human
No, never,
gpt
My mother, said Mr Marshall,
human
Remember Cousin Bess! Of course I do, said Aubrey, a tone of interest coming into his voice.
gpt
What of her?
human
My mother was her sister Ellen.
gpt
Why, Mr Marshall! are you my cousin?
human
If it please you to acknowledge me, Cousin Aubrey.
gpt
That I will, indeed! said Aubrey, clasping the hand of the ejected minister. Then, with a sudden and complete change of tone,--
human
But, maybe, if you knew all I know, you were not over ready to acknowledge me.
gpt
You are in trouble, my friend, answered Mr Marshall sympathisingly.
human
Can I help you thereout? At least I can feel for you in it, if I may do no more.
gpt
Mr Marshall, did you ever in your life feel that you had been a grand fool?
human
Yes,
gpt
I am glad to hear it, though I should not have thought so. I thought you had always been a precisely proper person, and I did not suppose you could feel for me a whit. But I must tell my trouble to somebody, or I shall grow desperate. Look you, I have lost my place, and I can get none other, and I have not twenty pounds in the world, and I owe an hundred pounds, and I can't go home.
human
Thank God!
gpt
Well, to be sure,--Mr Marshall, what on earth are you thanking God for?
human
That your husks have lost their flavour, my son. So long as the prodigal finds the husks sweet, there is little hope of him. But let him once discover that they are dry husks, and not sweet fruits, and that his companions are swine, and not princes--then he is coming to himself, and there is hope of making a man of him again. I say therefore, Thank God!
gpt
I shall never make anything better than a fool.
human
A man commonly ceases to be a fool when he begins to reckon himself one.
gpt
You know not the worst yet. But--Mr Marshall, if I tell it you, you will not betray me, for my poor old grandmother's sake? I never gave her much cause to love me, but I know she doth, and it would grieve her if I came to public hurt and shame.
human
It would grieve me, my cousin, more than you know. Fear not, but speak freely.
gpt
Well,--I know not if my grandmother told you that I was intimate with some of these poor gentlemen that have paid the penalty of their treason of late?
human
I know that you knew Percy and Winter--and, I dare say, Rookwood.
gpt
I knew them all, and Catesby too. And though I was not privy to the plot--not quite so bad as that!--yet I would have followed Mr Tom Winter almost anywhere,--ay, even into worse than I did.
human
Surely, Aubrey Louvaine, you never dreamed of perversion!
gpt
Mr Marshall, I was ready to do anything Tom Winter bade me; but he never meddled with my religion. And--come, I may as well make a clean breast, as I have begun--I loved Dorothy Rookwood, and if she had held up a finger, I should have gone after. You think the Rookwoods Protestants, don't you? They are not.
human
I doubted them somewhat, he said:
gpt
Oh, she would have none of me. She told me I was a beggar and a fool both, and she spake but the bitter truth. Yet it was bitter when she said it.
human
My poor boy!
gpt
I thought Hans but a fool when he went and bound himself to yon mercer--he, the son of a Dutch Baron! But I see now--I was the fool, not he. Had I spent my days in selling silk stockings instead of wearing them, and taken my wages home to my mother like a good little boy, it had been better for me. I see, now,--now that the doors are all shut against me, and I dare not go home.
human
Yet tell me, Aubrey, for I scarce understand it--why dare you not go home?