HomeCharles DickensGeorge Silverman′s Explanation

George Silverman′s Explanation. Charles Dickens

′I am absolutely blessed,′ said my lady, casting up her eyes (and so taking them off me for one moment), ′in having to do with gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to the idea of being mercenary!′ She shivered at the word. ′And now as to the pupil.′

′The -?′ I was quite at a loss.

′Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is. She is,′ said my lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, ′I do verily believe, the most extraordinary girl in this world. Already knows more Greek and Latin than Lady Jane Grey. And taught herself! Has not yet, remember, derived a moment′s advantage from Mr. Silverman′s classical acquirements. To say nothing of mathematics, which she is bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I hear from my son and others) Mr. Silverman′s reputation is so deservedly high!′

Under my lady′s eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt persuaded; and yet I did not know where I could have dropped it.

′Adelina,′ said my lady, ′is my only daughter. If I did not feel quite convinced that I am not blinded by a mother′s partiality; unless I was absolutely sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it a high and unusual privilege to direct her studies, - I should introduce a mercenary element into this conversation, and ask you on what terms - ′

I entreated my lady to go no further. My lady saw that I was troubled, and did me the honour to comply with my request.

EIGHTH CHAPTER

EVERYTHING in mental acquisition that her brother might have been, if he would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirable qualities that no one but herself could be, - this was Adelina.

I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory, her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then; I am over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours as she was in those, bright and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful and good.

When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say? In the first day? in the first week? in the first month? Impossible to trace. If I be (as I am) unable to represent to myself any previous period of my life as quite separable from her attracting power, how can I answer for this one detail?

Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on me. And yet, comparing it with the far heavier burden that I afterwards took up, it does not seem to me now to have been very hard to bear. In the knowledge that I did love her, and that I should love her while my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my secret deep in my own breast, and she was never to find it, there was a kind of sustaining joy or pride, or comfort, mingled with my pain.

But later on, - say, a year later on, - when I made another discovery, then indeed my suffering and my struggle were strong. That other discovery was -

These words will never see the light, if ever, until my heart is dust; until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of which, when imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual glimpse of remembrance; until all the pulses that ever beat around us shall have long been quiet; until all the fruits of all the tiny victories and defeats achieved in our little breasts shall have withered away. That discovery was that she loved me.

Next page →


← 13 page George Silverman′s Explanation 15 page →
Pages: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18
Overall 18 pages


© e-libr.com
feedback