She allowed him to separate himself from her, and he, after saying, 'Now Liz, be a rational girl and a good sister,' walked away. She remained standing alone with Bradley Headstone, and it was not until she raised her eyes, that he spoke.
'I said,' he began, 'when I saw you last, that there was something unexplained, which might perhaps influence you. I have come this evening to explain it. I hope you will not judge of me by my hesitating manner when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest disadvantage. It is most unfortunate for me that I wish you to see me at my best, and that I know you see me at my worst.'
She moved slowly on when he paused, and he moved slowly on beside her.
'It seems egotistical to begin by saying so much about myself,' he resumed, 'but whatever I say to you seems, even in my own ears, below what I want to say, and different from what I want to say. Ican't help it. So it is. You are the ruin of me.'
She started at the passionate sound of the last words, and at the passionate action of his hands, with which they were accompanied.
'Yes! you are the ruin--the ruin--the ruin--of me. I have no resources in myself, I have no confidence in myself, I have no government of myself when you are near me or in my thoughts.
And you are always in my thoughts now. I have never been quit of you since I first saw you. Oh, that was a wretched day for me!
That was a wretched, miserable day!'
A touch of pity for him mingled with her dislike of him, and she said: 'Mr Headstone, I am grieved to have done you any harm, but I have never meant it.'
'There!' he cried, despairingly. 'Now, I seem to have reproached you, instead of revealing to you the state of my own mind! Bear with me. I am always wrong when you are in question. It is my doom.'
Struggling with himself, and by times looking up at the deserted windows of the houses as if there could be anything written in their grimy panes that would help him, he paced the whole pavement at her side, before he spoke again.
'I must try to give expression to what is in my mind; it shall and must be spoken. Though you see me so confounded--though you strike me so helpless--I ask you to believe that there are many people who think well of me; that there are some people who highly esteem me; that I have in my way won a Station which is considered worth winning.'
'Surely, Mr Headstone, I do believe it. Surely I have always known it from Charley.'
'I ask you to believe that if I were to offer my home such as it is, my station such as it is, my affections such as they are, to any one of the best considered, and best qualified, and most distinguished, among the young women engaged in my calling, they would probably be accepted. Even readily accepted.'
'I do not doubt it,' said Lizzie, with her eyes upon the ground.
'I have sometimes had it in my thoughts to make that offer and to settle down as many men of my class do: I on the one side of a school, my wife on the other, both of us interested in the same work.'
'Why have you not done so?' asked Lizzie Hexam. 'Why do you not do so?'
'Far better that I never did! The only one grain of comfort I have had these many weeks,' he said, always speaking passionately, and, when most emphatic, repeating that former action of his hands, which was like flinging his heart's blood down before her in drops upon the pavement-stones; 'the only one grain of comfort Ihave had these many weeks is, that I never did. For if I had, and if the same spell had come upon me for my ruin, I know I should have broken that tie asunder as if it had been thread.'
She glanced at him with a glance of fear, and a shrinking gesture.
He answered, as if she had spoken.
'No! It would not have been voluntary on my part, any more than it is voluntary in me to be here now. You draw me to you. If Iwere shut up in a strong prison, you would draw me out. I should break through the wall to come to you. If I were lying on a sick bed, you would draw me up--to stagger to your feet and fall there.'
The wild energy of the man, now quite let loose, was absolutely terrible. He stopped and laid his hand upon a piece of the coping of the burial-ground enclosure, as if he would have dislodged the stone.
'No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him.
To some men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,' striking himself upon the breast, 'has been heaved up ever since.'
'Mr Headstone, I have heard enough. Let me stop you here. It will be better for you and better for me. Let us find my brother.'
'Not yet. It shall and must be spoken. I have been in torments ever since I stopped short of it before. You are alarmed. It is another of my miseries that I cannot speak to you or speak of you without stumbling at every syllable, unless I let the check go altogether and run mad. Here is a man lighting the lamps. He will be gone directly. I entreat of you let us walk round this place again. You have no reason to look alarmed; I can restrain myself, and I will.'
She yielded to the entreaty--how could she do otherwise!--and they paced the stones in silence. One by one the lights leaped up making the cold grey church tower more remote, and they were alone again. He said no more until they had regained the spot where he had broken off; there, he again stood still, and again grasped the stone. In saying what he said then, he never looked at her; but looked at it and wrenched at it.
