 CHAPTER XXVIII FEBE PART I They 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 breakfast? Isabella and Gertrude, will you? So rare was such an invitation from Miss Kildar to her female cousins that they hesitated before they accepted it. Their mama, however, signifying acquiescence in the project, they fetched their bonnets and the trio set out. It did not suit these three persons to be thrown much together. Miss Kildar liked the society of few ladies. Indeed, she had a cordial pleasure in that of none except Mrs. Pryor and Carolyn Hellstone. 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 Mrs. Simpson. Without deviating from her wanted rule of discussing 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 fervor laughed in her grey English eye. Some directions necessary to be given to her foreman, 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 Lungin called her in. She excused herself from the meal and went upstairs. Is not Shirley coming to Lungin, 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 Kildar. 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 went so ever springing, effected in a brief ten minutes, past 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 Kildar. 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. Then 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 hotcher repelled it. Was she ill? The reply came with decision. I am not. Did anything weigh on her mind? Had anything happened to effect her spirits? She scornfully ridiculed the idea. What did they mean by spirits? She had no spirits, black or white, blue or gray, to effect. Something must be the matter. She was so altered. She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was planer. 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 preemptorily 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-sperning epithets burst from her lips when alone. Fool, coward, she would term herself. Pultrune, 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 you 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. In 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 alterations in her spirits commented on the alteration in her 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 still-brow-more 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 hilltop, noticed that instead of turning on rush edge, the top ridge of still-brow-more, 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 Nunnelly. This gentleman and his ancestors had been the agents of the Kildar family for generations back. Some people affirmed that Miss Kildar was become involved in business speculations connected with Hollow's mill, that she had lost money and was constrained to mortgage her land. Others conjectured that she was going to be married and that the settlements were preparing. Mr. Moore and Henry Simpson were together in the school room. The tutor was waiting for a lesson which the pupil seemed busy in preparing. 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. 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. This distress is not occasioned by physical pain, you say, Harry. You have a grief. Call it me. 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 does it concern? The cause, sir, is surely. It concerns surely. 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 Kildar has 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. She says she is ill. I believe, sir, if she were dying she would smile and defer. Nothing ails me. What have you learned, then? What new circumstance? I have learned that she has just made her will. Made her will. The tutor and pupil were silent. She told you that, asked more when some minutes had elapsed? She told me quite cheerfully, not as an ominous circumstance which I felt it to be. She said I was the only person besides her solicitor, Pearson Hall, and Mr. Hellstone and Mr. York, who knew anything about it. And to me she intimated she wished specially to explain his 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 Simpson, 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 field-head. 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 Carolyn Hellstone some money, too, that this manor house, with its furniture and books, she had bequeathed 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 Hellstone, 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 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? 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 belong, 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 Kildars 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 at 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. But Mr. Moore, you smile. I could not smile to see Shirley in such a mood. My boy, I am neither nervous nor poetic nor inexperienced. 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 Kildar or a Simpson, and I answered I was Kildar 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 Kildar 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 Kildar and to make field-head my residence. Henry Shirley Kildar I said I would be called, and I will. Her name and her manor house are ages old, and Simpson and Simpson 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 inference 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. Does she ever complain to your mother or sisters? 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 health 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 rush edge. Of late she has never permitted weather to be a hindrance to her rides. You remember, Mr. Moore, how wet and stormy it was last Wednesday, so wild indeed that she would not permit Zoe to be saddled. Yet the blast she thought too tempestuous for her mare, she herself faced on foot. That afternoon she walked nearly as far as nunnally. I asked her when she came in if she was not afraid of taking cold. But 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 say, 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 eau de ma grandeur on his youthful ardour. To him I can speak as if in my eyes they were both children. Let me see 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 nunnally 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 straight 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 behooves me to look to myself 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 romance. 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. 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 past. She will refuse me. Henry is in treating 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 rather she were a little perverse. It will steal me. I prefer her, queer-ast 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. End of Chapter 28 Part 1. Chapter 28 Part 2 of Shirley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. Chapter 28 Phoebe, Part 2 The door unclosed, Miss Kildar 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 writing out. She had evidently passed it quietly. She wore her neat indoor dress and silk apron. This was no tolestrus 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 act sense and with rigid mean. Perhaps he would had she looked saucy, but her air never showed less of crannery. 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 death. Did you want me, sir? She asked. I ventured, Miss Kildar, 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 about your health. All your friends are unhappy on that subject. It 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 Kildar, I had some influence with you. Have I any now? May I feel that what I am saying is not accounted positive presumption? 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? 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. 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. Have you the appetite you once had? No, but it is not because I am ill. 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 perloined it. It fitted your forefinger. Try now. She permitted the test. The ring dropped from the wasted little hand. Louis picked it up and reattached it to the chain. An uneasy flush colored his brow. Shirley again said, It is not because I am ill. Not only have you lost sleep, appetite, and flesh proceeded more, 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. You nervous? Yes, and if Miss Kildar 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. Resting her elbow on the table, she leaned her head on her hand. Mr. Moore felt as if he had at last gained some footing 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. Since 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 eclah. In short, I never liked to be the center 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 irredeal mischief done? Had I thought it right to go to you I would never have made 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? 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 attention or a theme for village gossip. Besides, it may pass away without result, God knows. More though tortured with suspense did not demand a quick explanation, he suffered neither gesture, glance, nor word to betray impatience. His tranquility tranquilized surely, his confidence reassured her. Great effects may spring from trivial causes, she remarked as she loosened a bracelet from her wrist. Then unfastening her sleeve and partially turning it up. Look here, Mr. Moore. She showed a scar on 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 Breyerfield but you, because you can take it quietly. Certainly there is nothing in that 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 was 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 quickening. 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? I make no promise now, tell me the tale and then exact what pledge you will. It is a very short 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, Nunnally had been with her the evening before, thought more 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 Wynn's pointers. The poor creature ran with her head down, 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 bid it so as to draw blood, then ran panting on. Directly after Mr. Wynn'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. Moor leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Ms. Kildar resumed her square of silk canvas and continued the creation of a wreath of Parmy's 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. 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. I dare say you never once groaned. I'm 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. 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. Because it is not worth sharing. Because nobody can give the high price you require for your confidence. Nobody 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 then sweet with your endowments and nature? Do you truly expect that you will be seized with hydrophobia and die raving mad? 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, though I value your life as much as I do my own chance of happiness and eternity. Look up. 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 climb? 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 be self-possessed but you. Now promise to be friend me, to keep Mr. Simpson away from me, not to let Henry come near lest I should hurt him. 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 round 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. Provisions has made her honest, forbearance has made her kind-hearted. 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. I promise. That is good in you, she said, looking up at him as he bent over her and smiling. 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. 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 condescend 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. Well, you have Carol and Hellstone. 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 Reverend Matthewson Hellstone M.A. to lean upon. For any left-hand fallings off there is Hiram York Esquire. Both elders pay you homage. I never saw Mrs. York 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. It appears so. How thankful we ought to be. Yes. How contented. Yes. 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 flavor. Still leaning on the back of Mrs. Kildar'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? Holy, 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? Why am I austere and shy? Because you are proud. Why am I proud? I should like to know, will you be good enough to tell me? Just 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. Make that turtle, Mr. Moore. Immediately, what do you think of marrying to sober poverty many-tinted caprice? Are you capricious? You are. A libel, I am as 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. Well, Mr. Moore, you should contend against these changeful humours. They are your besetting sin. One never knows where to have you. Miss Kildar, I had once, for two years, a pupil who grew very dear to me. Henry is dear, but she is dearer. Henry never gives me trouble. She—well, she did. I think she vexed me twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. She was never with you above three hours or at 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 creature comforts. I 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 quarreled 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 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 Kildar? 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 had once learned to withdraw. Praise her, admire in her haughture a careful improvement on your own coolness. Conscience and honour and the most despotic necessity dragged me apart from her and kept me sundered with ponderous fetters. She was free. She might have been clement. Never free to compromise herself respect to seek where she had been shunned. Then she was inconsistent. She tantalised 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. Tomorrow you will not be as you are today. I don't know, will you? I am not mad, most noble, Bernice. 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 Nunnally. The fire shines on you and me, and shows us very clearly in the glassness Kildar, 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 surely rose. 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 Kildar's cheek. Right 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 Lewis, that he had an interview with you the evening before he left, and I saw him quit field head 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 pulverizing a man's brittle pride. I suppose Robert put too 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 I advise his return, but that his return is advisable. The second bell rang, and Miss Kildar obeyed its call. CHAPTER XXIX Louis Mawr 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 tolerated confinement to a small still corner of the real world very patiently. How hushed is field head this evening. All but Mawr, Miss Kildar, the whole family of the Simpsons, even Henry, are gone to Nunnally. 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 Tudor too, but the Tudor 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 Nunnally Forest. Yes, he would rather have appointed Trist with a phantom abyss or mist-pale nun among the wet and weedy relics of that ruined sanctuary of theirs, moldering in the core of the wood. Louis Mawr longs to have something near him tonight, but not the boy baronet, nor his benevolent but stern mother, nor his patrician sisters, nor one soul of the Simpsons. 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 rains glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she 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 Eolith. Mawr, 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 fleece, 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. Mawr wanders through all the rooms. He seems following a phantom from parlor to parlor. 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 twinkle 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 Mawr 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 significance 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. Mawr spoke. Her mark, he said. Here she has been, careless, attractive thing, called away in haste, doubtless, and forgetting 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 something 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 remonstrating 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 workstand, 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 mementos about me. I used rather to like solitude, to fancy her a somewhat quiet and serious, yet fair nymph, an oriad descending to me from lone mountain passes, something of the blue mist of hills in her array, and of their chill breeze in her breath, but much also of their solemn beauty in her mean. 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 to my strength. Since that hour I abhor solitude. Cold abstraction, 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 Stillbro. Shyness, her shyness not mine, drew a silver veil between us. Much can't have I heard and read about maid and modesty, but properly used and not hackneyed the words are good and appropriate words. As she passed to the window, after tacitly but gracefully recognizing me, I could call her nothing in my own mind save, stainless virgin. To my perception a delicate splendor robed her, and the modesty of girlhood was her halo. I may be the most fatuous, as I am one of the plainest, of men, but in truth that shyness of hers touched me exquisitely. It flattered my finest sensations. I looked a stupid block, I dare say. I was alive with a life of paradise as she turned her glance from my glance and softly averted her head to hide the suffusion of her cheek. I know this is the talk of a dreamer, of a rapt romantic lunatic. I do dream. I will dream now and then, and if she has inspired romance into my prosaic composition, how can I help it? What a child she is sometimes. What an unsophisticated, untaught thing. I see her now looking up into my face and in treating me to prevent them from smothering her and to be sure and give her a strong narcotic. I see her confessing that she was not so self-sufficing, so independent of sympathy as people thought. I see the secret tear drop quietly from her eyelash. She said I thought her childish, and I did. She imagined I despised her. Despised her? It was unutterably sweet to feel myself at once near her and above her, to be conscious of a natural right and power to sustain her, as a husband should sustain his wife. I worship her perfections, but it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me, that nestle her to my heart, that fold her about with my love, and that for a most selfish but deeply natural reason. These faults are the steps by which I mount to ascendancy over her. If she rose a trimmed artificial mound without inequality, what vantage would she offer the foot? It is the natural hill with its mossy breaks and hollows, whose slope invites ascent, whose summit it is pleasure to gain. To leave metaphor, it delights my eye to look on her. She suits me. If I were a king and she the housemaid that swept my palace stairs, across all that space between us, my eye would recognize her qualities. A true pulse would beat for her in my heart, though an unspanned gulf made acquaintance impossible. If I were a gentleman and she waited on me as a servant, I could not help liking that surely. 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 stuffed gown. Let her offer me there a draft of water, with that smile, with that warm good will with which she now dispenses menorial 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 do now. 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. Now 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 person that little satin bag I see the tassel of silver beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my brother Robert. All her little failings would I know be a source of irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I delight to find her at fault, and were I always resident with her I am aware she would be no-niggered 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 min-wam-youten meets my eye, expostulatory words crowd to my lips. From a tasseturn 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 crann, malin, tachin 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 a wind on the hills. And I confess it. To this mute page I may confess it. I have waited an hour in the court for the chance of witnessing her return, and for the dearer chance of receiving her in my arms from the saddle. I have noticed, again it is to this page only I would make the remark, that she will never permit any man but myself to render her that assistance. I have seen her politely decline Sir Philip Nunnelly's aid. She is always mighty gentle with her young baronette, mighty tender of his feelings, foresooth, and of his very thin-skinned amour probe. I have marked her haughtily reject, Sam wins. 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 genie to the glisten of the lamp. All my knowledge, all my prudence, all my calm, and all my power stand in her presence, humbly waiting a task. How glad they are when a mandate comes! What joy they take in the toils she assigns! Does she know it? I have called her careless. It is remarkable that her carelessness never compromises her refinement. Indeed, through this very loophole of character, the reality, depth, genuineness of that refinement may be ascertained. A whole garment sometimes covers meagerness 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. When 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 straw breadth. She would suit Robert, but what could I do with anything so nearly faultless? She is my equal, poor as myself. She is certainly pretty, a little Raphael-head hers, Raphael in feature, quite English in expression, all insular grace and purity. But where is there anything to alter, anything to endure, anything to reprimand, to be anxious about? There she is, a lily of the valley, untinted, needing no tint. What change could improve her? What pencil dare to paint? My sweetheart, if ever I have one, must bear nearer affinity to the rose, a sweet, lively delight guarded with prickly peril. My wife, if ever I marry, must stir my great frame with a sting now and then. She must furnish use to her husband's vast mass of patience. I was not made so enduring to be mated with a lamb. I should find more congenial responsibility in the charge of a young lioness or leperdice. I like few things sweet but what are likewise pungent, few things bright but what are likewise hot. I like the summer day, whose sun makes fruit blush and corn blanche. 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 bet-fove my powers would revel. O my pupil, O Perry, 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 surely, and she must be bent. It cannot curb her, and she must be curbed. Beware, Sir Philip Nunnally, I never see you walking or sitting at her side and observe her lips compressed or her brown knit in resolute endurance of some trait of your character which she neither admires nor likes. In determined toleration of some weakness she believes atoned for by a virtue, but which annoys her despite that belief. I never mark the grave glow of her face, the unsmiling sparkle of her eye, the slight recoil of her whole frame when you draw a little too near, and gaze a little too expressively, and whisper a little too warmly. I never witness these things, but I think of the fable of Semile 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 Godhead. It is a priest of Juno that stands before me, watching late and lone at a shrine in an archive temple. For years of solitary ministry he has lived on dreams. There is divine madness upon him. He loves the idol he serves and prays day and night that his frenzy may be fed and that the ox-eyed may smile on her votary. She has heard she will be propitious. All Argos slumbers. The doors of the temple are shut. The priest waits at the altar. A shock of heaven and earth is felt not by the slumbering city, only by that lonely watcher brave and unshaken in his fanaticism. In the midst of silence, with no pre-looting sound, he is wrapped in sudden light. Through the roof, through the rent, wide yawning, vast, white-blazing, blue of heaven above, pours a wondrous descent, dread as the downrushing of stars. He has what he asked, with draw, for bare to look I am blinded. I hear in that faint and unspeakable sound wood that I could not hear it. I see an insufferable glory burning terribly between the pillars. Gods be merciful and quench it. A pious archive enters to make an early offering in the cool dawn of mourning. 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 pile dashes 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 tomorrow. 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 ring them all out of me slowly and separately, only by confession, penitence, and treaty. I never can touch her hand or a ringlet of her head or a ribbon of her dress, but I will make privileges for myself. Every feature of her face, her bright eyes, her lips shall go through each change they know for my pleasure, display each exquisite variety of glance and curve to delight, thrill, perhaps more hopelessly to enchain me. If I must be her slave I will not lose my freedom for nothing. He locked the desk, pocketed all the property, and went. CHAPTER XXXV. Everybody said it was high time for Mr. Moore to return home. All Breyerfield wondered at his strange absence, and Winbury and Nunnally brought each its separate contribution of amazement. Was it known why he stayed away? Yes, it was known twenty, forty times over, there being at least forty plausible reasons adduced to account for the unaccountable circumstance. Business it was not, that the gossips agreed. He had achieved the business on which he departed long ago. His four ringleaders he had soon scented out and run down. He had attended their trial, heard their conviction and sentence, and seen them safely shipped prior to transportation. This was known at Breyerfield. The newspapers had reported it. The still-brok courier had given every particular with amplifications. None applauded his perseverance or hailed his success, though the mill owners were glad of it, trusting that the terrors of law vindicated would henceforward paralyze the sinister valor of disaffection. Disaffection, however, was still heard muttering to himself. He swore ominous oaths over the drugged beer of ale houses and drank strange toasts in fiery British gin. One report affirmed that more dared not come to Yorkshire. He knew his life was not worth an hour's purchase if he did. I'll tell him that, said Mr. York, when his foreman mentioned the rumour, and if that does not bring him home full gallop, nothing will. Either that or some other motive prevailed at last to recall him. He announced to Joe Scott the day he should arrive at still-bro, desiring his hackney to be sent to the George for his accommodation. And Joe Scott, having informed Mr. York, that gentleman made it in his way to meet him. It was market day. Moore arrived in time to take his usual place at the market dinner. As something of a stranger, and as a man of note and action, the assembled manufacturers received him with a certain distinction. Some, who in public would scarcely have dared to acknowledge his acquaintance, lest a little of the hate and vengeance laid up in store for him, should perchance have fallen on them, in private hailed him as, in some sort, their champion. When the wine had circulated, their respect would have kindled to enthusiasm, had not Moore's unshaken nonchalance held it in a damp, low, smoldering state. Mr. York, the permanent president of these dinners, witnessed his young friends bearing with exceeding complacency. If one thing could stir his temper or excite his contempt more than another, it was to see a man be fooled 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. Distain would have but incensed. It was in difference that appeased his rough spirit. Robert, leaning back in his chair, quiet and almost surly, while the clothiers and blanket-makers vaunted his prowess and rehearsed his deeds, many of them interspersing their flatteries with coarse invectives against the operative class, was a delectable sight for Mr. York. His heart tingled with the pleasing conviction that these gross eulogums shamed more deeply and made him half-scorn himself and his work. On abuse, on reproach, on calumny, it is easy to smile, but painful indeed is the panegyric of those we condemn. Often had more gazed with a brilliant countenance over howling crowds from a hostile hustling. He had breasted the storm of unpopularity with gallant bearing and sole elate. But he drooped his head under the half-bread tradesman's praise and shrank chagrined before their congratulations. York could not help asking him how he liked his supporters and whether he did not think they did honour to his cause. But it is a pity, lad, he added, that you did not hang these four samples of the unwashed. If you had managed that feat, the gentry here would have riven the horses out of the coach, yoked to a score of asses, and drawn you into still-bro like a conquering general. More soon foresook the wine, yoked from the party, and took the road. In less than five minutes Mr. York followed him, they rode out of still-bro together. It was early to go home, but it was yet 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. York moderately exhilarated with his moderate libations, and not displeased to see young moor again in Yorkshire and to have him for his comrade during the long ride home, took the discourse much to himself. He touched briefly but scoffingly on the trials and the conviction. He passed thence to the gossip of the neighbourhood, and ere long he attacked more 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 out your hand and take it. And what did you do? You called for a horse and rode a hunting to Warwickshire. Your sweetheart, Fortune, I mean, was perfectly indulgent. She said, I'll excuse him. He's young. She waited like patience on a monument till the chase was over and the vermin prey run down. She expected you would come back then and be a good lad. You might still have had her first prize. It capped her beyond expression and me too to find that, instead of thundering home in a breakneck gallop and laying your assize laurels at her feet, you coolly took coach up to London. What you have done there, Satan knows. Nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and salt. Your face was never lily fair, but it is olive green now. You're not as bonny as you were, man. And who is to have this prize you talk so much about? Only a baronet, that is all. I have not a doubt in my mind you've lost her. She will be Lady Nunnally before Christmas. Quite probable. But she need not to have been, fool of a lad. I swear you might have had her. By what token, Mr. York? By every token, by the light of her eyes, the red of her cheek, red they grew when your name was mentioned, though of custom they are pale. My chance is quite over, I suppose. It ought to be. But try. It is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip Milk and Water. And then he writes verses, they say, tags rhymes. You are above that, Bob, at all events. Would you advise me to propose, late as it is, Mr. York, at the eleventh hour? You can but make the experiment, Robert. If she has a fancy for you, and on my conscience I believe she has, or had, she will forgive much. But, my lad, you are laughing. Is it at me? You had better grin at your own perverseness. I see, however, you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth. You have as sour a look at this moment as one need wish to see. I have so quarreled with myself, York. I have so kicked against the pricks, and struggled in a straight waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head by driving it against a harder wall. Ha! I'm glad to hear that. Sharp exercise, Yon. I hope it has done you good. Tain some of the self-conceit out of you? Self-conceit? What is it? Self-respect? Self-tolerance even? What are they? Do you sell the articles? Do you know anybody who does? Give an indication they would find in me a liberal chapman. I would part with my last guinea this minute to buy. Is it so with you, Robert? I find that spicy. I like a man to speak his mind. What has gone wrong? The machinery of all my nature, the whole enginery of this human mill, the boiler which I take to be the heart, is fit to burst. That so be puttin' in print, it's striking, it's almost blank verse. You'll be jingling into poetry just a now. If the afflatus comes, give way, Robert, never heed me, I'll bear it this wet. Hidious, abhorrent, base-blunder, you may commit in a moment what you may rue for years, what life cannot cancel. Lad, go on. I call it pie, nuts, sugar-candy. I like the taste uncommonly. Go on, it will do you good to talk. The moor is before us now, and there is no life for many a mile around. 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. Lad, smooth knot down, be candid as a convicted, justified, sanctified, method-y at an experienced meeting. Make yourself as wicked as Beelzebub. It will ease your mind. As Mina's mammon you would say, York, 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? With all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a coroner's inquest. Hyrum, York, 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, York. I saw in her youth and a species of beauty. I saw power in her. Her wealth offered me the redemption of my honour and my standing. I owed her gratitude. She had aided me substantially and effectually by a loan of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these things? Could I believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn, and leave her? Young, graceful, gracious, my benefactress, attached to me, enamoured of me. I used to say so to myself. Dwell on the word. Mouth it over and over again. Swell over it with a pleasant pompous complacency, with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself and unimpaired even by esteem for her. Indeed I smiled in deep secrecy at her naivete and simplicity in being the first to love and to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a good heavy handle, York. You can swing it about your head and knock me out of the saddle if you choose. I should rather relish a loundering whack. Take patience, Robert, till the moon rises and I can see you. Take 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 feel in her a powerful magnet to my interest in vanity. I never felt as if nature meant her to be my other and better self. When a question on that head rushed upon me, I flung it off, saying brutally, I should be rich with her and ruined without her. Vowing I would be practical and not romantic. A very sensible resolve. What mischief came of it, Bob? With this sensible resolve I walked up to Fieldhead one night last August. It was the very eve of my departure for Birmingham, for you see I wanted to secure Fortune's splendid prize. I had previously dispatched a note requesting a private interview. I found her at home and alone. She received me without embarrassment for she thought I came on business. I was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly know how I got the operation over, but I went to work in a hard, firm fashion. Frightful enough, I dare say. I sternly offered myself, my fine person, with my debts, of course, as a settlement. It vexed me. It kindled my ire to find that she neither blushed, trembled, nor looked down. She responded, I doubt whether I have understood you, Mr. Moore. And I had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly as A, B, C, before she would fully take it in. And then what did she do? Instead of faltering a sweet yes, or maintaining a soft, confused silence, which would have been as good, she started up, walked twice fast through the room in the way that she only does and no other woman, and ejaculated, God bless me! York I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantle-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 yourself. You spoke like a brigand who demanded my purse, rather than like a lover who asked my heart. A queer sentence was it not, York? 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 had once enraged and shamed me. Gerard Moore you know you don't love Shirley Kildar. 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-course, half-cold admiration for truth-robbing manly love. What happened next, you will say, Mr. York? Why she sat down in the window-seat and cried. She cried passionately, her eyes not only reigned but lightened. They flashed open, large, dark, haughty upon me. They said you have pained me, you have outraged me, you have deceived me. She added words soon to looks. I did respect, I did admire, I did like you, she said. Yes, as much as if you were my brother. And you, you want to make a speculation of me. You would emulate me to that mill, your malosh. I had the common sense to abstain from any word of excuse, any attempt at paliation. 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 Kildar. 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 loved those we wished 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 maneuver 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, yet rest there. My heart is as pure of passion for you as yours is barren of affection for me. I hope I was answered, York. I seemed to be a blind, besotted sort of person was my remark. Loved you, I, 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 think I loved you then? When I stopped you in Maythorn 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, York 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 so 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, more, she said. It was worse than et tu, Bruté. I relieved myself by what should have been a sigh, but it became a groan. A sense of cane-like desolation made my breast ache. There has been error 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 my hat. All the time I could not have borne to 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. 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. Someday 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 comprehend 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. York. 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 themselves. 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 I will take an axe and an immigrant'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 Kildar looked, ever again feel towards me as Miss Kildar 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. Tut! said the imperturbable York. 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, York. 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 bows, for instance yourself and Hellstone, with whom she is so playful, pleasant and eloquent. 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 conversed, and others, thinking me perhaps peculiarly privileged, 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 night. Nothing in her cherished affection in me made me better gentler. She only stirred my brain and wedded 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 thee and reckon to despise thy refinements, but as it is a dark night and we are by ourselves, I don't mind telling thee that thy talk brings back a glimpse of my own past life. 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 windowless. But you loved her, York. You worshipped Mary Cave. Your conduct, after all, was that of a man, never of a fortune-hunter. I did love her, but then she was beautiful as the moon we do not see to-night. There is not like her in these days. Miss Hellstone 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 Hellstone. Many a time I have put on my spectacles to look at the Lassian church, because she has gentle blue-een with long lashes, and when she sits in shadow and is very still and very pale, and is happen about to fall asleep with the length of the sermon and the heat of the bigon, she is as like one of Canova's marbles as ought else. Was Mary Cave in that style? Far grander, less last-like and flesh-like. You wondered why she hadn't wings and a crown. She was a stately peaceful angel, was 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 knees to help me. Mary Cave was not what you think her, York, 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. If I had interrupted York, 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 or sense, she could not have been so perfectly impassable to my regard as she showed herself. She must have preferred me to that copper-faced despot. During York 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 atmosphere 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 her room, yet if you sought her in her retreat, she welcomed you with the sweetest 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. York raised his hat, 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 with a strange red glower. She is no more silver than old Hellstone's brow as ivory. What does she mean by leaning her cheek on rush edge in that way, and looking at us with scowl and amenace? York, 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 and 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 bitterness booming in Bilbury 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. Where either spoke again they were on the other side of rush-edge. 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, recommended first. I believe, I daily find it proved, that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, but out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We air, 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, Robert? What are thy plans? For my private plans I'll keep them to myself, which is very easy, as at present I have none. No private life has permitted a man in my position, a man in debt. For my public plans my views are a little altered. When I was in Birmingham I looked a little into reality, measured 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, mixed 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, a hungered, a thirst, 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 riot as mob, just as here to for. 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 condine 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 York beyond a man's personal interest, beyond the advancement of well-laid schemes, beyond even the discharge of dishonoring debts. To respect himself, a man must believe he renders justice to his fellow men. Unless I am more considerate to ignorance, 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 wayside trough, where the moonbeam was playing in a crystal eddy. York pursued more, right on, I must let him drink. York accordingly rode slowly forwards, occupying himself as he advanced in discriminating, amongst the many lights now spangling the distance, those of briar mains. Still Bromor 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. York 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. York, ere he turned, knew the four convicts of Birmingham were avenged.