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

don’t know half enough; my heart craves to be fed. If you knew how hungry and ferocious it is, you would hasten to stay it with a kind word or two.’

“ ‘Poor Tartar!’ said she, touching and patting my hand⁠—‘poor fellow, stalwart friend, Shirley’s pet and favourite, lie down!’

“ ‘But I will not lie down till I am fed with one sweet word.’

“And at last she gave it.

“ ‘Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don’t care for life unless I may pass it at your side.’

“ ‘Something more.’

“She gave me a change; it was not her way to offer the same dish twice.

“ ‘Sir,’ she said, starting up, ‘at your peril you ever again name such sordid things as money, or poverty, or inequality. It will be absolutely dangerous to torment me with these maddening scruples. I defy you to do it.’

“My face grew hot. I did once more wish I were not so poor or she were not so rich. She saw the transient misery; and then, indeed, she caressed me. Blended with torment, I experienced rapture.

“ ‘Mr. Moore,’ said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest countenance, ‘teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property, but I ask you to share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your judgment is well balanced, your heart is kind, your principles are sound. I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always!’

“ ‘So help me God, I will!’ ”

Yet again a passage from the blank book if you like, reader; if you don’t like it, pass it over:⁠—

“The Sympsons are gone, but not before discovery and explanation. My manner must have betrayed something, or my looks. I was quiet, but I forgot to be guarded sometimes. I stayed longer in the room than usual; I could not bear to be out of her presence; I returned to it, and basked in it, like Tartar in the sun. If she left the oak parlour, instinctively I rose and left it too. She chid me for this procedure more than once. I did it with a vague, blundering idea of getting a word with her in the hall or elsewhere. Yesterday towards dusk I had her to myself for five minutes by the hall fire. We stood side by side; she was railing at me, and I was enjoying the sound of her voice. The young ladies passed, and looked at us; we did not separate. Ere long they repassed, and again looked. Mrs. Sympson came; we did not move. Mr. Sympson opened the dining-room door. Shirley flashed him back full payment for his spying gaze. She curled her lip and tossed her tresses. The glance she gave was at once explanatory and defiant. It said: ‘I like Mr. Moore’s society, and I dare you to find fault with my taste.’

“I asked, ‘Do you mean him to understand how matters are?’

“ ‘I do,’ said she; ‘but I leave the development to chance. There will be a scene. I neither invite it nor fear it; only, you must be present, for I am inexpressibly tired of facing him solus. I don’t like to see him in a rage. He then puts off all his fine proprieties and conventional disguises, and the real human being below is what you would call commun, plat, bas⁠—vilain et un peu méchant. His ideas are not clean, Mr. Moore; they want scouring with soft soap and fuller’s earth. I think, if he could add his imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill’s bucking-basket, and let her boil it in her copper, with rainwater and bleaching-powder (I hope you think me a tolerable laundress), it would do him incalculable good.’

“This morning, fancying I heard her descend somewhat early, I was down instantly. I had not been deceived. There she was, busy at work in the breakfast-parlour, of which the housemaid was completing the arrangement and dusting. She had risen betimes to finish some little keepsake she intended for Henry. I got only a cool reception, which I accepted till the girl was gone, taking my book to the window-seat very quietly. Even when we were alone I was slow to disturb her. To sit with her in sight was happiness, and the proper happiness, for early morning⁠—serene, incomplete, but progressive. Had I been obtrusive, I knew I should have encountered rebuff. ‘Not at home to suitors’ was written on her brow. Therefore I read on, stole now and then a look, watched her countenance soften and open as she felt I respected her mood, and enjoyed the gentle content of the moment.

“The distance between us shrank, and the light hoarfrost thawed insensibly. Ere an hour elapsed I was at her side, watching her sew, gathering her sweet smiles and her merry words, which fell for me abundantly. We sat, as we had a right to sit, side by side; my arm rested on her chair; I was near enough to count the stitches of her work, and to discern the eye of her needle. The door suddenly opened.

“I believe, if I had just then started from her, she would have despised me. Thanks to the phlegm of my nature, I rarely start. When I am well-off, bien, comfortable, I am not soon stirred. Bien I was⁠—très bien⁠—consequently immutable. No muscle moved. I hardly looked to the door.

“ ‘Good morning, uncle,’ said she, addressing that personage, who paused on the threshold in a state of petrifaction.

“ ‘Have you been long downstairs, Miss Keeldar, and alone with Mr. Moore?’

“ ‘Yes, a very long time. We both came down early; it was scarcely light.’

“ ‘The proceeding is improper⁠—’

“ ‘It was at first, I was rather cross, and not civil; but you will perceive that we are now friends.’

“ ‘I perceive