“Humph! How’s that?” asked Carraways. “But the fact is, Basil, you seem changed altogether. I sometimes think that one of the judges has lost his gravity, and you’ve picked it up: for after all, it doesn’t seem very well to fit you. I hardly know if I like you so well in it as in the boy suit. However, you’re right, lad. Be grave betimes: ’tis best, and prepares you before hand for the knocks that are certain to come. Though, to be sure, if a man may count upon a bright and easy road—a path of diamond dust with rosebud borders, like the gardens in the fairy book—you are the man.”
“Indeed, sir,” and Basil shook his head, “I think—that is, I know you mistake my path of life. ’Tis not so fine; and more, I hope not so tedious as that you see for me. In a word, I shall owe nothing to Mr. Jericho.”
“Indeed! What, quarrelled with him? I’m sorry for that. You should remember your interest, Basil.”
“There, my good sir, without a thought you speak a wisdom that, with a thought, you despise. I shall try to make interest one with honesty; if it succeeds, why, the profits will bring the best sweets of gain; if it fails, why still it leaves something behind; it is not all beggary.”
“Very good, very excellent, Basil”—said Carraways—“nevertheless, you must not cast away Mr. Jericho. He is a strange man, no doubt. If half that’s said of him be true, a very strange man. But then again only that very half, said of the most of us, would make a deuced alteration in the best looking,—the most punctual and respectable. Therefore, not half—no, not a twentieth part that’s said—is to be listened to. Nevertheless Basil”—and, despite of himself, Carraways looked grave, and felt the craving of curiosity—“nevertheless do you know, it is all about the world that your father-in-law, a few days since, received a pistol-bullet through his heart, and that moreover his heart has a hole through it at this very moment?”
“Yes, I have heard the story,” said Basil. “One of the jokes of”—
“Ha! Well, I thought so; a joke is it? Bessy would have it that it meant nothing more than a fable—or hieroglyphic—or something of that sort. Of course, I knew that. I knew a man couldn’t live with a hole in his heart,” for all which Carraways seemed a little disappointed at Basil’s half-explanation at the moment. Common truth fell like cold water upon the awakened fancy of the old merchant; with the greater shock, as it was rare indeed that he laid himself out for an enjoyment of the extraordinary.
“And now, sir,” said Basil, and he almost trembled as he spoke, “I wish to address you upon the dearest question of my life.”
“Bless me!” said Carraways, and he gravely seated himself, and motioned Basil to a chair. Then the old man, with a slight tremor of hand, wiped his spectacles, replaced them on his nose, cleared his throat, clasped his hands, and endeavoured to look the very study of easy, unconscious courtesy—placid and polite. And at the time the colour was tingling in his cheeks, and he felt his heart beat distinctly, painfully.
In few stammering words, speech running freer as it flowed, Basil spoke of his affection for Bessy. All that has been said since the first father was first asked for the first daughter—if the reader be capable of the task, may be imagined; and the most eloquent and affectionate phrases assorted from the mountain of words, to piece out at the bravest and best the declaration of Basil. At length he paused. Carraways pressed his hand, and looked mournfully in the young man’s face.