“Your brother is an altered man,” returned the gentleman, compassionately. “I assure you I don’t doubt it.”
“He was an altered man when he did wrong,” said Harriet. “He is an altered man again, and is his true self now, believe me, Sir.”
“But we go on,” said her visitor, rubbing his forehead, in an absent manner, with his hand, and then drumming thoughtfully on the table, “we go on in our clockwork routine, from day to day, and can’t make out, or follow, these changes. They—they’re a metaphysical sort of thing. We—we haven’t leisure for it. We—we haven’t courage. They’re not taught at schools or colleges, and we don’t know how to set about it. In short, we are so d⸺d businesslike,” said the gentleman, walking to the window, and back, and sitting down again, in a state of extreme dissatisfaction and vexation.
“I am sure,” said the gentleman, rubbing his forehead again; and drumming on the table as before, “I have good reason to believe that a jog-trot life, the same from day to day, would reconcile one to anything. One don’t see anything, one don’t hear anything, one don’t know anything; that’s the fact. We go on taking everything for granted, and so we go on, until whatever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we do from habit. Habit is all I shall have to report, when I am called upon to plead to my conscience, on my deathbed. ‘Habit,’ says I; ‘I was deaf, dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a million things, from habit.’ ‘Very businesslike indeed, Mr. What’s-your-name,’ says Conscience, ‘but it won’t do here!’ ”
The gentleman got up and walked to the window again and back: seriously uneasy, though giving his uneasiness this peculiar expression.
“Miss Harriet,” he said, resuming his chair, “I wish you would let me serve you. Look at me; I ought to look honest, for I know I am so, at present. Do I?”
“Yes,” she answered with a smile.
“I believe every word you have said,” he returned. “I am full of self-reproach that I might have known this and seen this, and known you and seen you, any time these dozen years, and that I never have. I hardly know how I ever got here—creature that I am, not only of my own habit, but of other people’s! But having done so, let me do something. I ask it in all honour and respect. You inspire me with both, in the highest degree. Let me do something.”
“We are contented, Sir.”
“No, no, not quite,” returned the gentleman. “I think not quite. There are some little comforts that might smooth your life, and his. And his!” he repeated, fancying that had made some impression on her. “I have been in the habit of thinking that there was nothing wanting to be done for him; that it was all settled and over; in short, of not thinking at all about it. I am different now. Let me do something for him. You too,” said the visitor, with careful delicacy, “have need to watch your health closely, for his sake, and I fear it fails.”
“Whoever you may be, Sir,” answered Harriet, raising her eyes to his face, “I am deeply grateful to you. I feel certain that in all you say, you have no object in the world but kindness to us. But years have passed since we began this life; and to take from my brother any part of what has so endeared him to me, and so proved his better resolution—any fragment of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgotten reparation—would be to diminish the comfort it will be to him and me, when that time comes to each of us, of which you spoke just now. I thank you better with these tears than any words. Believe it, pray.”
The gentleman was moved, and put the hand she held out, to his lips, much as a tender father might kiss the hand of a dutiful child. But more reverently.
“If the day should ever come,” said Harriet, “when he is restored, in part, to the position he lost—”
“Restored!” cried the gentleman, quickly. “How can that be hoped for? In whose hands does the power of any restoration lie? It is no mistake of mine, surely, to suppose that his having gained the priceless blessing of his life, is one cause of the animosity shown to him by his brother.”
“You touch upon a subject that is never breathed between us; not even between us,” said Harriet.
“I beg your forgiveness,” said the visitor. “I should have known it. I entreat you to forget that I have done so, inadvertently. And now, as I dare urge no more—as I am not sure that I have a right to do so—though Heaven knows, even that doubt may be habit,” said the gentleman, rubbing his head, as despondently as before, “let me; though a stranger, yet no stranger; ask two favours.”
“What are they?” she inquired.
“The first, that if you should see cause to change your resolution, you will suffer me to be as your right hand. My name shall then be at your service; it is useless now, and always insignificant.”
“Our choice of friends,” she answered, smiling faintly, “is not so great, that I need any time for consideration. I can promise that.”
“The second, that you will allow me sometimes, say every Monday morning, at nine o’clock—habit again—I must be businesslike,” said the gentleman, with a whimsical inclination to quarrel with himself on that head, “in walking past, to see you at the door or window. I don’t ask to come in, as your brother will be gone out at that hour. I don’t ask to speak to you. I merely ask to see, for the satisfaction of my own mind, that you are well, and without intrusion to remind you,
