Cornelia sat with a clenched hand. “You are rich and he is poor,” was
the keynote of her thoughts, repeated from minute to minute. “And it
is gold gives you the right in the world's eye to despise him!” she
apostrophized the vanished Laura, clothing gold with all the baseness of
that person. Now, when one really hates gold, one is at war with one's
fellows. The tide sets that way. There is no compromise: to hate it is
to try to stem the flood. It happens that this is one of the temptations
of the sentimentalist, who should reflect, but does not, that the fine
feelers by which the iniquities of gold are so keenly discerned, are a
growth due to it, nevertheless. Those 'fine feelers,' or antennae of
the senses, come of sweet ease; that is synonymous with gold in our
island-latitude. The sentimentalists are represented by them among the
civilized species. It is they that sensitively touch and reject,
touch and select; whereby the laws of the polite world are ultimately
regulated, and civilization continually advanced, sometimes
ridiculously. The sentimentalists are ahead of us, not by weight of
brain, but through delicacy of nerve, and, like all creatures in the
front, they are open to be victims. I pray you to observe again the
shrinking life that afflicts the adventurous horns of the snail, for
example. Such are the sentimentalists to us--the fat body of mankind. We
owe them much, and though they scorn us, let us pity them.
Especially when they are young they deserve pity, for they suffer
cruelly. I for my part prefer to see boys and girls led into the ways of
life by nature; but I admit that in many cases, in most cases, our
good mother has not (occupied as her hands must be) made them perfectly
presentable; by which fact I am warned to have tolerance for the finer
beings who labour under these excessive sensual subtleties. I perceive
their uses. And they are right good comedy; for which I may say that
I almost love them. Man is the laughing animal: and at the end of an
infinite search, the philosopher finds himself clinging to laughter as
the best of human fruit, purely human, and sane, and comforting. So let
us be cordially thankful to those who furnish matter for sound embracing
laughter.
Cornelia detested gold--entirely on general grounds and for abstract
reasons. Not a word of Mr. Barrett was shaped, even in fancy; but she
interjected to herself, with meditative eye and mouth: “The saints were
poor!” (the saints of whom he had read, translating from that old Latin
book) “St. Francis! how divine was his life!” and so forth, until the
figure of Mr. Penniless Barrett walked out in her imagination clad in
saintly garments, superior not only to his creditor, Mr. Chips, but to
all who bought or sold.
“I have been false,” she said; implying the “to him.” Seeing him on that
radiant height above her, she thought “How could I have fallen so!” It
was impossible for her mind to recover the delusion which had prompted
her signing herself to bondage--pledging her hand to a man she did
not love. Could it have been that she was guilty of the immense folly,
simply to escape from that piece of coarse earth, Mrs. Chump? Cornelia
smiled sadly, saying: “Oh, no! I should not have committed a wickedness
for so miserable an object.” Despairing for a solution of the puzzle,
she cried out, “I was mad!”, and with a gasp of horror saw herself madly
signing her name to perdition.
“I was mad!” is a comfortable cloak to our sins in the past. Mournful
to think that we have been bereft of reason; but the fit is over, and we
are not in Bedlam!
Cornelia next wrestled with the pride of Mr. Barrett. Why had he not
come to her once after reading the line pencilled in the book? Was
it that he would make her his debtor in everything? He could have
reproached her justly; why had he held aloof? She thirsted to be
scourged by him, to hang her head ashamed under his glance, and hug the
bitter pain he dealt her. Revolving how the worst man on earth would
have behaved to a girl partially in his power (hands had been permitted
to be pressed, and the gateways of the eyes had stood open: all but vows
had been interchanged), she came to regard Mr. Barrett as the best man
on the earth. That she alone saw it, did not depreciate the value of her
knowledge. A goal gloriously illumined blazed on her from the distance.
“Too late!” she put a curb on the hot courses in her brain, and they
being checked, turned all at once to tears and came in a flood. How
indignant would the fair sentimentalist have been at a whisper of her
caring for the thing before it was too late!
Cornelia now daily trod the red pathways under the firs, and really
imagined herself to be surprised, even vexed, when she met Mr. Barrett
there at last. Emilia was by his side, near a drooping birch. She
beckoned to Cornelia, whose North Pole armour was doing its best to keep
down a thumping heart.
“We are taking our last walk in the old wood,” said, Mr. Barrett,
admirably collected. “That is, I must speak for myself.”
“You leave early?” Cornelia felt her throat rattle hideously.
“In two days, I expect--I hope,” said he.
“Why does he hope?” thought Cornelia, wounded, until a vision of the
detaining Chips struck her with pity and remorse.
She turned to Emilia. “Our dear child is also going to leave us.”
“I?” cried Emilia, fierily out of languor.
“Does not your Italy claim you?”
“I am nothing to Italy any more. Have I not said so? I love England
now.”
Cornelia smiled complacently. “Let us hope your heart is capacious
enough to love both.”
“Then your theory is” (Mr. Barrett addressed Cornelia in the winning old
style), “that the love of one thing enlarges the heart for another?”
“Should it not?” She admired his cruel self-possession pitiably, as she
contrasted her own husky tones with it.
Emilia looked from one to the other, fancying that they must have her
case somewhere in prospect, since none could be unconscious of the
vehement struggle going on in her bosom; but they went farther and
farther off from her comprehension, and seemed to speak of bloodless
matters. “And yet he is her lover,” she thought. “When they meet they
talk across a river, and he knows she is going to another man, and
does not gripe her wrist and drag her away!” The sense that she had no
kinship with such flesh shut her mouth faster than Wilfrid's injunctions
(which were ordinarily conveyed in too subtle a manner for her to feel
their meaning enough to find them binding). Cornelia, for a mask to
her emotions, gave Emilia a gentle, albeit high-worded lecture on the
artist's duty toward Art, quoting favourite passages from Mr. Barrett's
favourite Art-critic. And her fashion of dropping her voice as she
declaimed the more dictatorial sentences (to imply, one might guess,
by a show of personal humility that she would have you to know her
preaching was vicarious; that she stood humbly in the pulpit, and was
but a vessel for the delivery of the burden of the oracle), all this was
beautiful to him who could see it. I cannot think it was wholesome
for him; nor that Cornelia was unaware of a naughty wish to glitter
temporarily in the eyes of the man who made her feel humble. The sorcery
she sent through his blood communicated itself to hers. When she had
done, Emilia, convincedly vanquished by big words, said, “I cannot
talk,” and turned heavily from them without bestowing a smile upon
either.
Cornelia believed that the girl would turn back as abruptly as she
had retreated; and it was not until Emilia was out of sight that she
remembered the impropriety of being alone with Mr. Barrett. The Pitfall
of Sentiment yawned visible, but this lady's strength had been too
little tried for her to lack absolute faith in it. So, out of deep
silences, the two leapt to speech and immediately subsided to the depths
again: as on a sultry summer's day fishes flash their tails in the
sunlight and leave a solitary circle widening on the water.
Then Cornelia knew what was coming. In set phrase, and as one who
performs a duty frigidly pleasant, he congratulated her on her rumored
union. One hand was in his buttoned coat; the other hung elegantly
loose: not a feature betrayed emotion. He might have spoken it in a
ballroom. To Cornelia, who exulted in self-compression, after the Roman
method, it was more dangerous than a tremulous tone.
“You know me too well to say this, Mr. Barrett.”
The words would come. She preserved her steadfast air, when they had
escaped, to conceal her shame. Seeing thus much, he took it to mean that
it was a time for plain-speaking. To what end, he did not ask.
“You have not to be told that I desire your happiness above all earthly
things,” he said: and the lady shrank back, and made an effort to
recover her footing. Had he not been so careful to obliterate any badge
of the Squire of low degree, at his elbows, cuffs, collar, kneecap, and
head-piece, she might have achieved it with better success. For cynicism
(the younger brother of sentiment and inheritor of the family property)
is always on the watch to deal fatal blows through such vital parts
as the hat or the H's, or indeed any sign of inferior estate. But Mr.
Barrett was armed at all points by a consummate education and a most
serviceable clothesbrush.
“You know how I love this neighbourhood!” said she.
“And I! above all that I have known!”
They left the pathway and walked on mosses--soft yellow beds, run over
with grey lichen, and plots of emerald in the midst.
“You will not fall off with your reading?” he recommenced.
She answered “Yes,” meaning “No”; and corrected the error languidly,
thinking one of the weighty monosyllables as good as the other: for what
was reading to her now?
“It would be ten thousand pities if you were to do as so many women do,
when... when they make these great changes,” he continued.
“Of what avail is the improvement of the mind?” she said, and followed
his stumble over the “when,” and dropped on it.
“Of what avail! Is marriage to stop your intellectual growth?”
“Without sympathy,” she faltered, and was shocked at what she said; but
it seemed a necessity.
“You must learn to conquer the need for it.”
Alas! his admonition only made her feel the need more cravingly.
“Promise me one thing,” he said. “You will not fall into the rut? Let me
keep the ideal you have given me. For the sake of heaven, do not cloud
for me the one bright image I hold! Let me know always that you are
growing, and that the pure, noble intelligence which distinguishes you
advances, and will not be subdued.”
Cornelia smiled faintly. “You have judged me too generously, Mr.
Barrett.”
“Too little so! might I tell you!” He stopped short, and she felt the
silence like a great wave sweeping over her.
They were nearing the lake, with the stump of the pollard-willow in
sight, and toward it they went.
“I shall take the consolation of knowing that I shall hear of you, some
day,” she said, having recourse to a look of cheerfulness.
He knew her to allude to certain hopes of fame. “I am getting wiser, I
fear--too wise for ambition!”
“That is a fallacy, a sophism.”
He pointed to the hollow tree. “Is there promise of fruit from that?”
“You...you are young, Mr. Barrett.”
“And on a young, forehead it may be written, 'Come not to gather more.'”
Cornelia put her hand out: “Oh, Mr. Barrett! unsay it!” The nakedness of
her spirit stood forth in a stinging tear. “The words were cruel.”
“But, if they live, and are?”
“I feel that you must misjudge me. When I wrote them...you cannot
know! The misery of our domestic life was so bitter! And yet, I have no
excuse, none! I can only ask for pity.”
“And if you are wretched, must not I be? You pluck from me my last
support. This, I petitioned Providence to hear from you--that you would
be happy! I can have no comfort but in that.”
“Happy!” Cornelia murmured the word musically, as if to suck an irony
from the sweetness of the sound. “Are we made for happiness?”
Mr. Barrett quoted the favourite sage, concluding: “But a brilliant
home and high social duties bring consolation. I do acknowledge that an
eminent station will not only be graced by you, but that you give the
impression of being born to occupy it. It is your destiny.”
“A miserable destiny!”
It pleased Cornelia to become the wilful child who quarrels with its
tutor's teachings, upon this point.
Then Mr. Barrett said quickly: “Your heart is not in this union?”
“Can you ask? I have done my duty.”
“Have you, indeed!”
His tone was severe in the deliberation of its accents.
Was it her duty to live an incomplete life? He gave her a definition
of personal duty, and shadowed out all her own ideas on the subject;
seeming thus to speak terrible, unanswerable truth.
As one who changes the theme, he said: “I have forborne to revert to
myself in our interviews; they were too divine for that. You will always
remember that I have forborne much.”
“Yes!” She was willing at the instant to confess how much.
“And if I speak now, I shall not be misinterpreted?”
“You never would have been, by me.”
“Cornelia!”
Though she knew what was behind the door, this flinging of it open with
her name startled the lady; and if he had faltered, it would not have
been well for him. But, plainly, he claimed the right to call her by her
Christian name. She admitted it; and thenceforward they were equals.
It was an odd story that he told of himself. She could not have repeated
it to make it comprehensible. She drank at every sentence, getting no
more from it than the gratification of her thirst. His father, at least,
was a man of title, a baronet. What was meant by estates not entailed?
What wild freak of fate put this noble young man in the power of an
eccentric parent, who now caressed him, now made him an outcast? She
heard of the sum that was his, coming from his dead mother to support
him just one hundred pounds annual! Was ever fate so mournful?
Practically, she understood that if Mr. Barrett would write to his
father, pledging himself to conform to his mysterious despotic will in
something, he would be pardoned and reinstated.
He concluded: “Hitherto I have preferred poverty. You have taught me at
what a cost! Is it too late?”
The fall of his voice, with the repetition of her name, seemed as if
awakening her, but not in a land of reason.
“Why...why!” she whispered.
“Beloved?”
“Why did you not tell me this before?”
“Do you upbraid me?”
“Oh, no! Oh, never!” she felt his hand taking hers gently. “My friend,”
she said, half in self-defence; and they, who had never kissed as
lovers, kissed under the plea of friendship.