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PinkMonkey.com-Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens



880

Chapter 48

Being for the Benefit of Mr Vincent Crummles, and
positively his last Appearance on this Stage.

It was with a very sad and heavy heart, oppressed by many
painful ideas, that Nicholas retraced his steps eastward and
betook himself to the counting-house of Cheeryble Brothers.
Whatever the idle hopes he had suffered himself to entertain,
whatever the pleasant visions which had sprung up in his mind
and grouped themselves round the fair image of Madeline Bray,
they were now dispelled, and not a vestige of their gaiety and
brightness remained.

It would be a poor compliment to Nicholas’s better nature, and
one which he was very far from deserving, to insinuate that the
solution, and such a solution, of the mystery which had seemed to
surround Madeline Bray, when he was ignorant even of her name,
had damped his ardour or cooled the fervour of his admiration. If
he had regarded her before, with such a passion as young men
attracted by mere beauty and elegance may entertain, he was now
conscious of much deeper and stronger feelings. But, reverence
for the truth and purity of her heart, respect for the helplessness
and loneliness of her situation, sympathy with the trials of one so
young and fair and admiration of her great and noble spirit, all
seemed to raise her far above his reach, and, while they imparted
new depth and dignity to his love, to whisper that it was hopeless.

‘I will keep my word, as I have pledged it to her,’ said Nicholas,
manfully. ‘This is no common trust that I have to discharge, and I

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PinkMonkey.com-Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens



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