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

at the casement, shrinking a little to one side in an attitude not unusual with you. You were dressed in white, as I have seen you dressed at an evening party. For half a second your fresh, living face seemed turned towards me, looking at me; for half a second my idea was to go and take your hand, to chide you for your long absence, and welcome your present visit. Two steps forward broke the spell. The drapery of the dress changed outline; the tints of the complexion dissolved, and were formless. Positively, as I reached the spot, there was nothing left but the sweep of a white muslin curtain, and a balsam plant in a flowerpot, covered with a flush of bloom. ‘Sic transit,’ et cetera.”

“It was not my wraith, then? I almost thought it was.”

“No; only gauze, crockery, and pink blossom⁠—a sample of earthly illusions.”

“I wonder you have time for such illusions, occupied as your mind must be.”

“So do I. But I find in myself, Lina, two natures⁠—one for the world and business, and one for home and leisure. Gérard Moore is a hard dog, brought up to mill and market; the person you call your cousin Robert is sometimes a dreamer, who lives elsewhere than in Cloth-hall and countinghouse.”

“Your two natures agree with you. I think you are looking in good spirits and health. You have quite lost that harassed air which it often pained one to see in your face a few months ago.”

“Do you observe that? Certainly I am disentangled of some difficulties. I have got clear of some shoals, and have more sea-room.”

“And, with a fair wind, you may now hope to make a prosperous voyage?”

“I may hope it⁠—yes⁠—but hope is deceptive. There is no controlling wind or wave. Gusts and swells perpetually trouble the mariner’s course; he dare not dismiss from his mind the expectation of tempest.”

“But you are ready for a breeze; you are a good seaman, an able commander. You are a skilful pilot, Robert; you will weather the storm.”

“My kinswoman always thinks the best of me, but I will take her words for a propitious omen. I will consider that in meeting her tonight I have met with one of those birds whose appearance is to the sailor the harbinger of good luck.”

“A poor harbinger of good luck is she who can do nothing, who has no power. I feel my incapacity. It is of no use saying I have the will to serve you when I cannot prove it. Yet I have that will. I wish you success. I wish you high fortune and true happiness.”

“When did you ever wish me anything else? What is Fanny waiting for? I told her to walk on. Oh! we have reached the churchyard. Then we are to part here, I suppose. We might have sat a few minutes in the church porch, if the girl had not been with us. It is so fine a night, so summer-mild and still, I have no particular wish to return yet to the Hollow.”

“But we cannot sit in the porch now, Robert.”

Caroline said this because Moore was turning her round towards it.

“Perhaps not. But tell Fanny to go in. Say we are coming. A few minutes will make no difference.”

The church clock struck ten.

“My uncle will be coming out to take his usual sentinel round, and he always surveys the church and churchyard.”

“And if he does? If it were not for Fanny, who knows we are here, I should find pleasure in dodging and eluding him. We could be under the east window when he is at the porch; as he came round to the north side we could wheel off to the south; we might at a pinch hide behind some of the monuments. That tall erection of the Wynnes would screen us completely.”

“Robert, what good spirits you have! Go! go!” added Caroline hastily. “I hear the front door⁠—”

“I don’t want to go; on the contrary, I want to stay.”

“You know my uncle will be terribly angry. He forbade me to see you because you are a Jacobin.”

“A queer Jacobin!”

“Go, Robert, he is coming; I hear him cough.”

“Diable! It is strange⁠—what a pertinacious wish I feel to stay!”

“You remember what he did to Fanny’s⁠—” began Caroline, and stopped abruptly short. “Sweetheart” was the word that ought to have followed, but she could not utter it. It seemed calculated to suggest ideas she had no intention to suggest⁠—ideas delusive and disturbing. Moore was less scrupulous. “Fanny’s sweetheart?” he said at once. “He gave him a shower-bath under the pump, did he not? He’d do as much for me, I dare say, with pleasure. I should like to provoke the old Turk⁠—not, however, against you. But he would make a distinction between a cousin and a lover, would he not?”

“Oh, he would not think of you in that way, of course not; his quarrel with you is entirely political. Yet I should not like the breach to be widened, and he is so testy. Here he is at the garden gate. For your own sake and mine, Robert, go!”

The beseeching words were aided by a beseeching gesture and a more beseeching look. Moore covered her clasped hands an instant with his, answered her upward by a downward gaze, said “Good night!” and went.

Caroline was in a moment at the kitchen door behind Fanny. The shadow of the shovel-hat at that very instant fell on a moonlit tomb. The rector emerged, erect as a cane, from his garden, and proceeded in slow march, his hands behind him, down the cemetery. Moore was almost caught. He had to “dodge” after all, to coast round the church, and finally to bend his tall form behind the Wynnes’ ambitious monument. There he was forced to hide full ten minutes, kneeling with one knee on the turf, his hat off, his curls bare to the dew, his dark eye shining, and his lips parted with inward