Beulah - Page 217/348

"Sir, you could help me, if you would." She clasped her hands over

his arm, and fixed her eyes on his countenance, with all the

confidence and dependence of other days.

"Did I ever refuse you anything you asked?" said he, looking down at

the little hands on his arm, and at the pale, anxious face, with its

deep, troubled eyes.

"No! and it is precisely for that reason that I ask assistance from

you now."

"I suppose you are reduced to the last necessity. What has become of

your pride, Beulah?"

"It is all here, in my heart, sir! thundering to me to walk out and

leave you, since you are so unlike yourself!"

He looked stern and indescribably sad. She glanced up an instant at

his fascinating eyes, and then, laying her head down on his arm, as

she used to do in childhood, said resolutely: "Oh, sir! you must aid me. Whom have I to advise me but you?"

"My advice has about as much weight with you as Charon's would,

could he utter it. I am an admirable counselor only so long as my

opinions harmonize with the dictates of your own will. How am I to

aid you? I went, at twelve o'clock last night, to see a dying man,

and, passing along the street, saw a light burning from your window.

Two hours later, as I returned, it glimmered there still. Why were

you up? Beulah, what is the matter with you? Has your last treatise

on the 'Origin of Ideas' run away with those of its author, and

landed you both in a region of vagaries? Remember, I warned you."

"Something worse, sir." "Perhaps German metaphysics have stranded

you on the bleak, bald cliffs of Pyrrhonism?"

"Sir, it seems to me there is a great deal of unmerited odium laid

upon the innocent shoulders of German metaphysics. People declaim

against the science of metaphysics, as if it were the disease

itself; whereas it is the remedy. Metaphysics do not originate the

trouble; their very existence proves the priority of the disease

which they attempt to relieve--"

"Decidedly a homeopathic remedy," interrupted her guardian, smiling.

"But, sir, the questions which disturb my mind are older than my

acquaintance with so-called philosophic works. They have troubled me

from my childhood."

"Nevertheless, I warned you not to explore my library," said he,

with a touch of sorrow in his voice.

"How, then, can you habitually read books which you are unwilling to

put into my hands?"