EIGHTH CHAPTER

by Charles Dickens

　　EVERYTHING in mental acquisition that her brother might have been,if he would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirablequalities that no one but herself could be, - this was Adelina. I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon herintelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory,her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-pacedtutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then; Iam over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours as shewas in those, bright and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful andgood. When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say? In the firstday? in the first week? in the first month? Impossible to trace.If I be (as I am) unable to represent to myself any previous periodof my life as quite separable from her attracting power, how can Ianswer for this one detail? Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on me. Andyet, comparing it with the far heavier burden that I afterwardstook 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 herwhile my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my secret deep inmy own breast, and she was never to find it, there was a kind ofsustaining joy or pride, or comfort, mingled with my pain. But later on, - say, a year later on, - when I made anotherdiscovery, 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 isdust; until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of which,when imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual glimpse ofremembrance; until all the pulses that ever beat around us shallhave long been quiet; until all the fruits of all the tinyvictories and defeats achieved in our little breasts shall havewithered away. That discovery was that she loved me. She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me for that; she mayhave over-valued my discharge of duty to her, and loved me forthat; she may have refined upon a playful compassion which shewould sometimes show for what she called my want of wisdom,according to the light of the world's dark lanterns, and loved mefor that; she may - she must - have confused the borrowed light ofwhat I had only learned, with its brightness in its pure, originalrays; but she loved me at that time, and she made me know it. Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off from her inmy lady's eyes as if I had been some domesticated creature ofanother kind. But they could not put me farther from her than Iput myself when I set my merits against hers. More than that.They could not put me, by millions of fathoms, half so low beneathher as I put myself when in imagination I took advantage of hernoble trustfulness, took the fortune that I knew she must possessin her own right, and left her to find herself, in the zenith ofher beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty, plodding me. No! Worldliness should not enter here at any cost. If I had triedto keep it out of other ground, how much harder was I bound to tryto keep it out from this sacred place! But there was something daring in her broad, generous character,that demanded at so delicate a crisis to be delicately andpatiently addressed. And many and many a bitter night (O, I foundI could cry for reasons not purely physical, at this pass of mylife!) I took my course. My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously overstated theaccommodation of my pretty house. There was room in it for onlyone pupil. He was a young gentleman near coming of age, very wellconnected, but what is called a poor relation. His parents weredead. The charges of his living and reading with me were defrayedby an uncle; and he and I were to do our utmost together for threeyears towards qualifying him to make his way. At this time he hadentered into his second year with me. He was well-looking, clever,energetic, enthusiastic; bold; in the best sense of the term, athorough young Anglo-Saxon. I resolved to bring these two together.