Thou sayst it, and not I; for thou hast done
The ugly deed that made these ugly words.
--SOPHOCLES: _Electra_.
Yea, it becomes a man
To cherish memory, where he had delight.
For kindness is the natural birth of kindness.
Whose soul records not the great debt of joy,
Is stamped for ever an ignoble man.
--SOPHOCLES: _Ajax_.
It so happened that, on the morning of the day when Esther went to see
her father, Jermyn had not yet heard of her presence at Transome Court.
One fact conducing to keep him in this ignorance was, that some days
after his critical interview with Harold--days during which he had been
wondering how long it would be before Harold made up his mind to
sacrifice the luxury of satisfied anger for the solid advantage of
securing fortune and position--he was peremptorily called away by
business to the south of England, and was obliged to inform Harold by
letter of his absence. He took care also to notify his return; but
Harold made no sign in reply. The days passed without bringing him any
gossip concerning Esther's visit, for such gossip was almost confined to
Mr. Lyon's congregation, her Church pupils, Miss Louisa Jermyn among
them, having been satisfied by her father's written statement that she
was gone on a visit of uncertain duration. But on this day of Esther's
call in Malthouse Yard, the Miss Jermyns in their walk saw her getting
into the Transomes' carriage, which they had previously observed to be
waiting, and which they now saw bowled along on the road toward Little
Treby. It followed that only a few hours later the news reached the
astonished ears of Matthew Jermyn.
Entirely ignorant of those converging indications and small links of
incident which had raised Christian's conjectures, and had gradually
contributed to put him in possession of the facts; ignorant too of some
busy motives in the mind of his obliged servant Johnson; Jermyn was not
likely to see at once how the momentous information that Esther was the
surviving Bycliffe could possibly have reached Harold. His daughters
naturally leaped, as others had done, to the conclusion that the
Transomes, seeking a governess for little Harry, had had their choice
directed to Esther, and observed that they must have attracted her by a
high salary to induce her to take charge of such a small pupil; though
of course it was important that his English and French should be
carefully attended to from the first. Jermyn, hearing this suggestion,
was not without a momentary hope that it might be true, and that Harold
was still safely unconscious of having under the same roof with him the
legal claimant of the family estate.
But a mind in the grasp of a terrible anxiety is not credulous of easy
solutions. The one stay that bears up our hopes is sure to appear frail,
and if looked at long will seem to totter. Too much depended on that
unconsciousness of Harold's; and although Jermyn did not see the course
of things that could have disclosed and combined the various items of
knowledge which he had imagined to be his own secret, and therefore his
safeguard, he saw quite clearly what was likely to be the result of the
disclosure. Not only would Harold Transome be no longer afraid of him,
but also, by marrying Esther (and Jermyn at once felt sure of this
issue), would be triumphantly freed from any unpleasant consequences,
and could pursue much at his ease the gratification of ruining Matthew
Jermyn. The prevision of an enemy's triumphant ease is in any case
sufficiently irritating to hatred, and there were reasons why it was
peculiarly exasperating here: but Jermyn had not the leisure now for
mere fruitless emotion; he had to think of a possible device which might
save him from imminent ruin--not an indefinite adversity, but a ruin in
detail, which his thoughts painted out with the sharpest, ugliest
intensity. A man of sixty, with an unsuspicious wife and daughters
capable of shrieking and fainting at a sudden revelation, and of looking
at him reproachfully in their daily misery under a shabby lot to which
he had reduced them--with a mind and with habits dried hard by the
years--with no glimpse of an endurable standing-ground except where he
could domineer and be prosperous according to the ambitions of pushing
middle-class gentility,--such a man is likely to find the prospect of
worldly ruin ghastly enough to drive him to the most uninviting means of
escape. He will probably prefer any private scorn that will save him
from public infamy, or that will leave him with money in his pocket, to
the humiliation and hardship of new servitude in old age, a shabby hat
and a melancholy hearth, where the firing must be used charily and the
women look sad. But though a man may be willing to escape through a
sewer, a sewer with an outlet into the dry air is not always at hand.
Running away, especially when spoken of as absconding, seems at a
distance to offer a good modern substitute for the right of sanctuary;
but seen closely, it is often found inconvenient and scarcely possible.
Jermyn, on thoroughly considering his position, saw that he had no very
agreeable resources at command. But he soon made up his mind what he
would do next. He wrote to Mrs. Transome requesting her to appoint an
hour in which he could see her privately: he knew she would understand
that it was to be an hour when Harold was not at home. As he sealed the
letter, he indulged a faint hope that in this interview he might be
assured of Esther's birth being unknown at Transome Court; but in the
worst case, perhaps some help might be found in Mrs. Transome. To such
uses may tender relations come when they have ceased to be tender! The
Hazaels of our world who are pushed on quickly against their
preconceived confidence in themselves to do doglike actions by the
sudden suggestion of a wicked ambition, are much fewer than those who
are led on through the years by the gradual demands of a selfishness
which has spread its fibres far and wide through the intricate vanities
and sordid cares of an everyday existence.
In consequence of that letter to Mrs. Transome, Jermyn was, two days
afterward, ushered into the smaller drawing-room at Transome Court. It
was a charming little room in its refurbished condition: it had two
pretty inlaid cabinets, great china vases with contents that sent forth
odors of paradise, groups of flowers in oval frames on the walls, and
Mrs. Transome's own portrait in the evening costume of 1800, with a
garden in the background. That brilliant young woman looked smilingly
down on Mr. Jermyn as he passed in front of the fire; and at present
hers was the only gaze in the room. He could not help meeting the gaze
as he waited, holding his hat behind him--could not help seeing many
memories lit up by it; but the strong bent of his mind was to go on
arguing each memory into a claim, and to see in the regard others had
for him a merit of his own. There had been plenty of roads open to him
when he was a young man; perhaps if he had not allowed himself to be
determined (chiefly, of course, by the feelings of others, for of what
effect would his own feelings have been without them?) into the road he
actually took, he might have done better for himself. At any rate, he
was likely at last to get the worst of it, and it was he who had most
reason to complain. The fortunate Jason, as we know from Euripides,
piously thanked the goddess, and saw clearly that he was not at all
obliged to Medea; Jermyn was, perhaps, not aware of the precedent, but
thought out his own freedom from obligation and the indebtedness of
others toward him with a native faculty not inferior to Jason's.
Before three minutes had passed, however, as if by some sorcery, the
brilliant smiling young woman above the mantelpiece seemed to be
appearing at the doorway withered and frosted by many winters, and with
lips and eyes from which the smile had departed. Jermyn advanced, and
they shook hands, but neither of them said anything by way of greeting.
Mrs. Transome seated herself, and pointed to a chair opposite and near
her.
"Harold has gone to Loamford," she said, in a subdued tone. "You had
something particular to say to me?"
"Yes," said Jermyn, with his soft and deferential air. "The last time I
was here I could not take the opportunity of speaking to you. But I am
anxious to know whether you are aware of what has passed between me and
Harold?"
"Yes, he has told me everything."
"About his proceedings against me? and the reason he stopped them?"
"Yes: have you had notice that he has begun them again?"
"No," said Jermyn, with a very unpleasant sensation.
"Of course he will now," said Mrs. Transome. "There is no reason in his
mind why he should not."
"Has he resolved to risk the estate then?"
"He feels in no danger on that score. And if there were, the danger
doesn't depend on you. The most likely thing is, that he will marry this
girl."
"He knows everything then?" said Jermyn, the expression of his face
getting clouded.
"Everything. It's of no use for you to think of mastering him: you can't
do it. I used to wish Harold to be fortunate, and he is fortunate," said
Mrs. Transome, with intense bitterness. "It's not my star that he
inherits."
"Do you know how he came by the information about this girl?"
"No; but she knew it all before we spoke to her. It's no secret."
Jermyn was confounded by this hopeless frustration to which he had no
key. Though he thought of Christian, the thought shed no light; but the
more fatal point was clear: he held no secret that could help him.
"You are aware that these chancery proceedings may ruin me?"
"He told me they would. But if you are imagining I can do anything, pray
dismiss the notion. I have told him as plainly as I dare that I wish him
to drop all public quarrel with you, and that you could make an
arrangement without scandal. I can do no more. He will not listen to me;
he doesn't mind about my feelings. He cares more for Mr. Transome than
he does for me. He will not listen to me any more than if I were an old
ballad-singer."
"It's very hard on me, I know," said Jermyn, in the tone with which a
man flings out a reproach.
"I besought you three months ago to bear anything rather than quarrel
with him."
"I have not quarrelled with him. It is he who has been always seeking a
quarrel with me. I have borne a great deal--more than any one else
would. He set his teeth against me from the first."
"He saw things that annoyed him; and men are not like women," said Mrs.
Transome. There was bitter innuendo in that truism.
"It's very hard on me--I know that," said Jermyn, with an
intensification of his previous tone, rising and walking a step or two,
then turning and laying his hand on the back of the chair. "Of course
the law in this case can't in the least represent the justice of the
matter. I made a good many sacrifices in times past. I gave up a great
deal of fine business for the sake of attending to the family affairs,
and in that lawsuit they would have gone to rack and ruin if it hadn't
been for me."
He moved away again, laid down his hat, which he had been previously
holding, and thrust his hands into his pockets as he returned. Mrs.
Transome sat motionless as marble, and almost as pale. Her hands lay
crossed on her knees. This man, young, slim, and graceful, with a
selfishness which then took the form of homage to her, had at one time
kneeled to her and kissed those hands fervently, and she had thought
there was a poetry in such passion beyond any to be found in everyday
domesticity.
"I stretched my conscience a good deal in that affair of Bycliffe, as
you know perfectly well. I told you everything at the time. I told you I
was very uneasy about those witnesses, and about getting him thrown into
prison. I know it's the blackest thing anybody could charge me with, if
they knew my life from beginning to end; and I should never have done
it, if I had not been under an infatuation such as makes a man do
anything. What did it signify to me about the loss of the lawsuit? I was
a young bachelor--I had the world before me."
"Yes," said Mrs. Transome, in a low tone. "It was a pity you didn't make
another choice."
"What would have become of you?" said Jermyn, carried along a climax,
like other self-justifiers. "I had to think of you. You would not have
liked me to make another choice then."
"Clearly," said Mrs. Transome, with concentrated bitterness, but still
quietly; "the greater mistake was mine."
Egoism is usually stupid in a dialogue; but Jermyn's did not make him so
stupid that he did not feel the edge of Mrs. Transome's words. They
increased his irritation.
"I hardly see that," he replied, with a slight laugh of scorn. "You had
an estate and a position to save, to go no farther. I remember very well
what you said to me--'A clever lawyer can do anything if he has the
will; if it's impossible, he will make it possible. And the property is
sure to be Harold's some day.' He was a baby then."
"I remember most things a little too well; you had better say at once
what is your object in recalling them."
"An object that is nothing more than justice. With the relation I stood
in, it was not likely I should think myself bound by all the forms that
are made to bind strangers. I had often immense trouble to raise the
money necessary to pay off debts and carry on the affairs; and, as I
said before, I had given up other lines of advancement which would have
been open to me if I had not stayed in this neighborhood at a critical
time when I was fresh to the world. Anybody who knew the whole
circumstances would say that my being hunted and run down on the score
of my past transactions with regard to the family affairs, is an
abominably unjust and unnatural thing."
Jermyn paused a moment, and then added, "At my time of life----and with
a family about me----and after what has passed----I should have thought
there was nothing you would care more to prevent."
"I do care. It makes me miserable. That is the extent of my power--to
feel miserable."
"No, it is not the extent of your power. You could save me if you would.
It is not to be supposed that Harold would go on against me--if he knew
the whole truth."
Jermyn had sat down before he uttered the last words. He had lowered his
voice slightly. He had the air of one who thought that he had prepared
the way for an understanding. That a man with so much sharpness, with so
much suavity at command--a man who piqued himself on his persuasiveness
toward women--should behave just as Jermyn did on this occasion, would
be surprising but for the constant experience that temper and selfish
insensibility will defeat excellent gifts--will make a sensible person
shout when shouting is out of place, and will make a polished man rude
when his polish might be of eminent use to him.
As Jermyn, sitting down and leaning forward with an elbow on his knee,
uttered his last words--"if he knew the whole truth"--a slight shock
seemed to pass through Mrs. Transome's hitherto motionless body,
followed by a sudden light in her eyes, as in an animal's about to
spring.
"And you expect me to tell him?" she said, not loudly, but yet with a
clear metallic ring in her voice.
"Would it not be right for him to know?" said Jermyn, in a more bland
and persuasive tone than he had yet used.
Perhaps some of the most terrible irony of the human lot is this of a
deep truth coming to be uttered by lips that have no right to it.
"I will never tell him!" said Mrs. Transome, starting up, her whole
frame thrilled with a passion that seemed almost to make her young
again. Her hands hung beside her clenched tightly, her eyes and lips
lost the helpless repressed bitterness of discontent, and seemed
suddenly fed with energy. "You reckon up your sacrifices for me: you
have kept a good account of them, and it is needful: they are some of
them what no one else could guess or find out. But you made your
sacrifices when they seemed pleasant to you; when you told me they were
your happiness; when you told me that it was I who stooped, and I who
bestowed favors."
Jermyn rose too, and laid his hand on the back of the chair. He had
grown visibly paler, but seemed about to speak.
"Don't speak!" Mrs. Transome said peremptorily. "Don't open your lips
again. You have said enough; I will speak now. I have made sacrifices
too, but it was when I knew that they were not my happiness. It was
after I saw that I had stooped--after I saw that your tenderness had
turned into calculation--after I saw that you cared for yourself only,
and not for me. I heard your explanations--of your duty in life--of our
mutual reputation--of a virtuous young lady attached to you. I bore it;
I let everything go; I shut my eyes: I might almost have let myself
starve, rather than have scenes of quarrel with the man I had loved, in
which I must accuse him of turning my love into a good bargain." There
was a slight tremor in Mrs. Transome's voice in the last words, and for
a moment she paused: but when she spoke again it seemed as if the tremor
had frozen into a cutting icicle. "I suppose if a lover picked one's
pocket, there's no woman would like to own it. I don't say I was not
afraid of you: I was afraid of you, and I know now I was right."
"Mrs. Transome," said Jermyn, white to the lips, "it is needless to say
more. I withdraw any words that have offended you."
"You can't withdraw them. Can a man apologize for being a dastard?--And
I have caused you to strain your conscience, have I?--it is I who have
sullied your purity? I should think the demons have more honor--they are
not so impudent to one another. I would not lose the misery of being a
woman, now I see what can be the baseness of a man. One must be a
man--first to tell a woman that her love has made her your debtor, and
then ask her to pay you by breaking the last poor threads between her
and her son."
"I do not ask it," said Jermyn, with a certain asperity. He was
beginning to find this intolerable. The mere brute strength of a
masculine creature rebelled. He felt almost inclined to throttle the
voice out of this woman.
"You do ask it: it is what you would like. I have had a terror on me
lest evil should happen to you. From the first, after Harold came home,
I had a terrible dread. It seemed as if murder might come between you--I
didn't know what. I felt the horror of his not knowing the truth. I
might have been dragged at last, by my own feeling--by my own memory--to
tell him all, and make him as well as myself miserable, to save you."
Again there was a slight tremor, as if at the remembrance of womanly
tenderness and pity. But immediately she launched forth again.
"But now you have asked me, I will never tell him! Be ruined--no--do
something more dastardly to save yourself. If I sinned, my judgment went
beforehand--that I should sin for a man like you."
Swiftly upon those last words Mrs. Transome passed out of the room. The
softly padded door closed behind her making no noise, and Jermyn found
himself alone.
For a brief space he stood still. Human beings in moments of passionate
reproach and denunciation, especially when their anger is on their own
account, are never so wholly in the right that the person who has to
wince cannot possibly protest against some unreasonableness or
unfairness in their outburst. And if Jermyn had been capable of feeling
that he had thoroughly merited this infliction, he would not have
uttered the words that drew it down on him. Men do not become penitent
and learn to abhor themselves by having their backs cut open with the
lash; rather, they learn to abhor the lash. What Jermyn felt about Mrs.
Transome when she disappeared was, that she was a furious woman--who
would not do what he wanted her to do. And he was supported as to his
justifiableness by the inward repetition of what he had already said to
her; it was right that Harold should know the truth. He did not take
into account (how should he?) the exasperation and loathing excited by
his daring to urge the plea of right. A man who had stolen the pyx, and
got frightened when justice was at his heels, might feel the sort of
penitence which would induce him to run back in the dark and lay the pyx
where the sexton might find it; but if in doing so he whispered to the
Blessed Virgin that he was moved by considering the sacredness of all
property, and the peculiar sacredness of the pyx, it is not to be
believed that she would like him the better for it. Indeed, one often
seems to see why the saints should prefer candles to words, especially
from penitents whose skin is in danger. Some salt of generosity would
have made Jermyn conscious that he had lost the citizenship which
authorized him to plead the right; still more, that his self-vindication
to Mrs. Transome would be like the exhibition of a brand-mark, and only
show that he was shame-proof. There is heroism even in the circles of
hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind
and never recriminate. But these things, which are easy to discern when
they are painted for us on the large canvas of poetic story, become
confused and obscure even for well-read gentlemen when their affection
for themselves is alarmed by pressing details of actual experience. If
their comparison of instances is active at such times, it is chiefly in
showing them that their own case has subtle distinctions from all other
cases, which should free them from unmitigated condemnation.
And it was in this way with Matthew Jermyn. So many things were more
distinctly visible to him, and touched him more acutely, than the effect
of his acts or words on Mrs. Transome's feelings! In fact--he asked,
with a touch of something that makes us all akin--was it not
preposterous, this excess of feeling on points which he himself did not
find powerfully moving? She had treated him most unreasonably. It would
have been right for her to do what he had--not asked, but only hinted at
in a mild and interrogatory manner. But the clearest and most unpleasant
result of the interview was, that this right thing which he desired so
much would certainly not be done for him by Mrs. Transome.
As he was moving his arm from the chair-back, and turning to take his
hat, there was a boisterous noise in the entrance-hall; the door of the
drawing-room, which had closed without latching, was pushed open, and
old Mr. Transome appeared with a face of feeble delight, playing horse
to little Harry, who roared and flogged behind him, while Moro yapped in
a puppy voice at their heels. But when Mr. Transome saw Jermyn in the
room he stood still in the doorway, as if he did not know whether
entrance was permissible. The majority of his thoughts were but ravelled
threads of the past. The attorney came forward to shake hands with due
politeness, but the old man said, with a bewildered look, and in a
hesitating way--
"Mr. Jermyn?--why--why--where is Mrs. Transome?"
Jermyn smiled his way out past the unexpected group; and little Harry,
thinking he had an eligible opportunity, turned round to give a parting
stroke on the stranger's coat-tails.