BOOK IX

THE CHOICE

1

If human souls in sickness could have the food they pine for, Mrs.

Holmroyd would have taken Beryl to the grave in distant Clothton where

the child’s father lay. But the harsh voice of economy forbade. And

though she tortured sorrow unavailingly to find some means by which its

wishes might be met, she was loth, too, to part with the little daughter

whom death had snatched so violently from her arms. More than ever now

she felt the need of her. She yearned for the comfort of the child’s

companionship; for the knowledge that Beryl slept not too far from her

mother’s care. That she might open her window and draw comfort from the

thought that the breeze which came to her was the same that had kissed

and sweetened her little daughter’s grave. She did not blind conscience

entirely to the selfishness of her desires in this. Nay, conscience

bitterly upbraided her at moments with grudging Beryl to the child’s

dead father, and she owned the dreadful justice of the accusation; but

economy triumphed over irresolution at last, and lent her mother’s

selfishness a seemly cloak for what it did. She realized that it was the

voice of stern necessity to which she hearkened, and not the voice of

selfish interest alone, and Beryl was laid to rest in the green

churchyard of St. Saviour’s, beneath the golden iris of the clock that

kept perpetual watch upon the child’s sleep, on the sun-side of the

western door.

Her death, and the costs of her interment, brought terror appreciably

closer to the house in Spring Bank Gardens. For the little school had

been broken up, and schools--once their precarious life is

interrupted--sicken with almost a human facility and sink into decline.

Parents seem to entertain a prejudice against letting their children

reassemble too quickly beneath a roof which Death has visited. And

scholars show no eagerness to recommence the studies from which

providence has so mercifully freed them. And, truth to tell, for all she

strove to set her school afoot once more, with a veiled desperation that

tried to counteract the dreadful apathy she felt, Mrs. Holmroyd had no

heart for teaching; no heart for pies; no heart for anything but

undisturbed communion with her own sorrow. All else seemed vain and

secular, a very sacrilege of the grief so recently sustained. And

Beryl’s death had, as it were, awakened her with violence to the pious

mockery of this life she lived; this frail, precarious life she led so

earnestly and with such monstrous confidence. A cloud of illusions died

with her little daughter. A curtain had been torn aside between herself

and life’s realities, and the dreadful thinness of its texture was

revealed. Ideals were not attainable through power of themselves, her

disillusioned grief affirmed, but by the power of harder, baser things.

Aspirations were but ends; not means. Steps of the heart’s desire alone

take no man nearer heaven; they must be built of stouter stuff; of

brick; of stone; of anything that gives the stumbling foot a hold. And

Oswald, through this loss so recently sustained, and through the dire

uncertainty of life disclosed by it, grew doubly dear ... doubly

necessary and precious to her. He must be saved. He must be saved at all

cost for the fulfilment of the great ideal embodied in him. Desperately

she cast eyes on every side to seek the means of safety for her son, and

found--to her dismay--no place of any likelihood for them to rest on

save the broad figure of Councillor Burford.

Since that fateful Saturday evening when he had called to put his

fortune to the test, the Councillor had paid no further visit to the

house in Spring Bank Gardens. Oswald, and the little Beryl before she

died, were wont to listen for the once familiar footfall in vain; and

Mrs. Holmroyd for her secret’s sake had made believe to listen too,

lifting up her head with theirs and simulating a conviction falsified

when the step passed by. Nor was this silence broken when death cast his

shadow over Mrs. Holmroyd’s house. Neither the Councillor nor his

daughter vouchsafed any word or sign of sympathy in that first dark hour

when most she needed it. From the Rencils every imaginable kindness

flowed: flowers for the room where Beryl lay; a wreath to place upon her

tiny coffin and mitigate the cruelty of its shape. Kindness! Oh,

kindness in sufficiency to open every portal of her soul. Before they

sealed the sleeping countenance from sight for ever, Mrs. Rencil called

and laid the softest kiss upon the child’s cheek, turning from this to

clasp Mrs. Holmroyd’s hand in tearful, voiceless sympathy. If anything

had helped to sustain Mrs. Holmroyd’s belief in the unshakable goodness

of God during this sad hour, surely it was the human goodness of these

friends, whose human sympathy kindled the divine, and seemed to light

for her a lamp in heaven.

But the house on the Hunmouth Road gave no acknowledgment of the loss

she had sustained; breathed no word of condolence. And yet, Miss Burford

at least could plead no ignorance of the dark event befallen, for

Elizabeth had been constrained to sue for leave of absence from the

Councillor’s daughter on the morning that Oswald took his mother’s

message to her door. The leave of absence had been granted, it is true,

though not (if Elizabeth’s indiscreet recountal could be credited) too

graciously. “It was very awkward” (Miss Burford had declared) “and she

wished to goodness people wouldn’t go and fall ill right on her washday.

There were seven days in the week. Surely, with a little contrivance,

they might have picked some other day for That!”

This unkind comment on Miss Burford’s part--itself providing such a

commentary on the speaker--and the determined silence that succeeded it,

wounded Mrs. Holmroyd’s sorrow to the quick. In her heart there grew a

secret grievance against the Councillor and his daughter. Lit by the

contrasting kindness of the Rencils their conduct cast a shadow deep and

cruel. For herself she had no heed, but this lack of feeling shown

towards her dead child seemed almost too great for pardon. Many times

the Councillor had sat with Beryl at her table, accepting such small

hospitality as lay in Mrs. Holmroyd’s power to set before him; and now,

in the hour of overwhelming sorrow, he had no word or sign of sympathy

to offer her. Her outraged grief touched almost a degree of scorn for

the unworthiness on which her friendship had been in the past so

misbestowed. And when, three days after the sad function at St.

Saviour’s, she heard with Oswald the familiar footstep in the street,

succeeded by the customary rap upon the parlour door, and the spacious

figure of Councillor Burford pushed its way apologetically into her

room: “Are you there, ma’am?” ... she received the tardy visitor with

sorrowful reserve. The Councillor’s broad shoulders and blunt crowned

hat--whose removal, as of old, constituted his last concession to

politeness when he stood upon the hearthrug--and the overpowering

atmosphere of worldly business which he brought in with him,

unbreathable by sorrow’s finer lungs, stirred Mrs. Holmroyd to a feeling

almost of resentment, as for an undesired intrusion. For he took his

stand as he had always stood; held his hat in front of him as he had

always held it; looked round the room with an eye that seemed to betray

no consciousness of the awful change wrought in it since the occasion of

his last visit. And his first words when he faced Mrs. Holmroyd from the

hearthrug: “Well, ma’am. And how’s things going with you?” hurt her

terribly with their ineptness and inadequacy. For a while she could do

no more than bow her head and murmur “Thank you ...,” too deeply wounded

to come to closer quarters with such a question. But in the silence that

ensued she was moved after a moment to add the quiet intimation for her

dead child’s sake: “Ours--perhaps you have heard--has been a house of

great sorrow ... since you were here last, Mr. Burford,”--for the

Councillor’s attitude and silence caused her for a space to wonder

whether, after all, he could be acquainted with the fact of her trouble.

His answer quickly set the doubt at rest.

“So I’ve been given to understand, ma’am,” he said. “It’ll have been a

trying time for you.” He came no closer to condolence than that; his

words possessed no greater power of assimilation with fine sorrow than

his own broad person, but now that Mrs. Holmroyd had opened for him this

dark subject of such difficulty, he entered it with promptitude, as one

who had only been awaiting an invitation given.

“In fact ...” he said, “it’s that, as much as anything, that’s brought

me round this afternoon, ma’am.” He confessed with burly frankness that

the visit was perhaps belated, and in his own prosaic way expressed

regret, saying it wouldn’t have been amiss if he’d come a bit sooner (he

knew) than what he did, and as a matter of fact it had been in his mind

a day or two. But he hadn’t wanted to intrude on her at a time like

that, when she might be forgiven for preferring her own company to his.

Had Annie wrote to her? She hadn’t? No, he thought she hadn’t. It

wouldn’t have hurt her if she had ha’ done. But Mrs. Holmroyd knew how

it was at _their_ house. Always that amount of cleaning to be done. And

besides, his daughter wasn’t over and above fond of using the pen. She

never had been, all her life. “She’s not same as you, ma’am,--always

able to find the right word at the right time, whether it’s to be wrote

or spoke. Letter-writing costs her a deal of trouble, and never seems to

leave her in a particular good temper when it’s done.” All the same (he

owned) she might have called on Mrs. Holmroyd and spared him the

necessity. “She’s got a deal more time than me, and sympathy’s more a

woman’s business than a man’s. Not that I haven’t felt sympathy with

you, ma’am,” he hastened to assure her. “I have. I’ve felt a great deal.

In fact ... I venture to think there’s nobody in Daneborough that’s felt

sorrier for what’s took place than me.”

Compared with the ineffable, fine kindness of the Rencils such sympathy

was blundering and crude. And yet there showed a character of blunt

sincerity about both man and words that touched Mrs. Holmroyd’s heart

despite herself, and softened her remorsefully with a consciousness of

late misjudgment. For it was plain the Councillor had come this

afternoon to offer her a troubled sympathy which he lacked lips or skill

to utter. And sorrow must have food. The constrained crumbs he dropped

so awkwardly she took with gratitude, as for her dead child’s sake. All

thoughts, all words, all tributes directed to that cherished memory

were--to Mrs. Holmroyd’s heart--like a prolongation of the life

withdrawn; like bridges thrown out to span the chasm between them.

Little by little, as they spoke, the feeling of estrangement ebbed away.

It was no longer an obtrusive stranger who stood upon her hearthrug,

bringing the materiality of a harsh and alien world into the sacred

universe of sorrow. It was a familiar figure of much friendship, linked

by unbreakable association with the dead. At this very table he had

sat--how many times!--with Beryl in the past. How many times had Beryl

lifted up her eager voice to announce his coming. “Listen!... He’s

there. I can hear him ... ever so far away.”

Of the fact of their last eventful interview in this room but little

memory survived, and that of small embarrassment. For Mrs. Holmroyd the

intervention of a great sorrow had made every recollection pale save the

bitterness of recent days. She asked at length--for the cloth was laid,

and the board spread, and the Councillor’s eyes roved perpetually over

the table as he talked--if she might offer him a cup of tea. He had not

come for that (he said) and should be sorry to intrude upon her privacy

... but still.... And sat down, as of old, in the easy chair that Oswald

placed for him.

“It makes a strange difference to a table,” he commented, “when

anybody’s took from it so sudden. I can see the difference with my own

eyes, and I don’t need to be told what a difference _you’ll_ see,

ma’am.” He bit into his teacake with an amplitude that seemed, in some

sort, to attest the measure of the spaciousness of his regret.

He stayed an hour, and by the time he took his leave the old intimacy

had been re-established. Both Mrs. Holmroyd and Oswald were sorry when

he rose at last, and felt their loneliness intensified when the room was

void of his big, reassuring presence, and they heard their visitor’s

firm footsteps fading down the street.

“I shall perhaps take the liberty to call and see you again, some time

soon, ma’am,” were his concluding words on leaving, and Mrs. Holmroyd

thanked him for the token of his friendliness with real gratitude in

heart.

2

Councillor Burford kept his word. Before two days had passed he paid a

second visit to the house of mourning in Spring Bank Gardens. Thereafter

his visits resumed their old frequency. Within a month of Beryl’s death

and burial he sought occasion to repeat his fateful Saturday night’s

offer--choosing this time a more auspicious day--and Mrs. Holmroyd had

neither heart nor courage to say No in all its nakedness. Indeed, from

the first day of the resumption of his visits--divining to what end they

must inevitably lead--she had been pleading with her prejudices to think

more kindly of this big, broad-shouldered man. Since marriage without

some pious counterfeit of real affection was, to her, an act

unthinkable, she had essayed to set her suitor’s qualities in the

kindest light for Oswald’s sake. Could she indeed (she asked herself)

reject an honourable proposal that signified so much to her son’s

future? Had she, even at a time like this, the right to study her own

feelings before the larger considerations of his welfare? Nay, her

troubled conscience seemed to cry; if she had but sacrificed those

feelings sooner, who knows if Beryl might not have been with them still.

Horrified by which thought, and hushed by the recent lesson of her loss,

she strove to see attractiveness in the figure of her frequent guest; to

endue his form with dignity and his character with worth.

The most awful thing to bear in this was the sense of her disloyalty to

the dead. Not less than Oswald’s goodness and ability, and the boy’s

ultimate advancement in the world, had her self-devotion to the memory

of his dead father been part of the Ideal. She had never during all her

widowhood entertained the thought of superseding his memory with a

living husband. But now, for Oswald’s sake must this personal ideal of

hers be shattered. Henceforth the great Ideal lay with her son. Her only

part in it, the only contribution she could render was sacrifice.

To make herself the wife of such a husband--with so high a standard of

true husbandship in heart--was for her a bitter step to take. No woman

knew less of the sordid practices of snobbery than Mrs. Holmroyd. Her

heart protested kinship with all the world; sympathy with the lowliest;

respect, tenderness, affection, even, for all flesh that bore the

impress of its Maker and partook of the sacrament of sorrow. In

consenting to be the wife of Councillor Burford it was not that she felt

a personal degradation; it was the degradation of something higher than

herself that tortured her; it was the deliberate lowering of standards

exalted by the spirit; standards that held her, in somewise, closer to

God. She, who had known and loved the best of husbands, was accepting

now--or preparing to accept--one who was unworthy to be named with him.

Thought on in that way, with every emotion, every aspiration in revolt,

she cried: “I cannot. I could not.... It is dreadful to think of.” But

when she set against this her coming dire necessity--for soon the

slender resources which had been her stronghold up to the present, must

be exhausted--and asked what then was to become of Oswald ... she turned

back to her self-schooling with haste and horror.

Ah! this sad task of re-teaching the affections; this melancholy school

in which her feelings were constrained to mingle with thoughts unworthy

of them, and to learn from the soiled pages of a mercenary primer.

Prayers entered into it too. On her knees she prayed for the requisite

humbleness of spirit, for such light from heaven as should blind her to

the earthly fact of what she did, and lend her conduct higher sanctity.

She implored her dead husband’s forgiveness for the act contemplated. It

was (she told him) for their son’s sake. It was (she told him) for the

rehabilitation of his good name, which she held more sacred than her

own. And in this tormented state of mind she had surrendered whilst

there was still a modicum of free-will left to her, and she might be

able to avoid at least the last shame of financial necessity.

She gave way with many reservations. Oh, many reservations that a

stricken conscience imposed on her. She strove in all things to be

honest to her future husband. She professed no deceptive depth of love.

She told the Councillor that she had loved once, and for ever. But she

owned to being touched by his faith in her, and if he believed that she

was such a wife as could make him happy, she would loyally do her best

to justify his trust. Scrupulously though she hedged her heart the

answer given sufficed for Councillor Burford. It caused his businesslike

exterior to soften visibly with the emotion of a desire attained, an

aspiration gratified. His voice became unsteady; there crept even a

moisture about his eyes. He affirmed: “I’m not a man to make promises,

ma’am. I’m plain and outspoken ... but I venture to think you won’t have

no occasion to regret your choice.” His pride, in its simplicity, was

almost childlike; it tended to disclose those trumpery vanities which a

stern business frontage had hitherto kept hidden. Something of

self-complacency began to show in him. He “ventured to think” this and

that, in regard to Mrs. Holmroyd’s decision, which he characterized as

“very sensible and wise, ma’am.” She would be a happy woman. Why, he

might go so far as to say “a proud woman”--or his name would not be

Burford. She would have a comfortable home, free of care or anxiety as

to the future. And one day, all being well, she might count on being

Mayoress of this important Borough (which he always pronounced

“Borrow”). “It’s not every woman in Daneborough that can look forward to

_that_ ma’am.” Such a culminating promise of publicity was, to be sure,

the last thing Mrs. Holmroyd had foreseen or sought and the sudden

prospect shocked her not a little. To pass through marriage into a stage

of domestic extinction for Oswald’s sake had marked the limit of what

she had allowed herself to contemplate. But she strove courageously to

make her face reflect, although with faint success, her future husband’s

pride, and for the rest resigned herself to every item of the long

sacrifice imposed on her.

3

Not the least bitter was the visit that Miss Burford paid her, one

afternoon, in the official character of prospective daughter-in-law.

She called unexpectedly, breathing hard, with the chill animosity of an

East Wind; her lips compressed; her eye bright and keen; a tiny flame of

colour burning ominously on each cheek bone. She had come (she let it

instantly be understood) at her father’s instigation, and led by no

desire of her own. Her father had only deigned to acquaint her with his

intentions a week ago. She had heard tales, of course. Under the

circumstances that was only to be expected. But she had never, no, she

had never dreamed! It had come quite as a ... surprise to her. “Shock”

was obviously the word she had intended to employ, but Mrs. Holmroyd’s

altered face averted its employment. It was plain to see that the

Councillor’s daughter smouldered with desire to mortify her foe, but

there were limits which a studied insolence must keep--or fail

completely of its mark. At her father’s age, of course, (she said) it

seemed ridiculous--to Her!--that he should ever dream of getting married

again. But there was no reasoning with him. He was not easy to get on

with. Far from it. Still ... “I’m only his daughter,” she exclaimed with

bitterness. “I’m nobody. No. Not more than the hearthrug.” She indicated

the worn hearthrug contemptuously with the ferule of her umbrella, and

the hand that gripped it shook. “Well! I hope you will be satisfied. It

will be a great change of life for you ... after this.”

Her sentiments were curbed by a visible and powerful restraint that

checked at the last moment the almost spoken words upon her lips,

constantly replacing these with others less offensive in sound, though

not in intention. All the while she spoke she sat bolt upright upon her

chair, breathing so fiercely that her sentences were interrupted often

by the compressed feelings through which they had to fight their way. As

for Mrs. Holmroyd, the suddenness of her adversary’s attack deprived her

for awhile of the least power of speech or action. She could only sit in

silence, void of any weapon with which to defend herself against Miss

Burford’s rancour, even had she possessed the will to do so. For, of a

dreadful truth, she knew herself to be what Miss Burford’s indignation

chose to paint her: an interloper, a usurper, prepared to take

possession of a home on no better title than the infatuation of a

parent. Yet she could not sit and suffer tacitly insinuations whose

utterance made her conduct, even to herself, show viler than it was. If

not in words, at least in manner, Miss Burford charged her:

“_You_ have brought this about. _You_ are responsible. Don’t tell me my

father would ever have _dreamed_ of marrying again if you had not

schemed to put the idea into his head.”

“I little thought,” the Councillor’s daughter declared, “what it was

going to mean to me when you called that morning with your family to

bring back my father’s solitaire. From the moment you put foot in the

house”--she could not control the shaft--“my home has never been the

same. You have altogether changed my father--and not for the better. He

has become quite another man.”

Driven at last by such a thrust as this to take defensive measures for

her own dignity, Mrs. Holmroyd interposed:

“I am deeply distressed, Miss Burford, to think I should ever be an

innocent cause of trouble to ... to anybody. But it is only due to

myself to tell you that nothing was further from my thoughts in the

first instance. I have been not less troubled, and surprised by the

course of events--than you.”

“Oh, to be sure!” Miss Burford tossed her head. “It is only natural you

should say so.”

“I am betraying no confidence,” Mrs. Holmroyd continued, “when I tell

you that at first ... indeed, for a long while, I gave your father’s

proposal no encouragement.” Miss Burford sniffed superciliously, as much

as to emphasize the phrases “at first” and “for a long while,” with

feminine contempt. Every fibre of her body was resistant, and before

such an uncompromising attitude Mrs. Holmroyd felt the dismal

helplessness of her position. Too loyal to her own ideal of truth to

profess to this woman that she had subscribed to dictates of the heart

alone in marrying Miss Burford’s father, she seemed to be left without a

cause to plead. Nay, shame would have deterred her from seeking refuge

in a plea which wronged so dreadfully her better self and judgment. And

yet a grosser shame deterred her from confession of the truth that, in

such a sacred region of the character as this, she was an opportunist,

sacrificing herself to Councillor Burford for the worldly advantages

which this loveless union with him secured. In two respects her tongue

was tied, and without a voice to speak for her she had the bitter

consciousness of being inextricably crushed between honesty and

imposture: unable to gain justification from the heart or advocacy from

the head. That Miss Burford divined the weakness of her adversary’s

cause was evident, for she made of Mrs. Holmroyd’s halfhearted

protestations her footstool. Reassured by the submissive meekness of the

lips that sped no verbal darts against her own, she strengthened her

attack. The mockery of her visit was unmasked. She had come, an

ostensible emissary of peace, bearing words of implacable hostility and

hate; her bosom rose as she spoke; the heat mounted to her cheeks, the

venom to her tongue. Her message of goodwill became an indictment: every

word of it a poisoned arrow. She did not know what had possessed her

father. To go and do a thing like this, with everybody crying shame on

him! Well! Mrs. Holmroyd had had her way. She would soon rule in a house

that Miss Burford’s life had been wasted in preparing for her. All these

years ... Miss Burford had toiled and moiled and worn herself to the

bone--for This! Let Mrs. Holmroyd rest easy in her conscience if she

could!

... Nor did the tirade end here. There were other things more dreadful

that she said, and that Mrs. Holmroyd listened to--for the Councillor’s

daughter, casting prudence to the wind, uncorked the flask of wrath and

drenched her adversary with its vitriol.

“I have had to put up with my father all these years. He is not an easy

man to get on with--as you will find out to your consternation before

long. You don’t know him as _I_ do. He is an obstinate, stubborn man who

will go his own way. Yes, and rather go the wrong way of his own

choosing than take the right way when anybody else points it out to him.

And now ... just because of a woman he has known only a few months.

Know? Why, when I say ‘know’ I mean, he knows nothing at all about ... I

am to be turned out of my own house like a dog. Me. His own daughter. To

make way for you and your son.”

Mrs. Holmroyd half rose with a protesting: “Oh no! Oh no, Miss

Burford....”

“I say ‘Yes,’” Miss Burford threw back at her. “My father has just told

me so. I am to go. And even if he had not told me, do you suppose I

would ever consent to take second place to You, before my own servant,

in a house where my word has been law for over twenty years? Do you

imagine I would receive orders from You, or have to keep silence as if I

was a child? The house has been _my_ house until now. What would my

friends think of me if I showed so little pride as to remain in it?”

“Stop!” cried Mrs. Holmroyd, who had mutely drunk this cup of

degradation to its dregs. “I pray you to say no more, Miss Burford, for

you have said enough. Oh, more than enough of what is cruel and unjust.

I have listened to you because my sympathies tell me that your voice has

a true claim to be heard. You are right. This is your house, not mine,

and I forgive you for the hard feelings with which you resist my coming

into it. But it is not yet too late. No step has been taken that cannot

be retraced. I will neither rob you of your father’s affection nor of

your home.”

She spoke with the quiet determination that convinced Miss Burford of

her adversary’s sincerity, and brought her all at once out of the region

of insensate anger into the cold air of common-sense. To satisfy the

vengeful feelings of her injured heart it was requisite to regard Mrs.

Holmroyd as a wilful foe, a base, designing woman who had plotted

dominion from the first day that she had schemed admittance into the

Burford house. Such dispositions as Miss Burford’s do not form their

judgments on conscientious reasoning. They attribute to an adversary

just such motives as justify them in their hatred, and will not admit

the least element of goodness that makes their own position untenable.

When Mrs. Holmroyd, therefore, pointed so clearly at the resolution to

withdraw from her compact with the Councillor, Miss Burford felt no

prick of conscience. Nevertheless she stood sufficiently in awe of her

father and of what his indignation might visit upon her for this

unwarrantable interference with his plans, to be shocked at the course

of action which her words had stung Mrs. Holmroyd to propose. For, in

the momentous interview with her parent which had preceded this visit,

the Councillor had let his will be known in no uncertain voice. He had

stood with his broad back to the fire-place, and his hands locked behind

his coat tails, and had told his daughter what he expected, and had the

right to expect, of her. He expected her (he said) to treat his second

wife with consideration and respect....

“Respect!” she had cried, as if the word--in such an application--burnt

her tongue.

“Aye. Respect!” the Councillor affirmed, with greater intensity than

before.

“Who else gives it her?” asked his daughter. “A woman living in a small

house in a back street, with scarcely a penny to bless herself with. A

stranger that nobody knows anything about--that nobody would ever have

known of but for you. _Me_ give respect to _her_!” She bit her lip with

the mortification of so preposterous an idea. If her father insisted on

bringing this creature into the house--against every dictate of decency,

and in defiance of the disgust of all right thinking people--she would

(she said) go out of it. He had been prepared for this threat, and

envisaged it with the tranquillity that is as gall and wormwood to the

threatener.

“You’re old enough to please yourself,” he said.

“Do you call that pleasing myself?” she cried.

“You won’t say you’re doing it to please _me_,” he answered dryly. But

he did not ask her where she meant to go, or what she intended to do, or

how she planned to earn her living. She was driven to reveal all this

unprompted. Or rather, she threw down the suggestion like a gauntlet, as

a challenge to his opinion. She would take a situation; she would go out

into service.

“Well,” said her father, “I can’t stop you. If you won’t respect my

wishes in one thing, you won’t in another. If you like going out into

service better than stopping at home and behaving yourself, there’s no

more to be said.”

“And have the world cry shame of you!” his daughter blazed at him,

rendered furious with his imperturbability, and seeking words and

phrases to shake his temper and bring it down to a level with her own.

“Shame of _me_!” he said. “How do you make that out? Because my daughter

sets herself against my wishes, and thinks to make her father go _her_

way when she refuses to go his! Shame of _you_, you mean.”

“Now, see here!” he said. “ ... I’ve borne with you too long, Annie. I’m

not your son; I’m your father. All that you have and enjoy comes from

me. If you’d treated me more reasonable and considerate, who’s to say I

should ever have thought of getting married again. But I’m tired of

living in a house that isn’t my own, and being tret as if I’d no right

to it. Folks that know anything will know very well I’m only taking a

wife because I couldn’t get what comfort I’m entitled to from my own

daughter.”

So the discussion had gone on. In his own way the Councillor had been

just and uncompromising. It wasn’t him, he said, that turned his

daughter adrift. It was her that disputed his right to act according to

his years and discretion. He gave her fair warning that he was going to

be married. If she was prepared to be civil and reasonable and act her

part as a daughter, and no more, she would be at liberty to remain in

the house. That is.... He hadn’t put the matter to his future wife yet,

but he had no doubt she’d....

“And do you think ...” his daughter fired up; “that I would condescend

to stay here with _her_ permission? Has it come to this: that I’ve got

to beg and pray of _her_? My word! No thank you.”

“There’s no question of you begging and praying,” the Councillor argued.

“And nobody knows that better than yourself. But I’m not going to allow

a wife of mine to come into this house to be insulted, or made miserable

by Anybody. And it amounts to this, Annie. If you’re resolved to take

what’s happened in the wrong spirit, and persevere in your intention to

make trouble in my house ... then we must try and provide for you in

some other way. You’ll have to go and live with your brother.”

“With Him ... and Her!” cried Miss Burford furiously. “And submit to her

untidy ways!” She pinched her lips to their firmest edge of

determination. “Never. Never.”

“Then you’ll have to go and live with your Aunt Matilda,” said her

father dispassionately.

“What! After the things she said to me about my housekeeping ... in

this very room?” his daughter expostulated.

“Then where _will_ you go?” asked the Councillor. “And who _will_ you

live with?”

“I’ll go where I’m beholden to nobody,” she said hoarsely, on the verge

of tears, “and live with them that value what I do for them.”

“Ah!” said her father significantly.

“I’ll earn my own bread. Yes. And let folks cry shame on you and her.

I’ll go out charing. I’ll do like Elizabeth, and take no money but what

I’ve earned.”

She did not mean it, she knew. Even through the heat of her passion, she

was aware she did not mean it. She threw worthless resolutions and empty

words upon her fury to make it blaze spectacular, and terrify her parent

with the awful conflagration actuated by his conduct. And he knew she

did not mean it. It was but her womanly unreasoning passion that spoke,

and he had wisdom enough to treat such rhetoric with brevity.

“I can’t do no more, Annie,” he said, pulling out his watch--an action

that invariably stung and wounded her; inferring (as it plainly did)

that he owed greater obligations to impersonal Time, than to his own

daughter.

“That’s it!” she said, taking scorn of the action. “Look at your watch.

Say you must be going. Tell me you’re too busy to stop here arguing with

_me_--just because you’ve nothing more to say. Leave me. Go back to Her.

I’m Nobody.”

After that they had reverted no more to the subject. She had had the

prudence to retain no such visible remembrance of the feud between them

as would have imposed silence on both sides, and the Councillor was

doggedly determined to ignore, in this respect, his daughter’s

prejudices and resentments. He spoke of the weather, of the town, of

the council-chamber, of his business, with a detachment which--in a

quarrel standing on some more trivial base--would have incensed her to

the most acrid retaliation, but which she made wise use of now to gain

an indirect admission to her father’s mood. He, on his side, did not

fail to note--beneath the chill reserve of his daughter’s demeanour--an

alertness eager for every sign that fell from him; the evidence of an

anger that strove to preserve its self-respect and yet to forfeit

nothing by imprudence. Encouraged by these evidences he began to use the

name of Mrs. Holmroyd with deliberation and intent, and Miss Burford

restrained herself from anything more discouraging than a tightening of

the lips. But one evening, before returning to his business, he said

without embarrassment: “By the way, Annie. It’ll have to be settled one

way or another about this matter of me getting married. I don’t want to

do nothing for the sake of annoyance. But I’ve got my future wife’s

feelings to consider, and it’s about time she should know what’s going

to happen here. I should like to be able to ask her up to tea one of

these nights, but you may be sure I shan’t do that if it’s to involve

her in any unpleasantness....” He paused, and Miss Burford merely

hardened her mouth with an expression of determination pledged to

nothing in particular, but prepared to wait frigidly upon events.

“ ... She’s not the sort of lady to force herself anywhere where she

knows her presence isn’t welcome. But if you care to call round and see

her ... soon....”

“See her?” his daughter echoed. “Me? What for?”

“Why.... To do the civil thing towards her,” the Councillor took up

without irritation or diffidence. “And show her the politeness she has a

right to expect from my daughter. There’s nobody understands politeness

better, nor would appreciate it more.”

Not daring to take up arms against a composure which she deemed

(rightly) to be crucial, Miss Burford sought refuge in a non-committal

“Indeed!” and touched articles on the table with hands expressive of a

resolution unaltered and unalterable, though without verbal aggravation

of her father’s mood.

“It comes to this, Annie,” he told her, buttoning his coat with a quiet

but conclusive gesture, “both me and you’s got to settle which way we

intend to take. You know which way _I’m_ taking. I’m hoping my way will

be your way. But if it’s not to be that, and you decide to go some other

way ... well, it’s forced to affect my plans. That’s all. I may push

things on a little. I don’t want to do nothing rash or hasty, but it’s

only fair to put the matter before you very straight. I don’t want to

have no reproaches when it’s done, and be told you hadn’t fully

understood, and why hadn’t I made myself clearer?

“ ... Eh?” He was going out as he spoke, and stopped at the door,

dissatisfied with her inconclusive silence. “Do you hear, Annie?” He

asked the final question with a certain sharpening of the tone

calculated to impose discretion on the listener.

“Yes. I hear,” Miss Burford answered in a voice purged of any quality

more pronounced than aggrievement.

“That’s all, then,” her father acknowledged, with a resumption of his

unruffled calm. “I only wanted to be sure. Time’s getting on for all of

us.”

4

It had been an ultimatum on her father’s part. He had refused to quarrel

with her. He had got past the stage where altercations with an injured

daughter formed part of his habitual routine. He had got past the stage

where it was necessary to suffer her periodic outbursts of annoyance and

displeasure, and gratify her with the loss of his temper, by which

sacrifice alone her equanimity might be restored, and the house resume

its normal groove. So long as his daughter had been necessary to him,

and he had been constrained to count on her for such comforts as lay in

her power to give or to withhold, he had been under the obligation to

quarrel with her. But now, she knew, his own cause was so sound and

strong, he felt no necessity to lose his temper. He would be gravely,

studiously, resolutely considerate towards her until the end. He had

taken every step to salve his conscience. He had invited her to go his

way; he had urged her to be respectful to the interloper; he had warned

her of the consequences of her obstinacy. She had lit a bonfire of

pretentious passion; burned up no end of indignant phrases and

resounding resolutions. The spectacle had left him unimpressed. She

watched him go down the garden path, and said to herself, with a

resumption of the indignant blaze in which her perverse nature loved to

live:

“Never! Never! I will starve first.”

And that very afternoon she had garbed herself with her customary

punctilious and unresulting care, and had set off to visit Mrs.

Holmroyd. In what mood she undertook the journey heaven knew alone. It

changed with her as she walked. At one moment she was a crushed and

broken woman, walking forth to make the supreme sacrifice of her wasted

years. At another she was an indomitable spirit, too proud to own

defeat, too resolute to beg, who went in obedience to a father’s

arbitrary wish. But the red worm of revenge gnawed her very vitals, and

the placatory phrases grew venomous as she shaped them. Indignations

needed a vent. Alternately she attacked a foe, unmasked a traitor, or

propitiated a rival. She was half a dozen women in as many minutes, and

in such a changing atmosphere of passion policy was impossible. Yet in a

dim way policy, of a sort, had shone through her conflicting moods like

a lantern, through gusts of sleet and drift. She realized that this

insensate opposition to her father’s will was fast placing her in a

false and inextricable position. She strove, it is true, to oppose him

to the last pitch of defiance, and to cost him and herself and all her

world the maximum of trouble and vexation in return for the sacrifice

demanded of her. But she still wished to keep some pathway of retirement

behind her, however narrow, by means of which she might--albeit still

fighting--with dignity retreat. Part of her anger, it vexed her to

perceive, lay against her own self. Her father had the right to marry;

her father had the right to study his own convenience before hers. It

was ridiculous to suppose that any man of her father’s age should submit

to have his conduct ordered and dictated by a daughter. Why then had she

contested the inevitable? Why had she taken up arms in a cause so

obviously destined to defeat? Partly by reason of the solitude and

retirement of her life, because this foolish gratification of her ill

passion was become with her an indulgence--like cards, or tea-parties,

or scandal. She treated herself to the luxury of indignation as a

solatium for the emptiness of her days. She saw moreover that--like

every other form of self-indulgence--the habit had grown upon her. For

she retained no longer the old control upon herself; her sense of

fitness and proportion was impaired; she lacked the power to direct her

quarrels with a sure hand; she became their servant rather than their

mistress. Already this controversy about Mrs. Holmroyd had taken her

deeper than she had desired. Before her father she felt it almost

impossible to assume the air and speech of ultimate surrender. Such a

course seemed--after what herself had done and uttered--too limp, too

cowardly, too craven. But it came to her--after her father’s

departure--that it would be a fine revenge on him to go and manifest a

noble spirit of forbearance to her rival. Yes. She would go and

demonstrate such a disposition of magnanimity as should reproach and

shame them both. “My father” (she would say to Mrs. Holmroyd) “has

requested me to come and welcome you into the family with my own lips. I

won’t deny that his action came as a blow to me ... at first. I won’t

deny that I have thought, and doubtless said, some harsh things about

you both. But he is my father. And if he sees his happiness in you ...

it’s not for me to thwart him. I wish him ... and you, every happiness.”

That, or some vague equivalent, had been in her mind all the while she

walked. But no resolution that she could muster was equal to the task of

renouncing the congenial rôle of injury. In some presentation injury

must show. And only by magnifying or creating wrongs was it possible to

enjoy this orgy of martyrdom. So, as she made her way to Spring Bank

Gardens, she attributed endless calumnies to the guilty couple. “He will

have told her....” “She will have said....” “Oh! I know what’s passed

between them. I know what things they’ve uttered about _me_.” And these

blind animosities, nurtured for her own gratification and enjoyment, had

swept her off her feet. She plunged from recklessness to recklessness:

whilst striving to portray patience under long suffering she tried her

hardest to inflict wounds. There should be no peace for any of them.

Their portion, henceforth, should be rancour, hatred and remorse.

And then, Mrs. Holmroyd’s pale face and firm, determined lips brought

her back to consciousness of the insanity of the course her passion

took.

“It is not too late,” she heard Oswald’s mother tell her. “I will

neither rob you of your father’s affection nor of your home. I too have

had a home. Indeed, I have one still. This little house, with all its

sad and precious memories, is very dear to me, Miss Burford.”

In Miss Burford’s angry bosom the tender sentiment aroused only

animosity. Such expressions used towards a house affronted her practical

common-sense; she felt them as a demonstration of her adversary’s

superiority. They were false, affected, ridiculous. Feelings so fine as

this were wilfully assumed, like clothes and high looks and educated

tones of voice, to try and impose on practical-minded people. But Mrs.

Holmroyd had risen to her feet, and Miss Burford rose too, conscious of

the utter disaster of her plans, yet powerless to flex the perversity of

her stubborn nature and make it pliable to any policy save that to which

the narrow moment bound her.

“Not too late?” she said, suffering herself once more to taste before

her rival the bitterness of injury. “Not too late? When you have turned

my father against me? When you have twisted him round your little

finger, Mrs. Holmroyd, and he has told me I am to go out and earn my own

living, or starve, to make way for a perfect stranger, like you?”

How much more she said Miss Burford scarcely knew or heeded, in the

abandonment of her passion; nor did Mrs. Holmroyd glean too clearly what

was said to her through the disturbance in her own emotions. In a sort

of haze of unreality, a fume of shame and indignation and constraint the

women took their leave of one another. Mrs. Holmroyd found herself alone

at last in her polluted parlour, with her two hands tightly

interlocked, and the tears of outrage slowly creeping through her

lashes. Miss Burford, sustained by an inward rage, found herself

ultimately in the street, trembling with the efforts of her recent

demonstration; shocked at the unpremeditated violence of her visit, so

utterly at variance with her intentions. If she could but have bent her

stubborn pride she would have gone back to the house so violently left

and craved forgiveness of her outraged rival. The thought--the longing;

nay, the necessity--almost moved her. She turned once upon her heel; the

very words importuned her lips:

“Mrs. Holmroyd. Excuse me. I can’t take my leave of you like this. I

know I am hot-headed, impulsive, abrupt, ill-tempered. I know I am.

There is much of my father in me. All my friends say so. They all know

and dread my tongue. I say things at times that I never intend. I

haven’t meant half of what I’ve just said. I can’t think what ever made

me say them. But you don’t realize how much I’ve gone through lately;

how much I’ve had to put up with. What with my father ... and house

worries, and the servant....”

And she would have modulated into the key of self-compassion, and

solicited Mrs. Holmroyd’s indulgence for an overworked, hard-used,

much-to-be-pitied creature, to whom life and fate had been most cruelly

unkind. But the impulse--so strong one moment as to be well-nigh

peremptory--died away like an electric wind.

“To _her_!” she said, through her nipped, hard lips. “Go back and pray

to _her_! So that she can tell my father all I’ve said and done!”

And because this picture of their triumph was too vivid for her pride,

and because, endowing them with looks and words and accents sharpened by

herself, she warred not against them but against her own nature, and

fell pierced by her own arrows--because of this she turned, siding

definitely with the cause lost by her perversity and folly, saying she

was glad, now, that she had spoken her mind, and that Mrs. Holmroyd had

been forced to swallow the bitter draught of truth, and that her father

would be driven to do his worst; crying passionately within herself as

she walked home:

“Let him! What does it matter to me? I’m nobody. I’ll go and starve, and

everybody will cry shame on him.”

5

To Mrs. Holmroyd this scene had proved terrible. Guiltless of the least

intention of offence herself, she felt Miss Burford’s shame as if it had

been her own, and shrank from contact with the dreadful human passion

which had seared and branded her innocence, and left it scarred (or so

it seemed to her) with infamy. In some sort, conscience reproved her,

this was her punishment for the worship of false idols. None could

desert true gods, betray noble ideals, without some bitter toll being

taken. She, who had looked upon Miss Burford hitherto from the superior

height of detachment, had laid herself open to the latter’s proper

scorn; she had been treated with obloquy by one to whose lower level she

had descended only after a protracted struggle with her prejudices and

pride. Nay, she had only come to accept the Councillor at all by a

resolute detachment of him from his circle; by fixing her eyes upon

himself, and blotting out the narrow life he lived and stood for. But

now, with both arms Miss Burford had seemed to fling back double-doors

upon the future, and cry: “See!” The prospect horrified, degraded her.

She saw herself immersed for ever in a vulgar element of strife,

buffeted between taunts and calumnies, charged with having wormed her

way, for self-advancement, into a social world whose conditions repelled

her. She foresaw nothing but wretchedness; nothing but remorse; nothing

but disillusionment, and said: “What am I thinking of? It was a mistake.

It can never be.”

In this spirit of awakening to the truth she resolved to write to

Councillor Burford. Yes, write before life’s necessities could cause her

better self once more to waver. She resolved to write and tell him that,

after much serious thought and anxious deliberation, she found herself

unable--for his sake no less than hers--to fulfil the promise given. She

was engaged indeed upon this letter so difficult of execution when the

Councillor called. Despite her stern resolve, his presence seemed to

bring with it a sort of comfort. He greeted her with an intimacy shorn

of none of his old respect; continuing to address her, despite the

change in their relations, as “Ma’am.” After the asp-like venom of his

daughter’s tongue his broad and solid accents were reassuring. And then,

try howsoever she would to muffle the degrading sentiment, his presence,

and the friendship it bespoke, brought security into her precarious

home. He stood firm rooted like a great tree, offering shelter to lonely

widowhood. Within the ample radius of his branches no want could come;

no penury, no care, no terror of the future. This, after all, had been

the haven for her doubts to rest in; this big, broad man, with the solid

worldly comfort he represented, had been during these latter days the

true sustaining power of her mind.

Perceiving her seated at the table, pen in hand, he feigned polite

retirement, albeit still standing at the door.

“Don’t let me disturb you, ma’am. I see you’re busy writing....”

Thus challenged so directly, the spirit of her resolution faltered, but

she made no effort to avoid the issue.

“I was ... writing to you,” she said.

“To me?” He came forward at once and took his stand beside her. “Indeed.

Then it’s well I thought to call. It’ll save somebody else a

journey.--Shall I read what you’ve wrote?” He stretched out a hand

towards the letter, and with sudden shame of the words she had struggled

so hard to set on paper, she warded it from his possession.

“No ... please! On second thoughts ... I think I would rather you should

wait until the letter is completed.” She added, timorously: “It has been

a difficult letter to write.”

“Indeed, ma’am.” He noted then the signs of trouble on her face and said

after a moment: “I’m sorry to hear that. Letters that’s difficult to

write isn’t always very pleasant to read. May I ask what’s in it?”

She turned slightly away from him, and braced herself to say:

“I was writing to ask you to relieve me from my promise.”

“What! Do you mean ...?”

“Yes.”

She was aware that he looked curiously at her from under his brows, with

one hand plunged into the breast of his coat, and the gaze caused her

heart to beat. Why? Because, in part she was afraid of a tussle with

unequal forces; in part because she trembled with the sharpened

consciousness of how much, for her son, had been staked upon this

reckless throw. Suppose.... Yes, suppose he told her: “Very well,

ma’am.” Suppose he answered: “You know your own feelings best, ma’am. It

doesn’t beseem me to try and force you against your will.” What then?

What then, ... when he had left her, and she sat alone amid the wreckage

of a home beyond her power to maintain?

“May I venture to ask,” the Councillor enquired, “what’s prompted you to

write in that strain, ma’am?”

She said: “I’ve been thinking. Thinking very seriously, Mr. Burford.”

“Ah!” said he.

“And the more I think ... the more clearly I see the difficulties.”

“Difficulties! What difficulties? Who for?”

“For everybody concerned.”

“Everybody concerned, ma’am? There’s only two that is concerned. That’s

me and you. If it suits _us_, there’s no occasion why we should trouble

our heads with nobody else.”

She hazarded: “ ... Your daughter,” and he uttered a sententious “Ah! I

thought I hadn’t been mistook. She’s been to see you.”

Mrs. Holmroyd said hastily: “Please do not blame her. I had been

thinking this matter over ... long before then. I had felt that it was

unfair, cruel, wrong of me to displace Miss Burford from the position in

your house which she has enjoyed for so many years.”

“What, ma’am!” interposed the Councillor. “Do you mean to say you’d go

and compromise me before the whole Borough for no better reason than

that? You’ve as good as given me your word, and I’ve seen no reason to

keep the matter secret. What do you suppose my friends will say? What do

you suppose the town of Daneborough will say if I’ve got to go and tell

folks now that you’ve seen fit to change your mind? It’ll be a serious

reflection on both of us, ma’am, and I venture to think you must see it.

It’ll make me a laughing stock in the Council, and very likely do me

harm in the Ward. It’s not as if you’d engaged to marry an ordinary

Burgess; you’ve engaged to be the wife of a Town Councillor. I’m a

public man in the public eye, and one can’t play fast and loose with

one’s obligations towards the public without a loss of repitation and

character. You must realize that for yourself, ma’am. I want to have no

shade cast on _your_ repitation, and I want none cast on mine. We’ve got

to live in Daneborough, both of us, and I should be very sorry to lose

one ounce of the respect I’ve earned in business and on the Council.

... But of course, ma’am, if you tell me your opinions has undergone a

change, and you don’t hold me in the same estimation you did....”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Mrs. Holmroyd’s better nature cried, touched by the

look he cast on her.

“I’m very glad to hear you say that, ma’am,” the Councillor confessed,

with obvious relief. “It’s very reassuring.” And he turned to the

subject of Miss Burford without delay. Whatever Mrs. Holmroyd decided in

this matter, he wished her clearly to understand that it would make no

difference to the unfortunate relations existing between himself and his

daughter. “Things has got to such a pitch at home now that something’s

forced to be done. We can’t go on any longer as we are. So if you’re

actuated by any mistaken notion of helping Annie, ma’am, against me ...

you can dismiss it from your mind at once. You’re not to blame in any

way for what’s happened. She’s brought it on herself. She ought to have

been married years ago, and if she’d been the right sort of woman to

manage a husband I’m not the father to have wished to stand in her way.

She could have had a home of her own and welcome. And I know _this_,

ma’am. If Annie’d once got the idea of marriage into her head no

consideration of _me_ would have kept her where she is. And is a man of

my age to be ruled by his own daughter, and have his actions settled

just in such a way as suits her temper and convenience? Are we to be

governed by our children, ma’am?” Mrs. Holmroyd thought of Oswald and of

all the sacrifices she was prepared to make for him, and said in a faint

voice of half concurrence: “Not in all things, Mr. Burford.”

“Annie’s been almost past living with, these last ten years,” her father

said. “And any man of less patience than me would have married long ago,

if only to be rid of her. I’ve never took that view myself. I can

honestly say, ma’am, I never gave marriage a thought for its own sake

until I met you. When a man that’s been married once gets to my age and

sees the matrimonial troubles of his friends, and them that aren’t his

friends, he thinks twice before he risks making the mistake again. It’s

come to this: the same house won’t hold me and my daughter. I’m sorry to

say it, and it’s no fault of mine that it should be so, but it _is_ so.

And if even you was to say you wouldn’t take the place you said you

would at the head of my house, me and Annie would part company all the

same. If I’m not to have a wife sitting at my table, I won’t have a

daughter there that’s done nothing and does nothing but cross my will. I

won’t have her sitting opposite me and saying to herself: ‘_I_ stopped

his game.’ For that’s what she _would_ say, ma’am. And I shouldn’t think

of asking you to share my house as long as there was her in it to make

you miserable. For that’s what she would do. She’s no friend of yours.

I’ll own it. She’s no friend of nobody’s. She’s never satisfied unless

she has her own way, and never happy when she gets it. I shall provide

for her wants, you may be sure, and treat her generous as befits a man’s

own daughter. But it’s time I was spared the petty worries and vexations

that seems the breath of life to her, and had a house of my own which I

could take some pride and pleasure in.”

He talked without any sign of heat, without the least visible desire to

gain points in argument by vilifying the character of the absent one.

His tone was that of a regretful and dispassionate regard for truth;

mourning fact as it was, but seeking neither to magnify nor diminish it.

And his reasoned arguments put him incontestably in the right. “It’ll be

very hard on me, ma’am,” he said, “if you’re going to throw me and all

my happiness overboard, just because of a daughter that cares for

neither. I don’t deny you’re acting up to principle, and only trying to

do what’s right--in fact, I’ve far too high an opinion of your character

to think you’d ever stoop to any course of action that’s unworthy of

you. But if you’re going to take Annie’s part and tell me in all

seriousness I’ve got to sacrifice myself and you for _her_ ... Why!” he

said, with a gesture of bewilderment, “I can’t understand it. But I

hope, after what’s been said, you’ll see what a mistake you would be

making if you was to press your objections any further. Of course as

I’ve said before, if your objection is personal, and it’s me that’s the

real stumbling-block ... well, I suppose you’ve a right to consider

yourself, ma’am. But I think, in that case, you should have spoke

sooner, and spared me what--you can’t fail to realize--is forced to be a

great humiliation for me. There’s nobody in Daneborough that doesn’t

know Councillor Burford, but folks has got to ask who Mrs. Holmroyd is

... and you’d be spared much that I should have to suffer. I won’t deny

that I’ve had to put up with a little harmless chaff already, and

there’s a lot of people who quiz me about the step I’ve taken--but it

would be highly unpalatable if our arrangement was broken off at this

stage, and I’ve the confidence to hope you’ll think better of your

intention, ma’am.”

6

Councillor Burford’s arguments prevailed. They prevailed because, first

of all, they were incontestable. And they prevailed because, in the

second place, Mrs. Holmroyd was moved by this big man’s pride and faith

in her. And they prevailed because, as he spoke, quietly rearranging the

situation in a new perspective of duty, she clung unconsciously to a

need that satisfied every call of conscience, and yet avoided the dire

alternative from which, even in making her confession, she had shrunk.

Here were two sides to the controversy, each with its appeal to

conscience, and though the quarrel in itself was crude and dreadful, and

roused in her a deep repugnance against being mixed so closely with

sentiments and acts so foreign to her nature, she contrasted Councillor

Burford’s voice and quiet manner with the compressed animosity of his

daughter this afternoon. The wish to wound, the wish to hurt and injure,

put her plainly out of the court of sympathy. Mrs. Holmroyd indulged an

academic sorrow for the misguided creature--that owed itself to

conscience, and not to feeling. She knew--she had known all along--that

between herself and Miss Burford there existed not the least bond of

interest or friendship. Their views of life were utterly at variance.

All she could ever hope for, so far as she and Miss Burford were

concerned, would be an occasional lull in their hostilities, when Miss

Burford wearied of attack and came to closer quarters for the detection

of fresh sources of aggrievement. Miss Burford had formed ever the dark

background of this matrimonial life to come; had formed ever the enigma

of its possibility: sphynx-like and, up to now, insoluble. It is true

that the Councillor had spoken of Mrs. Holmroyd’s place at the head of

his house, and had, without any detailed explanation, considered his

daughter as dispossessed of her domestic governance, saying: “Annie, of

course, will make way for you, ma’am. You’ll be entire mistress of your

own affairs.” But the precise nature of her disposal had never been

revealed, and Mrs. Holmroyd--though this problem perplexed her with many

painful considerations--had never dared or cared to press for clearer

definitions. That she could not possibly occupy a house in common with

the Councillor’s daughter seemed obvious. But she could not bring

herself to take the steps which should precipitate Miss Burford’s

displacement. She left the matter in the hands of providence, assuring

herself whenever the uncertainty grew too acute: “Of course.... She will

understand. Her father will have prepared her.” Re-marriage in itself

was a procedure sufficiently repugnant to her conscience, but a

re-marriage complicated by so many ugly features tended at times to make

her sick at heart. She relapsed, however, on that selective and

protective power of her sex which sees fervently only just so much of

truth as it seeks and needs to see. By detaching Councillor Burford from

all environment; by seeing him persistently in the glamour of intimacy

and kindness thrown over him by her own small house; by associating him

with many happy memories of her little parlour, where she and Oswald and

Beryl had sat and listened for his coming footstep, and so weaving him

by deft feminine processes into the very texture of that dear, departed

life, already made holy by the hand of death ... by doing this, and

seeing him so, cut off from contact with the grosser world, but linked

as it were by many subtle strands to the spiritual, she had cajoled her

affections into a sentimental liking for the big, broad man that bore no

great weight of reason, but cracked like thin ice beneath the heel of

reality. And now the spectre of Miss Burford was laid at last, by her

father’s own hand. He had taken from Mrs. Holmroyd the least pretext for

self-reproach. He had told her that whether she kept her faith with him

or not, his daughter’s case would be unaltered in so far as it concerned

her father and her father’s home.

“You are not in any way to blame, ma’am,” he had told Mrs. Holmroyd.

“Set your mind entirely at ease on _that_ point. It was always

understood that Annie should keep house for me as long as things went on

as they was. But she knew very well that some day I might want a better

helpmate. And when that day came she was aware she’d have to make way.”

So conscience was salved, and the difficulty smoothed away. Mrs.

Holmroyd, with exemplary discretion, confided little to the Councillor’s

enquiry about his daughter’s visit: “Well ... She’s been to see you

then. How did she behave herself? I hope she remembered what was due to

you, and treated you with proper respect.”

When the Councillor took leave at length, the compact was sealed beyond

all cancellation. If she would show herself to be an honourable woman,

innocent of the charge of inconstancy, and loyal to a pledge twice

given, there could be no retraction now. Feelings, fears, doubts,

misgivings--Yes! and dislikes and repugnances--must be hid henceforth

within a casket of secrecy, and sealed with silence. The larger

liberties were lost to her; at one fell swoop she had bartered the

freedom of existence and was become a vassal to her own promise. And

because she held the promise of a woman holy, and faith between all

human creatures inviolable, she felt the more in terror of her state of

servitude. For we are slaves, less to one another, than to such rules of

conduct as we hold unbreakable, for the preservation of our own souls.

7

Mrs. Holmroyd’s friendship with the Rencils, grown much closer since the

death of Beryl and their wondrous sympathy and kindness in this dark

hour of her need, had brought exceeding comfort to her. This contact, on

a footing of something close to intimacy, had served to sharpen her

aspirations and to give her the illusion of living near to those higher

things which her life had lost. The briefest space of time passed in the

charmed happiness of the Organist’s home repaid her for many anxieties

and days of doubt. It was only there, with her spirit lips attached to

the cup of their perfect happiness, and draining every word and look and

act for her soul’s sustenance, that her full self expanded and she

regained the full vision of life’s loveliness. At such moments her

husband came back to her. He was no longer lying in his grave at

Clothton, but here in the midst of them, reanimated by their human

sympathy and living in their smiles and glances. Her struggles were

known to the Organist and his wife; they were drawn to her gentleness.

Each took pleasure in the other, and Mr. Rencil and his wife

experienced, after every visit that Mrs. Holmroyd paid them, that glow

of human satisfaction in the knowledge of happiness conferred.

But the consciousness of her new relationship towards Councillor Burford

weighed on Mrs. Holmroyd’s heart like lead. An intuition, that stabbed

content with the sharpness of a knife, told her that this new intrusive

element would mar assuredly the perfect sympathy of their friendship.

She felt its darkening influence in herself; she feared, once the secret

was divulged, that she would note a corresponding change in them. Twice

she called to see Mrs. Rencil for the express purpose of confession,

and twice her courage failed her. “I ought to have spoken,” she

reproached herself in walking home. “After their great kindness to me

... this silence on my part becomes deceptive.” But the thought of the

confession, and the consciousness of her almost insurmountable

reluctance to make it, showed her the true nature of the obligation

entered into. After her decisive interview with Councillor Burford,

however, she resolved that nothing should deter her from making an

announcement already overdue. And she called forthwith at the house in

Hill Street with this single purpose in her mind. For all her resolution

it came as a positive relief to learn that Mrs. Rencil was not in, but

the Organist himself ran down to greet the visitor, and pressed her to

go upstairs--saying that his wife might return home at any moment.

Indeed, Mrs. Holmroyd had not been seated long in the sunlit upper room

before Ethel Rencil arrived, invoking “Arthur!” as she mounted the

stairs, in a voice half songful. Ah! That touched the visitor’s heart

like an old tune; sharpened her eyes with the brightness of half-shed

tears in a moment. Such a tender revelation of companionship, of mutual

dependence for happiness, the one upon the other, stung her to a sort of

ecstasy that owned not anything of covetousness, but only of

appreciation and of yearning. And a sudden flood of misery submerged her

as she thought of herself and contrasted her lot with theirs. Not so

would she have the joy of calling on her second husband’s name. Nay, she

had not yet familiarized herself with his embodiment sufficiently to

think of him in terms of Christian names at all. For her he was still

Councillor Burford; still the blunt, self-constituted caller whom she

treated, even in the secret places of her heart, with the most

scrupulous distance and respect. The perfect intimacy of united lives,

the lovely cup of fellowship to which each contributes and from which

each sips in turn--the perfect union of affinities was not for her. Only

a sense of duty, a spirit of loyalty and true service superseding love,

could sanctify a marriage such as this she had the hardihood to

contemplate. It held no raptures, such a state. There was no joy to be

expected of it. Only justification.

In the midst of these reflections, swift and poignant, Mrs. Rencil

entered. Her smile--just wide enough at first to frame the looked-for

figure of her husband--expanded instantly to recognition of the visitor,

crying what a welcome surprise this was, and how kind of her to come and

see them. Yet to Mrs. Holmroyd--preoccupied with inward comparisons, and

troubled with problems respecting the disclosure which conscience was

resolved to make, and hypersensitive to all external influences and

suggestions--the manner of the Organist’s wife, albeit superficially

cordial, betrayed something of the simulated brightness of formality

which, like a meretricious picture, invokes the aid of a high varnish to

compensate for its lack of depth. With a reciprocal smile upon her lips

that accompanied a painful sinking of the heart, the visitor said to

herself:

“She knows. She has heard. Perhaps she is offended. I ought to have told

her before.”

And at the first moment offering her purpose its shirked and sought-for

opportunity, she stumbled into confession, saying she should be sorry

for them to learn the news from any lips except her own. The opening

was, perhaps, infelicitous--since it imposed on her hearers the polite

duty of dissimulation. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rencil, in fact, did their

utmost by facial expression to give their guest the assurance her words

appeared to call for, although she fancied that Mrs. Rencil’s more

sophisticated eye belied the ignorance it strove so earnestly to feign.

And her heart beat heavily within her. She felt the blood suffuse her

face and neck as she made the hateful declaration, suffering an odious

sensation of being bathed in her own guilt. For just one moment both the

Organist and his wife retained their expressions of friendly interest

with which they had awaited her announcement, and she had the feeling

that during this brief space of time they sought within themselves--and

of each other--for guidance as to the nature of their next look, and

their next word. But, fractional though the hesitation was, to Mrs.

Holmroyd it seemed abysmal. Something died down; dropped like a dead

leaf; floated silently out of this circle of sympathy. The tone of

friendship sustained by all of them, till then, sank of its own weight

to the level of politeness and conventional pretence. For they knew

already what she had to tell them; of that Mrs. Holmroyd entertained no

doubt. She heard Mrs. Rencil say: “Indeed!...” in a voice of

unconvincing surprise. The Organist contented himself with turning the

bland beam of his glasses in the direction of his wife, as though to

reciprocate her interest. “How nice of you to come and tell us.... Of

course, we won’t breathe a word--will we Arthur! At least ... until we

have your permission.” She strewed her empty phrases over the situation

as if they had been wisps of coloured wool, picked hap-hazard from a

work-basket, expressive of nothing but artificial brightness.

“Is it anybody we know, Mrs. Holmroyd?”

The words “we know” rose up in accentuation above the rest like a weal

on smitten flesh. Mrs. Holmroyd said with obvious constraint:

“I think ... perhaps, by name. It is Mr. Burford.”

Again there followed that slight, infinitesimal pause--that fine, sharp

edge of silence which cuts so deep.

“Do you mean ... the Councillor?” Mrs. Rencil asked, and though

politeness could not have designated Mrs. Holmroyd’s future husband by

any nicer name, it was (as Mrs. Holmroyd’s burning cheeks attested) a

euphemism for the business he pursued. She bowed her head slightly,

“Yes,” divining with pain at heart that they were disappointed in her;

that she had sunk below the standard of their expectations. In her

trouble she seemed to hear their inward voices crying, each one to the

other:

“How could she! How could she!”

And the outer voice of Mrs. Rencil, speaking for the first time, added:

“You have our sincere wishes for your happiness, Mrs. Holmroyd.”

Happiness! Oh, the mockery of it. For she was powerless to excuse or

justify her action. She, who had spoken ever of her husband and the love

she bore to him and he to her; who had built her friendship with the

Rencils on the corner-stone of this ... came now to tell them she was

pledged to be the wife of a big, illiterate, prosperous Daneborough

tradesman. That love had led her to such a step was, for them and all

the world who judged her, quite unthinkable. If she sought to plead the

warmth of her affections in excuse, she rebuked her sense of fitness and

fine feeling. If she vindicated her heart she accused her head. She

experienced a terrific longing to unbosom herself to these two

friends--the only friends she had; to put her course of action before

them in its true perspective. But that would have involved disloyalty to

her future husband. To hint at any derogation of him was to condemn her

own self and cause. And though her spiritual loneliness cried out for

some companionship to which it might confide its sorrows, she knew that

such a confidence would only tend to widen the breach of sympathy

between them. She was conscious of that breach of sympathy in their

scrupulous choice of questions. She sensed their difficulty. Her

conduct in this second marriage shocked them. They despised her. She

felt certain they despised her, although politeness demanded that they

should simulate a superficial interest in her still. They sought only

such questions as skirted the centre of the topic, striving to preserve

their own detachment from a theme so alien to their hearts; to

compromise themselves in no respect towards her new life, whilst

endeavouring to preserve the outward semblance of unbroken friendship.

Did she think of marrying soon? She would, no doubt, be leaving the

house in Spring Bank Gardens? Perhaps she would be not altogether sorry

to leave a district of such sad associations. But they asked her little.

They skilfully ignored her obvious desire to be questioned, so that she

might have the assurance of their fellowship at all points; so that,

aided by interrogation, she might justify her conduct somewhat; might

show a vestige of her heart to them. And in a tentative way she

tried--with a desperation belied by the gentleness of her face and

speech--to communicate, as though in answer to enquiry, the things they

failed to ask of her, hoping (though she lacked the inward satisfaction

of it) that they might perceive something of her true heart and mind

beyond. And they said: “Of course ...” and sought to show themselves as

nice as could be to one who had sunk so far below the high consideration

of their friendship.

And with that--or little more--the subject of her second marriage was

interred, and it seemed plain to her that the spirits of the Organist

and his wife left its place of sepulture with alacrity. The little Alice

came in, and the Organist made fun with her in his own delightful

fashion; and his wife--watching the spectacle with unconcealed

rapture--turned from time to time to Mrs. Holmroyd with resumption of

her old self, as though to invite her guest into the circle of their

happiness. But all the while Mrs. Holmroyd participated with a pain at

heart, like one who tastes of the sweetness of confraternity for the

last time: too sick to eat. Sad at heart she took her leave at length,

and Mr. Rencil accompanied her downstairs. For some inexplicable reason

she had half hoped he would. They descended the staircase and reached

the hall, and the Organist opened the door, and she saw and sensed the

world of awful emptiness beyond--dark and cold and comfortless as the

grave itself, without one single flame of fellowship to light and warm

it. And suddenly, with a surgent impulse that her soul could not

withstand, she turned upon the Organist a face of supplication.

“Mr. Rencil....” Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, and she

accompanied the exclamation with a faint gesture of the hand, weak and

aimless, and yet charged with a curious expressive beauty of its own in

the Organist’s sight. Such a transient gesture as weds itself to looks

or words once in a lifetime, and makes them memorable by means of a

vague loveliness for which no meaning can be found; of an emotion that

goes straight to the heart, albeit the heart knows neither how nor why.

“Mr. Rencil.... You will not think too hardly of me. You will not blame

me too greatly!...”

He said: “Blame you, Mrs. Holmroyd!” in a voice of unmistakable

surprise, for her gesture and her accents of intensity had found him

unprepared.

“For the step I am taking,” she explained. “Oh! Believe ... I want you

to believe, please ... I want you both to believe, if you will, that I

have not acted in this matter lightly. It has cost me many days and

weeks of anxious thinking.”

She looked earnestly into his face, and he answered with gentle

gravity:

“We appreciate your character too well, Mrs. Holmroyd, to suppose for a

moment that you would take any step unless it fully satisfied your

conscience.”

She could see his face no longer for the tears that flooded him from

sight. A tide of divine sorrow submerged, yet sustained her. For a

moment she stood thus and tasted the insufferable sweetness of a rapture

akin to death.

“Life holds nothing more precious for me ...” she went on in a voice

broken by the stress of her emotion, “than the sympathy and friendship I

have found in this house. They have sustained me, helped me, during many

dark moments. I cannot tell you how much my heart owes to the kindness

you have shown it....”

Her voice, breaking at that, she offered him--as though in attestation

of a debt unpayable--her hand. He took it, and impulsively she laid her

second hand for one moment over his and pressed it with a sudden

effusion of friendship and of gratitude. Then, without another word or

look she took her leave and bore her full heart away from this house of

insupportable sweetness.

Arthur Rencil gazed out for a moment into the street, and closed the

door with the slow preoccupation of one who acts still under the

influence of a deep emotion, walking gravely up the staircase to the

room where his wife awaited him. Her head was turned over her shoulder

to the open doorway in anticipation of his return, and her first

question when he entered was:

“What did she say to you downstairs, dear?”

“She begged that we would not blame her too greatly.”

“How sad. She feels it, Arthur. When you wished her all happiness ...

her lip trembled. For very little she would have burst into tears.

Didn’t you notice?”

“I realized she was in trouble. I tried not to look at her too closely.”

He moved to the mantel-piece. “Just as she was going away ... she

thanked us, Ethel, for our kindness to her. She said we could not

realize how much her heart owed us. I think she has the fear that what

she is doing may cost her our friendship.”

Mrs. Rencil said: “Poor woman ... poor woman. It is a terrible position

to be in. I suppose she sees no alternative. She is thinking only of her

little boy.--Such a pretty woman too. Don’t you think so, Arthur? At

times, when she is smiling, she looks quite young. She speaks so

prettily, too. I love to listen to her. Don’t you? She is my conception

of a thoroughly good woman.”

“Are there such things,” the Organist enquired thoughtfully, “as

thoroughly good women?”

“You know there are!” his wife exclaimed, with a smile that did not

altogether dissipate her gravity. “I can’t explain how it is ... but

somehow, I always feel a better woman when I am with her. But marrying a

man like that!” She gave a little shudder. “Whatever can they have in

common? Oh! it seems shocking for so much goodness and refinement to be

thrown away. She deserves a better husband.” And with glistening eyes

she added: “Somebody more like you, Arthur.”

The Organist turned a luminous smile upon her through his glasses.

“But I am not a City Father with a flourishing business and a fat

banking account, Ethel. I am only a poor church organist who has to make

up in goodness what he lacks in money.”

“If it only needs money to make you different from what you are,” his

wife attested stoutly, “I hope we may always be poor. Oh, Arthur! When I

think of Mrs. Holmroyd, I feel how truly thankful we ought both to be.

We have been married nearly ten years--and during all that time we have

never had anything more than just those silly quarrels that teach us

how dear we are to one another.--What’s that?” It was the sound of

tottering and unsteady scales from the music room. “A pupil? Were you

expecting anybody?”

Arthur Rencil looked up through his glasses and made a comic gesture of

despair.

“Of course I wasn’t. It’s true that I told her to come at half-past

five, but she forgets everything else I tell her--and why she has

remembered this I can’t imagine. Still ... it’s part of the happiness

we’ve both of us got to be so thankful for, Ethel! And when she has been

thirteen times, and I have sent in the bill, and her father comes to

settle it six months later--the money will go nicely towards paying for

that last new hat of yours ... or the next one!” He was leaving his wife

with a smile when she called him by name.

“Arthur!”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be long, dear!”

“You mean ... I am to give my pupil short measure, Ethel? Why?”

“No. Of course I didn’t mean that. But don’t give her longer than she’s

supposed to have. Come back and bring your writing here, and sit with

me. I promise not to talk. I’ll do my fancy work. But I like to have you

near me.”

He went back to her, responsive to the supplication in her eyes, took

her head in his two hands and kissed her. She held his neck captive for

awhile, nestling her cheek against his, and said: “Oh, Arthur ... what

must the world be like to those who have no love to turn to when they

need it!”