human
This distress is not occasioned by physical pain, you say, Harry? You have a grief; tell it me.
gpt
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.
human
Who knows but, if we talk it over, we may relieve it? What is the cause? Whom does it concern?
gpt
The cause, sir, is Shirley; it concerns Shirley.
human
Does it? You think her changed?
gpt
All who know her think her changed--you too, Mr. Moore.
human
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.
gpt
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----
human
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.
gpt
What have you learned then? What new circumstance?
human
I have learned that she has just made her will.
gpt
Made her will?
human
She told you that?
gpt
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.
human
Go on, Harry.
gpt
Henry Sympson, go on, when I tell you.
human
What else did she say?
gpt
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.
human
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?
gpt
We settled one or two family points between ourselves.
human
I should rather like to know what----
gpt
But, Mr. Moore, you smile. _I_ could not smile to see Shirley in such a mood.
human
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.
gpt
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.
human
Well?
gpt
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.
human
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.
gpt
That Shirley thinks she is going to die.
human
She referred to her health?
gpt
Not once; but I assure you she is wasting. Her hands are grown quite thin, and so is her cheek.
human
Does she ever complain to your mother or sisters?
gpt
Never. She laughs at them when they question her. Mr. Moore, she is a strange being, so fair and girlish--not a man-like woman at all, not an Amazon, and yet lifting her head above both help and sympathy.
human
Do you know where she is now, Henry? Is she in the house, or riding out?
gpt
Surely not out, sir. It rains fast.
human
True; which, however, is no guarantee that she is not at this moment cantering over Rushedge. Of late she has never permitted weather to be a hindrance to her rides.
gpt
You remember, Mr. Moore, how wet and stormy it was last Wednesday--so wild, indeed, that she would not permit Zoë to be saddled? Yet the blast she thought too tempestuous for her mare she herself faced on foot; that afternoon she walked nearly as far as Nunnely. I asked her, when she came in, if she was not afraid of taking cold. 'Not I,' she said. 'It would be too much good luck for me. I don't know, Harry, but the best thing that could happen to me would be to take a good cold and fever, and so pass off like other Christians.' She is reckless, you see, sir.
human
Reckless indeed! Go and find out where she is, and if you can get an opportunity of speaking to her without attracting attention, request her to come here a minute.
gpt
Yes, sir.
human
Harry!
gpt
Do not deliver the message formally. Word it as, in former days, you would have worded an ordinary summons to the schoolroom.
human
I see, sir. She will be more likely to obey.
gpt
And, Harry----
human
Sir?
gpt
I will call you when I want you. Till then, you are dispensed from lessons.
human
I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry, he said.
gpt
I can seem to make light of his apprehensions, and look down _du haut de ma grandeur_ on his youthful ardour. To _him_ I can speak as if, in my eyes, they were both children. Let me see if I can keep up the same rôle with her. I have known the moment when I seemed about to forget it, when Confusion and Submission seemed about to crush me with their soft tyranny, when my tongue faltered, and I have almost let the mantle drop, and stood in her presence, not master--no--but something else. I trust I shall never so play the fool. It is well for a Sir Philip Nunnely to redden when he meets her eye. He may permit himself the indulgence of submission. He may even, without disgrace, suffer his hand to tremble when it touches hers; but if one of her farmers were to show himself susceptible and sentimental, he would merely prove his need of a strait waistcoat. So far I have always done very well. She has sat near me, and I have not shaken--more than my desk. I have encountered her looks and smiles like--why, like a tutor, as I am. Her hand I never yet touched--never underwent that test. Her farmer or her footman I am not--no serf nor servant of hers have I ever been; but I am poor, and it behoves me to look to my self-respect--not to compromise an inch of it. What did she mean by that allusion to the cold people who petrify flesh to marble? It pleased me--I hardly know why; I would not permit myself to inquire. I never do indulge in scrutiny either of her language or countenance; for if I did, I should sometimes forget common sense and believe in romance. A strange, secret ecstasy steals through my veins at moments. I'll not encourage--I'll not remember it. I am resolved, as long as may be, to retain the right to say with Paul, 'I am not mad, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.'
human
If she comes, what shall I say to her? How account, firstly, for the freedom of the request? Shall I apologize to her? I could in all humility; but would an apology tend to place us in the positions we ought relatively to occupy in this matter? I _must_ keep up the professor, otherwise---- I hear a door.
gpt
She will refuse me. Henry is entreating her to come; she declines. My petition is presumption in her eyes. Let her _only_ come, I can teach her to the contrary. I would rather she were a little perverse; it will steel me. I prefer her cuirassed in pride, armed with a taunt. Her scorn startles me from my dreams; I stand up myself. A sarcasm from her eyes or lips puts strength into every nerve and sinew I have. Some step approaches, and not Henry's.