ON THE LEVELS
Not the least of many mysteries in the natural history of the
Cartwrights was, how they all managed to bestow themselves in the house
which they occupied. To be sure, the family--omitting Mr. Cartwright,
seldom at home--were all of one sex, which perhaps made the difficulty
less insuperable; but the fact remained that Mrs. Cartwright and her
five grown-up daughters, together with a maid-servant, lived, moved, and
had their being in an abode consisting of six rooms, a cellar, and a
lumber closet. A few years ago they had occupied a much more roomy
dwelling on the edge of the aristocratic region of Dunfield; though not
strictly in St. Luke's--the Belgravia of the town--they of course spoke
of it as if it were. A crisis in the fortunes of the family had
necessitated a reduction of their establishment; the district in which
they now dwelt was humbler, but then it could always be described as
'near North Parade, you know'; North Parade being an equivalent of
Mayfair. The uppermost windows commanded a view of the extensive
cattle-market, of a long railway viaduct, and of hilly fields beyond.
The five Misses Cartwright did not greatly relish the change; they were
disposed even to resist, to hold their ground on the verge of St.
Luke's, to toll their father that he must do his duty and still maintain
them in that station of life for which they were clearly designed by
Providence. But Mr. Cartwright, after many cries of 'Wolf,' found
himself veritably at close quarters with the animal, and female argument
had to yield to the logic of fact. 'Be thankful,' exclaimed the
hard-driven paterfamilias, when his long patience came to an end, 'that
we haven't all to go to the Union. It 'll come to that yet, mark my
word!' And, indeed, few people in Dunfield would have expressed surprise
at the actual incidence of this calamity. Mr. Cartwright was ostensibly
a commercial traveller, but obviously he must have joined with this main
pursuit many odds and ends of money-making activity, seeing that the
family kept out of debt, and still indulged themselves in extravagances
which many substantial households would have declared themselves unable
to afford. If the town were visited by an opera company, or by some
dramatic star going the round of the provinces, the Cartwrights were
sure to have prominent seats, and to exhibit themselves in becoming
costume. If a bazaar were held, their ready-money was always
forthcoming. At flower shows, galas, croquet parties, they challenged
comparison with all who were not confessedly of the Dunfield _elite_.
They regularly adorned their pew in the parish church, were liberal at
offertories, exerted themselves, not without expense, in the Sunday
school feast, and the like. How--cried all Dunfield--how in the name of
wonder was it done?
We are not concerned to probe the mystery; suffice it that the situation
be exhibited as it appeared to the eyes of the world. When the
afore-mentioned crisis declared itself, though every one enjoyed the
opportunity of exclaiming 'I told you so!' there were few who did not
feel really sorry for the Cartwrights, so little of envy mingled with
the incessant gossip of which the family were the subject. Mrs.
Cartwright was held in more or less affection by every one who knew her.
She was a woman of fifty, of substantial frame, florid, and somewhat
masculine in manner; a thorough Yorkshire-woman, her tone and demeanour
were marked by a frank good-nature which often exaggerated itself into
bluffness, and was never consistent with the delicacy of refined taste,
but which unmistakably evinced a sound and benevolent disposition. When
her sharp temper was stirred--and her daughters gave it abundant
exercise--she expressed herself in a racy and vigorous vernacular which
there was no opposing; never coarse, never, in the large sense,
unwomanly, she made her predominance felt with an emphasis which would
fain have been rivalled by many of the mothers of Dunfield. Lavishly
indulgent to her girls, she yet kept them thoroughly in hand, and won,
if not their tenderness, at all events their affection and respect. The
girls themselves were not outwardly charming; Jessie, the youngest but
one, had perhaps a certain claim to prettiness, but, like all her
sisters, she was of coarse type. Their education had been of the most
haphazard kind; their breeding was not a little defective; but a certain
tact, common to the family, enabled them to make the very most of
themselves, so that they more than passed muster among the middle-class
young ladies of the town. As long as they sojourned on the borders of
St. Luke's, nothing was farther from the thoughts of any one of them
than the idea that they might have to exert themselves to earn their own
living; it was only of late that certain emphatic representations on the
part of their father had led Mrs. Cartwright to consider which of the
girls was good for anything. Amy, the eldest, had rather a weak
constitution; it was plain that neither in body nor in mind could she be
called upon to exert herself. Eleanor who came next, had musical
faculties; after terrific family debates it was decided that she must
give lessons on the piano, and a first pupil was speedily found. Barbara
was good for nothing whatever, save to spend money on her personal
adornment; considering that she was the plainest of the family--her
sisters having repeatedly decided the point--her existence appeared on
the whole singularly superfluous. Then came Jessie. Of Jessie her father
had repeatedly said that she was the only girl of his who had brains;
those brains, if existent, must now be turned to account. But Jessie had
long since torn up her school-books into curl-papers, and, as learning
accumulated outside her head, it vanished from the interior. When she
declared that arithmetic was all but a mystery to her, and that she had
forgotten what French she ever knew, there was an unprecedented outbreak
of parental wrath: this was the result of all that had been spent on her
education! She must get it back as best she could, for, as sure as fate,
she should be packed off as a governess. Look at Emily Hood: why, that
girl was keeping herself, and, most likely, paying her mother's
butcher's bill into the bargain, and her advantages had been fewer than
Jessie's. After storms beyond description, Jessie did what her mother
called 'buckle to,' but progress was slight. 'You must get Emily Hood to
help you when she comes home for her holidays,' was Mrs. Cartwright's
hopeful suggestion one night that the girl had fairly broken down and
given way to sobs and tears. Emily was written to, and promised aid. The
remaining daughter, Geraldine, was held to be too young as yet for
responsible undertakings; she was only seventeen, and, besides, there
was something rather hopeful going on between her and young Baldwin, the
solicitor, who had just begun practice in Dunfield. So that, on the
whole, Geraldine's lot looked the most promising of all.
In previous years; the family had never failed to betake themselves for
three weeks or so to Scarborough, or Whitby, or Bridlington; this year
they had for the first time contented themselves with humbler
recreation; Mrs. Cartwright and four of the girls managed a week at
Ilkley, Jessie was fortunate enough to be invited to stay for a
fortnight with friends at the seaside. She was the latest to return.
Emily being now at home, there was no longer an excuse for postponing
study; books were procured, and Jessie, by way of preparation,
endeavoured to fathom the abysses of her ignorance.
We have heard Emily's opinion as to the possibility of studious
application in the house of the Cartwrights. Her own visits thither were
made as few as possible; she declared that she never came away without a
headache. In spite of restricted space, the Cartwrights found it
impossible to relinquish the habit of universal hospitality. As if
discontented with the narrow proportions of her own family, Mrs.
Cartwright was never thoroughly at ease unless she had three or four
friends to occupy every available square foot of floor in her diminutive
sitting-room, and to squeeze around the table when meals were served. In
vain did acquaintances hold apart from a sense of consideration, or time
their visits when eating and drinking could scarcely be in question;
they were given plainly to understand that their delicacy was an
offence, and that, if they stayed away, it would be put down to their
pride. It was almost impossible to hit an hour for calling at which the
family would be alone; generally, as soon as the front door opened, the
ear of the visitor was assailed with laughter loud and long, with
multitudinous vociferation, Mrs. Cartwright's rich voice high above all
others. The room itself was a spectacle for men and gods. Not a member
of the family had the most rudimentary instinct of order; no article,
whether of ornament or use, had its recognised station. Needlework lay
in heaps on table, chairs, and floor; you stretched out your legs too
far, and came in contact with a casual flower-vase, put down to be out
of the way; you desired to open the piano, and had first to remove a
tray of wineglasses. To listen to the girls' conversation for five
minutes was to understand their surroundings; they were hopelessly
feather-brained, they chattered and gabbled with deafening persistency.
If there was no good in their talk, there could scarcely be said to be
any harm; they lived so completely on the surface of things that they
impressed one as incapable even of a doubtful thought. One reason why
Geraldine was the only one who had yet definitely attracted a male
admirer might lie in the fact that there was no air of femininity about
the girls, nothing whatever to touch the most susceptible imagination; a
parcel of schoolboys would have been as provocative. And this
notwithstanding that they talked incessantly of love-making, of
flirtations, of the making and breaking of matches; it was the very
freedom and shallowness of such gossip that made it wholly unexciting;
their mother's presence put no check on the talk--she, indeed, was very
much like her daughters in choice of subject--and the young men who
frequented the house joined in discussion of sexual entanglements with a
disengaged air which, if it impugned their delicacy, at all events
seemed to testify to practical innocence.
Those young men! Dunfield was at that time not perhaps worse off in its
supply of marriageable males than other small provincial towns, but, to
judge from the extensive assortment which passed through the
Cartwrights' house, the lot of Dunfield maidens might beheld pathetic.
They were not especially ignorant or vulgar, these budding townsmen,
simply imbecile. One could not accuse them of positive faults, for they
had no positive qualities, unless it were here and there a leaning to
physical fatuity. Their interests were concerned with the pettiest of
local occurrences; their favouritisms and animosities were those of
overgrown infants. They played practical jokes on each other in the open
streets; they read the local newspapers to extract the feeblest of
gossip; they had a game which they called polities, and which consisted
in badging themselves with blue or yellow, according to the choice of
their fathers before them; they affected now and then to haunt
bar-parlours and billiard-rooms, and made good resolutions when they had
smoked or drunk more than their stomachs would support. If any Dunfield
schoolboy exhibited faculties of a kind uncommon in the town, he was
despatched to begin life on a more promising scene; those who remained,
who became the new generation of business men, of town councillors, of
independent electors, were such as could not by any possibility have
made a living elsewhere. Those elders who knew Dunfield best could not
point to a single youth of fair endowments who looked forward to
remaining in his native place.
The tone of Dunfield society was not high.
No wonder that Emily Hood had her doubts as to the result of study taken
up by one of the Cartwrights. Still, she held it a duty to give what
help she could, knowing how necessary it was that Jessie should, if
possible, qualify herself to earn a living. The first thing after
breakfast on Tuesday morning she set forth to visit her friends. It was
not quite ten o'clock when she reached the house, and she looked forward
with some assurance of hope to finding the family alone. Jessie herself
opened the door, and Emily; passing at once into the sitting-room,
discovered that not only had a visitor arrived before her, but this the
very person she would most have desired to avoid. Mr. Richard Dagworthy
was seated in conversation with Mrs. Cartwright and her daughters or
rather he had been conversing till Emily's arrival caused a momentary
silence. He had called thus early, on his way to the mill, to inquire
for Mr. Cartwright's present address having occasion to communicate with
him on business matters.
The room was so small that Emily had a difficulty in reaching Mrs.
Cartwright to shake hands with her, owing to Dagworthy's almost blocking
the only available way round the table. He stood up and drew back,
waiting his turn for greeting; when it came, he assumed the manner of an
old friend. A chair was found for Emily, and conversation, or what
passed for such, speedily regathered volume. The breakfast things were
still on the table, and Miss Geraldine, who was always reluctant to rise
of a morning, was engaged upon her meal.
'You see what it's come to, Mr. Dagworthy,' exclaimed the mother of the
family, with her usual lack of reticence. 'Jessie can't or won't learn
by herself, so she has to bother Emily to come and teach her. It's too
bad, I call it, just in her holiday time. She looks as if she wanted to
run about and get colour in her cheeks, don't _you_ think so?'
'Well, mother,' cried Jessie, 'you needn't speak as if Emily was a child
in short clothes.'
The other girls laughed.
'I dare say Emily wishes she was,' pursued Mrs. Cartwright. 'When you're
little ones, you're all for being grown up, and when you _are_ grown up,
then you see how much better off you were before,--that is, if you've
got common sense. I wish my girls had half as much all put together as
Emily has.'
'I'm sure I don't wish I was a child,' remarked Geraldine, as she bit
her bread-and-butter.
'Of course you don't, Geraldine,' replied Dagworthy, who was on terms of
much familiarity with all the girls. 'If you were, your mother wouldn't
let you come down late to breakfast, would she?'
'I never remember being in time for breakfast since I was born,' cried
the girl.
'I dare say your memory doesn't go far enough back,' rejoined Dagworthy,
with the smile of one who trifled from a position of superior age and
experience.
Mrs. Cartwright laughed with a little embarrassment. Amy, the eldest
girl, was quick with an inquiry whether Emily had been as yet to the
Agricultural Show, the resort at present of all pleasure-seeking
Dunfieldians. Emily replied that she had not, and to this subject the
talk strayed. Mr. Dagworthy had dogs on exhibition at the show. Barbara
wanted to know how much he would take for a certain animal which had
captivated her; if she had some idea that this might lead to an offer of
the dog as a present, she was doomed to disappointment, for Dagworthy
named his price in the most matter-of-fact way. But nothing had excited
so much interest in these young ladies as the prize pigs; they were in
raptures at the incredible degree of fatness attained; they delighted to
recall that some of the pigs were fattened to such a point that rollers
had to be placed under their throats to keep their heads up and prevent
them from being choked by the pressure of their own superabundant flesh.
In all this conversation Dagworthy took his part, but not quite with the
same freedom as before Emily's arrival. His eyes turned incessantly in
her direction, and once or twice he only just saved himself from
absent-mindedness when a remark was addressed to him. It was with
obvious reluctance that he at length rose to leave.
'When are you all coming to see me?' he asked, as he stood smoothing his
felt hat with the back of his hand. 'I suppose I shall have to give a
croquet party, and have some of the young fellows, then you'll come fast
enough. Old men like myself you care nothing about.'
'I should think not, indeed,' replied Barbara the plain. 'Why, your
hair's going grey. If you didn't shave, you'd have had grey whiskers
long ago.'
'When I invite the others,' he returned, laughing, 'you may consider
yourself excepted.'
Amid delicate banter of this kind he took his departure. Of course he
was instantly the subject of clamorous chatter.
'Will he really give a croquet party?' demanded one, eagerly.
'Not he!' was the reply from another. 'It would cost him too much in tea
and cakes.'
'Nonsense!' put in Mrs. Cartwright. 'He doesn't care for society, that's
what it is. I believe he's a good deal happier living there by himself
than he was when his wife was alive.'
'That isn't very wonderful,' exclaimed Amy. 'A proud, stuck-up thing,
she was! Served him right if she made him uncomfortable; he only married
her because her people were grand.'
'I don't believe they ever go near him now,' said the mother.
'What did they quarrel about, mother?' asked Jessie. 'I believe he used
his wife badly, that's the truth of it.'
'How do _you_ know what the truth of it is?' returned her mother,
contemptuously. 'I know very well he did nothing of the kind; whatever
his faults are, he's not that sort of man.'
'Well, you must confess, mother, he's downright mean; and you've often
enough said Mrs. Dagworthy spent more money than pleased him. I know
very well I shouldn't like to be his wife.'
'You wait till he asks you, Jessie,' cried Barbara, with sisterly
reproof.
'I don't suppose he's very likely to ask any of you,' said Mrs.
Cartwright, with a laugh which was not very hearty. 'Now, Geraldine,
_when_ are you going to have done your breakfast? Here's ten o'clock,
and you seem as if you'd never stop eating. I won't have this
irregularity. Now tomorrow morning I'll have the table cleared at nine
o'clock, and if you're not down you'll go without breakfast altogether,
mind what I say.'
The threat was such an old one that Geraldine honoured it with not the
least attention, but helped herself abundantly to marmalade, which she
impasted solidly on buttered toast, and consumed with much relish.
'Now you've got Emily here,' pursued Mrs. Cartwright, turning her attack
upon Jessie, 'what are you going to do with her? Are you going to have
your lessons in this room?'
'I don't know. What do _you_ say, Emily?'
Emily was clearly of Opinion that lessons under such conditions were
likely to be of small profit.
'If it were not so far,' she said, 'I should propose that you came to me
every other day; I should think that will be often enough.'
'Why, it's just as far for you to come here,' exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright.
'If you're good enough to teach her--great, lazy thing that she is!--the
least she can do is to save you all the trouble she can.'
'I've got an idea,' observed Jessie. 'Why shouldn't we have lessons in
the garden?'
'That's just as bad. Emily 'll have the same distance to walk. Don't
hear of it, Emily; you make her come to Banbrigg!'
'I don't in the least mind the walk,' Emily said. 'Perhaps we might take
it in turns, one lesson in the garden and the next at Banbrigg.'
After ten minutes' vociferous discussion, during which Emily held her
peace, this plan was eventually agreed upon.
Jessie ran upstairs to prepare herself to go forth.
'Now don't you let her waste your time, Emily,' said Mrs. Cartwright, in
the girl's absence. 'If you see she's doing no good, just give it up. I
don't half like the thought of making you drudge in this way in your
holidays. I'm sure it's very kind of you to have offered to do it, and
it's certain she'll mind you more than she would any one else. She
doesn't care a scrap for all I say to her, though she knows well enough
it's as much as her father can do to keep things going at all. There
never was such bad times in _my_ recollection! How are things in London?
Did you hear much complaint?'
Emily found it hard to resist a smile at the thought of Mr. Athel or any
of those belonging to him indulging in complaints of this nature.
'And what sort of people are they you've got with this time?' the other
went on to ask. 'Do they treat you well?'
'Very well indeed.'
It would have been difficult for a stranger, comparing Emily, her tone
and bearing, with the members of the Cartwright family, to believe that
she came of the same class and had lived through her girlhood under
precisely similar conditions. So marked a difference could not but
impress even the Cartwrights themselves; the girls did not behave with
entire freedom in her presence, and influences to which they were
anything but readily susceptible were apparent in the tone they adopted
in addressing her. In spite of themselves, they bowed to a superiority
but vaguely understood. Jessie, perhaps, exhibited less of this
instinctive reverence than the others, although, in point of fact, her
endowments were decidedly above those of her sisters; the reason being,
no doubt, that acknowledged precedence in intellect had fostered in her
the worst kind of self-confidence. The girl was intolerably conceited.
Emily almost disliked her; she would have found it a more agreeable task
to endeavour to teach any one of the more stupid sisters. It was in the
certainty of a couple of hours' moral suffering that she left the house
with Jessie.
The garden which was to be the scene of study was ten minutes' walk away
from the house. To reach it, they had to pass along a road which
traversed the cattle market, a vast area of pens, filled on one day in
each week with multitudes of oxen, sheep, and swine. Beyond the market,
and in the shadow of the railway viaduct previously referred to, lay
three or four acres of ground divided up by hedges into small gardens,
leased by people who had an ambition to grow their own potatoes and
cabbages, but had no plot attached to their houses. Jessie opened a
rough wooden door, made fast by a padlock, and, closing it again behind
them, led the way along a narrow path between high hedges, a second
wooden door was reached, which opened into the garden itself. This was
laid out with an eye less to beauty than to usefulness. In the centre
was a patch of grass, lying between two pear trees; the rest of the
ground was planted with the various requisites of the kitchen, and in
one corner was a well. In the tool house were kept several Windsor
chairs; two of these were now brought forth and placed on the grass
between the pear trees. But Jessie was not disposed to apply herself on
the instant to the books which she had brought in a satchel; her first
occupation was to hunt for the ripest gooseberries and currants, and to
try her teeth in several pears which she knocked down with the handle of
a rake. When at length she seated herself, her tongue began to have its
way.
'How I do dislike that Mr. Dagworthy!' she said, with transparent
affectation. 'I wonder what he came for this morning. He said he wanted
father's address, but I know that was only an excuse. He hasn't been to
see us for months. It was like his impudence to ever come at all, after
the way he behaved when he married that stuck-up Miss Hanmer.'
'Will you tell me how many of these French exercises you have written?'
Emily asked as soon as a pause gave her the opportunity.
'Oh, I don't know,' was the answer; 'about ten, I think. Do you know, I
really believe he thinks himself good-looking? And he's as plain as he
can be. Don't you think so, Emily?'
'I really have no opinion.'
'It was strange he should come this morning. It was only yesterday I met
him over there by the mill,'--Dagworthy's mill stood at one end of the
cattle-market,--'and you can't think the impudent way he talked. And,
oh, how did he know that you were going to give me lessons?'
'I can't say.'
'Well, he did know, somehow; I was astonished. Perhaps your father told
him?'
'That is not very likely.'
'Well, he knew. I wonder who he'll marry next. You may depend upon it he
did treat his wife badly; everybody said so. If he were to propose to
me, I should answer like that woman did to Henry the Eighth, you know.'
She tittered. 'I can't fancy marrying a man who's been married before,
could you? I said that to Mrs. Tichborne one day, at Bridlington, and
what do you think she answered? Oh, she said, they're the best husbands.
Only a good-natured fool marries a second time.'
This was the kind of talk that Emily knew she would have to endure; it
was unutterably repugnant to her. She had observed in successive
holidays the growth of a spirit in Jessie Cartwright more distinctly
offensive than anything which declared itself in her sisters' gabble,
however irritating that might be. The girl's mind seemed to have been
sullied by some contact, and previous indications disposed Emily to
think that this Mrs. Tichborne was very probably a source of evil. She
was the wife of an hotel-keeper, the more vulgar for certain
affectations of refinement acquired during bar-maidenhood in London, and
her intimacy with the Cartwrights was now of long standing. It was
Jessie whom she specially affected; with her Jessie had just been
spending a fortnight at the seaside. The evil caught from Mrs.
Tichborne, or from some one of similar character, did not associate
itself very naturally with the silly _naivete_ which marked the girl;
she had the air of assuming the objectionable tone as a mark of
cleverness. Emily could not trust herself to utter the kind of comment
which would naturally have risen to her lips; it would be practically
useless, and her relations to Jessie were not such as could engender
affectionate zeal in a serious attempt to overcome evil influences.
Emily was not of the women whose nature it is to pursue missionary
enterprise; instead of calling forth her energies, a situation like the
present threw her back upon herself; she sought a retreat from disgust
in the sheltered purity of her own heart. Outwardly she became cold; her
face expressed that severity which was one side of her character.
'Don't you think it would be better if we made a beginning this
morning?' she said, as soon as another pause in the flow of chatter gave
her opportunity.
'What a one you are for work!' Jessie protested. 'You seem to take to it
naturally, and yet I'm sure it isn't a natural thing. Just think of
having to muddle over French grammar at my age! And I know very well it
'll never come to anything. Can you imagine me teaching? I always hated
school, and I hate the thought of being a governess. It's different with
you; you're right down clever, and you make people take an interest in
you. But just think of me! Why I should be thought no more of than a
servant. I suppose I should have to make friends with the milkman and
the butcher's boy; I don't see who else I should have to talk to. How's
a girl to get married if she spends all her time in a nursery teaching
children grammar? You don't seem to care whether you're ever married or
not, but I do, and it's precious hard to have all my chances taken away.
This was Jessie's incessant preoccupation; she could not talk for five
minutes without returning to it. Herein she only exaggerated her
sisters' habits of mind. The girls had begun to talk of 'sweethearts'
and husbands before they were well out of the nursery. In earlier years
Emily had only laughed at what she called such foolishness; she could
not laugh now. Such ways of thinking and speaking were a profanation of
all she held holiest; words which she whispered in trembling to her
heart were vulgarised and defiled by use upon these tinkling tongues; it
was blasphemy against her religion.
Once more she endeavoured to fix the girl's thoughts on the work in
hand, and by steady persistence conquered at length some semblance of
attention. But an hour proved the utmost limit of Jessie's patience,
then her tongue got its way again, and the inevitable subjects were
resumed. She talked of the 'gentlemen' whose acquaintance, in a greater
or less degree, she had made at the seaside; described their manoeuvres
to obtain private interviews with her, repeated jokes of their
invention, specified her favourites, all at headlong speed of disjointed
narrative. Emily sat beneath the infliction, feeling that to go through
this on alternate days for some weeks would be beyond her power. She
would not rise and depart, for a gathering warmth within encouraged her
to await a moment when speech would come to her aid. It did so at
length; her thought found words almost involuntarily.
'Jessie, I'm afraid we shall not do much good if we always spend our
mornings like this!'
'Oh, but I thought we'd done enough for to-day.'
'Perhaps so, but--What I want to say is this. Will you, as a kindness
to me, forget these subjects when we are together? I don't mind what
else you talk about, but stories of this kind make me fidgety; I feel as
if I should be obliged to get up and run away.'
'Do you really mean it? You don't like me to talk about gentlemen? What
a queer girl you are, Emily! Why, you're not settling down to be an old
maid at your age, are you?'
'We'll say so; perhaps that explains it.'
'Well, that's queer. I can't see, myself, what else there is to talk
about. Grammar's all very well when we're children, but it seems to me
that what a grown-up girl has to do is to look out for a husband. How
you can be satisfied with books'--the infinite contempt she put into the
word!--'is more than I can make out.'
'But you will do what I ask, as a kindness? I am in earnest; I shall be
afraid of seeing you if you can't help talking of such things.'
Jessie laughed extravagantly; such a state of mind was to her comical
beyond expression.
'You _are_ a queer one! Of course I'll do as you wish; you shan't hear
me mention a single gentleman's name, and I'll tell all the others to be
careful whenever you come.'
Emily averted her face; it was reddened with annoyance at the thought of
being discussed in this way by all the Cartwright household.
'You can do that if you like,' she said coldly, 'though it's no part of
my wish. I spoke of the hours when we are together for study.'
'Very well, I won't say anything,' replied the girl, who was
good-natured enough beneath all her vulgarities. 'And now what shall we
do till dinner-time?'
'I must make the best of my way home.'
'Oh, nonsense! Why, you're going to have dinner with us; of course that
was understood.'
Not by Emily, however. It cost a good deal of firmness, for the
Cartwrights one and all would lay hands on you rather than lose a guest;
but Emily made good her escape. Once well on her way to Banbrigg, she
took in great breaths of free air, as if after a close and unwholesome
atmosphere. She cried mentally for an ounce of civet. There was upon
her, too, that uneasy sense of shame which is apt to possess a reticent
nature when it has been compelled, or tempted, to some unwonted freedom
of speech. Would it not have been better, she asked herself, to merely
avoid the talk she found so hateful by resolutely advancing other
topics? Perhaps not; it was just possible that her words might bear some
kind of fruit. But she wished heartily that this task of hopeless
teaching had never been proposed to her; it would trouble her waking
every other day, and disturb with a profitless annoyance the ideal
serenity for which she was striving.
Yet it had one good result; her mother's follies and weaknesses were
very easy to bear in comparison, and, when the midday meal was over, she
enjoyed with more fulness the peace of her father's room upstairs, where
she had arranged a table for her own work. Brilliant sunlight made the
bare garret, with its outlook over the fields towards Pendal, a cheerful
and homelike retreat. Here, whilst the clock below wheezed and panted
after the relentless hours, Emily read hard at German, or, when her mind
called for rest, sheltered herself beneath the wing of some poet, who
voiced for her the mute hymns of her soul. But the most sacred hour was
when her parents had gone to rest, and she sat in her bedroom, writing
her secret thoughts for Wilfrid some day to read. She had resolved to
keep for him a journal of her inner life from day to day. In this way
she might hope to reveal herself more truthfully than spoken words would
ever allow; she feared that never, not even in the confidence of their
married life, would her tongue learn to overcome the fear of its own
utterances. How little she had told him of herself, of her love! In
Surrey she had been so timid; she had scarcely done more than allow him
to guess her thoughts; and at their last meeting she had been compelled
into opposition of his purpose, so that brief time had been left for
free exchange of tenderness. But some day she would put this little book
of manuscript into his hands, and the shadowy bars between him and her
would vanish. She could only write in it late at night, when the still
voice within spoke clearly amid the hush. The only sound from the outer
world was that of a train now and then speeding by, and that carried her
thoughts to Wilfrid, who had journeyed far from her into other
countries. Emily loved silence, the nurse of the soul; the earliest and
the latest hours were to her most dear. It had never been to her either
an impulse or a joy to realise the existence of the mass of mankind; she
had shrunk, after the first excitement, from the thronged streets of
London, passing from them with delight to the quiet country. Others
might find their strength in the sense of universal human fellowship;
she would fain live apart, kindly disposed to all, but understanding
well that her first duty was to tend the garden of her mind. That it was
also her first joy was, by the principles of her religion, justification
in pursuing it.
In a few days she obliged her mother to concede to her a share in the
work of the house. She had nothing of the common feminine interest in
such work for its own sake, but it was a pleasure to lessen her mother's
toil. There was very little converse between them; for evidently they
belonged to different worlds. When Mrs. Hood took her afternoon's
repose, it was elsewhere than in the room where Emily sat, and Emily
herself did not seek to alter this habit, knowing that she often, quite
involuntarily, caused her mother irritation, and that to reduce their
intercourse as far as could be without marked estrangement was the best
way to make it endurable to both. But the evening hours she invariably
devoted to her father; the shortness of the time that she was able to
give him was a reason for losing no moment of this communion. She knew
that the forecast of the evening's happiness sustained him through the
long day, and even so slight a pleasure as that she bestowed in opening
the door at his arrival, she would not willingly have suffered him to
lose. It did not appear that Mrs. Hood reflected on this exclusive
attachment in Emily; it certainly troubled her not at all. This order in
the house was of long standing; it had grown to seem as natural as
poverty and hopelessness. Emily and her father reasoned as little about
their mutual affection; to both it was a priceless part of life, given
to them by the same dark powers that destroy and deprive. It behoved
them to enjoy it while permitted to do so.
Had she known the recent causes of trouble which weighed upon her
parents, Emily would scarcely have been able to still keep her secret
from them. The anxiety upon her father's face and her mother's ceaseless
complaining were too familiar to suggest anything unusual. She had come
home with the resolve to maintain silence, if only because her marriage
seemed remote and contingent upon many circumstances; and other reasons
had manifested themselves to her even before Wilfrid's visit. At any
time she would find a difficulty in speaking upon such a subject with
her mother; strange though it may sound, the intimacy between them was
not near enough to encourage such a disclosure, with all the
explanations it would involve. Nor yet to her father would she willingly
speak of what had happened, until it became necessary to do so. Emily's
sense of the sanctity of relations such as those between Wilfrid and
herself had, through so different a cause, very much the same effects as
what we call false shame. The complex motives of virgin modesty had with
her become a conscious sustaining power, a faith; of all beautiful
things that the mind could conceive, this mystery was the loveliest, and
the least capable of being revealed to others, however near, without
desecration. Perhaps she had been aided in the nurturing of this ideal
by her loneliness; no friend had ever tempted her to confidences; her
gravest and purest thoughts had never been imparted to any. Thus she had
escaped that blunting of fine perceptions which is the all but
inevitable result of endeavouring to express them. Not to speak of mere
vulgarity such as Jessie Cartwright exhibited, Emily's instinct shrank
from things which usage has, for most people, made matters of course;
the public ceremony of marriage, for instance, she deemed a barbarism.
As a sacrament, the holiest of all, its celebration should, she felt, be
in the strictest privacy; as for its aspect as a legal contract, let
that concession to human misery be made with the smallest, not the
greatest, violation of religious feeling. Thinking thus, it was natural
that she should avail herself of every motive for delay. And in that
very wretchedness of her home which her marriage would, she trusted, in
a great measure alleviate, she found one of the strongest. The
atmosphere of sordid suffering depressed her; it was only by an effort
that she shook off the influences which assailed her sadder nature; at
times her fears were wrought upon, and it almost exceeded her power to
believe in the future Wilfrid had created for her. The change from the
beautiful home in Surrey to the sad dreariness of Banbrigg had followed
too suddenly upon the revelation of her blessedness. It indisposed her
to make known what was so dreamlike. For the past became more dreadful
viewed from the ground of hope. Emily came to contemplate it as some
hideous beast, which, though she seemed to be escaping its reach, might
even yet spring upon her. How had she borne that past so lightly? Her
fear of all its misery was at moments excessive. Looking at her unhappy
parents, she felt that their lot would crush her with pity did she not
see the relief approaching. She saw it, yet too often trembled with the
most baseless fears. She tried to assure herself that she had acted
rightly in resisting Wilfrid's proposal of an immediate marriage, yet
she often wished her conscience had not spoken against it. Wilfrid's own
words, though merely prompted by his eagerness, ceaselessly came back to
her--that it is ill to refuse a kindness offered by fate, so seldom
kind. The words were true enough, and their truth answered to that
melancholy which, when her will was in abeyance, coloured her views of
life.
But here at length was a letter from Wilfrid, a glad, encouraging
letter. His father had concluded that he was staying behind in England
to be married, and evidently would not have disturbed himself greatly
even if such had been the case. All was going well. Nothing of the past
should be sacrificed, and the future was their own.