Shirley

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 ›holms,‹ 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 foot-stool, 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 to-morrow.«
    »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, like 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 Beth-el, 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 up-stairs 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.
    Shirley takes life easily: is not that fact written in her eye? In her good-tempered moments, is it not as full of lazy softness as in her brief fits of anger it is fulgent with quick-flashing fire?