Shirley (80 page)

There was a gallery, and there was a passage; at the end of that passage Martin paused before a door

and tapped. He had to tap twice—thrice. A voice, known to one listener, at last said, "Come in."

The boy entered briskly.

"Mr. Moore, a lady called to inquire after you. None of the women were about. It is washing-day,

and the maids are over the crown of the head in soap-suds in the back kitchen, so I asked her to step

up."

"Up here, sir?"

"Up here, sir; but if you object, she shall go down again."

"Is this a place or am I a person to bring a lady to, you absurd lad?"

"No; so I'll take her off."

"Martin, you will stay here. Who is she?"

"Your grandmother from that château on the Scheldt Miss Moore talks about."

"Martin," said the softest whisper at the door, "don't be foolish."

"Is she there?" inquired Moore hastily. He had caught an imperfect sound.

"She is there, fit to faint. She is standing on the mat, shocked at your want of filial affection."

"Martin, you are an evil cross between an imp and a page. What is she like?"

"More like me than you; for she is young and beautiful."

"You are to show her forward. Do you hear?"

"Come, Miss Caroline."

"Miss Caroline!" repeated Moore.

And when Miss Caroline entered she was encountered in the middle of the chamber by a tall, thin,

wasted figure, who took both her hands.

"I give you a quarter of an hour," said Martin, as he withdrew, "no more. Say what you have to say in that time. Till it is past I will wait in the gallery; nothing shall approach; I'll see you safe away.

Should you persist in staying longer, I leave you to your fate."

He shut the door. In the gallery he was as elate as a king. He had never been engaged in an adventure he liked so well, for no adventure had ever invested him with so much importance or inspired him with so much interest.

"You are come at last," said the meagre man, gazing on his visitress with hollow eyes.

"Did you expect me before?"

"For a month, near two months, we have been very near; and I have been in sad pain, and danger,

and misery, Cary."

"I could not come."

"Couldn't you? But the rectory and Briarmains are very near—not two miles apart."

There was pain and there was pleasure in the girl's face as she listened to these implied reproaches.

It was sweet, it was bitter to defend herself.

"When I say I could not come, I mean I could not see you; for I came with mamma the very day we

heard what had happened. Mr. MacTurk then told us it was impossible to admit any stranger."

"But afterwards—every fine afternoon these many weeks past I have waited and listened. Something

here, Cary"—laying his hand on his breast—"told me it was impossible but that you should think of me. Not that I merit thought; but we are old acquaintance—we are cousins."

"I came again, Robert; mamma and I came again."

"Did you? Come, that is worth hearing. Since you came again, we will sit down and talk about it."

They sat down. Caroline drew her chair up to his. The air was now dark with snow; an Iceland blast

was driving it wildly. This pair neither heard the long "wuthering" rush, nor saw the white burden it drifted. Each seemed conscious but of one thing—the presence of the other.

"So mamma and you came again?"

"And Mrs. Yorke did treat us strangely. We asked to see you. 'No,' said she, 'not in my house. I am at present responsible for his life; it shall not be forfeited for half an hour's idle gossip.' But I must not tell you all she said; it was very disagreeable. However, we came yet again—mamma, Miss Keeldar,

and I. This time we thought we should conquer, as we were three against one, and Shirley was on our

side. But Mrs. Yorke opened such a battery."

Moore smiled. "What did she say?"

"Things that astonished us. Shirley laughed at last; I cried; mamma was seriously annoyed. We were all three driven from the field. Since that time I have only walked once a day past the house, just for the satisfaction of looking up at your window, which I could distinguish by the drawn curtains. I

really dared not come in."

"I
have
wished for you, Caroline."

"I did not know that; I never dreamt one instant that you thought of me. If I had but most distantly imagined such a possibility——"

"Mrs. Yorke would still have beaten you."

"She would not. Stratagem should have been tried, if persuasion failed. I would have come to the

kitchen door; the servants should have let me in, and I would have walked straight upstairs. In fact, it was far more the fear of intrusion—the fear of yourself—that baffled me than the fear of Mrs.

Yorke."

"Only last night I despaired of ever seeing you again. Weakness has wrought terrible depression in

me—terrible depression."

"And you sit alone?"

"Worse than alone."

"But you must be getting better, since you can leave your bed?"

"I doubt whether I shall live. I see nothing for it, after such exhaustion, but decline."

"You—you shall go home to the Hollow."

"Dreariness would accompany, nothing cheerful come near me."

"I
will
alter this. This
shall
be altered, were there ten Mrs. Yorkes to do battle with."

"Cary, you make me smile."

"Do smile; smile again. Shall I tell you what I should like?"

"Tell me anything—only keep talking. I am Saul; but for music I should perish."

"I should like you to be brought to the rectory, and given to me and mamma."

"A precious gift! I have not laughed since they shot me till now."

"Do you suffer pain, Robert?"

"Not so much pain now; but I am hopelessly weak, and the state of my mind is inexpressible—dark,

barren, impotent. Do you not read it all in my face? I look a mere ghost."

"Altered; yet I should have known you anywhere. But I understand your feelings; I experienced something like it. Since we met, I too have been very ill."

"
Very
ill?"

"I thought I should die. The tale of my life seemed told. Every night, just at midnight, I used to wake from awful dreams; and the book lay open before me at the last page, where was written 'Finis.' I had

strange feelings."

"You speak my experience."

"I believed I should never see you again; and I grew so thin—as thin as you are now. I could do nothing for myself—neither rise nor lie down; and I could not eat. Yet you see I am better."

"Comforter—sad as sweet. I am too feeble to say what I feel; but while you speak I
do
feel."

"Here I am at your side, where I thought never more to be. Here I speak to you. I see you listen to me willingly—look at me kindly. Did I count on that? I despaired."

Moore sighed—a sigh so deep it was nearly a groan. He covered his eyes with his hand.

"May I be spared to make some atonement."

Such was his prayer.

"And for what?"

"We will not touch on it now, Cary; unmanned as I am, I have not the power to cope with such a

topic. Was Mrs. Pryor with you during your illness?"

"Yes"—Caroline smiled brightly—"you know she is mamma?"

"I have heard—Hortense told me; but that tale too I will receive from yourself. Does she add to your happiness?"

"What! mamma? She is
dear
to me;
how
dear I cannot say. I was altogether weary, and she held me up."

"I deserve to hear that in a moment when I can scarce lift my hand to my head. I deserve it."

"It is no reproach against you."

"It is a coal of fire heaped on my head; and so is every word you address to me, and every look that lights your sweet face. Come still nearer, Lina; and give me your hand—if my thin fingers do not scare you."

She took those thin fingers between her two little hands; she bent her head
et les effleura de ses
lèvres
. (I put that in French because the word
effleurer
is an exquisite word.) Moore was much moved.

A large tear or two coursed down his hollow cheek.

"I'll keep these things in my heart, Cary; that kiss I will put by, and you shall hear of it again one day."

"Come out!" cried Martin, opening the door—"come away; you have had twenty minutes instead of a quarter of an hour."

"She will not stir yet, you hempseed."

"I dare not stay longer, Robert."

"Can you promise to return?"

"No, she can't," responded Martin. "The thing mustn't become customary. I can't be troubled. It's very well for once; I'll not have it repeated."

"
You
'll not have it repeated."

"Hush! don't vex him; we could not have met to-day but for him. But I will come again, if it is your wish that I should come."

"It
is
my wish—my
one
wish—almost the only wish I can feel."

"Come this minute. My mother has coughed, got up, set her feet on the floor. Let her only catch you on the stairs, Miss Caroline. You're not to bid him good-bye"—stepping between her and Moore

—"you are to march."

"My shawl, Martin."

"I have it. I'll put it on for you when you are in the hall."

He made them part. He would suffer no farewell but what could be expressed in looks. He half carried Caroline down the stairs. In the hall he wrapped her shawl round her, and, but that his mother's tread then creaked in the gallery, and but that a sentiment of diffidence—the proper, natural, therefore the noble impulse of his boy's heart—held him back, he would have claimed his reward; he would have said, "Now, Miss Caroline, for all this give me one kiss." But ere the words had passed his lips she was across the snowy road, rather skimming than wading the drifts.

"She is my debtor, and I
will
be paid."

He flattered himself that it was opportunity, not audacity, which had failed him. He misjudged the

quality of his own nature, and held it for something lower than it was.

34

Chapter

CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION—REMARKABLE

INSTANCE OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE

OF RELIGIOUS DUTIES.

Martin, having known the taste of excitement, wanted a second draught; having felt the dignity of power, he loathed to relinquish it. Miss Helstone—that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face

was now perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine—had once come

within his sphere. It fretted him to think the visit might never be repeated.

Though a schoolboy he was no ordinary schoolboy; he was destined to grow up an original. At a

few years' later date he took great pains to pare and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of

the world, but he never succeeded; an unique stamp marked him always. He now sat idle at his desk in

the grammar school, casting about in his mind for the means of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know how many commenced life-romances are doomed never

to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent in the wood

with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book of his imagination.

Martin harboured an irreligious reluctance to see the approach of Sunday. His father and mother,

while disclaiming community with the Establishment, failed not duly, once on the sacred day, to fill

their large pew in Briarfield Church with the whole of their blooming family. Theoretically, Mr.

Yorke placed all sects and churches on a level. Mrs. Yorke awarded the palm to Moravians and Quakers, on account of that crown of humility by these worthies worn. Neither of them were ever known, however, to set foot in a conventicle.

Martin, I say, disliked Sunday, because the morning service was long, and the sermon usually little

to his taste. This Saturday afternoon, however, his woodland musings disclosed to him a new-found

charm in the coming day.

It proved a day of deep snow—so deep that Mrs. Yorke during breakfast announced her conviction

that the children, both boys and girls, would be better at home; and her decision that, instead of going to church, they should sit silent for two hours in the back parlour, while Rose and Martin alternately

read a succession of sermons—John Wesley's "Sermons." John Wesley, being a reformer and an agitator, had a place both in her own and her husband's favour.

"Rose will do as she pleases," said Martin, not looking up from the book which, according to his custom then and in after-life, he was studying over his bread and milk.

"Rose will do as she is told, and Martin too," observed the mother.

"I am going to church."

So her son replied, with the ineffable quietude of a true Yorke, who knows his will and means to

have it, and who, if pushed to the wall, will let himself be crushed to death, provided no way of escape can be found, but will never capitulate.

"It is not fit weather," said the father.

No answer. The youth read studiously; he slowly broke his bread and sipped his milk.

"Martin hates to go to church, but he hates still more to obey," said Mrs. Yorke.

"I suppose I am influenced by pure perverseness?"

"Yes, you are."

"Mother,
I am not
."

"By what, then, are you influenced?"

"By a complication of motives, the intricacies of which I should as soon think of explaining to you as I should of turning myself inside out to exhibit the internal machinery of my frame."

"Hear Martin! hear him!" cried Mr. Yorke. "I must see and have this lad of mine brought up to the bar. Nature meant him to live by his tongue. Hesther, your third son must certainly be a lawyer; he has

the stock-in-trade—brass, self-conceit, and words—words—words."