Shirley (74 page)

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 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! 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.

"'O 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 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.

"'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 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. 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 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 my 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."

"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 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 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 thee, and reckon to despise thy refinements; but as it is 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
, 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 naught 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 wondered 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 knees, 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 or sense, she could not have

been so perfectly impassible to my regard as she showed herself; 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 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 a 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. Yorke 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 wi' a strange red glower. She is no more silver than old Helstone's brow is ivory. What does she mean by leaning her cheek on Rushedge 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, 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 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 principle 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?"

"For my private plans, I'll keep them to myself—which 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