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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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958 But, if Nicholas’s own heart embarrassed him, Newman’s came to his relief. There was so much earnestness in his remonstrance, and such sincerity and fervour in his manner, odd and ludicrous as it always was, that it imparted to Nicholas new firmness, and enabled him to say, after he had walked on for some little way in silence: ‘You read me a good lesson, Newman, and I will profit by it. One step, at least, I may take--am bound to take indeed--and to that I will apply myself tomorrow.’ ‘What is that?’ asked Noggs wistfully. ‘Not to threaten Ralph? Not to see the father?’ ‘To see the daughter, Newman,’ replied Nicholas. ‘To do what, after all, is the utmost that the brothers could do, if they were here, as Heaven send they were! To reason with her upon this hideous union, to point out to her all the horrors to which she is hastening; rashly, it may be, and without due reflection. To entreat her, at least, to pause. She can have had no counsellor for her good. Perhaps even I may move her so far yet, though it is the eleventh hour, and she upon the very brink of ruin.’ ‘Bravely spoken!’ said Newman. ‘Well done, well done! Yes. Very good.’ ‘And I do declare,’ cried Nicholas, with honest enthusiasm, ‘that in this effort I am influenced by no selfish or personal considerations, but by pity for her, and detestation and abhorrence of this scheme; and that I would do the same, were there twenty rivals in the field, and I the last and least favoured of them all.’ ‘You would, I believe,’ said Newman. ‘But where are you hurrying now?’ |
