam 
 often flogs his pointers cruelly. She was too flurried to 
 know me ; and when I attempted to pat her head, she 
 turned and snatched at my arm. She bit it so as to draw 
 blood, then ran panting on. Directly after, Mr. Wynne's 
 keeper came up, carrying a gun. He asked if I had seen a 
 dog, I told him I had seen Phoebe. 
 
 ' " You had better chain up Tartar, ma'am," he said, 
 " and tell your people to keep within the house ; I am after 
 Phoebe to shoot her, and the groom is gone another way. 
 She is raging mad." ' 
 
 Mr. Moore leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms 
 across his chest ; Miss Keeldar resumed her square of silk 
 canvas, and continued the creation of a wreath of Parmese 
 violets. 
 
 ' And you told no one, sought no help, no cure : you 
 would not come to me ? ' 
 
 ' I got as far as the school-room door ; there my courage 
 failed : I preferred to cushion the matter.'
 
 PHCEBE 521 
 
 ' Why ? What can I demand better in this world than 
 to be of use to you ? ' 
 
 ' I had no claim.' 
 
 ' Monstrous ! And you did nothing ? ' 
 
 ' Yes : I walked straight into the laundry, where they 
 are ironing most of the week, now that I have so many 
 guests in the house. While the maid was busy crimping 
 or starching, I took an Italian iron from the fire, and 
 applied the light scarlet glowing tip to my arm : I bored 
 it well in : it cauterized the little wound. Then I went 
 upstairs.' 
 
 1 1 dare say you never once groaned ? ' 
 
 1 1 am sure I don't know. I was very miserable. Not 
 firm or tranquil at all, I think : there was no calm in my 
 mind.' 
 
 ' There was calm in your person. I remember listening 
 the whole time we sat at luncheon to hear if you moved in 
 the room above : all was quiet.' 
 
 ' I was sitting at the foot of the bed, wishing Phoebe had 
 not bitten me.' 
 
 ' And alone ! You like solitude. ' 
 
 1 Pardon me.' 
 
 ' You disdain sympathy.' 
 
 ' Do I, Mr. Moore ? ' 
 
 ' With your powerful mind, you must feel independent 
 of help, of advice, of society.' 
 
 ' So be it since it pleases you.' 
 
 She smiled. She pursued her embroidery carefully and 
 quickly ; but her eyelash twinkled, and then it glittered, 
 and then a drop fell. 
 
 Mr. Moore leaned forward on his desk, moved his chair, 
 altered his attitude. 
 
 ' If it is not so,' he asked, with a peculiar mellow change 
 in his voice, ' how is it, then ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know.' 
 
 ' You do know, but you won't speak : all must be locked 
 up in yourself.'
 
 522 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Because it is not worth sharing.' 
 
 1 Because nobody can give the high price you require for 
 your confidence. Nohody is rich enough to purchase it. 
 Nobody has the honour, the intellect, the power you demand 
 in your adviser. There is not a shoulder in England on 
 which you would rest your hand for support far less a 
 bosom which you would permit to pillow your head. Of 
 course you must live alone.' 
 
 ' I can live alone, if need be. But the question is not 
 how to live but how to die alone. That strikes me in a 
 more grisly light.' 
 
 ' You apprehend the effects of the virus You 
 
 anticipate an indefinitely threatening, dreadful doom ? ' 
 
 She bowed. 
 
 ' You are very nervous and womanish.' 
 
 ' You complimented me two minutes since on my 
 powerful mind.' 
 
 ' You are very womanish. If the whole affair were coolly 
 examined and discussed, I feel assured it would turn out 
 that there is no danger of your dying at all.' 
 
 ' Amen ! I am very willing to live, if it please God. I 
 have felt life sweet.' 
 
 ' How can it be otherwise than sweet with your endow- 
 ments and nature ? Do you truly expect that you will be 
 seized with hydrophobia, and die raving mud ? ' 
 
 ' I expect it, and have feared it. Just now, I fear 
 nothing.' 
 
 ' Nor do I, on your account. I doubt whether the 
 smallest particle of virus mingled with your blood : and if 
 it did, let me assure you that young, healthy, faultlessly 
 sound as you are no harm will ensue. For the rest, I 
 shall inquire whether the dog was really mad. I hold she 
 was not mad.' 
 
 ' Tell nobody that she bit me.' 
 
 ' Why should I, when I believe the bite innocuous as a 
 cut of this penknife ? Make yourself easy : I am easy, 
 thougli I value your life as much as I 'do my own chance of 
 happiness in eternity. Look up.'
 
 PHCEBE 523 
 
 'Why, Mr. Moore?' 
 
 ' I wish to see if you are cheered. Put your work down : 
 raise your head.' 
 
 ' There ' 
 
 ' Look at me. Thank you ! And is the cloud broken ? ' 
 
 ' I fear nothing.' 
 
 ' Is your mind restored to its own natural sunny clime ? ' 
 
 ' I am very content ; but I want your promise.' 
 
 ' Dictate.' 
 
 ' You know, in case the worst I have feared should 
 happen, they will smother me. You need not smile : they 
 will they always do. My uncle will be full of horror, 
 weakness, precipitation ; and that is the only expedient 
 which will suggest itself to him. Nobody in the house will 
 he self-possessed but you : now promise to befriend me to 
 keep Mr. Sympson away from me not to let Henry come 
 near, lest I should hurt him. Mind mind that you take 
 care of yourself, too : but I shall not injure you, I know I 
 shall not. Lock the chamber-door against the surgeons 
 turn them out, if they get in. Let neither the young nor the 
 old MacTurk lay a finger on me ; nor Mr. Greaves, their 
 colleague ; and, lastly, if I give trouble, with your own hand 
 administer to me a strong narcotic : such a sure dose of 
 laudanum as shall leave no mistake. Promise to do this.' 
 
 Moore left his desk, and permitted himself the recreation 
 of one or two turns through the room. Stopping behind 
 Shirley's chair, he bent over her, and said, in a low, emphatic 
 voice, ' I promise all you ask without comment, without 
 reservation.' 
 
 ' If female help is needed, call in my housekeeper, Mrs. 
 Gill : let her lay me out, if I die. She is attached to me. 
 She wronged me again and again, and again and again I 
 forgave her. She now loves me, and would not defraud me 
 of a pin : confidence has made her honest; forbearance has 
 made her kindhearted. At this day, I can trust both her 
 integrity, her courage, and her affection. Call her; but 
 keep my good aunt and my timid cousins away. Once 
 more, promise.'
 
 524 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I promise.' 
 
 ' That is good in you,' she said, looking up at him as he 
 bent above her, and smiling. 
 
 1 Is it good ? Does it comfort ? ' 
 
 'Very much.' 
 
 ' I will be with you I and Mrs. Gill only in any, in 
 every extremity where calm and fidelity are needed. No 
 rash or coward hand shall meddle.' 
 
 ' Yet you think me childish?' 
 
 ' I do.' 
 
 ' Ah ! you despise me.' 
 
 1 Do we despise children ? ' 
 
 ' In fact, I am neither so strong, nor have I such pride 
 in my strength, as people think, Mr. Moore ; nor am I so 
 regardless of sympathy ; but when I have any grief, I fear 
 to impart it to those I love, lest it should pain them ; 
 and to those whom I view with indifference, I cannot con- 
 descend to complain. After all, you should not taunt me 
 with being childish ; for if you were as unhappy as I have 
 been for the last three weeks, you too would want some 
 friend.' 
 
 ' We all want a friend, do we not ? ' 
 
 ' All of us that have anything good in our natures.' 
 
 1 Well, you have Caroline Helstone.' 
 
 ' Yes. . . . And you have Mr. Hall.' 
 
 ' Yes. . . . Mrs. Pryor is a wise, good woman : she can 
 counsel you when you need counsel.' 
 
 ' For your part you have your brother Robert.' 
 
 ' For any right-hand defections, there is the Rev. Mathew- 
 son Helstone, M.A., to lean upon ; for any left-hand fallings- 
 off, there is Hiram Yorke, Esq. Both elders pay you 
 homage.' 
 
 ' I never saw Mrs. Yorke so motherly to any young man 
 as she is to you. I don't know how you have won her heart ; 
 but she is more tender to you than she is to her own sons. 
 You have, besides, your sister, Hortense.' 
 
 'It appears we are both well provided.'
 
 PHCEBE 525 
 
 ' It appears so.' 
 
 ' How thankful we ought to be I ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' How contented ! ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 1 For my part, I am almost contented just now, and very 
 thankful. Gratitude is a divine emotion : it fills the heart, 
 but not to bursting : it warms it, but not to fever. I like to 
 taste leisurely of bliss : devoured in haste, I do not know its 
 flavour.' 
 
 Still leaning on the back of Miss Keeldar's chair, Moore 
 watched the rapid motion of her fingers, as the green and 
 purple garland grew beneath them. After a prolonged pause 
 he again asked, ' Is the shadow quite gone ? ' 
 
 ' Wholly. As I was two hours since, and as I am 
 now, are two different states of existence. I believe, Mr. 
 Moore, griefs and fears nursed in silence grow like Titan 
 infants.' 
 
 ' You will cherish such feelings no more in silence ? ' 
 
 ' Not if I dare speak.' 
 
 ' In using the word " dare," to whom do you allude ? ' 
 
 ' To you.' 
 
 ' How is it applicable to me ? ' 
 
 ' On account of your austerity and shyness.' 
 
 1 Why am I austere and shy ? ' 
 
 1 Because you are proud.' 
 
 ' Why am I proud ? ' 
 
 ' I should like to know : will you be good enough to 
 tell me ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps, because I am poor, for one reason : poverty 
 and pride often go together.' 
 
 ' That is such a nice reason : I should be charmed to 
 discover another that would pair with it. Mate that turtle, 
 Mr. Moore.' 
 
 ' Immediately. What do you think of marrying to sober 
 Poverty many-tinted Caprice ? ' 
 
 ' Are you capricious ? '
 
 526 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' You are.' 
 
 ' A libel. I am steady as a rock : fixed as the Polar 
 Star.' 
 
 ' I look out at some early hour of the day, and see a fine 
 perfect rainbow, bright with promise, gloriously spanning the 
 beclouded welkin of life. An hour afterwards I look again 
 half the arch is gone, and the rest is faded. Still later, the 
 stern sky denies that it ever wore so benign a symbol of 
 hope.' 
 
 1 Well, Mr. Moore, you should contend against these 
 changeful humours : they are your besetting sin. One never 
 knows where to have you.' 
 
 ' Miss Keeldar, I had once for two years a pupil who 
 grew very dear to me. Henry is dear, but she was dearer. 
 Henry never gives me trouble ; she well she did. I 
 think she vexed me twenty-three hours out of the twenty- 
 four 
 
 1 She was never with you above three hours, or at the 
 most six at a time.' 
 
 ' She sometimes spilled the draught from my cup, and 
 stole the food from my plate ; and when she had kept me 
 unfed for a day (and that did not suit me, for I am a man 
 accustomed to take my meals with reasonable relish, and to 
 ascribe due importance to the rational enjoyment of creatui'e 
 
 comforts) ' 
 
 know you do. I can tell what sort of dinners you 
 like best perfectly well. I know precisely the dishes you 
 prefer 
 
 ' She robbed these dishes of flavour, and made a fool of 
 me besides. I like to sleep well. In my quiet days, when 
 I was my own man, I never quarrelled with the night for 
 being long, nor cursed my bed for its thorns. She changed 
 all this.' 
 
 ' Mr. Moore ' 
 
 ' And having taken from me peace of mind, and ease of 
 life, she took from me herself; quite coolly just as if, when 
 she was gone, the world would be all the same to me. I
 
 PHOEBE 527 
 
 knew I should see her again at some time. At the end of 
 two years, it fell out that we encountered again under her 
 own roof, where she was mistress. How do you think she 
 bore herself towards me, Miss Keeldar ? ' 
 
 ' Like one who had profited well by lessons learned from 
 yourself.' 
 
 ' She received me haughtily : she meted out a wide 
 space between us, and kept me aloof by the reserved 
 gesture, the rare and alienated glance, the word calmly 
 civil.' 
 
 ' She was an excellent pupil ! Having seen you distant, 
 she at once learned to withdraw. Pray, sir, admire, in her 
 hauteur, a careful improvement on your own coolness.' 
 
 ' Conscience, and honour, and the most despotic ne- 
 cessity, dragged me apart from her, and kept me sundered 
 with ponderous fetters. She was free : she might have been 
 clement.' 
 
 ' Never free to compromise her self-respect : to seek 
 where she had been shunned.' 
 
 ' Then she was inconsistent : she tantalized as before. 
 When I thought I had made up my mind to seeing in her 
 only a lofty stranger, she would suddenly show me such a 
 glimpse of loving simplicity she would warm me with such 
 a beam of reviving sympathy, she would gladden an hour 
 with converse so gentle, gay, and kindly that I could no 
 more shut my heart on her image, than I could close that 
 door against her presence. Explain why she distressed 
 me so.' 
 
 ' She could not bear to be quite outcast ; and then she 
 would sometimes get a notion into her head, on a cold, wet 
 day, that the school-room was no cheerful place, and feel it 
 incumbent on her to go and see if you and Henry kept up a 
 good fire ; and once there she liked to stay.' 
 
 ' But she should not be changeful : if she came at all, 
 she should come oftener.' 
 
 ' There is such a thing as intrusion.' 
 
 ' To-morrow, you will not be as you are to-day.'
 
 528 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 1 don't know. Will you ? ' 
 
 ' I am not mad, most noble Berenice ! We may give 
 one day to dreaming, but the next we must awake ; and I 
 shall awake to purpose the morning you are married to Sir 
 Philip Nunnely. The fire shines on you and me, and shows 
 us very clearly in the glass, Miss Keeldar; and I have been 
 gazing on the picture all the time I have been talking. 
 Look up ! What a difference between your head and mine ! 
 I look old for thirty ! ' 
 
 ' You are so grave ; you have such a square brow ; and 
 your face is sallow. I never regard you as a young man, 
 nor as Robert's junior.' 
 
 ' Don't you ? I thought not. Imagine Robert's clear- 
 cut, handsome face looking over my shoulder. Does not 
 the apparition make vividly manifest the obtuse mould of 
 my heavy traits ? There ! ' (he started) ' I have been 
 expecting that wire to vibrate this last half-hour.' 
 
 The dinner-bell rang, and Shirley rose. 
 
 1 Mr. Moore,' she said, as she gathered up her silks, 
 ' have you heard from your brother lately ? Do you know 
 what he means by staying in town so long ? Does he talk 
 of returning ? ' 
 
 ' He talks of returning ; but what has caused his long 
 absence I cannot tell. To speak the truth, I thought none 
 in Yorkshire knew better than yourself why he was reluctant 
 to come home.' 
 
 A crimson shadow passed across Miss Keeldar's cheek. 
 
 'Write to him, and urge him to come,' she said. 'I 
 know there has been no impolicy in protracting his absence 
 thus far: it is good to let the mill stand, while trade is so 
 bad ; but he must not abandon the county.' 
 
 ' I am aware,' said Louis, ' that he had an interview with 
 you the evening before he left, and I saw him quit Fieldhead 
 afterwards. I read his countenance, or tried to read it. He 
 turned from me. I divined that he would be long away. 
 Some fine, slight fingers have a wondrous knack at pul- 
 verizing a man's brittle pride. I suppose Robert put too
 
 PHCEBE 529 
 
 much trust in his manly beauty and native gentlemanhood. 
 Those are better off who, being destitute of advantage, 
 cannot cherish delusion. But I will write, and say you 
 advise his return." 
 
 ' Do not say / advise his 1'eturn, but that his return is 
 advisable.' 
 
 The second bell rang, and Miss Keeldar obeyed its call.
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX 
 
 LOUIS MOORE 
 
 Louis MOORE was used to a quiet life ; being a quiet man, 
 he endured it better than most men would : having a 
 large world of his own in his own head and heart, he toler- 
 ated confinement to a small, still corner of the real world 
 very patiently. 
 
 How hushed is Fieldhead this evening ! All but Moore 
 Miss Keeldar, the whole family of the Sympsons, even Henry 
 are gone to Nunnely. Sir Philip would have them come : 
 he wished to make them acquainted with his mother and 
 sisters, who are now at the Priory. Kind gentleman as the 
 Baronet is, he asked the Tutor too ; but the Tutor would 
 much sooner have made an appointment with the ghost of 
 the Earl of Huntingdon to meet him, and a shadowy ring of 
 his merry men, under the canopy of the thickest, blackest, 
 oldest oak in Nunnely Forest. Yes, he would leather have 
 appointed tryst with a phantom abbess, or mist-pale nun, 
 among the wet and weedy relics of that ruined sanctuary of 
 theirs, mouldering in the core of the wood. Louis Moore 
 longs to have something near him to-night : but not the 
 boy-baronet, nor his benevolent but stern mother, nor his 
 patrician sisters, nor one soul of the Sympsons. 
 
 This night is not calm : the equinox still struggles in its 
 storms. The wild rains of the day are abated : the great 
 single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing 
 and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a 
 continued long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. 
 The Moon reigns glorious, glad ol the gale ; as glad as if she
 
 LOUIS MOORE 531 
 
 gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion 
 will watch for his goddess to-night : there are no flocks out 
 on the mountains ; and it is well, for to-night she welcomes 
 ^Eolus. 
 
 Moore sitting in the school-room heard the storm roar 
 round the other gable, and along the hall-front : this end was 
 sheltered. He wanted no shelter ; he desired no subdued 
 sounds, or screened position. 
 
 ' All the parlours are empty,' said he : ' I am sick at heart 
 of this cell.' 
 
 He left it, and went where the casements, larger and 
 freer than the branch-screened lattice of his own apartment, 
 admitted unimpeded the dark-blue, the silver-fleeced, the 
 stirring and sweeping vision of the autumn night-sky. He 
 carried no candle : unneeded was lamp or fire : the broad 
 and clear, though cloud-crossed and fluctuating beam of the 
 moon shone on every floor and wall. 
 
 Moore wanders through all the rooms : he seems follow- 
 ing a phantom from parlour to parlour. In the oak-room he 
 stops : this is not chill, and polished, and fireless like the 
 salon : the hearth is hot and ruddy ; the cinders tinkle in the 
 intense heat of their clear glow ; near the rug is a little work- 
 table, a desk upon it, a chair near it. 
 
 Does the vision Moore has tracked occupy that chair? 
 You would think so, could you see him standing before it. 
 There is as much interest now in his eye, and as much sig- 
 nificance in his face, as if in this household solitude he had 
 found a living companion, and was going to speak to it. 
 
 He makes discoveries. A bag, a small satin bag, hangs 
 on the chair-back. The desk is open, the keys are in the 
 lock ; a pretty seal, a silver pen, a crimson berry or two of 
 ripe fruit on a green leaf, a small, clean, delicate glove -these 
 trifles at once decorate and disarrange the stand they strew. 
 Order forbids details in a picture : she puts them tidily away ; 
 but details give charm. 
 
 Moore spoke. 
 
 'Her mark,' he said: 'here she has been careless,
 
 532 SHIELEY 
 
 attractive thing ! called away in haste, doubtless, and for- 
 getting to return and put all to rights. Why does she leave 
 fascination in her footprints ? Whence did she acquire the 
 gift to be heedless, and never offend ? There is always some- 
 thing to chide in her, and the reprimand never settles in 
 displeasure on the heart ; but, for her lover or her husband, 
 when it had trickled a while in words, would naturally melt 
 from his lips in a kiss. Better pass half an hour in remon- 
 strating with her, than a day in admiring or praising any 
 other woman alive. Am I muttering? soliloquizing? Stop 
 that.' 
 
 He did stop it. He stood thinking ; and then he made 
 an arrangement for his evening's comfort. 
 
 He dropped the curtains over the broad window and regal 
 moon : he shut out Sovereign and Court and Starry Armies ; 
 he added fuel to the hot but fast-wasting fire ; he lit a candle, 
 of which there were a pair on the table ; he placed another 
 chair opposite that near the work-stand, and then he sat 
 down. His next movement was to take from his pocket a 
 small, thick book of blank paper ; to produce a pencil ; and 
 to begin to write in a cramped, compact hand. Come near, 
 by all means, reader : do not be shy : stoop over his shoulder 
 fearlessly, and read as he scribbles. 
 
 ' It is nine o'clock ; the carriage will not return before 
 eleven, I am certain. Freedom is mine till then : till then, I 
 may occupy her room ; sit opposite her chair ; rest my elbow 
 on her table ; have her little mementoes about me. 
 
 ' I used rather to like Solitude to fancy her a somewhat 
 quiet and serious, yet fair nymph ; an Oread, descending to 
 me from lone mountain-passes ; something of the blue tnist 
 of hills in her array, and of their chill breeze in her breath 
 but much, also, of their solemn beauty in her mien. I once 
 could court her serenely, and imagine my heart easier when 
 I held her to it all mute, but majestic. 
 
 'Since that day I called S. to me in the school-room, and 
 she came and sat so near my side ; since she opened the 
 trouble of her mind to me asked my protection appealed
 
 LOUIS MOOEE 533 
 
 to my strength : since that hour I abhor Solitude. Cold ab- 
 straction fleshless skeleton daughter mother and mate 
 of Death ! 
 
 ' It is pleasant to write about what is near and dear as 
 the core of my heart : none can deprive me of this little book, 
 and through this pencil, I can say to it what I will say 
 what I dare utter to nothing living say what I dare not 
 think aloud. 
 
 'We have scarcely encountered each other since that 
 evening. Once, when I was alone in the drawing-room, 
 seeking a book of Henry's, she entered, dressed for a concert 
 at Stilbro'. Shyness 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 recognising 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 fatuitous, as I am one of the plainest, of men ; but, in 
 truth, that shyness of hers touched me exquisitely : it nattered 
 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 unsophisti- 
 cated, 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 in- 
 dependent 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.
 
 534 SHIKLEY 
 
 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 recognise 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
 
 LOUIS MOOEE 535 
 
 beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my 
 brother Eobert : 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 crane, rnalin, 
 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 
 Zoe 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 witness- 
 ing 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 of 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
 
 536 SHIRLEY 
 
 power, stand in her presence humbly waiting a task. How 
 glad they are when a mandate comes ! What joy they take 
 in the toil 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 J do with anything so nearly fault- 
 less ? SJie is my equal ; poor as myself ; she is certainly 
 preity : 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, untiuted, needing no tint. What change 
 could improve her ? What pencil dare to paint ? My sweet- 
 heart, 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 respon- 
 sibility in the charge of a, young lioness or leopardess. I
 
 LOUIS MOORE 637 
 
 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 erelong 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 " bete fauve," my powers 
 would revel. 
 
 ' Oh, my pupil ! Oh, 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 deter- 
 mined 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 1 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
 
 538 SHIELEY 
 
 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 slum- 
 bering city ; only by that lonely watcher, brave and unshaken 
 in his fanaticism. In the midst of silence, with no preluding 
 sound, he is wrapt 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 
 down-rushing 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 
 privik-ges for myself : every feature of her face, her bright
 
 LOUIS MOORE 539 
 
 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.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 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 contribu- 
 tion 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 unaccount- 
 able circumstance. Business it was not iliat 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 convic- 
 tion 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 
 nailed his success ; though the mill-owners were glad of it, 
 trusting that the terrors of Law vindicated would hence- 
 forward paralyze the sinister valour of disaffection. Dis- 
 affection, 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 pur- 
 chase, if he did. 
 
 'I'll toll him that,' said Mr. Yorke, when his foreman
 
 RUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL 541 
 
 mentioned the rumour ; ' and if tliat 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 
 1 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 acknow- 
 ledge his acquaintance, 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 non- 
 chalance held it in a damp, low, smouldering state. 
 
 Mr. Yorke the permanent president of these dinners 
 witnessed his young friend's bearing with exceeding com- 
 placency. 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 interspers- 
 ing 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
 
 542 
 
 those we contemn. Often had Moore ga;^ed 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 ho 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-toa 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 homo took the discourse much to himself. He 
 touched briefly, but scoffmgly, on the trials and the convic- 
 tion ; he passed thence to the gossip of the neighbourhood, 
 and, erelong, 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. Rhe said, " I'll 
 excuse him : he's young." She waited like " Patience on a 
 monument," till the chase was over, and the vermin-prey
 
 BUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL 543 
 
 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 bonnie as you were, man.' 
 
 ' And who is to have this prize you talk so much 
 about ? ' 
 
 1 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 ? ' 
 1 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 girn 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.
 
 544 SHIRLEY 
 
 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, Eobert ? 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 may rue for years what life cannot 
 cancel.' 
 
 1 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 Beelze- 
 bub : it will ease your mind.'
 
 EUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL 545 
 
 1 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 tiling 
 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 effec- 
 tually 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 na'iveU 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
 
 546 SHIELEY 
 
 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 despatched a note, re- 
 questing 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 deter- 
 mined. 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 
 doubb 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 ! "
 
 EUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL 547 
 
 ' Yorke, I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantel- 
 piece ; 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 your- 
 self. 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. 
 
 ' " Gerard Moore, you know you don't love Shirley Keel- 
 dar." 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 admira- 
 tion, 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. 
 
 1 " 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 ! "
 
 548 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 1 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 manoeuvre 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 tongue 
 betrays you : you now speak wrong. I never loved you. 
 Be at rest there. My heart is as pure of passion for you as 
 yours is barren of affection for me." 
 
 ' I hope I was answered, Yorke ? 
 
 ' " I seem to be a blind, besotted sort of person," was my 
 remark. 
 
 ' " Loved you ! " she cried. " Why, I have been as frank 
 with you as a sister never shunned you never feared you. 
 You cannot," she affirmed triumphantly " you cannot 
 make me tremble with your coming, nor accelerate my pulse 
 by your influence." 
 
 ' I alleged that often, when she spoke to me, she blushed, 
 and that the sound of my name moved her. 
 
 ' " Not for your sake ! " she declared briefly : I urged 
 explanation, but could get none. 
 
 ' " When I sat beside you at the school-feast, did you
 
 BUSHEDGE, A. CONFESSIONAL 549 
 
 think I loved you then ? When I stopped you in May thorn- 
 lane did you think I loved you then ? When I called on 
 you in the counting-house when I walked with you on the 
 pavement did you think I loved you then ? " 
 ' So she questioned me ; and I said I did. 
 'By the Lord! Yorke she rose she grew tall she 
 expanded and refined almost to flame : there was a 
 trembling all through her, as in live coal, when its vivid 
 vermilion is hottest. 
 
 ' " That is to say, that you have the worst opinion of me : 
 that you deny me the possession of all I value most. That 
 is to say, that I am a traitor to all my sisters : that I have 
 acted as no woman can act, without degrading herself and 
 her sex : that I have sought where the incorrupt of my kind 
 naturally scorn and abhor to seek." She and I were silent, 
 for many a minute. "Lucifer Star of the Morning ! " she 
 went on, " thou art fallen. You once high in my esteem 
 are hurled down : you once intimate in my friendship are 
 cast out. Go ! " 
 
 ' I went not : I had heard her voice tremble seen her 
 lip quiver : I knew another storm of tears would fall ; and 
 then, I believed, some calm and some sunshine must come, 
 and I would wait for it. 
 
 ' As fast, but more quietly than before, the warm rain 
 streamed down : there was another sound in her weeping 
 a softer, more regretful sound. While I watched, her eyes 
 lifted to me a gaze more reproachful than haughty more 
 mournful than incensed. 
 
 '"Oh, Moore!" said she: "it was worse than Et tu, 
 Brute ! " 
 
 ' I relieved myself by what should have been a sigh, but 
 it became a groan. A sense of Cain-like desolation made my 
 breast ache. 
 
 ' " There has been en-or in what I have done," I said, 
 " and it has won me bitter wages : which I will go and 
 spend far from her who gave them." 
 
 ' I took iny hat. All the time I could not have borne to
 
 550 SHIRLEY 
 
 depart so ; and I believed she would not let me. Nor would 
 she, but for the mortal pang I had given her pride, that 
 cowed her compassion and kept her silent. 
 
 ' I was obliged to turn back of my own accord when I 
 reached the door, to approach her and to say, " Forgive me." 
 
 ' " I could, if there was not myself to forgive, too," was 
 her reply ; " but to mislead a sagacious man so far, I must 
 have done wrong." 
 
 ' I broke out suddenly with some declamation I do not 
 remember : I know that it was sincere, and that my wish 
 and aim were to absolve her to herself : in fact, in her case, 
 self-accusation was a chimera. 
 
 1 At last, she extended her hand. For the first time I 
 wished to take her in my arms and kiss her. I did kiss her 
 hand many times. 
 
 ' " Some day we shall be friends again," she said, " when 
 you have had time to read my actions and motives in a true 
 light, and not so horribly to misinterpret them. Time may 
 give you the right key to all : then, perhaps, you will com- 
 prehend me ; and then we shall be reconciled." 
 
 ' Farewell drops rolled slow down her cheeks : she wiped 
 them away. 
 
 ' " I am sorry for what has happened deeply sorry," she 
 sobbed. So was I God knows ! Thus were we severed.' 
 
 ' A queer tale ! ' commented Mr. Yorke. 
 
 ' I'll do it no more,' vowed his companion : ' never more 
 will I mention marriage to a woman, unless I feel love. 
 Henceforth, Credit and Commerce may take care of them- 
 selves. Bankruptcy may come when it lists. I have done 
 with slavish fear of disaster. I mean to work diligently, 
 wait patiently, bear steadily. Let the worst come 1 will 
 take an axe and an emigrant's berth, and go out with Louis 
 to the West he and I have settled it. No woman shall 
 ever again look at me as Miss Keeldar looked ever again 
 feel towards me as Miss Keeldar felt : in no woman's 
 presence will I ever again stand at once such a fool and 
 such a knave such a brute and such a puppy.'
 
 RUSHEDGU, A CONFESSIONAL 551 
 
 ' Tut ! ' said the imperturbable Yorke, ' you make too 
 much of it ; but still, I say, I am capped : firstly, that she 
 did not love you ; and, secondly, that you did not love her. 
 You are both young ; you are both handsome ; you are both 
 well enough for wit, and even for temper take you on the 
 right side : what ailed you that you could not agree ? ' 
 
 ' We never have been never could be at home with each 
 other, Yorke. Admire each other as we might at a distance, 
 still we jarred when we came very near. I have sat at one 
 side of a room and observed her at the other ; perhaps in an 
 excited, genial moment, when she had some of her favourites 
 round her her old beaux, for instance, yourself and 
 Helstone, with whom she is so playful, pleasant and elo- 
 quent. I have watched her when she was most natural, most 
 lively, and most lovely ; my judgment has pronounced her 
 beautiful : beautiful she is, at times, when her mood and her 
 array partake of the splendid. I have drawn a little nearer, 
 feeling that our terms of acquaintance gave me the right of 
 approach ; I have joined the circle round her seat, caught 
 her eye, and mastered her attention ; then we have con- 
 versed ; and others thinking me, perhaps, peculiarly privi- 
 leged have withdrawn by degrees, and left us alone. Were 
 we happy thus left? For myself, I must say, No. Always 
 a feeling of constraint came over me ; always I was disposed 
 to be stern and strange. We talked politics and business : 
 no soft sense of domestic intimacy ever opened our hearts, 
 or thawed our language, and made it flow easy and limpid. 
 If we had confidences, they were confidences of the counting- 
 house, not of the heart. Nothing in her cherished affection 
 in me made me better, gentler : she only stirred my brain 
 and whetted my acuteness : she never crept into my heart 
 or influenced its pulse ; and for this good reason, no doubt, 
 because I had not the secret of making her love me.' 
 
 ' Well, lad, it is a queer thing. I might laugh at thce, 
 and reckon to despise thy refinements; but as it is dark 
 night and we are by ourselves, 1 don't mind telling thee 
 that thy talk brings back a glimpse of my own past life.
 
 552 SHIRLEY 
 
 Twenty-five years ago, I tried to persuade a beautiful woman 
 to love me, and she would not. I had not the key to her 
 nature : she was a stone wall to me, doorless and window- 
 less.' 
 
 ' But you loved her, Yorke : you worshipped Mary Cave : 
 your conduct, after all, was that of a man never of a fortune- 
 hunter.' 
 
 ' Ay ! I did love her : but then she was beautiful as the 
 moon we do not see to-night : there is nought like her in 
 these days : Miss Helstone, maybe, has a look of her, but 
 nobody else.' 
 
 ' Who has a look of her ? ' 
 
 ' That black-coated tyrant's niece ; that quiet, delicate 
 Miss Helstone. Many a time I have put on my spectacles 
 to look at the lassie in church, because she has gentle blue 
 een, wi' long lashes ; and, when she sits in shadow, and is 
 very still and very pale, and is, happen, about to fall asleep 
 wi' the length of the sermon and the heat of the biggin' 
 she is as like one of Canova's marbles as aught else.' 
 ' Was Mary Cave in that style ? ' 
 
 ' Far grander ! Less lass-like and flesh-like. You won- 
 dered why she hadn't wings and a crown. She was a stately, 
 peaceful angel was my Mary.' 
 
 ' And you could not persuade her to love you ? ' 
 ' Not with all I could do ; though I prayed Heaven many 
 a time, on my bended knee, to help me." 
 
 ' Mary Cave was not what you think her, Yorke I have 
 seen her picture at the Rectory. She is no angel, but a fair, 
 regular- featured, taciturn-looking woman rather too white 
 and lifeless for my taste. But supposing she had been 
 something better than she was 
 
 ' Robert,' interrupted Yorke, ' I could fell you off your 
 horse at this moment. However, I'll hold my hand. 
 Reason tells me you are right, and I am wrong. I know 
 well enough that the passion I still have is only the remnant 
 of an illusion. If Miss Cave had possessed either feeling o: 
 sense, she could not have been so perfectly impassible to my
 
 EUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL 553 
 
 regard as she showed hersalf she must have preferred me 
 to that copper-faced despot.' 
 
 ' Supposing, Yorke, she had been educated (no women 
 were educated in those days) : supposing she had possessed 
 a thoughtful, original mind, a love of knowledge, a wish for 
 information, which she took an artless delight in receiving 
 from your lips, and having measured out to her by your 
 hand : supposing her conversation when she sat at your 
 side was fertile, varied, imbued with a picturesque grace 
 and genial interest, quiet flowing but clear and bounteous ; 
 supposing that when you stood near her by chance, or when 
 you sat near her by design, comfort at once became your 
 atmosphei'e, and content your element ; supposing that 
 whenever her face was under your gaze, or her idea filled 
 your thoughts, you gradually ceased to be hard and anxious, 
 and pure affection, love of home, thirst for sweet discourse, 
 unselfish longing to protect and cherish, replaced the sordid, 
 cankering calculations of your trade ; supposing with all 
 this that many a time, when you had been so happy as to 
 possess your Mary's little hand, you had felt it tremble as 
 you held it just as a warm little bird trembles when you 
 take it from its nest ; supposing you had noticed her shrink 
 into the background on your entrance into a room, yet if you 
 sought her in her retreat she welcomed you with the sw r eetest 
 smile that ever lit a fair virgin face, and only turned her 
 eyes from the encounter of your own, lest their clearness 
 should reveal too much ; supposing, in short, your Mary had 
 been not cold, but modest ; not vacant, but reflective ; not 
 obtuse, but sensitive ; not inane, but innocent ; not prudish, 
 but pure would you have left her to court another woman 
 for her wealth ? ' 
 
 Mr. Yorke raised his hat, and wiped his forehead with his 
 handkerchief. 
 
 ' The moon is up,' was his first not quite relevant remark, 
 pointing with his whip across the moor. ' There she is, 
 rising into the haze, staring at us wi' a strange red glower. 
 She is no more silver than old Helstoue's brow is ivory.
 
 554 SHIRLEY 
 
 What does she mean by leaning her cheek on Eusheige i' 
 that way, and looking at us wi' a scowl and a menace ? ' 
 
 ' Yorke, if Mary had loved you silently, yet faithfully 
 chastely, yet fervently as you would wish your wife to love, 
 would you have left her ? ' 
 
 ' Robert ! ' he lifted his arm : he held it suspended, and 
 paused. ' Robert ! this is a queer world, arid men are 
 made of the queerest dregs that Chaos churned up in her 
 ferment. I might swear sounding oaths oaths that would 
 make the poachers think there was a bittern booming in 
 Bilberry Moss that, in the case you put, Death only should 
 have parted me from Mary. But I have lived in the world 
 fifty-five years ; I have been forced to study human nature ; 
 and to speak a dark truth the odds are, if Mary had 
 loved and not scorned me ; if I had been secure of her 
 affection, certain of her constancy, been irritated by no 
 doubts, stung by no humiliations the odds are ' (he let his 
 hand fall heavy on the saddle) ' the odds are, I should 
 have left her ! ' 
 
 They rode side by side in silence. Ere either spoke again, 
 they were on the other side of Rushedge : Briarfield lights 
 starred the purple skirt of the moor. Robert, being the 
 youngest, and having less of the past to absorb him than his 
 comrade, recommenced first. 
 
 ' I believe I daily find it proved that we can get 
 nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a prin- 
 ciple or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through 
 strengthening peril. We err ; we fall ; we are humbled then 
 we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out 
 of the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice ; 
 we are sickened, degraded ; everything good in us rebels 
 against us ; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our 
 bodies ; there is a period of civil war ; if the soul has strength, 
 it conquers and rules thereafter.' 
 
 ' What art thou going to do now, Robert ? What are 
 thy plans ? ' 
 
 ' Fi.ir my private plans, I'll keep them to myself ; which
 
 BUSHEDGE, A CONFESSIONAL 555 
 
 is very easy, as at present I have none : no private life is 
 permitted a man in my position, a man in debt. For my 
 public plans, my views are a little altered. While I was in 
 Birmingham, I looked a little into reality, considered closely, 
 and at their source, the causes of the present troubles of 
 this country ; I did the same in London. Unknown, I could 
 go where I pleased, mix with whom I would. I went where 
 there was want of food, of fuel, of clothing ; where there was 
 no occupation and no hope. I saw some, with naturally 
 elevated tendencies and good feelings, kept down amongst 
 sordid privations and harassing griefs. I saw many 
 originally low, and to whom lack of education left scarcely 
 anything but animal wants, disappointed in those wants, 
 ahungered, athirst and desperate as famished animals. I 
 saw what taught my brain a new lesson, and filled my breast 
 with fresh feelings. I have no intention to profess more 
 softness or sentiment than I have hitherto professed ; mutiny 
 and ambition I regard as I have always regarded them : I 
 should resist a riotous mob just as heretofore : I should open 
 on the scent of a runaway ringleader as eagerly as ever, and 
 run him down as relentlessly, and follow him up to condign 
 punishment as rigorously ; but I should do it now chiefly for 
 the sake and the security of those he misled. Something 
 there is to look to, Yorke, beyond a man's personal interest : 
 beyond the advancement of well-laid schemes ; beyond even 
 the discharge of dishonouring debts. To respect himself, a 
 man must believe he renders justice to his fellow-men. 
 Unless I am more considerate to ignoi'ance, more forbearing 
 to suffering, than I have hitherto been, I shall scorn myself 
 as grossly unjust. What now ? ' he said, addressing his 
 horse, which, hearing the ripple of water, and feeling thirsty, 
 turned to a way-side trough, where the moonbeam was 
 playing in a crystal eddy. 
 
 ' Yorke,' pursued Moore, ' ride on : I must let him 
 drink.' 
 
 Yorke accordingly rode slowly forwards, occupying himself 
 as he advanced, in discriminating, amongst the many lights
 
 556 SHIRLEY 
 
 now spangling the distance, those of Briarmains. Stilbro' 
 Moor was left behind : plantations rose dusk on either hand ; 
 they were descending the hill : below them lay the valley 
 with its populous parish : they felt already at home. 
 
 Surrounded no longer by heath, it was not startling to 
 Mr. Yorke to see a hat rise, and to hear a voice speak 
 behind the wall. The words, however, were peculiar. 
 
 ' When the wicked perisheth, there is shouting,' it said ; 
 and added, ' As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no 
 more ' (with a deeper growl) ; ' terrors take hold of him as 
 waters ; hell is naked before him. He shall die without 
 knowledge.' 
 
 A fierce flash and sharp crack violated the calm of 
 night. Yorke, ere he turned, knew the four convicts of 
 Birmingham were avenged.
 
 CHAPTEE XXXI 
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 
 
 THE die was cast. Sir Philip Nunnely knew it : Shirley 
 knew it : Mr. Sympson knew it. That evening, when all 
 the Fieldhead family dined at Nunnely Priory, decided the 
 business. 
 
 Two or three things conduced to bring the baronet to a 
 point. He had observed that Miss Keeldar looked pensive 
 and delicate. This new phase in her demeanour smote him 
 on his weak or poetic side : a spontaneous sonnet brewed in 
 his brain ; and while it was still working there, one of his 
 eisters persuaded his lady-love to sit down to the piano and 
 sing a ballad one of Sir Philip's own ballads. It was the 
 least elaborate, the least affected out of all comparison the 
 best of his numerous efforts. 
 
 It chanced that Shirley, the moment before, had been 
 gazing from a window down on the park ; she had seen that 
 stormy moonlight which ' le Professeur Louis ' was, perhaps, 
 at the same instant contemplating from her own oak-parlour 
 lattice ; she had seen the isolated trees of the domain 
 broad, strong, spreading oaks, and high-towering heroic 
 beeches wrestling with the gale. Her ear had caught the full 
 roar of the forest lower down ; the swift rushing of clouds, 
 the moon, to the eye, hasting swifter still, had crossed her 
 vision : she turned from sight and sound touched, if not 
 rapt, wakened if not inspired. 
 
 She sang, as requested. There was much about love in 
 the ballad : faithful love that refused to abandon its object; 
 love that disaster could not shake ; love that, in calamity 
 waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set
 
 668 SHIRLEY 
 
 to a fine old air in themselves they were simple and sweet : 
 perhaps when read, they wanted force ; when well sung, 
 they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well : she breathed 
 into the feeling, softness ; she poured round the passion, 
 force : her voice was fine that evening ; its expression 
 dramatic : she impressed all, and charmed one. 
 
 On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat 
 down on a seat semi-stool, semi-cushion : the ladies were 
 round her none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and 
 the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might 
 look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What 
 made her sing so ? They never sang so. Was it proper to 
 sing with such expression, with such originality so unlike 
 a school-girl ? Decidedly not : it was strange, it was 
 unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was 
 unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged. 
 
 Moreover, old Lady Nunnely eyed her stonily from her 
 great chair by the fireside : her gaze said, ' This, woman is 
 not of mine or my daughters' kind : I object to her as my 
 son's wife.' 
 
 Her son, catching the look, read its meaning : he grew 
 alarmed : what he so wished to win, there was danger he 
 might lose. He must make haste. 
 
 The room they were in had once been a picture-gallery. 
 Sir Philip's father Sir Monckton had converted it into a 
 saloon ; but still it had a shadowy, long-withdrawing look. 
 A deep recess with a window a recess that held one couch, 
 one table, and a fairy cabinet, formed a room within a room. 
 Two persons standing there might interchange a dialogue, 
 and, so it were neither long nor loud, none be the wiser. 
 
 Sir Philip induced two of his sisters to perpetrate a duet; 
 he gave occupation to the Misses Syrnpson : the elder ladies 
 were conversing together. He was pleased to remark that, 
 meantime, Shirley rose to look at the pictures. He had a 
 tale to tell about one ancestress, whose dark beauty seemed 
 as that of a flower of the south : he joined her, and began to 
 tell it.
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 559 
 
 There were mementoes of the same lady in the cabinet 
 adorning the recess ; and while Shirley was stooping to 
 examine the missal and the rosary on the inlaid shelf, and 
 while the Misses Nunnely indulged in a prolonged screech, 
 guiltless of expression, pure of originality, perfectly conven- 
 tional and absolutely unmeaning, Sir Philip stooped too, and 
 whispered a few hurried sentences. At first, Miss Keeldar 
 was struck so still, you might have fancied that whisper a 
 charm which had changed her to a statue ; but she presently 
 looked up and answered. They parted. Miss Keeldar 
 returned to the fire, and resumed her seat : the baronet 
 gazed after her, then went and stood behind his sisters. 
 Mr. Sympson Mr. Sympson only had marked the 
 pantomime. 
 
 That gentleman drew his own conclusions. Had he been 
 as acute as he was meddling, as profound as he was prying, 
 he might have found that in Sir Philip's face whereby to 
 correct his inference. Ever shallow, hasty, and positive, he 
 went home quite cock-a-hoop. 
 
 He was not a man that kept secrets well : when elate on 
 a subject, he could not avoid talking about it. The next 
 morning, having occasion to employ his son's tutor as his 
 secretary, he must needs announce to him, in mouthing 
 accents, and with much flimsy pomp of manner, that he had 
 better hold himself prepared for a return to the south, at an 
 early day, as the important business which had detained 
 him (Mr. Sympson) so long in Yorkshire, was now on the 
 eve of fortunate completion : his anxious and laborious 
 efforts were likely, at last, to be crowned with the happiest 
 success : a truly eligible addition was about to be made to 
 the family connections. 
 
 'In Sir Philip Nunnely?' Louis Moore conjectured. 
 
 Whereupon Mr. Sympson treated himself simultaneously 
 to a pinch of snuff and a chuckling laugh, checked only by a 
 sudden choke of dignity, and an order to the tutor to proceed 
 with business. 
 
 For a day or two, Mr. Sympson continued as bland as
 
 560 SHIBLEY 
 
 oil ; but also he seemed to sit on pins, and his gait, when he 
 walked, emulated that of a hen treading a hot girdle. He 
 was for ever looking out of the window, and listening for 
 chariot- wheels : Bluebeard's wife Sisera's mother were 
 nothing to him. He waited when the matter should be 
 opened in form ; when himself should be consulted ; when 
 lawyers should be summoned ; when settlement discussions, 
 and all the delicious worldly fuss, should pompously begin. 
 
 At last there came a letter ; he himself handed it to Miss 
 Keeldar out of the bag : he knew the handwriting ; he knew 
 the crest on the seal. He did not see it opened and read, 
 for Shirley took it to her own room ; nor did he see it 
 answered, for she wrote her reply shut up, and was very long 
 about it, the best part of a day. He questioned her 
 whether it was answered ; she responded, ' Yes." 
 
 Again he waited waited in silence absolutely not 
 daring to speak : kept mute by something in Shirley's face, 
 a very awful something inscrutable to him as the writing 
 on the wall to Belshazzar. He was moved more than once 
 to call Daniel in the person of Louis Moore, and to ask 
 an interpretation ; but his dignity forbade the familiarity. 
 Daniel himself, perhaps, had his own private difficulties 
 connected with that baffling bit of translation : he looked 
 like a student for whom grammars are blank, and diction- 
 aries dumb. 
 
 Mr. Sympson had been out, to while away an anxious 
 hour in the society of his friends at De Walden Hall. He 
 returned a little sooner than was expected ; his family and 
 Miss Keeldar were assembled in the oak-parlour ; addressing 
 the latter, he requested her to step with him into another 
 room : he wished to have with her a ' strictly private 
 interview.' 
 
 She rose, asking no questions, and professing no 
 surprise. 
 
 'Very well, sir,' she said in the tone of a determined 
 person, who is informed that the dentist is come to extract
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 561 
 
 that large double tooth of his, from which he has suffered 
 such a purgatory this month past. She left her sewing and 
 her thimble in the window-seat, and followed her uncle 
 where he led. 
 
 Shut into the drawing-room, the pair took seats, each in 
 an armchair, placed opposite, a few yards between them. 
 
 ' I have been to De Walden Hall,' said Mr. Sympson. 
 He paused. Miss Keeldar's eyes were on the pretty white 
 and green carpet. That information required no response : 
 she gave none. 
 
 ' I have learned,' he went on, slowly, ' I have learned a 
 circumstance which surprises me.' 
 
 Resting her cheek on her forefinger, she waited to be told 
 what circumstance. 
 
 ' It seems that Nunnely Priory is shut up ; that the 
 
 family are gone back to their place in shire. It seems 
 
 that the baronet that the baronet that Sir Philip himself 
 has accompanied his mother and sisters.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' said Shirley. 
 
 'May I ask if you share the amazement with which I 
 received this news ? ' 
 
 ' No, sir.' 
 
 ' Is it news to you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' I mean I mean ' pursued Mr. Sympson, now fidgeting 
 in his chair, quitting his hitherto brief and tolerably clear 
 phraseology, and returning to his customary wordy, confused, 
 irritable style ; ' I mean to have a thorough explanation. 1 
 will not be put off. I I shall insist on being heard ; and on 
 on having my own way. My questions must be answered. 
 I will have clear, satisfactory replies. I am not to be trifled 
 with. (Silence.) 
 
 'It is a strange and an extraordinary thing a very 
 singular a most odd thing ! I thought all was right : knew 
 no other : and there the family are gone ! ' 
 
 ' I suppose, sir, they had a right to go.' 
 
 ' Sir Philip is gone ! ' (with emphasis).
 
 562 SHIRLEY 
 
 Shirley raised her brows : ' Bon voyage ! ' said she. 
 
 ' This will not do : this must be altered, ma'am.' 
 
 He drew his chair forward ; he pushed it back ; he looked 
 perfectly incensed, and perfectly helpless. 
 
 ' Come, come, now, uncle,' expostulated Shirley, ' do not 
 begin to fret and fume, or we shall make no sense of the 
 business. Ask me what you want to know : I am as will- 
 ing to come to an explanation as you : I promise you truthful 
 replies.' 
 
 ' I want I demand to know, Miss Keeldar, whether Sir 
 Philip has made you an offer ? ' 
 
 ' He has.' 
 
 I You avow it ? ' 
 
 ' I avow it. But now, go on : consider that point settled.' 
 
 ' He made you an offer that night we dined at the 
 Priory ? ' 
 
 ' It is enough to say that he made it. Go on.' 
 
 ' He proposed in the recess in the room that used to 
 be a picture-gallery that Sir Monckton converted into a 
 saloon ? ' 
 
 No answer. 
 
 ' You were both examining a cabinet : I saw it all : my 
 sagacity was not at fault it never is. Subsequently, you 
 received a letter from him. On what subject of what nature 
 were the contents ? ' 
 
 ' No matter.' 
 
 ' Ma'am, is that the way in which you speak to me ? ' 
 
 Shii-ley's foot tapped quick on the carpet. 
 
 ' There you sit, silent and sullen you who promised 
 truthful replies ! ' 
 
 ' Sir, I have answered you thus far : proceed.' 
 
 ' I should like to see that letter.' 
 
 ' You cannot see it.' 
 
 I 1 must and shall, ma'am. I am your guardian.' 
 
 ' Having ceased to be a ward, I have no guardian.' 
 ' Ungrateful being ! Reared by me as my own 
 daughter '
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 563 
 
 ' Once more, uncle, have the kindness to keep to the 
 point. Let us both remain cool. For my part, I do not 
 wish to get into a passion ; but, you know, once drive me 
 beyond certain bounds, I care little what I say : I am not 
 then soon checked. Listen ! You have asked me whether 
 Sir Philip made me an offer : that question is answered. 
 What do you wish to know next ? ' 
 
 ' I desire to know whether you accepted or refused him ? 
 and know it I will.' 
 
 ' Certainly : you ought to know it. I refused him.' 
 ' Be fused him ! You yo^l ) Shirley Keeldar, refused Sir 
 Philip Nunnely ? ' 
 
 ' I did.' 
 
 The poor gentleman bounced from his chair, and first 
 rushed, and then trotted, through the room. 
 
 ' There it is ! There it is ! There it is ! ' 
 
 1 Sincerely speaking, I am sorry, uncle, you are so 
 disappointed.' 
 
 Concession contrition never do any good with some 
 people. Instead of softening and conciliating, they but 
 embolden and harden them : of that number was Mr. 
 Sympson. 
 
 ' I disappointed ! What is it to me ? Have / an interest 
 in it? You would insinuate, perhaps, that I have motives ?' 
 
 ' Most people have motives, of some sort, for their actions.' 
 
 ' She accuses me to my face ! I that have been a parent 
 to her she charges with bad motives ! ' 
 
 ' Bad motives, I did not say.' 
 
 ' And now you prevaricate. You have no principles ! ' 
 
 ' Uncle, you tire me : I want to go away.' 
 
 ' Go you shall not ! I will be answered. What are your 
 intentions, Miss Keeldar ? ' 
 
 ' In what respect ? ' 
 
 ' In respect of matrimony.' 
 
 ' To be quiet and to do just as I please.' 
 
 ' Just as you please ! The words are to the last degree 
 indecorous,'
 
 564 SHIKLEY 
 
 ' Mr. Sympson, I advise you not to become insulting : 
 you know I will not bear that.' 
 
 1 You read French. Your mind is poisoned with French 
 novels. You have imbibed French principles.' 
 
 ' The ground you are treading now returns a mighty 
 hollow sound under your feet. Beware ! ' 
 
 ' It will end in infamy, sooner or later : I have foreseen 
 it all along.' 
 
 ' Do you assert, sir, that something in which / am con- 
 cerned will end in infamy ? ' 
 
 'That it will that it will. You said just now you 
 would act as you please. You acknowledge no rules no 
 limitations.' 
 
 ' Silly stuff ! and vulgar as silly ! ' 
 
 ' Eegardless of decorum, you are prepared to fly in the 
 face of propi'iety.' 
 
 ' You tire me, uncle.' 
 
 ' What, madam what could be your reasons for refusing 
 Sir Philip ? ' 
 
 ' At last, there is another sensible question : I shall be 
 glad to reply to it. Sir Philip is too young for me : I 
 regard him as a boy : all his relations his mother especially 
 would be annoyed if he married me : such a step would 
 embroil him with them : I am not his equal in the world's 
 estimation.' 
 
 ' Is that all ? ' 
 
 ' Our dispositions are not compatible.' 
 
 ' Why, a more amiable gentleman never breathed.' 
 
 ' He is very amiable very excellent truly estimable, 
 but not my master ; not in one point. I could not trust 
 myself with his happiness: I would not undertake the 
 keeping of it for thousands : I will accept no hand which 
 cannot hold me in check.' 
 
 ' I thought you liked to do as you please : you are vastly 
 inconsistent.' 
 
 'When I promise to obey, it shall be under the conviction 
 that I can keep that promise : I could not obey a youth like
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 565 
 
 Sir Philip. Besides, he would never command me : he 
 would expect me always to rule to guide, and I have no 
 taste whatever for the office.' 
 
 1 You no taste for swaggering, and subduing, and ordering, 
 and ruling ? ' 
 
 ' Not ray husband: only my uncle.' 
 ' Where is the difference ? ' 
 
 ' There is a slight difference : that is certain. And I know 
 full well, any man who wishes to live in decent comfort 
 with me as a husband must be able to control me.' 
 ' I wish you had a real tyrant.' 
 
 ' A tyrant would not hold me for a day not for an hour. 
 I would rebel break from him defy him.' 
 
 ' Are you not enough to bewilder one's brain with your 
 self-contradiction ? ' 
 
 ' It is evident I bewilder your brain.' 
 ' You talk of Sir Philip being young : he is two-and- 
 twenty.' 
 
 ' My husband must be thirty, with the sense of forty.' 
 1 You had better pick out some old man some white- 
 headed or bald-headed swain.' 
 1 No, thank you.' 
 
 ' You could lead some doting fool : you might pin him to 
 your apron.' 
 
 ' I might do that with a boy : but it is not my vocation. 
 Did I not say I prefer a master ? One in whose presence 
 I shall feel obliged and disposed to be good. One whose 
 control my impatient temper must acknowledge. A man 
 whose approbation can reward whose displeasure punish 
 me. A man I shall feel it impossible nob to love, and very 
 possible to fear.' 
 
 'What is there to hinder you from doing all (his with 
 Sir Philip? He is a baronet; a man of rank, property, 
 connections, far above yours. If you talk of intellect, he is 
 a poet. : he writes verses : which you, I take it, cannot do, 
 with all your cleverness.' 
 
 ' Neither his title, wealth, pedigree, nor poetry, avail to
 
 666 SHIRLEY 
 
 invest him with the power I describe. These are feather- 
 weights : they want ballast : a measure of sound, solid 
 practical sense would have stood him in better stead with 
 me.' 
 
 ' You and Henry rave about poetry : you used to catch 
 fire like tinder on the subject when you were a girl.' 
 
 ' Oh ! uncle, there is nothing really valuable in this 
 world there is nothing glorious in the world to come, that is 
 not poetry ! ' 
 
 ' Marry a poet, then, in God's name ! ' 
 
 ' Show him me, and I will.' 
 
 ' Sir Philip.' 
 
 ' Not at all. You are almost as good a poet as he. 
 
 1 Madam, you are wandering from the point.' 
 
 ' Indeed, uncle, I wanted to do so ; and I shall be glad 
 to lead you away with me. Do not let us get out of temper 
 with each other : it is not worth while.' 
 
 ' Out of temper, Miss Keeldar ! I should be glad to 
 know who is out of temper.' 
 
 ' I am not, yet.' 
 
 ' If you mean to insinuate that I am, I consider that you 
 are guilty of impertinence.' 
 
 1 You will be soon, if you go on at that rate.' 
 
 ' There it is ! With your pert tongue, you would try the 
 patience of a Job.' 
 
 ' I know I should.' 
 
 ' No levity, miss ! This is not a laughing matter. It is 
 an affair I am resolved to probe thoroughly, convinced that 
 there is mischief at the bottom. You described just now, 
 with far too much freedom for your years and sex, the sort 
 of individual you would prefer as a husband. Pray, did you 
 paint from the life ? ' 
 
 Shirley opened her lips ; but instead of speaking she 
 only glowed rose-red. 
 
 ' I shall have an answer to that question,' affirmed Mr. 
 Symplon, assuming vast courage and consequence on the 
 strength of this symptom of confusion.
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 567 
 
 'It was an historical picture, uncle, from several 
 originals.' 
 
 ' Several originals ! Bless my heart ! ' 
 
 ' I have been in love several times.' 
 
 ' This is cynical.' 
 
 ' With heroes of many nations.' 
 
 4 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 ! ' 
 
 1 Once I loved Socrates.' 
 
 ' Pooh ! No trifling, ma'am.' 
 
 ' I admired Themistocles, Leonidas, Epaminondas.' 
 
 1 Miss Keeldar ' 
 
 ' To pass over a few centuries, Washington was a plain 
 man, but I liked him : but, to speak of the actual pre- 
 sent ' 
 
 ' Ah ! the actual present.' 
 
 ' To quit crude school-girl fancies, and come to reali- 
 ties ' 
 
 ' 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 particulai'S.' 
 
 ' They positively are rather alike ; their very faces are
 
 568 SHIELEY 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' Kant and fustian ! ' 
 
 ' I daresay 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 oue day roar exultingly over him. He has been 
 unscared by the howl, and he will he 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.' 
 
 4 You don't go the way to know.' 
 
 'My family respectability shall not be compromised.' 
 
 4 A good resolution : keep it.' 
 
 4 Madam, it is you who shall keep it.'
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 569 
 
 ' 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 ? ' 
 
 1 Does it ? ' 
 
 1 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.' 
 
 1 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.'
 
 570 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' I say she is mad.' 
 
 1 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 passiona'e. 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 .^O'l, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises 
 before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 571 
 
 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 
 analyse 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.'
 
 572 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' 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 con- 
 tents 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. Syrnpson ! 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. 
 
 ' Oh, Mr. Moore ! ' she said ; ' I was afraid it was my 
 uncle again : he and I have quarrelled.'
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 573 
 
 ' 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 school- 
 room 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 Eobert.' And he looked at Shirley. 
 
 ' I shall be glad to hear news of him : is he coming 
 borne ? ' 
 
 ' 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 havo spoken. 
 It might have been worse : Robert is not dead, but much 
 hurt. 1 
 
 ' Oh ! 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
 
 574 
 
 wounded severely, but it was hoped not fatally : of tho 
 assassin, or assassins, nothing was known they had escaped. 
 ' No doubt,' Mr. Yorke observed, ' it was done in revenge : 
 it was a pity ill-will had ever been raised ; but that could 
 not be helped now.' 
 
 ' He is my only brother,' said Louis, as Shirley returned 
 the note. ' I cannot hear unmoved that ruffians have lain 
 in wait for him, and shot him down like some wild beast 
 from behind a wall.' 
 
 ' Be comforted : be hopeful. He will get better I know 
 he will.' 
 
 Shirley, solicitous to soothe, held her hand over Mr. 
 Moore's, as it lay on the arm of the chair : she just touched 
 it lightly, scarce palpably. 
 
 ' Well, give me your hand,' he said ; ' it will be for the 
 first time : it is in a moment of calamity give it me.' 
 
 Awaiting neither consent nor refusal, he took what he 
 asked. 
 
 ' I am going to Briarmains now,' he went on. ' I \vant 
 you to step over to the Kectory, and tell Caroline Helstone 
 what has happened: will you do this? she will hear it 
 best from you.' 
 
 ' Immediately,' said Shirley, with docile promptitude. 
 ' Ought I to say that there is no danger? ' 
 
 ' Say so.' 
 
 ' You will come back soon, and let me know more?' 
 
 ' I will either come or write.' 
 
 ' Trust me for watching over Caroline. I will com- 
 municate with your sister, too ; but, doubtless, she is already 
 with Eobert ? ' 
 
 ' Doubtless ; or will be soon. Good morning, now.' 
 
 ' You will boar up, come what may ? ' 
 
 ' We shall sco that." 
 
 Shirley's fingers were obliged to withdraw from the 
 Tutor':; : Louis was obliged to relinquish that haud folded, 
 clasped, hidden in his own. 
 
 ' I thought I should have had to support her,' he said, as
 
 UNCLE AND NIECE 575 
 
 he walked towards Briarmains, ' and it is she who has made 
 me strong. That look of pity that gentle touch! No 
 down was ever softer no elixir more potent ! It lay like 
 a snowflake : it thrilled like lightning. A thousand times 
 I have longed to possess that hand to have it in mine. I 
 have possessed it for five minutes I held it. Her fingers 
 and mine can never be strangers more having met once, 
 they must meet again.'
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 
 
 BRIARMAINS being nearer than the Hollow, Mr. Yorke had 
 conveyed his young coimade there. He had seen him laid 
 in the best bed of the house, as carefully as if he had been 
 one of his own sons. The sight of his blood, welling from 
 the treacherously-inflicted wound, made him indeed the son 
 of the Yorkshire gentleman's heart. The spectacle of the 
 sudden event ; of the tall, straight shape prostrated in its 
 pride across the road : of the fine southern head laid low in 
 the dust ; of that youth in prime flung at once before him 
 pallid, lifeless, helpless this was the very combination of 
 circumstances to win for the victim Mr. Yorke's liveliest 
 interest. 
 
 No other hand was there to raise to aid ; no other 
 voice to question kindly ; no other brain to concert measures : 
 he had to do it all himself. This utter dependence of the 
 speechless, bleeding youth (as a youth he regarded him) on 
 his benevolence, secured that benevolence most effectually. 
 Well did Mr. Yorke like to have power, and to use it : he 
 had now between his hands power over a fellow-creature's 
 life : it suited him. 
 
 No less perfectly did it suit his saturnine better-half : 
 the incident was quite in her way, and to her taste. Some 
 women would have been terror-struck to see a gory man 
 brought in over their threshold, and laid down in their hall 
 in the ' howe of the night.' There, you would suppose, was 
 subject-matter for hysterics. No : Mrs. Yorke went into 
 hysterics when Jessie would not leave the garden to conae to
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 577 
 
 her knitting, or when Martin proposed starting for Australia, 
 with a view to realize freedom, and escape the tyranny of 
 Matthew; but an attempted murder near her door a half- 
 murdered man in her best bed set her straight, cheered her 
 spirits, gave her cap the dash of a turban. 
 
 Mrs. Yorke was just the woman who, while rendering 
 miserable the drudging life of a simple maid-servant, would 
 nurse like a heroine an hospital full of plague patients. 
 She almost loved Moore : her tough heart almost yearned 
 towards him, when she found him committed to her charge 
 left in her arms, as dependent on her as her youngest-born 
 in the cradle. Had she seen a domestic, or one of her 
 daughters, give him a draught of water, or smooth his 
 pillow, she would have boxed the intruder's ears. She 
 chased Jessie and Eose from the upper realm of tha 
 house : she forbade the housemaids to set their foot in it. 
 
 Now, if the accident had happened at the Rectory gates, 
 and old Helstone had taken in the martyr, neither Yorke 
 nor his wife would have pitied him : they would have ad- 
 judged him right served for his tyranny and meddling : 
 as it was, he became, for the present, the apple of their 
 eye. 
 
 Strange ! Louis Moore was permitted to come, to sit 
 down on the edge of the bed, and lean over the pillow, to 
 hold his brother's hand, and press his pale forehead with hig 
 fraternal lips : and Mrs. Yorke bore it well. She suffered 
 him to stay half the day there ; she once suffered him to sit 
 up all night in the chamber ; she rose herself at five o'clock 
 of a wet November morning, and with her own hands lit the 
 kitchen fire, and made the brothers a breakfast, and served 
 it to them herself. Majestically arrayed in a boundless 
 flannel wrapper, a shawl, and her nightcap, she sat and 
 watched them eat, as complacently as a hen beholds her 
 chickens feed. Yet she gave the cook warning that dtiy for 
 venturing to make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of 
 sago-gruel ; and the housemaid lost her favour because, when 
 Mr. Louis was departing, she brought him his surtout aired
 
 578 SHIBLEY 
 
 from the kitchen, and, like a ' forward piece,' as she was 
 helped him on with it, and accepted, in return, a smile, a 
 ' thank you, my girl,' and a shilling. Two ladies called one 
 day, pale and anxious, and begged earnestly, humbly, to be 
 allowed to see Mr. Moore one instant : Mrs. Yorke harder ed 
 her heart, and sent them packing, not without opprobrium. 
 
 But how was it when Hortense Moore came? Not so 
 bad as might have been expected : the whole family of the 
 Moores really seemed to suit Mrs. Yorke so as no other 
 family had ever suited her. Hortense and she possessed 
 an exhaustless mutual theme of conversation in the corrupt 
 propensities of servants. Their views of this class were 
 similar : they watched them with the same suspicion, and 
 judged them with the same severity. Hortense, too, from 
 the very first, showed no manner of jealousy of Mrs. Yorke's 
 attentions to Robert: she let her keep the post of nurse 
 with little interference ; and, for herself, found ceaseless 
 occupation in fidgeting about the house, holding the kitchen 
 under surveillance, reporting what passed there, and, in 
 short, making herself generally useful. Visitors, they both 
 of them agreed in excluding sedulously from the sick-room. 
 They held the young millowner captive, and hardly let the 
 air breathe or the sun shine on him. 
 
 Mr. MacTurk, the surgeon to whom Moore's case had 
 been committed, pronounced his wound of a dangerous, but, 
 he trusted, not of a hopeless character. At first he wished 
 to place with him a nurse of his own selection ; but this 
 neither Mrs. Yorke nor Hortense would hear of : they pro- 
 mised faithful observance of directions. He was left, there- 
 fore, for the present, in their hands. 
 
 Doubtless, they executed the trust to the best of their 
 ability ; but something got wrong : the bandages were dis- 
 placed, or tampered with ; great loss of blood followed. 
 MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam. He 
 was one of those surgeons whom it is dangerous to vex ; 
 abrupt in his best moods ; in his worst, savage. On seeing 
 Moore's state, he relieved his feelings by a little flowery
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 579 
 
 language, with which it is not necessary to strew the present 
 page. A bouquet or two of the choicest blossoms fell on the 
 unperturbed head of one Mr. Graves, a stony young assistant, 
 he usually carried about with him ; with a second nosegay 
 he gifted another young gentleman in his train an interesting 
 fac-simile of himself, being, indeed, his own son ; but the 
 full corbeille of blushing bloom fell to the lot of meddling 
 womankind, en masse. 
 
 For the best part of one winter night, himself and 
 satellites were busied about Moore. There, at his bedside, 
 shut up alone with him in his chamber, they wrought and 
 wrangled over his exhausted frame. They three were on 
 one side of the bed, and Death on the other. The conflict 
 was sharp : it lasted till day broke, when the balance between 
 the belligerents seemed so equal that both parties might have 
 claimed the victory. 
 
 At dawn, Graves and young MacTurk were left in charge 
 of the patient, while the senior went himself in search of 
 additional strength, and secured it in the person of Mrs. 
 Horsfall, the best nurse on his staff. To this woman he 
 gave Moore in charge, with the sternest injunctions respect- 
 ing the responsibility laid on her shoulders. She took this 
 responsibility stolidly, as she did also the easy-chair at the 
 bed-head. That moment she began her reign. 
 
 Mrs. Horsfall had one virtue, orders received from 
 MacTurk she obeyed to the letter : the Ten Commandments 
 were less binding in her eyes than her surgeon's dictum. In 
 other respects, she was no woman, but a dragon. Hortense 
 Moore fell effaced before her; Mrs. Yorke withdrew 
 crushed ; yet both these women were personages of some 
 dignity in their own estimation, and of some bulk in the 
 estimation of others. Perfectly cowed by the breadth, the 
 height, the bone, and the brawn of Mrs. Horsfall, they 
 retreated to the back -parlour. She, for her part, sat up- 
 stairs when she liked, and down-stairs when she preferred 
 it : she took her dram three times a-day, and her pipe of 
 tobacco four times.
 
 680 SHIKLEY 
 
 As to Moore, no one now ventured to inquire about him : 
 Mrs. Horsfall had him at dry-nurse : it was she wbo was to 
 do for him ; and the general conjecture now ran that she 
 did for him accordingly. 
 
 Morning and evening MacTurk came to see him : his 
 case, thus complicated by a new mischance, was become one 
 of interest in the surgeon's eyes : he regarded him as a 
 damaged piece of clock-work, which it would be credit- 
 able to his skill to set a-going again. Graves and young 
 MacTurk Moore's sole other visitors contemplated him 
 in the light in which they were wont to contemplate the 
 occupant for the time being of the dissecting-room at Stilbro' 
 Infirmary. 
 
 Eobert Moore had a pleasant time of it : in pain ; in 
 danger ; too weak to move ; almost too weak to speak ; a sort 
 of giantess his keeper ; the three surgeons his sole society. 
 Thus he lay through the diminishing days and lengthen- 
 ing nights of the whole drear month of November. 
 
 In the commencement of his captivity, Moore used feebly 
 to resist Mrs. Horsfall : he hated the sight of her rough bulk, 
 and dreaded the contact of her hard hands : but she taught 
 him docility in a trice. She made no account whatever of 
 his six feet -his manly thews and sinews : she turned him 
 in his bed as another woman would have turned a babe in 
 its cradle. When he was good, she addressed him as ' my 
 dear ' and ' honey ; ' and when he was bad, she sometimes 
 shook him. Did he attempt to speak when MacTurk was 
 there, she lifted her hand and bade him ' hush ! ' like a nurse 
 checking a forward child. If she had not smoked if she 
 had not taken gin, it would have been better, he thought ; 
 but she did both. Once in her absence he intimated to 
 MacTurk, that ' that woman was a dram-drinker.' 
 
 ' Pooh ! my dear sir ; they are all so,' was the reply he 
 got for his pains. ' But Horsfall has this virtue/ added 
 the surgeon, ' drunk or sober, P U always remembers to 
 obey m" '
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 581 
 
 At length the latter autumn passed ; its fogs, its rains 
 withdrew from England their mourning and their tears ; 
 its winds swept on to sigh over lands far away. Behind 
 November came deep winter; clearness, stillness, frost 
 accompanying. 
 
 A calm day had settled into a crystalline evening : the 
 world wore a North Pole colouring : all its lights and tints 
 looked like the ' reflets ' * of white, or violet, or pale green 
 gems. The hills wore a lilac blue ; the setting sun had 
 purple in its red ; the sky was ice, all silvered azure ; when 
 the stars rose, they were of white crystal not gold ; gray, or 
 cerulean, or faint emerald hues cool, pure, and transparent 
 tinged the mass of the landscape. 
 
 What is this by itself in a wood no longer green, no 
 longer even russet ; a wood, neutral tint this dark blue 
 moving object ? Why, it is a schoolboy a Briarfield 
 grammar-schoolboy who has left his companions, now 
 trudging home by the high-road, and is seeking a certain 
 tree, with a certain mossy mound at its root convenient as 
 a seat. Why is he lingering here ? the air is cold, and the 
 time wears late. He sits down : what is he thinking about ? 
 Does he feel the chaste charm Nature wears to-night ? A 
 pearl-white moon smiles through the green trees : does he 
 care for her smile ? 
 
 Impossible to say ; for he is silent, and his countenance 
 does not speak : as yet, it is no mirror to reflect sensation, 
 but rather a mask to conceal it. This boy is a stripling of 
 fifteen slight, and tall of his years ; in his face there is as 
 little of amenity as of servility : his eye seems prepared to 
 note any incipient attempt to control or overreach him, and 
 the rest of his features indicate faculties alert for resistance. 
 Wise ushers avoid unnecessary interference with that lad. 
 To break him in by severity would be a useless attempt ; to 
 win him by flattery would be an effort worse than useless. 
 
 * Find me an English word as good, reader, and I will gladly 
 dispense with the French word. ' Reflections ' won't do.
 
 582 SHIRLEY 
 
 He is best let alone. Time will educate, and experience 
 train him. 
 
 Professedly, Martin Yorke (it is a young Yorke, of 
 course) tramples on the name of poetry : talk sentiment to 
 him, and you would be answered by sarcasm. Here he is, 
 wandering alone, waiting duteously on Nature, while she 
 unfolds a page of stern, of silent, and of solemn poetry, 
 beneath his attentive gaze. 
 
 Being seated, he takes from his satchel a book not 
 the Latin grammar, but a contraband volume of Fairy 
 tales ; there will be light enough yet for an hour to serve 
 his keen young vision : besides, the moon waits on him 
 her beam, dim and vague as yet, fills the glade where 
 he sits. 
 
 He reads : he is led into a solitary mountain region ; 
 all round him is rude and desolate, shapeless, and almost 
 colourless. He hears bells tinkle on the wind ; forth-riding 
 from the formless folds of the mist, dawns on him the 
 brightest vision a green-robed lady, on a snow-white 
 palfrey ; he sees her dress, her gems, and her steed ; she 
 arrests him with some mysterious question : he is spell- 
 bound, and must follow her into Fairyland. 
 
 A second legend bears him to the sea-shore : there 
 tumbles in a strong tide, boiling at the base of dizzy cliffs : 
 it rains and blows. A reef of rocks, black and rough, 
 stretches far into the sea ; all along, and among, and above 
 these crags, dash and flash, sweep and leap, swells, wreaths, 
 drifts of snowy spray. Some lone wanderer is out on these 
 rocks, treading, with cautious step, the wet, wild sea-weed ; 
 glancing down into hollows where the brine lies fathoms 
 deep and emerald-clear, and seeing there wilder and stranger, 
 and huger vegetation, than is found on land, with treasure 
 of shells some green, some purple, some pearly clustered 
 in the curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry. Looking 
 up, and forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a 
 tall, pale thing shaped like man, but made of spray 
 transparent, tremulous, awful : it stands not alone : they are
 
 SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 583 
 
 all human figures that wanton in the rocks a crowd of 
 foam-women- a band of white, evanescent Nereides. 
 
 Hush! shut the book: hide it in the satchel: Martin 
 hears a tread. He listens : No Yes : Once more, the dead 
 leaves, lightly crushed, rustle on the wood-path. Martin 
 watches : the trees part, and a woman issues forth. 
 
 She is a lady dressed in dark silk, a veil covering her 
 face. Martin never met a lady in this wood before nor any 
 female, save, now and then, a village-girl come to gather 
 nuts. To-night, the apparition does not displease him. He 
 observes, as she approaches, that she is neither old nor 
 plain, but, on the contrary, very youthful ; and, but that he 
 now recognizes her for one whom he has often wilfully 
 pronounced ugly, he would deem that he discovered traits of 
 beauty behind the thin gauze of that veil. 
 
 She passes him, and says nothing. He knew she would : 
 all women are proud monkeys and he knows no more 
 conceited doll than that Caroline Helstone. The thought is 
 hardly hatched in his mind, when the lady retraces those 
 two steps she had got beyond him, and, raising her veil, 
 reposes her glance on his face, while she softly asks, ' Are 
 you one of Mr. Yorke's sons ? ' 
 
 No human evidence would ever have been able to per- 
 suade Martin Yorke that he blushed when thus addressed ; 
 yet blush he did, to the ears. 
 
 ' I am,' he said, bluntly ; and encouraged himself to 
 wonder, superciliously, what would come next. 
 
 ' You are Martin, I think ? ' was the observation that 
 followed. 
 
 It could not have been more felicitous : it was a simple 
 sentence very artlessly, a little timidly pronounced ; but it 
 chimed in harmony to the youth's nature : it stilled him like 
 a note of music. 
 
 Martin had a keen sense of his personality : he felt it 
 right and sensible that the girl should discriminate him from 
 his brothers. Like his father, he hated ceremony : it was 
 acceptable to hear a lady address him aa ' Martin,' and not
 
 584 SHIBLEY 
 
 Mr. Martin, or Master Martin, which form would have lost 
 her his good graces for ever. Worse, if possible, than 
 ceremony, was the other extreme of slipshod familiarity : the 
 slight tone of bashfulness the scarcely perceptible hesita- 
 tion was considered perfectly in place. 
 
 ' I am Martin,' he said. 
 
 ' Are your father and mother well ? ' (it was lucky she 
 did not say papa and mamma : that would have undone all,) 
 ' and Kose and Jessie ? ' 
 
 ' I suppose so.' 
 
 ' My cousin Hortense is still at Briarmains ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, yes ! ' 
 
 Martin gave a comic half-smile and demi-groan : the 
 half-smile was responded to by the lady, who could guess in 
 what sort of odour Hortense was likely to be held by the 
 young Yorkes. 
 
 1 Does your mother like her ? ' 
 
 'They suit so well about the servants, they can't help 
 liking each other ! ' 
 
 I It is cold to-night.' 
 
 ' Why are you out so late ?' 
 
 ' I lost my way in this wood.' 
 
 Now, indeed, Martin allowed himself a refreshing laugh 
 of scorn. 
 
 ' Lost your way in the mighty forest of Briarmains ! 
 You deserve never more to find it.' 
 
 ' I never was here before, and I believe I am trespassing 
 now : you might inform against me if you chose, Martin, and 
 have me fined : it is your father's wood.' 
 
 I 1 should think I knew that ; but since you are so simple 
 as to lose your way, I will guide you out.' 
 
 ' You need not : I have got into the track now: I shall 
 be right. Martin ' (a little quickly), ' how is Mr. Moore ? ' 
 
 Martin had heard certain rumours : it struck him that it 
 might be amusing to make an experiment. 
 
 'Going to die. Nothing can save him. All hope flung 
 overboard ! '
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 585 
 
 She put her veil aside. She looked into his eyes, and 
 said, ' To die ! ' 
 
 ' To die. All along of the women, my mother and the 
 rest : they did something about his bandages that finished 
 everything : he would have got better but for them, I am 
 sure they should be arrested, cribbed, tried, and brought in 
 for Botany Bay, at the very least.' 
 
 The questioner, perhaps, did not hear this judgment: 
 she stood motionless. In two minutes, without another 
 word, she moved forwards : no good-night, no further inquiry. 
 This was not amusing, nor what Martin had calculated on : 
 he expected something dramatic and demonstrative : it was 
 hardly worth while to frighten the girl, if she would not 
 entertain him in return. He called, ' Miss Helstone ! ' 
 
 She did not hear or turn. He hastened after and over- 
 took her. 
 
 4 Come. Are you uneasy about what I said ? ' 
 
 ' You know nothing about death, Martin : you are too 
 young for me to talk to concerning such a thing.' 
 
 ' Did you believe me ? It's all flummery ! Moore eats 
 like three men : they are always making sago or tapioca, or 
 something good for him : I never go into the kitchen, but 
 there is a saucepan on the fire, cooking him some dainty. 
 I think I will play the old soldier, and be fed on the fat of 
 the land like him.' 
 
 ' Martin ! Martin ! ' here her voice trembled, and she 
 stopped. ' It is exceedingly wrong of you, Martin : you have 
 almost killed me.' 
 
 Again she stopped : she leaned against a tree, trembling, 
 shuddering, and as pale as death. 
 
 Martin contemplated her with inexpressible curiosity. In 
 one sense it was, as he would have expressed it, ' nuts ' to 
 him to see this : it told him so much, and he was beginning 
 to have a great relish for discovering secrets ; in another 
 sense, it reminded him of what he had once felt when he 
 had heard a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which 
 Matthew had crushed with a stone, and that was not a
 
 586 SHIKLEY 
 
 pleasant feeling. Unable to find anything very appropriate 
 to say, in order to comfort her, he began to cast about in his 
 mind what he could do : he smiled : the lad's smile gave 
 wondrous transparency to his physiognomy. 
 
 ' Eureka ! ' he cried. ' I'll set all straight by-and-by. 
 You are better now, Miss Caroline : walk forward,' he 
 urged. 
 
 Not reflecting that it would be more difficult for Miss 
 Helstone than for himself to climb a wall or penetrate a 
 hedge, he piloted her by a short cut which led to no gate. 
 The consequence was he had to help her over some for- 
 midable obstacles, and, while he railed at her for helpless- 
 ness, he perfectly liked to feel himself of use. 
 
 ' Martin, before we separate, assure me seriously, and on 
 your word of" honour, that Mr. Moore is better.' 
 
 ' How very much you think of that Moore ! ' 
 
 ' No but many of his friends may ask me, and I wish 
 to be able to give an authentic answer.' 
 
 ' You may tell them he is well enough, only idle : you 
 may tell them that he takes mutton-chops for dinner, and 
 the best of arrowroot for supper. I intercepted a basin 
 myself one night on its way up-stairs, and ate half of it.' 
 
 ' And who waits on him, Martin ? Who nurses him ? ' 
 
 ' Nurses him ? the great baby ! Why, a woman as round 
 and big as our largest water-butt a rough, hard-favoured 
 old girl. I make no doubt she leads him a rich life : nobody 
 else is let near him : he is chiefly in the dark. It is my 
 belief she knocks him about terribly in that chamber. I 
 listen at the wall sometimes when I am in bed, and I think 
 I hear her thumping him. You should see her fist : she 
 could hold half a dozen hands like yours in her one palm. 
 After all, notwithstanding the chops and jellies he gets, I 
 would not be in his shoes. In fact, it is my private opinion 
 that she eats most of what goes up on the tray to Mr. Moore. 
 I wish she may not be starving him.' 
 
 Profound silence and meditation on Caroline's part, and 
 a sly watchfulness on Martin's.
 
 THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 687 
 
 'You never see him, I suppose, Martin?' 
 
 1 1? No : I don't care to see him, for my own part.' 
 
 Silence again. 
 
 ' Did not you come to our house once with Mrs. Pryor, 
 about five weeks since, to ask after him ? ' again inquired 
 Martin. 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' I daresay you wished to be shown up-stairs ? ' 
 
 1 We did wish it : we entreated it ; but your mother 
 declined.' 
 
 ' Ay ! she declined. I heard it all : she treated you as it 
 is her pleasure to treat visitors now and then : she behaved 
 to you rudely and harshly.' 
 
 ' She was not kind ; for, you know, Martin, we are 
 relations, and it is natural we should take an interest in Mr. 
 Moore. But here we must part : we are at your father's 
 gate.' 
 
 ' Very well what of that ? I shall walk home with 
 you.' 
 
 ' They will miss you, and wonder where you are.' 
 
 ' Let them I can take care of myself, I suppose.' 
 
 Martin knew that he had already incurred the penalty of 
 a lecture, and dry bread for his tea. No matter, the evening 
 had furnished him with an adventure : it was beHer than 
 muffins and toast. 
 
 He walked home with Caroline. On the way he promised 
 to see Mr. Moore, in spite of the dragon who guarded his 
 chamber, and appointed an hour on the next day, when 
 Caroline was to come to Briarmains Wood and get tidings of 
 him : he would meet her at a certain tree. The scheme led 
 to nothing : still he liked it. 
 
 Having reached home, the dry bread and the lecture were 
 duly administered to him, and he was dismissed to bed at an 
 early hour. He accepted his punishment with the toughest 
 stoicism. 
 
 Ere ascending to his chamber he paid a secret visit to 
 the dining-room, a still, cold, stately apartment, seldom
 
 588 SHIRLEY 
 
 used ; for the family customarily dined in the back-parlour. 
 He stood before the mantelpiece, and lifted his candle to 
 two pictures hung above female heads : one, a type of se- 
 rene beauty happy and innocent ; the other, more lovely 
 but forlorn and desperate. 
 
 ' She looked like that,' he said, gazing on the latter 
 sketch, ' when she sobbed, turned white, and leaned against 
 the tree. I suppose,' he pursued, when he was in his room, 
 and seated on the edge of his pallet-bed ' I suppose she is, 
 what they call, " in love ; " yes, in love with that long thing 
 in the next chamber. Whisht ! is that Horsfall clattering 
 him ? I wonder he does not yell out. It really sounds as 
 if she had fallen on him tooth and nail ; but I suppose she 
 is making the bed. I saw her at it once she hit into the 
 mattresses as if she was boxing. It is queer, Zillah (they 
 call her Zillah) Zillah Horsfall is a woman, and Caroline 
 Helstone is a woman : they are two individuals of the same 
 species not much alike though. Is she a pretty girl, that 
 Caroline ? I suspect she is very nice to look at something 
 so clear in her face so soft in her eyes. I approve of her 
 looking at me ; it does me good. She has long eyelashes : 
 their shadow seems to rest where she gazes, and to instil 
 peace and thought. If she behaves well, and continues to 
 suit me, as she has suited me to-day, I may do her a good 
 turn. I rather relish the notion of circumventing my mother 
 and that ogress, old Horsfall. Not that I like humouring 
 Moore ; but whatever I do I'll be paid for, and in coin of 
 my own choosing : I know what reward I will claim one 
 displeasing to Moore, and agreeable to myself.' 
 
 He turned into bed.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 MARTIN'S TACTICS 
 
 IT was necessary to the arrangement of Martin's plan, that 
 he should stay at home that day. Accordingly, he found no 
 appetite for breakfast ; and, just about school-time, took a 
 severe pain about his heart, which rendered it advisable 
 that, instead of setting out to the grammar-school with 
 Mark, he should succeed to his father's arm-chair by the 
 fireside, and also to his morning-paper. This point being 
 satisfactorily settled, and Mark being gone to Mr. Sum- 
 ner's class, and Matthew and Mr. Yorke withdrawn to the 
 counting-house, three other exploits, nay four, remained to 
 be achieved. 
 
 The first of these was to realize the breakfast he had not 
 yet tasted, and with which his appetite of fifteen could ill 
 afford to dispense ; the second, third, fourth, to get hia 
 mother, Miss Moore, and Mrs. Horsfall successively, out 
 of the way before four o'clock that afternoon. 
 
 The first was, for the present, the most pressing, since 
 the work before him demanded an amount of energy which 
 the present empty condition of his youthful stomach did 
 not seem likely to supply. 
 
 Martin knew the way to the larder ; and knowing this 
 way, he took it. T*he servants were in the kitchen, break- 
 fasting solemnly with closed doors ; his mother and Miss 
 Moore were airing themselves on the lawn, and discussing 
 the closed doors aforesaid : Martin, safe in the larder, made 
 fastidious selection from its stores. His breakfast had been 
 delayed he was determined it should be recherche 1 : it
 
 590 SHIRLEY 
 
 appeared to liim that a variety on his usual somewhat insipid 
 fare of bread-and-milk was both desirable and advisable : 
 the savoury and the salutary he thought might be combined. 
 There was store of rosy apples laid in straw upon a shelf ; 
 he picked out three. There was pastry upon a dish ; he 
 selected an apricot-puff and a damson tart. On the plain 
 household bread his eye did not dwell ; but he surveyed 
 with favour some currant tea-cakes, and condescended to 
 make choice of one. Thanks to his clasp-knife, he was able 
 to appropriate a wing of fowl and a slice of ham ; a cantlet 
 of cold custard-pudding he thought would harmonize with 
 these articles ; and having made this final addition to his 
 booty, he at length sallied forth into the hall. 
 
 He was already half way across three steps more would 
 have anchored him in the harbour of the back-parlour 
 when the front door opened, and there stood Matthew. 
 Better far had it been the Old Gentleman, in full equipage 
 of horns, hoofs, and tail. 
 
 Matthew, sceptic and scoffer, had already failed to sub- 
 scribe a prompt belief in that pain about the heart : he 
 had muttered some words, amongst which the phrase 
 'shamming Abraham' had been very distinctly audible; 
 and the succession to the arm-chair and newspaper had 
 appeared to affect him with mental spasms : the spectacle 
 now before him, the apples, the tarts, the tea-cake, the 
 fowl, ham and pudding, offered evidence but too well 
 calculated to inflate his opinion of his own sagacity. 
 
 Martin paused ' interdit ' one minute, one instant ; the 
 next he knew his ground, and pronounced all well. With 
 the true perspicacity ' des ames elites,' he at once saw how 
 this at first sight untoward event might be turned to 
 excellent account : he saw how it might be so handled as to 
 secure the accomplishment of his second task, viz. the 
 disposal of his mother. He knew that a collision between 
 him and Matthew always suggested to Mrs. Yorke the 
 propriety of a fit of hysterics ; he further knew that, on the 
 principle of calm succeeding to storm, after a morning of
 
 MAETIN'S TACTICS 591 
 
 hysterics, his mother was sure to indulge in an afternoon of 
 bed. This would accommodate him perfectly. 
 
 The collision duly took place in the hall. A dry laugh, 
 an insulting sneer, a contemptuous taunt, met by a noncha- 
 lant but most cutting reply, were the signals. They rushed 
 at it. Martin, who usually made little noise on these occa- 
 sions, made a great deal now. In flew the servants, Mrs. 
 Yorke, Miss Moore : no female hand could separate them : 
 Mr. Yorke was summoned. 
 
 ' Sons,' said he, ' one of you must leave my roof if this 
 occurs again : I will have no Cain and Abel strife here.' 
 
 Martin now allowed himself to be taken off : he had been 
 hurt, he was the youngest and slightest : he was quite cool, 
 in no passion : he even smiled, content that the most 
 difficult part of the labour he had set himself was over. 
 
 Once he seemed to flag in the course of the morning. 
 
 ' It is not worth while to bother myself for that Caroline,' 
 he remarked. But, a quarter of an hour afterwards, he was 
 again in the dining-room, looking at the head with dis- 
 hevelled tresses and eyes turbid with despair. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, ' I made her sob, shudder, almost faint : 
 I'll see her smile before I've done with her : besides, I 
 want to outwit all these womenites.' 
 
 Directly after dinner, Mrs. Yorke fulfilled her son's 
 calculation, by withdrawing to her chamber. Now for 
 Hortense. 
 
 That lady was just comfortably settled to stocking- 
 mending in the back-parlour, when Martin laying down a 
 book which, stretched on the sofa (he was still indisposed, 
 according to his own account), he had been perusing in 
 all the voluptuous case of a yet callow pacha lazily 
 introduced some discourse about Sarah, the maid at the 
 Hollow. In the course of much verbal meandering, he 
 insinuated information that this damsel was said to have 
 three suitors, Frederic Murgatroyd, Jeremiah Pighills, and 
 Jobn-of-Mally's-of-Hannah's-of-Dch's ; and that Miss Mann 
 had affirmed she knew for a fact, that, now the girl was left
 
 592 SHIELEY 
 
 in sole charge of the cottage, she often had her swains 
 to meals, and entertained them with the best the house 
 afforded. 
 
 It needed no more. Hortense could not have lived 
 another hour without betaking herself to the scene of these 
 nefarious transactions, and inspecting the state of matters in 
 person. Mrs. Horsfall remained. 
 
 Martin, master of the field now, extracted from his 
 mother's work-basket a bunch of keys ; with these he 
 opened the sideboard cupboard, produced thence a black 
 bottle and a small glass, placed them on the table, nimbly 
 mounted the stairs, made for Mr. Moore's door, tapped, the 
 nurse opened. 
 
 1 If you please, ma'am, you are invited to step into the 
 back-parlour, and take some refreshment : you will not be 
 disturbed : the family are out.' 
 
 He watched her down ; he watched her in ; himself shut 
 the door : he knew she was safe. 
 
 The hard work was done; now for the pleasure. He 
 snatched his cap, and away for the wood. 
 
 It was yet but half-past three ; it had been a fine morn- 
 ing, but the sky looked dark now : it was beginning to 
 snow ; the wind blew cold ; the wood looked dismal ; the 
 old tree grim. Yet Martin approved the shadow on his 
 path : he found a charm in the spectral aspect of the 
 doddered oak. 
 
 He had to wait : to and fro he walked, while the flakes 
 fell faster ; and the wind, which at first had but moaned, 
 pitifully howled. 
 
 ' She is long in coming,' he muttered, as he glanced 
 along the narrow track. ' I wonder,' he subjoined, ' what 
 I wish to see her so much for ? She is not coming for me. 
 But I have power over her, and I want her to come that I 
 may use that power.' 
 
 H '. continued his walk. 
 
 ' Now,' he resumed, ' when a further period had elapsed, 
 ' if she fails to come, I shall hate and scorn her.'
 
 MARTIN'S TACTICS 593 
 
 It struck four : he heard the church-clock far away. A 
 step so quick, so light, that, but for the rustling of leaves, it 
 would scarcely have sounded on the wood-walk, checked 
 his impatience. The wind blew fiercely now, and the 
 thickened white storm waxed bewildering ; but on she 
 came, and not dismayed. 
 
 ' Well, Martin,' she said, eagerly, ' how is he ? ' 
 
 ' It is queer how she thinks of him,' reflected Martin : 
 : the blinding snow and bitter cold are nothing to her, I 
 believe : yet she is but a " chitty-faced creature," as my 
 mother would say. I could find in my heart to wish I had 
 a cloak to wrap her in.' 
 
 Thus meditating to himself, he neglected to answer Miss 
 Helstone. 
 
 ' You have seen him ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 1 Oh ! You promised you would.' 
 
 I mean to do better by you than that. Didn't I say, I 
 don't care to see him ? ' 
 
 ' But now it will be so long before I get to know any- 
 thing certain about him, and I am sick of waiting. Martin, 
 do see him, and give him Caroline Helstone's regards, and 
 say she wished to know how he was, and if anything could 
 be done for his comfort.' 
 
 ' I won't.' 
 
 ' You are changed : you were so friendly last night.' 
 
 ' Come : we must not stand in this wood ; it is too 
 cold.' 
 
 ' But, before I go, promise me to come again to-morrow 
 with news.' 
 
 ' No such thing ; I am much too delicate to make and 
 keep such appointments in the winter season : if you knew 
 what a pain I had in my chest this morning, and how I 
 went without breakfast, and was knocked down besides, 
 you'd feel the impropriety of bringing me here in thp, snow. 
 Come, I say.' 
 
 ' Are you really delicate, Martin ? '
 
 594 SHIRLEY 
 
 'Don't I look so?' 
 
 1 You have rosy cheeks.' 
 
 ' That's hectic. Will you come or you won't ? ' 
 
 ' Where ? ' 
 
 1 With me. I was a fool not to bring a cloak : I would 
 have made you cozy.' 
 
 ' You are going home : my nearest road lies in the 
 opposite direction.' 
 
 ' Put your arm through mine. I'll take care of you.' 
 
 ' But, the wall the hedge it is such hard work climbing, 
 and you are too slender and young to help me without 
 hurting yourself.' 
 
 ' You shall go through the gate.' 
 
 ' But ' 
 
 ' But ! but ! Will you trust me or not ? ' 
 
 She looked into his face. 
 
 ' I think I will. Anything rather than return as anxious 
 as I came.' 
 
 ' I can't answer for that. This, however, I promise you ; 
 be ruled by me, and you shall see Moore yourself.' 
 
 ' See him myself ? ' 
 
 ' Yourself.' 
 
 'But, dear Martin, does he know?' 
 
 ' Ah ! I'm dear now. No : he doesn't know.' 
 
 ' And your mother and the others ? ' 
 
 ' All is right.' 
 
 Caroline fell into a long silent fit of musing, but still 
 she walked on with her guide : they came in sight of 
 Briarmains. 
 
 ' Have you made up your mind ? ' he asked. 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 ' Decide. We are just on the spot. I won't see him 
 that I tell you except to announce your arrival.' 
 
 ' Martin, you are a strange boy, and this is a strange 
 step ; but all I feel is and has been, for a long time, strange 
 1 will see him.' 
 
 ' Having said that, you will neither hesitate nor retract.'
 
 MARTIN'S TACTICS 595 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Here we are, then. Do not be afraid of passing the 
 parlour window : no one will see you. My father and 
 Matthew are at the mill ; Mark is at school ; the servants 
 are in the back-kitchen ; Miss Moore is at the cottage ; my 
 mother in her bed ; and Mrs. Horsfall in Paradise. Observe 
 I need not ring : I open the door ; the hall is empty ; 
 the staircase quiet ; so is the gallery : the whole house and 
 all its inhabitants are under a spell, which I will not break 
 till you are gone.' 
 
 ' Martin, I trust you.' 
 
 ' You never said a better word. Let me take your 
 shawl : I will shake off the snow and dry it for you. You 
 are cold and wet : never mind ; there is a fire upstairs. 
 Are you ready ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Follow me.' 
 
 He left his shoes on the mat ; mounted the stair 
 unshod ; Caroline stole after, with noiseless step : there was 
 a gallery, and there was a passage ; at the end of that passage 
 Martin paused before a door and tapped : he had to tap 
 twice thrice : a voice, known to one listener, at last said, 
 ' Come in.' 
 
 The boy entered briskly. 
 
 ' Mr. Moore, a lady called to inquire after you : none of 
 the women were about : it is washing-day, and the maids 
 are over the crown of the head in soap-suds in the back- 
 kitchen : so I asked her to step up. 1 
 
 ' Up here, sir? ' 
 
 'Up here, sir; but if you object, she shall go down 
 again.' 
 
 ' Is this a place, or am I a person to bring a lady to, you 
 absurd lad ? ' 
 
 ' No : so I'll take her off.' 
 
 1 Martin, you will stay here. Who is she ? ' 
 
 ' Your grandmother from that chateau on the Scheldt 
 Miss Moore talks about,'
 
 596 SHIRLEY 
 
 4 Martin,' said the softest whisper at the door, ' don't be 
 foolish.' 
 
 ' Is she there ? ' inquired Moore, hastily. He had 
 caught an imperfect sound. 
 
 ' She is there, fit to faint : she is standing on the mat, 
 shocked at your want of filial affection.' 
 
 4 Martin, you are an evil cross between an imp and a 
 page. What is she like ? ' 
 
 ' More like me than you ; for she is young and beautiful.' 
 
 ' You are to show her forward. Do you hear ? ' 
 
 ' Come, Miss Caroline.' 
 
 4 Miss Caroline ! ' repeated Moore. 
 
 And when Miss Caroline entered, she was encountered 
 in the middle of the chamber by a tall, thin, wasted figure 
 who took both her hands. 
 
 4 1 give you a quarter-of-an-hour/ said Martin, as he 
 withdrew : 4 no more. Say what you have to say in that 
 time : till it is past, I will wait in the gallery : nothing shall 
 approach : I'll see you safe away. Should you persist in 
 staying longer, I leave you to your fate.' 
 
 He shut the door. In the gallery he was as elate as a 
 king : he had never been engaged in an adventure he liked 
 so well ; for no adventure had ever invested him with so 
 much importance, or inspired him with so much interest. 
 
 ' You are come at last,' said the meagre man, gazing on 
 his visitress with hollow eyes. 
 
 ' Did you expect me before ? ' 
 
 ' For a month near two months, we have been very near ; 
 and I have been in sad pain, and danger, and misery, Gary.' 
 
 ' I could not come.' 
 
 ' Couldn't you ? But the Rectory and Briarmains are 
 very near : not two miles apart.' 
 
 There was pain there was pleasure in the girl's face as 
 she listened to these implied reproaches : it was sweet it 
 was bitter to defend herself. 
 
 ' When I say I could not come, I mean I could not see 
 you, for I came with mamma the very day we heard what
 
 MARTIN'S TACTICS 597 
 
 had happened. Mr. MacTurk then told us it was impossible 
 to admit any stranger.' 
 
 1 But afterwards every fine afternoon these many weeks 
 past I have waited and listened. Something here, Gary ' 
 (laying his hand on his breast), ' told me it was impossible 
 but that you should think of me. Not that I merit thought ; 
 but we are old acquaintance : we are cousins.' 
 
 ' I came again, Robert : mamma and I came again.' 
 
 ' Did you ? Come, that is worth hearing : since you 
 came again, we will sit down and talk about it. 
 
 They sat down. Caroline drew her chair up to his. 
 The air was now dark with snow : an Iceland blast was 
 driving it wildly. This pair neither heard the long ' wuther- 
 ing ' rush, nor saw the white burden it drifted : each seemed 
 conscious but of one thing the presence of the other. 
 
 ' And so mamma and you came again ? ' 
 
 ' And Mrs. Yorke did treat us strangely. We asked to 
 see you. " No," said she ; " not in my house. I am a*; 
 present responsible for his life : it shall not be forfeited for 
 half-an-hour's idle gossip." But I must not tell you all she 
 said : it was very disagreeable. However, we came yet 
 again mamma, Miss Keeldar, and I. This time we thought 
 we should conquer, as we were three against one, and 
 Shirley was on our side. But Mrs. Yorke opened such a 
 battery.' 
 
 Moore smiled. 
 
 ' What did she say ? ' 
 
 ' Things that astonished us. Shirley laughed at last ; I 
 cried ; mamma was seriously annoyed : we were all three 
 driven from the field. Since that time I have only walked 
 once a day past the house, just for the satisfaction of looking 
 up at your window, which I could distinguish by the drawn 
 curtains. I really dared not come in.' 
 
 ' I have wished for you, Caroline.' 
 
 ' I did not know that. I never dreamt one instant that 
 you thought of me. If I had but most distantly imagined 
 such a possibility
 
 598 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Mrs. Yorke would still have beaten you.' 
 
 'She would not. Stratagem should have been tried, if 
 persuasion failed. I would have come to the kitchen door ; 
 the servant should have let me in ; and I would have walked 
 straight up-stairs. In fact, it was far more the fear of 
 intrusion the fear of yourself, that baffled me, than the fear 
 of Mrs. Ycrke.' 
 
 1 Only last night, I despaired of ever seeing you again. 
 Weakness has wrought terrible depression in me terrible 
 depression.' 
 
 ' And you sit alone ? ' 
 
 ' Worse than alone.' 
 
 'But you must be getting better, since you can leave 
 your bed ? ' 
 
 ' I doubt whether I shall live : I see nothing for it, after 
 such exhaustion, but decline.' 
 
 ' You you shall go home to the Hollow.' 
 
 ' Dreariness would accompany nothing cheerful come 
 near me.' 
 
 ' I will alter this : this shall be altered, were there ten 
 Mrs. Yorkes to do battle with.' 
 
 1 Gary, you make me smile.' 
 
 ' Do smile : smile again. Shall I tell you what I should 
 like?' 
 
 ' Tell me anything only keep talking. I am Saul : but 
 for music I should perish.' 
 
 ' I should like you to be brought to the Rectory, and 
 given to me and mamma.' 
 
 ' A precious gift ! I have not laughed since they shot 
 me till now.' 
 
 1 Do you suffer pain, Robert ? ' 
 
 1 Not so much pain now : but I am hopelessly weak, and 
 the state of my mind is inexpressible dark, barren, impotent. 
 Do you not read it all in my face ? I look a mere ghost.' 
 
 1 Altered, yet I should have known you anywhere : but I 
 understand your feelings : I experienced something like it. 
 Since we met, I too have been very ill.'
 
 MARTIN'S TACTICS 599 
 
 1 Very ill ? ' 
 
 ' I thought I should die. The tale of my life seemed told. 
 Every night, just at midnight, I used to wake from awful 
 dreams and the book lay open before me at the last page, 
 where was written " Finis." I had strange feelings.' 
 
 ' You speak my experience.' 
 
 ' I believed I should never see you again ; and I grew so 
 thin as thin as you are now : I could do nothing for myself 
 neither rise nor lie down ; and I could not eatyet, you 
 see I am better.' 
 
 ' Comforter ! sad as sweet : I am too feeble to say what I 
 feel ; but, while you speak, I do feel.' 
 
 ' Here, I am at your side, where I thought never more to 
 be : here I speak to you I see you listen to me willingly 
 look at me kindly. Did I count on that? I despaired.' 
 
 Moore sighed a sigh so deep, it was nearly a groan : he 
 covered his eyes with his hand. 
 
 ' May I be spared to make some atonement.' 
 
 Such was his prayer. 
 
 ' And for what ? ' 
 
 ' We will not touch on it now, Gary ; unmanned as I am, 
 I have not the power to cope with such a topic. Was Mrs. 
 Pryor with you during your illness ? ' 
 
 1 Yes,' (Caroline smiled brightly) ' you know she is 
 mamma ? ' 
 
 ' I have heard : Hortense told me ; but that tale too I 
 will receive from yourself. Does she add to your happi- 
 ness ? ' 
 
 ' What ! mamma ? She is dear to me ; how dear I cannot 
 say. I was altogether weary, and she held me up.' 
 
 ' I deserve to hear that in a moment when I can scarce 
 lift my hand to my head. I deserve it.' 
 
 1 It is no reproach against you.' 
 
 ' It is a coal of fire heaped on my head ; and so is every 
 word you address to me, and every look tbat lights your 
 sweet face. Come still nearer, Lina, and give me your hand 
 if my thin fingers do not scare you.'
 
 600 SHIBLEY 
 
 She took those thin fingers between her two little 
 hands she bent her head ' et les effleura de ses levres ' (I 
 put that in French, because the word ' effleurer ' is an 
 exquisite word). Moore was much moved : a large tear or 
 two coursed down his hollow cheek. 
 
 ' I'll keep these things in my heart, Gary ; that kiss I 
 will put by, and you shall hear of it again one day.' 
 
 I Come out ! ' cried Martin, opening the door. ' Come 
 away you have had twenty minutes instead of a quarter of 
 an hour.' 
 
 ' She will not stir yet you hempseed.' 
 
 ' I dare not stay longer, Eobert.' 
 
 ' Can you promise to return ? ' 
 
 ' No, she can't,' responded Martin. ' The thing musn't 
 become customary : I can't be troubled. It's very well for 
 once : I'll not have it repeated,' 
 
 ' You'll not have it repeated.' 
 
 ' Hush 1 don't vex him we could not have met to-day but 
 for him : but I will come again, if it is your wish that I 
 should come.' 
 
 ' It is my wish my one wish almost the only wish I Gan 
 feel.' 
 
 ' Come this minute : my mother has coughed, got up, set 
 her feet on the floor. Let her only catch you on the stairs, 
 Miss Caroline : you're not to bid him good-by ' (stepping 
 between her and Moore) ' you are to march.' 
 
 ' My shawl, Martin.' 
 
 I 1 have it. I'll put it on for you when you are in the 
 hall.' 
 
 He made them part : he would suffer no farewell but 
 what could be expressed in looks : he half carried Caroline 
 down the stairs. In the hall he wrapped her shawl round her, 
 and but that his mother's tread then creaked in the gallery, 
 and but that a sentiment ol diffidence the proper, natural, 
 therefore the noble impulse of his boy's heait, held him back, 
 hu would have claimed his reward he would have said, 
 ' Now, Miss Caroline, for all this give me one kiss.' But ere
 
 MARTIN'S TACTICS 601 
 
 the words had passed his lips, she was across the snowy 
 road, rather skimming than wading the drifts. 
 
 ' She is my debtor, and I will be paid.' 
 
 He flattered himself that it was opportunity, not 
 audacity, which had failed him : he misjudged the quality of 
 his own nature, and held it for something lower than it was.
 
 CHAPTER xxxiv 
 
 CASE OP DOMESTIC PERSECUTION BEMABKABLE INSTANCE 
 OF PIOUS PEBSEVEBANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELI- 
 GIOUS DUTIES 
 
 MARTIN having known the taste of excitement, wanted a 
 second draught ; having felt the dignity of power, he loathed 
 to relinquish it. Miss Helstone that girl he had always 
 called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before his 
 eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine had 
 once come within his sphere : it fretted him to think the visit 
 might never be repeated. Though a schoolboy, he was no 
 ordinary schoolboy : he was destined to grow up an original. 
 At a few years' later date, he took great pains to pare and 
 polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, 
 but he never succeeded : an unique stamp marked him 
 always. He now sat idle at his desk in the grammar- 
 school, casting about in his mind for the means of adding 
 another chapter to his commenced romance : he did not yet 
 know how many commenced life-romances are doomed 
 never to get beyond the first or, at most, the second 
 chapter. His Saturday half -holiday he spent in the wood 
 with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book 
 of his imagination. 
 
 Martin harboured an irreligious reluctance to see the 
 approach of Sunday. His father and mother while dis- 
 claiming community with the establishment failed not duly, 
 once on the sacred day, to fill their large pew in Briarfield 
 church with the whole of their blooming family. Thcoreti- 
 cally, Mr. Yorke placed all sects and churches on a level : 
 M a. Yorke awarded the palm to Moravians and Quakers,
 
 CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION 603 
 
 on account of that crown of humility by these worthies worn : 
 neither of them were ever known, however, to set foot in a 
 conventicle. 
 
 Martin, I say, disliked Sunday, because the morning 
 service was long, and the sermon usually little to his taste : 
 this Saturday afternoon, however, his woodland musingn dis- 
 closed to him a new-found charm in the coming day. 
 
 It proved a day of deep snow : so deep, that Mrs. Yorke, 
 during breakfast, announced her conviction that the children, 
 both boys and girls, would be better at home ; and her 
 decision that, instead of going to church, they should sit 
 silent for two hours in the back-parlour, while Rose and 
 Martin alternately read a succession of sermons John 
 Wesley's Sermons : John Wesley, being a Reformer and an 
 Agitator, had a place both in her own and her husband's 
 favour. ' Rose will do as she pleases,' said Martin, not look- 
 ing up from the book which, according to his custom then 
 and in after-life, he was studying over his bread-and-milk. 
 
 ' Rose will do as she is told, and Martin too,' observed 
 the mother. 
 
 ' I am going to church.' So her son replied, with the 
 ineffable quietude of a true Yorke, who knows his will and 
 means to have it, and who, if pushed to the wall, will let him- 
 self be crushed to death, provided no way of escape can be 
 found but will never capitulate. 
 
 ' It is not fit weather,' said the father. No answer : the 
 youth read studiously ; he slowly broke his bread and 
 sipped his milk. ' Martin hates to go to church, but he 
 hates still more to obey,' said Mrs. Yorke. 
 
 ' I suppose I am influenced by pure perverseness ? ' 
 
 ' Yes- you are.' 
 
 ' Mother I am not.' 
 
 ' By what, then, are you influenced? ' 
 
 ' By a complication of motives ; the intricacies of which I 
 should as soon think of explaining to you as I should of 
 turning myself inside out to exhibit the internal machinery 
 of my frame.'
 
 604 SHIELEY 
 
 4 Hear Martin ! Hear him ! ' cried Mr. Yorke. ' I must 
 see and have this lad of mine brought up to the Bar : Nature 
 meant him to live by his tongue. Hesther, your third son 
 must certainly be a lawyer : he has the stock in trade brass, 
 self-conceit, and words words.' 
 
 ' Some bread, Rose, if you please,' requested Martin, with 
 intense gravity, serenity, phlegm : the boy had naturally a 
 low, plaintive voice, which, in his ' dour moods,' rose scarcely 
 above a lady's whisper : the more inflexibly stubborn the 
 humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He rang the bell, 
 and gently asked for his walking-shoes. 
 
 ' But, Martin,' urged his sire, ' there is drift all the way 
 a man could hardly wade through it. However, lad,' he 
 continued, seeing that the boy rose as the church-bell began 
 to toll, ' this is a case wherein I would by no means baulk 
 the obdurate chap of his will. Go to church by all means. 
 There is a pitiless wind, and a sharp, frozen sleet, besides 
 the depth underfoot. Go out into it, since thou prefers it to 
 a warm fireside.' 
 
 Martin quietly assumed his cloak, comforter, and cap, 
 and deliberately went out. ' My father has more sense than 
 my mother,' he pronounced. ' How women miss it ! They 
 drive the nail into the flesh, thinking they are hammering 
 away at insensate stone.' He reached church early. 
 ' Now, if the weather frightens her (and it is a real December 
 tempest), or if that Mrs. Pryor objects to her going out, and 
 I should miss her after all, it will vex me : but, tempest or 
 tornado, hail or ice, she ought to come ; and, if she has a 
 mind worthy of her eyes and features, she will come : she 
 will be here for the chance of seeing me, as I am here for 
 the chance of seeing her : she will want to get a word 
 respecting her confounded sweetheart, as I want to get 
 another flavour of what I think the essence of life : a taste 
 of existence, with the spirit preserved in it, and not 
 evaporated. Adventure is to stagnation what champagne is 
 to flat porter.' 
 
 He looked round. The church was cold, silent, empty,
 
 CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION 605 
 
 but for one old woman. As the chimes subsided, and the 
 single bell tolled slowly, another and another elderly 
 parishioner came dropping in, and took a humble station in 
 the free sittings. It is always the frailest, the oldest, and the 
 poorest that brave the worst weather, to prove and maintain 
 their constancy to dear old mother Church : this wild 
 morning, not one affluent family attended, not one carriage 
 party appeared all the lined and cushioned pews were 
 empty ; only on the bare oaken seats sat ranged the grey- 
 haired elders and feeble paupers. 
 
 ' I'll scorn her, if she doesn't come,' muttered Martin 
 shortly and savagely to himself. The Rector's shovel-hat 
 had passed the porch : Mr. Helstone and his clerk were in 
 the vestry. The bells ceased the reading-desk was filled 
 the doors were closed the service commenced : void stood 
 the Rectory-pew- she was not there : Martin scorned her. 
 ' Worthless thing I Vapid thing ! Commonplace humbug ! 
 Like all other girls weakly, selfish, shallow ! ' Sucli w.is 
 Martin's liturgy. ' She is not like our picture : her eyes are 
 not large and expressive : her nose is not straight, delicate, 
 Hellenic : her mouth has not that charm I thought it had 
 which, I imagined, could beguile me of sullenness in my 
 worst moods. What is she ? A thread-paper, a doll, a toy 
 a girl, in short.' 
 
 So absorbed was the young cynic, he forgot to rise from 
 his knees at the proper place, and was still in an exemplary 
 attitude of devotion when the litany over the first hymn 
 was given out. To be so caught did not contribute to soothe 
 him : he started up red (for he was as sensitive to ridicule 
 as any girl). To make the matter worse, the church-door 
 had re-opened, and the aisles were filling : patter, patter, 
 patter, a hundred little feet trotted in. It was the Sunday- 
 scholars. According to Briarfield winter custom, these 
 children had till now been kept where there was a warm 
 stove, and only led into church just before the Communion 
 and Sermon. 
 
 The little ones were settled first, and at last, when the
 
 606 SHIRLEY 
 
 boys and the younger girls were all arranged when the 
 organ was swelling high, and the choir and congregation 
 were rising to uplift a spiritual song a tall class of young 
 women came quietly in, closing the procession. Their 
 teacher, having seen them seated, passed into the Rectory- 
 pew. The French-grey cloak and small heaver bonnet were 
 known to Martin : it was the very costume his eyes had 
 ached to catch. Miss Helstone had not suffered the storm 
 to prove an impediment : after all, she was come to church. 
 Martin probably whispered his satisfaction to his hymn- 
 book ; at any rate, he therewith hid his face two minutes. 
 Satisfied or not, he had time to get very angry with her 
 again before the sermon was over; she had never once 
 looked his way : at least, he had not been so lucky as to 
 encounter a glance. ' If,' he said ' if she takes no notice 
 of rne ; if she shows I am not in her thoughts, I shall 
 have a worse, a meaner opinion of her than ever. Most 
 despicable would it be to come for the sake of those sheep- 
 faced Sunday-scholars, and not for my sake, or that long 
 skeleton Moore's.' The sermon found an end ; the bene- 
 diction was pronounced ; the congregation dispersed : she had 
 not been near him. Now, indeed, as Martin set his face 
 homeward, ho felt that the sleet was sharp, and the east 
 wind cold. 
 
 His nearest way lay through some fields : it was a 
 dangerous, because an untrodden way : he did not care ; he 
 would take it. Near the second stile rose a clump of trees : 
 was that an umbrella waiting there ? Yes : an umbrella held 
 with evident difficulty against the blast : behind it fluttered 
 a French-grey cloak. Martin grinned as he toiled up the 
 steep encumbered field, difficult to the foot as a slope in the 
 upper realms of Etna. There was an inimitable look in his 
 face when, having gained the stile, he seated himself coolly 
 thereupon, and thus opened a conference which, for his 
 own part, he was willing to prolong indefinitely. ' I 
 think you had better strike a bargain : exchange me for 
 Mrs. Pryor.'
 
 lKSTAi.L cni'Hcii (m;i\KFii:i.i> cnritcii). 
 
 The tower only remains of the cliuri-h described.
 
 CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION 607 
 
 ' I was not sure whether you would come this way, 
 Martin ; but I thought I would run the chance : there is no 
 such thing as getting a quiet word spoken in the church or 
 churchyard.' 
 
 ' Will you agree ? Make over Mrs. Pryor to my mother, 
 and put me in her skirts ? ' 
 
 ' As if I could understand you ! What puts Mrs. Pryor 
 into your head ? ' 
 
 ' You call her " mamma," don't you ? ' 
 
 ' She is my mamma.' 
 
 1 Not possible or so inefficient, so careless a mamma I 
 should make a five times better one. You may laugh : I 
 have no objection to see you laugh : your teeth I hate ugly 
 teeth ; but yours are as pretty as a pearl necklace, and a 
 necklace, of which the pearls are very fair, even, and well 
 matched too.' 
 
 1 Martin, what now ? I thought the Yorkes never paid 
 compliments ? ' 
 
 ' They have not done till this generation ; but I feel as if 
 it were my vocation to turn out a new variety of the Yorke 
 species. I am rather tired of my own ancestors : we have 
 traditions going back for four ages tales of Hiram, which 
 was the son of Hiram, which was the son of Samuel, which 
 was the son of John, which was the son of Zernbbabel 
 Yorke. All, from Zerubbabel down to the last Hiram, were 
 such as you see my father. Before that, there was a 
 Godfrey : we have his picture ; it hangs in Moore's bed- 
 room : it is like me. Of his character we know nothing ; 
 but I am sure it was different to his descendants: he has 
 long curling dark hair ; he is carefully and cavalierly dressed. 
 Having said that he is like me, I need not add that he is hand- 
 some.' 
 
 ' You are not handsome, Martin.' 
 
 ' No ; hut wait a while : just let me take my time : I 
 mean to begin from this day to cultivate, to polish, and we 
 shall see.' 
 
 ' You are a very strange a very unaccountable boy,
 
 608 SHIRLEY 
 
 Martin ; but don't imagine you ever will be handsome : you 
 cannot.' 
 
 ' I mean to try. But we were talking about Mrs. Pryor : 
 she must be the most unnatural mamma in existence, coolly 
 to let her daughter come out in this weather. Mine was in 
 such a rage, because I would go to church : she was fit to 
 fling the kitchen-brush after me. Mamma was very much 
 concerned about me ; but I am afraid I was obstinate : I 
 would go.' 
 
 1 To see me ? ' 
 
 ' Exactly : I thought of nothing else. I greatly feared 
 the snow would hinder you from coming : you don't know 
 how pleased I was to see you all by yourself in the pew.' 
 
 ' I came to fulfil my duty, and set the parish a good 
 example. And so you were obstinate, were you ? I should 
 like to see you obstinate, I should. Wouldn't I have you 
 in good discipline, if I owned you ? Let me take the 
 umbrella. I can't stay two minutes : our dinner will be 
 ready.' 
 
 4 And so will ours ; and we have always a hot dinner 
 on Sundays. Roast goose to-day, with apple-pie and rice- 
 pudding. I always contrive to know the bill of fare : well, 
 I like these things uncommonly ; but I'll make the sacrifice, 
 if you will.' 
 
 ' We have a cold dinner : my uncle will allow no un- 
 necessary cooking on the Sabbath. But I must return : the 
 house would be in commotion, if I failed to appear.' 
 
 ' So will Briarmains, bless you ! I think I hear my 
 father sending out the overlooker and five of the dyers, to 
 look in six directions for the body of his prodigal son in the 
 snow : and my mother repenting her of her many misdeeds 
 towards me, now I am gone.' 
 
 ' Martin, how is Mr. Moore ? ' 
 
 1 That is what you came for just to say that word.' 
 
 1 Come, tell me quickly.' 
 
 ' Hang him ! he is no worse ; but as ill-used as ever 
 mewed up, kept in solitary confinement. They mean to
 
 CASE OF DOMESTIC PEKSECUTION 600 
 
 make either an idiot or a maniac of him, and take out a 
 commission of lunacy. Horsfall starves him : you saw how 
 thin he was.' 
 
 ' You were very good the other day, Martin. 1 
 
 1 What day ? I am always good a model.' 
 
 ' When will you be so good again ? ' 
 
 ' I see what you are after ; but you'll not wheedle me : 
 I am no cat's paw.' 
 
 ' But it must be done : it is quite a right thing, and a 
 necessary thing.' 
 
 ' How you encroach ! Bemember, I managed the matter 
 of my own free will before.' 
 
 ' And you will again.' 
 
 ' I won't : the business gave me far too much trouble ; I 
 like my ease.' 
 
 ' Mr. Moore wishes to see me, Martin ; and I wish to see 
 him.' 
 
 ' I daresay ' (coolly). 
 
 ' It is too bad of your mother to exclude his friends.' 
 
 ' Tell her so.' 
 
 ' His own relations.' 
 
 ' Come and blow her up.' 
 
 1 You know that would advance nothing. Well, I shall 
 stick to my point. See him I will. If you won't help me, 
 I'll manage without help.' 
 
 ' Do : there is nothing like self-reliance self-depend- 
 ence.' 
 
 ' I have no time to reason with you now ; but I consider 
 you provoking. Good morning.' Away she went the 
 umbrella shut ; for she could not carry it against the 
 wind. 
 
 ' She is not vapid ; she is not shallow,' said Martin. ' I 
 shall like to watch, and mark how she will work her way 
 without help. If the storm were not of snow, but of fire 
 such as came refreshingly down on the cities of the plain 
 she would go through it to procure five minutes' speech of 
 that Moore. Now, I consider I have had a pleasant morning :
 
 610 SHIELEY 
 
 the disappointments got time on : the fears and fits of anger 
 only made that short discourse pleasanter, when it came at 
 last. She expected to coax me at once : she'll not manage 
 that in one effort : she shall come again, again, and yet 
 again. It would please me to put her in a passion to make 
 her cry : I want to discover how far she will go what she 
 will do and dare to get her will. It seems strange and new 
 to find one human being thinking so much about another 
 as she thinks about Moore. But it is time to go home ; 
 my appetite tells me the hour : won't I walk into that 
 goose ? and we'll try whether Matthew or I shall get the 
 largest cut of the apple-pie to-day.'
 
 CHAPTEE XXXV 
 
 WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT MUCH 
 
 MARTIN had planned well : he had laid out a dexterously con- 
 certed scheme for his private amusement; but older and 
 wiser schemers than he are often doomed to see their finest- 
 spun projects swept to annihilation by the sudden broom of 
 Fate that fell housewife, whose red arm none can control. 
 In the present instance, this broom was manufactured out of 
 the tough fibres of Moore's own stubborn purpose, bound tight 
 with his will. He was now resuming his strength, and 
 making strange head against Mrs. Horsfall. Each morning 
 he amazed that matron with a fresh astonishment. First, he 
 discharged her from her valet-duties : he would dress himself. 
 Then, he refused the coffee she brought him : he would 
 breakfast with the family. Lastly, he forbade her his 
 chamber. On the same day, amidst the outcries of all the 
 women in the place, he put his head out of doors. The 
 morning after, he followed Mr. Yorke to his counting-house, 
 and requested an envoy to fetch a chaise from the Red-House 
 Inn. He was resolved, he said, to return home to the 
 Hollow that very afternoon. Mr. Yorke, instead of oppos- 
 ing, aided and abetted him : the chaise was sent for, though 
 Mrs. Yorke declared the step would be his death. It came. 
 Moore, little disposed to speak, made his purse do duty 
 for his tongue : he expressed his gratitude to the servants 
 and to Mrs. Horsfall, by the chink of his coin. The latter 
 personage approved and understood this language perfectly ;
 
 612 8HIBLEY 
 
 it made amends for all previous contumacy : she and her 
 patient parted the best friends in the world. 
 
 The kitchen visited and soothed, Moore betook himself to 
 the parlour ; he had Mrs. Yorke to appease ; not quite so 
 easy a task as the pacification of her housemaids. There she 
 sat plunged in sullen dudgeon ; the gloomiest speculations 
 on the depths of man's ingratitude absorbing her thoughts. 
 He drew near and bent over her ; she was obliged to look up, 
 if it were only to bid him ' avaunt.' There was beauty still 
 in his pale, wasted features ; there was earnestness, and 
 a sort of sweetness for he was smiling in his hollow 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Good-by ! ' he said ; and, as he spoke, the smile glit- 
 tered and melted. He had no iron mastery of his sensations 
 now : a trifling emotion made itself apparent in his present 
 weak state. 
 
 ' And what are you going to leave us for ? ' she asked : 
 ' we will keep you, and do anything in the world for you, if 
 you will only stay till you are stronger.' 
 
 ' Good-by ! ' he again said : and added, ' you have been a 
 mother to me : give your wilful son one embrace.' 
 
 Like a foreigner, as he was, he offered her first one cheek, 
 then the other : she kissed him. 
 
 ' What a trouble what a burden I have been to you ! ' he 
 muttered. 
 
 ' You are the worst trouble now, headstrong youth ! ' was 
 the answer. ' I wonder who is to nurse you at Hollow's 
 cottage : your sister Hortense knows no more about such 
 matters than a child.' 
 
 ' Thank God ! for I have had nursing enough to last me 
 my life.' 
 
 Here the little girls came in ; Jessie crying, Rose quiet, 
 but grave. Moore took them out into the hall to soothe, 
 pet, and kiss them. He knew it was not in their mother's 
 nature to bear to see any living thing caressed but herself : 
 she would have felt annoyed had he fondled a kitten in her 
 presence.
 
 MATTERS MAKE SLOW PROGRESS 613 
 
 The boys were standing about the chaise as Moore entered 
 it ; but for them he had no farewell. To Mr. Yorke he only 
 said, ' You have a good riddance of me : that was an unlucky 
 shot for you, Yorke ; it turned Briarmains into an hospital. 
 Come and see me at the cottage soon.' 
 
 He drew up the glass ; the chaLe rolled away. In half 
 an hour he alighted at his own garden wicket. Having paid 
 the driver and dismissed the vehicle, he leaned on that 
 wicket an instant, at once to rest and to muse. 
 
 ' Six months ago I passed out of this gate,' said he, ' a 
 proud, angry, disappointed man ; I come back sadder and 
 wiser ; weakly enough, but not worried. A cold, grey, yet 
 quiet world lies round a world where, if I hope little, I fear 
 nothing. All slavish terrors of embarrassment have left me : 
 let the worst come, I can work, as Joe Scott does, for an 
 honourable living : in such doom I yet see some hardship, but 
 no degradation. Formerly, pecuniary ruin was equivalent in 
 my eyes to personal dishonour. It is not so now : I know 
 the difference. Ruin is an evil; but one for which I am 
 prepared ; the day of whose coming I know, for I have cal- 
 culated. I can yet put it off six months not an hour longer : 
 if things by that time alter which is not probable ; if fetters, 
 which now seem indissoluble, should be loosened from our 
 trade (of all things the most unlikely to happen) I might 
 
 conquer in this long struggle yet I might Good God I 
 
 what might I not do ? But the thought is a brief madness : 
 let me see things with sane eyes. Ruin will come, lay her 
 axe to my fortune's roots, and hew them down. I shall 
 snatch a sapling, I shall cross the sea, and plant it in 
 American woods. Louis will go with me. Will none but 
 Louis go ? I cannot tell I have no light to ask.' 
 
 He entered the house. 
 
 It was afternoon, twilight yet out of doors : starless and 
 moonless twilight ; for, though keenly freezing with a dry, 
 black frost, heaven wore a mask of clouds congealed and 
 fast-locked. The mill-dam too was frozen : the Hollow was 
 very still : indoors it was already dark. Sarah had lit a
 
 614 SHIRLEY 
 
 good fire in the parlour ; she was preparing tea in the 
 kitchen. 
 
 ' Hortense,' said Moore, as his sister bustled up to help 
 him off with his cloak, ' I am pleased to come home.' 
 
 Hortense did not feel the peculiar novelty of this expres- 
 sion coming from her brother, who had never before called 
 the cottage his home, and to whom its narrow limits had 
 always heretofore seemed rather restrictive than protective : 
 still, whatever contributed to his happiness pleased her ; and 
 she expressed herself to that effect. 
 
 He sat down, but soon rose again : he went to the win- 
 dow ; he came back to the fire. 
 
 ' Hortense ! ' 
 
 ' Mon frere ? ' 
 
 'This little parlour looks very clean and pleasant: 
 unusually bright, somehow.' 
 
 ' It is true, brother : I have had the whole house 
 thoroughly and scrupulously cleaned in your absence.' 
 
 ' Sister, I think on this first day of my return home, you 
 ought to have a friend or so to tea ; if it were only to see 
 bow fresh and spruce you have made the little place.' 
 
 ' True, brother : if it were not late I might send for Miss 
 Mann.' 
 
 ' So you might ; but it really is too late to disturb that 
 good lady ; and the evening is much too cold for her to 
 come out.' 
 
 1 How thoughtful in you, dear Gerard ! We must put it 
 off till another day.' 
 
 ' I want some one to-day, dear sister : some quiet guest, 
 who would tire neither of us.' 
 
 ' Miss Ainley ? ' 
 
 ' An excellent person, they say ; but she lives too far off. 
 Tell Harry Scott to step up to the Rectory with a request 
 from you that Caroline Helstone should come and spend the 
 evening with you.' 
 
 ' Would it not be better to-morrow, dear brother? ' 
 
 ' 1 should like her to see the place as it is just now ; its
 
 MATTEBS MAKE SLOW PKOGBESS 615 
 
 brilliant cleanliness and perfect neatness are so much to 
 your credit.' 
 
 ' It might benefit her in the way of example.' 
 
 ' It might and must : she ought to come.' 
 
 He went into the kitchen. 
 
 ' Sarah, delay tea half an hour.' He then commissioned 
 her to despatch Harry Scott to the Rectory, giving her a 
 twisted note hastily scribbled in pencil by himself, and 
 addressed ' Miss Helstone.' 
 
 Scarcely had Sarah time to get impatient under the fear 
 of damage to her toast already prepared, when the messenger 
 returned ; and with him the invited guest. 
 
 She entered through the kitchen, quietly tripped up 
 Sarah's stairs to take off her bonnet and furs, and came 
 down as quietly, with her beautiful curls nicely smoothed ; 
 her graceful merino dress and delicate collar all trim and 
 spotless ; her gay little work-bag in her hand. She lingered 
 to exchange a few kindly words with Sarah ; and to look at 
 the new tortoiseshell kitten basking on the kitchen hearth ; 
 and to speak to the canary-bird, which a sudden blaze from 
 the fire had startled on its perch ; and then she betook her- 
 self to the parlour. 
 
 The gentle salutation, the friendly welcome, were inter- 
 changed in such tranquil sort as befitted cousins meeting; a 
 sense of pleasure, subtle and quiet as a perfume, diffused 
 itself through the room ; the newly-kindled lamp burned up 
 bright ; the tray and the singing urn were brought in. 
 
 ' I am pleased to come home,' repeated Mr. Moore. 
 
 They assembled round the table. Hortense chiefly 
 talked. She congratulated Caroline on the evident improve- 
 ment in her health : her colour and her plump cheeks were 
 returning, she remarked. It was true. There was an 
 obvious change in Miss Helstone : all about her seemed 
 elastic ; depression, fear, forlornness, were withdrawn : no 
 longer crushed, and saddened, and slow, and drooping, she 
 looked like one who had tasted the cordial of heart's ease, 
 and been lifted on the wing of hope.
 
 616 SHIKLEY 
 
 After tea, Hortense went up-stairs : she had not rum- 
 maged her drawers for a month past, and the impulse to 
 perform that operation was now become resistless. During 
 her absence, the talk passed into Caroline's hands : she 
 took it up with ease ; she fell into her best tone of conver- 
 sation. A pleasing facility and elegance of language gave 
 fresh charm to familiar topics; a new music in the always 
 soft voice gently surprised and pleasingly captivated the 
 listener ; unwonted shades and lights of expression elevated 
 the young countenance with character, and kindled it with 
 animation. 
 
 ' Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings,' 
 said Moore, after earnestly gazing at her for some minutes. 
 
 ' Do I ? ' 
 
 ' I sent for you this evening that I might be cheered ; 
 but you cheer me more than I had calculated.' 
 
 ' I am glad of that. And I really cheer you ? ' 
 
 ' You look brightly, move buoyantly, speak musically.' 
 
 ' It is pleasant to be here again.' 
 
 ' Truly it is pleasant : I feel it so. And to see health on 
 your cheek, and hope in your eye, is pleasant, Gary ; but 
 what is this hope, and what is the source of this sunshine I 
 perceive about you ? ' 
 
 ' For one thing I am happy in mamma ; I love her so 
 much, and she loves me. Long and tenderly she nursed 
 me ; now, when her care has made me well, I can occupy 
 myself for and with her all the day. I say it is my turn to 
 attend to her ; and I do attend to her : I am her waiting- 
 woman, as well as her child : I like you would laugh if 
 you knew what pleasure I have in making dresses and 
 sewing for her. She looks so nice now, Robert : I will not 
 let her be old-fashioned. And then, she is charming to talk 
 to : full of wisdom ; ripe in judgment ; rich in information ; 
 exhaustless in stores her observant faculties have quietly 
 amassed. Every day that I live with her, I like her better ; 
 I esteem her more highly ; I love her more tenderly.' 
 
 ' That for one thing, then, Gary : you talk in such a way
 
 MATTERS MAKE SLOW PEOGEESS 617 
 
 about " mamma," it is enough to make one jealous of the 
 old lady.' 
 
 ' She is not old, Eobert.' 
 
 ' Of the young lady, then.' 
 
 ' She does not pretend to be young.' 
 
 1 Well of the matron. But you said, " mamma's " 
 affection was one thing that made you happy : now for the 
 other thing.' 
 
 ' I am glad you are better.' 
 
 4 What besides ? ' 
 
 ' I am glad we are friends.' 
 
 ' You and I ? ' 
 
 ' Yes : I once thought we never should be.' 
 
 ' Gary, some day I mean to tell you a thing about myself 
 that is not to my credit, and, consequently, will not please 
 you.' 
 
 ' Ah ! don't ! I cannot bear to think ill of you.' 
 
 ' And I cannot bear that you should think better of me 
 than I deserve.' 
 
 ' Well, but I half know your " thing : " indeed, I believe 
 I know all about it.' 
 
 ' You do not.' 
 
 ' I believe I do.' 
 
 ' Whom does it concern besides me ? ' 
 
 She coloured ; she hesitated ; she was silent. 
 
 ' Speak, Gary ! -whom does it concern? ' 
 
 She tried to utter a name, and could not. 
 
 ' Tell me : there is none present but ourselves : be 
 frank.' 
 
 ' But if I guess wrong ? ' 
 
 ' I will forgive. Whisper, Gary.' 
 
 He bent his ear to her lips : still she would not, or could 
 not, speak clearly to the point. Seeing that Moore waited, 
 and was resolved to hear something, she at last said, ' Miss 
 Keeldar spent a day at the Eectory about a week since. The 
 evening came on very wintry, and we persuaded her to stay 
 all night.'
 
 618 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' And you and she curled your hair together ? ' 
 
 4 How do you know that ? ' 
 
 ' And then you chatted ; and she told you 
 
 ' It was not at curling-hair time ; so you are not as wise 
 as you think : and besides, she didn't tell me.' 
 
 ' You slept together afterwards ? ' 
 
 1 We occupied the same room and bed. We did not 
 sleep much : we talked the whole night through.' 
 
 ' I'll be sworn you did ! and then it all came out tant 
 pis. I would rather you had heard it from myself.' 
 
 1 You are quite wrong : she did not tell me what you 
 suspect : she is not the person to proclaim such things ; but 
 yet I inferred something from parts of her discourse : I 
 gathered more from rumour, and I made out the rest by 
 instinct.' 
 
 ' But if she did not tell you that I wanted to marry her 
 for the sake of her money, and that she refused me indig- 
 nantly and scornfully (you need neither start nor blush ; nor 
 yet need you prick your trembling fingers with your needle : 
 that is the plain truth, whether you like it or not) if such 
 was not the subject of her august confidences, on what 
 point did they turn ? You say you talked the whole night 
 through : what about ? ' 
 
 ' About things we never thoroughly discussed before, 
 intimate friends as we have been ; but you hardly expect I 
 should tell you ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, yes, Gary you will tell me : you said we were 
 friends ; and friends should always confide in each other.' 
 
 ' But you are sure you won't repeat it ? ' 
 
 1 Quite sure.' 
 
 1 Not to Louis ? ' 
 
 I Not even to Louis. What does Louis care for young 
 ladies' secrets ? ' 
 
 ' Robert Shirley is a curious, magnanimous being.' 
 
 I 1 daresay : I can imagine there are both odd points and 
 grand points about her.' 
 
 ' I have found her chary in showing her feelings ; but
 
 MATTERS MAKE SLOW PROGRESS 619 
 
 when they rush out, river-like, and pass full and powerful 
 before you, almost without leave from her you gaze, you 
 wonder, you admire, and I think love her.' 
 
 ' You saw this spectacle ? ' 
 
 ' Yes : at dead of night ; when all the house was silent, 
 and starlight, and the cold reflection from the snow glim- 
 mered in our chamber, then I saw Shirley's heart.' 
 
 'Her heart's core? Do you think she showed you 
 that?' 
 
 ' Her heart's core.' 
 
 1 And how was it ? ' 
 
 ' Like a shrine, for it was holy ; like snow, for it was 
 pure ; like flume, for it was warm ; like death, for it was 
 strong.' 
 
 ' Can she love ? Tell me that.' 
 
 ' What think you ? ' 
 
 ' She has loved none that have loved her yet.' 
 
 1 Who are those that have loved her ? ' 
 
 He named a list of gentlemen, closing with Sir Philip 
 Nunnely. 
 
 ' She has loved none of these.' 
 
 ' Yet some of them were worthy of a woman's affec- 
 tion.' 
 
 ' Of some women's ; hut not of Shirley's.' 
 
 ' Is she better than others of her sex ? ' 
 
 ' She is peculiar, and more dangerous to take as a wife 
 rashly.' 
 
 ' I can imagine that.' 
 
 ' She spoke of you 
 
 ' Oh ! she did ! I thought you denied it.' 
 
 ' She did not speak in the way you fancy ; but I asked 
 her, and I would make her tell me what she thought of you, 
 or rather, how slie felt towards you. I wanted to know : I 
 had long wanted to know.' 
 
 ' Fo had I ; but let us hear : she thinks meanly she feels 
 contemptuously, doubtless? ' 
 
 ' She thinks of you almost as highly as a woman can
 
 620 SHIRLEY 
 
 think of a man. You know she can be eloquent : I yet feel 
 in fancy the glow of the language in which her opinion was 
 conveyed.' 
 
 ' But how does she feel ? ' 
 
 ' Till you shocked her (she said you had shocked her, but 
 she would not tell me how), she felt as a sister feels towards 
 a brother of whom she is at once fond and proud.' 
 
 ' I'll shock her no more, Gary, for the shock rebounded 
 on myself till I staggered again : but that comparison about 
 sister and brother is all nonsense : she is too rich and proud 
 to entertain fraternal sentiments for me.' 
 
 ' You don't know her, Robert ; and somehow, I fancy now 
 (I had other ideas formerly), that you cannot know her : you 
 and she are not so constructed as to be able thoroughly to 
 understand each other.' 
 
 ' It may be so. I esteem her ; I admire her ; and yet my 
 impressions concerning her are harsh perhaps uncharitable. 
 I believe, for instance, that she is incapable of love ' 
 
 ' Shirley incapable of love ! ' 
 
 ' That she will never marry : I imagine her jealous of 
 compromising her pride, of relinquishing her power, of 
 sharing her property.' 
 
 ' Shirley has hurt your amour-propre.' 
 
 ' She did hurt it though I had not an emotion of tender- 
 ness, not a spark of passion for her.' 
 
 ' Then, Robert, it was very wicked in you to want to 
 marry her.' 
 
 ' And very mean, my little pastor, my pretty priestess. I 
 never wanted to kiss Miss Keeldar in my life, though she has 
 tine lips, scarlet and round, as ripe cherries ; or, if I did wish 
 it, it was the mere desire of the eye.' 
 
 ' I doubt, now, whether you are speaking the truth : the 
 grapes or the cherries are sour " hung too high." ' 
 
 ' She has a pretty figure, a pretty face, beautiful hair : I 
 acknowledge all her charms and feel none of them ; or only 
 feel them in a way she would disdain. I suppose I was truly 
 tempted, by the mere gilding of the bait. Caroline, what a
 
 MATTEES MAKE SLOW PROGRESS 621 
 
 noble fellow your Robert is great< good, disinterested, and 
 then so pure ! ' 
 
 ' But not perfect : he made a great blunder once, and we 
 will hear no more about it.' 
 
 ' And shall we think no more about it, Gary ? Shall we 
 not despise hirn in our heart, gentle but just, compassionate 
 but upright ? ' 
 
 ' Never ! We will remember that with what measure we 
 mete it shall be measured unto us, and so we will give no 
 scorn only affection.' 
 
 ' Which won't satisfy, I warn you of that. Something 
 besides affection something far stronger, sweeter, warmer 
 will be demanded one day : is it there to give ? ' 
 
 Caroline was moved much moved. 
 
 ' Be calm, Lina,' said Moore, soothingly ; ' I have no 
 intention, because I have no right, to perturb your mind 
 now, nor for months to come : don't look as if you would 
 leave me : we will make no more agitating allusions : we 
 will resume our gossip. Do not tremble : look me in the 
 face : see what a poor, pale, grim phantom I am more 
 pitiable than formidable.' 
 
 She looked shyly. ' There is something formidable still, 
 pale as you are,' she said, as her eye fell under his. 
 
 ' To return to Shirley,' pursued Moore ; ' is it your opinion 
 that she is ever likely to marry? ' 
 
 ' She loves.' 
 
 ' Platonically theoretically all humbug ! ' 
 
 ' She loves, what I call, sincerely.' 
 
 ' Did she say so ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot affirm that she said so : no such confession as, 
 I love this man or that, passed her lips.' 
 
 ' I thought not.' 
 
 ' But the feeling made its way in spite of her, and I saw 
 it. She spoke of one man in a strain not to be misunder- 
 stood : her voice alone was sufficient testimony. Having 
 wrung from her an opinion on your character, I demanded 
 a second opinion of - - another person about whom I had
 
 622 SHIRLEY 
 
 my conjectures ; though they were the most tangled and 
 puzzled conjectures in the world. I would make her 
 speak : I shook her, I chid her, I pinched her fingers 
 when she tried to put me off with gibes and jests in her 
 queer, provoking way, and at last, out it came : the voice, I 
 say, was enough ; hardly raised above a whisper, and yet 
 such a soft vehemence in its tones. There was no confes- 
 sion no confidence in the matter : to these things she 
 cannot condescend ; but I am sure that man's happiness is 
 dear to her as her own life.' 
 
 1 Who is it ? ' 
 
 ' I charged her with the fact ; she did not deny ; she did 
 not avow, but looked at me : I saw her eyes by the snow- 
 gleam. It was quite enough : I triumphed over her 
 mercilessly.' 
 
 ' What right had you to triumph ? Do you mean to say 
 you are fancy-free ? ' 
 
 ' Whatever / am, Shirley is a bondswoman. Lioness ! 
 She has found her captor. Mistress she may be of all round 
 her but her own mistress she is not.' 
 
 ' So you exulted at recognising a fellow-slave in one so 
 fair and imperial ? ' 
 
 ' I did ; Robert, you say right, in one so fair and 
 imperial.' 
 
 ' You confess it a/eZZow-slave ? ' 
 
 ' I confess nothing ; but I say that haughty Shirley is no 
 more free than was Hagar.' 
 
 ' And who, pray, is the Abraham : the hero of a patriarch 
 who has achieved such a conquest ? ' 
 
 ' You still speak scornfully, and cynically, and sorely ; 
 but I will make you change your note before I have done 
 with you.' 
 
 1 We will see that : can she marry this Cupidon ? ' 
 
 ' Cupidon ! he is just about as much a Cupidon as you 
 are a Cyclops.' 
 
 1 Can she marry him ? ' 
 
 ' You will see.'
 
 MATTERS MAKE SLOW PROGRESS 623 
 
 ' I want to know his name, Gary.' 
 
 ' Guess it.' 
 
 ' Is it any one in this neighbourhood ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, in Briarficld parish.' 
 
 ' Then it is some person unworthy of her. I don't know 
 a soul in Briarfield parish her equal.' 
 
 ' Guess.' 
 
 ' Impossible. I suppose she is under a delusion, and 
 will plunge into some absurdity after all.' 
 
 Caroline smiled. 
 
 ' Do you approve the choice ? ' asked Moore. 
 
 ' Quite, quite.' 
 
 ' Then I am puzzled ; for the head which owns this 
 bounteous fall of hazel curls is an excellent little thinking 
 machine, most accurate in its working : it boasts a correct, 
 steady judgment, inherited from " mamma," I suppose.' 
 
 1 And I quite approve, and mamma was charmed.' 
 
 ' " Mamma " charmed ! Mrs. Pryor ! It can't be romantic, 
 then ? ' 
 
 ' It is romantic, but it is also right.' 
 
 ' Tell me, Gary. Tell me out of pity : I am too weak to 
 be tantalized.' 
 
 1 You shall be tantalized : it will do you no harm : you 
 are not so weak as you pretend.' 
 
 ' I have twice this evening had some thoughts of falling 
 on the floor at your feet.' 
 
 ' You hud better not : I shall decline to help you 
 up.' 
 
 ' And worshipping you downright. My mother was a 
 Roman Catholic ; you look like the loveliest of her pictoes 
 of the Virgin : I think I will embrace her faith, and kneel 
 and adore.' 
 
 ' Robert, Robert, sit still ; don't be absurd : I will go to 
 Hortense, if you commit extravagances.' 
 
 ' You have stolen my senses : just now nothing will 
 come into my mind but " les litanies de la sainte Vierge. 
 Rose celeste, reine des Anges ! "
 
 624 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 " Tour d'ivoire, maison d'or : " is not that the jargon ? 
 Well, sit down quietly, and guess your riddle.' 
 
 1 But, " mamma " charmed ! There's the puzzle.' 
 
 1 I'll tell you what mamma said when I told her : 
 " Depend upon it, my dear, such a choice will make the 
 happiness of Miss Keeldar's life." ' 
 
 ' I'll guess once, and no more. It is old Helstone. She 
 is going to be your aunt.' 
 
 1 I'll tell my uncle ; I'll tell Shirley ! ' cried Caroline, 
 laughing gleefully. ' Guess again, Robert ; your blunders 
 are charming.' 
 
 ' It is the parson, Hall.' 
 
 ' Indeed, no : he is mine, if you please.' 
 
 ' Yours ! Ay ! the whole generation of women in Briar- 
 field seem to have made an idol of that priest : I wonder 
 why : he is bald, sand-blind, grey-haired.' 
 
 ' Fanny will be here to fetch me, before you have solved 
 the riddle, if you don't make haste.' 
 
 ' I'll guess no more, I am tired : and then I don't care. 
 Miss Keeldar may marry " le grand Turc " for me.' 
 
 ' Must I whisper ? ' 
 
 ' That you must, and quickly : here comes Hortense ; 
 come near, a little nearer, my own Lina : I care for the 
 whisper more than the words.' 
 
 She whispered : Robert gave a start, a flash of the eye, 
 a brief laugh : Miss Moore entered, and Sarah followed 
 behind, with information that Fanny was come. The hour 
 of converse was over. 
 
 Robert found a moment to exchange a few more whis- 
 pered sentences : he was waiting at the foot of the staircase, 
 as Caroline descended after putting on her shawl. 
 
 ' Must I call Shirley a noble creature now ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' If you wish to speak the truth, certainly.' 
 
 ' Must I forgive her ? ' 
 
 ' Forgive her ? Naughty Robert ! Was she in the 
 wrong, or were you ? ' 
 
 1 Must I at length love her downright, Gary? '
 
 MATTERS MAKE SLOW PROGRESS 625 
 
 Caroline looked keenly up, and made a movement 
 towards him, something between the loving and the 
 petulant. 
 
 ' Only give the word, and I'll try to obey you.' 
 
 ' Indeed, you must not love her : the bare idea is 
 perverse.' 
 
 But then she is handsome, peculiarly handsome : hers 
 is a beauty that grows on you : you think her but graceful, 
 when you first see her; you discover her to be beautiful, 
 when you have known her for a year.' 
 
 ' It is not you who are to say these things. Now, 
 Robert, be good.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Gary, I have no love to give. Were the goddess 
 of beauty to woo me, I could not meet her advances : there 
 is no heart which I can call mine in this breast.' 
 
 ' So much the better : you are a great deal safer with- 
 out : good-night.' 
 
 ' Why must you always go, Lina, at the very instant 
 when I most want you to stay ? ' 
 
 ' Because you most wish to retain when you are most 
 certain to lose.' 
 
 ' Listen ; one other word. Take care of your own heart : 
 do you hear me ? ' 
 
 ' There is no danger.' 
 
 ' I am not convinced of that : the Platonic parson, for 
 instance.' 
 
 'Who? Malone?' 
 
 ' Cyril Hall : I owe more than one twinge of jealousy to 
 that quarter.' 
 
 1 As to you, you have been flirting with Miss Mann : she 
 showed me the other day a plant you had given her. 
 F' I am ready.'
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 
 
 Louis MOORE'S doubts, respecting the immediate evacuation 
 of Fieldhead by Mr. Sympson, turned out to be perfectly 
 well founded. The very next day after the grand quarrel 
 about Sir Philip Nunnely, a sort of reconciliation was 
 patched up between uncle and niece : Shirley, who could 
 never find it in her heart to be or to seem inhospitable 
 (except in the single instance of Mr. Donne), begged the 
 whole party to stay a little longer : she begged in such 
 earnest, it was evident she wished it, for some reason. They 
 took her at her word : indeed, the uncle could not bring him- 
 self to leave her quite uuwatched at full liberty to marry 
 Robert Moore, as soon as that gentleman should be able 
 (Mr. Sympson piously prayed this might never be the case) 
 to reassert his supposed pretensions to her hand. They all 
 stayed. 
 
 In his first rage against all the house of Moore, Mr. 
 Sympson had so conducted himself towards Mr. Louis, that 
 that gentleman patient of labour or suffering, but intolerant 
 of coarse insolence had promptly resigned his post, and 
 could now be induced to resume and retain it only till such 
 time as the family should quit Yorkshire : Mrs. Symp- 
 son's entreaties prevailed with him thus far ; his own 
 attachment to his pupil constituted an additional motive for 
 concession ; and probably he had a third motive, stronger 
 than either of the other two : probably he would have found 
 it very hard indeed to leave Fieldhead just now.
 
 WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 627 
 
 Things went on, for some time, pretty smoothly ; Miss 
 Keeldar's health was re-established; her spirits resumed 
 their flow : Moore had found means to relieve her from every 
 nervous apprehension ; and, indeed, from the moment of 
 giving him her confidence, every fear seemed to have taken 
 wing: her heart became as lightsome, her manner as care- 
 less, as those of a little child, that, thoughtless of its own 
 life or death, trusts all responsibility to its parents. He and 
 William Farren through whose medium he made inquiries 
 concerning the state of Phoebe agreed in asserting that the 
 dog was not mad : that it was only ill-usage which had 
 driven her from home : for it was proved that her master 
 was in the frequent habit of chastising her violently. Their 
 assertion might, or might not, be true : the groom and game- 
 keeper affirmed to the contrary ; both asserting that, if hers 
 was not a clear case of hydrophobia, there was no such 
 disease. But to this evidence Louis Moore turned an in- 
 credulous ear : he reported to Shirley only what was en- 
 couraging : she believed him ; and, right or wrong, it ia 
 certain that in her case the bite proved innocuous. 
 
 November passed ; December came : the Sympsons were 
 now really departing ; it was incumbent on them to be at 
 home by Christmas ; their packages were preparing ; they 
 were to leave in a few days. One winter evening, during 
 the last week of their stay, Louis Moore again took out his 
 little blank book, and discoursed with it as follows : 
 
 ' She is lovelier than ever. Since that little cloud was dis- 
 pelled, all the temporary waste and wanness have vanished. 
 It was marvellous to see how soon the magical energy 
 of youth raised her elastic, and revived her blooming. 
 
 ' After breakfast this morning, when I had seen her, and 
 listened to her, and so to speak felt her, in every sentient 
 atom of my frame, I passed from her sunny presence into 
 the chill drawing-room. Taking up a little gilt volume, I 
 found it to contain a selection of lyrics. I n t:d a poem or
 
 628 SHIRLEY 
 
 two : whether the spell was in me or in the verse, I know not, 
 but my heart filled genially my pulse rose : I glowed, not- 
 withstanding the frosty air. I, too, am young as yet : though 
 she said she never considered me young, I am barely thirty : 
 there are moments when life for no other reason than my 
 own youth beams with sweet hues upon me. 
 
 ' It was time to go to the schoolroom : I went. That 
 same schoolroom is rather pleasant in a morning ; the sun 
 then shines through the low lattice ; the books are in order : 
 there are no papers strewn about ; the fire is clear and clean ; 
 no cinders have fallen, no ashes accumulated. I found 
 Henry there, and he had brought with him Miss Keeldar : 
 they were together. 
 
 ' I said she was lovelier than ever : she is. A fine rose, 
 not deep but delicate, opens on her cheek ; her eye, always 
 dark, clear, and speaking, utters now a language I cannot 
 render it is the utterance, seen not heard, through which 
 angels must have communed when there was " silence in 
 heaven." Her hair was always dusk as night, and fine as 
 silk; her neck was always fair, flexible, polished but both 
 have now a new charm : the tresses are soft as shadow, the 
 shoulders they fall on wear a goddess-grace. Once I only 
 saw her beauty, now I feel it. 
 
 1 Henry was repeating his lesson to her before bringing 
 it to me one of her hands was occupied with the book, 
 he held the other : that boy gets more than his share of 
 privileges ; he dares caress and is caressed. What indul- 
 gence and compassion she shows him ! Too much : if this 
 went on, Henry, in a few years, when his soul was formed, 
 would offer it on her altar, as I have offered mine. 
 
 ' I saw her eyelid flitter when I came in, but she did not 
 look up : now she hardly ever gives me a glance. She 
 seems to grow silent, too to me she rarely speaks, and, 
 when I am present, she says little to others. In my gloomy 
 moments, I attribute this change to indifference, aversion, 
 what not? In my sunny intervals I give it another mean- 
 ing : I say, were I her equal, I could find in this shyness
 
 WBITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 629 
 
 coyness, and in that coyness love. As it is, dare I look 
 for it ? What could I do with it, if found ? 
 
 ' This morning I dared, at least, contrive an hour's com- 
 munion for her and me ; I dared not only wish but will an 
 interview with her : I dared summon solitude to guard us. 
 Very decidedly I called Henry to the door : without hesita- 
 tion, I said, " Go where you will, my boy ; but, till I call 
 you, return not here." 
 
 I Henry, I could see, did not like his dismissal : that boy 
 is young, but a thinker : his meditative eye shines on me 
 strangely sometimes : he half feels what links me to 
 Shirley ; he half guesses that there is a dearer delight in the 
 reserve with which I am treated, than in all the endearments 
 he is allowed. The young, lame, half-grown lion would 
 growl at me now and then, because I have tamed his lioness 
 and am her keeper, did not the habit of discipline and the 
 instinct of affection hold him subdued. Go, Henry ; you 
 must learn to take your share of the bitter of life with all of 
 Adam's race that have gone before, or will come after you : 
 your destiny can be no exception to the common lot : be 
 grateful that your love is overlooked thus early, before it 
 can claim any affinity to passion : an hour's fret, a pang of 
 envy, suffice to express what you feel : Jealousy, hot as the 
 sun above the line, Rage, destructive as the tropic storm, the 
 clime of your sensations ignores as yet. 
 
 I 1 took my usual seat at the desk, quite in my usual 
 way : I am blessed in that power to cover all inward 
 ebullition with outward calm. No one who looks at my 
 slow face can guess the vortex sometimes whirling in 
 my heart, and engulfing thought, and wrecking prudence. 
 Pleasant is it to have the gift to proceed peacefully and 
 powerfully in your course without alarming by one eccentric 
 movement. It was not my present intention to utter one 
 word of love to her, or to reveal one glimpse of the fire in 
 which I waited. Presumptuous, I never have been ; pre- 
 sumptuous, I never will be : rather than even seem selfish 
 and interested. I would resolutely rise, gird my loins, part
 
 630 SHIRLEY 
 
 and leave her, and seek, on the other side of the globe, a 
 new life, cold and barren as the rock the salt tide daily 
 washes. My design this morning was to take of her a near 
 scrutiny to read a line in the page of her heart ; before I 
 left, I determined to know what I was leaving. 
 
 ' I had some quills to make into pens : most men's hands 
 would have trembled when their hearts were so stirred; 
 mine went to work steadily, and my voice, when I called it 
 into exercise, was firm. 
 
 ' " This day week you will be alone at Fieldhead, Miss 
 Keeldar." 
 
 '"Yes: I rather think my uncle's intention to go is a 
 settled one now." 
 
 ' " He leaves you dissatisfied." 
 
 ' " He is not pleased with me." 
 
 '"He departs as he came no better for his journey : 
 this is mortifying." 
 
 ' " I trust the failure of his plans will take from him all 
 inclination to lay new ones." 
 
 ' " In his way, Mr. Sympson honestly wished you well. 
 All he has done, or intended to do, he believed to be for the 
 best." 
 
 ' " You are kind to undertake the defence of a man who 
 has permitted himself to treat you with so much insolence." 
 
 ' " I never feel shocked at, or bear malice for, what is 
 spoken in character ; and most perfectly in character was that 
 vulgar and violent onset against me, when he had quitted 
 you worsted." 
 
 ' " You cease now to be Henry's tutor ? " 
 
 ' " I shall be parted from Henry for a while (if he and I 
 live we shall meet again somehow, for we love each other) 
 and be ousted from the bosom of the Sympson family for 
 ever. Happily this change does not leave me stranded : it 
 but hurries into premature execution designs long formed." 
 
 ' " No change finds you off your guard : I was sure, in 
 your calm way, you wouM be prepared for sudden mutation. 
 I always think you stand in the world like a solitary but
 
 631 
 
 watchful, thoughtful archer in a wood ; and the quiver on 
 your shoulder holds more arrows than one ; your bow is 
 provided with a second string. Such too is your brother's 
 wont. You two might go forth homeless hunters to the 
 loneliest western wilds ; all would be well with you. The 
 hewn tree would make you a hut, the cleared forest yield 
 you fields from its stripped bosom, the buffalo would feel 
 your rifle-shot, and with lowered horns and hump pay 
 homage at your feet." 
 
 1 " And any Indian tribe of Black-feet, or Flat-heads, 
 would afford us a bride, perhaps ? " 
 
 1 " No " (hesitating) : " I think not. The savage is sordid: 
 I think, that is, I Jiope, you would neither of you share your 
 hearth with that to which you could not give your heart." 
 
 ' " What suggested the wild West to your mind, Miss 
 Keeldar ? Have you been with me in spirit when I did not 
 see you ? Have you entered into my day-dreams, and beheld 
 my brain labouring at its scheme of a future." 
 
 ' She had separated a slip of paper for lighting tapers a 
 spill, as it is called into fragments : she threw morsel by 
 morsel into the fire, and stood pensively watching them 
 consume. She did not speak. 
 
 ' " How did you learn what you seem to know about my 
 intentions?" 
 
 ' " I know nothing : I am only discovering them now : I 
 spoke at hazard." 
 
 ' " Your hazard sounds like divination. A tutor I will 
 never be again : never take a pupil after Henry and your- 
 self : no I again will I sit habitually at another man's table 
 no more be the appendage of a family. I am now a man of 
 thirty : I have never been free since I was a boy of ten. I 
 have such a thirst for freedom such a deep passion to know 
 her and call her mine such a day-desire and night-longing 
 to win her and possess her, I will not refuse to cross the 
 Atlantic for her sake : her I will follow deep into virgin 
 woods. Mine it shall not be to accept a savage girl as a 
 slave -she could not be a v.ife. I know no white woman
 
 632 SHIRLEY 
 
 whom I love that would accompany me ; but I am certain 
 Liberty will await me, sitting under a pine : when I call her 
 she will come to my log-house, and she shall fill my arms." 
 
 ' She could not hear me speak so unmoved, and she was 
 moved. It \vas right I meant to move her. She could not 
 answer me, nor could she look at me : I should have been 
 sorry if she could have done either. Her cheek glowed as if 
 a crimson flower, through whose petals the sun shone, had 
 cast its light upon it. On the white lid and dark lashes of 
 her downcast eye, trembled all that is graceful in the sense 
 of half-painful, half-pleasing shame. 
 
 ' Soon she controlled her emotion, and took all her feel- 
 ings under command. I saw she had felt insurrection, and 
 was waking to empire she sat down. There was that in 
 her face which I could read : it said, I see the line which is 
 my limit nothing shall make me pass it. I feel I know 
 how far I may reveal my feelings, and when I must clasp 
 the volume. I have advanced to a certain distance, as far as 
 the true and sovereign and undegraded nature of my kind 
 permits now here I stand rooted. My heart may break if 
 it is baffled : let it break it shall never dishonour me it 
 shall never dishonour my sisterhood in me. Suffering before 
 degradation ! death before treachery ! 
 
 'I, for my part, said, "If she were poor, I would be at 
 her feet. If she were lowly, I would take her in my arms. 
 Her Gold and her Station are two griffins, that guard her on 
 each side. Love looks and longs, and dares not : Passion 
 hovers round, and is kept at bay : Truth and Devotion are 
 scared. There is nothing to lose in winning her no sacri- 
 fice to make it is all clear gain, and therefore unimaginably 
 difficult." 
 
 ' Difficult or not, something must be done ; something 
 must be said. I could not, and would not, sit silent with all 
 that beauty mode.stly mute in my presence. I spoke thus, 
 and still I spoke with calm : quiet as my words were, I could 
 hear they fell in a tone distinct, round, and deep. 
 
 ' " Still, I know I shall be strangely placed with that
 
 633 
 
 mountain nymph, Liberty. She is, I suspect, akin to that 
 Solitude which I once wooed, and from which I now seek a 
 divorce. These Oreads are peculiar : they come upon you 
 with an unearthly charm, like some starlight evening ; they 
 inspire a wild but not warm delight; their beauty is the 
 beauty of spirits : their grace is not the grace of life, but of 
 seasons or scenes in Nature : theirs is the dewy bloom of 
 morning the languid flush of evening the peace of the 
 moon the changefulness of clouds. I want and will have 
 something different. This elfish splendour looks chill to my 
 vision, and 'feels frozen to rny touch. I am not a poet: I 
 cannot live with abstractions. You, Miss Keeldar, have 
 sometimes, in your laughing satire, called me a material 
 philosopher, and implied that I live sufficiently for the sub- 
 stantial. Certainly I feel material from head to foot ; and 
 glorious as Nature is, and deeply as I worship her with the 
 solid powers of a solid heart, I would rather behold her 
 through the soft human eyes of a loved and lovely wife, 
 than through the wild orbs of the highest goddess of 
 Olympus." 
 
 ' " Juno could not cook a buffalo steak as you like it," 
 said she. 
 
 ' " She could not : but I will tell you who could some 
 young, penniless, friendless orphan girl. I wish I could find 
 such a one : pretty enough for me to love, with something 
 of the mind and heart suited to my taste : not uneducated 
 honest and modest. I care nothing for attainments ; but I 
 would fain have the germ of those sweet natural powers which 
 nothing acquired can rival : any temper Fate wills, I can 
 manage the hottest. To such a creature as this, I should 
 like to be first tutor and then husband. I would teach her 
 my language, my habits, and my principles, and then I 
 would reward her with my love." 
 
 ' " Reward her ! lord of the creation ! Reward her 1 " 
 ejaculated she, with a curled lip. 
 
 ' " And be repaid a thousandfold." 
 
 ' " If she willed it, Monscigneur '
 
 634 SHIRLEY 
 
 1 " And she should will it." 
 
 1 " You have stipulated for any temper Fate wills. 
 Compulsion is flint and a blow to the metal of some souls." 
 " And love the spark it elicits." 
 
 1 " Who cares for the love that is but a spark seen, 
 flown upward, and gone? " 
 
 ' " I must find my orphan girl. Tell me how, Miss 
 Keeldar." 
 
 ' " Advertise : and be sure you add, when you describe 
 the qualifications, she must be a good plain cook." 
 
 '"I must find her; and when I do find her, I shall 
 marry her." 
 
 ' " Not you ! " and her voice took a sudden accent of 
 peculiar scorn. 
 
 ' I liked this : I had roused her from the pensive mood 
 in which I had first found her : I would stir her further. 
 
 '"Why doubt it?" 
 
 ' " You marry ! " 
 
 ' " Yes, of course : nothing more evident than that I 
 can, and shall." 
 
 ' "The contrary is evident, Mr. Moore." 
 
 ' She charmed me in this mood : waxing disdainful, half 
 insulting, pride, temper, derision, blent in her large fine eye, 
 that had, just now, the look of a merlin's. 
 
 ' " Favour me with your reasons for such an opinion, 
 Miss Keeldar." 
 
 ' " How will you manage to marry, I wonder ? " 
 
 ' " I shall manage it with ease and speed when I find the 
 proper person." 
 
 ' " Accept celibacy ! " (and she made a gesture with her 
 hand as if she gave me something) ; " take it as your 
 doom ! " 
 
 ' " No : you cannot give what I already have. Celibacy 
 has been mine for thirty years. If you wish to offer me a 
 gift, a parting present, a keepsake, you must change the 
 boon." 
 
 1 " Take worse, then ! "
 
 WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 635 
 
 ' " How ? What ? " 
 
 ' I now felt, and looked, and spoke eagerly. I was unwise 
 to quit my sheet-anchor of calm even for an instant : it 
 deprived me of an advantage and transferred it to her. The 
 little spark of temper dissolved in sarcasm, and eddied over 
 her countenance in the ripples of a mocking smile. 
 
 1 " Take a wife that has paid you court to save your 
 modesty, and thrust herself upon you to spare your 
 scruples." 
 
 ' " Only show me where." 
 
 ' " Any stout widow that has had a few husbands already, 
 and can manage these things." 
 
 ' " She must not be rich then. Oh these riches ! " 
 
 1 " Never would you have gathered the produce of the 
 gold-bearing garden. You have not courage to confront the 
 sleepless dragon : you have not craft to borrow the aid of 
 Atlas ! " 
 
 ' " You look hot and haughty." 
 
 ' " And you far haughtier. Yours is the monstrous pride 
 which counterfeits humility." 
 
 ' " I am a dependent : I know my place." 
 
 ' " I am a woman : I know mine." 
 
 ' " I am poor : I must be proud." 
 
 ' " I have received ordinances, and own obligations 
 stringent as yours." 
 
 ' We had reached a critical point now, and we halted and 
 looked at each other. She would not give in, I felt. Beyond 
 this, I neither felt nor saw. A few moments yet were mine : 
 the end was coming I 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 advan- 
 tageous offers, and, I believe, a fifth. Have you rejected Sir 
 Philip Nunnely?"
 
 636 SHIELEY 
 
 ' I put this question suddenly and promptly. 
 
 ' " Did you think I should take him ? " 
 
 1 " I thought you might." 
 
 ' " On what grounds, may I ask? " 
 
 ' " Conformity of rank ; age ; pleasing contrast of temper, 
 for lie is mild and amiable ; harmony of intellectual tastes." 
 
 ' " A beautiful sentence ! Let us take it to pieces. ' Con- 
 formity of rank.' He is quite above me : compare my grange 
 with his palace, if you please : I am disdained by his kith 
 and kiu. ' 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, uncom- 
 missioned to descend ? Unjust barbarian ! ' Harmony 
 
 of intellectual tastes.' He is fond of poetry, and I hate 
 it 
 
 ' " Do you ? That is news." 
 
 1 " 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 ! bear- 
 ing 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
 
 WKITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 637 
 
 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." 
 
 1 " 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 abuse 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." 
 
 1 " 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 bree/e, 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
 
 638 
 
 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 T -white beauty-spot which stars his broad fore- 
 head. 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 penni- 
 less and friendless young orphan girl, when you find her." 
 
 1 " Oh ! could I find her such as I image her. Some- 
 thing 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 al-out 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 ; should 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 ic ill." 
 
 ' She turned to leave me. Could I now let her part as
 
 WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 639 
 
 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 con- 
 versation 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." 
 
 1 " 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.
 
 640 SHIRLEY 
 
 '"My pupil," I said. 
 
 "' My master," was the low answer. 
 
 ' " I have a thing to tell you." 
 
 1 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. 
 
 1 " Well, Mr. Moore, what then ? " was the answer I got, 
 uttered in a tone that would have been petulant if it had not 
 faltei'ed. 
 
 ' " 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."
 
 WBITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 641 
 
 ' 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." 
 
 1 " 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."
 
 642 SHIBLEY 
 
 ' " 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." 
 
 1 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 ghow me how to sustain my part well. Your judgment 
 is well balanced ; your heart is kind ; your principles are
 
 WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 643 
 
 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 some- 
 times. 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, or 
 elsewhere. Yesterday, towards dusk, I had her to myself 
 for five minutes, by the hall-fire : we stood side by side ; 
 she was railing at me, and I was enjoying the sound of her 
 voice : the young ladies passed, and looked at us ; we did 
 not separate : erelong, they repassed, and again looked. 
 Mrs. Sympson came ; we did not move : Mr. Sympson 
 opened the dining-room door ; Shirley flashed him back full 
 payment for his spying gaze : she curled her lip, and tossed 
 her tresses. The glance she gave was at once explanatory 
 and defiant ; it said " I like Mr. Moore's society, and I dare 
 you to find fault with my taste." 
 
 ' I asked, " Do you mean him to understand how matters 
 are ? " 
 
 ' " I do," said she ; " but I leave the development to 
 chance. There will be a scene. I neither invite it nor fear 
 it only, you must be present : for I am inexpressibly tired 
 of facing him solus. I don't like to see him in a rage : he 
 then puts off all his fine proprieties and conventional dis- 
 guises, and the real human being below is what you would 
 call ' commun, plat, bas vilain et un peu me"chant.' His
 
 644 SHIRLEY 
 
 ideas are not clean, Mr. Moore ; they want scouring with 
 soft soap and fuller's earth. I think, if he could add his 
 imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill's bucking-basket, 
 and let her boil it in her copper, with rain-water and 
 bleaching-powder (I hope you think me a tolerable laundress), 
 it would do him incalculable good." 
 
 ' This morning, fancying I heard her descend somewhat 
 early, I was down instantly. I had not been deceived : 
 there she was, busy at work, in the breakfast-parlour, of 
 which the housemaid was completing the arrangement and 
 dusting. She had risen betimes to finish some little keepsake 
 she intended for Henry. I got only a cool reception ; which 
 I accepted till the girl was gone, taking my book to the 
 window-seat very quietly. Even when we were alone, I 
 was slow to disturb her : to sit with her in sight was happi- 
 ness, and the proper happiness, for early morning serene, 
 incomplete, but progressive. Had I been obtrusive, I knew 
 I should have encountered rebuff. " Not at home to suitors," 
 was written on her brow ; therefore, I read on stole, now 
 and then, a look ; watched her countenance soften and open, 
 and she felt I respected her mood, and enjoyed the gentle 
 content of the moment. 
 
 ' The distance between us shrank, and the light hoar- 
 frost thawed insensibly : ere an hour elapsed, I was at her 
 side, watching her sew, gathering her sweet smiles and her 
 merry words, which fell for me abundantly. We sat, as we 
 had a right to sit, side by side : my arm rested on her 
 chair ; I was near enough to count the stitches of her work, 
 and to discern the eye of her needle. The door suddenly 
 opened. 
 
 ' I believe, if I had just then started from her, she would 
 have despised me : thanks to the phlegm of my nature, I 
 rarely start. When I am well-off, bien, comfortable, I am 
 not soon stirred: bien I was tres bien consequently, 
 immutable : no muscle moved. I hardly looked to the 
 door. 
 
 " Good-morning, uncle," said she, addressing that
 
 WBITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 645 
 
 personage ; who paused on the threshold in a state of 
 petrification. 
 
 ' " Have you been long down-stairs, 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. Hence- 
 forward, 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 I 
 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
 
 646 SHIRLEY 
 
 meant to marry : my intention was then formed, but not 
 mature for communication ; now it is i"ipe, sun-mellowed, 
 perfect : take the crimson-peach take Louis Moore ! " 
 
 1 " But " (savagely) " you sJiall twi 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 hap- 
 pened 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 Bed-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 bis wretched cowardice
 
 WBITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 647 
 
 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 bewil- 
 dered, 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 to-day, 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 tan- 
 talisedsometimes 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,
 
 648 SHIRLEY 
 
 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, fugi- 
 tive, 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 rain-drop, a thing never to be over- 
 taken, 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 moon -lit hall, with the design of 
 getting a word as she returned : nor in this did I fail. 
 
 ' " Miss Keeldar, stay one instant 1 " said I, meeting 
 her. 
 
 ' " \Yhy ? the hall is too cold."
 
 WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 649 
 
 ' " 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 1 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.
 
 650 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' " 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." 
 
 ' " Be reasonable, Louis, be patient ! I like you because 
 you are patient." 
 
 ' " Like me no longer, then, love me instead : fix our 
 marriage-day. Think of it to-night, and decide." 
 
 ' She breathed a murmur, inarticulate yet expressive ; 
 darted, or melted, from my arms and I lost her.'
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 THE WINDINQ-UP 
 
 YES, reader, we must settle accounts now. I have only 
 briefly to narrate the final fates of some of the personages 
 whose acquaintance we have made in this narrative, and 
 then you and I must shake hands, and for the present 
 separate. Let us turn to the Curates, to the much-loved, 
 though long-neglected. Come forward, modest merit ! 
 Malone, I see, promptly answers the invocation : he knows 
 his own description when he hears it. 
 
 No, Peter Augustus, we can have nothing to say to you : 
 it won't do. Impossible to trust ourselves with the touching 
 tale of your deeds and destinies. Are you not aware, Peter, 
 that a discriminating public has its crotchets : that the un- 
 varnished truth does not answer ; that plain facts will not 
 digest ? Do you not know that the squeak of the real pig is 
 no more relished now than it was in days of yore ? Were I 
 to give the catastrophe of your life and conversation, the 
 public would sweep off in shrieking hysterics, and there 
 would be a wild cry for sal-volatile and burnt feathers. 
 1 Impossible ! ' would be pronounced here : ' untrue ! ' would 
 be responded there. ' Inartistic ! ' would be solemnly decided. 
 Note well ! Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, 
 it is, somehow, always denounced as a lie : they disown it, 
 cast it off, throw it on the parish ; whereas the product of 
 your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer fiction, is 
 adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural : the 
 little spurious wretch gets all the comfits, the honest,
 
 652 SHIELEY 
 
 lawful bantling, all the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, 
 Peter ; and, as you are the legitimate urchin, rude, unwashed, 
 and naughty, you must stand down. 
 
 Make way for Mr. Sweeting. Here he comes, with his 
 lady on his arm ; the most splendid and the weightiest 
 woman in Yorkshire : Mrs. Sweeting, formerly Miss Dora 
 Sykes. They were married under the happiest auspices ; 
 Mr. Sweeting having been just inducted to a comfortable 
 living, and Mr. Sykes being in circumstances to give Dora a 
 handsome portion. They lived long and happily together, 
 beloved by their parishioners and by a numerous circle of 
 friends. There ! I think the varnish has been put on very 
 nicely. Advance, Mr. Donne. This gentleman turned out 
 admirably : far better than either you or I could possibly 
 have expected, reader. He, too, married a most sensible, 
 quiet, lady-like little woman : the match was the making of 
 him : he became an exemplary domestic character, and a 
 truly active parish-priest (as a pastor, he, to his dying day, 
 conscientiously refused to act). The outside of the cup and 
 platter he burnished up with the best polishing-powder ; the 
 furniture of the altar and temple he looked after with the 
 zeal of an upholsterer the care of a cabinet-maker. His 
 little school, his little church, his little parsonage, all owed 
 their erection to him ; and they did him credit : each was a 
 model in its way : if uniformity and taste in architecture had 
 been the same thing as consistency and earnestness in reli- 
 gion, what a shepherd of a Christian flock Mr. Donne would 
 have made ! There was one art in the mastery of which 
 nothing mortal ever surpassed Mr. Donne it was that of 
 begging. By his own unassisted efforts, he begged all the 
 money for all his erections. In this matter he had a grasp 
 of plan, a scope of action quite unique : he begged of high 
 and low of the shoeless cottage-brat and the coroneted 
 duke : he sent out begging- letters far and wide to old 
 Queen Charlotte, to the princesses her daughters, to her 
 sons the royal dukes, to the Prince Regent, to Lord Castle- 
 reagh, to every member of the Ministry then in office ; and,
 
 THE WINDING-UP 653 
 
 what is more remarkable, he screwed something out of every 
 one of these personages. It is on record that he got five 
 pounds from the close-fisted old lady, Queen Charlotte, and 
 two guineas from the royal profligate, her eldest son. When 
 Mr. Donne set out on begging expeditions, he armed himself 
 in a complete suit of brazen mail : that you had given a 
 hundred pounds yesterday, was, with him, no reason why 
 you should not give two hundred to-day : he would tell you 
 so to your face, and, ten to one, get the money out of you : 
 people gave to get rid of him. After all, he did some good 
 with the cash ; he was useful in his day and generation. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to remark that, on the premature and 
 sudden vanishing of Mr. Malone from the stage of Briarfield 
 parish (you cannot know how it happened, reader ; your 
 curiosity must be robbed to pay your elegant love of the 
 pretty and pleasing), there came as his successor another 
 Irish curate, Mr. Macarthey. I am happy to be able to 
 inform you, with truth, that this gentleman did as much 
 credit to his country as Malone had done it discredit : he 
 proved himself as decent, decorous, and conscientious, as 
 
 Peter was rampant, boisterous, and (this last epithet I 
 
 choose to suppress, because it would let the cat out of the 
 bag). He laboured faithfully in the parish : the schools, both 
 Sunday and day-schools, flourished under his sway like green 
 bay-trees. Being human, of course he had his faults ; these. 
 however, were proper, steady-going, clerical faults ; what 
 many would call virtues : the circumstance of finding him- 
 self invited to tea with a Dissenter would unhinge him for a 
 week ; the spectacle of a Quaker wearing his hat in the 
 church, the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature being 
 interred with Christian rites these things could make 
 strange havoc in Mr. Macarthey's physical and mental 
 economy ; otherwise he was sane and rational, diligent and 
 charitable. 
 
 I doubt not a justice-loving public will have remarked, 
 ere this, that I have thus far shown a criminal remissness in 
 pursuing, catching, and bringing to condign punishment the
 
 654 SHIRLEY 
 
 would-be assassin of Mr. Robert Moore : here was a fine 
 opening to lead my willing readers a dance, at once decorous 
 and exciting : a dance of law and gospel, of the dungeon, 
 the dock, and the ' dead-thraw.' You might have liked it, 
 reader, but I should not : I and my subject would presently 
 have quarrelled, and then I should have broken down : I 
 was happy to find that facts perfectly exonerated me from 
 the attempt. The murderer was never punished ; for the 
 good reason that he was never caught ; the result of the 
 further circumstance that he was never pursued. The 
 magistrates made a shuffling, as if they were going to rise 
 and do valiant things ; but, since Moore himself, instead of 
 urging and leading them as heretofore, lay still on his little 
 cottage-couch, laughing in his sleeve and sneering with every 
 feature of his pale, foreign face, they considered better of it ; 
 and, after fulfilling certain indispensable forms, prudently 
 resolved to let the matter quietly drop, which they did. Mr- 
 Moore knew who had shot him, and all Briarfield knew ; it 
 was no other than Michael Hartley, the half-crazed weaver 
 once before allnded to, a frantic Antinomian in religion, and 
 a mad leveller in politics ; the poor soul died of delirium 
 tremens, a year after the attempt on Moore, and Robert gave 
 his wretched widow a guinea to bury him. 
 
 The winter is over and gone : spring has followed with 
 beamy and shadowy, with flowery and showery flight : we 
 are now in the heart of summer in mid-June, the June 
 of 1812. 
 
 It is burning weather : the air is deep azure and red 
 gold : it fits the time ; it fits the age ; it fits the present 
 spirit of the nations. The nineteenth century wantons in 
 its giant adolescence : the Titan-boy uproots mountains in 
 his game, and hurls rocks in his wild sport. This summer, 
 Bonaparte is in the saddle : he and his host scour Russian 
 deserts : he has with him Frenchmen and Poles, Italians 
 and children of the Rhine, six hundred thousand strong. 
 He marches on old Moscow : under old Moscow's walls the
 
 THE WINDING-UP 655 
 
 rude Cossack waits him. Barbarian stoic ! he waits without 
 fear of the boundless ruin rolling on. He puts his trust in a 
 snow-cloud : the Wilderness, the Wind, and the Hail -storm 
 are his refuge : his allies are the elements Air, Fire, 
 Water. And what are these ? Three terrible archangels 
 ever stationed before the throne of Jehovah. They stand 
 clothed in white, girdled with golden girdles ; they uplift 
 vials brimming with the wrath of God. Their time is the 
 day of vengeance; their signal, the word of the Lord of 
 Hosts, ' thundering with the voice of His excellency.' 
 ' Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow ? or hast 
 thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved 
 against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and 
 war ? Go your ways : pour out the vials of the wrath of 
 God upon the earth.' It is done : the earth is scorched 
 with fire : the sea becomes ' as the blood of a dead man : ' 
 the islands flee away ; the mountains are not found. 
 
 In this year, Lord Wellington assumed the reins in 
 Spain : they made him Generalissimo, for their own sal- 
 vation's sake. In this year, he took Badajos, he fought the 
 field of Vittoria, he captured Pampeluna, he stormed St. 
 Sebastian ; in this year, he won Salamanca. 
 
 Men of Manchester ! I beg your pardon for this slight 
 resum6 of warlike facts : but it is of no consequence. Lord 
 Wellington is, for you, only a decayed old gentleman now : 
 I rather think some of you have called him a ' dotard ' you 
 h.ive taunted him with his age, and the loss of his physical 
 vigour. What fine heroes you are yourselves ! Men like 
 you have a right to trample on what is mortal in a demigod. 
 Scoff at your ease your scorn can never break his grand 
 old heart. 
 
 But come, friends, whether Quakers or Cotton-printers, 
 let us hold a Peace-Congress, and let out our venom quietly. 
 We have been talking with unseemly zeal about bloody 
 battles and butchering generals ; we arrive now at a 
 triumph in your line. On the 18th of June, 1812, the 
 Orders in Council were repealed, and the blockaded ports
 
 656 SHIBLEY 
 
 thrown open. You know very well such of you as are old 
 enough to remember you made Yorkshire and Lancashire 
 shake with your shout on that occasion : the ringers cracked 
 a bell in Briarfield belfry ; it is dissonant to this day. The 
 Association of Merchants and Manufacturers dined together 
 at Stilbro', and one and all went home in such a plight as 
 their wives would never wish to witness more. Liverpool 
 started and snorted like a river-horse roused among his 
 reeds by thunder. Some of the American merchants felt 
 threatenings of apoplexy, and had themselves bled : all, like 
 wise men, at this first moment of prosperity, prepared to 
 rush into the bowels of speculation, and to delve new 
 difficulties, in whose depths they might lose themselves at 
 some future day. Stocks, which had been accumulating for 
 years, now went off in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
 eye ; warehouses were lightened, ships were laden ; work 
 abounded, wages rose : the good time seemed come. These 
 prospects might be delusive, but they were brilliant to 
 some they were even true. At that epoch, in that single 
 month of June, many a solid fortune was realized. 
 
 When a whole province rejoices, the humblest of its 
 inhabitants taste a festal feeling : the sound of public bells 
 rouses the most secluded abode, as if with a call to be gay. 
 And so Caroline Helstone thought, when she dressed herself 
 more carefully than usual on the day of this trading triumph, 
 and went, attired in her neatest muslin, to spend the after- 
 noon at Fieldhead, there to superintend certain millinery 
 preparations for a great event : the last appeal in these 
 matters being reserved for her unimpeachable taste. She 
 decided on the wreath, the veil, the dress to be worn at the 
 altar : she chose various robes and fashions for more 
 ordinary occasions, without much reference to the bride's 
 opinion ; that lady, indeed, being in a somewhat imprac- 
 ticable mood. 
 
 Louis had presaged difficulties, and he had found 
 them ' in fact, his mistress had shown herself exquisitely
 
 THE WINDING-UP 657 
 
 provoking ; putting off her marriage day by day, week by 
 week, month by month. At first coaxing him with soft 
 pretences of procrastination, and in the end rousing his 
 whole deliberate but determined nature to revolt against her 
 tyranny, at once so sweet and so intolerable. 
 
 It had needed a sort of tempest-shock to bring her to 
 the point ; but there she was at last, fettered to a fixed day : 
 there she lay, conquered by love, and bound with a vow. 
 
 Thus vanquished and restricted, she pined, like any 
 other chained denizen of deserts. Her captor alone could 
 cheer her ; his society only could make amends for the lost 
 privilege of liberty : in his absence, she sat or wandered 
 alone ; spoke little, and ate less. 
 
 She furthered no preparations for her nuptials ; Louis 
 was himself obliged to direct all arrangements : he was 
 virtually master of Fieldhead, weeks before he became so 
 nominally : the least presumptuous, the kindest master that 
 ever was ; but with his lady absolute. She abdicated 
 without a word or a struggle. ' Go to Mr. Moore ; ask Mr. 
 Moore,' was her answer when applied to for orders. Never 
 was wooer of wealthy bride so thoroughly absolved from the 
 subaltern part ; so inevitably compelled to assume a para- 
 mount character. 
 
 In all this, Miss Keeldar partly yielded to her dis- 
 position ; but a remark she made a year afterwards proved 
 that she partly also acted on system. ' Louis/ she said, 
 ' would never have learned to rule, if she had not ceased to 
 govern : the incapacity of the sovereign had developed the 
 powers of the premier.' It had been intended that Miss 
 Helstone should act as bridesmaid at the approaching 
 nuptials ; but Fortune had destined her another part. 
 
 She came home in time to water her plants. She had 
 performed this little task. The last flower attended to was 
 a rose-tree, which bloomed in a quiet green nook at the 
 back of the house. This plant had received the refreshing 
 shower : she was now resting a minute. Near the wall 
 stood a fragment of sculptured stone a monkish relic ;
 
 668 SHIRLEY 
 
 once, perhaps, the base of a cross; she mounted it, that 
 she might better command the view. She had still the 
 watering-pot in one hand ; with the other, her pretty dress 
 was held lightly aside, to avoid trickling drops : she gazed 
 over the wall, along some lonely fields ; beyond three dusk 
 trees, rising side by side, against the sky ; beyond a solitary 
 thorn, at the head of a solitary lane far off : she surveyed 
 the dusk moors, where bonfires were kindling : the summer 
 evening was warm ; the bell-music was joyous ; the blue 
 smoke of the fires looked soft ; their red flame bright : above 
 them, in the sky whence the sun had vanished, twinkled a 
 silver point the Star of Love. 
 
 Caroline was not unhappy that evening ; far otherwise : 
 but as she gazed she sighed, and as she sighed a hand 
 circled her, and rested quietly on her waist. Caroline 
 thought she knew who had drawn near : she received the 
 touch unstartled. ' I am looking at Venus, mamma : see, 
 she is beautiful. How white her lustre is, compared with 
 the deep red of the bonfires ! ' The answer was a closer 
 caress ; and Caroline turned, and looked, not into Mrs. 
 Pryor's matron face, but up at a dark manly visage. She 
 dropped her watering pot, and stepped down from the 
 pedestal. ' I have been sitting with " mamma " an hour,' 
 said the intruder. ' I have had a long conversation with 
 her. Where, meantime, have you been? ' 
 
 ' To Fieldhead. Shirley is as naughty as ever, Robert : 
 she will neither say Yes nor No to any question put. She 
 sits alone : I cannot tell whether she is melancholy or 
 nonchalant: if you rouse her, or scold her, she gives you a 
 look half wistful, half reckless, which sends you away as 
 queer and crazed as herself. What Louis will make of her, 
 I cannot tell : for my part, if I were a gentleman, I think I 
 would not dare undertake her.' 
 
 ' Never mind them : they were cut out for each other. 
 Louis, strange to say, likes her all the better for these 
 freaks : he will manage her, if any one can. She tries him, 
 however : he has had a stormy courtship for such a calm
 
 THE WINDING-UP 
 
 character ; but you see it all ends in victory for him. 
 Caroline, I have sought you to ask an audience. Why are 
 those bells ringing ? ' 
 
 ' For the repeal of your terrible law ; the Orders you 
 hate so much. You are pleased, are you not ? ' 
 
 'Yesterday evening at this time, I was packing some 
 books for a sea-voyage : they were the only possessions, 
 except some clothes, seeds, roots, and tools, which I felt 
 free to take with me to Canada. I was going to leave you.' 
 
 1 To leave me ? To leave me ? ' Her little fingers 
 fastened on his arm : she spoke and looked affrighted. 
 
 1 Not now not now. Examine my face ; yes, look at 
 me well : is the despair of parting legible thereon ? ' She 
 looked into an illuminated countenance, whose characters 
 were all beaming, though the page itself was dusk : this face, 
 potent in the majesty of its traits, shed down on her hope, 
 iondness, delight. ' Will the repeal do you good ; much 
 good - immediate good ? ' she inquired. 
 
 ' The repeal of the Orders in Council saves me. Now I 
 shall not turn bankrupt ; now I shall not give up business ; 
 now I shall not leave England ; now I shall be no longer 
 poor ; now I can pay my debts ; now all the cloth I have in 
 my warehouses will be taken off my hands, and commissions 
 given me for much more : this day lays for my fortunes a 
 broad, firm foundation; on which, for the first time in my 
 life, I can securely build.' 
 
 Caroline devoured his words : she held his hand in hers ; 
 she drew a long breath. 
 
 1 You are saved ? Your heavy difficulties are lifted ? ' 
 
 1 They are lifted : I breathe : I can act.' 
 
 ' At last ! Oh ! Providence is kind. Thank Him, 
 Kobert.' 
 
 ' I do thank Providence.' 
 
 ' And I ako, for your sake ! ' She looked up devoutly. 
 
 ' Now, I can take more workmen ; give better wages ; lay 
 wiser and more liberal plans ; do some good ; be less selfish : 
 now, Caroline, I can have a house a home which I can 
 
 3
 
 660 SHIKLEY 
 
 truly call mine and now He paused; for his deep 
 voice was checked. ' And now,' he resumed ' now I can 
 think of marriage ; now I can seek a wife. This was no 
 moment for her to speak : she did not speak. ' Will 
 Caroline, who meekly hopes to be forgiven as she forgives 
 will she pardon all I have made her suffer all that long 
 pain I have wickedly caused her all that sickness of body 
 and mind she owed to me? Will she forget what she 
 knows of my poor ambition my sordid schemes? Will 
 she let me expiate these things ? Will she suffer me to 
 prove that, as I once deserted cruelly, trifled wantonly, 
 injured basely, I can now love faithfully, cherish fondly, 
 treasure tenderly ? ' 
 
 His hand was in Caroline's still : a gentle pressure 
 answered him. ' Is Caroline mine ? ' 
 
 ' Caroline is yours.' 
 
 ' I will prize her : the sense of her value is here, in my 
 heart ; the necessity for her society is blended with my life : 
 not more jealous shall I be of the blood whose flow moves 
 my pulses, than of her happiness and well-being. 1 
 
 1 1 love you, too, Eobert, and will take faithful care of 
 you.' 
 
 ' Will you take faithful care of me ? faithful care ! as if 
 that rose should promise to shelter from tempest this hard, 
 grey stone ? But she will care for me, in her way : these 
 hands will be the gentle ministrants of every comfort I can 
 taste. I know the being I seek to entwine with my own 
 will bring me a solace a charity a purity to which, of 
 myself, I am a stranger.' 
 
 Suddenly, Caroline was troubled ; her lip quivered. 
 
 ' What flutters my dove ? ' asked Moore, as she nestled 
 to, and then uneasily shrank from him. 
 
 ' Poor mamma I I am all mamma has : must I leave 
 her?' 
 
 'Do you know, I thought of that difficulty: I and 
 "mamma " have discussed it.' 
 
 ' Tell me what you wish what you would like and I
 
 THE WINDING-UP 661 
 
 will consider if it is possible to consent ; but I cannot desert 
 her, even for you : I cannot break her heart, even for your 
 sake.' 
 
 ' She was faithful when I was false was she not ? I 
 never came near your sick-bed, and she watched it cease- 
 lessly.' 
 
 ' What must I do ? Anything but leave her.' 
 
 1 At my wish, you never shall leave her.' 
 
 1 She may live very near us ? ' 
 
 'With us only she will have her own rooms and 
 servant : for this she stipulates herself.' 
 
 ' You know she has an income, that, with her habits, 
 makes her quite independent ? ' 
 
 ' She told me that, with a gentle pride that reminded me 
 of somebody else.' 
 
 ' She is not at all interfering, and incapable of gossip.' 
 
 ' I know her, Gary : but if instead of being the personi- 
 fication of reserve and discretion she were something quite 
 opposite, I should not fear her.' 
 
 ' Yet she will be your mother-in-law ? ' The speaker 
 gave an arch little nod : Moore smiled. ' Louis and I are 
 not of the order of men who fear their mothers-in-law, 
 Gary : our foes never have been, nor will be, those of our 
 own household. I doubt not, my mother-in-law will make 
 much of me.' 
 
 ' That she will in her quiet way, you know. She is not 
 demonstrative ; and when you see her silent, or even cool, 
 you must not fancy her displeased it is only a manner she 
 has. Be sure to let me interpret for her, whenever she 
 puzzles you ; always believe my account of the matter, 
 Robert." 
 
 ' Oh, implicitly ! Jesting apart, I feel that she and I will 
 suit on ne peut mieux. Hortense, you know, is exquisitely 
 susceptible in our French sense of the w r ord and not, 
 perhaps, always reasonable in her requirements : yet 
 dear, honest girl I never painfully wounded her feelings, 
 or had a serious quarrel with her, in my life.'
 
 662 SHIBLEY 
 
 I No : you are most generously considerate indeed, 
 most tenderly indulgent to her ; and you will be considerate 
 with mamma. You are a gentleman all through, Robert, to 
 the bone, and nowhere so perfect a gentleman as at your 
 own fireside.' 
 
 ' An eulogium I like : it is very sweet. I am well 
 pleased my Caroline should view me in this light.' 
 
 ' Mamma just thinks of you as I do.' 
 
 ' Not quite, I hope ? ' 
 
 ' She does not want to marry you don't be vain ; but 
 she said to me the other day, " My dear, Mr. Moore has 
 pleasing manners ; he is one of the few gentlemen I have 
 seen who combine politeness with an air of sincerity." ' 
 
 ' " Mamma" is rather a misanthropist, is she not? Not 
 the best opinion of the sterner sex ? ' 
 
 ' She forbears to judge them as a whole, but she has her 
 exceptions whom she admires. Louis and Mr. Hall, and, of 
 late yourself. She did not like you once : I knew that 
 because she would never speak of you. But, Robert 
 
 ' Well, what now ? What is the new thought ? ' 
 
 ' You have not seen my uncle yet ? ' 
 
 I 1 have : " mamma " called him into the room. He 
 consents conditionally : if I prove that I can keep a wife, I 
 may have her ; and I can keep her better than he thinks 
 better than I choose to boast.' 
 
 ' If you get rich, you will do good with your money, 
 Robert ? ' 
 
 ' I will do good ; you shall tell me how : indeed, I have 
 some schemes of my own, which you and I will talk about 
 on our own hearth one day. I have seen the necessity of 
 doing good : I have learned the downright folly of being 
 selfish. Caroline, I foresee what I will now foretell. This 
 war must ere long draw to a close : Trade is likely to 
 prosper for some years to come : there may be a brief mis- 
 understanding between England and America, but that will 
 not last. What would you think if, one day perhaps ere 
 another ten years elapse Louis and I divide Briarfield
 
 THE WINDING-UP 663 
 
 parish betwixt us ? Louis, at any rate, is certain of power 
 and property : he will not bury his talents : he is a benevo- 
 lent fellow, and has, besides, an intellect of his own of no 
 trifling calibre. His mind is slow but strong : it must work : 
 it may work deliberately, but it will work well. He will be 
 made magistrate of the district Shirley says he shall : she 
 would proceed impetuously and prematurely to obtain for 
 him this dignity, if he would let her, but he will not ; as 
 usual, he will be in no haste : ere he has been master of 
 Fieldhead a year, all the district will feel his quiet influence, 
 and acknowledge his unassuming superiority : a magistrate 
 is wanted they will, in time, invest him with the office 
 voluntarily and unreluctantly Everybody admires his future 
 wife : and everybody will, in time, like him : he is of the 
 " pate " generally approved, " bon comme le pain " daily 
 bread for the most fastidious ; good for the infant and the 
 aged, nourishing for the poor, wholesome for the rich. 
 Shirley, in spite of her whims and oddities, her dodges and 
 delays, has an infatuated fondness for him : she will one day 
 see him as universally beloved as even sJie could wish : he 
 will also be universally esteemed, considered, consulted, 
 depended on too much so: his advice will be always 
 judicious, his help always good-natured erelong, both will 
 be in inconvenient request : he will have to impose restric- 
 tions. As for me, if I succeed as I intend to do, my 
 success will add to his and Shirley's income : I can double 
 the value of their mill-property : I can line yonder barren 
 Hollow with lines of cottages, and rows of cottage- 
 gardens ' 
 
 1 Robert ! And root up the copse ? ' 
 
 1 The copse shall be firewood ere five years elapse : the 
 beautiful wild ravine shall be a smooth descent ; the green 
 natural terrace shall be a paved street : there shall be 
 cottages in the dark ravine, and cottages on the lonely 
 slopes : the rough pebbled track shall be an even, firm, 
 broad, black, sooty road, bedded with the cinders from my 
 mill: and my mill, Caroline my mill shall fill its present yard.'
 
 664 SHIRLEY 
 
 ' Horrible ! You will change our blue hill-country air 
 into the Stilbro' smoke atmosphere.' 
 
 ' I will pour the waters of Pactolus through the valley of 
 Briarfield.' 
 
 ' I like the beck a thousand times better.' 
 
 1 1 will get an act for enclosing Nunnely Common, and 
 parcelling it out into farms.' . 
 
 1 Stilbro' Moor, however, defies you, thank Heaven ! What 
 can you grow in Bilberry Moss! What will flourish on 
 Eushedge ? ' 
 
 ' Caroline, the houseless, the starving, the unemployed, 
 shall come to Hollow's-mill from far and near ; and Joe 
 Scott shall give them work, and Louis Moore, Esq., shall let 
 them a tenement, and Mrs. Gill shall mete them a portion 
 till the first pay-day.' 
 
 She smiled up in his face. 
 
 1 Such a Sunday-school as you will have, Gary ! such 
 collections as you will get ! such a day-school as you and 
 Shirley, and Miss Ainley will have to manage between you ! 
 The mill shall find salaries for a master and mistress, 
 and the Squire or the Clothier shall give a treat once a 
 quarter.' She mutely offered a kiss, an offer taken 
 unfair advantage of, to the extortion of about a hundred 
 kisses. ' Extravagant day-dreams ! ' said Moore, with a sigh 
 and smile, ' yet perhaps we may realise some of them. 
 Meantime, the dew is falling : Mrs. Moore, I shall take 
 you in.' 
 
 It is August : the bells clash out again, not only through 
 Yorkshire but through England : from Spain, the voice of a 
 trumpet has sounded long: it now waxes louder and louder: 
 it proclaims Salamanca won. This night is Briarfield to be 
 illuminated. On this day the Fieldhead tenantry dine 
 together ; the Hollow's-mill work-people will be assembled 
 for a like festal purpose ; the schools have a grand treat. 
 This morning there were two marriages solemnized in 
 Briarfield church, Louis Gerard Moore, Esq., late of
 
 THE WINDING-UP 665 
 
 Antwerp, to Shirley, daughter of the late Charles Cave 
 Keeldar, Esq., of Fieldhead : Robert Gerard Moore, Esq., of 
 Hollow's-mill, to Caroline, niece of the Rev. Matthewson 
 Helstone, M.A., Rector of Briarfield. 
 
 The ceremony, in the first instance, was performed by 
 Mr. Helstone ; Hiram Yorke, Esq., of Briarmains, giving the 
 bride away. In the second instance, Mr. Hall, Vicar of 
 Nunnely, officiated. Amongst the bridal train, the two most 
 noticeable personages were the youthful bridesmen, Henry 
 Sympson and Martin Yorke. 
 
 I suppose Robert Moore's prophecies were, partially, at 
 least, fulfilled. The other day I passed up the Hollow, 
 which tradition says was once green, and lone, and wild ; 
 and there I saw the manufacturer's day-dreams embodied in 
 substantial stone and brick and ashes the cinder-black 
 highway, the cottages, and the cottage-gardens ; there I saw 
 a mighty mill, and a chimney, ambitious as the tower of 
 Babel. I told my old housekeeper when I came home 
 where I had been. ' Ay ! ' said she ; ' this world has queer 
 changes. I can remember the old mill being built the very 
 first it was in all the district ; and then, I can remember 
 it being pulled down, and going with my lake-lasses 
 (companions) to see the foundation-stone of the new one laid : 
 the two Mr. Moores made a great stir about it ; they were 
 there, and a deal of fine folk beside, and both their ladies ; very 
 bonnie and grand they looked ; but Mrs. Louis was the grand- 
 est, she always wore such handsome dresses : Mrs. Robert 
 was quieter-like. Mrs. Louis smiled when she talked : she 
 had a real, happy, glad, good-natured look ; but she had 
 een that pierced a body through : there is no such ladies 
 now-a-days.' 
 
 ' What was the Hollow like then, Martha ? ' 
 
 'Different to what it is now; but I can tell of it clean 
 different again: when there was neither mill, nor cot, nor 
 hall, except Fieldhead, within two miles of it. I can tell, 
 one summer-evening, fifty years syne, my mother coming 
 running in just at the edge of dark, almost fleyed out of her
 
 666 SHIRLEY 
 
 wits, saying, she had seen a fairish (fairy) in Fieldhead 
 Hollow ; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on 
 this country side (though they've been heard within these 
 forty years). A lonesome spot it was and a bonnie spot 
 full of oak-trees and nut-trees. It is altered now.' 
 
 The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader 
 putting on his spectacles to look for the moral. It would be 
 an insult to his sagacity to offer directions. I only say, God 
 speed him in the quest !
 
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