Чарльз Диккенс
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Rosa shook her head, with an almost plaintive air of hesitation in want of help.
‘Is there any instruction that I can take from you with reference to your affairs?’
‘I – I should like to settle them with Eddy first, if you please,’ said Rosa, plaiting the crease in her dress.
‘Surely, surely,’ returned Mr. Grewgious. ‘You two should be of one mind in all things. Is the young gentleman expected shortly?’
‘He has gone away only this morning. He will be back at Christmas.’
‘Nothing could happen better. You will, on his return at Christmas, arrange all matters of detail with him; you will then communicate with me; and I will discharge myself (as a mere business acquaintance) of my business responsibilities towards the accomplished lady in the corner window. They will accrue at that season.’ Blurring pencil once again. ‘Memorandum, “Leave.” Yes. I will now, my dear, take my leave.’
‘Could I,’ said Rosa, rising, as he jerked out of his chair in his ungainly way: ‘could I ask you, most kindly to come to me at Christmas, if I had anything particular to say to you?’
‘Why, certainly, certainly,’ he rejoined; apparently – if such a word can be used of one who had no apparent lights or shadows about him – complimented by the question. ‘As a particularly Angular man, I do not fit smoothly into the social circle, and consequently I have no other engagement at Christmas-time than to partake, on the twenty-fifth, of a boiled turkey and celery sauce with a – with a particularly Angular clerk I have the good fortune to possess, whose father, being a Norfolk farmer, sends him up (the turkey up), as a present to me, from the neighbourhood of Norwich. I should be quite proud of your wishing to see me, my dear. As a professional Receiver of rents, so very few people do wish to see me, that the novelty would be bracing.’
For his ready acquiescence, the grateful Rosa put her hands upon his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and instantly kissed him.
‘Lord bless me!’ cried Mr. Grewgious. ‘Thank you, my dear! The honour is almost equal to the pleasure. Miss Twinkleton, madam, I have had a most satisfactory conversation with my ward, and I will now release you from the incumbrance of my presence.’
‘Nay, sir,’ rejoined Miss Twinkleton, rising with a gracious condescension: ‘say not incumbrance. Not so, by any means. I cannot permit you to say so.’
‘Thank you, madam. I have read in the newspapers,’ said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a little, ‘that when a distinguished visitor (not that I am one: far from it) goes to a school (not that this is one: far from it), he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It being now the afternoon in the – College – of which you are the eminent head, the young ladies might gain nothing, except in name, by having the rest of the day allowed them. But if there is any young lady at all under a cloud, might I solicit – ’
‘Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious!’ cried Miss Twinkleton, with a chastely-rallying forefinger. ‘O you gentlemen, you gentlemen! Fie for shame, that you are so hard upon us poor maligned disciplinarians of our sex, for your sakes! But as Miss Ferdinand is at present weighed down by an incubus’ – Miss Twinkleton might have said a pen-and-ink-ubus of writing out Monsieur La Fontaine – ‘go to her, Rosa my dear, and tell her the penalty is remitted, in deference to the intercession of your guardian, Mr. Grewgious.’
Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey, suggestive of marvels happening to her respected legs, and which she came out of nobly, three yards behind her starting-point.
As he held it incumbent upon him to call on Mr. Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to the gatehouse, and climbed its postern stair. But Mr. Jasper’s door being closed, and presenting on a slip of paper the word ‘Cathedral,’ the fact of its being service-time was borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So he descended the stair again, and, crossing the Close, paused at the great western folding-door of the Cathedral, which stood open on the fine and bright, though short-lived, afternoon, for the airing of the place.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, ‘it’s like looking down the throat of Old Time.’
Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the fast-darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry, and all was still.
Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to the chancel-steps, where he met the living waters coming out.
‘Nothing is the matter?’ Thus Jasper accosted him, rather quickly. ‘You have not been sent for?’
‘Not at all, not at all. I came down of my own accord. I have been to my pretty ward’s, and am now homeward bound again.’
‘You found her thriving?’
‘Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I merely came to tell her, seriously, what a betrothal by deceased parents is.’
‘And what is it – according to your judgment?’
Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the lips that asked the question, and put it down to the chilling account of the Cathedral.
‘I merely came to tell her that it could not be considered binding, against any such reason for its dissolution as a want of affection, or want of disposition to carry it into effect, on the side of either party.’
‘May I ask, had you any especial reason for telling her that?’
Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply: ‘The especial reason of doing my duty, sir. Simply that.’ Then he added: ‘Come, Mr. Jasper; I know your affection for your nephew, and that you are quick to feel on his behalf. I assure you that this implies not the least doubt of, or disrespect to, your nephew.’
‘You could not,’ returned Jasper, with a friendly pressure of his arm, as they walked on side by side, ‘speak more handsomely.’
Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to smooth his head, and, having smoothed it, nodded it contentedly, and put his hat on again.
‘I will wager,’ said Jasper, smiling – his lips were still so white that he was conscious of it, and bit and moistened them while speaking: ‘I will wager that she hinted no wish to be released from Ned.’
‘And you will win your wager, if you do,’ retorted Mr. Grewgious. ‘We should allow some margin for little maidenly delicacies in a young motherless creature, under such circumstances, I suppose; it is not in my line; what do you think?’
‘There can be no doubt of it.’
‘I am glad you say so. Because,’ proceeded Mr. Grewgious, who had all this time very knowingly felt his way round to action on his remembrance of what she had said of Jasper himself: ‘because she seems to have some little delicate instinct that all preliminary arrangements had best be made between Mr. Edwin Drood and herself, don’t you see? She don’t want us, don’t you know?’
Jasper touched himself on the breast, and said, somewhat indistinctly: ‘You mean me.’
Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast, and said: ‘I mean us. Therefore, let them have their little discussions and councils together, when Mr. Edwin Drood comes back here at Christmas; and then you and I will step in, and put the final touches to the business.’
‘So, you settled with her that you would come back at Christmas?’ observed Jasper. ‘I see! Mr. Grewgious, as you quite fairly said just now, there is such an exceptional attachment between my nephew and me, that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy, happy fellow than for myself. But it is only right that the young lady should be considered, as you have pointed out, and that I should accept my cue from you. I accept it. I understand that at Christmas they will complete their preparations for May, and that their marriage will be put in final train by themselves, and that nothing will remain for us but to put ourselves in train also, and have everything ready for our formal release from our trusts, on Edwin’s birthday.’
‘That is my understanding,’ assented Mr. Grewgious, as they shook hands to part. ‘God bless them both!’
‘God save them both!’ cried Jasper.
‘I said, bless them,’ remarked the former, looking back over his shoulder.
‘I said, save them,’ returned the latter. ‘Is there any difference?’
CHAPTER X – SMOOTHING THE WAY
It has been often enough remarked that women have a curious power of divining the characters of men, which would seem to be innate and instinctive; seeing that it is arrived at through no patient process of reasoning, that it can give no satisfactory or sufficient account of itself, and that it pronounces in the most confident manner even against accumulated observation on the part of the other sex. But it has not been quite so often remarked that this power (fallible, like every other human attribute) is for the most part absolutely incapable of self-revision; and that when it has delivered an adverse opinion which by all human lights is subsequently proved to have failed, it is undistinguishable from prejudice, in respect of its determination not to be corrected. Nay, the very possibility of contradiction or disproof, however remote, communicates to this feminine judgment from the first, in nine cases out of ten, the weakness attendant on the testimony of an interested witness; so personally and strongly does the fair diviner connect herself with her divination.
‘Now, don’t you think, Ma dear,’ said the Minor Canon to his mother one day as she sat at her knitting in his little book-room, ‘that you are rather hard on Mr. Neville?’
‘No, I do not, Sept,’ returned the old lady.
‘Let us discuss it, Ma.’
‘I have no objection to discuss it, Sept. I trust, my dear, I am always open to discussion.’ There was a vibration in the old lady’s cap, as though she internally added: ‘and I should like to see the discussion that would change my mind!’
‘Very good, Ma,’ said her conciliatory son. ‘There is nothing like being open to discussion.’
‘I hope not, my dear,’ returned the old lady, evidently shut to it.
‘Well! Mr. Neville, on that unfortunate occasion, commits himself under provocation.’
‘And under mulled wine,’ added the old lady.
‘I must admit the wine. Though I believe the two young men were much alike in that regard.’
‘I don’t,’ said the old lady.
‘Why not, Ma?’
‘Because I don’t,’ said the old lady. ‘Still, I am quite open to discussion.’
‘But, my dear Ma, I cannot see how we are to discuss, if you take that line.’
‘Blame Mr. Neville for it, Sept, and not me,’ said the old lady, with stately severity.
‘My dear Ma! why Mr. Neville?’
‘Because,’ said Mrs. Crisparkle, retiring on first principles, ‘he came home intoxicated, and did great discredit to this house, and showed great disrespect to this family.’
‘That is not to be denied, Ma. He was then, and he is now, very sorry for it.’
‘But for Mr. Jasper’s well-bred consideration in coming up to me, next day, after service, in the Nave itself, with his gown still on, and expressing his hope that I had not been greatly alarmed or had my rest violently broken, I believe I might never have heard of that disgraceful transaction,’ said the old lady.
‘To be candid, Ma, I think I should have kept it from you if I could: though I had not decidedly made up my mind. I was following Jasper out, to confer with him on the subject, and to consider the expediency of his and my jointly hushing the thing up on all accounts, when I found him speaking to you. Then it was too late.’
‘Too late, indeed, Sept. He was still as pale as gentlemanly ashes at what had taken place in his rooms overnight.’
‘If I had kept it from you, Ma, you may be sure it would have been for your peace and quiet, and for the good of the young men, and in my best discharge of my duty according to my lights.’
The old lady immediately walked across the room and kissed him: saying, ‘Of course, my dear Sept, I am sure of that.’
‘However, it became the town-talk,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, rubbing his ear, as his mother resumed her seat, and her knitting, ‘and passed out of my power.’
‘And I said then, Sept,’ returned the old lady, ‘that I thought ill of Mr. Neville. And I say now, that I think ill of Mr. Neville. And I said then, and I say now, that I hope Mr. Neville may come to good, but I don’t believe he will.’ Here the cap vibrated again considerably.
‘I am sorry to hear you say so, Ma – ’
‘I am sorry to say so, my dear,’ interposed the old lady, knitting on firmly, ‘but I can’t help it.’
‘ – For,’ pursued the Minor Canon, ‘it is undeniable that Mr. Neville is exceedingly industrious and attentive, and that he improves apace, and that he has – I hope I may say – an attachment to me.’
‘There is no merit in the last article, my dear,’ said the old lady, quickly; ‘and if he says there is, I think the worse of him for the boast.’
‘But, my dear Ma, he never said there was.’
‘Perhaps not,’ returned the old lady; ‘still, I don’t see that it greatly signifies.’
There was no impatience in the pleasant look with which Mr. Crisparkle contemplated the pretty old piece of china as it knitted; but there was, certainly, a humorous sense of its not being a piece of china to argue with very closely.
‘Besides, Sept, ask yourself what he would be without his sister. You know what an influence she has over him; you know what a capacity she has; you know that whatever he reads with you, he reads with her. Give her her fair share of your praise, and how much do you leave for him?’
At these words Mr. Crisparkle fell into a little reverie, in which he thought of several things. He thought of the times he had seen the brother and sister together in deep converse over one of his own old college books; now, in the rimy mornings, when he made those sharpening pilgrimages to Cloisterham Weir; now, in the sombre evenings, when he faced the wind at sunset, having climbed his favourite outlook, a beetling fragment of monastery ruin; and the two studious figures passed below him along the margin of the river, in which the town fires and lights already shone, making the landscape bleaker. He thought how the consciousness had stolen upon him that in teaching one, he was teaching two; and how he had almost insensibly adapted his explanations to both minds – that with which his own was daily in contact, and that which he only approached through it. He thought of the gossip that had reached him from the Nuns’ House, to the effect that Helena, whom he had mistrusted as so proud and fierce, submitted herself to the fairy-bride (as he called her), and learnt from her what she knew. He thought of the picturesque alliance between those two, externally so very different. He thought – perhaps most of all – could it be that these things were yet but so many weeks old, and had become an integral part of his life?
As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took it to be an infallible sign that he ‘wanted support,’ the blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, worthy of Cloisterham and of Minor Canon Corner. Above it, a portrait of Handel in a flowing wig beamed down at the spectator, with a knowing air of being up to the contents of the closet, and a musical air of intending to combine all its harmonies in one delicious fugue. No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be disclosed by degrees, this rare closet had a lock in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides met; the one falling down, and the other pushing up. The upper slide, on being pulled down (leaving the lower a double mystery), revealed deep shelves of pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin canisters, spice-boxes, and agreeably outlandish vessels of blue and white, the luscious lodgings of preserved tamarinds and ginger. Every benevolent inhabitant of this retreat had his name inscribed upon his stomach. The pickles, in a uniform of rich brown double-breasted buttoned coat, and yellow or sombre drab continuations, announced their portly forms, in printed capitals, as Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Mixed, and other members of that noble family. The jams, as being of a less masculine temperament, and as wearing curlpapers, announced themselves in feminine caligraphy, like a soft whisper, to be Raspberry, Gooseberry, Apricot, Plum, Damson, Apple, and Peach. The scene closing on these charmers, and the lower slide ascending, oranges were revealed, attended by a mighty japanned sugar-box, to temper their acerbity if unripe. Home-made biscuits waited at the Court of these Powers, accompanied by a goodly fragment of plum-cake, and various slender ladies’ fingers, to be dipped into sweet wine and kissed. Lowest of all, a compact leaden-vault enshrined the sweet wine and a stock of cordials: whence issued whispers of Seville Orange, Lemon, Almond, and Caraway-seed. There was a crowning air upon this closet of closets, of having been for ages hummed through by the Cathedral bell and organ, until those venerable bees had made sublimated honey of everything in store; and it was always observed that every dipper among the shelves (deep, as has been noticed, and swallowing up head, shoulders, and elbows) came forth again mellow-faced, and seeming to have undergone a saccharine transfiguration.
The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up quite as willing a victim to a nauseous medicinal herb-closet, also presided over by the china shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To what amazing infusions of gentian, peppermint, gilliflower, sage, parsley, thyme, rue, rosemary, and dandelion, did his courageous stomach submit itself! In what wonderful wrappers, enclosing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe his rosy and contented face, if his mother suspected him of a toothache! What botanical blotches would he cheerfully stick upon his cheek, or forehead, if the dear old lady convicted him of an imperceptible pimple there! Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper staircase-landing: a low and narrow whitewashed cell, where bunches of dried leaves hung from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were spread out upon shelves, in company with portentous bottles: would the Reverend Septimus submissively be led, like the highly popular lamb who has so long and unresistingly been led to the slaughter, and there would he, unlike that lamb, bore nobody but himself. Not even doing that much, so that the old lady were busy and pleased, he would quietly swallow what was given him, merely taking a corrective dip of hands and face into the great bowl of dried rose-leaves, and into the other great bowl of dried lavender, and then would go out, as confident in the sweetening powers of Cloisterham Weir and a wholesome mind, as Lady Macbeth was hopeless of those of all the seas that roll.
In the present instance the good Minor Canon took his glass of Constantia with an excellent grace, and, so supported to his mother’s satisfaction, applied himself to the remaining duties of the day. In their orderly and punctual progress they brought round Vesper Service and twilight. The Cathedral being very cold, he set off for a brisk trot after service; the trot to end in a charge at his favourite fragment of ruin, which was to be carried by storm, without a pause for breath.
He carried it in a masterly manner, and, not breathed even then, stood looking down upon the river. The river at Cloisterham is sufficiently near the sea to throw up oftentimes a quantity of seaweed. An unusual quantity had come in with the last tide, and this, and the confusion of the water, and the restless dipping and flapping of the noisy gulls, and an angry light out seaward beyond the brown-sailed barges that were turning black, foreshadowed a stormy night. In his mind he was contrasting the wild and noisy sea with the quiet harbour of Minor Canon Corner, when Helena and Neville Landless passed below him. He had had the two together in his thoughts all day, and at once climbed down to speak to them together. The footing was rough in an uncertain light for any tread save that of a good climber; but the Minor Canon was as good a climber as most men, and stood beside them before many good climbers would have been half-way down.
‘A wild evening, Miss Landless! Do you not find your usual walk with your brother too exposed and cold for the time of year? Or at all events, when the sun is down, and the weather is driving in from the sea?’
Helena thought not. It was their favourite walk. It was very retired.
‘It is very retired,’ assented Mr. Crisparkle, laying hold of his opportunity straightway, and walking on with them. ‘It is a place of all others where one can speak without interruption, as I wish to do. Mr. Neville, I believe you tell your sister everything that passes between us?’
‘Everything, sir.’
‘Consequently,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘your sister is aware that I have repeatedly urged you to make some kind of apology for that unfortunate occurrence which befell on the night of your arrival here.’ In saying it he looked to her, and not to him; therefore it was she, and not he, who replied:
‘Yes.’
‘I call it unfortunate, Miss Helena,’ resumed Mr. Crisparkle, ‘forasmuch as it certainly has engendered a prejudice against Neville. There is a notion about, that he is a dangerously passionate fellow, of an uncontrollable and furious temper: he is really avoided as such.’
‘I have no doubt he is, poor fellow,’ said Helena, with a look of proud compassion at her brother, expressing a deep sense of his being ungenerously treated. ‘I should be quite sure of it, from your saying so; but what you tell me is confirmed by suppressed hints and references that I meet with every day.’
‘Now,’ Mr. Crisparkle again resumed, in a tone of mild though firm persuasion, ‘is not this to be regretted, and ought it not to be amended? These are early days of Neville’s in Cloisterham, and I have no fear of his outliving such a prejudice, and proving himself to have been misunderstood. But how much wiser to take action at once, than to trust to uncertain time! Besides, apart from its being politic, it is right. For there can be no question that Neville was wrong.’
‘He was provoked,’ Helena submitted.
‘He was the assailant,’ Mr. Crisparkle submitted.
They walked on in silence, until Helena raised her eyes to the Minor Canon’s face, and said, almost reproachfully: ‘O Mr. Crisparkle, would you have Neville throw himself at young Drood’s feet, or at Mr. Jasper’s, who maligns him every day? In your heart you cannot mean it. From your heart you could not do it, if his case were yours.’
‘I have represented to Mr. Crisparkle, Helena,’ said Neville, with a glance of deference towards his tutor, ‘that if I could do it from my heart, I would. But I cannot, and I revolt from the pretence. You forget however, that to put the case to Mr. Crisparkle as his own, is to suppose to have done what I did.’
‘I ask his pardon,’ said Helena.
‘You see,’ remarked Mr. Crisparkle, again laying hold of his opportunity, though with a moderate and delicate touch, ‘you both instinctively acknowledge that Neville did wrong. Then why stop short, and not otherwise acknowledge it?’
‘Is there no difference,’ asked Helena, with a little faltering in her manner; ‘between submission to a generous spirit, and submission to a base or trivial one?’
Before the worthy Minor Canon was quite ready with his argument in reference to this nice distinction, Neville struck in:
‘Help me to clear myself with Mr. Crisparkle, Helena. Help me to convince him that I cannot be the first to make concessions without mockery and falsehood. My nature must be changed before I can do so, and it is not changed. I am sensible of inexpressible affront, and deliberate aggravation of inexpressible affront, and I am angry. The plain truth is, I am still as angry when I recall that night as I was that night.’
‘Neville,’ hinted the Minor Canon, with a steady countenance, ‘you have repeated that former action of your hands, which I so much dislike.’
‘I am sorry for it, sir, but it was involuntary. I confessed that I was still as angry.’
‘And I confess,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, ‘that I hoped for better things.’
‘I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but it would be far worse to deceive you, and I should deceive you grossly if I pretended that you had softened me in this respect. The time may come when your powerful influence will do even that with the difficult pupil whose antecedents you know; but it has not come yet. Is this so, and in spite of my struggles against myself, Helena?’
She, whose dark eyes were watching the effect of what he said on Mr. Crisparkle’s face, replied – to Mr. Crisparkle, not to him: ‘It is so.’ After a short pause, she answered the slightest look of inquiry conceivable, in her brother’s eyes, with as slight an affirmative bend of her own head; and he went on:
‘I have never yet had the courage to say to you, sir, what in full openness I ought to have said when you first talked with me on this subject. It is not easy to say, and I have been withheld by a fear of its seeming ridiculous, which is very strong upon me down to this last moment, and might, but for my sister, prevent my being quite open with you even now. – I admire Miss Bud, sir, so very much, that I cannot bear her being treated with conceit or indifference; and even if I did not feel that I had an injury against young Drood on my own account, I should feel that I had an injury against him on hers.’
Mr. Crisparkle, in utter amazement, looked at Helena for corroboration, and met in her expressive face full corroboration, and a plea for advice.
‘The young lady of whom you speak is, as you know, Mr. Neville, shortly to be married,’ said Mr. Crisparkle, gravely; ‘therefore your admiration, if it be of that special nature which you seem to indicate, is outrageously misplaced. Moreover, it is monstrous that you should take upon yourself to be the young lady’s champion against her chosen husband. Besides, you have seen them only once. The young lady has become your sister’s friend; and I wonder that your sister, even on her behalf, has not checked you in this irrational and culpable fancy.’
‘She has tried, sir, but uselessly. Husband or no husband, that fellow is incapable of the feeling with which I am inspired towards the beautiful young creature whom he treats like a doll. I say he is as incapable of it, as he is unworthy of her. I say she is sacrificed in being bestowed upon him. I say that I love her, and despise and hate him!’ This with a face so flushed, and a gesture so violent, that his sister crossed to his side, and caught his arm, remonstrating, ‘Neville, Neville!’
Thus recalled to himself, he quickly became sensible of having lost the guard he had set upon his passionate tendency, and covered his face with his hand, as one repentant and wretched.
Mr. Crisparkle, watching him attentively, and at the same time meditating how to proceed, walked on for some paces in silence. Then he spoke:
‘Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville, I am sorely grieved to see in you more traces of a character as sullen, angry, and wild, as the night now closing in. They are of too serious an aspect to leave me the resource of treating the infatuation you have disclosed, as undeserving serious consideration. I give it very serious consideration, and I speak to you accordingly. This feud between you and young Drood must not go on. I cannot permit it to go on any longer, knowing what I now know from you, and you living under my roof. Whatever prejudiced and unauthorised constructions your blind and envious wrath may put upon his character, it is a frank, good-natured character. I know I can trust to it for that. Now, pray observe what I am about to say. On reflection, and on your sister’s representation, I am willing to admit that, in making peace with young Drood, you have a right to be met half-way. I will engage that you shall be, and even that young Drood shall make the first advance. This condition fulfilled, you will pledge me the honour of a Christian gentleman that the quarrel is for ever at an end on your side. What may be in your heart when you give him your hand, can only be known to the Searcher of all hearts; but it will never go well with you, if there be any treachery there. So far, as to that; next as to what I must again speak of as your infatuation. I understand it to have been confided to me, and to be known to no other person save your sister and yourself. Do I understand aright?’
Helena answered in a low voice: ‘It is only known to us three who are here together.’
‘It is not at all known to the young lady, your friend?’
‘On my soul, no!’
‘I require you, then, to give me your similar and solemn pledge, Mr. Neville, that it shall remain the secret it is, and that you will take no other action whatsoever upon it than endeavouring (and that most earnestly) to erase it from your mind. I will not tell you that it will soon pass; I will not tell you that it is the fancy of the moment; I will not tell you that such caprices have their rise and fall among the young and ardent every hour; I will leave you undisturbed in the belief that it has few parallels or none, that it will abide with you a long time, and that it will be very difficult to conquer. So much the more weight shall I attach to the pledge I require from you, when it is unreservedly given.’
