The time passed on very quietly during these years. Nothing particular
happened; so that looking back now--now that once more things have begun
to happen, and all the peaceful children who cost me nothing but
pleasant cares have grown up and are setting forth, each with his and
her more serious complications, into individual life--it seems to me
like a long flowery plain of peace. I did not think so then, and no
doubt from time to time questions arose that were hard to answer and
difficulties that cost me painful thought. But now all seems to me a
sort of heavenly monotony and calm, turning years into days. In this
gentle domestic quiet six months went by like an afternoon; for it was,
I think, about six months after the first meeting I have just described
when Ellen Harwood rushed in one morning with a scared face, to tell me
of something which had occurred and which threatened to break up in a
moment the quiet of her life. Mr. Ridgway had come again various
times--we had daily intercourse at the window, where, when he passed, he
always looked up now, and where I seldom failed to see him and give him
a friendly greeting. This intercourse, though it was so slight, was also
so constant that it made us very fast friends; and when Ellen, as I have
said, rushed in very white and breathless one bright spring morning,
full of something to tell, my first feeling was alarm. Had anything
happened to John?
‘Oh, no. Nothing has happened. At least, I don’t suppose you would say
anything had happened--that is, no harm--except to me,’ said Ellen,
wringing her hands, ‘except to me! Oh, do you recollect that first night
he came to see you, when you were so kind as to ask him, and I sang that
song he is so fond of? I took fright then; I never could tell how--and
now it looks as if it would all come true----’
‘As if what would come true?’
‘Somebody,’ said Ellen, sitting down abruptly in the weariness of her
dejection, ‘somebody from the office is to go out directly to the
Levant. Oh, Chatty, dear, you that are learning geography and
everything, tell me where is the Levant? It is where the currants and
raisins come from. The firm has got an establishment, and it is
likely--oh, it is very likely: they all think that John, whom they
trust so much--John--will be sent----’
She broke off with a sob--a gasp. She was too startled, too much excited
and frightened, to have the relief of tears.
‘But that would be a very good thing, surely--it would be the very best
thing for him. I don’t see any cause for alarm. My dear Ellen, he would
do his work well; he would be promoted; he would be made a partner----’
‘Ah!’ She drew a long breath: a gleam of wavering light passed over her
face. ‘I said you would think it no harm,’ she said mournfully, ‘no
harm--except to me.’
‘It is on the Mediterranean Sea,’ said Chatty over her atlas, with a
great many big round ‘Oh’s’ of admiration and wonder, ‘where it is
always summer, always beautiful. Oh, Ellen, I wish I were you! but you
can send us some oranges,’ the child added philosophically. Ellen gave
her a rapid glance of mingled fondness and wrath.
‘You think of nothing but oranges!’ she cried (quite unjustly, I must
say); then putting her hands together and fixing her wistful eyes upon
me, ‘I feel,’ she said in the same breath, ‘as if the world were coming
to an end.’
‘You mean it is just about beginning--for of course he will not go
without you--and that is the very best thing that could happen.’
‘Oh, how can you say so? it cannot happen; it is the end of everything,’
Ellen cried, and I could not console her. She would do nothing but wring
her hands and repeat her plaint, ‘It is the end of everything.’ Poor
girl, apart from John her life was dreary enough, though she had never
felt it dreary. Music lessons in the morning, and after that continual
attendance upon an exacting fiery invalid. The only break in her round
of duty had been her evening hours, her little walk and talk with John.
No wonder that the thought of John’s departure filled her with a terror
for which she could scarcely find words. And she never took into account
the other side of the question, the solution which seemed to me so
certain, so inevitable. She knew better--that, at least, whatever other
way might be found out of it, could not be.
Next day in the evening, when he was going home, John himself paused as
he was passing the window, and looked up with a sort of appeal. I
answered by beckoning to him to come in, and he obeyed the summons very
rapidly and eagerly. The spring days had drawn out, and it was now quite
light when John came home. He came in and sat down beside me, in the
large square projecting window, which was my favourite place. There was
a mingled air of eagerness and weariness about him, as if, though
excited by the new prospect which was opening before him, he was yet
alarmed by the obstacles in his way, and reluctant, as Ellen herself
was, to disturb the present peaceful conditions of their life. ‘I do not
believe,’ he said, ‘that they will ever consent. I don’t know how we
are to struggle against them. People of their age have so much stronger
wills than we have. They stand to what they want, and they have it,
reason or no reason.’
‘That is because you give in; you do not stand to what you want,’ I
said. He looked away beyond me into the evening light, over the heads of
all the people who were going and coming so briskly in the road, and
sighed.
‘They have such strong wills. What can you say when people tell you that
it is impossible, that they never can consent? Ellen and I have never
said that, or even thought it. When we are opposed we try to think how
we can compromise, how we can do with as little as possible of what we
want, so as to satisfy the others. I always thought that was the good
way, the nobler way,’ he said with a flush coming over his pale face.
‘Have we been making a mistake?’
‘I fear so--I think so; yes, I am sure,’ I cried. ‘Yours would be the
nobler way if--if there was nobody but yourself to think of.’
He looked at me with a wondering air. ‘I think I must have expressed
myself wrongly,’ he said; ‘it was not ourselves at all that we were
thinking of.’
‘I know; but that is just what I object to,’ I said. ‘You sacrifice
yourselves, and you encourage the other people to be cruelly selfish,
perhaps without knowing it. All that is virtue in you is evil in them.
Don’t you see that to accept this giving up of your life is barbarous,
it is wicked, it is demoralizing to the others. Just in so much as
people think well of you they will be forced to think badly of them.’
He was a little startled by this view, which, I confess, I struck out on
the spur of the moment, not really seeing how much sense there was in
it. I justified myself afterwards to myself, and became rather proud of
my argument; but for a woman to argue, much less suggest, that
self-sacrifice is not the chief of all virtues, is terrible. I was half
frightened and disgusted with myself, as one is when one has brought
forward in the heat of partisanship a thoroughly bad, yet, for the
moment, effective argument. But he was staggered, and I felt the thrill
of success which stirs one to higher effort.
‘I never thought of that; perhaps there is some truth in it,’ he said.
Then, after a pause, ‘I wonder if you, who have been so good to us all,
who are fond of Ellen--I am sure you are fond of Ellen--and the children
like her.’
‘Very fond of Ellen, and the children all adore her,’ I said with
perhaps unnecessary emphasis.
‘To me that seems natural,’ he said, brightening. ‘But yet what right
have we to ask you to do more? You have been as kind as it is possible
to be.’
‘You want me to do something more? I will do whatever I can--only speak
out.’
‘It was this,’ he said, ‘if you would ask--you who are not an interested
party--if you would find out what our prospects are. Ellen does not want
to escape from her duty. There is nothing we are not capable of
sacrificing rather than that she should shrink from her duty. I need not
tell you how serious it is. If I don’t take this--in case it is offered
to me--I may never get another chance again; but, if I must part from
Ellen, I cannot accept it. I cannot; it would be like parting one’s soul
from one’s body. But I have no confidence in myself any more than Ellen
has. They have such strong wills. If they say it must not and cannot
be--what can I reply? I know myself. I will yield, and so will Ellen.
How can one look them in the face and say, ‘Though you are her father
and mother, we prefer our own comfort to yours?’
‘Do not say another word. I will do it,’ I said, half exasperated, half
sympathetic--oh, yes! more than half sympathetic. They were fools; but I
understood it, and was not surprised, though I was exasperated. ‘I will
go and beard the lion in his den,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they will not let me
see the lion, only his attendant. But remember this,’ I said
vindictively, ‘if Ellen and you allow yourselves to be conquered, if you
are weak and throw away all your hopes, never come to me again. I have
made up my mind. You must give up me as well as all the rest. I will not
put up with such weakness.’ John stared at me with alarm in his eyes; he
was not quite comfortable even when I laughed at my own little bit of
tragedy. He shook his head with a melancholy perplexity.
‘I don’t see clearly,’ he said; ‘I don’t seem able to judge. To give in
is folly; and yet, when you think--supposing it were duty--suppose her
father were to die when she was far away from him?’
‘If we were to consider all these possibilities there never would be a
marriage made--never an independent move in life,’ I cried. ‘Parents die
far from their children, and children, alas! from their parents. How
could it be otherwise? But God is near to us all. If we were each to
think ourselves so all-important, life would stand still; there would be
no more advance, no progress; everything would come to an end.’
John shook his head; partly it was in agreement with what I said, partly
in doubt for himself. ‘How am I to stand up to them and say, “Never mind
what you want--_we_ want something else?” There’s the rub,’ he said,
still slowly shaking his head. He had no confidence in his own power of
self-assertion. He had never, I believe, been able to answer
satisfactorily the question, why should he have any special thing which
some one else wished for? It was as natural to him to efface himself, to
resign his claims, as it was to other men to assert them. And yet in
this point he could not give up--he could not give Ellen up, come what
might; but neither could he demand that he and she should be permitted
to live their own life.
After long deliberation I decided that it would not be expedient to rush
across to Pleasant Place at once and get it over while John and Ellen
were taking their usual evening walk, which was my first impulse; but to
wait till the morning, when all would be quiet, and the invalid and his
wife in their best humour. It was not a pleasant errand; the more I
thought of it, the less I liked it. If they were people who could demand
such a sacrifice from their daughter, was it likely that they would be
so far moved by my arguments as to change their nature? I went through
the little smoky garden plot, where the familiar London ‘blacks’ lay
thick on the grass, on the sweetest May morning, when it was a pleasure
to be alive. The windows were open, the little white muslin curtains
fluttering. Up-stairs I heard a gruff voice asking for something, and
another, with a querulous tone in it, giving a reply. My heart began to
beat louder at the sound. I tried to keep up my courage by all the
arguments I could think of. Nevertheless, my heart sank down into my
very shoes when the little maid, with her apron folded over her arm, and
as grimy as ever, opened to me--with a curtsey and a ‘La!’ of delighted
surprise--this door of fate.