He that will not when he may; vol. I

CHAPTER XIV.

The girl spoke to her father, but her eyes were caught instantly by the unusual apparition of the lady in the shop. Who was she? not an ordinary customer, not anybody with an order for picture frames. A flutter awoke in Janet’s breast. Was it perhaps somebody sent from the shop to offer that situation which was the dream of her fancy? a situation, she did not quite know what, varying as her hopes and sense of self-importance varied from that of a companion (which, the forewoman of the shop had told her, her manners and look were equal to—not to speak of her education) to that of a lady’s maid. Emigration was not an idea which pleased Janet. She was afraid of the sea, afraid of the unknown, and not at all desirous of being always at home, shut up within the circle of family duties and companionship. She wanted to see the world, as all young people had, she thought, a right to do. To go into the wilds had no charm for her. She had grown up in the close presence of all her father’s theories without being affected by one of them. She had heard him speak by the hour and had paid no attention. All his moral independence, the haughtiness of his determination to be his own master, and stand under subjection to no man, affected his child no more than to make her wish the more fervently for that “situation,” which would deliver her from the monotony of these “holdings forth.” Janet’s ideal of a happy existence was that of a large “establishment” where there would be a crowd of servants, elegant valets and splendid butlers at the feet of the pretty maid whom nobody would be able to tell from a lady—or perhaps a chance of catching the eye of the master of one of these fine gentlemen, who would make her a lady in earnest, with servants of her own. Nobody knew of these secret dreams which occupied her fancy, and grew and flourished in the atmosphere of the shop; but when her father called her suddenly, and she came down to see Lady Markham standing so exactly like (she thought) a lady whom the forewoman might have sent with the offer of a situation, her heart began to beat, and her head to turn round with excitement—excitement only not so great as that of the woman who stood gazing at her with wistful eyes, asking herself if this was the woman whom Paul preferred to all the world.

Janet was tall, and possessed what the people at the shop called “a lovely figure;” the mantles and jackets never looked so well as upon her. The habit of putting these garments on, and making a little parade in front of the glass to show them, which was her daily duty, had given a certain ease of carriage not usual in her class. When you are accustomed to be gazed at, whether for yourself, or what you carry on your shoulders, it takes away the native embarrassment of the self-conscious creature. She was dressed in that gown of black alpaca which is the uniform of the shops, and which did full justice to the fine lines of her form. These were not the mere slim outlines of a girlish figure which might turn to anything, but really beautiful, finely proportioned, and imposing. She came down into her father’s shop, into the line of sunshine that crossed it, with the air of a young queen. Her face, however, was not so fine. She was pale, her nose not quite so delicate, her mouth not so small as beauty demanded. Her hair was fair, with little colour in it, and affording but little relief to the forehead upon which it clustered in a wild but careful disorder, according to the fashion of the time. Lady Markham took in every line and every feature as the girl advanced: far more critically than if she had been, as Janet thought, an intending employer did she examine this new unknown being who (was it possible?) had Paul’s future in her hands. They gazed at each other, forgetting the man who stood by watching their mutual interest with what would have been amusement had he been less indignant and curious. Men and women are always so strange to each other. He looked at these two with a half-despairing, half-comic (notwithstanding his seriousness) consciousness that the ideas that were going through their minds were to him a sealed book. He did not know, poor man, that the lady, who was a stranger, was the one of the two that was comprehensible to him, and that stranger than all Greek or Latin, more mysterious than philosophy, would have been to him, had he been able to see them, the thoughts in the mind of his own child.

“I want to ask you a question, Janet. Don’t be alarmed, it is not anything to frighten you,” he said. “In the first place this is Lady Markham, the mother of Mr. Markham whom you have so often seen here.”

Janet made a curtsey to the lady, uttering a little confused “Oh!” of wonder, and opening her eyes, and even her mouth, in surprise. Could Mr. Markham have recommended her? Mr. Markham! She did not know what to think. Why should he wish her to be under his mother’s care? Thought goes quick at all times, quickest of all in such a crisis, when the next word may change all your prospects in life. Her mind plunged forward in a moment into a world of possibilities, while her eyelids quivered with that expression, and her mouth kept the form of the “Oh!” tremulous and astonished. The quiver communicated itself to her whole frame—what might come next?

“You must understand,” said Lady Markham quickly, “that I have nothing to do with the question your father is going to ask you. It is not put in consequence of anything I have told him—nor is it put at my desire.”

Spears gave a little laugh, elevating his eyebrows. Yes, this was the sort of thing to be expected. She had led him on to it, and now she protested that she had nothing to do with it—was not this the kind of tactics pursued by her class in all ages? To push the frank and honest man of the people into a corner and then to disown him. He laughed, though he had not much inclination to laugh.

“Quite right, quite true,” he said; “it is for my own satisfaction entirely. Janet, nobody has ever come between you and me,” the man added with a certain pathos. He looked at his daughter with a mist of honest affection and trust in his eyes, and without an idea, without a suspicion, that between him and her lay a whole world of difference, indescribable by ordinary words. “I have been father and mother both to you. Answer me, my girl, without any fear. Mr. Markham has told his family that he is going with us to Queensland. Janet, answer me plainly, is it out of love for you?”

“Father!” Janet, whose face was turned towards him, gave a sudden cry. In a moment a flame of colour went over her. She opened her eyes still wider, and her mouth, with dismay. “Oh, father! father!” she cried, in a tone of warning and alarm.

It seemed to Lady Markham that nothing more was necessary. Her limbs refused to support her any longer. She sank upon the seat which she had abandoned. The girl was afraid to speak the truth before her; but yet what doubt could there be of the meaning in her voice.

“I ask you to tell me plainly—to speak out as between you and me,” said Spears. He was not slow to perceive what her tone implied, and the warning in it made him angry. “There is no reason why you should hesitate to say it. If so it is, there is nothing wrong in it as far as I can see. Blush you must, I suppose—girls cannot help it; but tell me, like an innocent creature as you are, tell me the truth. I tell you there is nothing to be ashamed of. Is it out of love for you?”

Her thoughts rushed, tumbling over each other in a wild dance, a feverish Bacchic procession, through Janet’s head. She did not mean to say, or even to imply what was not true. But such questioning could only mean one thing, that Mr. Markham had confessed to his mother that he was “in love” for her—that unthought-of, bewildering promotion was within her reach. She did not mean to tell a lie. She blushed more hotly than ever.

“Oh, father, how can you ask me such a thing—before a lady?” she said.

“Then it is true?”

Janet did not make any reply; she dropped her head with a modest grace, twisting her fingers together nervously, her whole frame quivering. It was not she that had told them anything: they had told her. Ah! she remembered now a score of little nothings. Had not he picked up her thimble for her when she let it fall? Had not he opened the door for her when she came and went? How often she had wondered how he could come night after night and day after day—for what?—to talk to father, to listen to father! Many and many a time she had wondered at, and in her heart despised, her father’s disciples. It was “bosh” that he was saying, and yet these others would sit round him and take it all in. But here was something altogether different. That a young man should only have pretended to listen to father, should have come for herself all the time, was quite comprehensible to Janet. There was nothing strange even—nothing out of the way in it. It was what lovers had done from the beginning of time.

“Is that all you have got to say?” said her father. “Can’t you give us any more satisfaction? Speak out when I tell you, Janet. All this time that he has been coming here, not saying a word to you, pretending to be my disciple—” A little sting of wounded vanity was in Spears too. He did not quite like to feel that he had been deceived, that his most fervent follower was nothing but the lover of his daughter. “All this time,” he repeated, “has it been for you he has been coming? That is what we want to know.”

Still Janet said nothing. She stood with her eyes cast down, interlacing her fingers in and out, out and in—her mind in such a sudden heat of active operation that she had not leisure to speak. It was not the first time that the idea had presented itself to her. She had thought of it as a very desirable thing that Mr. Markham (or one of the others) should fall in love with her. But up to this moment she had not been able to see any likelihood of her desire realising itself. However, her mind leaped into instant action, supporting with a whole array of proof the suggestion so suddenly placed before her, of the truth of which she did not entertain a moment’s doubt. How could she doubt it? If he had told his mother, certainly it must be true; and the other facts adapted themselves as by magic to this great central fact. As soon as she had got possession of that as a foundation, the details seemed to come at a wish, and a whole superstructure of blessedness sprang upwards towards the skies.

“I don’t know what you wish me to say, father,” she answered, at last, after another peremptory call. She spoke with all the modesty of conviction, for she felt now that every word was true. “There are things as a girl cannot speak about. There are a deal of things as are nothing in themselves; but still a girl knows what they mean.”

These modest words gave an indescribable pang to both her hearers. As for Spears, it was all he could do not to cry out with anger and pain. To think that at this great crisis, at a moment when so much depended upon it, she should speak with such disregard of grammar, notwithstanding all the care he had taken of her education.

“There are things as a girl cannot speak about.”

He knew that this would catch Lady Markham’s ears, and he felt himself humbled before her—not because of the fact, which there was no harm in, which was indeed natural enough; but that his girl should tell it in such grammar occupied Spears to the exclusion of deeper sentiment. He turned to his visitor with a conciliatory tone, and a look of deprecation as if asking her pardon.

“Well!” he said, “my lady! there does not seem to be much doubt on that point. We will have to make up our minds to it, though it is not what I could have wished, any more than you.”

The very light seemed darkened in Lady Markham’s eyes, the room went round with her, and she saw nothing clearly. Oh, why had she come here to make sure! Why had she not let it alone, all vague as it was! An hour ago she had thought anything better than uncertainty—but now uncertainty itself would have been a boon. She looked at Spears, catching the tone of deprecation in his voice, which seemed so natural, and made a sudden appeal to him.

“Make up, our minds to it,” she cried. “How is that possible? Oh, Mr. Spears, I have always thought you so superior to anything of the kind. You would not take advantage of the confidence placed in you; you would not allow my boy, because of his admiration for your talents, to ruin himself, to compromise his position, to disappoint all our hopes!”

She rose up and put out her hands, appealing—in the forgetfulness of personal despair—to his generosity, though it was against himself and his own child. The most courteous, the most considerate person will forget when it is their own dearest interests which are concerned.

His fantastic distress about the grammar went out of the man’s mind. His forehead contracted, a gleam of anger came from his eyes. But he had no doubt as to having right on his side, and he answered with dignity. “Madam,” he said, “we had better understand each other. I don’t want your son any more than you want my daughter; but they have their rights, and if they like each other I will not interfere.”

She was driven almost wild by this reply. “Sir William will never consent—he will never consent to it,” she cried.

“That’s none of my business—nor my child’s,” said Spears. He forgot the respect with which she had inspired him. “Here’s the difference between your class and mine, my lady,” he said with some scorn. “I consider the one thing needful in a marriage is love—on both sides. In our rank of life we don’t consider much more. We don’t ask questions about a girl’s ancestors or her fortune. Most likely there’s none of either sort, as in this case—but where there is love, what more is wanting? You will never persuade me to interfere.”

“Marriage!” she repeated, in a voice of dismay. Of course that was what it must come to. She cast a look of dismay and almost horror at the girl who would, if this were so, take her own place, and hold her position in the world. She rose up suddenly from her rude seat, feeling that her limbs still failed her, but that in any case she could stay no longer here. “Oh, there is a great deal more wanting—a great deal more,” she cried. “Life is not so simple for us. A woman should know what she undertakes—what weight she will have on her shoulders. There are other things to be taken into consideration in such a life as ours.”

“You think so,” said Spears. What he intended to be a superior smile dwindled into something like a sneer. He did not like this assertion, which he could not contradict. After all, it was true enough that his own existence was far more elementary and primitive than the other, and he did not like the thought.

“You do not know,” said Lady Markham, “you cannot understand the difficulties of people who are looked up to by a whole district, who have the comfort of others, the very life of many in their hands. But why should I speak of this?” she said. “I thought you understood, but you do not understand. Now it is war between us, as you said. I want to harm no one, but I must do what I can for my boy.”

She made them a curtsey which (for she could not be uncivil) included both father and daughter, then drew down her veil with a trembling hand and hurried away.

Spears went after her to the door. He was furious at this calm assertion of something higher, larger, and more elevated in her different rank; yet he could not help a certain reverence, an unwilling worship of the lady, of whom he had once said regretfully that nothing like her was ever produced in his own. He went to the door, and gazed after her as she went along, her steps still hurried and agitated, but her natural grace coming back to her. “Looked up to by a whole district—the comfort of others, their very life in her hands.” Ah! there might be something in that after all. He felt in his own veins a fulness, a swell of rising blood as of a man able to bear others upon his shoulders, and fearing no responsibility. That should come in the new world to which he was bound. There he too would cease to be a single unit among other isolated individuals, and would become a head also, a leader, the first of a community. He felt as if she had dared him to it, and he would achieve it. But as he stood there half-angry, half-stimulated, he was aware of his daughter behind him, straining on tiptoe to look over his shoulder—and turned round, looking at her with a new principle of judgment and discrimination in his eyes.

“Was it really Lady Markham? Is she Mr. Markham’s mother?” said Janet, breathless with excitement. “Oh, how pretty she must have been, father! She’s not a bit nicely dressed, not what I would call equal to her situation. But she looks a real lady. Don’t you think you would know she was a real lady, whatever she had on?”

“I don’t know what you mean by a real lady. You are quite as silly as the rest, you little fool.”

“Oh, but you do know,” cried Janet. “Miss Stichel puts on lovely things, but she never has that look. Was that the lady that was so kind to you in the country?—in that beautiful grand house?”

“Did I say she was kind to me?” said Spears, melting a little. “Well, yes, I suppose she was.”

“And was it really,” said Janet, drooping her head, after she had cast one keen glance at her father’s face, “really—about nothing but Mr. Markham’s nonsense that she came here?”

“Janet,” said her father, taking her by the hand—his mind had wandered from the great question of the moment, but her words brought it suddenly back. He looked tenderly and anxiously into the girl’s face, which sank before his gaze, but only with an easy blush and pleasant embarrassment. “I don’t want to be inquisitorial. I don’t want to pry into what is perhaps too delicate for a man’s ear. But tell me if you can what you mean by Mr. Markham’s nonsense? He has always seemed very serious to me. Try and tell me if you can—try and speak to me as you would have spoken if your mother had been here.”

This touched her heart, for she was not a bad girl. She began to cry a little. “She would not have asked me—she would have understood,” she said. “Oh, father, what can I tell you beyond what I have told you? Besides, what does it matter what I say? He must have spoke himself, or what brought the lady here?”

This seemed conclusive to Spears too. It did not occur to him that “Mr. Markham’s nonsense” must mean something more than what Paul had said to his mother. He put his arm round his child, and drew her close to him. “You should not say ‘he must have spoke,’ Janet—though it would seem indeed as if he had said something. She wanted me to order him off. Tell me, my girl, are you really—fond of this young fellow?” he said, with persuasive tenderness. “Don’t turn your face away, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I thought you were but a child, and lo! you are a woman with lovers after you,” he went on, with a smile that was pathetic. “I can’t say I like it, but it’s nature, and I won’t complain.”

“Oh don’t, father,” said Janet, drawing herself away. “Don’t! How can I tell you—or any one?” There was just enough of feeling to give a natural air of pretty reserve and delicacy to the girlish shrinking, the quick movement she made to conceal her face from his eyes. Her voice was tremulous, her cheeks suffused with the blush of excitement and pleasant confusion. After a pause she turned half round and asked, as if avoiding a more difficult question, “Is it a very grand house? Will it come to him after? Will he be a Sir too?”

“If it lasts till his time,” said the revolutionary, “which let us hope it will not. The chances are, that all these detestable distinctions will be swept away long before, and the wrongs of the poor be made an end of. The country will not bear it much longer.”

“Oh!” cried Janet, forgetting her bashfulness, and turning upon him a face full of eager vehemence and indignation. “I am sick of hearing of the country! What harm does it do the country? Will they have a penny the more for taking away his money? Why shouldn’t I be a lady as well as any one else? To have a grand house, and a man in livery to walk behind me is what I should like above everything! I hope it will last till our time. I don’t believe there will be any difference. Oh, father, won’t you just give up making speeches and holding meetings, and let things be?”

“Janet!” he cried, with a flash of anger; but it seemed ludicrous, after all, to attach any importance to what such a child said. He laughed a confused and disconcerted laugh. “That doesn’t come well from my daughter! And what do you know about such things? You are a little goose, and that is all about it. Besides, what does it matter? We are all going to Queensland—he, too. There will not be many grand houses, or men in livery, you baby! to be found there.”

“Oh!” cried Janet, growing pale with disappointment and dismay; “but you don’t think he will have to go there now?”

“Why not now? There is more reason than ever now, it appears to me.”

“Oh!” cried Janet again—that stock English monosyllable expressing a whole gamut of dissatisfaction and surprise. “I thought that would only be because he thought his people would object, and didn’t know what we—I—would say. He would rather go than be separated—rather than lose—us; it is easy to understand. But when he’s been and told, and when his mother has come here, and when it’s all in the way of being settled—Oh!” cried Janet again, with natural vehemence, “what in all the world should he go for now? Would any one go that could help it? and him that has everything he can set his face to, and sure to come into a fortune, and all made easy for him. What in all the world should he go for now?”

Spears stood and looked at her with a confusion that was almost stupidity. He was indeed stupefied by this extraordinary speech. Was it really what it seemed to be, a revelation of an unknown character, a new creation altogether—or was it merely the silly babble of a child?

“My girl,” he said, with a tone of severity, yet still keeping the half of his smile, so confused and uncertain was he, not knowing what to think; “what is this you are saying? It is not like a child of mine. What if I were to say—as I have a good right—he shall come to Queensland or he shall not have you?”

“You would not have any right to say such a thing,” said Janet, with decision. “Don’t you tell us we’ve all got the right, both men and girls, to do what is best for ourselves and to judge for ourselves? and would you be the tyrant to take that from us? Oh, no, father, no! I never would have said a word but for this. Many a one has said to me, ‘What are you going for? I wouldn’t go a step in your place. I’d take a situation, and stay where all my friends are.’ That’s been said to me—times and times; and I’ve always said ‘No. Where father goes I must go.’ But, all the same, I always hated going. For one thing, I know I should be ill all the way. I hate a ship; and I hate living in the country, where you would never see so much as a street-lamp, nor hear anything but cows mooing, and sheep baaing; but I would have gone and never said a word. Only now,” cried Janet, with rising vehemence, “what would be the good of me going, or of him going? If I was married I shouldn’t be of no use to you; and what in all the world should take him there, if it wasn’t following after me?”

Her father stood and gazed at her stupefied. His very jaw dropped with wonder. She had never made so long a speech in her life; but now that she had spoken, it was all as clear, as definitely settled and arranged, as pitiless in its reasonableness, as if, instead of a girl of twenty, she had been a philosopher laying down the law. All her timidity was gone. She looked him full in the face while she ended her lengthened argument. As for Spears, the very power of speech seemed to be taken from him. A sound like a laugh, harsh and jarring, came from him when she ended.

“So that’s how it is?” he said, and turned and went back to his bench like a man who did not know what he was doing. Janet was glad enough to be thus released. She who had known her own sentiments all along was not startled by them as he was; but she felt that it was best now she had uttered them to let them have time and quiet to work their necessary effect. She turned to the eight-day clock, which had been ticking solemnly all this time in the corner, with a half shriek.

“Good gracious!” she cried, “it’s past nine, and me still here. Whatever will Miss Stichel say?”

CHAPTER XV.

Lady Markham was angry; she could not help it. And there was an additional sting in the situation from the fact that she felt she had brought it upon herself. She had taken an injudicious step. In her desire to relieve her own mind, she had compromised Paul. Her own alarms, her suspicion and doubt, had realised themselves. She blamed Spears all the more bitterly that in her heart she wanted not to be obliged to blame herself. But by and by the needle veered round to that point of the moral compass which in a candid mind it is so ready to stop at, self-accusation. Why did she give this man the occasion of insulting her, and the girl the occasion of defying her? It was her own fault. She ought not, above all, to have compromised her son. This became the most terrible thought of all as she dwelt upon it. Instead of doing good she had done harm; instead of relieving Paul from the influence of the demagogue, she had riveted and strengthened his connection with the demagogue’s family who were worse, much worse than himself. Was it possible that Paul, her son, the brother of Alice, could have chosen from all the world such a girl as Janet Spears? Her heart thrilled with the wonder of it, the disappointment of it. Was that all he could find in woman? and she herself had helped to cement the tie between them. How could she ever forgive herself? She walked along quickly, recovering her outward composure, but more and more troubled in mind as she thought upon what she had done. Why did she go? how, she asked herself, being, like most women, ready to distrust herself and give in to the common opinion on the subject whenever anything went wrong with her—how could she forget that it was always dangerous for a woman to interfere? She was in the very deepest of these painful thoughts, angry with herself, and deeply distressed by the apparent consequences of her ill-advised mission, when, turning the corner of the little street which brought her into one of the larger thoroughfares, she suddenly, without any warning, found herself face to face with Paul. The surprise was so great that she had no time to put on any defences, to prepare for questions and astonishment on his side. They met without a moment’s warning, the two people who might have been supposed least likely to encounter each other at such a time and place.

“Paul!” she cried, with a sensation of fright. And he stopped, looked at her sternly, and cast a jealous inquiring look along the street by which she had so evidently come.

“Mother! what are you doing here?” he said.

“I came out—to take a walk, as it was so fine a morning,” she said, forcing a smile. Then Lady Markham came to herself and perceived the folly of false pretences. “No—I will not try to deceive you, Paul. I have been visiting Mr. Spears,” she said.

“Visiting Spears!”

“Yes; what is there wonderful in that?—you brought him to visit me. Other people may blame me for it, but I don’t see how you can. I had a kind of faith in him.”

“You had; has it been disappointed then, mother, your faith?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “No doubt it was foolish. A man of his class—must feel like his class no doubt. It was foolish on my part.”

“What was there,” said Paul, with a sort of contempt which he hid under exaggerated politeness, “that Lady Markham could want with a man of his class—with a demagogue and Radical?”

“Paul,” she said, her voice faltering a little, “it does not become you, however wise and superior you may feel yourself, to assume this tone to your mother. This is to change our positions altogether. I have done a thing which has proved ill-advised and may turn out badly, but I did it for the best. I will not hide it from you who are the chief person concerned. I went to ask him to use his influence with you, my own having failed, to induce you to think a little of your actual duties to your family. He did not take the same view of it as I do, which perhaps was natural; and I saw, though without wishing it,” she added, in a still more tremulous tone, “the—young woman——”

“What young woman?” His voice was angry, almost threatening. He came a step nearer, and stood over her with a cloud upon his face. “What young woman is it? whom do you mean?”

“It is a poor thing to make a mystery of it when it has gone so far. I confess my mistake, and why should you conceal your intentions on your side? This can only have the effect of making everything worse. I was made to see her against my will, and to hear from her own lips——”

“Mother!” cried Paul, violently, stopping her. Then he said, endeavouring again to calm himself, “I have heard often that it is only women who can be thoroughly cruel to other women.”

“Then you have heard what is false, Paul, what is entirely and cruelly false; though you boys toss about such accusations at your pleasure, insulting the women who bear with you, and suffer for you. I tell you because I feel it would have been wiser had I taken no part in the matter; had I kept away; said nothing, and done nothing.”

“And I tell you—” cried Paul, in vehement indignation; then he stopped short and cried out with an anxious voice, “Mother, what is it you have done?”

“Everything that is unwise,” she said. “I have been rebuffed by your friend. I will tell you the truth, Paul. When he said that he had no wish to have you as a fellow emigrant, I, in my folly, asked, Was it his daughter? And she was not so reticent as you are. She owned that it was so. She was more frank than you are; and to do him justice I will allow that her father looked as much surprised as I.”

“She owned it was so!” Paul’s face became ghastly in the morning light. Then after a minute’s blank silence, he said, with a harsh laugh, “Surprised? Yes, her father might be surprised; but why you? You seem to have been the only person who knew all about it, who had got it all cut and dry to be produced at a moment’s notice. Oh, mother!” he cried, bitterly, “your morning’s work will cost me dear—it will cost me dear!”

Lady Markham stood with bowed head to receive her son’s reproaches. “I was wrong,” she said; “I was wrong. Oh, Paul, my dearest boy, come home with me; let us talk it all over; let us think of everything! If you knew how hard it is for me to oppose you! and all the more when your heart is engaged. Am I one to set myself against love?” She blushed as she looked at him with a woman’s reverence for the centre of all affections, and a mother’s shamefacedness in opening such a subject with her son. “But, Paul, there are so many things—oh, so many things to think of! and you are so young—and——”

“Mother, stop!” he said, “your arguments have nothing to do with me; they are wrong altogether. If my life is spoiled, it will be your doing; not mine, but yours—not mine, but yours.”

Lady Markham lifted her head with the surprise and something of the indignation of a person unjustly accused. “This is going too far,” she said. “I have been wrong, but to throw the total blame upon me is unreasonable. In this, as in other things, nobody could harm you; nobody could make your position worse, if you had not risked and lost it yourself.”

There were few passengers in the streets, silent and semi-deserted as always in summer, and yet more because it was still so early. The two figures which stood there together breaking the sunshine were almost the only people visible, and the closeness of the discussion between them had hitherto been witnessed by nobody; just at this point, however, some one issued suddenly from the gate of one of the colleges near, and came down the steps into the street. They were scared by the appearance of any one in this dreary city, and it was not expedient that the warmth of their conversation should be apparent to others.

“Walk along with me,” she said. “Do not let us stand here.”

Paul looked round him for a moment on either hand. On one side was the narrow street in which Spears lived, the line of colleges and better houses on the other. Lady Markham’s face was turned towards the better side. This was enough to decide him, foolish as he was. He turned the other way.

“What is the good of discussing—of talking over? All the harm is done that can be done,” he said, with a wave of his hand. Then he crossed the road quite suddenly, leaving his mother standing looking after him. Very miserable was the young man as he went away. He went down Spears’ street, but he had no intention of going to see Spears. Everything seemed, against him. The best thing for him to do, he thought, would be to get out of sight of everybody—to fly from the evils of fate that were gathering round his feet. What had he done to be caught like this in a tangle which he had not himself sought, from which indeed he had always done his best to keep free? It was no doing of his: chance and his parents had done it, and the detestable conventionalities of society, which made it impossible for a man to be civil to a girl out of his own class without laying himself open to remark. If he had not met her here, yesterday, so innocently, without premeditation! Already, by the folly of everybody concerned, this girl had got to be her to the young man; no name needed to distinguish the creature in whose hands some blind hazard seemed to have placed his life. Blind hazard—aided by his father and mother. How bitter were his thoughts as he went on. What was he to do? She had owned to it. Half he hated her for being so foolishly deceived, half his heart melted to her for the deception which only some latent tenderness could have produced. Must he wring the girl’s heart by making it all plain to her, and humble her in her own eyes? or must he accept a position he had not sought, which he no more desired than they desired it, and of which he saw all the inappropriateness, all the disadvantages? As he went on with that cruel question in his mind, there rose out of the morning air, appearing not much less suddenly than his mother had done, running towards him, the figure of the girl of whom he was thinking. To Paul it was as if his thoughts had taken shape. She came towards him, not seeing him, with all the ease of motion which unconsciousness gives—tall and graceful in her plain black gown. The girl’s head was full of a subdued triumph, but for the moment all she was consciously thinking of was how to get to her shop as quickly as possible. She ran like another Atalanta, skimming along the unlovely street, her feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground. This sudden apparition filled Paul with excitement. She had changed to him altogether since yesterday, when she was nothing but Spears’ daughter. Now she was suddenly identified, separated from all the world, and become herself. How could he help but be interested in her? She had owned to it. To what had she owned? It seemed for the moment almost a relief, bitterly as he resented her introduction into his life, to turn to her, who knew none of the complications involved, who was unaware of his fury and indignation against everybody round him—to turn to her, whose mind must be entirely single and simple, torn by no conflict. He did not know why he wanted to speak to her, what he wanted to say to her; but he stepped into her way with a certain imperiousness, making her stop short in her rapid career. Janet, thus arrested, gave a sudden cry. She stopped, the breath coming quick on her lips, and put her hand to her breast; her heart gave a sudden leap, the colour flew over her face in a sudden wave of crimson.

“Oh, Mr. Markham!” she said.

“Where are you going so fast?” Somehow it seemed to him, with a half-consolatory sense of proprietorship, that here was a creature who belonged to him, who would find no fault with him as the others did, who was his. He put himself in her way, stopping her—not as if by accident, but of set purpose—assuming the right which she for her part never resisted. There were troubles and difficulties with every one else; but with her no difficulties, no troubles. She acknowledged his sway at once, stopped herself, blushed, and drooped her head. There was no question of approving or disapproving here. She answered his voice instantly, like a slave. There are many people who only see a thing in its best aspect when it becomes their own. For the moment Paul Markham became one of those. He had never thought her so handsome before; perhaps indeed in all her life she had never been so handsome as when she stopped all blushing and glowing at his call, acknowledging in her every look the proprietorship which it gave him a sort of pleasure to claim. “Where are you going so fast?” he said.

“Oh, Mr. Markham, I am in a great hurry! I don’t know what Miss Stichel will say: I never was so late before in my life!”

“What has kept you so late?”

He was far more imperious in his tone than he had ever been when she was nothing to him. Then he had been courtly and polite, frightening the girl with a courtesy which she did not understand. She liked this roughness much better. It meant—it would be impossible to tell all it meant.

“I was kept by—visitors. Oh, Mr. Markham! don’t keep me any longer now. I don’t know what Miss Stichel will say to me. She will be so angry.”

“She must not be angry. How does she dare to show her anger to you? You had visitors. I know: my mother.”

“Oh, Mr. Markham!” Janet said again, faintly, drooping her head; and then there was a momentary pause.

“I know,” he said.

He did not know, and could not tell afterwards by what impulse he did it. Some infatuation took possession of him. He took her hand in the middle of the street, in sight of any one that might be looking. There was nobody looking, which vexed Janet, but he did it without thought of that. It would have made no difference if all the world had been there.

“That is how it is, I suppose,” he said, holding her hand. And then he added, somewhat drearily, “If there is anything wrong in it, it is their own doing, there is always that to be said.”

This somewhat chilled Janet, who expected a warmer address; but she reflected that the street was scarcely a place for love-making; and Miss Stichel, though not so important as usual, had still to be considered.

“Let me go, please, Mr. Markham,” she said; “I mustn’t be late: for whatever may happen afterwards I am still their servant at the shop.”

He dropped her hand as if it burnt him, and grew red with anger and uneasy shame.

“This must not be,” he said. “I will go and speak to Spears.”

Though he was so firm in his democratic principles, the idea that any one connected with himself should be under the orders of a mistress galled him beyond bearing. It was a thing that could not be.

“It will not be for long,” Janet said, cheerfully.

She, for her part, rather liked the shop. It was more cheerful than the other shop which was home.

“I cannot suffer it,” he said, “for another day. I will speak to Spears.”

This was all he said, but he kept standing there looking at her with eyes which were more investigating than admiring. If he had nothing more to say than this, why should he keep her standing there and expose her to Miss Stichel’s scolding? But she did not like to burst away as she would have done from a less stately wooer. She was much intimidated by a lover like Paul, though very proud of him. She stood with her eyes cast down, waiting till he should let her go free. The thing that would have made Janet most happy would have been that he should walk to the shop with her, showing that he was not ashamed of her, and give her the pride and glory of being seen by the other young ladies in company with the gentleman she was going to marry, the gentleman who had vowed that she should not remain there—not another day. This would have been the natural thing to do, Janet thought. But it did not seem to occur to Paul in the same light. He looked at her, examining her appearance with anxious and critical, yet with very sober and calm inspection. They were neither of them so happily fluttered, so excited as they might have been. She was not exacting, did not ask too much; and he was critical with the discrimination of a superior, a judge whose powers of judgment were biassed by no glamour of partiality.

“We shall see each other later in the evening. I will not detain you longer,” he said, in a tone of gentle politeness.

He even gave a little sigh of relief as he turned away. Janet, not knowing whether she was more sorry or glad to be liberated, cast more than one furtive glance behind her at his departing figure. But it did not seem to have occurred to Paul to look after her. He walked on stately and straight, turning neither to one side nor the other, towards Spears’s shop. He had not meant to go, but neither had he intended any of the other things that had come to pass. Fate seemed to have got possession of him. He walked into the shop with the same straightforward steady tread, not as usual, that was impossible. Most likely there would have to be something said—but for that, too, he felt himself ready, if need were.

Spears was no longer working at the simple work of his picture-frames. He had thrown them into a heap—all the little bits of carved work which he had been glueing and fitting into each other—and with a large sheet of paper on the table before him was drawing with much intentness and preoccupation. He had set the plume of the foxglove upright before him, and was bending his brows and contorting both limbs and features over his drawing as he had done over the lily he had designed for Alice. The handful of coloured gladiolus which had been lying on the table he had pushed impatiently aside, and they lay at his feet, here and there, scattered under the table and about the floor like things rejected, while he drew in the foxglove boldly with a blue pencil. All his soul seemed to be in his drawing. He scarcely took any notice of Paul—a half glance up, a hurried nod, and that was all. Presently, however, he took up one of the gladiolus stalks and laid it tentatively across the foxglove; then with a pshaw! of angry impatience tossed it away again.

“That won’t do,” he said, half to himself, “none o’ that. Nature will not stand it. The free-growing, wild thing is grand, but that poor stiff, conventional rubbish, manufactured out of some gardener’s brains, out of his bad dreams, is good for nothing; and it’s everywhere the same, so far as I can see. Things must be wedded after their kind.”

“Do you mean that for me, Spears?”

“Do I mean that for you? Which are you? the grand tower of the foxglove that’s good for everything—strength and continuance and beauty—or that poor spiky trash? I don’t know. I mean nothing that I don’t understand.”

Then there was silence once more. Paul took up some of the bits of uncompleted work and fixed them together. He would not open the subject, but he knew Spears well enough to know that it must have been some great agitation which had driven him away from his pot-boiling to the work of designing. That was not a work that would ever “pay.” The frames answered the purpose of daily bread; but the designs into which all the rude artist’s soul was thrown were not profitable. A few of the young men who were his friends had bought some plaques and panels of his finer original work; but such purchasers were few and far between; and to spend a whole morning making a design for one of these delicate unprofitable carvings showed that the workman had certainly for the moment lost command of himself.

After a few minutes, during which he measured the little lathes together and fitted them carelessly, Paul went quietly to the back of the room, and taking an old coat which hung there put it on and sat down to do the work which the other had left undone. This was not a kind of work he had ever attempted before. He had been a student of carving, not because of any natural impulse towards the art, but partly for Spears’s company, partly in order to be able to aid in some small way his struggle for a living. This eventful morning brought him a new impulse. While his master laboured impetuously at his drawing, Paul took the humbler work in hand. After all the distraction that had been in his mind, there was something in this homely effort that soothed him. Cast upon it on all hands, in all ways, it was a sort of relief to him to identify himself altogether with this other sphere, which he had chosen and sought out, yet into which he had never cast himself so completely, so fully, as his own family had cast him. He smiled at this within himself, as he began to work at Spears’s everyday vulgar work. Well! if they would have it so, so be it! He had played with the notion of equality, of democratic simplicity, with the doctrine that it was every man’s duty to earn his own living, and give up to humanity the full enjoyment of the land and accumulations of money, which no individual had a right to retain. All this he had held hotly in theory; but in the meantime had lived in his college rooms, and according to his natural position—an anomaly which only now appeared to him in its full vividness. Yes, now he saw it. He smiled to himself, no longer with bitterness, with a lofty disdain of his own past, of all his traditions, of his family, which by way of opposition and resistance to his purpose and principles had pushed him over the verge on which he had been hesitating. Perhaps but for them he might still have hesitated before he took the final step. It was they who had decided it, who had given him the last impulse. He smiled with a sense of the weakness of efforts which thus naturally balked themselves, feeling superior in his calm certainty of decision to all these agitations. Yes, it was over; there was no longer any question of what might or might not be. His fate was settled; he was a member of Spears’s family, not of Sir William Markham’s. That sense of calm which follows a great decision, and at the same time of proud resignation which succeeds a sacrifice exacted, calmed his mind. Somehow, Paul could not have told how, he felt himself a sort of sacrificial offering to justice and nature, making the most eloquent of protests against wrong, tyranny, injustice, and everything that was evil in society. With the dignity of a noble victim, and with a consciousness of innate, inborn, but most illogical superiority to fate, he drew the glue-pot and the tools towards him, and began to do the workman’s work. Nothing could have been more illogical; for the superiority of labour was one of the first principles of his creed, and to make pictures-frames was a respectable occupation by which a man might live. Yet it was with a smile of unspeakable superiority that he began his first day’s real work, enjoying the sensation of voluntary humility, of doing what it was beneath him to do.

Thus they went on in silence for some time: Paul working clumsily enough, with a sense of the humour implied in his adoption of the trade, which made it amusing in its novelty and inappropriateness, but which was most unlike the steady devotion of a man who felt this work to be his duty; while Spears pursued his with a fury of invention which denoted the perturbation of his mind. He flung the drooping bells of the foxglove upon his paper and erected its splendid stalk with an energy and force which was like a defiance, holding the somewhat coarse blue pencil in his hand like a sword, screwing his mouth and putting his limbs into every contortion possible, as he sat, with his stool pushed as far as might be from the table, and all the upper part of his person overhanging it. If it had been an eagle or a lion he was drawing the force and expression of his whole figure would have been more appropriate. As it was, the foxglove bristled with a kind of scornful defiance, yet drooped with something of melancholy, as an eagle might have done in all its pride of strength, yet with the pathos of all speechless creatures in its eyes. In this particular, though he was an actor, he was speechless as the eagle or the wildly noble flower. He had seen a sight which had taken all speech out of him, as it might have done from Shakespeare. He had seen a something unknown, a small, vulgar, incomprehensible spirit, to him unrecognisable, a thing out of his cognisance, looking at him through the eyes of his child. What could he say to such a revelation? Nothing. It took his voice from him and almost his breath. He had not been able to endure the placid work which left him free for thought. Say that his designing did not reach a very ethereal point of art; but it was the highest exercise of skill to him. He flung himself upon the paper, thrusting away all the painful enlightenments and contradictions of his life as he thrust away the gay-coloured spike of the gladiolus. He would have crushed them under foot if he had been able, but this he could not do. They would not disappear from his memory as the others did from his table. Thus he worked on, with a fervour which was almost savage, while Paul, with a proud smile on his face, handled the glue-pot. After a while the mere sense of companionship mollified the elder man. He was wounded, and wanted just such soothing as the sight of his disciple sitting quietly by gave him. His work grew less firm, his hand less rigid; the great pencil ceased to dig into the paper with its violent lines. Insensibly the softening went on. First, he threw a hasty glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows at the young man tranquilly seated near him. Then his fiery inspiration slackened; he paused to look at his model, to devise the next line, and doing so let his eyes rest upon Paul with a growing softness. At last he got up, threw down his pencil, and coming up to his companion struck him on the shoulder.

“Well!” he said. “Boy! So that was how it was. You listened to the father—old fool! but your thoughts were with the girl. That was how it was.” This was not the thing that gnawed at Spears’s heart, but he put it forward by way perhaps of persuading himself, as we all do sometimes, that it was the lesser matter that hurt him most.

Paul paused in his work, and looked up. His face was very serious, with none of that glow of happiness in it which belongs to an accepted lover—as the man beside him, who had been a true lover himself, was quick to see.

“Who said that? Not I, Spears—not I.”

“Who said it? Well, I cannot tell you. The women among them; they have their own way of looking at things.”

And then the two men paused, looking at each other. This was the moment in which it was natural that Janet’s lover should make his own explanation to the father of the girl whom he loved. The whole life of two people at least, and of many more in a secondary point of view, hung upon Paul’s lips, to be decided by the next impulse that might move him, by the next fantastic words which, out of the mist of unreal fact in which he had got himself enveloped, he might be moved to say.

END OF VOL. I.


LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.