"You cannot separate the husband from his family."
"What then?"
"Mr. Louis Moore"s sister you will be."
"Mr. Sympson, I am sick at heart with all this weak trash; I will bear no more. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, your aims are not my aims, your G.o.ds are not my G.o.ds. We do not view things in the same light; we do not measure them by the same standard; we hardly speak in the same tongue. Let us part."
"It is not," she resumed, much excited-"it is not that I hate you; you are a good sort of man. Perhaps you mean well in your way. But we cannot suit; we are ever at variance. You annoy me with small meddling, with petty tyranny; you exasperate my temper, and make and keep me pa.s.sionate. As to your small maxims, your narrow rules, your little prejudices, aversions, dogmas, bundle them off. Mr. Sympson, go, offer them a sacrifice to the deity you worship; I"ll none of them. I wash my hands of the lot. I walk by another creed, light, faith, and hope than you."
"Another creed! I believe she is an infidel."
"An infidel to your religion, an atheist to your G.o.d."
"An-atheist!!!"
"Your G.o.d, sir, is the world. In my eyes you too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship; in all things you appear to me too superst.i.tious. Sir, your G.o.d, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre. Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the487 work he likes best-making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius, and fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred-secret hatred; there is disgust-unspoken disgust; there is treachery-family treachery; there is vice-deep, deadly domestic vice. In his dominions children grow unloving between parents who have never loved; infants are nursed on deception from their very birth; they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies. Your G.o.d rules at the bridal of kings; look at your royal dynasties! Your deity is the deity of foreign aristocracies; a.n.a.lyze the blue blood of Spain! Your G.o.d is the Hymen of France; what is French domestic life? All that surrounds him hastens to decay; all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your G.o.d is a masked Death."
"This language is terrible! My daughters and you must a.s.sociate no longer, Miss Keeldar; there is danger in such companionship. Had I known you a little earlier-but, extraordinary as I thought you, I could not have believed--"
"Now, sir, do you begin to be aware that it is useless to scheme for me; that in doing so you but sow the wind to reap the whirlwind? I sweep your cobweb projects from my path, that I may pa.s.s on unsullied. I am anch.o.r.ed on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand-they only. Know this at last."
Mr. Sympson was becoming a little bewildered.
"Never heard such language!" he muttered again and again; "never was so addressed in my life-never was so used!"
"You are quite confused, sir. You had better withdraw, or I will."
He rose hastily. "We must leave this place; they must pack up at once."
"Do not hurry my aunt and cousins; give them time."
"No more intercourse; she"s not proper."
He made his way to the door. He came back for his handkerchief. He dropped his snuff-box, leaving the contents scattered on the carpet; he stumbled out. Tartar lay outside across the mat; Mr. Sympson almost fell over him. In the climax of his exasperation he hurled an oath at the dog and a coa.r.s.e epithet at his mistress.
"Poor Mr. Sympson! he is both feeble and vulgar," said Shirley to herself. "My head aches, and I am tired,"488 she added; and leaning her head upon a cushion, she softly subsided from excitement to repose. One, entering the room a quarter of an hour afterwards, found her asleep. When Shirley had been agitated, she generally took this natural refreshment; it would come at her call.
The intruder paused in her unconscious presence, and said, "Miss Keeldar."
Perhaps his voice harmonized with some dream into which she was pa.s.sing. It did not startle, it hardly roused her. Without opening her eyes, she but turned her head a little, so that her cheek and profile, before hidden by her arm, became visible. She looked rosy, happy, half smiling, but her eyelashes were wet. She had wept in slumber; or perhaps, before dropping asleep, a few natural tears had fallen after she had heard that epithet. No man-no woman-is always strong, always able to bear up against the unjust opinion, the vilifying word. Calumny, even from the mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings. Shirley looked like a child that had been naughty and punished, but was now forgiven and at rest.
"Miss Keeldar," again said the voice. This time it woke her. She looked up, and saw at her side Louis Moore-not close at her side, but standing, with arrested step, two or three yards from her.
"O Mr. Moore!" she said. "I was afraid it was my uncle again: he and I have quarrelled."
"Mr. Sympson should let you alone," was the reply. "Can he not see that you are as yet far from strong?"
"I a.s.sure you he did not find me weak. I did not cry when he was here."
"He is about to evacuate Fieldhead-so he says. He is now giving orders to his family. He has been in the schoolroom issuing commands in a manner which, I suppose, was a continuation of that with which he has hara.s.sed you."
"Are you and Henry to go?"
"I believe, as far as Henry is concerned, that was the tenor of his scarcely intelligible directions; but he may change all to-morrow. He is just in that mood when you cannot depend on his consistency for two consecutive hours. I doubt whether he will leave you for weeks yet. To myself he addressed some words which will require a little attention and comment by-and-by, when I have time to bestow on them. At the moment he came in I was busied with a489 note I had got from Mr. Yorke-so fully busied that I cut short the interview with him somewhat abruptly. I left him raving. Here is the note. I wish you to see it. It refers to my brother Robert." And he looked at Shirley.
"I shall be glad to hear news of him. Is he coming home?"
"He is come. He is in Yorkshire. Mr. Yorke went yesterday to Stilbro" to meet him."
"Mr. Moore, something is wrong--"
"Did my voice tremble? He is now at Briarmains, and I am going to see him."
"What has occurred?"
"If you turn so pale I shall be sorry I have spoken. It might have been worse. Robert is not dead, but much hurt."
"O sir, it is you who are pale. Sit down near me."
"Read the note. Let me open it."
Miss Keeldar read the note. It briefly signified that last night Robert Moore had been shot at from behind the wall of Milldean plantation, at the foot of the Brow; that he was wounded severely, but it was hoped not fatally. Of the a.s.sa.s.sin, or a.s.sa.s.sins, nothing was known; they had escaped. "No doubt," Mr. Yorke observed, "it was done in revenge. It was a pity ill-will had ever been raised; but that could not be helped now."
"He is my only brother," said Louis, as Shirley returned the note. "I cannot hear unmoved that ruffians have laid in wait for him, and shot him down, like some wild beast from behind a wall."
"Be comforted; be hopeful. He will get better-I know he will."
Shirley, solicitous to soothe, held her hand over Mr. Moore"s as it lay on the arm of the chair. She just touched it lightly, scarce palpably.
"Well, give me your hand," he said. "It will be for the first time; it is in a moment of calamity. Give it me."
Awaiting neither consent nor refusal, he took what he asked.
"I am going to Briarmains now," he went on. "I want you to step over to the rectory and tell Caroline Helstone what has happened. Will you do this? She will hear it best from you."
"Immediately," said Shirley, with docile prompt.i.tude. "Ought I to say that there is no danger?"
490"Say so."
"You will come back soon, and let me know more?"
"I will either come or write."
"Trust me for watching over Caroline. I will communicate with your sister too; but doubtless she is already with Robert?"
"Doubtless, or will be soon. Good-morning now."
"You will bear up, come what may."