Bleak House - страница 110

change – if you do come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and woman, than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, Rick!) – don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your confidence, if I do nothing to forfeit it.'

'I am very sure, sir,' returned Richard, 'that I speak for Ada, too, when I say that you have the strongest power over us both – rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection – strengthening every day.'

'Dear cousin John,' said Ada, on his shoulder, 'my father's place can never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have rendered to him, is transferred to you.'

'Come!' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'Now for our assumption. Now we lift our eyes up, and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do nothing well, without sincerely meaning it, and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here, or leave your cousin Ada here.'

'I will leave it here, sir,' replied Richard, smiling, 'if I brought it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance.'

'Right!' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'If you are not to make her happy, why should you pursue her?'

'I wouldn't make her unhappy – no, not even for her love,' retorted Richard, proudly.

'Well said!' cried Mr. Jarndyce; 'that's well said! She remains here, in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well. Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think you and Ada had better take a walk.'

Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him, and then the cousins went out of the room – looking back again directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.

The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes, as they passed down the adjoining room on which the sun was shining, and out at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight, as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come, and making them all years of brightness. So they passed away into the shadow, and were gone. It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over.

'Am I right, Esther?' said my Guardian, when they were gone.

He who was so good and wise, to ask me whether he was right!

'Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core of so much that is good!' said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. 'I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near.' And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.