“I never made it a secret; I had no reason for so doing. If you had asked me who Henry’s tutor was, I would have told you. Besides, I thought you knew.”
“I am puzzled about more things than one in this matter. You don’t like poor Louis. Why? Are you impatient at what you perhaps consider his servile position? Do you wish that Robert’s brother were more highly placed?”
“Robert’s brother, indeed!” was the exclamation, uttered in a tone like the accents of scorn; and with a movement of proud impatience Shirley snatched a rose from a branch peeping through the open lattice.
“Yes,” repeated Caroline, with mild firmness, “Robert’s brother. He is thus closely related to Gérard Moore of the Hollow, though nature has not given him features so handsome or an air so noble as his kinsman; but his blood is as good, and he is as much a gentleman were he free.”
“Wise, humble, pious Caroline!” exclaimed Shirley ironically. “Men and angels, hear her! We should not despise plain features, nor a laborious yet honest occupation, should we? Look at the subject of your panegyric. He is there in the garden,” she continued, pointing through an aperture in the clustering creepers; and by that aperture Louis Moore was visible, coming slowly down the walk.
“He is not ugly, Shirley,” pleaded Caroline; “he is not ignoble. He is sad; silence seals his mind. But I believe him to be intelligent; and be certain, if he had not something very commendable in his disposition, Mr. Hall would never seek his society as he does.”
Shirley laughed; she laughed again, each time with a slightly sarcastic sound. “Well, well,” was her comment. “On the plea of the man being Cyril Hall’s friend and Robert Moore’s brother, we’ll just tolerate his existence; won’t we, Cary? You believe him to be intelligent, do you? Not quite an idiot – eh? Something commendable in his disposition! – id est, not an absolute ruffian. Good! Your representations have weight with me; and to prove that they have, should he come this way I will speak to him.”
He approached the summer-house. Unconscious that it was tenanted, he sat down on the step. Tartar, now his customary companion, had followed him, and he couched across his feet.
“Old boy!” said Louis, pulling his tawny ear, or rather the mutilated remains of that organ, torn and chewed in a hundred battles, “the autumn sun shines as pleasantly on us as on the fairest and richest. This garden is none of ours, but we enjoy its greenness and perfume, don’t we?”
He sat silent, still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding affection. A faint twittering commenced among the trees round. Something fluttered down as light as leaves. They were little birds, which, lighting on the sward at shy distance, hopped as if expectant.
“The small brown elves actually remember that I fed them the other day,” again soliloquized Louis. “They want some more biscuit. Today I forgot to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have not a crumb for you.”
He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out empty.
“A want easily supplied,” whispered the listening Miss Keeldar.
She took from her reticule a morsel of sweet-cake; for that repository was never destitute of something available to throw to the chickens, young ducks, or sparrows. She crumbled it, and bending over his shoulder, put the crumbs into his hand.
“There,” said she—“there is a providence for the improvident.”
“This September afternoon is pleasant,” observed Louis Moore, as, not at all discomposed, he calmly cast the crumbs on to the grass.
“Even for you?”
“As pleasant for me as for any monarch.”
“You take a sort of harsh, solitary triumph in drawing pleasure out of the elements and the inanimate and lower animate creation.”
“Solitary, but not harsh. With animals I feel I am Adam’s son, the heir of him to whom dominion was given over ‘every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ Your dog likes and follows me. When I go into that yard, the pigeons from your dovecot flutter at my feet. Your mare in the stable knows me as well as it knows you, and obeys me better.”
“And my roses smell sweet to you, and my trees give you shade.”
“And,” continued Louis, “no caprice can withdraw these pleasures from me; they are mine.”
He walked off. Tartar followed him, as if in duty and affection bound, and Shirley remained standing on the summer-house step. Caroline saw her face as she looked after the rude tutor. It was pale, as if her pride bled inwardly.
“You see,” remarked Caroline apologetically, “his feelings are so often hurt it makes him morose.”
“You see,” retorted Shirley, with ire, “he is a topic on which you and I shall quarrel if we discuss it often; so drop it henceforward and forever.”
“I suppose he has more than once behaved in this way,” thought Caroline to herself, “and that renders Shirley so distant to him. Yet I wonder she cannot make allowance for character and circumstances. I wonder the general modesty, manliness, sincerity of his nature do not plead with her in his behalf. She is not often so inconsiderate, so irritable.”
The verbal testimony of two friends of Caroline’s to her cousin’s character augmented her favourable opinion of him. William Farren, whose cottage he had visited in company with Mr. Hall, pronounced him a “real gentleman;” there was not such another in Briarfield. He – William—“could do aught for that man. And then to see how t’ bairns liked him, and how t’ wife took to him first minute she saw him. He never went into a house but t’ childer wor about him directly. Them little things wor like as if they’d a keener sense nor grown-up folks i’ finding our folk’s natures.”
Mr. Hall, in answer to a question of Miss Helstone’s as to what he thought of Louis Moore, replied promptly that he was the best fellow he had met with since he left Cambridge.
“But he is so grave,” objected Caroline.
“Grave! the finest company in the world! Full of odd, quiet, out-of-the-way humour. Never enjoyed an excursion so much in my life as the one I took with him to the Lakes. His understanding and tastes are so superior, it does a man good to be within their influence; and as to his temper and nature, I call them fine.”
“At Fieldhead he looks gloomy, and, I believe, has the character of being misanthropical.”
“Oh! I fancy he is rather out of place there – in a false position. The Sympsons are most estimable people, but not the folks to comprehend him. They think a great deal about form and ceremony, which are quite out of Louis’s way.”
“I don’t think Miss Keeldar likes him.”
“She doesn’t know him – she doesn’t know him; otherwise she has sense enough to do justice to his merits.”
“Well, I suppose she doesn’t know him,” mused Caroline to herself, and by this hypothesis she endeavoured to account for what seemed else unaccountable. But such simple solution of the difficulty was not left her long. She was obliged to refuse Miss Keeldar even this negative excuse for her prejudice.
One day she chanced to be in the schoolroom with Henry Sympson, whose amiable and affectionate disposition had quickly recommended him to her regard. The boy was busied about some mechanical contrivance; his lameness made him fond of sedentary occupation. He began to ransack his tutor’s desk for a piece of wax or twine necessary to his work. Moore happened to be absent. Mr. Hall, indeed, had called for him to take a long walk. Henry could not immediately find the object of his search. He rummaged compartment after compartment; and at last, opening an inner drawer, he came upon – not a ball of cord or a lump of beeswax, but a little bundle of small marble-coloured cahiers, tied with tape. Henry looked at them. “What rubbish Mr. Moore stores up in his desk!” he said. “I hope he won’t keep my old exercises so carefully.”