GODFREY AND SEPIA.
When the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at Durnmelling, in
the expectation of joining them in London within a fortnight at latest.
The illness of Mr. Redmain, however, caused her stay to be prolonged,
and she was worn out with _ennui_. The self she was so careful over was
not by any means good company: not seldom during her life had she found
herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of suicide
or repentance. This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would even,
occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine, go for a
solitary walk--a thing, I need not say, she hated in itself, though now
it was her forlorn hope, in the poor possibility of falling in with
some distraction. But the hope was not altogether a vague one; for was
there not a man somewhere underneath those chimneys she saw over the
roof of the laundry? She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she
had often talked about him, and often watched him ride--never man more
to her mind. In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the
ha-ha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of a
neighbor whom the family did not visit. To no such folly would Sepia be
a victim.
The analysis of such a nature as hers, with her story to set it forth,
would require a book to itself, and I must happily content myself with
but a fact here and there in her history.
In one of her rambles on his ground she had her desire, and met Godfrey
Wardour. He lifted his hat, and she stopped and addressed him by way of
apology.
"I am afraid you think me very rude, Mr. Wardour," she said. "I know I
am trespassing, but this field of yours is higher than the ground about
Durnmelling, and seems to take pounds off the weight of the atmosphere."
For all he had gone through, Godfrey was not yet less than courteous to
ladies. He assured Miss Yolland that Thornwick was as much at her
service as if it were a part of Durnmelling. "Though, indeed," he
added, with a smile, "it would be more correct to say, 'as if
Durnmelling were a part of Thornwick'--for that was the real state of
the case once upon a time."
The statement interested or seemed to interest Miss Yolland, giving
rise to many questions; and a long conversation ensued. Suddenly she
woke, or seemed to wake, to the consciousness that she had forgotten
herself and the proprieties together: hastily, and to all appearance
with some confusion, she wished him a good morning; but she was not too
much confused to thank him again for the permission he had given her to
walk on his ground.
It was not by any intention on the part of Godfrey that they met
several times after this; but they always had a little conversation
before they parted; nor did Sepia find any difficulty in getting him
sufficiently within their range to make him feel the power of her eyes.
She was too prudent, however, to bring to bear upon any man all at once
the full play of her mesmeric battery; and things had got no further
when she went to London--a week or two before the return of the
Redmains, ostensibly to get things in some special readiness for
Hesper; but that this may have been a pretense appears possible from
the fact that Mary came from Cornwall on the same mission a few days
later.
I have just mentioned an acquaintance of Sepia's, who attracted the
notice and roused the peculiar interest of Mr. Redmain, because of a
look he saw pass betwixt them. This man spoke both English and French
with a foreign accent, and gave himself out as a Georgian--Count
Galofta, he called himself: I believe he was a prince in Paris. At this
time he was in London, and, during the ten days that Sepia was alone,
came to see her several times--called early in the forenoon first, the
next day in the evening, when they went together to the opera, and once
came and staid late. Whether from her dark complexion making her look
older than she was, or from the subduing air which her experience had
given her, or merely from the fact that she belonged to nobody much,
Miss Yolland seemed to have _carte blanche_ to do as she pleased, and
come and go when and where she liked, as one knowing well enough how to
take care of herself.
Mary, arriving unexpectedly at the house in Glammis Square, met him in
the hall as she entered: he had just taken leave of Sepia, who was
going up the stair at the moment. Mary had never seen him before, but
something about him caused her to look at him again as he passed.
Somehow, Tom also had discovered Sepia's return, and had gone to see
her more than once.
When Mr. and Mrs. Redmain arrived, there was so much to be done for
Hesper's wardrobe that, for some days, Mary found it impossible to go
and see Letty. Her mistress seemed harder to please than usual, and
more doubtful of humor than ever before. This may have arisen--but I
doubt it--from the fact that, having gone to church the Sunday before
they left, she had there heard a different sort of sermon from any she
had heard in her life before: sermons have something to do with the
history of the world, however many of them may be no better than a
withered leaf in the blast.
The morning after her arrival, Hesper, happening to find herself in
want of Mary's immediate help, instead of calling her as she generally
did, opened the door between their rooms, and saw Mary on her knees by
her bedside. Now, Hesper had heard of saying prayers--night and morning
both--and, when a child, had been expected, and indeed compelled, to
say her prayers; but to be found on one's knees in the middle of the
day looked to her a thing exceedingly odd. Mary, in truth, was not much
in the way of kneeling at such a time: she had to pray much too often
to kneel always, and God was too near her, wherever she happened to be,
for the fancy that she must seek him in any particular place; but so it
happened now. She rose, a little startled rather than troubled, and
followed her mistress into her room.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you, Mary," said Hesper, herself a little
annoyed, it is not quite easy to say why; "but people do not generally
say their prayers in the middle of the day."
"I say mine when I need to say them," answered Mary, a little cross
that Hesper should take any notice. She would rather the thing had not
occurred, and it was worse to have to talk about it.
"For my part, I don't see any good in being righteous overmuch," said
Hesper.
I wonder if there was another saying in the Bible she would have been
so ready to quote!
"I don't know what that means," returned Mary. "I believe it is
somewhere in the Bible, but I am sure Jesus never said it, for he tells
us to be righteous as our Father in heaven is righteous."
"But the thing is impossible," said Hesper. "How is one with such
claims on her as I have, to attend to these things? Society has claims:
no one denies that."
"And has God none?" asked Mary.
"Many people think now there is no God at all," returned Hesper, with
an almost petulant expression.
"If there is no God, that settles the question," answered Mary. "But,
if there should be one, how then?"
"Then I am sure he would never be hard on one like me. I do just like
other people. One must do as people do. If there is one thing that must
be avoided more than another, it is peculiarity. How ridiculous it
would be of any one to set herself against society!"
"Then you think the Judge will be satisfied if you say, 'Lord, I had so
many names in my visiting-book, and so many invitations I could not
refuse, that it was impossible for me to attend to those things'?"
"I don't see that I'm at all worse than other people," persisted
Hesper. "I can't go and pretend to be sorry for sins I should commit
again the next time there was a necessity. I don't see what I've got to
repent of."
Nothing had been said about repentance: here, I imagine, the sermon may
have come in.
"Then, of course, you can't repent," said Mary.
Hesper recovered herself a little.
"I am glad you see the thing as I do," she said.
"I don't see it at all as you do, ma'am," answered Mary, gently.
"Why!" exclaimed Hesper, taken by surprise, "what have I got to repent
of?"
"Do you really want me to say what I think?" asked Mary.
"Of course, I do," returned Hesper, getting angry, and at the same time
uneasy: she knew Mary's freedom of speech upon occasion, but felt that
to draw back would be to yield the point. "What have I done to be
ashamed of, pray?"
Some ladies are ready to plume themselves upon not having been guilty
of certain great crimes. Some thieves, I dare say, console themselves
that they have never committed murder.
"If I had married a man I did not love," answered Mary, "I should be
more ashamed of myself than I can tell."
"That is the way of looking at such things in the class you belong to,
I dare say," rejoined Hesper; "but with us it is quite different. There
is no necessity laid upon _you. Our_ position obliges us."
"But what if God should not see it as you do?"
"If that is all you have got to bring against me!--" said Hesper, with
a forced laugh.
"But that is not all," replied Mary. "When you married, you promised
many things, not one of which you have ever done."
"Really, Mary, this is intolerable!" cried Hesper.
"I am only doing what you asked me, ma'am," said Mary. "And I have said
nothing that every one about Mr. Redmain does not know as well as I do."
Hesper wished heartily she had never challenged Mary's judgment.
"But," she resumed, more quietly, "how could you, how could any one,
how could God himself, hard as he is, ask me to fulfill the part of a
loving wife to a man like Mr. Redmain?--There is no use mincing matters
with _you,_ Mary."
"But you promised," persisted Mary. "It belongs, besides, to the very
idea of marriage."
"There are a thousand promises made every day which nobody is expected
to keep. It is the custom, the way of the world! How many of the
clergy, now, believe the things they put their names to?"
"They must answer for themselves. We are not clergymen, but women, who
ought never to say a thing except we mean it, and, when we have said
it, to stick to it."
"But just look around you, and see how many there are in precisely the
same position! Will you dare to say they are all going to be lost
because they do not behave like angels to their brutes of husbands?"
"I say, they have got to repent of behaving to their husbands as their
husbands behave to them."
"And what if they don't?"
Mary paused a little.
"Do you expect to go to heaven, ma'am?" she asked
"I hope so."
"Do you think you will like it?"
"I must say, I think it will be rather dull."
"Then, to use your own word, you must be very like lost anyway. There
does not seem to be a right place for you anywhere, and that is very
like being lost--is it not?"
Hesper laughed.
"I am pretty comfortable where I am," she said.
"Husband and all!" thought Mary, but she did not say that. What she did
say was:
"But you know you can't stay here. God is not going to keep up this way
of things for you; can you ask it, seeing you don't care a straw what
he wants of you? But I have sometimes thought, What if hell be just a
place where God gives everybody everything she wants, and lets
everybody do whatever she likes, without once coming nigh to interfere!
What a hell that would be! For God's presence in the very being, and
nothing else, is bliss. That, then, would be altogether the opposite of
heaven, and very much the opposite of this world. Such a hell would go
on, I suppose, till every one had learned to hate every one else in the
same world with her."
This was beyond Hesper, and she paid no attention to it.
"You can never, in your sober senses, Mary," she said, "mean that God
requires of me to do things for Mr. Redmain that the servants can do a
great deal better! That would be ridiculous--not to mention that I
oughtn't and couldn't and wouldn't do them for any man!"
"Many a woman," said Mary, with a solemnity in her tone which she did
not intend to appear there, "has done many more trying things for
persons of whom she knew nothing."
"I dare say! But such women go in for being saints, and that is not my
line. I was not made for that."
"You were made for that, and far more," said Mary.
"There are such women, I know," persisted Hesper; "but I do not know
how they find it possible."
"I can tell you how they find it possible. They love every human being
just because he is human. Your husband might be a demon from the way
you behave to him."
"I suppose _you_ find it agreeable to wait upon him: he is civil to
you, I dare say!"
"Not very," replied Mary, with a smile; "but the person who can not
bear with a sick man or a baby is not fit to be a woman."
"You may go to your own room," said Hesper.
For the first time, a feeling of dislike to Mary awoke in the bosom of
her mistress--very naturally, _all_ my readers will allow. The next few
days she scarcely spoke to her, sending directions for her work through
Sepia, who discharged the office with dignity.