EMILY'S DECISION
Emily reached home a few minutes before dinner-time. Her mother came to
her from the back of the house, where things were in Saturday tumult,
speaking with a voice of fretful satisfaction.
'I'd just given you up, and was wondering whether to let the meat spoil
or begin dinner alone.'
'I am sorry to be late, mother.'
'No, you're not late, my dear,' the mother admitted. 'It's only that
you're a little uncertain, and when one o'clock draws on I can never be
quite sure of you, if you're out. I must say I like punctuality, though
I dare say it's an old-fashioned kind of thing. Which would you like,
potatoes baked or boiled? I've got both, as I always think the baked
keep better for your father.'
'Whichever you have yourself, mother.'
'Now, child, do make a choice! As if you couldn't say which you would
prefer.'
'Boiled.'
'There now, you say that because you think there won't be enough of the
others. I know very well yen always like the baked, when I have them.
Don't you, now, Emily?'
'Mother, which you like! What _does_ it matter?'
'Well, my dear, I'm sure I only wanted to please you,' said Mrs. Hood,
in her tone of patience under injury. 'I can't see why you should be
angry with me. If I could give you more choice I would. No doubt you're
used to having potatoes done in all sorts of superior ways, but
unfortunately I wasn't brought up as a cook--'
The strange look with which Emily was regarding her brought her to a
pause; her voice dropped.
'Mother dear,' said the girl, in a low and shaken tone, 'I am neither
foolish nor unkind; do try to believe that. Something is troubling me.
To-day let your choice be mine.'
Mrs. Hood moved away, and served the dinner in silence.
'What is your trouble, my dear?' she asked presently. 'Can't you tell
me?'
Emily shook her head. Her mother relapsed into thoughtfulness, and they
finished their meal with little conversation. Mrs. Heed was just rising
from the table, when there was a sound of some one opening the gate
before the house; she looked to the window, and at once uttered an
exclamation of astonishment.
'Well! If that isn't--! He hasn't altered a bit all these years!'
'Who is it, mother?' Emily asked nervously.
'Why, my dear, it's that man Cheeseman! The very idea of his coming
here! Now, mark my words, he's come to ask for that money back again, or
for some of it, at all events. It was just showing off, pretending to
pay it back; exactly like him! But if your father's foolish enough to do
anything of the kind--There, he's knocking. I hoped never to see his
face again as long as I lived; how ever he can have the impudence to
come! I suppose I must let him in; but I'm sure I shan't offer him any
dinner.'
Emily had risen from her chair, and was trembling with excitement.
'Oh yes, mother,' she cried, with a joy which astonished Mrs. Heed, 'we
must behave kindly to him. He paid father the money; we must remember
that.'
'Well, you'll see if I'm net right. But I can't keep him standing at the
door. Do untie this apron, Emily; I'm so nervous, I can't get at the
knot. See, now, if he hasn't come for the money back again.'
'Never mind; he paid it! He paid it!'
'I can't understand you, child. What is there to be so pleased about?'
'Mother, do go to the door. Or shall I?'
The girl was overcome with a sudden light in utter darkness. She grasped
at her mother's explanation of the visitor's arrival; unable, in her
ardour, to calculate probabilities, to review details. Dagworthy had
been guilty of a base falsehood; the man approached who could assure her
of it. It was a plot, deeply planned. In some manner Dagworthy had
learned what had happened to her father in Hebsworth, and had risked
everything on the terror he could inspire in her. The coming of her
father's friend was salvation.
She found herself clasping his hand warmly.
'Well, Miss Hood,' Cheeseman came in exclaiming, 'you may perhaps have
half a recollection of me, when you're told who I am, but I'm quite sure
I shouldn't have known you. Your good father was telling me about you
yesterday; rare and proud he was to speak of you, too, and not without
reason, I see. Mrs. Hoed, you've no need to complain of your for tune.
Times have been hard, no doubt, but they've brought you a blessing. If I
had a young lady such as this to look at me and call me father--well,
well, it won't do to think of it.'
In spite of her determination, Mrs. Hoed was mollified into an offer of
dinner. Mr. Cheeseman affected to refuse, but at a word from Emily he
allowed himself to be persuaded. The two sat with him, and listened to
his talk of bygone days. Emily's face was flushed; she kept her eyes on
Cheeseman as if his arrival were that of a long-hoped-for friend. The
visitor abounded in compliments to mother and daughter alike. He ate,
the while, with extreme heartiness, and at length drew from the table in
the most effusive mood.
'Mrs. Hood,' he said, leaning forward, 'I owe you an apology, many
apologies. You and your good husband in times long past did me a service
of a very substantial kind. You thought I had forgotten it--yes, you
couldn't help but think it--'
'Oh, we won't talk about that, Mr. Cheeseman,' interposed Mrs. Hood, not
without a suggestion in her tone that she had indeed entertained the
thought attributed to her.
'Ah, but I can't help speaking of it,' said Cheeseman, feelingly. 'Miss
Hood, you probably don't know what I refer to; you were a very little
lady in those days. They were hard times with me; indeed, I've never
known anything else. I was saying to your good father yesterday that he
could no longer talk of his ill-luck. Many a day he and I have
encouraged each other to face fortune, but that's all over for him; he's
got his foot on firm ground, thank heaven! I'm still catching at straws,
you see; I dare say it's a good deal my own fault; and then I never had
a good wife to look after me, and a daughter growing up to teach me
prudence. Well but, Miss Hood, I was saying that your father did me a
great service; he lent me what was a large sum for him in those days--'
'Not a little one even in these, Mr. Cheeseman,' remarked Mrs. Hood.
'Well, well, but in those times it was a thing few men in his position
would have done. He lent me a ten-pound note, Miss Hood, and it's right
you should know it. Years have gone by, years, and any one would think
I'd kept out of the way to avoid paying the money back. I assure you,
Mrs. Hood, and to you, Miss Hood, I give my solemn word of honour, that
I've never from that day to this had more money than would just keep me
in bread and cheese and such poor clothing as this you see on me. Why,
even yesterday, as no doubt your good father has told you, I had but a
sixpenny-piece in the world, but one coin of sixpence. Ah, you may well
look sad, my good young lady. Please God, you'll never know what that
means. But one sixpence had I, and but for my old friend I should have
been hard driven to find a place of rest last night. Now do I look and
speak like an ungrateful man? Mrs. Hood, I've come here this day because
I felt in duty bound to call on you, being so near. I didn't know your
address, till that meeting by chance yesterday. When my old friend left
me, I got restless; I felt I must see you all again before I went south,
as I hope to do--to-morrow, perhaps. I felt I must clear myself from the
charge of in gratitude; I couldn't live easy under it. It was too much
like a piece of dishonesty, and that I've never yet been guilty of, for
all I've gone through, and, please God, never shall. My old friend Hood
and I, in days even before he had the happiness to meet you, Mrs. Hood,
we used to say to each other--Let luck do its worst, we'll live and die
honest men. And, thank heaven, we've kept our word; for an honester man
than James Hood doesn't walk the earth, and no one ever yet brought a
true charge of dishonesty against Alfred Cheeseman.'
He looked from mother to daughter. The former sat in helpless
astonishment, gazing about her; Emily had hardened her face.
'You find it a sad tale,' Cheeseman proceeded. 'Why, so it is, dear
ladies. If ever I had owned a ten-pound note, over and above the price
of a loaf of bread and a night's lodging, it should have been put aside
with the name of James Hood written on the back of it, and somehow I'd
have found him out. And I say the same thing now. Don't think, Mrs.
Hood, that I'm pleading my poverty as a way of asking you to forgive the
debt. The debt shall be paid; be assured of that. If I can only get to
London, there's a prospect before me; I have a project which I explained
to my old friend yesterday. You shall have the money, and, what's more,
you shall have interest--four per cent. per annum. Oh yes, you shall.
Only let me somehow get to London.'
The gate sounded again.
'Emily,' exclaimed Mrs. Hood, 'there's your father!'
She was pale, and the hand with which she pointed could not steady
itself.
'Mother,' said the girl, just above her breath, 'go! He is coming in!'
Mrs. Hood rose and left the room. Cheeseman could not but observe that
some strange agitation possessed them both. Possibly he explained it by
the light of his own conscience. He sat, smiling at Emily rather
uneasily. Then, seeing that there was likely to be a delay before Hood
entered, he bent forward to speak confidentially.
'Miss Hood, I see it in your face, you're as kind and warm-hearted as
your father is, and that's saying much. You won't think hardly of a poor
fellow who oftener misses a dinner than gets one? Every word I've said
to you's as true as the light of heaven, And my only chance is to get to
London. I've made an invention, and I feel sure I know a man who will
buy it of me. It took my last farthing to get here from Hebsworth. You
don't think hardly of me? I don't drink, on my word I don't; it's sheer
hard luck. Ah, if I had a home like this! It 'ud be like living in the
garden of Eden. Well, well!'
The door opened, and Hood came in, followed by his wife. He was
laughing, laughing loudly; the voice was so unlike his that this alone
would have caused Emily to gaze at him in astonishment.
'So you've looked us up!' he exclaimed, holding out his hand. 'Why, you
couldn't have done better; I was sorry afterwards I hadn't asked you. My
wife tells me you've had dinner; you won't mind sitting by whilst I eat?
And what do you think of Emily, eh? Grown a little since you saw her
last--ha, ha! So you've made up your mind to go to London? Emily had
dinner? Why, of course you have; I was forgetting. Baked potatoes!
Remember my old weakness for them baked, Cheeseman? We used to buy 'em
in the street at night, halfpenny apiece, eh? Old man with one arm,
remember? We used to hear him coming when he was half a mile off; what a
voice! And the man who sold peas; remember him? "All 'ot! All 'ot!" We
were lads then, eh, Cheeseman? Emily, just a mouthful, with butter? Let
me tempt you. No?--What train did you come by?'
He talked ceaselessly. There was a spot of red in the midst of each of
his sallow cheeks, and his eyes gleamed with excitement. On leaving the
mill a sudden thirst had come upon him, and he had quenched it with a
glass of spirits at the first public-house he passed. Perhaps that had
some part in his elation.
Emily almost immediately withdrew and went up to her bedroom. Here she
sat alone for more than an hour, in fear lest her mother should come to
the door. Then she heard the gate open, and, looking from the window,
saw her father and his friend pass into the road and walk away together,
the former still talking in an excited way. A minute or two later came
the knock which she dreaded. She opened the door, and her mother
entered.
'Emily, did you ever know your father so strange?' Mrs. Hood asked, in a
tone of genuine alarm. She had sunk upon a chair, and looked to the girl
as if overcome with physical weakness. 'What can it all mean? When I
asked him why he had told that story about the money, he only
laughed--said it was a joke, and he'd explain it all before long. I
can't think where the money came from! And now he's gone to pay that
man's fare to London, and no doubt to lend him more money too.'
Emily made no reply. She stood near the window, and looked out at the
clouds which were breaking after a brief shower.
'Wherever the money may have come from,' pursued her mother, 'it's cruel
that it should go in this way. We never wanted it worse than we do now.
It's my belief he's borrowed it himself; a nice thing to borrow for
one's own needs, and then throw it away on such a good-for-nothing as
that.'
Emily turned and put a question quietly.
'Are you in more than usual need of money?'
'Well, my dear, you know I always try to say as little about such things
as I can, but now your father's been and borrowed--as of course he must
have done--there's no choice but to tell you. The house at Barnhill's
going to be empty at the end of the quarter, and our rent here's going
to be raised, and, all things coming together, we've had a good deal to
make us anxious. It's just like your father--wanting to make me believe
that things are better than they really are; it always was his way, and
what's the good of it I never could see. Of course he means it well, but
he'd far better have been open about it, and have told me what he was
going to do.'
Emily was shaken with agitation.
'Mother!' she exclaimed, 'why have you both insisted on keeping silence
before me about your difficulties? There was no kindness in it; you have
done me the cruelest wrong. Had I not money in plenty beyond what I
needed? What if the future be uncertain? Has not the present its claims,
and can your needs be separated from mine? Because you have succeeded in
keeping me apart from the troubles of your life, you--you and
father--have thought you had done a praiseworthy thing. Is it not bad
enough that one human being should be indifferent to the wants of
another, just because they call each other strangers? Was it right to
bring such a hateful spirit of independence into a home, between parents
and child? If the world is base and unjust, is not that a reason the
more why we should draw ever more closely to each other, and be to each
other all that our power allows? Independent! Because I earned money and
could support myself, you have told me I must be independent, and leave
you the same. That is the lesson that life has taught you. It is well to
have understanding for lessons of a deeper kind.'
'Well, my child,' protested the mother, to whom the general tenor of
such reasoning was well-nigh as dark as its special application, 'we
have always felt we were doing our duty to you. At your age it is only
right you should have your money for yourself; who knows when you may
want it? I don't think you should be angry with us, just because we've
felt we'd rather put up with a little hardship now and then than have
you feel some day we'd been a burden on you. I haven't complained, and
I'm not complaining now. I'm sorry I came to speak to you about such a
thing. It seems as if you could never take a thing as I mean it. It's
like the potatoes at dinner; I meant to do you a kindness by giving you
the choice, and you flew out as if you hadn't patience with me.'
Emily kept her eyes upon the window.
'How you can say,' went on Mrs. Hood, 'that we've been cruel to you and
done you a wrong--I know we've very different ways of looking at most
things, but where we've wronged you is more than I can understand.'
'You have taken from me,' replied Emily, without moving her eyes, 'the
power to help you. I might have done much, now I can do nothing; and
your loss is mine.'
'No, indeed, it isn't, and shan't be, Emily. Your father and I have
always said that one thing, that you shouldn't suffer by us. What did
your father always say years ago? "Emily," he said, "shall have a good
education, however we stint ourselves; then, when she grows up, she'll
always be able to keep herself from want, and our poverty won't matter
to her." And in that, at all events, he was right, and it's come about
as he said. No, Emily, we're not going to be a burden to you, so don't
fear it.'
'Mother, will you let me be by myself a little? I will come down to you
presently.'
'Aren't you well, my dear?' the mother asked, with a mixture of offended
reserve and anxiety occasioned by the girl's voice and aspect.
'I have a headache. I will rest till tea-time.'
Mrs. Hood had for a long time been unused to tend Emily with motherly
offices; like her husband, she was not seldom impressed with awe of this
nature so apart from her own. That feeling possessed her now; before
Emily's last words she moved away in silence and closed the door behind
her gently.
The irony of fate, coming out so bitterly in all that her mother had
said, was like a cold hand on Emily's heart. She sat again in the chair
from which she had risen, and let her head lie back. Her vitality was at
a low ebb; the movement of indignation against the cruelty which was
wrecking her life had passed and left behind it a weary indifference.
Happily she need not think yet. There were still some hours of respite
before her; there was the night to give her strength. The daylight was a
burden; it must be borne with what patience she could summon. But she
longed for the time of sacred silence.
To a spirit capable of high exaltations, the hour of lassitude is a
foretaste of the impotence of death. To see a purpose in the cold light
of intellectual conviction, and to lack the inspiring fervour which can
glorify a struggle with the obstacles nature will interpose, is to
realise intensely the rugged baldness of life stripped of illusion, life
as we shall see it when the end approaches and the only voice that
convinces tell us that all is vanity. It is the mood known by the artist
when, viewing the work complete within his mind, his heart lacks its joy
and his hand is cold to execute. Self-consciousness makes of life itself
a work of art. There are the blessed moments when ardour rises in
pursuit of the ideal, when it is supreme bliss to strive and overcome;
and there are the times of aching languor, when the conception is still
clear in every line, but the soul asks wearily--To what end? In Emily it
was reaction after the eagerness of her sudden unreasoning hope. Body
and mind suffered beneath a burden of dull misery. Motives seemed weak;
effort was weary and unprofitable; life unutterably mean. It could
scarcely be called suffering, to feel thus.
She was roused by voices below, and, immediately after, her mother came
to her door again.
'Isn't it vexatious?' Mrs. Hood whispered. 'Here are Jessie and
Geraldine. I'm obliged to ask them to stay tea. Do you feel well enough
to come down?'
Emily went down at once, almost with a sense of relief, and presented
herself to the girls very much in her usual way.
'Now, I know very well you don't want us,' said Jessie, with her
sprightly frankness. 'We shouldn't have thought of coming if it hadn't
been that we met Mr. Hood just this side of the bridge, and he forced us
to come on; he said it wouldn't be very long before he was back himself.
But of course we shan't stay tea, so it's no use--'
'Oh, of course not,' put in Geraldine. 'We know Mrs. Hood's always far
too busy on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't want to come; I told Jessie
it would be far better to put it off till to-morrow--'
'All the same,' resumed her sister, 'she wanted to see you very much.
She's got something to tell you. Now you may as well get it out and done
with, Jerry; you needn't expect I'm going to help you.'
The two giggled together.
'What is it,' inquired Mrs. Hood. 'I daresay I could guess if I tried
very hard. Couldn't you, Emily?'
'Now then, Jerry, for the awful news,' urged her sister.
'No, _you'll_ have to tell, Jessie,' said the other, giggling and
blushing.
'Well, I suppose one of us must. She's been and engaged herself to Mr.
Baldwin. Of course we all knew--'
'Now, Jessie, you knew nothing of the kind!'
'Didn't I, though! Oughtn't she to be ashamed of herself, at her age,
Mrs. Hood! I know what Emily's opinion is; she's simply disgusted. Look
at her, and see if she isn't.'
The gabble of the two girls was worthy of the occasion their tongues
went like mill-clappers. Whilst her mother busied herself in preparing
tea, Emily sat and listened; fortunately there was little need for her
to talk. To herself she seemed to be suffering a kind of trance, without
detriment to her consciousness. The chattering and grimacing girls
appeared before her as grotesque unrealities, puppets animated in some
marvellous way, and set to caricature humanity. She tried to realise
that one of them was a woman like herself, who had just consented to be
a man's wife; but it was impossible to her to regard this as anything
but an aping of things which at other times had a solemn meaning. She
found herself gazing at Geraldine as one does at some singular piece of
mechanism with a frivolous purpose. And it was not only the individuals
that impressed her thus; these two represented life and the world. She
had strange, cynical thoughts, imaginings which revolted her pure mind
even whilst it entertained them. No endeavour would shake off this
ghastly clairvoyance. She was picturing the scene of Geraldine's
acceptance of the offer of marriage; then her thoughts passed on to the
early days of wedded life. She rose, shuddering, and moved about the
room; she talked to drive those images from her brain. It did but
transfer the sense of unreality to her own being. Where was she, and
what doing? Had she not dreamed that a hideous choice had been set
before her, a choice from which there was no escape, and which, whatever
the alternative she accepted, would blast her life? But that was
something grave, earnest, and what place was there for either
earnestness or gravity in a world where Geraldine represented womanhood
wooed and about to be wedded? There was but one way of stopping the
gabble which was driving her frantic; she threw open the piano and began
to play, to play the first music that came into her mind. It was a
passage from the Moonlight Sonata. A few moments, and the ghosts were
laid. The girls still whispered together, but above their voices the
pure stream of music flowed with gracious oblivion. When Emily ceased,
it was with an inward fervour of gratitude to the master and the
instrument, To know that, was to have caught once more the point of view
from which life had meaning. Now let them chatter and mop and mow; the
echo of that music still lived around.
Hood had not returned when they sat down to tea. Jessie began to ask
questions about the strange-looking man they had met in company with
him, but Mrs. Hood turned the conversation.
'I suppose you'll be coming with the same tale next, Jessie,' she said,
with reference to Geraldine.
'Me, Mrs. Hood? No, indeed; I haven't had lessons from Emily for
nothing. It's all very well for empty-headed chits like Jerry here, but
I've got serious things to attend to. I'm like Emily, she and I are
never going to be married.'
'Emily never going to be married?' exclaimed Mrs. Hood, half seriously.
'Ah, you mustn't believe all Emily tells you.'
'Oh, she hasn't told me that herself, but I'm quite sure she would be
offended if any one thought her capable of such frivolity.'
'Emily will keep it to herself till the wedding-day,' said Geraldine,
with a mocking shake of the bead. 'She isn't one to go telling her
secrets.'
At this point Hood made his appearance. His wife paid no heed to him as
he entered; Emily glanced at him furtively. He had the look of a man who
has predetermined an attitude of easy good-humour, nor had the parting
with Cheeseman failed to prove an occasion for fresh recourse to that
fiery adjuvant which of a sudden was become indispensable to him. Want
of taste for liquor and lifelong habit of abstemiousness had hitherto
kept Hood the soberest of men; he could not remember to have felt the
warm solace of a draught taken for solace' sake since the days when
Cheeseman had been wont to insist upon the glass of gin at their
meetings, and then it had never gone beyond the single glass, for he
felt that his head was weak, and dreaded temptation. Four-and-twenty
hours had wrought such a change in him, that already to enter a
public-house seemed a familiar act, and he calculated upon the courage
to be begotten of a smoking tumbler. Previously the mere outlay would
have made him miserable, but the command of unearned coin was affecting
him as it is wont to affect poor men. The new aid given to Cheeseman
left a few shillings out of the second broken sovereign. Let the two
pounds--he said to himself--be regarded as gone; eight remained
untouched. For the odd shillings, let them serve odd expenses. So when
he had purchased Cheeseman's ticket to King's Gross, he was free with
small change at the station bar. At the last moment it occurred to him
that he might save himself a walk by going in the train as far as
Pendal. So it was here that the final parting had taken place.
He seated himself with his legs across a chair, and began to talk to
Geraldine of the interesting news which Jessie had just whispered to him
when they met on the road. The character of his remarks was not quite
what it would have been a day or two ago; he joked with more freedom
than was his custom. Studiously he avoided the eyes of his wife and
daughter. He declined to sit up to the table, but drank a cup of tea
with his hands resting on the back of a chair.
The Cartwright sisters were anxious to use the evening for a visit to
certain other friends; shortly after six o'clock they took their
departure. While Emily and Mrs. Hood were seeing them away at the door,
Hood went upstairs to his laboratory.
'Emily, come here,' Mrs. Hood said, with anxious earnestness, leading
the way back into the sitting-room. And, when the door was closed--
'My dear, what _is_ the matter with him? Don't you notice his
strangeness?'
'Yes, mother, I do.'
'Can he have--It's a thing he never does! You know what I mean? That
Cheeseman has been taking him to a public-house; I am sure of it.'
Emily had had no such thought. To her a squalid horror clung about the
suggestion. To picture her father in such circumstances was to realise a
fresh fall into degradation, no doubt the inevitable consequence of that
she already knew of. There was a painful stricture at her heart; a cry
of despair all but found utterance.
Her father's voice was calling from the stair-head--'Emily!' She darted
to the door in momentary terror and replied.
'Will you come up?' Hood said; 'I want you.'
She ascended to the garret. Hood was standing with his back to the
little window, so that his face was shadowed. Emily moved to the table,
and, with her hands resting upon it, her eyes bent, stood waiting.
'Emily,' he began, still with a remnant of artificial pleasantry, though
his voice was not entirely under control, 'I want to explain that
money-matter to you. It doesn't look well; I am a good deal ashamed of
myself; if I was a boy I should deserve a whipping for telling a fib,
shouldn't I?'
It was impossible to make reply to such words.
'The truth is this,' he went on more nervously; 'we've been in a little
difficulty, your mother and I, that we didn't see any good in troubling
you about. In fact, there's a raising of rent, and one or two other
little things. When I was in Hebsworth yesterday I had an opportunity of
borrowing ten pounds, and I thought it better to do so. Then I met
Cheeseman, and it was his mention of the debt put into my head the
stupid thought of trying to spare your mother anxiety. Of course, such
tricks never succeed; I might have known it. But there, that's the truth
of the matter, and I'm easier now--now I've told it.'
Her heart bled for him, so dreadful to her ears was the choking of his
voice upon the last words. At the same time she was hot with anguish of
shame. He stood before her a wretched culprit, hiding his guilt with lie
upon lie; he, her father, whom she had reverenced so, had compassionated
so, whom she loved despairingly. She could not raise her head; she could
not speak. She longed to spring to him and hold him in her arms, but
other thoughts paralysed the impulse. Had there lain nothing in the
background, had his falsehood, his weakness, been all, she could have
comforted and strengthened him with pure pity and love. But the
consciousness of what was before her killed her power to stead him in
his misery. She could not speak out her very thought, and to palter with
solemn words was impossible. Hypocrisy from her to him at this
moment--hypocrisy, however coloured with sincere feeling, would have
sunk her in her own eyes beyond redemption.
'Let us speak no more of it, father,' she replied without raising her
head.
He was sober enough now, and in her voice, her attitude, he read his
hopeless condemnation. Between him and this high-hearted woman had conic
that which would never be removed; before her he was shamed to eternity.
Never again could he speak with her of truth, of justice, of noble aims;
the words would mock him. Never again could he take her kiss upon his
lips without shrinking. Her way henceforth lay ever further from his
own. What part had she in a life become so base? What place had she
under a roof dishonoured? If some day she wedded, his existence would be
to her a secret shame. For--worst thought of all--it was whispered to
his conscience that she did not credit even what he now told her. He
seemed to himself to have betrayed the second untruth by his way of
speaking it. In the silence which followed upon her words he heard
promptings of despair. How could he live in her presence from day to
day, not daring to meet her eyes? He looked back upon the years behind
him, and they seemed to overflow with peaceful happiness. Irretrievable,
his yielding and his shame; irrecoverable, the conscious rectitude
bartered so cheaply. He saw now that his life had held vast blessings,
and they were for ever lost.
Emily was speaking.
'Do you wish to stay here this evening, father?'
'No,' he answered hastily, 'I only called you up for--for that.'
Her heart reproached her with cruelty, but what remained save to leave
him to himself? They could not face each other, could not exchange a
natural word.
'Emily!'
She turned at the door. He had called her, but did not continue to
speak.
'Yes, father?'
'It's only for to-night. You'll--you'll sit with me again as usual?'
'Oh, I hope so!'
A rush of tears had its way as she closed the door, something so deeply
pathetic had there been in that appeal. It was the first time that her
misery had found this outlet; unable to calm herself at once, she turned
aside into her bedroom. Tears did not come to her readily; indeed, it
was years since she had shed them; the fit shook her with physical
suffering. The weeping would not stay itself, and to force her sobs into
silence was almost beyond her power. She flung herself desperately by
the bedside, throwing out her arms in the effort to free her chest from
its anguishing constraint.
In an hour she went down. Her mother was sitting miserably in the
kitchen, and Emily, dreading to have to talk again, kept apart in the
parlour. When it began to dusk, Hood descended, and supper was prepared
for in the usual way. There was small pretence of conversation, and, as
soon as possible, Emily bade her parents good-night. It was long before
she heard them go to their room; they whispered together in passing her
door.
And now the solemn hours shed about her guardian silence, and she could
listen to the voice of her soul. It was incredible that the morning of
the day which was not yet dead had witnessed that scene between her and
Dagworthy on the Castle Hill; long spaces of featureless misery seem to
stretch between. Perforce she had overborne reflection; one torment
coming upon another had occupied her with mere endurance; it was as
though a ruthless hand tore from her shred after shred of the fair
garment in which she had joyed to clothe herself, while a voice
mockingly bade her be in congruence with the sordid shows of the world
around. For a moment, whilst Beethoven sang to her, she knew the light
of faith; but the dull mist crept up again and thickened. Weeping had
not eased her bosom; she had only become more conscious of the load of
tears surcharging it. Now she lay upon her bed in the darkness, hushing
idle echoes of day, waiting upon the spirit that ever yet had comforted
and guided her.
What, divested of all horror due to imagination, was the threat to which
her life lay subject? Dagworthy had it in his power to ruin her father,
to blast his remaining years with a desolation to which the life-long
struggle with poverty would be the mere pleasantry of fate. She could no
longer entertain a doubt of the guilt the first suggestion of which
excited her scornful laughter, and she knew it to be more than probable
that her father had yielded to temptation purposely put in his way. She
was not unconscious of the power of reprisal which so gross a plot put
into her hands, though it was true that the secrecy Dagworthy had
maintained in his intercourse with her left but her bare assertion for
evidence against him. Yet the thought was profitless. Suppose he did not
venture to prosecute on the charge of theft, none the less could he work
the ruin he menaced; mere dismissal from his employment, with mention of
the cause to this and the other person, was all that was needed to
render the wretched clerk an outcast, hopeless of future means of
livelihood, for ever disgraced in the eyes of all who knew him. She felt
the cruelty of which this man, whose passions she had so frenzied, was
readily capable. She believed he would not spare her an item of
suffering which it was in his power to inflict. She knew that appeal to
him was worse than useless, for it was only too clear that for her to
approach him was to inflame his resolution. Her instinctive fear of him
was terribly justified.
With her alone, then, it lay to save her parents from the most dreadful
fate that could befal them, from infamy, from destitution, from despair.
For, even if her father escaped imprisonment, it would be impossible for
him to live on in Dunfield, and how, at his age, was a new life to be
begun? And it was idle to expect that the last degradation would be
spared him; his disgrace would involve her; Dagworthy's jealousy would
not neglect such a means of striking at her engagement. And Wilfrid must
needs know; to Emily not even the possibility of hiding such a thing
from him suggested itself. Could she become his wife with that stigma
upon her, bringing as dowry her beggared parents for him to support?
Did it mean that? Was this the thought that she had dreaded to face
throughout the day? Was it not only her father whose ruin was involved,
and must she too bid farewell to hope?
She let those ghastly eyes stare from the darkness into her own, and
tried to exhaust their horror. It overtaxed her courage with a smothered
cry of fear she sprang upright, and her shaking hands struck a flame to
bring light into the room. Not once, but again and again, did the chill
of terror pass through her whole frame. She caught a passing glimpse of
her image in the glass, and was fascinated into regarding it closely.
'You, who stand there in the pitiless night'--thus did thought speak
within her--'you, poor human thing, with the death-white face and eyes
staring in all but distraction, is this the very end of the rapturous
dream which has lulled you whilst destiny wrought your woe? Is it even
now too late to struggle? Is this the wild sorrow of farewell to love,
the beginning of an anguish which shall torture your soul to death? Have
you lost _him_?' For moments it was as though life fought with the last
and invincible enemy. On the spot where she had been standing she sank
powerless to her knees, clinging to the nearest object, her head falling
back.
The clock outside her door struck one; how long the dull vibration
seemed to endure. She was conscious of it, though lying with all but
palsied faculties. It was the first of the divisions which marked her
long vigil; the hours succeeded each other quickly; between voice and
voice there seemed to pass but a single wave of surging thought. But
each new warning of coming day found her nearer the calm of resolve.
Look at this girl, and try to know her. Emily knew but one article of
religion, and that bade her preserve, if need be, at the cost of life,
the purity of her soul. This was the supreme law of her being. The
pieties of kindred were as strong in her as in any heart that ever beat,
but respect for them Could not constrain her to a course which opposed
that higher injunction. Growing with her growth, nourished by the
substance which developed her intellectual force, a sense of all that
was involved in her womanhood had conic to be the guiding principle of
her existence. Imagine the great artist Nature bent upon the creation of
a soul which should hold in subtlest perfection of consciousness every
element essential to the successive ideals of maiden, wife, mother, and
the soul of this girl is pictured. Her religion of beauty was the
symbolic expression of instincts wholly chaste; her body was to her a
temple which preserved a sacred flame, and she could not conceive
existence if once the shrine had suffered desecration. We are apt to
attribute to women indiscriminately at least the outlines of this
consciousness; for the vast majority it confuses itself with the
prescriptions of a traditional dogma, if not with the mere prejudice of
social usage. For Emily no external dogma existed, and the tenor of her
life had aided her in attaining independence of ignoble dictation. Her
views were often strangely at variance with those of the social tribunal
which sits in judgment on virtue and vice. To her, for instance, the
woman who sells herself with ecclesiastical sanction differed only in
degree of impurity from her whose track is under the street-lamps. She
was not censorious, she was not self-righteous; she spoke to no one of
the convictions that ruled her, and to herself held them a mystery of
holiness, a revelation of high things vouchsafed she knew not whence nor
how. Suppose her to have been heart-free at this juncture of her fate,
think you she would have found it a whit less impossible to save her
father by becoming Dagworthy's wife. There was in her thought but one
parallel to this dire choice which lay before her: it was the means
offered to Isabel of rescuing her brother Claudio. That passion of
purity which fired Isabel's speech was the breath of Emily's life. She
knew well that many, and women too, would spare no condemnation of what
they would call her heartless selfishness; she knew that the paltriest
considerations of worldly estate are deemed sufficient to exact from a
woman the sacrifice now demanded of her. That was no law to Emily. The
moral sense which her own nature had developed must here alone control
her. Purity, as she understood it--the immaculate beauty of the
soul--was her religion: if other women would die rather than deny the
object of their worship, to her the ideal of chastity was worth no less
perfect a zeal. Far removed from the world which theorises, she
presented in her character a solution of the difficulties entertained by
those who doubtingly seek a substitute for the old religious sanctions.
Her motives had the simplicity of elemental faith; they were indeed but
the primary instincts of womanhood exalted to a rare perfection and
reflected in a consciousness of exceeding lucidity.
The awakening of love in such a nature as this was, as it were, the
admission to a supreme sacrament. Here was the final sanction of the
creed that had grown from within. In the plighting of her troth to
Wilfrid Athel, Emily had, as she herself saw it, performed the most
solemn and sacred act of her life; instead of being a mere preliminary
to a holy observance which should in truth unite them, it made that
later formality all but trivial. It was the aspiration of her devoutest
hours that this interchange of loving promise might keep its binding
sanctity for ever, that no touch of mutability might come upon her heart
till the last coldness stayed its heating. A second love appeared to her
self-contradicted; to transfer to another those thoughts which had
wedded her soul to Wilfrid's would not merely be sin, it was an
impossibility. Did he ever cease to cherish her--a thought at which she
smiled in her proud confidence--that could in nothing affect her love
for him, which was not otherwise to be expressed than as the sum of her
consciousness....
The pale light of dawn began to glimmer through the window-blind. Emily
gave it full admission, and looked out at the morning sky; faintest blue
was growing between streaks of cold grey. Her eyes ached from the
fixedness of intense thought; the sweet broad brow was marble, the
disorder of her hair spoke of self-abandonment in anguish. She had no
thought of seeking rest; very far from her was sleep and the blessedness
of oblivion. She felt as though sleep would never come again.
But she knew what lay before her; doubt was gone, and there only
remained fear to shake her heart. A day and a night had to be lived
through before she could know her fate, so long must she suffer things
not to be uttered. A day and a night, and then, perchance--nay,
certainly--the vanguard of a vast army of pain-stricken hours. There was
no passion now in her thought of Wilfrid; her love had become the
sternness of resolve which dreads itself. An hour ago her heart had been
pierced with self-pity in thinking that she should suffer thus so far
away from him, without the possibility of his aid, her suffering
undreamt by him. Now, in her reviving strength, she had something of the
martyr's joy. If the worst came, if she had spoken to him her last word
of tenderness, the more reason that her soul should keep unsullied the
image of that bliss which was the crown of life. His and his only, his
in the rapture of ideal love, his whilst her tongue could speak, her
heart conceive, his name.