Shirley

it is a schoolboy – a Briarfield grammar-schoolboy – who has left his companions, now trudging home by the high road, and is seeking a certain tree, with a certain mossy mound at its root – convenient as a seat. Why is he lingering here? – the air is cold, and the time wears late. He sits down: what is he thinking about? Does he feel the chaste charm nature wears to-night? A pearl-white moon smiles through the grey trees: Does he care for her smile?
    Impossible to say; for he is silent, and his countenance does not speak: as yet, it is no mirror to reflect sensation, but rather a mask to conceal it. This boy is a stripling of fifteen – slight, and tall of his years; in his face there is as little of amenity as of servility: his eye seems prepared to note any incipient attempt to control or overreach him, and the rest of his features indicate faculties alert for resistance. Wise ushers avoid unnecessary interference with that lad. To break him in by severity would be a useless attempt; to win him by flattery would be an effort worse than useless. He is best let alone. Time will educate, and experience train him.
    Professedly, Martin Yorke (it is a young Yorke, of course) tramples on the name of poetry: talk sentiment to him, and you would be answered by sarcasm. Here he is, wandering alone, waiting duteously on Nature, while she unfolds a page of stern, of silent, and of solemn poetry, beneath his attentive gaze.
    Being seated, he takes from his satchel a book – not the Latin grammar, but a contraband volume of Fairy tales; there will be light enough yet for an hour to serve his keen young vision: besides, the moon waits on him – her beam, dim and vague as yet, fills the glade where he sits.
    He reads: he is led into a solitary mountain region; all round him is rude and desolate, shapeless, and almost colourless. He hears bells tinkle on the wind; forth-riding from the formless folds of the mist, dawns on him the brightest vision – a green-robed lady, on a snow-white palfrey; he sees her dress, her gems, and her steed; she arrests him with some mysterious question: he is spell-bound, and must follow her into Fairy-land.
    A second legend bears him to the seashore: there tumbles in a strong tide, boiling at the base of dizzy cliffs: it rains and blows. A reef of rocks, black and rough, stretches far into the sea; all along, and among, and above these crags, dash and flash, sweep and leap, swells, wreaths, drifts of snowy spray. Some lone wanderer is out on these rocks, treading, with cautious step, the wet, wild sea-weed; glancing down into hollows where the brine lies fathoms deep and emerald-clear, and seeing there wilder, and stranger, and huger vegetation, than is found on land, with treasure of shells – some green, some purple, some pearly – clustered in the curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry. Looking up, and forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a tall, pale thing – shaped like man, but made of spray – transparent, tremulous, awful: it stands not alone: they are all human figures that wanton in the rocks – a crowd of foam-women – a band of white, evanescent Nereides.
    Hush! – shut the book: hide it in the satchel. – Martin hears a tread. He listens: No –– Yes: Once more, the dead leaves, lightly crushed, rustle on the wood-path. Martin watches: the trees part, and a woman issues forth.
    She is a lady dressed in dark silk, a veil covering her face. Martin never met a lady in this wood before – nor any female, save, now and then, a village-girl come to gather nuts. To-night, the apparition does not displease him. He observes, as she approaches, that she is neither old nor plain, but, on the contrary, very youthful; and, but that he now recognises her for one whom he has often wilfully pronounced ugly, he would deem that he discovered traits of beauty behind the thin gauze of that veil.
    She passes him, and says nothing. He knew she would: all women are proud monkeys – and he knows no more conceited doll than that Caroline Helstone. The thought is hardly hatched in his mind, when the lady retraces those two steps she had got beyond him, and, raising her veil, reposes her glance on his face, while she softly asks: –
    »Are you one of Mr. Yorke's sons?«
    No human evidence would ever have been able to persuade Martin Yorke that he blushed when thus addressed; yet blush he did, to the ears.
    »I am,« he said, bluntly; and encouraged himself to wonder,