Shirley Part 98

"'What do you mean by that, Mr. Moore?'

"'What I say. Improvement is imperatively needed.'

"'If you were a woman you would school monsieur, votre mari, charmingly. It would just suit you; schooling is your vocation.'

"'May I ask whether, in your present just and gentle mood, you mean to taunt me with being a tutor?'

"'Yes, bitterly; and with anything else you please-any defect of which you are painfully conscious.'

"'With being poor, for instance?'

"'Of course; that will sting you. You are sore about your poverty; you brood over that.'

"'With having nothing but a very plain person to offer the woman who may master my heart?'

"'Exactly. You have a habit of calling yourself plain. You are sensitive about the cut of your features because they are not quite on an Apollo pattern. You abase them more than is needful, in the faint hope that others may say a word in their behalf-which won't happen. Your face is nothing to boast of, certainly-not a pretty line nor a pretty tint to be found therein.'

"'Compare it with your own.'

"'It looks like a G.o.d of Egypt-a great sand-buried stone head; or rather I will compare it to nothing so lofty. It looks like Tartar. You are my mastiff's cousin. I think you as much like him as a man can be like a dog.'

"'Tartar is your dear companion. In summer, when544 you rise early, and run out into the fields to wet your feet with the dew, and freshen your cheek and uncurl your hair with the breeze, you always call him to follow you. You call him sometimes with a whistle that you learned from me. In the solitude of your wood, when you think n.o.body but Tartar is listening, you whistle the very tunes you imitated from my lips, or sing the very songs you have caught up by ear from my voice. I do not ask whence flows the feeling which you pour into these songs, for I know it flows out of your heart, Miss Keeldar. In the winter evenings Tartar lies at your feet. You suffer him to rest his head on your perfumed lap; you let him couch on the borders of your satin raiment. His rough hide is familiar with the contact of your hand. I once saw you kiss him on that snow-white beauty spot which stars his broad forehead. It is dangerous to say I am like Tartar; it suggests to me a claim to be treated like Tartar.'

"'Perhaps, sir, you can extort as much from your penniless and friendless young orphan girl, when you find her.'

"'Oh could I find her such as I image her! Something to tame first, and teach afterwards; to break in, and then to fondle. To lift the dest.i.tute proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over and then to be indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never indulged before; to see her alternately irritated and subdued about twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient mother of about a dozen children, only now and then lending little Louis a cordial cuff by way of paying the interest of the vast debt she owes his father. Oh' (I went on), 'my orphan girl would give me many a kiss; she would watch on the threshold for my coming home of an evening; she would run into my arms; she would keep my hearth as bright as she would make it warm. G.o.d bless the sweet idea! Find her I must.'

"Her eyes emitted an eager flash, her lips opened; but she reclosed them, and impetuously turned away.

"'Tell me, tell me where she is, Miss Keeldar!'

"Another movement, all haughtiness and fire and impulse.

"'I must know. You can tell me; you shall tell me.'

"'I never will.'

"She turned to leave me. Could I now let her part545 as she had always parted from me? No. I had gone too far not to finish; I had come too near the end not to drive home to it. All the enc.u.mbrance of doubt, all the rubbish of indecision, must be removed at once, and the plain truth must be ascertained. She must take her part, and tell me what it was; I must take mine and adhere to it.

"'A minute, madam,' I said, keeping my hand on the door-handle before I opened it. 'We have had a long conversation this morning, but the last word has not been spoken yet. It is yours to speak it.'

"'May I pa.s.s?'

"'No; I guard the door. I would almost rather die than let you leave me just now, without speaking the word I demand.'

"'What dare you expect me to say?'

"'What I am dying and perishing to hear; what I must and will hear; what you dare not now suppress.'

"'Mr. Moore, I hardly know what you mean. You are not like yourself.'

"I suppose I hardly was like my usual self, for I scared her-that I could see. It was right: she must be scared to be won.

"'You do know what I mean, and for the first time I stand before you myself. I have flung off the tutor, and beg to introduce you to the man. And remember, he is a gentleman.'

"She trembled. She put her hand to mine as if to remove it from the lock. She might as well have tried to loosen, by her soft touch, metal welded to metal. She felt she was powerless, and receded; and again she trembled.

"What change I underwent I cannot explain, but out of her emotion pa.s.sed into me a new spirit. I neither was crushed nor elated by her lands and gold; I thought not of them, cared not for them. They were nothing-dross that could not dismay me. I saw only herself-her young beautiful form, the grace, the majesty, the modesty of her girlhood.

"'My pupil,' I said.

"'My master,' was the low answer.

"'I have a thing to tell you.'

"She waited with declined brow and ringlets drooped.

"'I have to tell you that for four years you have been546 growing into your tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare that you have bewitched me, in spite of sense, and experience, and difference of station and estate. You have so looked, and spoken, and moved; so shown me your faults and your virtues-beauties rather, they are hardly so stern as virtues-that I love you-love you with my life and strength. It is out now.'

"She sought what to say, but could not find a word. She tried to rally, but vainly. I pa.s.sionately repeated that I loved her.

"'Well, Mr. Moore, what then?' was the answer I got, uttered in a tone that would have been petulant if it had not faltered.

"'Have you nothing to say to me? Have you no love for me?'

"'A little bit.'

"'I am not to be tortured. I will not even play at present.'

"'I don't want to play; I want to go.'

"'I wonder you dare speak of going at this moment. You go! What! with my heart in your hand, to lay it on your toilet and pierce it with your pins? From my presence you do not stir, out of my reach you do not stray, till I receive a hostage-pledge for pledge-your heart for mine.'

"'The thing you want is mislaid-lost some time since. Let me go and seek it.'

"'Declare that it is where your keys often are-in my possession.'

"'You ought to know. And where are my keys, Mr. Moore? Indeed and truly I have lost them again; and Mrs. Gill wants some money, and I have none, except this sixpence.'

"She took the coin out of her ap.r.o.n pocket, and showed it in her palm. I could have trifled with her, but it would not do; life and death were at stake. Mastering at once the sixpence and the hand that held it, I demanded, 'Am I to die without you, or am I to live for you?'

"'Do as you please. Far be it from me to dictate your choice.'

"'You shall tell me with your own lips whether you doom me to exile or call me to hope.'

"'Go; I can bear to be left.'

547"'Perhaps I too can bear to leave you. But reply, Shirley, my pupil, my sovereign-reply.'