“We are all taught to ask to be delivered from evil, Arthur,” said Laura, in a low voice. “I am glad if you were spared from that great crime; and only sorry to think that you could by any possibility have been led into it. But you never could; and you don’t think you could. Your acts are generous and kind: you disdain mean actions. You take Blanche without money, and without a bribe. Yes, thanks be to Heaven, dear brother. You could not have sold yourself away; I knew you could not when it came to the day, and you did not. Praise be—be where praise is due. Why does this horrid scepticism pursue you, my Arthur? Why doubt and sneer at your own heart—at every one’s? Oh, if you knew the pain you give me—how I lie awake and think of those hard sentences, dear brother, and wish them unspoken, unthought!”
“Do I cause you many thoughts and many tears, Laura?” asked Arthur. The fulness of innocent love beamed from her in reply. A smile heavenly pure, a glance of unutterable tenderness, sympathy, pity, shone in her face—all which indications of love and purity Arthur beheld and worshipped in her, as you would watch them in a child, as one fancies one might regard them in an angel.
“I—I don’t know what I have done,” he said, simply, “to have merited such regard from two such women. It is like undeserved praise, Laura—or too much good fortune, which frightens one—or a great post, when a man feels that he is not fit for it. Ah, sister, how weak and wicked we are; how spotless, and full of love and truth, Heaven made you! I think for some of you there has been no fall,” he said, looking at the charming girl with an almost paternal glance of admiration. “You can’t help having sweet thoughts, and doing good actions. Dear creature! they are the flowers which you bear.”
“And what else, sir?” asked Laura. “I see a sneer coming over your face. What is it? Why does it come to drive all the good thoughts away?”
“A sneer, is there? I was thinking, my dear, that nature in making you so good and loving did very well: but——”
“But what? What is that wicked but? and why are you always calling it up?”
“But will come in spite of us. But is reflection. But is the sceptic’s familiar, with whom he has made a compact; and if he forgets it, and indulges in happy day-dreams, or building of air-castles, or listens to sweet music let us say, or to the bells ringing to church, But taps at the door, and says, Master, I am here. You are my master; but I am yours. Go where you will you can’t travel without me. I will whisper to you when you are on your knees at church. I will be at your marriage pillow. I will sit down at your table with your children. I will be behind your deathbed curtain. That is what But is,” Pen said.
“Pen, you frighten me,” cried Laura.
“Do you know what But came and said to me just now, when I was looking at you? But said, If that girl had reason as well as love, she would love you no more. If she knew you as you are—the sullied, selfish being which you know—she must part from you, and could give you no love and no sympathy. Didn’t I say,” he added fondly, “that some of you seem exempt from the fall? Love you know; but the knowledge of evil is kept from you.”
“What is this you young folks are talking about?” asked Lady Rockminster, who at this moment made her appearance in the room, having performed, in the mystic retirement of her own apartments, and under the hands of her attendant, those elaborate toilet-rites without which the worthy old lady never presented herself to public view. “Mr. Pendennis, you are always coming here.”