He was quite right in thinking Ellen would be pleased. And yet, after it
was all over, she was a little wounded and disappointed, which was very
natural. She did not want him to go away, but she wanted him to get the
advancement all the same. This was foolish, but still it was natural,
and just what a woman would feel. She took great pains to explain to us
that it was not hesitation about John, nor even any hesitation on the
part of John in going--for Ellen had a quick sense of what was desirable
and heroic, and would not have wished her lover to appear indifferent
about his own advancement, even though she was very thankful and happy
that in reality he was so. The reason of the failure was that the firm
had sent out a nephew, who was in the office, and had a prior claim. ‘Of
course he had the first chance,’ Ellen said, with a countenance of great
seriousness; ‘what would be the good of being a relation if he did not
have the first chance?’ And I assented with all the gravity in the
world. But she was disappointed, though she was so glad. There ought not
to have been any one in the world who had the preference over John! She
carried herself with great dignity for some time afterwards, and with
the air of a person superior to the foolish and partial judgments of the
world; and yet in her heart how thankful she was! from what an abyss of
blank loneliness and weary exertion was her life saved! For now that I
knew it a little better I could see how little that was happy was in her
home. Her mother insisted that she should have that hour’s leisure in
the evening. That was all that any one thought of doing for her. It was
enough to keep her happy, to keep her hopeful. But without that, how
long would Ellen’s brave spirit have kept up? Perhaps had she never
known John, and that life of infinite tender communion, her natural
happy temperament would have struggled on for a long time against all
the depressing effects of circumstances, unaided. But to lose is worse
than never to have had. If it is
Better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all,
yet it is at the same time harder to lose that bloom of existence out of
your lot, than to have struggled on by mere help of nature without it.
She had been so happy--making so little go such a long way!--that the
loss of her little happiness would have been appalling to her. And yet
she was dissatisfied that this heartbreak did not come. She had strung
herself up to it. It would have been advancement, progress, all that a
woman desires for those belonging to her, for John. Sacrificing him for
the others, she was half angry not to have it in her power to sacrifice
herself to his ‘rise in life.’ I think I understood her, though we never
talked on the subject. She was dissatisfied, although she was relieved.
We have all known these mingled feelings.
This happened at the beginning of summer; but all its agitations were
over before the long sweet days and endless twilights of the happy
season had fully expanded upon us. It seems to me as I grow older that a
great deal of the comfort of our lives depends upon summer--upon the
weather, let us say, taking it in its most prosaic form. Sometimes
indeed to the sorrowful the brightness is oppressive; but to all the
masses of ordinary mortals who are neither glad nor sad, it is a
wonderful matter not to be chilled to the bone; to be able to do their
work without thinking of a fire; without having a sensation of cold
always in their lives never to be got rid of. Ellen and her lover
enjoyed that summer as people who have been under sentence of banishment
enjoy their native country and their home.
You may think there is not much beauty in a London suburb to tempt any
one: and there is not for those who can retire to the beautiful fresh
country when they will, and surround themselves with waving woods and
green lawns, or taste the freshness of the mountains or the saltness of
the sea. We, who go away every year in July, pined and longed for the
moment of our removal; and my neighbour in the great house which shut
out the air from Pleasant Place, panted in her great garden (which she
was proud to think was almost unparalleled for growth and shade in
London), and declared herself incapable of breathing any longer in such
a close and shut up locality. But the dwellers in Pleasant Place were
less exacting. They thought the long suburban road very pleasant. Where
it streamed off into little dusty houses covered with brown ivy and
dismal trellis work, and where every unfortunate flower was thick with
dust, they gazed with a touch of envy at the ‘gardens,’ and felt it to
be rural. When my pair of lovers went out for their walk they had not
time to go further than to the ‘Green Man,’ a little tavern upon the
roadside, where one big old elm tree, which had braved the dust and the
frost for more years than any one could recollect, stood out at a corner
at the junction of two roads, with a bench round it, where the passing
carters and cabmen drank their beer, and a trough for the horses, which
made it look ‘quite in the country’ to all the inhabitants of our
district. Generally they got as far as that, passing the dusty cottages
and the little terrace of new houses. A great and prolonged and most
entertaining controversy went on between them as they walked, as to the
kind of house in which they should eventually settle down. Ellen, who
was not without a bit of romance in her, of the only kind practicable
with her upbringing, entertained a longing for one of the dusty little
cottages. She thought, like all inexperienced persons, that in her hands
it would not be dusty. She would find means of keeping the ivy green.
She would see that the flowers grew sweet and clean, and set blacks and
dust alike at defiance. John, for his part, whose lodging was in one of
those little houses, preferred the new terrace. It was very new--very
like a row of ginger-bread houses--but it was very clean, and for the
moment bright, not as yet penetrated by the dust. Sometimes I was made
the confidante of these interminable, always renewed, always delightful
discussions. ‘They are not dusty yet,’ Ellen would say, ‘but how long
will it be before they are dusty? whereas with the villas’ (they had a
great variety of names--Montpellier Villas, Funchal Villas, Mentone
Mansions--for the district was supposed to be very mild) ‘one knows what
one has to expect; and if one could not keep the dust and the blacks out
with the help of brushes and dusters, what would be the good of one? I
should sow mignonette and Virginia stock,’ she cried with a firm faith;
‘low-growing flowers would be sure to thrive. It is only roses (poor
roses!) and tall plants that come to harm.’ John, for his part, dwelt
much upon the fact that in the little front parlours of the terrace
houses there were shelves for books fitted into a recess. This weighed
quite as much with him as the cleanness of the new places. ‘The villas
are too dingy for her,’ he said, looking admiringly at her fresh face.
‘She could never endure the little gray, grimy rooms.’ That was his
romance, to think that everything should be shining and bright about
her. He was unconscious of the dinginess of the parlour in Ellen’s home.
It was all irradiated with her presence to him. These discussions
however all ended in a sigh and a laugh from Ellen herself. ‘It is all
very fine talking,’ she would say.
And so the summer went on. Alas! and other summers after it. My eldest
girl married. My boys went out into the world. Many changes came upon
our house. The children began to think it a very undesirable locality.
Even Chatty, always the sweetest, sighed for South Kensington, if not
for a house in the country and a month in London in the season, which
was what the other girls wished for. This common suburban road, far from
fashion, far from society--what but their mother’s inveterate
old-fashionedness and indifference to appearances could have kept them
there so long? The great house opposite with the garden had ceased to
be. The high wall was gone from Pleasant Place, and instead of it stood
a fresh row of little villakins like the terrace which had once been
John Ridgway’s admiration. Alas! Ellen’s forebodings had been fully
realized, and the terrace was as dingy as Montpellier Villas by this
time. The whole neighbourhood was changing. Half the good houses in the
road--the houses, so to speak, of the aristocracy, which to name was to
command respect from all the neighbourhood--had been built out and
adorned with large fronts of plate glass and made into shops. Omnibuses
now rolled along the dusty way. The station where they used to stop had
been pushed out beyond the ‘Green Man,’ which once we had felt to be
‘quite in the country.’ Everything was changing; but my pair of lovers
did not change. Ellen got other pupils instead of Chatty and her
contemporaries who were growing up and beyond her skill, and came out at
ten o’clock every morning with as fresh a face as ever, and her little
roll of music always in her hand. And every evening, though now he was
set down at his lodgings from the omnibus, and no longer passed my
window on his way home, John made his pilgrimage of love to Pleasant
Place. She kept her youth--the sweet complexion, the dew in her eyes,
and the bloom upon her cheek--in a way I could not understand. The long
waiting did not seem to try her. She had always his evening visit to
look for, and her days were full of occupation. But John, who had
naturally a worn look, did not bear the probation so well as Ellen. He
grew bald; a general rustiness came over him. He had looked older than
he was to begin with: his light locks, his colourless countenance, faded
into a look of age. He was very patient--almost more patient than Ellen,
who, being of a more vivacious temper, had occasioned little outbursts
of petulant despair, of which she was greatly ashamed afterwards; but at
the same time this prolonged and hopeless waiting had more effect upon
him than upon her. Sometimes he would come to see me by himself for the
mere pleasure, it seemed to me, though we rarely spoke on the subject,
of being understood.
‘Is this to go on for ever?’ I said. ‘Is it never to come to an end?’
‘It looks like it,’ said John, somewhat drearily. ‘We always talk about
our little house. I have got three rises since then. I doubt if I shall
ever have any more; but we don’t seem a bit nearer----’ and he ended
with a sigh--not of impatience, like those quick sighs mixed up with
indignant, abrupt little laughs in which Ellen often gave vent to her
feelings--but of weariness and despondency much more hard to bear.
‘And the father,’ I said, ‘seems not a day nearer the end of his
trouble. Poor man, I don’t wish him any harm.’
This, I fear, was a hypocritical speech, for in my heart I should not
have been at all sorry to hear that his ‘trouble’ was coming to an end.
Then for the first time a gleam of humour lighted in John’s eye. ‘I am
beginning to suspect that he is--better,’ he said; ‘stronger at least. I
am pretty sure he has no thought of coming to an end.’
‘All the better,’ I said; ‘if he gets well, Ellen will be free.’
‘He will never get well,’ said John, falling back into his dejection,
‘and he will never die.’
‘Then it will never come to anything. Can you consent to that?’ I said.
He made me no reply. He shook his head; whether in dismal acceptance of
the situation, whether in protest against it, I cannot tell. This
interview filled me with dismay. I spent hours pondering whether, and
how, I could interfere. My interference had not been of much use before.
And my children began to laugh when this lingering, commonplace little
romance was talked of. ‘My mother’s lovers,’ the boys called them--‘My
mother’s turtle-doves.’
The time had almost run on to the length of Jacob’s wooing when one day
Ellen came to me, not running in, eager and troubled with her secret as
of old, but so much more quietly than usual, with such a still and fixed
composure about her, that I knew something serious had happened. I sent
away as quickly as I could the other people who were in the room, for I
need not say that to find me alone was all but an impossibility. I gave
Chatty, now a fine, tall girl of twenty, a look, which was enough for
her; she always understood better than any one. And when at last we were
free I turned to my visitor anxiously. ‘What is it?’ I said. It did not
excite her so much as it did me.
She gave a little abstracted smile. ‘You always see through me,’ she
said. ‘I thought there was no meaning in my face. It has come at last.
He is really going this time, directly, to the Levant. Oh, what a little
thing Chatty was when I asked her to look in the atlas for the Levant;
and now she is going to be married! What will you do,’ she asked
abruptly, stopping short to look at me, ‘when they are all married and
you are left alone?’
I had asked myself this question sometimes, and it was not one I liked.
‘“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,”’ I said; ‘the two little
ones of all have not so much as thought of marrying yet.’
Ellen answered me with a sigh, a quickly drawn impatient breath. ‘He is
to sail in a fortnight,’ she said. ‘Things have gone wrong with the
nephew. I knew he never could be so good as John; and now John must go
in a hurry to set things right. What a good thing that it is all in a
hurry! We shall not have time to think.’
‘You must go with him--you must go with him, Ellen!’ I cried.
She turned upon me almost with severity in her tone. ‘I thought you knew
better. I--go with him! Look here,’ she cried very hurriedly, ‘don’t
think I don’t face the full consequences--the whole matter. He is tired,
tired to death. He will be glad to go--and after--after! If he should
find some one else there, I shall never be the one to blame him.’
‘Ellen! you ought to ask his pardon on your knees--he find some one
else! What wrong you do to the faithfullest--the truest----’
‘He is the faithfullest,’ she said; then, after a moment, ‘but I will
never blame him. I tell you beforehand. He has been more patient than
ever man was.’
Did she believe what she was saying? It was very hard to know. The
fortnight flew by like a day. The days had been very long before in
their monotony, but now these two weeks were like two hours. I never
quite knew what passed. John had taken his courage in both hands, and
had bearded the father himself in his den: but, so far as I could make
out, it was not the father but the mother with her tears who vanquished
him. ‘When I saw what her life was,’ he said to me when he took leave of
me, ‘such a life! my mouth was closed. Who am I that I should take away
her only comfort from her? We love each other very dearly, it is our
happiness, it is the one thing which makes everything else sweet: but
perhaps, as Ellen says, there is no duty in it. It is all enjoyment. Her
duty is to them; it is her pleasure, she says, her happiness to be with
me.’
‘But--but you have been engaged for years. No doubt it is your
happiness--but surely there is duty too.’
‘She says not. My mind is rather confused. I don’t seem to know. Duty,
you know, duty is a thing that it is rather hard to do; something one
has to raise one’s self up to, and carry through with it, whether we
like it or whether we don’t like it. That’s her definition; and it seems
right--don’t you think it is right? But to say that of us would be
absurd. It is all pleasure--all delight,’ his tired eyelids rose a
little to show a gleam of emotion, then dropped again with a sigh; ‘that
is her argument; I suppose it is true.’
‘Then, do you mean to say----’ I cried, and stopped short in sheer
bewilderment of mind, not knowing what words to use.
‘I don’t think I mean to say anything. My head is all confused. I don’t
seem to know. Our feeling is all one wish to be together; only to see
one another makes us happy. Can there be duty in that? she says. It
seems right, yet sometimes I think it is wrong, though I can’t tell
how.’
I was confused too and silenced. I did not know what to say. ‘It
depends,’ I said faltering, ‘upon what you consider the object of life.’
‘Some people say happiness; but that would not suit Ellen’s theory,’ he
said. ‘Duty--I had an idea myself that duty was easily defined; but it
seems it is as difficult as everything is. So far as I can make out,’ he
added with a faint smile, ‘I have got no duties at all.’
‘To be faithful to her,’ I said, recollecting the strange speech she had
made to me.
He almost laughed outright. ‘Faithful! that is no duty; it is my
existence. Do you think I could be unfaithful if I were to try?’
These were almost the last words he said to me. I suppose he satisfied
himself that his duty to his employer required him to go away. And Ellen
had a feverish desire that he should go away, now that the matter had
been broached a second time. I am not sure that when the possibility of
sacrifice on his part dawned upon her, the chance that he might
relinquish for her this renewed chance of rising in the world, there did
not arise in her mind a hasty impatient wish that he might be
unfaithful, and give her up altogether. Sometimes the impatience of a
tired spirit will take this form. Ellen was very proud; by dint of
having made sacrifices all her life, she had an impetuous terror of
being in her turn the object for which sacrifices should be made. To
accept them was bitterness to her. She was eager to hurry all his
preparations, to get him despatched, if possible, a little earlier than
the necessary time. She kept a cheerful face, making little jokes about
the Levant and the people he would meet there, which surprised
everybody. ‘Is she glad that he is going? Chatty asked me, with eyes
like two round lamps of alarmed surprise. The last night of all they
spent with us--and it seemed a relief to Ellen that it should be thus
spent, and not _tête-à-tête_ as so many other evenings had been. It was
the very height and flush of summer, an evening which would not sink
into darkness and night as other evenings do. The moon was up long
before the sun had gone reluctantly away. We sat without the lamp in the
soft twilight, with the stream of wayfarers going past the windows, and
all the familiar sounds, which were not vulgar to us, we were so used to
them. They were both glad of the half light. When I told Ellen to go and
sing to us, she refused at first with a look of reproach; then, with a
little shake of her head, as if to throw off all weakness, changed her
mind and went to the piano. It was Chatty who insisted upon Mr.
Ridgway’s favourite song, perhaps out of heedlessness, perhaps with that
curious propensity the young often have to probe wounds and investigate
how deep a sentiment may go. We sat in the larger room, John and myself,
while behind, in the dim evening, in the distance, scarcely visible,
Ellen sat at the piano and sang. What the effort cost her I would not
venture to inquire. As for him, he sat with melancholy composure
listening to every tone of her voice. She had a very sweet refined
voice--not powerful, but tender, what people call sympathetic. I could
not distinguish his face, but I saw his hand beat the measure
accompanying every line, and when she came to the burden of the song he
said it over softly to himself. Broken by all the babble outside, and by
the music in the background, I yet heard him, all tuneless and low,
murmuring this to himself: ‘I will come again, I will come again, my
sweet and bonnie.’ Whether his eyes were dry I cannot tell, but mine
were wet. He said them with no excitement, as if they were the words
most simple, most natural--the very breathing of his heart. How often, I
wonder, would he think of that dim room, the half-seen companions, the
sweet and tender voice rising out of the twilight? I said to myself,
‘Whoever may mistrust you, I will never mistrust you,’ with fervour. But
just as the words passed through my mind, as if Ellen had heard them,
her song broke off all in a moment, died away in the last line, ‘I will
come a----’ There was a sudden break, a jar on the piano--and she
sprang up and came towards us, stumbling, with her hands put out, as it
she could not see. The next sound I heard was an unsteady little laugh,
as she threw herself down on a sofa in the corner where Chatty was
sitting. ‘I wonder why you are all so fond of that old-fashioned
nonsense,’ she said.
And next day the last farewells were said, and John went away.