“I came here, you pure fountain of love,” she said, “to see—as I began by telling you—what such a thing as you was like. I was curious. I am satisfied. Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours, with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are expecting you, and whom your money will console. When it’s all gone, you can believe, and trust, and love again, you know! I thought you a broken toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished, and thrown away. But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and trustfulness—which you look like, and is quite consistent with your story!—I have something more to say. Attend to it; for what I say I’ll do. Do you hear me, you fairy spirit? What I say, I mean to do!”
Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.
“Hide yourself,” she pursued, “if not at home, somewhere. Let it be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life—or, better still, in some obscure death. I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have found no way of helping it to be still! I have heard of such means sometimes. I believe they may be easily found.”
A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here. She stopped, and listened to it as if it were music.
“I am of a strange nature, perhaps,” Rosa Dartle went on; “but I can’t breathe freely in the air you breathe. I find it sickly. Therefore, I will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. If you live here to-morrow, I’ll have your story and your character proclaimed on the common stair. There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed. If, leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me), the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat. Being assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favor of your hand, I am sanguine as to that.”
Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could I bear it?
“Oh me, oh me!” exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there was no relenting in Rosa Dartle’s smile. “What, what, shall I do!”
“Do?” returned the other. “Live happy in your own reflections! Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth’s tenderness—he would have made you his serving-man’s wife, would he not?—or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honorable position to which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair—find one, and take your flight to Heaven!”
I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was his, thank God!
She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out of my sight.