"A woman naturally born to fears."--_King John._
"Methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb,
Is coming toward me; and my inward soul
With nothing trembles."--_King Richard II._
Matthew Jermyn approached Mrs. Transome taking off his hat and smiling.
She did not smile, but said--
"You knew Harold was not at home?"
"Yes; I came to see you, to know if you had any wishes that I could
further, since I have not had an opportunity of consulting you since he
came home."
"Let us walk toward the Rookery, then."
They turned together, Mr. Jermyn still keeping his hat off and holding
it behind him; the air was so soft and agreeable that Mrs. Transome had
nothing but a large veil over her head.
They walked for a little while in silence till they were out of sight,
under tall trees, and treading noiselessly on falling leaves. What
Jermyn was really most anxious about, was to learn from Mrs. Transome
whether anything had transpired that was significant of Harold's
disposition toward him, which he suspected to be very far from friendly.
Jermyn was not naturally flinty-hearted: at five-and-twenty he had
written verses, and had got himself wet through in order not to
disappoint a dark-eyed woman whom he was proud to believe in love with
him; but a family man with grown up sons and daughters, a man with a
professional position and complicated affairs that make it hard to
ascertain the exact relation between property and liabilities,
necessarily thinks of himself and what may be impending.
"Harold is remarkably acute and clever," he began at last, since Mrs.
Transome did not speak. "If he gets into Parliament, I have no doubt he
will distinguish himself. He has a quick eye for business of all kinds."
"That is no comfort to me," said Mrs. Transome. To-day she was more
conscious than usual of that bitterness which was always in her mind in
Jermyn's presence, but which was carefully suppressed:--suppressed
because she could not endure that the degradation she inwardly felt
should ever become visible or audible in acts or words of her
own--should ever be reflected in any word or look of his. For years
there had been a deep silence about the past between them; on her side
because she remembered; on his, because he more and more forgot.
"I trust he is not unkind to you in any way. I know his opinions pain
you; but I trust you find him in everything else disposed to be a good
son."
"Oh, to be sure--good as men are disposed to be to women, giving them
cushions and carriages, and recommending them to enjoy themselves, and
then expecting them to be contented under contempt and neglect. I have
no power over him--remember that--none."
Jermyn turned to look in Mrs. Transome's face: it was long since he had
heard her speak to him as if she were losing her self-command.
"Has he shown any unpleasant feeling about your management of affairs?"
"_My_ management!" Mrs. Transome said, with concentrated rage, flashing
a fierce look at Jermyn. She checked herself: she felt as if she were
lighting a torch to flare on her own past folly and misery. It was a
resolve which had become a habit, that she would never quarrel with this
man--never tell him what she saw him to be. She had kept her woman's
pride and sensibility intact: through all her life there had vibrated
the maiden need to have her hand kissed and be the object of chivalry.
And so she sank into silence again, trembling.
Jermyn felt annoyed--nothing more. There was nothing in his mind
corresponding to the intricate meshes of sensitiveness in Mrs.
Transome's. He was anything but stupid; yet he always blundered when he
wanted to be delicate or magnanimous; he constantly sought to soothe
others by praising himself. Moral vulgarity cleaved to him like an
hereditary odor. He blundered now.
"My dear Mrs. Transome," he said, in a tone of bland kindness, "you are
agitated--you appear angry with me. Yet I think, if you consider, you
will see that you have nothing to complain of in me, unless you will
complain of the inevitable course of man's life. I have always met your
wishes both in happy circumstances and in unhappy ones. I should be
ready to do so now, if it were possible."
Every sentence was as pleasant to her as if it had been cut in her bared
arm. Some men's kindness and love-making are more exasperating, more
humiliating than others' derision; but the pitiable woman who has once
made herself secretly dependent on a man who is beneath her in feeling,
must bear that humiliation for fear of worse. Coarse kindness is at
least better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller
nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness. Mrs. Transome knew in
her inmost soul that those relations which had sealed her lips on
Jermyn's conduct in business matters, had been with him a ground for
presuming that he should have impunity in any lax dealing into which
circumstances had led him. She knew that she herself had endured all the
more privation because of his dishonest selfishness. And now, Harold's
long-deferred heirship, and his return with startlingly unexpected
penetration, activity, and assertion of mastery, had placed them both in
the full presence of a difficulty which had been prepared by the years
of vague uncertainty as to issues. In this position, with a great dread
hanging over her, which Jermyn knew, and ought to have felt that he had
caused her, she was inclined to lash him with indignation, to scorch him
with the words that were just the fit names for his doings--inclined all
the more when he spoke with an insolent blandness, ignoring all that was
truly in her heart. But no sooner did the words "You have brought it on
me" rise within her than she heard within also the retort, "You brought
it on yourself." Not for all the world beside could she bear to hear
that retort uttered from without. What did she do? With strange sequence
to all that rapid tumult, after a few moments' silence she said--
"Let me take your arm."
He gave it immediately, putting on his hat and wondering. For more than
twenty years Mrs. Transome had never chosen to take his arm.
"I have but one thing to ask. Make me a promise."
"What is it?"
"That you will never quarrel with Harold."
"You must know that it is my wish not to quarrel with him."
"But make a vow--fix it in your mind as a thing not to be done. Bear
anything from him rather than quarrel with him."
"A man can't make a vow not to quarrel," said Jermyn, who was already a
little irritated by the implication that Harold might be disposed to use
him roughly. "A man's temper may get the better of him at any moment. I
am not prepared to bear _anything_."
"Good God!" said Mrs. Transome, taking her hand from his arm, "is it
possible you don't feel how horrible it would be?"
As she took away her hand, Jermyn let his arm fall, put both his hands
in his pockets, and shrugging his shoulders said, "I shall use him as he
uses me."
Jermyn had turned round his savage side, and the blandness was out of
sight. It was this that had always frightened Mrs. Transome: there was a
possibility of fierce insolence in this man who was to pass with those
nearest to her as her indebted servant, but whose brand she secretly
bore. She was as powerless with him as she was with her own son.
This woman, who loved rule, dared not speak another word of attempted
persuasion. They were both silent, taking the nearest way into the
sunshine again. There was a half-formed wish in both their minds--even
in the mother's--that Harold Transome had never been born.
"We are working hard for the election," said Jermyn, recovering
himself, as they turned into the sunshine again. "I think we shall get
him returned, and in that case he will be in high good-humor. Everything
will be more propitious than you are apt to think. You must persuade
yourself," he added, smiling at her, "that it is better for a man of his
position to be in Parliament on the wrong side than not to be in at
all."
"Never," said Mrs. Transome. "I am too old to learn to call bitter sweet
and sweet bitter. But what I may think or feel is of no consequence now.
I am as unnecessary as a chimney ornament."
And in this way they parted on the gravel, in that pretty scene where
they had met. Mrs. Transome shivered as she stood alone: all around her,
where there had once been brightness and warmth, there were white ashes,
and the sunshine looked dreary as it fell on them.
Mr. Jermyn's heaviest reflections in riding homeward turned on the
possibility of incidents between himself and Harold Transome which would
have disagreeable results, requiring him to raise money, and perhaps
causing scandal, which in its way might also help to create a monetary
deficit. A man of sixty, with a wife whose Duffield connections were of
the highest respectability, with a family of tall daughters, an
expensive establishment, and a large professional business, owed a great
deal more to himself as the mainstay of all those solidities, than to
feelings and ideas which were quite unsubstantial. There were many
unfortunate coincidences which placed Mr. Jermyn in an uncomfortable
position just now; he had not been much to blame, he considered; if it
had not been for a sudden turn of affairs no one would have complained.
He defied any man to say that he had intended to wrong people; he was
able to refund, to make reprisals, if they could be fairly demanded.
Only he would certainly have preferred that they should not be demanded.
A German poet was entrusted with a particularly fine sausage, which he
was to convey to the donor's friend at Paris. In the course of a long
journey he smelled the sausage; he got hungry, and desired to taste it;
he pared a morsel off, then another, and another, in successive moments
of temptation, till at last the sausage was, humanly speaking, at an
end. The offence had not been premeditated. The poet had never loved
meanness, but he loved sausage; and the result was undeniably awkward.
So it was with Matthew Jermyn. He was far from liking that ugly
abstraction rascality, but he had liked other things which had suggested
nibbling. He had to do many things in law and in daily life which, in
the abstract, he would have condemned; and indeed he had never been
tempted by them in the abstract. Here, in fact, was the inconvenience:
he had sinned for the sake of particular concrete things, and particular
concrete consequences were likely to follow.
But he was a man of resolution, who, having made out what was the best
course to take under a difficulty, went straight to his work. The
election must be won: that would put Harold in good-humor, give him
something to do, and leave himself more time to prepare for any crisis.
He was in anything but low spirits that evening. It was his eldest
daughter's birthday, and the young people had a dance. Papa was
delightful--stood up for a quadrille and a country-dance, told stories
at supper, and made humorous quotations from his early readings: if
these were Latin, he apologized, and translated to the ladies; so that a
deaf lady-visitor from Duffield kept her trumpet up continually, lest
she should lose any of Mr. Jermyn's conversation, and wished that her
niece Maria had been present, who was young and had a good memory.
Still the party was smaller than usual, for some families in Treby
refused to visit Jermyn, now that he was concerned for a Radical
candidate.