Meantime the clothier did not neglect his battered mill. Its reparation was esteemed a light task, carpenters’ and glaziers’ work alone being needed. The rioters not having succeeded in effecting an entrance, his grim metal darlings – the machines – had escaped damage.
Whether during this busy life – whether while stern justice and exacting business claimed his energies and harassed his thoughts – he now and then gave one moment, dedicated one effort, to keep alive gentler fires than those which smoulder in the fane of Nemesis, it was not easy to discover. He seldom went near Fieldhead; if he did, his visits were brief. If he called at the rectory, it was only to hold conferences with the rector in his study. He maintained his rigid course very steadily. Meantime the history of the year continued troubled. There was no lull in the tempest of war; her long hurricane still swept the Continent. There was not the faintest sign of serene weather, no opening amid “the clouds of battle-dust and smoke,” no fall of pure dews genial to the olive, no cessation of the red rain which nourishes the baleful and glorious laurel. Meantime, Ruin had her sappers and miners at work under Moore’s feet, and whether he rode or walked, whether he only crossed his counting house hearth or galloped over sullen Rushedge, he was aware of a hollow echo, and felt the ground shake to his tread.
While the summer thus passed with Moore, how did it lapse with Shirley and Caroline? Let us first visit the heiress. How does she look? Like a lovelorn maiden, pale and pining for a neglectful swain? Does she sit the day long bent over some sedentary task? Has she forever a book in her hand, or sewing on her knee, and eyes only for that, and words for nothing, and thoughts unspoken?
By no means. Shirley is all right. If her wistful cast of physiognomy is not gone, no more is her careless smile. She keeps her dark old manor house light and bright with her cheery presence. The gallery and the low-ceiled chambers that open into it have learned lively echoes from her voice; the dim entrance hall, with its one window, has grown pleasantly accustomed to the frequent rustle of a silk dress, as its wearer sweeps across from room to room, now carrying flowers to the barbarous peach-bloom salon, now entering the dining room to open its casements and let in the scent of mignonette and sweet briar, anon bringing plants from the staircase window to place in the sun at the open porch door.
She takes her sewing occasionally; but, by some fatality, she is doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five minutes at a time. Her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce threaded, when a sudden thought calls her upstairs. Perhaps she goes to seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle book or older china-topped work box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment indispensable; perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she recollects to have seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; perhaps only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular view, whence Briarfield church and rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered in trees. She has scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of cambric or square of half-wrought canvas, when Tartar’s bold scrape and strangled whistle are heard at the porch door, and she must run to open it for him. It is a hot day; he comes in panting; she must convoy him to the kitchen, and see with her own eyes that his water-bowl is replenished. Through the open kitchen door the court is visible, all sunny and gay, and people with turkeys and their poults, peahens and their chicks, pearl-flecked Guinea fowls, and a bright variety of pure white, and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon plumed pigeons. Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She runs to the pantry for a roll, and she stands on the door step scattering crumbs. Around her throng her eager, plump, happy feathered vassals John is about the stables, and John must be talked to, and her mare looked at. She is still petting and patting it when the cows come in to be milked. This is important; Shirley must stay and take a review of them all. There are perhaps some little calves, some little new-yeaned lambs – it may be twins, whose mothers have rejected them. Miss Keeldar must be introduced to them by John, must permit herself the treat of feeding them with her own hand, under the direction of her careful foreman. Meantime John moots doubtful questions about the farming of certain “crofts,” and “ings,” and “holmes,” and his mistress is necessitated to fetch her garden hat – a gipsy straw – and accompany him, over stile and along hedgerow, to hear the conclusion of the whole agricultural matter on the spot, and with the said “crofts,” “ings,” and “holms” under her eye. Bright afternoon thus wears into soft evening, and she comes home to a late tea, and after tea she never sews.
After tea Shirley reads, and she is just about as tenacious of her book as she is lax of her needle. Her study is the rug, her seat a footstool, or perhaps only the carpet at Mrs. Pryor’s feet: there she always learned her lessons when a child, and old habits have a strong power over her. The tawny and lion-like bulk of Tartar is ever stretched beside her, his negro muzzle laid on his fore paws – straight, strong, and shapely as the limbs of an Alpine wolf. One hand of the mistress generally reposes on the loving serf’s rude head, because if she takes it away he groans and is discontented. Shirley’s mind is given to her book. She lifts not her eyes; she neither stirs nor speaks – unless, indeed, it be to return a brief respectful answer to Mrs. Pryor, who addresses deprecatory phrases to her now and then.
“My dear, you had better not have that great dog so near you; he is crushing the border of your dress.”
“Oh, it is only muslin. I can put a clean one on tomorrow.”
“My dear, I wish you could acquire the habit of sitting to a table when you read.”
“I will try, ma’am, some time; but it is so comfortable to do as one has always been accustomed to do.”
“My dear, let me beg of you to put that book down. You are trying your eyes by the doubtful firelight.”
“No, ma’am, not at all; my eyes are never tired.”
At last, however, a pale light falls on the page from the window. She looks; the moon is up. She closes the volume, rises, and walks through the room. Her book has perhaps been a good one; it has refreshed, refilled, rewarmed her heart; it has set her brain astir, furnished her mind with pictures. The still parlour, the clean hearth, the window opening on the twilight sky, and showing its “sweet regent,” new throned and glorious, suffice to make earth an Eden, life a poem, for Shirley. A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins, unmingled, untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency, because by no human agency bestowed – the pure gift of God to His creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her experience of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence angels looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it. No, not as she wishes it; she has not time to wish. The swift glory spreads out, sweeping and kindling, and multiplies its splendours faster than Thought can effect his combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter her longings. Shirley says nothing while the trance is upon her – she is quite mute; but if Mrs. Pryor speaks to her now, she goes out quietly, and continues her walk upstairs in the dim gallery.
If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is, reckless she is, and most ignorant; for she does not know her dreams are rare, her feelings peculiar. She does not know, has never known, and will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green.