Shirley

“Whom will you marry, Miss Keeldar?”

“Not Mr. Sam Wynne, because I scorn him; not Sir Philip Nunnely, because I only esteem him.”

“Whom have you in your eye?”

“Four rejected candidates.”

“Such obstinacy could not be unless you were under improper influence.”

“What do you mean? There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil. Improper influence! What old woman’s cackle is that?”

“Are you a young lady?”

“I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated.”

“Do you know” (leaning mysteriously forward, and speaking with ghastly solemnity)—“do you know the whole neighbourhood teems with rumours respecting you and a bankrupt tenant of yours, the foreigner Moore?”

“Does it?”

“It does. Your name is in every mouth.”

“It honours the lips it crosses, and I wish to the gods it may purify them.”

“Is it that person who has power to influence you?”

“Beyond any whose cause you have advocated.”

“Is it he you will marry?”

“He is handsome, and manly, and commanding.”

“You declare it to my face! The Flemish knave! the low trader!”

“He is talented, and venturous, and resolute. Prince is on his brow, and ruler in his bearing.”

“She glories in it! She conceals nothing! No shame, no fear!”

“When we speak the name of Moore, shame should be forgotten and fear discarded. The Moores know only honour and courage.”

“I say she is mad.”

“You have taunted me till my blood is up; you have worried me till I turn again.”

“That Moore is the brother of my son’s tutor. Would you let the usher call you sister?”

Bright and broad shone Shirley’s eye as she fixed it on her questioner now.

“No, no; not for a province of possession, not for a century of life.”

“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 gods are not my gods. 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 passionate. 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 god.”

“An – atheist!!!”

“Your god, 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 superstitious. Sir, your god, 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 the 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 god rules at the bridal of kings; look at your royal dynasties! Your deity is the deity of foreign aristocracies; analyze the blue blood of Spain! Your god 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 god is a masked Death.”

“This language is terrible! My daughters and you must associate 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 pass on unsullied. I am anchored 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 snuffbox, 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 coarse epithet at his mistress.

“Poor Mr. Sympson! he is both feeble and vulgar,” said Shirley to herself. “My head aches, and I am tired,” 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 passing. 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 assure you he did not find me weak. I did not cry when he was here.”