MR. MEADOWS dispatched his work in Shropshire twice as fast as he had
calculated, and returned home with two forces battling inside him--love
and prudence. The battle was decided for him.
William Fielding's honest but awkward interference had raised in Susan
Merton a desire to separate her sentiments from his by showing Mr.
Meadows a marked respect. She heard of his arrival and instantly sent
her father to welcome him home. Old Merton embraced the commission, for
he happened to need Meadows's advice and assistance. The speculations
into which he had been led by Mr. Clinton, after some fluctuations, wore
a gloomy look, “which could only be temporary,” said that gentleman.
Still a great loss would be incurred by selling out of them at a period
of depression, and Mr. Clinton advised him to borrow a thousand pounds
and hold on till things brightened.
Mr. Meadows smiled grimly as the fly came and buzzed all this in his
web: “Dear! dear! what a pity my money is locked up! Go to Lawyer
Crawley. Use my name. He won't refuse my friend, for I could do him an
ill turn if I chose.”
“I will. You are a true friend. You will look in and see us, of course,
market-day?”
“Why not?”
Meadows did not resume his visits at Grassmere without some twinges of
conscience and a prudent resolve not to anchor his happiness upon Susan
Merton. “That man might come here any day with his thousand pounds and
take her from me,” said he. “He seems by his letters to be doing well,
and they say any fool can make money in the colonies. Well, if he comes
home respectable and well to do--I'll go out. If I am not to have the
only woman I ever loved or cared for, let thousands and thousands of
miles of sea lie between me and that pair.” But still he wheeled about
the flame.
Ere long matters took a very different turn. The tone of George's
letters began to change. His repeated losses of bullocks and sheep were
all recorded in his letters to Susan, and these letters were all read
with eager anxiety by Meadows a day before they reached Grassmere.
The respectable man did not commit this action without some iron passing
through his own soul--_Nemo repente turpissimus._ The first letter
he opened it was like picking a lock. He writhed and blushed, and his
uncertain fingers fumbled with another's property as if it had been
red-hot. The next cost him some shame, too, but the next less, and soon
these little spasms of conscience began to be lost in the pleasure the
letters gave him. “It is clear he will never make a thousand pounds out
there, and if he doesn't the old farmer won't give him Susan. Won't? He
shan't! He shall be too deep in my debt to venture on it even if he
was minded.” Meadows exulted over the letters; and as he exulted they
stabbed him, for by the side of the records of his ill fortune the exile
never failed to pour out his love and confidence in his Susan and to
acknowledge the receipt of some dear letter from her, which Meadows
could see by George's must have assured him of undiminished or even
increased affection.
Thus did sin lead to sin. By breaking a seal which was not his and
reading letters which were not his, Meadows filled himself with the
warmest hopes of possessing Susan one day, and got to hate George for
the stabs the young man innocently gave him. At last he actually looked
on George as a sort of dog in the manger, who could not make Susan
happy, yet would come between her heart and one who could. All weapons
seemed lawful against such a mere pest as this--a dog in the manger.
Meadows started with nothing better nor worse than a commonplace
conscience. A vicious habit is an iron that soon sears that sort of
article. When he had opened and read about four letters, his moral
nature turned stone-blind of one eye. And now he was happier (on the
surface) than he had been ever since he fell in love with Susan.
Sure now that one day or another she must be his, he waited patiently,
enjoyed her society twice a week, got everybody into his power, and
bided his time. And one frightful thing in all this was that his love
for Susan was not only a strong but in itself a good love. I mean it was
a love founded on esteem; it was a passionate love, and yet a
profound and tender affection. It was the love which, under different
circumstances, has often weaned men, ay, and women, too, from a
frivolous, selfish, and sometimes from a vicious life. This love Meadows
thought and hoped would hallow the unlawful means by which he must crown
it. In fact, he was mixing vice and virtue. The snow was to whiten the
pitch, not the pitch blacken the snow. Thousands had tried this before
him and will try it after him. Oh, that I could persuade them to mix
fire and gunpowder instead! Men would bless me for this when all else I
have written has been long, long forgotten.
He felt good all over when he sat with Susan and thought how his means
would enable that angel to satisfy her charitable nature, and win the
prayers of the poor as well as the admiration of the wealthy. “If ever
a woman was cherished she shall be! If ever a woman was happy she shall
be!” And as for him, if he had done wrong to win her, he would more
than compensate it afterward. In short, he had been for more than twenty
years selling, buying, swapping, driving every conceivable earthly
bargain--so now he was proposing one to Heaven.
At last came a letter in which George told Susan of the fatal murrain
among his sheep, of his fever that had followed immediately, of the
further losses while he lay ill, and concluded by saying that he had no
right to tie her to his misfortunes, and that he felt it would be more
manly to set her free.
When he read this, Meadows' exultation broke all bounds. “Ah ha!” cried
he, “is it come to that at last? Well, he is a fine fellow after all,
and looks at it the sensible way, and if I can do him a good turn in
business I always will.”
The next day he called at Grassmere. Susan met him all smiles and was
more cheerful than usual. The watchful man was delighted. “Come, she
does not take it to heart.” He did not guess that Susan had cried for
hours and hours over the letter, and then had sat quietly down and
written a letter and begged George to come home and not add separation
to their other misfortunes; and that it was this decision, and having
acted upon it, that had made her cheerful. Meadows argued in his own
favor, and now made sure to win. The next week he called three times at
Grassmere instead of twice, and asked himself how much longer he
must wait before he should speak out. Prudence said, “A little more
patience;” and so he still hid in his bosom the flame that burned him
the deeper for this unnatural smothering. But he drank deep, silent
draughts of love, and reveled in the bright future of his passion.
It was no longer hope, it was certainty. Susan liked him; her eye
brightened at his coming; her father was in his power. There was nothing
between them but the distant shadow of a rival; sooner or later she must
be his. So passed three calm, delicious weeks away.