Shirley

There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly. There must be something, too, in its dews which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage, not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird. In all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.

The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, bestowed on deer and dove, has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses. Her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy. Above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample – a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant. She haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful, though of what one so untaught can think it is not easy to divine.

On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone – for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where – she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag overspread by a tree was her station. The oak roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat; the oak boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy.

Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death. The wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair.

The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, in wishing than hoping, in imagining than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things herself seemed to herself the centre – a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed – a star in an else starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?

She gazed abroad on Heaven and Evening. Heaven and Evening gazed back on her. She bent down, searching bank, hill, river, spread dim below. All she questioned responded by oracles. She heard – she was impressed; but she could not understand. Above her head she raised her hands joined together.

“Guidance – help – comfort – come!” was her cry.

There was no voice, nor any that answered.

She waited, kneeling, steadfastly looking up. Yonder sky was sealed; the solemn stars shone alien and remote.

At last one overstretched chord of her agony slacked; she thought Something above relented; she felt as if Something far round drew nigher; she heard as if Silence spoke. There was no language, no word, only a tone.

Again – a fine, full, lofty tone, a deep, soft sound, like a storm whispering, made twilight undulate.

Once more, profounder, nearer, clearer, it rolled harmonious.

Yet again – a distinct voice passed between Heaven and Earth.

“Eva!”

If Eva were not this woman’s name, she had none. She rose. “Here am I.”

“Eva!”

“O Night (it can be but Night that speaks), I am here!”

The voice, descending, reached Earth.

“Eva!”

“Lord,” she cried, “behold thine handmaid!”

She had her religion – all tribes held some creed.

“I come – a Comforter!”

“Lord, come quickly!”

The Evening flushed full of hope; the Air panted; the Moon – rising before – ascended large, but her light showed no shape.

“Lean towards me, Eva. Enter my arms; repose thus.”

“Thus I lean, O Invisible but felt! And what art thou?”

“Eva, I have brought a living draught from heaven. Daughter of Man, drink of my cup!”

“I drink: it is as if sweetest dew visited my lips in a full current. My arid heart revives; my affliction is lightened; my strait and struggle are gone. And the night changes! the wood, the hill, the moon, the wide sky – all change!”

“All change, and forever. I take from thy vision darkness; I loosen from thy faculties fetters! I level in thy path obstacles; I with my presence fill vacancy. I claim as mine the lost atom of life. I take to myself the spark of soul – burning heretofore forgotten!”

“O take me! O claim me! This is a god.”

“This is a son of God – one who feels himself in the portion of life that stirs you. He is suffered to reclaim his own, and so to foster and aid that it shall not perish hopeless.”

“A son of God! Am I indeed chosen?”

“Thou only in this land. I saw thee that thou wert fair; I knew thee that thou wert mine. To me it is given to rescue, to sustain, to cherish mine own. Acknowledge in me that Seraph on earth named Genius.”

“My glorious Bridegroom! true Dayspring from on high! All I would have at last I possess. I receive a revelation. The dark hint, the obscure whisper, which have haunted me from childhood, are interpreted. Thou art He I sought. Godborn, take me, thy bride!”

“Unhumbled, I can take what is mine. Did I not give from the altar the very flame which lit Eva’s being? Come again into the heaven whence thou wert sent.”

That Presence, invisible but mighty, gathered her in like a lamb to the fold; that voice, soft but all-pervading, vibrated through her heart like music. Her eye received no image; and yet a sense visited her vision and her brain as of the serenity of stainless air, the power of sovereign seas, the majesty of marching stars, the energy of colliding elements, the rooted endurance of hills wide based, and, above all, as of the lustre of heroic beauty rushing victorious on the Night, vanquishing its shadows like a diviner sun.

Such was the bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record the long strife between Serpent and Seraph – How still the Father of Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory, pain into bliss, poison into passion? How the “dreadless Angel” defied, resisted, and repelled? How again and again he refined the polluted cup, exalted the debased emotion, rectified the perverted impulse, detected the lurking venom, baffled the frontless temptation – purified, justified, watched, and withstood? How, by his patience, by his strength, by that unutterable excellence he held from God – his Origin – this faithful Seraph fought for Humanity a good fight through time; and, when Time’s course closed, and Death was encountered at the end, barring with fleshless arm the portals of Eternity, how Genius still held close his dying bride, sustained her through the agony of the passage, bore her triumphant into his own home, Heaven; restored her, redeemed, to Jehovah, her Maker; and at last, before Angel and Archangel, crowned her with the crown of Immortality?

Who shall of these things write the chronicle?

“I never could correct that composition,” observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. “Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom.”

She had taken a crayon from the tutor’s desk, and was drawing little leaves, fragments of pillars, broken crosses, on the margin of the book.

“French may be half forgotten, but the habits of the French lesson are retained, I see,” said Louis. “My books would now, as erst, be unsafe with you. My newly-bound St. Pierre would soon be like my Racine – Miss Keeldar, her mark, traced on every page.”

Shirley dropped her crayon as if it burned her fingers.

“Tell me what were the faults of that devoir?” she asked. “Were they grammatical errors, or did you object to the substance?”

“I never said that the lines I drew were indications of faults at all. You would have it that such was the case, and I refrained from contradiction.”

“What else did they denote?”

“No matter now.”

“Mr. Moore,” cried Henry, “make Shirley repeat some of the pieces she used to say so well by heart.”

“If I ask for any, it will be Le Cheval Dompté,” said Moore, trimming with his penknife the pencil Miss Keeldar had worn to a stump.

She turned aside her head; the neck, the clear cheek, forsaken by their natural veil, were seen to flush warm.

“Ah! she has not forgotten, you see, sir,” said Henry, exultant. “She knows how naughty she was.”