“Willingly!” here cried a voice outside the open window. “I know that fragrance of meal bread. Miss Keeldar, may I come in and partake?”
“Mr. Hall”—it was Mr. Hall, and with him was Louis Moore, returned from their walk—“there is a proper luncheon laid out in the dining room and there are proper people seated round it. You may join that society and share that fare if you please; but if your ill-regulated tastes lead you to prefer ill-regulated proceedings, step in here, and do as we do.”
“I approve the perfume, and therefore shall suffer myself to be led by the nose,” returned Mr. Hall, who presently entered, accompanied by Louis Moore. That gentleman’s eye fell on his desk, pillaged.
“Burglars!” said he. – “Henry, you merit the ferule.”
“Give it to Shirley and Caroline; they did it,” was alleged, with more attention to effect than truth.
“Traitor and false witness!” cried both the girls. “We never laid hands on a thing, except in the spirit of laudable inquiry!”
“Exactly so,” said Moore, with his rare smile. “And what have you ferreted out, in your ‘spirit of laudable inquiry’?”
He perceived the inner drawer open.
“This is empty,” said he. “Who has taken?”
“Here, here!” Caroline hastened to say, and she restored the little packet to its place. He shut it up; he locked it in with a small key attached to his watch-guard; he restored the other papers to order, closed the repository, and sat down without further remark.
“I thought you would have scolded much more, sir,” said Henry. “The girls deserve reprimand.”
“I leave them to their own consciences.”
“It accuses them of crimes intended as well as perpetrated, sir. If I had not been here, they would have treated your portfolio as they have done your desk; but I told them it was padlocked.”
“And will you have lunch with us?” here interposed Shirley, addressing Moore, and desirous, as it seemed, to turn the conversation.
“Certainly, if I may.”
“You will be restricted to new milk and Yorkshire oatcake.”
“Va – pour le lait frais!” said Louis. “But for your oatcake!” and he made a grimace.
“He cannot eat it,” said Henry. “He thinks it is like bran, raised with sour yeast.”
“Come, then; by special dispensation we will allow him a few cracknels, but nothing less homely.”
The hostess rang the bell and gave her frugal orders, which were presently executed. She herself measured out the milk, and distributed the bread round the cosy circle now enclosing the bright little schoolroom fire. She then took the post of toaster-general; and kneeling on the rug, fork in hand, fulfilled her office with dexterity. Mr. Hall, who relished any homely innovation on ordinary usages, and to whom the husky oatcake was from custom suave as manna, seemed in his best spirits. He talked and laughed gleefully – now with Caroline, whom he had fixed by his side, now with Shirley, and again with Louis Moore. And Louis met him in congenial spirit. He did not laugh much, but he uttered in the quietest tone the wittiest things. Gravely spoken sentences, marked by unexpected turns and a quite fresh flavour and poignancy, fell easily from his lips. He proved himself to be – what Mr. Hall had said he was – excellent company. Caroline marvelled at his humour, but still more at his entire self-possession. Nobody there present seemed to impose on him a sensation of unpleasant restraint. Nobody seemed a bore – a check – a chill to him; and yet there was the cool and lofty Miss Keeldar kneeling before the fire, almost at his feet.
But Shirley was cool and lofty no longer, at least not at this moment. She appeared unconscious of the humility of her present position; or if conscious, it was only to taste a charm in its lowliness. It did not revolt her pride that the group to whom she voluntarily officiated as handmaid should include her cousin’s tutor. It did not scare her that while she handed the bread and milk to the rest, she had to offer it to him also; and Moore took his portion from her hand as calmly as if he had been her equal.
“You are overheated now,” he said, when she had retained the fork for some time; “let me relieve you.”
And he took it from her with a sort of quiet authority, to which she submitted passively, neither resisting him nor thanking him.
“I should like to see your pictures, Louis,” said Caroline, when the sumptuous luncheon was discussed. – “Would not you, Mr. Hall?”
“To please you, I should; but, for my own part, I have cut him as an artist. I had enough of him in that capacity in Cumberland and Westmoreland. Many a wetting we got amongst the mountains because he would persist in sitting on a camp stool, catching effects of rain clouds, gathering mists, fitful sunbeams, and what not.”
“Here is the portfolio,” said Henry, bringing it in one hand and leaning on his crutch with the other.
Louis took it, but he still sat as if he wanted another to speak. It seemed as if he would not open it unless the proud Shirley deigned to show herself interested in the exhibition.
“He makes us wait to whet our curiosity,” she said.
“You understand opening it,” observed Louis, giving her the key. “You spoiled the lock for me once; try now.”
He held it. She opened it, and, monopolizing the contents, had the first view of every sketch herself. She enjoyed the treat – if treat it were – in silence, without a single comment. Moore stood behind her chair and looked over her shoulder, and when she had done and the others were still gazing, he left his post and paced through the room.
A carriage was heard in the lane – the gate bell rang. Shirley started.
“There are callers,” she said, “and I shall be summoned to the room. A pretty figure – as they say – I am to receive company. I and Henry have been in the garden gathering fruit half the morning. Oh for rest under my own vine and my own fig tree! Happy is the slave-wife of the Indian chief, in that she has no drawing room duty to perform, but can sit at ease weaving mats, and stringing beads, and peacefully flattening her pickaninny’s head in an unmolested corner of her wigwam. I’ll emigrate to the western woods.”
Louis Moore laughed.
“To marry a White Cloud or a Big Buffalo, and after wedlock to devote yourself to the tender task of digging your lord’s maize field while he smokes his pipe or drinks fire-water.”
Shirley seemed about to reply, but here the schoolroom door unclosed, admitting Mr. Sympson. That personage stood aghast when he saw the group around the fire.
“I thought you alone, Miss Keeldar,” he said. “I find quite a party.”
And evidently from his shocked, scandalized air, had he not recognized in one of the party a clergyman, he would have delivered an extempore philippic on the extraordinary habits of his niece: respect for the cloth arrested him.
“I merely wished to announce,” he proceeded coldly, “that the family from De Walden Hall, Mr., Mrs., the Misses, and Mr. Sam Wynne, are in the drawing room.” And he bowed and withdrew.
“The family from De Walden Hall! Couldn’t be a worse set,” murmured Shirley.
She sat still, looking a little contumacious, and very much indisposed to stir. She was flushed with the fire. Her dark hair had been more than once dishevelled by the morning wind that day. Her attire was a light, neatly fitting, but amply flowing dress of muslin; the shawl she had worn in the garden was still draped in a careless fold round her. Indolent, wilful, picturesque, and singularly pretty was her aspect – prettier than usual, as if some soft inward emotion, stirred who knows how, had given new bloom and expression to her features.
“Shirley, Shirley, you ought to go,” whispered Caroline.
“I wonder why?”
She lifted her eyes, and saw in the glass over the fireplace both Mr. Hall and Louis Moore gazing at her gravely.
“If,” she said, with a yielding smile—“if a majority of the present company maintain that the De Walden Hall people have claims on my civility, I will subdue my inclinations to my duty. Let those who think I ought to go hold up their hands.”