She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.
“Harriet,” he said, detaining it in his. “To speak to you of the worth of any sacrifice that you can make now—above all, of any sacrifice of mere money—would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be, I feel, not less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great history, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to bend my head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes from a higher and better source of inspiration than my poor worldly knowledge. I will say only this: I am your faithful steward; and I would rather be so, and your chosen friend, than I would be anybody in the world, except yourself.”
She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good night.
“Are you going home?” he said. “Let me go with you.”
“Not tonight. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone. Will you come tomorrow?”
“Well, well,” said he, “I’ll come tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll think of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps you’ll think of it, dear Harriet, and—and—think of me a little in connection with it.”
He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: which was so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain Cuttle’s remedy more than once, and to rub his face with his sleeve. By degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his own frame of mind, glided melodiously into the “Harmonious Blacksmith,” which he played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed like true metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello and the empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood until nearly midnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set up on end in the sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole foundry full of harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable intelligence.
When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, taking a course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by byways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some open ground, where there were a few quiet little old houses standing among gardens. At the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and Harriet alighted.
Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on one side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across the garden to the house.
“How is your patient, nurse, tonight?” said Harriet.
“In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes, of my Uncle’s Betsey Jane!” returned the woman of the light complexion, in a sort of doleful rapture.
“In what respect?” asked Harriet.
“Miss, in all respects,” replied the other, “except that she’s grown up, and Betsey Jane, when at death’s door, was but a child.”
“But you have told me she recovered,” observed Harriet mildly; “so there is the more reason for hope, Mrs. Wickam.”
“Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to bear it!” said Mrs. Wickam, shaking her head. “My own spirits is not equal to it, but I don’t owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so blest!”
“You should try to be more cheerful,” remarked Harriet.
“Thank you, Miss, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Wickam grimly. “If I was so inclined, the loneliness of this situation—you’ll excuse my speaking so free—would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I ain’t at all. I’d rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was bereaved of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself the better for it.”
In truth, this was the very Mrs. Wickam who had superseded Mrs. Richards as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained the loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The excellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription, which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary and uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as instructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors, attendants on sick beds, and the like, had established Mrs. Wickam in very good business as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities being particularly commended by an admiring and numerous connection.
Mrs. Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side, lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old woman sat mechanically staring out at
