“I am not required to go yet; I would not desert
him, dear Miss Summerson, even if I were.”
One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before
he left me. I knew that I should not be worthier
of the love I could not take if I reserved it.
“Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “you will
be glad to know from my lips before I say good night
that in the future, which is clear and bright before
me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to
regret or desire.”
It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
“From my childhood I have been,” said
I, “the object of the untiring goodness of the
best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every
tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing
I could do in the compass of a life could express the
feelings of a single day.”
“I share those feelings,” he returned.
“You speak of Mr. Jarndyce.”
“You know his virtues well,” said I, “but
few can know the greatness of his character as I know
it. All its highest and best qualities have
been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in
the shaping out of that future in which I am so happy.
And if your highest homage and respect had not been
his already—which I know they are—they
would have been his, I think, on this assurance and
in the feeling it would have awakened in you towards
him for my sake.”
He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would
have been. I gave him my hand again.
“Good night,” I said, “Good-bye.”
“The first until we meet to-morrow, the second
as a farewell to this theme between us for ever.”
“Yes.”
“Good night; good-bye.”
He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching
the street. His love, in all its constancy and
generosity, had come so suddenly upon me that he had
not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again
and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.
But they were not tears of regret and sorrow.
No. He had called me the beloved of his life
and had said I would be evermore as dear to him as
I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold
the triumph of having heard those words. My
first wild thought had died away. It was not
too late to hear them, for it was not too late to
be animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and
contented. How easy my path, how much easier
than his!
Another Discovery
I had not the courage to see any one that night.
I had not even the courage to see myself, for I was
afraid that my tears might a little reproach me.
I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the
dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had
no need of any light to read my guardian’s letter
by, for I knew it by heart. I took it from the
place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by
its own clear light of integrity and love, and went
to sleep with it on my pillow.
