THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.
The same wind that rushed about the funeral of William Marston in the
old churchyard of Testbridge, howled in the roofless hall and ruined
tower of Durnmelling, and dashed against the plate-glass windows of the
dining-room, where the three ladies sat at lunch. Immediately it was
over, Lady Malice rose, saying:
"Hesper, I want a word with you. Come to my room."
Hesper obeyed, with calmness, but without a doubt that evil awaited her
there. To that room she had never been summoned for anything she could
call good. And indeed she knew well enough what evil it was that to-day
played the Minotaur. When they reached the boudoir, rightly so called,
for it was more in use for _sulking_ than for anything else, Lady
Margaret, with back as straight as the door she had just closed, led
the way to the fire, and, seating herself, motioned Hesper to a chair.
Hesper again obeyed, looking as unconcerned as if she cared for nothing
in this world or in any other. Would we were all as strong to suppress
hate and fear and anxiety as some ladies are to suppress all show of
them! Such a woman looks to me like an automaton, in which a human
soul, somewhere concealed, tries to play a good game of life, and makes
a sad mess of it.
"Well, Hesper, what do you think?" said her mother, with a dull attempt
at gayety, which could nowise impose upon the experience of her
daughter.
"I think nothing, mamma," drawled Hesper.
"Mr. Redmain has come to the point at last, my dear child."
"What point, mamma?"
"He had a private interview with your father this morning."
"Indeed!"
"Foolish girl! you think to tease me by pretending indifference!"
"How can a fact be pretended, mamma? Why should I care what passes in
the study? I was never welcome there. But, if you wish, I will pretend.
What important matter was settled in the study this morning?"
"Hesper, you provoke me with your affectation!"
Hesper's eyes began to flash. Otherwise she was still--silent--not a
feature moved. The eyes are more untamable than the tongue. When the
wild beast can not get out at the door, nothing can keep him from the
windows. The eyes flash when the will is yet lord even of the lines of
the mouth. Not a nerve of Hesper's quivered. Though a mere child in the
knowledge that concerned her own being, even the knowledge of what is
commonly called the heart, she was yet a mistress of the art of
self-defense, socially applied, and she would not now put herself at
the disadvantage of taking anything for granted, or accept the clearest
hint for a plain statement. She not merely continued silent, but looked
so utterly void of interest, or desire to speak, that her mother,
recognizing her own child, and quailing before the evil spirit she had
herself sent on to the generations to come, yielded and spoke out.
"Mr. Redmain has proposed for your hand, Hesper," she said, in a tone
as indifferent in her turn as if she were mentioning the appointment of
a new clergyman to the family living.
For one moment, and one only, the repose of Hesper's faultless upper
lip gave way; one writhing movement of scorn passed along its curves,
and left them for a moment straightened out--to return presently to a
grander bend than before. In a tone that emulated, and more than
equaled, the indifference of her mother's, she answered:
"And papa?"
"Has referred him to you, of course," replied Lady Margaret.
"Meaning it?"
"What else? Why not? Is he not a _bon parli?_"
"Then papa did not mean it?"
"I do not understand you," elaborated the mother, with a mingled yawn,
which she was far from attempting to suppress, seeing she simulated it.
"If Mr. Redmain is such a good match in papa's eyes," explained Hesper,
"why does papa refer him to me?"
"That you may accept him, of course."
"How much has the man promised to pay for me?"
"_Hesper!_"
"I beg your pardon, mamma. I thought you approved of calling things by
their right names!"
"No girl can do better than follow her mother's example," said Lady
Margaret, with vague sequence. "If _you_ do, Hesper, you will accept
Mr. Redmain."
Hesper fixed her eyes on her mother, but hers were too cold and clear
to quail before them, let them flash and burn as they pleased.
"As you did papa?" said Hesper.
"As I did Mr. Mortimer."
"That explains a good deal, mamma."
"We are _your_ parents, anyhow, Hesper."
"I suppose so. I don't know which to be sorrier for--you or me. Tell
me, mamma: would _you_ marry Mr. Redmain?"
"That is a foolish question, and ought not to be put. It is one which,
as a married woman, I could not consider without impropriety. Knowing
the duty of a daughter, I did not put the question to _you_. You are
yourself the offspring of duty."
"If you were in my place, mamma," reattempted Hesper, but her mother
did not allow her to proceed.
"In any place, in every place, I should do my duty," she said.
It was not only born in Lady Malice's blood, but from earliest years,
had been impressed on her brain, that her first duty was to her family,
and mainly consisted in getting well out of its way--in going peaceably
through the fire to Moloch, that the rest might have good places in the
Temple of Mammon. In her turn, she had trained her children to the
bewildering conviction that it was duty to do a certain wrong, if it
should be required. That wrong thing was now required of Hesper--a
thing she scorned, hated, shuddered at; she must follow the rest; her
turn to be sacrificed was come; she must henceforth be a living lie.
She could recompense herself as the daughters who have sinned by
yielding generally do when they are mothers, with the sin of
compelling, and thus make the trespass round and full. There is in no
language yet the word invented to fit the vileness of such mothers;
but, as time flows and speech grows, it may be found, and, when it is
found, it will have action retrospective. It is a frightful thing when
ignorance of evil, so much to be desired where it can contribute to
safety, is employed to smooth the way to the unholiest doom, in which
love itself must ruthlessly perish, and those, who on the plea of
virtue were kept ignorant, be perfected in the image of the mothers who
gave them over to destruction. Some, doubtless, of the innocents thus
immolated pass even through hideous fires of marital foulness to come
out the purer and the sweeter; but whither must the stone about the
neck of those that cause the little ones to offend sink those mothers?
What company shall in the end be too low, too foul for them? Like to
like it must always be.
Hesper was not so ignorant as some girls; she had for some time had one
at her side capable of casting not a little light of the kind that is
darkness.
"_Duty_, mamma!" she cried, her eyes flaming, and her cheek flushed
with the shame of the thing that was but as yet the merest object in
her thought; "can a woman be born for such things? How _could_
I--mamma, how could any woman, with an atom of self-respect, consent to
occupy the same--_room_ with Mr. Redmain?"
"Hesper! I am shocked. _Where_ did you learn to speak, not to say
_think_, of such things? Have I taken such pains--good God! you strike
me dumb! Have I watched my child like a very--angel, as anxious to keep
her mind pure as her body fair, and is _this_ the result?" Upon what
Lady Margaret founded her claim to a result more satisfactory to her
maternal designs, it were hard to say. For one thing, she had known
nothing of what went on in her nursery, positively nothing of the real
character of the women to whom she gave the charge of it;
and--although, I dare say, for worldly women, Hesper's schoolmistresses
were quite respectable--what did her mother, what could she know of the
governesses or of the flock of sheep--all presumably, but how certainly
_all_ white?--into which she had sent her?
"Is _this_ the result?" said Lady Margaret.
"Was it your object, then, to keep me innocent, only that I might have
the necessary lessons in wickedness first from my husband?" said
Hesper, with a rudeness for which, if an apology be necessary, I leave
my reader to find it.
"Hesper, you are vulgar!" said Lady Margaret, with cold indignation,
and an expression of unfeigned disgust. She was, indeed, genuinely
shocked. That a young lady of Hesper's birth and position should talk
like this, actually objecting to a man as her husband because she
recoiled from his wickedness, of which she was not to be supposed to
know, or to be capable of understanding, anything, was a thing unheard
of in her world-a thing unmaidenly in the extreme! What innocent girl
would or could or dared allude to such matters? She had no right to
know an atom about them!
"You are a married woman, mamma," returned Hesper, "and therefore must
know a great many things I neither know nor wish to know. For anything
I know, you may be ever so much a better woman than I, for having
learned not to mind things that are a horror to me. But there was a
time when you shrunk from them as I do now. I appeal to you as a woman:
for God's sake, save me from marrying that wretch!"
She spoke in a tone inconsistently calm.
"Girl! is it possible you dare to call the man, whom your father and I
have chosen for your husband, a wretch!"
"Is he not a wretch, mamma?"
"If he were, how should I know it? What has any lady got to do with a
man's secrets?"
"Not if he wants to marry her daughter?"
"Certainly not. If he should not be altogether what he ought to be--and
which of us is?--then you will have the honor of reclaiming him. But
men settle down when they marry."
"And what comes of their wives?"
"What comes of women. You have your mother before you, Hesper."
"O mother!" cried Hesper, now at length losing the horrible affectation
of calm which she had been taught to regard as _de rigueur_, "is it
possible that you, so beautiful, so dignified, would send me on to meet
things you dare not tell me--knowing they would turn me sick or mad?
How dares a man like that even desire in his heart to touch an innocent
girl?"
"Because he is tired of the other sort," said Lady Malice, half
unconsciously, to herself. What she said to her daughter was ten times
worse: the one was merely a fact concerning Redmain; the other revealed
a horrible truth concerning herself. "He will settle three thousand a
year on you, Hesper," she said with a sigh; "and you will find yourself
mistress."
"I don't doubt it," answered Hesper, in bitter scorn. "Such a man is
incapable of making any woman a wife."
Hesper meant an awful spiritual fact, of which, with all her ignorance
of human nature, she had yet got a glimpse in her tortured reflections
of late; but her mother's familiarity with evil misinterpreted her
innocence, and caused herself utter dismay. What right had a girl to
think at all for herself in such matters? Those were things that must
be done, not thought of!
"These things must not be thought
After these ways; so, they will drive us mad."
Yes, these things are hard to think about--harder yet to write about!
The very persons who would send the white soul into arms whose mere
touch is a dishonor will be the first to cry out with indignation
against that writer as shameless who but utters the truth concerning
the things they mean and do; they fear lest their innocent daughters,
into whose hands his books might chance, by ill luck, to fall, should
learn that it is _their_ business to keep themselves pure.--Ah, sweet
mothers! do not be afraid. You have brought them up so carefully, that
they suspect you no more than they do the well-bred gentlemen you would
have them marry. And have they not your blood in them? That will go
far. Never heed the foolish puritan. Your mothers succeeded with you:
you will succeed with your daughters.
But it is a shame to speak of those things that are done of you in
secret, and I will forbear. Thank God, the day will come--it may be
thousands of years away--when there shall be no such things for a man
to think of, any more than for a girl to shudder at! There is a
purification in progress, and the kingdom of heaven _will_ come, thanks
to the Man who was holy, harmless, undefined, and separate from
sinners. You have heard a little, probably only a little, about him at
church sometimes. But, when that day comes, what part will you have had
in causing evil to cease from the earth?
There had been a time in the mother's life when she herself regarded
her approaching marriage, with a man she did not love, as a horror to
which her natural maidenliness--a thing she could not help--had to be
compelled and subjected: of the true maidenliness--that before which
the angels make obeisance, and the lion cowers--she never had had any;
for that must be gained by the pure will yielding itself to the power
of the highest. Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in
a measure satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring
enough, that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually,
been assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had
once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the contact
with uncleanness. One thing she did know, and that swallowed up all the
rest--that her husband's affairs were so involved as to threaten
absolute poverty; and what woman of the world would not count damnation
better than that?--while Mr. Redmain was rolling in money. Had she
known everything bad of her daughter's suitor, short of legal crime,
for her this would have covered it all.
In Hesper's useless explosion the mother did not fail to recognize the
presence of Sepia, without whose knowledge of the bad side of the
world, Hesper, she believed, could not have been awake to so much. But
she was afraid of Sepia. Besides, the thing was so far done; and she
did not think she would work to thwart the marriage. On that point she
would speak to her.
But it was a doubtful service that Sepia had rendered her cousin--to
rouse her indignation and not her strength; to wake horror without
hinting at remedy; to give knowledge of impending doom, without poorest
suggestion of hope, or vaguest shadow of possible escape. It is one
thing to see things as they are; to be consumed with indignation at the
wrong; to shiver with aversion to the abominable; and quite another to
rouse the will to confront the devil, and resist him until he flee. For
this the whole education of Hesper had tended to unfit her. What she
had been taught--and that in a world rendered possible only by the
self-denial of a God--was to drift with the stream, denying herself
only that divine strength of honest love, which would soonest help her
to breast it.
For the earth, it is a blessed thing that those who arrogate to
themselves the holy name of society, and to whom so large a portion of
the foolish world willingly yields it, are in reality so few and so
ephemeral. Mere human froth are they, worked up by the churning of the
world-sea--rainbow-tinted froth, lovely thinned water, weaker than the
unstable itself out of which it is blown. Great as their ordinance
seems, it is evanescent as arbitrary: the arbitrary is but the slavish
puffed up--and is gone with the hour. The life of the people is below;
it ferments, and the scum is for ever being skimmed off, and cast--God
knows where. All is scum where will is not. They leave behind them
influences indeed, but few that keep their vitality in shapes of art or
literature. There they go--little sparrows of the human world,
chattering eagerly, darting on every crumb and seed of supposed
advantage! while from behind the great dustman's cart, the huge
tiger-cat of an eternal law is creeping upon them. Is it a spirit of
insult that leads me to such a comparison? Where human beings do not,
will not _will_, let them be ladies gracious as the graces, the
comparison is to the disadvantage of the sparrows. Not time, but
experience will show that, although indeed a simile, this is no
hyperbole.
"I will leave your father to deal with you, Hesper," said her mother,
and rose.
Up to this point, Mortimer children had often resisted their mother;
beyond this point, never more than once.
"No, please, mamma!" returned Hesper, in a tone of expostulation. "I
have spoken my mind, but that is no treason. As my father has referred
Mr. Redmain to me, I would rather deal with him."
Lady Malice was herself afraid of her husband. There is many a woman,
otherwise courageous enough, who will rather endure the worst and most
degrading, than encounter articulate insult. The mere lack of
conscience gives the scoundrel advantage incalculable over the honest
man; the lack of refinement gives a similar advantage to the cad over
the gentleman; the combination of the two lacks elevates the husband
and father into an autocrat. Hesper was not one her world would have
counted weak; she had physical courage enough; she rode well, and
without fear; she sat calm in the dentist's chair; she would have
fought with knife and pistol against violence to the death; and yet,
rather than encounter the brutality of an evil-begotten race
concentrated in her father, she would yield herself to a defilement
eternally more defiling than that she would both kill and die to escape.
"Give me a few hours first, mamma," she begged. "Don't let him come to
me just yet. For all your hardness, you feel a little for me--don't
you?"
"Duty is always hard, my child," said Lady Margaret. She entirely
believed it, and looked on herself as a martyr, a pattern of
self-devotion and womanly virtue. But, had she been certain of escaping
discovery, she would have slipped the koh-i-noor into her belt-pouch,
notwithstanding. Never once in her life had she done or abstained from
doing a thing _because_ that thing was right or was wrong. Such a
person, be she as old and as hard as the hills, is mere putty in the
fingers of Beelzebub.
Hesper rose and went to her own room. There, for a long hour, she
sat--with the skin of her fair face drawn tight over muscles rigid as
marble--sat without moving, almost without thinking--in a mere hell of
disgusted anticipation. She neither stormed nor wept; her life went
smoldering on; she nerved herself to a brave endurance, instead of a
far braver resistance.
I fancy Hesper would have been a little shocked if one had called her
an atheist. She went to church most Sundays--when in the country; for,
in the opinion of Lady Margaret, it was not decorous _there_ to omit
the ceremony: where you have influence you ought to set a good
example--of hypocrisy, namely! But, if any one had suggested to Hesper
a certain old-fashioned use of her chamber-door, she would have
inwardly laughed at the absurdity. But, then, you see, her chamber was
no closet, but a large and stately room; and, besides, how, alas!
_could_ the child of Roger and Lady M. Alice Mortimer know that in the
silence was hearing--that in the vacancy was a power waiting to be
sought? Hesper was not much alone, and here was a chance it was a pity
she should lose; but, when she came to herself with a sigh, it was not
to pray, and, when she rose, it was to ring the bell.
A good many minutes passed before it was answered. She paced the
room--swiftly; she could sit, but she could not walk slowly. With her
hands to her head, she went sweeping up and down. Her maid's knock
arrested her before her toilet-table, with her back to the door. In a
voice of perfect composure, she desired the woman to ask Miss Yolland
to come to her.
Entering with a slight stoop from the waist, Sepia, with a long, rapid,
yet altogether graceful step, bore down upon Hesper like a fast-sailing
cutter over broad waves, relaxing her speed as she approached her.
"Here I am, Hesper!" she said.
"Sepia," said Hesper, "I am sold."
Miss Yolland gave a little laugh, showing about the half of her
splendid teeth--a laugh to which Hesper was accustomed, but the meaning
of which she did not understand--nor would, without learning a good
deal that were better left unlearned. "To Mr. Redmain, of course!" she
said.
Hesper nodded.
"When are you going to be--"--she was about to say "cut up" but there
was a something occasionally visible in Hesper that now and then
checked one of her less graceful coarsenesses. "When is the purchase to
be completed?" she asked, instead.
"Good Heavens, Sepia! don't be so heartless!" cried Hesper. "Things are
not quite so bad as that! I am not yet in the hell of knowing that. The
day is not fixed for the great red dragon to make a meal of me."
"I see you were not asleep in church, as I thought, all the time of the
sermon, last Sunday," said Sepia.
"I did my best, but I could not sleep: every time little Mowbray
mentioned the beast, I thought of Mr. Redmain; and it made me too
miserable to sleep."
"Poor Hesper!--Well! let us hope that, like the beast in the
fairy-tale, he will turn out a man after all."
"My heart will break," cried Hesper, throwing herself into a chair.
"Pity me, Sepia; _you_ love me a little."
A slight shadow darkened yet more Sepia's shadowy brow.
"Hesper," she said, gravely, "you never told me there was anything of
that sort! Who is it?"
"Mr. Redmain, of course!--I don't know what you mean, Sepia."
"You said your heart was breaking: who is it for?" asked Sepia, almost
imperiously, and raising her voice a little.
"Sepia!" cried Hesper, in bewilderment.
"Why should your heart be breaking, except you loved somebody?"
"Because I hate _him_," answered Hesper.
"Pooh! is that all?" returned Miss Yolland. "If there were anybody you
wanted--then I grant!"
"Sepia!" said Hesper, almost entreatingly, "I can not bear to be teased
to-day. Do be open with me. You always puzzle me so! I don't understand
you a bit better than the first day you came to us. I have got used to
you--that is all. Tell me--are you my friend, or are you in league with
mamma? I have my doubts. I can't help it, Sepia."
She looked in her face pitifully. Miss Yolland looked at her calmly, as
if waiting for her to finish.
"I thought you would--not help me," Hesper went on, "--that no one can
except God--he could strike me dead; but I did think you would feel for
me a little. I hate Mr. Redmain, and I loathe myself. If _you_ laugh at
me, I shall take poison."
"I wouldn't do that," returned Miss Yolland, quite gravely, and as if
she had already contemplated the alternative; "--that is, not so long
as there was a turn of the game left."
"The game!" echoed Hesper. "--Playing for love with the devil!--I wish
the game were yours, as you call it!"
"Mine I'd make it, if I had it to play," returned Sepia. "I wish I were
the other player instead of you, but the man hates me. Some men
do.--Come," she went on, "I will be open with you, Hesper; you don't
hang for thoughts in England. I will tell you what I would do with a
man I hated--that is, if I was compelled to marry him; it would hardly
be fair otherwise, and I have a weakness for fair play.--I would give
him absolute fair play."
The last three words she spoke with a strange expression of mingled
scorn and jest, then paused, and seemed to have said all she meant to
say.
"Go on," sighed Hesper; "you amuse me." Her tone expressed anything but
amusement. "What would a woman of your experience do in my place?"
Sepia fixed a momentary look on Hesper; the words seemed to have stung
her. She knew well enough that, if Lady Malice came to know anything of
her real history, she would have bare time to pack up her small
belongings. She wanted Hesper married, that she might go with her into
the world again; at the same time, she feared her marriage with Mr.
Redmain would hardly favor her wishes. But she could not with prudence
do anything expressly to prevent it; while she might even please Mr.
Redmain a little, if she were supposed to have used influence on his
side. That, however, must not seem to Hesper. Sepia did not yet know in
fact upon what ground she had to build.
For some time she had been trying to get nearer to Hesper, but--much
like Hesper's experience with her--had found herself strangely baffled,
she could not tell how--the barrier being simply the half innocence,
half ignorance, of Hesper. When minds are not the same, words do not
convey between them.
She gave a ringing laugh, throwing back her head, and showing all her
fine teeth.
"You want to know what I would do with a man I hated, as you _say_ you
hate Mr. Redmain?--I would send for him at once--not wait for him to
come to me--and entreat him, _as he loved me_, to deliver me from the
dire necessity of obeying my father. If he were a gentleman, as I hope
he may be, he would manage to get me out of it somehow, and wouldn't
compromise me a hair's breadth. But, that is, _if I were you_. If I
were _myself_ in your circumstances, and hated him as you do, that
would not serve my turn. I would ask him all the same to set me free,
but I would behave myself so that he could not do it. While I begged
him, I mean, I should make him feel that he could not--should make him
absolutely determined to marry me, at any price to him, and at whatever
cost to me. He should say to himself that I did not mean what I
said--as, indeed, for the sake of my revenge, I should not. For that I
would give anything--supposing always, don't you know? that I hated him
as you do Mr. Redmain. He should declare to me it was impossible; that
he would die rather than give up the most precious desire of his
life--and all that rot, you know. I would tell him I hated him--only so
that he should not believe me. I would say to him, 'Release me, Mr.
Redmain, or I will make you repent it. I have given you fair warning. I
have told you I hated you.' He should persist, should marry me, and
then I _would_."
"Would what?"
"Do as I said."
"But what?"
"Make him repent it."
With the words, Miss Yolland broke into a second fit of laughter, and,
turning from Hesper, went, with a kind of loitering, strolling pace
toward the door, glancing round more than once, each time with a fresh
bubble rather than ripple in her laughter. Whether it was all
nonsensical merriment, or whether the author of laughter without fun,
Beelzebub himself, was at the moment stirring in her, Hesper could not
have told; as it was, she sat staring after her, unable even to think.
Just as she reached the door, however, she turned quickly, and, with
the smile of a hearty, innocent child, or something very like it, ran
back to Hesper, threw her arms round her, and said:
"There, now! I've done for you what I could: I have made you forget the
odious man for a moment. I was curious to know whether I could not make
a bride forget her bridegroom. The other thing is too easy."
"What other thing?"
"To make a bridegroom forget his bride, of course, you silly
child!--But there I am, off again! when really it is time to be
serious, and come to the only important point in the matter.--In what
shade of purity do you think of ascending the funeral pyre?--In
absolute white?--or rose-tinged?--or cream-colored!--or
gold-suspect?--Eh, happy bride?"
As she ceased, she turned her head away, pulled out her handkerchief,
and whimpered a little.
"Sepia!" said Hesper, annoyed, "you are a worse goose than I thought
you! What have _you_ got to cry about? _You_ have not got to marry him!"
"No; I wish I had!" returned Sepia, wiping her eyes. "Then I shouldn't
lose you. I should take care of that."
"And am I likely to gain such a friend in Mr. Redmain as to afford the
loss of the only _other_ friend I have?" said Hesper, calmly.
"Ah, Hesper! a sad experience has taught me differently, The moment you
are married to the man--as married you will be--you all are--bluster as
you may--that moment you will begin to change into a wife--a
domesticated animal, that is--a tame tabby. Unwilling a woman must be
to confess herself only the better half of a low-bred brute, with a
high varnish--or not, as the case may be; and there is nothing left her
to do but set herself to find out the wretch's virtues, or, as he
hasn't got any, to invent for him the least unlikely ones. She wants
for her own sake to believe in him, don't you know? Then she begins to
repent having said hard words of the poor gentleman. The next thing, of
course, will be, that you begin to hate the person, to whom you said
them, and to persuade yourself she drew them out of you; and so you
break off all communication with the obnoxious person; who being, in
the present instance, that black-faced sheep, Sepia Yolland, she is
very sorry beforehand, and hates Mr. Redmain with all her heart; first,
because Hesper Mortimer hates him, and next, but twice as much, because
she is going to love him. It is a great pity _you_ should have him,
Hesper. I wish you would hand him over to me. _I_ shouldn't mind what
he was. I should soon tame him."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hesper, with righteous
indignation. "_You would not mind what he was!_"
Sepia laughed--this time her curious half-laugh.
"If I did, I wouldn't marry him, Hesper," she said. "Which is
worse--not to mind, and marry him; or to mind, and marry him all the
same? Eh, Cousin Hesper Mortimer?"
"I _can't_ make you out, Sepia!" said Hesper. "I believe I never shall."
"Very likely. Give it up?"
"Quite."
"The best thing you could do. I can't always make myself out. But,
then, I always give it up directly, and so it does me no harm. But it's
ten times worse to worry your poor little heart to rags about such a
man as that; he's not worth a thought from a grand creature like you.
Where's the use, besides? Would you stand staring at your medicine a
whole day before the time for taking it comes? I wouldn't have my right
leg cut off because that is the side my dog walks on, and dogs go mad!
Slip, cup, and lip--don't you know? The man may be underground long
before the wedding-day: he's anything but sound, they tell me. But it
would be far better soon after it, of course. Think only--a young
widow, rich, and not a straw the worse!"
"Sepia, I can't for the life of me tell whether you are a Job's
comforter or the devil's advocate."
"Not the latter, my child; for I want to see you emerge a saint from
the miseries of matrimony. But, whatever you do, Hesper, don't break
your heart, for you will find it hard to mend. I broke mine once, and
have been mad ever since."
"What is the use of saying that to me, when you know I have to marry
the man?"
"I never said you were not to marry him; I said you were not to break
your heart. Marriage is nothing so long as you do not make a heart
affair of it; that hurts; and, as you are not in love, there is no
occasion for it at all."
"Marriage is nothing, Sepia! Is it nothing to be tied to a man--to
_any_ man--for all your life?"
"That's as you take it. Nobody makes so much of it nowadays as they
used. The clergy themselves, who are at the bottom of all the business,
don't fuss about every trifle in the prayer-book. They sign the
articles, and have done with it--meaning, of course, to break them, if
they stand in their way."
Hesper rose in anger.
"How dare you--" she began.
"Good gracious!" cried Sepia, "you don't imagine I meant anything so
wicked! How could you let such a thing come into your head? I declare
you are quite dangerous to talk to!"
"It's such a horrible business," said Hesper, "it seems to make one
capable of anything wicked, only to think about it. I would rather not
say another word on the subject."
A shudder ran through her, as if at the sight of some hideously
offensive object.
"That would be the best thing," said Sepia, "if it meant not think more
about it. Everything is better for not being thought about. I would do
anything to comfort you, dear. I would marry him for you, if that would
do; but I fear it would scarcely meet the views of Herr Papa. If I
could please the beast as well--and I think I should in time--I would
willingly hand him the purchase-money. But, of course, he would scorn
to touch it, except as the proceeds of the _bona-fide_ sale of his own
flesh and blood."