Mr. Cuming Walters guesses that Jasper was to aim a deadly blow (with his left hand, to judge from the picture) at Helena, and that Neville "was to give his life for hers." But, manifestly, Neville was to lead the hunt of Jasper up the spiral stair, as in Collins's design, and was to be dashed from the roof: his body beneath was to be "THAT, I never saw before. THAT must be real. Look what a poor mean miserable thing it is!" as Jasper says in his vision.
Mr. Cuming Walters, pursuing his idea of Helena as both Datchery and also as the owner of "the YOUNG face" of the youth in the vault (and also of the young hands, a young girl's hands could never pass for those of "an elderly buffer"), exclaims: "Imagine the intense power of the dramatic climax, when Datchery, the elderly man, is re- transformed into Helena Landless, the young and handsome woman; and when she reveals the seemingly impenetrable secret which had been closed up in one guilty man's mind."
The situations are startling, I admit, but how would Canon Crisparkle like them? He is, we know, to marry Helena, "the young person, my dear," Miss Twinkleton would say, "who for months lived alone, at inns, wearing a blue surtout, a buff waistcoat, and grey - " Here horror chokes the utterance of Miss Twinkleton. "Then she was in the vault in ANOTHER disguise, not more womanly, at that awful scene when poor Mr. Jasper was driven mad, so that he confessed all sorts of nonsense, for, my dear, all the Close believes that it WAS nonsense, and that Mr. Jasper was reduced to insanity by persecution. And Mr. Crisparkle, with that elegant dainty mother of his - it has broken her heart - is marrying this half-caste gipsy TROLLOP, with her blue surtout and grey - oh, it is a disgrace to Cloisterham!"
The climax, in fact, as devised by Mr. Cuming Walters, is rather too dramatic for the comfort of a minor canon. A humorist like Dickens ought to have seen the absurdity of the situation. Mr. Walters MAY be right, Helena may be Datchery, but she ought not to be.
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。