Part 83 (1/2)
”Ah! I was triumphant--triumphant in my innermost heart. I thought then that all the world must give way to me, because I had taken a double-first. And now--I have given way before all the world. What have I done with all the jewels of my youth? Thrown them before swine!”
”Come, George; you are hardly seven-and-twenty yet.”
”No, hardly; and I have no profession, no fortune, no pursuit, and no purpose. I am here, sitting on the broken stone of an old tomb, merely because it is as well for me to be here as elsewhere. I have made myself to be one as to whose whereabouts no man need make inquiry--and no woman. If that black, one-eyed brute, whom I thrashed a-top of the pyramid, had stuck his knife in me, who would have been the worse for it? You, perhaps--for six weeks or so.”
”You know there are many would have wept for you.”
”I know but one. She would have wept, while it would be ten times better that she should rejoice. Yes, she would weep; for I have marred her happiness as I have marred my own. But who cares for me, of whose care I can be proud? Who is anxious for me, whom I can dare to thank, whom I may dare to love?”
”Do we not love you at Hurst Staple?”
”I do not know. But I know this, that you ought to be ashamed of me.
I think Adela Gauntlet is my friend; that is, if in our pig-headed country a modest girl may love a man who is neither her brother nor her lover.”
”I am sure she is,” said Arthur; and then there was another pause.
”Do you know,” he continued, ”I once thought--”
”Thought what?”
”That you were fond of Adela.”
”So I am, heartily fond of her.”
”But I mean more than that.”
”You once thought that I would have married her if I could. That is what you mean.”
”Yes,” said Wilkinson, blus.h.i.+ng to his eyes. But it did not matter; for no one could see him.
”Well, I will make a clean breast of it, Arthur. Men can talk here, sitting in the desert, who would be as mute as death at home in England. Yes; there was once a moment, once _one_ moment, in which I would have married her--a moment in which I flattered myself that I could forget Caroline Waddington. Ah! if I could tell you how Adela behaved!”
”How did she behave? Tell me--what did she say?” said Arthur, with almost feverish anxiety.
”She bade me remember, that those who dare to love must dare to suffer. She told me that the wounded stag, 'that from the hunter's aim has ta'en a hurt,' must endure to live, 'left and abandoned of his velvet friends.'--And she told me true. I have not all her courage; but I will take a lesson from her, and learn to suffer--quietly, without a word, if that be possible.”
”Then you did propose to her?”
”No; hardly that. I cannot tell what I said myself; but 'twas thus she answered me.”
”But what do you mean by taking a lesson from her? Has she any such suffering?”
”Nay! You may ask her. I did not.”
”But you said so just now; at any rate you left me to infer it. Is there any one whom Adela Gauntlet really loves?”
George Bertram did not answer the question at once. He had plighted his word to her as her friend that he would keep her secret; and then, moreover, that secret had become known to him by mere guesses.
He had no right, by any law, to say it as a fact that Adela Gauntlet was not heart-whole. But still he thought that he would say so. Why should he not do something towards making these two people happy?
”Do you believe that Adela is really in love with any one?” repeated Arthur.
”If I tell you that, will you tell me this--Are you in love with any one--you yourself?”