Shirley

modesty;‹ but, properly used, and not hackneyed, the words are good and appropriate words: as she passed to the window, after tacitly but gracefully recognising me, I could call her nothing in my own mind save ›stainless virgin‹: to my perception, a delicate splendour robed her, and the modesty of girlhood was her halo. I may be the most fatuitous, as I am one of the plainest, of men; but, in truth, that shyness of hers touched me exquisitely: it flattered my finest sensations. I looked a stupid block, I dare say: I was alive with a life of Paradise, as she turned
her
glance from
my
glance, and softly averted her head to hide the suffusion of her cheek.
    I know this is the talk of a dreamer – of a rapt, romantic lunatic: I
do
dream: I
will
dream now and then; and if she has inspired romance into my prosaic composition, how can I help it?
    What a child she is sometimes! What an unsophisticated, untaught thing! I see her now, looking up into my face, and entreating me to prevent them from smothering her, and to be sure and give her a strong narcotic: I see her confessing that she was not so self-sufficing, so independent of sympathy, as people thought: I see the secret tear drop quietly from her eyelash. She said I thought her childish – and I did. She imagined I despised her. – Despised her! it was unutterably sweet to feel myself at once near her and above her: to be conscious of a natural right and power to sustain her, as a husband should sustain his wife.
    I worship her perfections; but it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me – that nestle her to my heart – that fold her about with my love – and that for a most selfish, but deeply-natural reason: these faults are the steps by which I mount to ascendancy over her. If she rose a trimmed, artificial mound, without inequality, what vantage would she offer the foot? It is the natural hill, with its mossy breaks and hollows, whose slope invites ascent – whose summit it is pleasure to gain.
    To leave metaphor. It delights my eye to look on her: she suits me: if I were a king, and she the housemaid that swept my palace-stairs – across all that space between us – my eye would recognise her qualities; a true pulse would beat for her in my heart, though an unspanned gulf made acquaintance impossible. If I were a gentleman, and she waited on me as a servant, I could not help liking that Shirley. Take from her her education – take her ornaments, her sumptuous dress – all extrinsic advantages – take all grace, but such as the symmetry of her form renders inevitable; present her to me at a cottage-door, in a stuff-gown; let her offer me there a draught of water, with that smile – with that warm good-will with which she now dispenses manorial hospitality – I should like her. I should wish to stay an hour: I should linger to talk with that rustic. I should not feel as I
now
do: I should find in her nothing divine; but whenever I met the young peasant, it would be with pleasure – whenever I left her, it would be with regret.
    How culpably careless in her to leave her desk open, where I know she has money! In the lock hang the keys of all her repositories, of her very jewel-casket. There is a purse in that little satin bag: I see the tassel of silver beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my brother Robert: all her little failings would, I know, be a source of irritation to him; if they vex me, it is a most pleasurable vexation: I delight to find her at fault, and were I always resident with her, I am aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She would just give me something to do; to rectify: a theme for my tutor-lectures. I never lecture Henry: never feel disposed to do so: if he does wrong, – and that is very seldom, dear excellent lad! – a word suffices: often I do no more than shake my head; but the moment her ›minois mutin‹ meets my eye, expostulatory words crowd to my lips: from a taciturn man, I believe she would transform me into a talker. Whence comes the delight I take in that talk? It puzzles myself sometimes: the more crâne, malin, taquin is her mood, consequently the clearer occasion she gives me for disapprobation; the more I seek her, the better I like her. She is never wilder than when equipped in her habit and hat; never less manageable than when she and Zoë come in fiery from a race with the wind on the hills; and I confess it – to this mute page I may