'
'Do you know,' said Jasper, when he had pushed away his plate and
glass, and had sat meditating for a few minutes: 'do you know that
I find some crumbs of comfort in the communication with which you
have so much amazed me?'
'DO you?' returned Mr. Grewgious, pretty plainly adding the
unspoken clause: 'I don't, I thank you!'
'After recovering from the shock of a piece of news of my dear boy,
so entirely unexpected, and so destructive of all the castles I had
built for him; and after having had time to think of it; yes.'
'I shall be glad to pick up your crumbs,' said Mr. Grewgious,
dryly.
'Is there not, or is there--if I deceive myself, tell me so, and
shorten my pain--is there not, or is there, hope that, finding
himself in this new position, and becoming sensitively alive to the
awkward burden of explanation, in this quarter, and that, and the
other, with which it would load him, he avoided the awkwardness,
and took to flight?'
'Such a thing might be,' said Mr. Grewgious, pondering.
'Such a thing has been. I have read of cases in which people,
rather than face a seven days' wonder, and have to account for
themselves to the idle and impertinent, have taken themselves away,
and been long unheard of.'
'I believe such things have happened,' said Mr. Grewgious,
pondering still.
'When I had, and could have, no suspicion,' pursued Jasper, eagerly
following the new track, 'that the dear lost boy had withheld
anything from me--most of all, such a leading matter as this--what
gleam of light was there for me in the whole black sky? When I
supposed that his intended wife was here, and his marriage close at
hand, how could I entertain the possibility of his voluntarily
leaving this place, in a manner that would be so unaccountable,
capricious, and cruel? But now that I know what you have told me,
is there no little chink through which day pierces? Supposing him
to have disappeared of his own act, is not his disappearance more
accountable and less cruel? The fact of his having just parted
from your ward, is in itself a sort of reason for his going away.
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