Szilard's face burned like fire at these words, but the old man hastened to soothe him.
"No, you could never reconcile yourself to that, I am sure. But you thought, perhaps, that the girl might descend to your level and share your poverty. There are in the world many a poor lad and lass who endow one another with nothing but their ardent love and yet make happy couples enough. So, no doubt, you argued, and herein lies the fallacy that has deceived you. If you had been enamoured of a poor girl, I should have said: it is rather early to think of marriage, but if it be God's will, take her! Work and fight your way through the world where there is room enough for every one. The lass, too, is used to deprivation, and you are also. She will be content with little. She can sew, she will do your cooking for you, and, if need be, your washing likewise! She can make one penny go as far as two. When there is a lot to do she will sing to make the work lighter, and when your supper is slender, her good humour and her loving embraces will make it more. But my dear boy! how are you going to make a poor housewife out of a girl who has been rich? How can she ever feel at home in a wretched, out-of-the-way shanty, where she will not even have you always by her side, for you will have to be looking after your daily bread? She will say nothing, she will make no complaint, but you will perceive that she misses something. She will not ask you for a new dress, but you will see that the one she wears is shabby and it would break your heart to reflect that you have fettered the girl you love to your step-motherly destiny, and your manly pride would one day blush for the recklessness which led you to drag her down with you."
"My dear guardian," said Szilard, "to prove to you that I did think of all these things let me tell you that I have put by from my salary and commissions enough to enable us to live comfortably for at least a twelvemonth. For a whole year I have lived on two pence a day in order to save, and during all that time I am sure you have not heard from me one word of complaint."
Mr. Sipos was horrified. It was an even worse case than he had imagined. What! to live for a whole year on two pence a day in order to scrape together a small capital for one's beloved! It would be very difficult to cure a madness which took such a practical turn as this!
"But my dear boy!" he resumed, "what is the good of it all? What can you do now that your secrets are discovered? It would have served you right if the girl's parents had proceeded against you on a charge of murder, for you were an accomplice in this poisoning business; but I am pretty sure they will only threaten to do so in case she refuses the baron. And what, pray, can you do in case they thus compel her to become his wife?"
"Whoever the baron may be," rejoined Szilard, "I suppose he is at least a gentleman; and if a woman looks him straight in the face on the wedding day and says to him: 'I cannot love you because I love another and always will love another,'—I cannot think he will be so devoid of feeling as to make her his wife notwithstanding."
"And if she does not say this, but voluntarily gives him her hand in order to save you from the persecutions of her family, what then?"
"Hearken, my dear guardian! She may be compelled to write to me that she loves me no more and I must forget her, but I shall not believe it till she pronounces or writes down a word the meaning of which only we two understand and nobody else in the world can discover. So long as this one word does not get into the possession of a third person, I shall know that she has not broken with me and no power in this world shall tear her from my heart. She may be silent, because she is not free to speak; she may speak because she is commanded to speak; yet, for all that, this religiously guarded word tells me what she really feels—and what no other human intelligence can understand. If you like, my dear guardian, you may betray this confession of mine to Henrietta's relatives and they will torment the girl till they get her to pronounce the mysterious word which once pronounced will burst the bonds that unite us. She will be driven to say something. But oh! women who love are very crafty. The word they will report to me will not be the right one. It is possible, too, that they may take her far away from me. Let them guard her well I say, let those who watch over her never close an eye. And if they give her a husband, they had best pray for his life for they know not what a fated thing it is to give away in marriage a girl who bears about in her heart the secret of a third person."
"My dear young friend, I see that we shall not come to an understanding with each other. You are bent upon plunging into ruin a poor defenceless girl in the name of what you call love, and will not renounce, though you have not the slightest hope of winning her—that I do not understand. I, on the other hand, am the legal adviser of the young lady's family, and, in that capacity, I considered it my duty to protest very energetically against the match in question. But when they placed those precious papers in my hands, I said at once that they must marry her to this man in any case. Otherwise they would have fancied I was advocating your crazy hopes, that I was an interested party and simply opposed the family candidate in order to smuggle in a kinsman of my own in his stead. That idea I was determined to knock out of their heads, happen what would. But that of course you do not understand. And now you had better return to your room. Destiny will one day explain to all of us what we do not understand now."