Kitabı oku: «The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. A Novel», sayfa 2
The gardener's son twines his fingers convulsively. Were Mr. Temple his equal in station, it would have fared ill with him, smarting as the man is with passionate jealousy and the sting of unrequited love. He controls himself sufficiently to say,
"I must ask you one question, sir. Do you remain at Springfield?"
"No; I leave to-night, and I shall probably be absent for weeks. Ah, I perceive that answer is satisfactory to you. I see a lady approaching. Shall you or I retire?"
The gardener's son, casting one glance at the advancing form, walks slowly away, and his shadow is soon swallowed up by other shadows, among which he walks in pain and grief.
Nelly Marston is in no holiday humour; she is trembling with shame at the thought of what passed in the sick-chamber of her peevish mistress, and she approaches Mr. Temple with downcast head. Love and humiliation are fighting a desperate battle within her breast, and she does not respond sympathetically to her lover's glad greeting. He uses his best arts to soothe and comfort her; he addresses her by every endearing title, saying she is dearer to him than all the world, and beseeching her to throw all the rest aside. She listens in silence at the first, as he pours this sweet balm of Gilead upon her troubled soul. He is in his brightest mood, and his speech which tells the oft-told tale flows sweetly and tenderly. They stand beneath the stars, and he calls upon them to witness his love, his truth, his honour. Every word that falls from his lips sinks into her soul, and her heart is like a garden filled with unfading flowers. Humiliation and unrest melt into oblivion, never more to rise and agonise her. He loves her; he tells her so a hundred times and in a hundred ways. He will be true to her; he swears it by all the beautiful signs around them. Fairer and more lovely grows the night as he kisses away her tears. The moon rises higher in the heavens and bathes them in light. Softly, more tenderly he speaks, and she, like a child listens, listens-listens and believes, and hides her blushing face from him. Ah, if truth lives, it lives in him-in him, the symbol of all that is good and manly, and noble! She is so weak, he so strong! She knows so little, he so much! The sweet and enthralling words he whispers into her ears as her head lies upon his breast, form the first page of the brightest book that life can open to her; and the sighing of the breeze, the sleeping flowers, the hushed melody of the waving grass, the laughing, flashing lights of heaven playing about the dreamy shadows in the waters of the brook, are one and all delicious evidences of his truth, his honour, and his love.
"I love you-I love you-I love you!" he vows and vows again. "Put your arms about my neck-so! and whispers to me what I am dying to hear."
"You are my life!" she sighs, and their lips meet; and then they sit and talk, and, as she gazes into the immeasurable distances of the stars, she sees, with the eyes of her soul, a happy future, filled with fond and sweet imaginings,
PART THE THIRD
AUTUMN
The season of England's loveliest sunsets is here. The golden corn, ripe and ready for the sickle, bows gracefully beneath the lavender-perfumed breeze, and whispers to bountiful earth, "My time has come. Farewell!"
In a garden attached to a cottage situated twenty miles from Springfield stands Nelly Marston, by the side of an old apple-tree loaded with fair fruit, and looking, with the white moss gathered about its limbs, like an ancient knight clothed in silver armour. The cottage has many rooms of delightfully odd shapes, is tastefully furnished, and is built in the centre of an acre of land so prettily laid out and so bright with colour that few strangers see it without pausing a while to admire.
Nelly Marston is more beautiful than when we saw her last at Springfield, and to the poetical mind presents a fine contrast to the gnarled and ancient tree, which, could it speak, might honestly say, "Old I am, but am yet fair to the eye and can produce good things. Come, my girl, gather sweetness from me, and wisdom too, if you need it."
She gathers sweetness and that is enough for her. From where she stands, she has a broken view of the winding lane which, from distant wider spaces, leads to the front of the cottage. Often and again her eyes are directed towards this lane, with a look which denotes that her heart is in them. She is like fair Rosamond waiting for her prince. He comes! A horseman turns into the winding path and waves his hand to her. She replies with the gladdest of smiles and with a waving of her own pretty hand, and her heart beats joyfully to the music of the horse's hoof. Her prince draws rein at the cottage-door, and she is there to meet him. A lad with face deeply pock-marked takes the horse to the stable, casting as many admiring glances towards Nelly as time will permit of.
"Now, Nelly," says the prince gaily, as he throws his arms about her and kisses her again and again, "was ever lover more punctual than I?"
"How can I tell?" she answers, "I never had but one."
"Ah, Nelly, Nelly!" he exclaims, with uplifted finger and an arch smile; "do you forget the gardener's son?"
"No, I do not forget him; he was very good to me. But I do not mean in that way."
"In what way, then, puss?"
"You'll tease me till I tell you. I don't know how to say it."
"Say it you must, though, my queen."
"Of course I must. You have got what you call a strong will. Isn't that it?"
"That is it," he assents, with a nod which is both careless and determined.
"And are never to be turned from your purpose?"
"Never. That is the only way to get on in life, and I mean to get on."
"Nothing can prevent that. You are so clever that I am half inclined to be frightened of you. And I should be, if I were not sure you loved me."
He kisses her as he observes, "Put the strongest will into the crucible of love, and it melts like lead in a furnace. In such a test steel would become as pliant as running water. Love is the most intoxicating poison, my darling."
"I don't like the word," she says.
"The word 'darling'?" he inquires.
"No, the word 'poison.' Love is not a poison; it is an elixir." She winds her arms round his neck, and murmurs, "It has given me a new life. The world is more beautiful than it used to be I am sure."
He smiles at her sentiment. "I remember telling you once that you had a strong will of your own, Nelly."
"I haven't that much," she says, placing the nail of her thumb to the tip of her little finger. "Not that much!"
"But you are a cunning puss, for all that," he says, as he draws her face to his. They are in the cottage now, and she is sitting on his knee. "You want to fly away from the subject we were speaking of, so my strong will must bring you back to it. Well, I'll be content with a compromise. Who is this lover that so limits your knowledge?"
"I shall not tell you that, sir. You must guess it-if you can! As if you could! No, I'll not say! I can keep a secret. Oh, you may laugh, but I can!"
"Well, then, where is he?"
"Where? Why, thousands of miles away of course!"
"Let me not catch him!" he cries gaily. "Well, now, pet, to spite that person, who I hope will not suffer very much in consequence, I intend to stop with you a whole fortnight."
Her face lights up with joy.
"I have important business in London," he continues, with a sly laugh; "oh, most important! My presence is imperatively required in the great city. The interests of an influential client depend personally upon me, so Lady Temple has given me leave of absence. Confiding old soul!"
"Lady Temple is the same as ever?"
"The same as ever. No change. Fretful and peevish, throwing out all sorts of dark innuendoes one minute, and smiling upon me the next. Now a lamb, now a tigress. I have the temper of an angel, Nell, or I could never stand it. But I humour her-for your sake, pet, as well as my own. Our future depends upon her.
"Does she speak of me?"
"She mentioned your name once last week, and not amiably. But enough of her. Goodbye, my worthy aunt, for a happy fortnight. If she guessed how matters stood, Nell, between me and you, I should be-well, best not think of that. The prospect is not a pleasant one. Now tell me how you have passed the time, how many new laid-eggs you get a day, and how the chickens are, whether the new little pig has any idea of its ultimate fate, how the fruit is getting on, and how you like the new boy I sent to look after the stable. You did not want him you wrote to me; but thereby hangs a tale, which you shall hear presently. Upon my word, Nell, I suspect he is in love with you, like everybody else who sees you. I have a kind of belief that you are a love-witch. He never took his eyes off you, all the time he was waiting for my nag. Now for the reason of his being here. Nelly, to-morrow morning, before you are up, there will arrive at this little cottage the prettiest basket-carriage and the prettiest pair of ponies in England. A present for you, pet, from your lover thousands of miles away. Ah, you kiss me for that, do you! Then I take it, you are pleased with this mysterious lover of yours!"
"I believe no woman in the world was ever half so happy as I. When you are with me, there is not a cloud on my life."
"That's a good hearing," he says, heartily. "Why, Nelly, you are a living wonder! A satisfied woman! I shall scarcely be surprised to hear you say you have not a wish ungratified."
"Not quite that. I have one wish."
"To wit," he prompts.
She whispers it to him.
"That the next fortnight would last for ever, so that you would never have to leave me!"
"A woman's wish all over," he says. "But the old man with the scythe will not be denied, my pet. While lovers dream, time flies the faster, I can't imagine you with white hair, Nell; yet you would look lovely anyway."
" Your hair will be white, too, remember," she says, in a tone of tender jesting. "It will be strange to look back so many years, and think and talk of the past. But we shall be to each other then what we are now. Say that we shall."
"Say it! I swear it, my pet! Let Time do his worst, then. You shall not pluck another white hair out of my head. Nelly, I love you more and more every day of my life."
"And nothing shall ever part us!"
"Nothing, my darling!"
She is, indeed, supremely happy. The springtime of youth and love is hers, and no deeper heresy could have been whispered to her than the warning such a springtime resembles
"The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by-and-by a cloud takes all away."
The minutes fly all too quickly, and Love, with magic brush, paints the present and the time to come.
PART THE FOURTH
WINTER
Fifteen months have passed. It is winter, and the snow is falling; weather-wise men say that it will continue to fall for days. Peaceful and solemn are the fields, with Nature's carpet of virgin snow covering and protecting the seedlings in the soil beneath. White and graceful devices beautify the woods, the traceries of which are so wonderfully delicate and exquisite that none but spirit fingers could have shaped them, and every little branch stands out bright and clear in the life-giving air.
The scene is the same as the last, but the pretty cottage shows signs of neglect. Our Nelly is there, and there is also a change in her. She is no longer the bright and winsome girl we looked upon a short time since. Her face is thin and haggard, and the expression on her features is one of despair and agony. In the clear light of the healthy winter's day she walks up and down, and round and round the little room where love once dwelt, and where she called up fair visions. Her fingers are tightly interlaced, her lips are white and trembling, her eyes dilate with fear and helpless bewilderment. She does not speak, and for an hour at least she walks about the room with tumultuous agony at her breast.
Watching her from without, with sympathising eyes, and with an air which denotes that he bears magnetically a share in her pain, is the stable-lad who was hired to look after the prettiest pair of ponies in the world, a present to her from her lover, who vowed that nothing should ever part them-from her lover, who had stolen "her soul with many vows of love, and ne'er a true one." And ne'er a true one! Ah, kind Heaven, can it be possible? Can such treachery exist in a world where goodness is? No, she will not believe it. She strives to shake the doubt from her, feebly she wrestles with it, but it clings to her with the tenacity of truth, and inflicts unspeakable torture upon her.
"If she'd only set down!" muttered the stable-boy. "If she'd only be still a bit! If she'd only drop off asleep!"
But her whole soul is quivering; as her flesh might under the influence of a keen, palpable torture. Pale as she is, a fire is burning within her which almost maddens her, and a thousand feverish pulses in her being are beating in cruel sympathy. Is love left in the world? Is faithfulness? Is manliness? No. The world is filled with shame, and dishonour, and treachery, and she stands there, their living, suffering symbol.
Why the stable-lad is near her no one but himself could explain, and he perhaps would have been puzzled to do so. He was dismissed from his service months ago, when the ponies and basket-carriage were sold; but he refused to leave. He lingers about the house, picks up his food anyhow, sleeps anywhere, and during the daylight hours is always ready to Nelly's call. She has sometimes, from the despair born of loneliness, made a companion of him. She has no other now.
He experiences a feeling of relief when, after more than an hour has passed, he observes a change in her movements. She throws on her hat hurriedly, and passes out of the house. The lad follows her at a distance. She does not know that she has forgotten her cloak, and she heeds not the snow. The fire burning within her warms her with a terrible, dangerous warmth. To all external impressions she seems to be absolutely dead. She walks for a mile into the village, and enters a stationer's shop, where the post-office is kept.
"Have you any letters for me?" she asks.
She is evidently known to the woman behind the counter, who replies with small courtesy, "There is nothing for you."
Nelly holds out her hand with eager imploring. She has not heard the answer.
"I told you there are no letters," says the woman.
"I beg your pardon," sighs Nelly, humbly; and looking round the shop, as though to find some other excuse for having entered, picks up a paper, pays for it, and retraces her steps home. Home! Alas!
The stable-lad follows her and is presently aware that somebody is following him. It is a man, and the lad turns and confronts him. The stranger takes no notice of the lad, and strives to pass.
"Where are you pushing to?" cries the lad, being himself the obstructive party.
"Out of my way, my lad," says the man, adding under his breath, "I must not lose her now."
"What are you following that lady for?" demands the lad.
The question is answered by another.
"You have something to do with her, then?"
"I should think I have."
"I want to know where she lives. I am a friend of hers."
"She wants 'em, I should say-badly."
This remark is made after a keen observance of the stranger's face. It is a well-looking, honest, ruddy face, and the examination appears to satisfy the lad.
"Wants what?" asks the stranger.
"Friends."
"I thought she had-rich ones."
"If she had," answers the lad, "and mind, I don't say she hadn't-if she had, she hasn't got 'em now."
"Ah," says the stranger, drawing a deep breath, "he has left her, then. Poor Nelly!"
The last two words, uttered with feeling, and in a low tone not intended to be heard, reach the lad's sharp ears, and dispose him still more favourably towards the stranger.
"Look here," he blurts out, "are you a gentleman?"
"Does that mean, am I rich?"
The lad looks dubious, not being quite sure.
"Am I a gentleman?" continues the stranger. "That's as it may be. Every true man is a gentleman; every gentleman is not a true man." The lad grins. Some understanding of the aphorism penetrates his uneducated mind. "Best ask me if I'm a true man, my lad."
"Well, then, are you?"
"I think so. So far as regards that lady, I am sure so."
"A true man, and a friend," says the lad. "That's just what she wants. No more gentlemen; she's had enough of them, I should say. I ain't a bit of use to her-was turned off when the ponies was sold, but couldn't go. Thought she might make use of me in some way, you see. She never give me a hard word-never. Not like him; he was as hard as nails-not to her; oh, no; he was always soft to her with his tongue, as far as I could see, and I kept my eyes open, and my ears too!"
By this time they have reached the cottage, and Nelly enters, without turning her head.
"There," says the lad, "that's where she lives, and if she ain't caught her death of cold, coming out without her shawl, I'll stand on my head for a week. But I can't do anything for her. She wants a man to stand by her, not a poor beggar like me."
The stranger looks kindly at the lad.
"My boy," he says, "if you have sisters, look sharp after them, and never let them play the game of lords and ladies. Now come with me, and tell me what I want to know."
It is a few hours later, and the snow is still falling. A candle is alight in the little room in which Nelly restlessly sits or walks. The paper she bought at the post-office lies unfolded on the table. Suddenly a moan escapes her lips; an inward pain has forced it from her. She grasps the table convulsively, and her fingers mechanically clutch the paper. The pain dies away, and she sits exhausted on her chair. Listlessly and without purpose she looks at the paper, seeing at first but a dim confusion of words; but presently something in the column she is gazing at presents itself to her mind in a coherent form. She passes her hands across her eyes, to clear the mist from them, bends eagerly down to the paper, and reads the words that have attracted her attention. Starting to her feet, with the paper in her hand, she is hurrying to the door, when it opens from without, and the stranger who had followed her home appears.
"John!" she cries, with her hand to her heart. "Ah, he has sent you, then! Thank God! He has sent you!"
"No one has sent me," says the gardener's son, who played his part in the Spring and Summer of our Prologue. "I am here of my own accord."
"What for?" she asks, shrinkingly, imploringly. It is remarkable in her that every word she speaks, every movement she makes, implies fear. She bears the appearance of a hunted animal, in dread of an unknown, unseen torture. "Why are you here?"
"I come to ask if I can serve you."
"You! You!"
"I-in truth and sincerity. I will not insult you by telling you that my feelings are unchanged-Good heavens! you are in pain!"
"Don't touch me! Don't come near me!" Two or three minutes pass in silence. Then the lines about her lips relax, and she speaks again, with a strange mingling of timidity and recklessness. "Do you know anything?"
"Much. Enough. Believe me, I wish to know nothing from you."
"And you come to ask me if you can serve me? Meaning it, in truth and sincerity?"
"Meaning it, in truth and sincerity."
She gazes at him, striving to discover whether his face bears truthful witness to the evidence of his lips, and, failing, makes a despairing motion with her hands.
"God help me!" she cries. "I cannot see. I do not know. But I believe you. I must, or I shall go mad. If you do not mean me to take you simply at your word, leave me at once without a sign."
"I will stop and serve you."
Her lips quiver at this exhibition of fidelity. Silently she hands him the paper, and points to the passage which appears to have aroused her to life. His eyes glitter as he reads the paragraph, which announces that on this evening Mr. Temple will take the chair at a lecture on "Man's Duty," to be delivered at a certain institution in a small town twenty miles away.
"I must go to that place," she says.
"To-night?"
"To-night. I must see him. I must speak to him to-night."
"You are not well; you are not fit to travel. To-morrow-"
"To-morrow I may not be able to travel. To-morrow will be too late. What I have said, I must do. You don't know what hangs upon it." Her lips contract with pain again. "If you leave me alone, and I do not see him to-night, I-I-"
Her eyes wander as her tongue refuses to shape the thought which holds her enthralled with fear and horror.
"A word first," says the gardener's son. "How long is it since you have seen him?"
"Three months."
"You have written to him?"
"Yes-yes. Ask me nothing more, for God's sake!"
"The place is twenty miles away. It is now six o'clock. In four hours the lecture will be over. It is snowing hard."
She comes close to his side; she looks straight into his eyes.
"John, your mother is dead."
"Yes."
"I heard of her at Springfield" – she shudders at the name-"and of your devotion to her. You loved her."
"I loved her."
"You stood at her deathbed."
"I held her in my arms when she died."
"Did she speak to you then?"
"A few words."
"They are sacred to you."
"Ay."
She pauses but for a moment; he looks at her wonderingly.
"John, you loved me!& quot; He clenches his hands, and digs his nails into his palms. "This that I am about to say will live in your mind till the last hour of your life, with the last words your mother spoke to you. If you do not take me at once to the place I wish to go to, I will not live till midnight!"
He sees the deadly resolution in her white face, and he determines to obey her.
"Remain here till I return," he says. "I will not be gone a quarter of an hour. Wrap yourself up well, for the wind is enough to freeze one. Put on a thick veil to keep the snow from your face. I will do as you wish."
"Ah, you are good! You are good!" she sighs, and for the first time during the day, for the first time for many days, the tears gush forth. "God reward you-and pity me!"
He goes, and returns within the time he named. A light American buggy is at the door, and the stable-lad is at the horse's head. Nelly is so weak that the young gardener has to support her as she walks from the house; he lifts her with ease in his strong arms into the conveyance-marvelling at her lightness, and loving and pitying her the more because of it-and mounts by her side. The stable-lad looks on wistfully.
"There is no room for you, my lad," says the gardener's son. "Stop here till we return. He can sleep in the house?" He asks this question of Nelly.
"Oh, yes," she answers, listlessly.
The next moment they are off.
The boy runs after them, keeps them in sight for a little while, but is compelled at length to stop for rest.
"Never mind," he mutters, when he has recovered his breath. "I know where they've gone to. I'll follow them the best way I can." And off he starts, at a more reasonable pace for a human being.
The snow comes down faster and faster, and the gardener's son, with his head bent to his breast, plies whip and rein. Their road lies through many winding lanes, lined and dotted with hedges and cottages. Not a soul is out but themselves, and the home-light gleams from the cottage windows. Echoes of voices are heard from within some laughing, some singing, some quarrelling. The gardener's son notices all the signs as they rattle past; Nelly is indifferent to them. They stop at a wayside inn, to give the horse breathing time. The gardener's son urges Nelly to take some refreshment; she refuses, with sad and fretful impatience, and begrudges the horse its needful rest. They start again, he striving to keep up her spirits with tender and cheerful words.
"Another milepost," he says, shaking up the reins, and in a few minutes proclaims blithely, "and another milepost! That's quick work, that last mile. What's the matter with the nag?" he cries, as the beast shies in sudden fright, "It's not a milepost. It's a woman."
The woman, who has been crouching by the roadside, rises, and walks silently into the gloom. They can see that she is in rags-a sad, poverty-stricken mortal, too numbed with cold and misery to make an appeal for charity. This thought is expressed by the young gardener, who concludes his remarks with, "Poor creature!" Nelly shudders at the words and the pitying tone in which they are uttered. White are the roads they traverse, leaving a clear-cut black gash behind them, into which the soft snow falls gently, as though to heal the wounds inflicted. White is the night, but Nelly's face bids fair to rival it. A sigh escapes her bosom, and she sinks back, insensible.
The gardener's son calls to her in alarm, but she does not reply. He sees a light in a cottage window a short distance off, and he draws up at the door. Yet even as he lifts Nelly down with gentle care, she recovers, and asks him with a frightened air why he has stopped.
"You fainted," he explains.
"I am well now," she cries, with feverish eagerness. "Go on-go on!"
He answers, with a determination, that he will not proceed until she has taken something to sustain her strength-a cup of tea, a little brandy, anything-and she is compelled to yield. He knocks at the cottage door. A labourer opens it. The young gardener explains the nature of his errand, and produces money.
"You are in luck's way," says the labourer. "The missus has just made herself a cup of tea."
His wife turns her head, with a reproachful look, towards the door, the opening of which has brought a blast of cold air into the room. She is kneeling by a cradle at the fireside, and with common, homely words of love is singing her baby to sleep. Nelly catches her breath as the song and its meaning fall upon her ears and understanding, and in an agony of agitation she begs the young gardener to take her away. The tears stream down her cheeks, and her face is convulsed as she thus implores him. The soft sweet song of the mother has cut into her heart with the sharp keenness of cruelly-edged steel.
"Let me go," she cries wildly, "let me go! O my heart, my heart!"
The labourer's wife comes hurriedly forward, still with the mother's love-light in her eyes. But instead of speaking soothing words to the girl, she exclaims,
"Lord save us! What brings you out on such a night as this, and where do you belong to? You ought to be ashamed of yourself" – (this to the young gardener) – "carrying the poor child about in such a condition!"
"Ay, ay, dame," replies the young gardener, gently, with an observant glance at Nelly, a glance which brings a troubled look into his own face; "it is a bitter night-"
Nelly stops his further speech, and putting her arm about the woman's neck, whispers to her. The young gardener turns his back upon the women, and the labourer sits on a chair, with his eyes to the ground. For a minute or so the men do not stir from the positions they have assumed; then, as though moved by a common thought, they step softly from the cottage, and stand in silence outside for many minutes, until the wife comes to the door, and beckons them in. Nelly is on her knees by the cradle.
"Get along as quick as you can," whispers the labourer's wife to the young gardener; "there's little time to lose."
There are tears on her face, and on Nelly's also, as she rises from her knees.
"God bless you, my dear!" says the woman to the unhappy girl; and when Nelly and her protector have departed, she turns to her husband, and kisses his weather-worn face, with a grateful feeling in her breast, to which she could not have given expression in speech. But words are not needed at this moment.
In the meanwhile the travellers are speeding onwards.
"Only four miles to go now," says the young gardener, cheerfully; "keep up your strength."
Nelly nods, and hides her face from her companion. It might make his heart faint to see the suffering depicted there.
It is difficult travelling, for the snow lies nearly a foot thick on the road, but John works with such good will, and the horse is so willing a creature, that they make fair progress. On they go, through wide and narrow spaces, clothed in purest white, and John now begins to wonder how this night's work will end. The reflection disturbs him, and he shakes the reins briskly, as though, by doing so, he can shake off distressing thoughts. Another mile is done, and another, and another. The young gardener's tongue keeps wagging all the way.
"I see the lights in the town," he says, in a tone of satisfaction, pointing with his whip.
The words have no sooner passed his lips than the horse twists its hoof in a hole hidden by the snow, and falls to the ground. John jumps out hastily, and lifts Nelly from the conveyance. The willing animal, in obedience to the gardener's urging, strives to rise, and partially succeeds, but slips down immediately with a groan.
"The horse is lamed," says John; "what shall we do now?"
He looks around for assistance. Not a house nor a human being is near them, and the town is nearly a mile distant. The lights which they could see from their elevation in the conveyance are no longer visible to them. Nelly's hands are tightly clasped as she looks imploringly into the face of her companion. "Can you walk?" asks John.
The reply comes from lips contracted with pain. "I must."
"I will carry you. I can!"
She shrinks from him, and moans that he must not touch her, and that she will try to walk. Slowly they plod along through the heavy snow, he encouraging her by every means in his power. Half an hour passes, and a church clock strikes ten. The church is quite close to them-a pretty, old-time place of worship, with many gables and an ancient porch; and a quaint churchyard adjoining, where hearts are at rest, and where human passions no longer bring woe and suffering.
Nelly clings to the gate of the church.
"John," she whispers.
"Yes," he answers, bending down to her.
"You have been a good friend to me. Will you continue to do what I wish?"
