Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

“I will know the name; I will have particulars.”

“They positively are rather alike. Their very faces are not dissimilar⁠—a pair of human falcons⁠—and dry, direct, decided both. But my hero is the mightier of the two. His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows.”

“Rant and fustian!”

“I dare say he can be harsh as a saw-edge and gruff as a hungry raven.”

“Miss Keeldar, does the person reside in Briarfield? Answer me that.”

“Uncle, I am going to tell you; his name is trembling on my tongue.”

“Speak, girl!”

“That was well said, uncle. ‘Speak, girl!’ It is quite tragic. England has howled savagely against this man, uncle, and she will one day roar exultingly over him. He has been unscared by the howl, and he will be unelated by the shout.”

“I said she was mad. She is.”

“This country will change and change again in her demeanour to him; he will never change in his duty to her. Come, cease to chafe, uncle, I’ll tell you his name.”

“You shall tell me, or⁠—”

“Listen! Arthur Wellesley, Lord Wellington.”

Mr. Sympson rose up furious. He bounced out of the room, but immediately bounced back again, shut the door, and resumed his seat.

“Ma’am, you shall tell me this. Will your principles permit you to marry a man without money⁠—a man below you?”

“Never a man below me.”

(In a high voice.) “Will you, Miss Keeldar, marry a poor man?”

“What right have you, Mr. Sympson, to ask me?”

“I insist upon knowing.”

“You don’t go the way to know.”

“My family respectability shall not be compromised.”

“A good resolution; keep it.”

“Madam, it is you who shall keep it.”

“Impossible, sir, since I form no part of your family.”

“Do you disown us?”

“I disdain your dictatorship.”

“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