Шарлотта Бронте
Shirley
On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone – for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where – she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag overspread by a tree was her station. The oak roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat; the oak boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy.
Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death. The wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair.
The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, in wishing than hoping, in imagining than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things herself seemed to herself the centre – a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed – a star in an else starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?
She gazed abroad on Heaven and Evening. Heaven and Evening gazed back on her. She bent down, searching bank, hill, river, spread dim below. All she questioned responded by oracles. She heard – she was impressed; but she could not understand. Above her head she raised her hands joined together.
“Guidance – help – comfort – come!” was her cry.
There was no voice, nor any that answered.
She waited, kneeling, steadfastly looking up. Yonder sky was sealed; the solemn stars shone alien and remote.
At last one overstretched chord of her agony slacked; she thought Something above relented; she felt as if Something far round drew nigher; she heard as if Silence spoke. There was no language, no word, only a tone.
Again – a fine, full, lofty tone, a deep, soft sound, like a storm whispering, made twilight undulate.
Once more, profounder, nearer, clearer, it rolled harmonious.
Yet again – a distinct voice passed between Heaven and Earth.
“Eva!”
If Eva were not this woman’s name, she had none. She rose. “Here am I.”
“Eva!”
“O Night (it can be but Night that speaks), I am here!”
The voice, descending, reached Earth.
“Eva!”
“Lord,” she cried, “behold thine handmaid!”
She had her religion – all tribes held some creed.
“I come – a Comforter!”
“Lord, come quickly!”
The Evening flushed full of hope; the Air panted; the Moon – rising before – ascended large, but her light showed no shape.
“Lean towards me, Eva. Enter my arms; repose thus.”
“Thus I lean, O Invisible but felt! And what art thou?”
“Eva, I have brought a living draught from heaven. Daughter of Man, drink of my cup!”
“I drink: it is as if sweetest dew visited my lips in a full current. My arid heart revives; my affliction is lightened; my strait and struggle are gone. And the night changes! the wood, the hill, the moon, the wide sky – all change!”
“All change, and forever. I take from thy vision darkness; I loosen from thy faculties fetters! I level in thy path obstacles; I with my presence fill vacancy. I claim as mine the lost atom of life. I take to myself the spark of soul – burning heretofore forgotten!”
“O take me! O claim me! This is a god.”
“This is a son of God – one who feels himself in the portion of life that stirs you. He is suffered to reclaim his own, and so to foster and aid that it shall not perish hopeless.”
“A son of God! Am I indeed chosen?”
“Thou only in this land. I saw thee that thou wert fair; I knew thee that thou wert mine. To me it is given to rescue, to sustain, to cherish mine own. Acknowledge in me that Seraph on earth named Genius.”
“My glorious Bridegroom! true Dayspring from on high! All I would have at last I possess. I receive a revelation. The dark hint, the obscure whisper, which have haunted me from childhood, are interpreted. Thou art He I sought. Godborn, take me, thy bride!”
“Unhumbled, I can take what is mine. Did I not give from the altar the very flame which lit Eva’s being? Come again into the heaven whence thou wert sent.”
That Presence, invisible but mighty, gathered her in like a lamb to the fold; that voice, soft but all-pervading, vibrated through her heart like music. Her eye received no image; and yet a sense visited her vision and her brain as of the serenity of stainless air, the power of sovereign seas, the majesty of marching stars, the energy of colliding elements, the rooted endurance of hills wide based, and, above all, as of the lustre of heroic beauty rushing victorious on the Night, vanquishing its shadows like a diviner sun.
Such was the bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record the long strife between Serpent and Seraph – How still the Father of Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory, pain into bliss, poison into passion? How the “dreadless Angel” defied, resisted, and repelled? How again and again he refined the polluted cup, exalted the debased emotion, rectified the perverted impulse, detected the lurking venom, baffled the frontless temptation – purified, justified, watched, and withstood? How, by his patience, by his strength, by that unutterable excellence he held from God – his Origin – this faithful Seraph fought for Humanity a good fight through time; and, when Time’s course closed, and Death was encountered at the end, barring with fleshless arm the portals of Eternity, how Genius still held close his dying bride, sustained her through the agony of the passage, bore her triumphant into his own home, Heaven; restored her, redeemed, to Jehovah, her Maker; and at last, before Angel and Archangel, crowned her with the crown of Immortality?
Who shall of these things write the chronicle?
“I never could correct that composition,” observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. “Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom.”
She had taken a crayon from the tutor’s desk, and was drawing little leaves, fragments of pillars, broken crosses, on the margin of the book.
“French may be half forgotten, but the habits of the French lesson are retained, I see,” said Louis. “My books would now, as erst, be unsafe with you. My newly-bound St. Pierre would soon be like my Racine – Miss Keeldar, her mark, traced on every page.”
Shirley dropped her crayon as if it burned her fingers.
“Tell me what were the faults of that devoir?” she asked. “Were they grammatical errors, or did you object to the substance?”
“I never said that the lines I drew were indications of faults at all. You would have it that such was the case, and I refrained from contradiction.”
“What else did they denote?”
“No matter now.”
“Mr. Moore,” cried Henry, “make Shirley repeat some of the pieces she used to say so well by heart.”
“If I ask for any, it will be Le Cheval Dompté,” said Moore, trimming with his penknife the pencil Miss Keeldar had worn to a stump.
She turned aside her head; the neck, the clear cheek, forsaken by their natural veil, were seen to flush warm.
“Ah! she has not forgotten, you see, sir,” said Henry, exultant. “She knows how naughty she was.”
A smile, which Shirley would not permit to expand, made her lip tremble; she bent her face, and hid it half with her arms, half in her curls, which, as she stooped, fell loose again. “Certainly I was a rebel,” she answered.
“A rebel!” repeated Henry. “Yes; you and papa had quarrelled terribly, and you set both him and mamma, and Mrs. Pryor, and everybody, at defiance. You said he had insulted you.”
“He had insulted me,” interposed Shirley.
“And you wanted to leave Sympson Grove directly. You packed your things up, and papa threw them out of your trunk; mamma cried, Mrs. Pryor cried; they both stood wringing their hands begging you to be patient; and you knelt on the floor with your things and your up-turned box before you, looking, Shirley, looking – why, in one of your passions. Your features, in such passions, are not distorted; they are fixed, but quite beautiful. You scarcely look angry, only resolute, and in a certain haste; yet one feels that at such times an obstacle cast across your path would be split as with lightning. Papa lost heart, and called Mr. Moore.”
“Enough, Henry.”
“No, it is not enough. I hardly know how Mr. Moore managed, except that I recollect he suggested to papa that agitation would bring on his gout; and then he spoke quietly to the ladies, and got them away; and afterwards he said to you, Miss Shirley, that it was of no use talking or lecturing now, but that the tea things were just brought into the schoolroom, and he was very thirsty, and he would be glad if you would leave your packing for the present and come and make a cup of tea for him and me. You came; you would not talk at first, but soon you softened and grew cheerful. Mr. Moore began to tell us about the Continent, the war, and Bonaparte – subjects we were both fond of listening to. After tea he said we should neither of us leave him that evening; he would not let us stray out of his sight, lest we should again get into mischief. We sat one on each side of him. We were so happy. I never passed so pleasant an evening. The next day he gave you, missy, a lecture of an hour, and wound it up by marking you a piece to learn in Bossuet as a punishment-lesson – Le Cheval Dompté. You learned it instead of packing up, Shirley. We heard no more of your running away. Mr. Moore used to tease you on the subject for a year afterwards.”
“She never said a lesson with greater spirit,” subjoined Moore. “She then, for the first time, gave me the treat of hearing my native tongue spoken without accent by an English girl.”
“She was as sweet as summer cherries for a month afterwards,” struck in Henry: “a good hearty quarrel always left Shirley’s temper better than it found it.”
“You talk of me as if I were not present,” observed Miss Keeldar, who had not yet lifted her face.
“Are you sure you are present?” asked Moore. “There have been moments since my arrival here when I have been tempted to inquire of the lady of Fieldhead if she knew what had become of my former pupil.”
“She is here now.”
“I see her, and humble enough; but I would neither advise Harry nor others to believe too implicitly in the humility which one moment can hide its blushing face like a modest little child, and the next lift it pale and lofty as a marble Juno.”
“One man in times of old, it is said, imparted vitality to the statue he had chiselled; others may have the contrary gift of turning life to stone.”
Moore paused on this observation before he replied to it. His look, at once struck and meditative, said, “A strange phrase; what may it mean?” He turned it over in his mind, with thought deep and slow, as some German pondering metaphysics.
“You mean,” he said at last, “that some men inspire repugnance, and so chill the kind heart.”
“Ingenious!” responded Shirley. “If the interpretation pleases you, you are welcome to hold it valid. I don’t care.”
And with that she raised her head, lofty in look and statue-like in hue, as Louis had described it.
“Behold the metamorphosis!” he said; “scarce imagined ere it is realized: a lowly nymph develops to an inaccessible goddess. But Henry must not be disappointed of his recitation, and Olympia will deign to oblige him. Let us begin.”
“I have forgotten the very first line.”
“Which I have not. My memory, if a slow, is a retentive one. I acquire deliberately both knowledge and liking. The acquisition grows into my brain, and the sentiment into my breast; and it is not as the rapid-springing produce which, having no root in itself, flourishes verdurous enough for a time, but too soon falls withered away. Attention, Henry! Miss Keeldar consents to favour you. ‘Voyez ce cheval ardent et impétueux,’ so it commences.”
Miss Keeldar did consent to make the effort; but she soon stopped.
“Unless I heard the whole repeated I cannot continue it,” she said.
“Yet it was quickly learned—‘soon gained, soon gone,’” moralized the tutor. He recited the passage deliberately, accurately, with slow, impressive emphasis.
Shirley, by degrees, inclined her ear as he went on. Her face, before turned from him, returned towards him. When he ceased, she took the word up as if from his lips; she took his very tone; she seized his very accent; she delivered the periods as he had delivered them; she reproduced his manner, his pronunciation, his expression.
It was now her turn to petition.
“Recall Le Songe d’Athalie,” she entreated, “and say it.”
He said it for her. She took it from him; she found lively excitement in the pleasure of making his language her own. She asked for further indulgence; all the old school pieces were revived, and with them Shirley’s old school days.
He had gone through some of the best passages of Racine and Corneille, and then had heard the echo of his own deep tones in the girl’s voice, that modulated itself faithfully on his. Le Chêne et le Roseau, that most beautiful of La Fontaine’s fables, had been recited, well recited, by the tutor, and the pupil had animatedly availed herself of the lesson. Perhaps a simultaneous feeling seized them now, that their enthusiasm had kindled to a glow, which the slight fuel of French poetry no longer sufficed to feed; perhaps they longed for a trunk of English oak to be thrown as a Yule log to the devouring flame. Moore observed, “And these are our best pieces! And we have nothing more dramatic, nervous, natural!”
And then he smiled and was silent. His whole nature seemed serenely alight. He stood on the hearth, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, musing not unblissfully.
Twilight was closing on the diminished autumn day. The schoolroom windows – darkened with creeping plants, from which no high October winds had as yet swept the sere foliage – admitted scarce a gleam of sky; but the fire gave light enough to talk by.
And now Louis Moore addressed his pupil in French, and she answered at first with laughing hesitation and in broken phrase. Moore encouraged while he corrected her. Henry joined in the lesson; the two scholars stood opposite the master, their arms round each other’s waists. Tartar, who long since had craved and obtained admission, sat sagely in the centre of the rug, staring at the blaze which burst fitful from morsels of coal among the red cinders. The group were happy enough, but—
“Pleasures are like poppies spread;
You seize the flower – its bloom is shed.”
The dull, rumbling sound of wheels was heard on the pavement in the yard.
“It is the carriage returned,” said Shirley; “and dinner must be just ready, and I am not dressed.”
A servant came in with Mr. Moore’s candle and tea; for the tutor and his pupil usually dined at luncheon time.
“Mr. Sympson and the ladies are returned,” she said, “and Sir Philip Nunnely is with them.”
“How you did start, and how your hand trembled, Shirley!” said Henry, when the maid had closed the shutter and was gone. “But I know why – don’t you, Mr. Moore? I know what papa intends. He is a little ugly man, that Sir Philip. I wish he had not come. I wish sisters and all of them had stayed at De Walden Hall to dine. – Shirley should once more have made tea for you and me, Mr. Moore, and we would have had a happy evening of it.”
Moore was locking up his desk and putting away his St. Pierre. “That was your plan, was it, my boy?”
“Don’t you approve it, sir?”
“I approve nothing utopian. Look Life in its iron face; stare Reality out of its brassy countenance. Make the tea, Henry; I shall be back in a minute.”
He left the room; so did Shirley, by another door.
Chapter XXVIII
Phoebe
Shirley probably got on pleasantly with Sir Philip that evening, for the next morning she came down in one of her best moods.
“Who will take a walk with me?” she asked, after breakfast. “Isabella and Gertrude, will you?”
So rare was such an invitation from Miss Keeldar to her female cousins that they hesitated before they accepted it. Their mamma, however, signifying acquiescence in the project, they fetched their bonnets, and the trio set out.
It did not suit these three young persons to be thrown much together. Miss Keeldar liked the society of few ladies; indeed, she had a cordial pleasure in that of none except Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone. She was civil, kind, attentive even to her cousins; but still she usually had little to say to them. In the sunny mood of this particular morning, she contrived to entertain even the Misses Sympson. Without deviating from her wonted rule of discussing with them only ordinary themes, she imparted to these themes an extraordinary interest; the sparkle of her spirit glanced along her phrases.
What made her so joyous? All the cause must have been in herself. The day was not bright. It was dim – a pale, waning autumn day. The walks through the dun woods were damp; the atmosphere was heavy, the sky overcast; and yet it seemed that in Shirley’s heart lived all the light and azure of Italy, as all its fervour laughed in her gray English eye.
Some directions necessary to be given to her foreman, John, delayed her behind her cousins as they neared Fieldhead on their return. Perhaps an interval of twenty minutes elapsed between her separation from them and her re-entrance into the house. In the meantime she had spoken to John, and then she had lingered in the lane at the gate. A summons to luncheon called her in. She excused herself from the meal, and went upstairs.
“Is not Shirley coming to luncheon?” asked Isabella. “She said she was hungry.”
An hour after, as she did not quit her chamber, one of her cousins went to seek her there. She was found sitting at the foot of the bed, her head resting on her hand; she looked quite pale, very thoughtful, almost sad.
“You are not ill?” was the question put.
“A little sick,” replied Miss Keeldar.
Certainly she was not a little changed from what she had been two hours before.
This change, accounted for only by those three words, explained no otherwise; this change – whencesoever springing, effected in a brief ten minutes – passed like no light summer cloud. She talked when she joined her friends at dinner, talked as usual. She remained with them during the evening. When again questioned respecting her health, she declared herself perfectly recovered. It had been a mere passing faintness, a momentary sensation, not worth a thought; yet it was felt there was a difference in Shirley.
The next day – the day, the week, the fortnight after – this new and peculiar shadow lingered on the countenance, in the manner of Miss Keeldar. A strange quietude settled over her look, her movements, her very voice. The alteration was not so marked as to court or permit frequent questioning, yet it was there, and it would not pass away. It hung over her like a cloud which no breeze could stir or disperse. Soon it became evident that to notice this change was to annoy her. First she shrank from remark; and, if persisted in, she, with her own peculiar hauteur, repelled it. “Was she ill?” The reply came with decision.
“I am not.”
“Did anything weigh on her mind? Had anything happened to affect her spirits?”
She scornfully ridiculed the idea. “What did they mean by spirits? She had no spirits, black or white, blue or gray, to affect.”
“Something must be the matter – she was so altered.”
“She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was plainer. If it suited her to grow ugly, why need others fret themselves on the subject?”
“There must be a cause for the change. What was it?”
She peremptorily requested to be let alone.
Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, and she seemed indignant at herself that she could not perfectly succeed. Brief self-spurning epithets burst from her lips when alone. “Fool! coward!” she would term herself. “Poltroon!” she would say, “if you must tremble, tremble in secret! Quail where no eye sees you!”
“How dare you,” she would ask herself—“how dare you show your weakness and betray your imbecile anxieties? Shake them off; rise above them. If you cannot do this, hide them.”
And to hide them she did her best. She once more became resolutely lively in company. When weary of effort and forced to relax, she sought solitude – not the solitude of her chamber (she refused to mope, shut up between four walls), but that wilder solitude which lies out of doors, and which she could chase, mounted on Zoë, her mare. She took long rides of half a day. Her uncle disapproved, but he dared not remonstrate. It was never pleasant to face Shirley’s anger, even when she was healthy and gay; but now that her face showed thin, and her large eye looked hollow, there was something in the darkening of that face and kindling of that eye which touched as well as alarmed.
To all comparative strangers who, unconscious of the alterations in her spirits, commented on the alteration in her looks, she had one reply,—
“I am perfectly well; I have not an ailment.”
And health, indeed, she must have had, to be able to bear the exposure to the weather she now encountered. Wet or fair, calm or storm, she took her daily ride over Stilbro’ Moor, Tartar keeping up at her side, with his wolf-like gallop, long and untiring.
Twice, three times, the eyes of gossips – those eyes which are everywhere, in the closet and on the hilltop – noticed that instead of turning on Rushedge, the top ridge of Stilbro’ Moor, she rode forwards all the way to the town. Scouts were not wanting to mark her destination there. It was ascertained that she alighted at the door of one Mr. Pearson Hall, a solicitor, related to the vicar of Nunnely. This gentleman and his ancestors had been the agents of the Keeldar family for generations back. Some people affirmed that Miss Keeldar was become involved in business speculations connected with Hollow’s Mill – that she had lost money, and was constrained to mortgage her land. Others conjectured that she was going to be married, and that the settlements were preparing.
Mr. Moore and Henry Sympson were together in the schoolroom. The tutor was waiting for a lesson which the pupil seemed busy in preparing.
“Henry, make haste. The afternoon is getting on.”
“Is it, sir?”
“Certainly. Are you nearly ready with that lesson?”
“No.”
“Not nearly ready?”
“I have not construed a line.”
Mr. Moore looked up. The boy’s tone was rather peculiar.
“The task presents no difficulties, Henry; or, if it does, bring them to me. We will work together.”
“Mr. Moore, I can do no work.”
“My boy, you are ill.”
“Sir, I am not worse in bodily health than usual, but my heart is full.”
“Shut the book. Come hither, Harry. Come to the fireside.”
Harry limped forward. His tutor placed him in a chair; his lips were quivering, his eyes brimming. He laid his crutch on the floor, bent down his head, and wept.
“This distress is not occasioned by physical pain, you say, Harry? You have a grief; tell it me.”
“Sir, I have such a grief as I never had before. I wish it could be relieved in some way; I can hardly bear it.”
“Who knows but, if we talk it over, we may relieve it? What is the cause? Whom does it concern?”
“The cause, sir, is Shirley; it concerns Shirley.”
“Does it? You think her changed?”
“All who know her think her changed – you too, Mr. Moore.”
“Not seriously – no. I see no alteration but such as a favourable turn might repair in a few weeks; besides, her own word must go for something: she says she is well.”
“There it is, sir. As long as she maintained she was well, I believed her. When I was sad out of her sight, I soon recovered spirits in her presence. Now.”
“Well, Harry, now. Has she said anything to you? You and she were together in the garden two hours this morning. I saw her talking, and you listening. Now, my dear Harry, if Miss Keeldar has said she is ill, and enjoined you to keep her secret, do not obey her. For her life’s sake, avow everything. Speak, my boy.”
“She say she is ill! I believe, sir, if she were dying, she would smile, and aver, ‘Nothing ails me.’”
“What have you learned then? What new circumstance?”
“I have learned that she has just made her will.”
“Made her will?”
The tutor and pupil were silent.
“She told you that?” asked Moore, when some minutes had elapsed.
“She told me quite cheerfully, not as an ominous circumstance, which I felt it to be. She said I was the only person besides her solicitor, Pearson Hall, and Mr. Helstone and Mr. Yorke, who knew anything about it; and to me, she intimated, she wished specially to explain its provisions.”
“Go on, Harry.”
“‘Because,’ she said, looking down on me with her beautiful eyes – oh! they are beautiful, Mr. Moore! I love them! I love her! She is my star! Heaven must not claim her! She is lovely in this world, and fitted for this world. Shirley is not an angel; she is a woman, and she shall live with men. Seraphs shall not have her! Mr. Moore, if one of the ‘sons of God,’ with wings wide and bright as the sky, blue and sounding as the sea, having seen that she was fair, descended to claim her, his claim should be withstood – withstood by me – boy and cripple as I am.”
“Henry Sympson, go on, when I tell you.”
“‘Because,’ she said, ‘if I made no will, and died before you, Harry, all my property would go to you; and I do not intend that it should be so, though your father would like it. But you,’ she said, ‘will have his whole estate, which is large – larger than Fieldhead. Your sisters will have nothing; so I have left them some money, though I do not love them, both together, half so much as I love one lock of your fair hair.’ She said these words, and she called me her ‘darling,’ and let me kiss her. She went on to tell me that she had left Caroline Helstone some money too; that this manor house, with its furniture and books, she had bequeathed to me, as she did not choose to take the old family place from her own blood; and that all the rest of her property, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, exclusive of the legacies to my sisters and Miss Helstone, she had willed, not to me, seeing I was already rich, but to a good man, who would make the best use of it that any human being could do – a man, she said, that was both gentle and brave, strong and merciful – a man that might not profess to be pious, but she knew he had the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of love and peace was with him. He visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world. Then she asked, ‘Do you approve what I have done, Harry?’ I could not answer. My tears choked me, as they do now.”
Mr. Moore allowed his pupil a moment to contend with and master his emotion. He then demanded, “What else did she say?”
“When I had signified my full consent to the conditions of her will, she told me I was a generous boy, and she was proud of me. ‘And now,’ she added, ‘in case anything should happen, you will know what to say to Malice when she comes whispering hard things in your ear, insinuating that Shirley has wronged you, that she did not love you. You will know that I did love you, Harry; that no sister could have loved you better – my own treasure.’ Mr. Moore, sir, when I remember her voice, and recall her look, my heart beats as if it would break its strings. She may go to heaven before me – if God commands it, she must; but the rest of my life – and my life will not be long, I am glad of that now – shall be a straight, quick, thoughtful journey in the path her step has pressed. I thought to enter the vault of the Keeldars before her. Should it be otherwise, lay my coffin by Shirley’s side.”
Moore answered him with a weighty calm, that offered a strange contrast to the boy’s perturbed enthusiasm.
“You are wrong, both of you – you harm each other. If youth once falls under the influence of a shadowy terror, it imagines there will never be full sunlight again; its first calamity it fancies will last a lifetime. What more did she say? Anything more?”
“We settled one or two family points between ourselves.”
“I should rather like to know what.”
“But, Mr. Moore, you smile. I could not smile to see Shirley in such a mood.”
“My boy, I am neither nervous, nor poetic, nor inexperienced. I see things as they are; you don’t as yet. Tell me these family points.”
“Only, sir, she asked me whether I considered myself most of a Keeldar or a Sympson; and I answered I was Keeldar to the core of the heart and to the marrow of the bones. She said she was glad of it; for, besides her, I was the only Keeldar left in England. And then we agreed on some matters.”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, that if I lived to inherit my father’s estate, and her house, I was to take the name of Keeldar, and to make Fieldhead my residence. Henry Shirley Keeldar I said I would be called; and I will. Her name and her manor house are ages old, and Sympson and Sympson Grove are of yesterday.”
“Come, you are neither of you going to heaven yet. I have the best hopes of you both, with your proud distinctions – a pair of half-fledged eaglets. Now, what is your inference from all you have told me? Put it into words.”
“That Shirley thinks she is going to die.”
“She referred to her health?”
“Not once; but I assure you she is wasting. Her hands are grown quite thin, and so is her cheek.”
“Does she ever complain to your mother or sisters?”
