He must be a strong man whom the sudden stare of Penury does not daunt and, in some measure, debase. Tarrant, whatever the possibilities of his nature, had fallen under a spell of indolent security, which declared its power only when he came face to face with the demand for vigorous action. The moment found him a sheer poltroon. ‘What! Is it possible that I—I—am henceforth penniless? I, to whom the gods were so gracious? I, without warning, flung from sheltered comfort on to the bare road side, where I must either toil or beg?’ The thing seemed unintelligible. He had never imagined such ruin of his hopes.
For the first time, he turned anxious thoughts upon the money to which his wife was—would be—might be—entitled. He computed the chances of success in the deception he and she were practising, and knew with shame that he must henceforth be party to a vulgar fraud. Could Nancy be trusted to carry through this elaborate imposition—difficult for the strongest-minded woman? Was it not a certainty that some negligence, or some accident, must disclose her secret? Then had he a wife and child upon his hands, to support even as common men support wife and child, by incessant labour. The prospect chilled him.
If he went to the West Indies, his absence would heighten the probability of Nancy’s detection. Yet he desired to escape from her. Not to abandon her; of that thought he was incapable; but to escape the duty—repulsive to his imagination—of encouraging her through the various stages of their fraud. From the other side of the Atlantic he would write affectionate, consolatory letters; face to face with her, could he support the show of tenderness, go through an endless series of emotional interviews, always reminding himself that the end in view was hard cash? Not for love’s sake; he loved her less than before she proved herself his wife in earnest. Veritable love—no man knew better—would have impelled him to save himself and her from a degrading position.
Was he committing himself to a criminality which the law would visit? Hardly that—until he entered into possession of money fraudulently obtained.
In miserable night-watchings, he fell to the most sordid calculations. Supposing their plot revealed, would Nancy in fact be left without resources? Surely not,—with her brother, her aunt, her lifelong friends the Barmbys, to take thought for her. She could not suffer extremities. And upon this he blushed relief.
Better to make up his mind that the secret must inevitably out. For the moment, Nancy believed she had resigned herself to his departure, and that she had strength to go through with the long ordeal. But a woman in her situation cannot be depended upon to pursue a consistent course. It is Nature’s ordinance that motherhood shall be attained through phases of mental disturbance, which leave the sufferer scarce a pretence of responsibility. Nancy would play strange pranks, by which, assuredly, he would be driven to exasperation if they passed under his eyes. He had no mind to be called father; perhaps even his humanity might fail under the test to which, as a lover, he had given scarce a casual thought. By removing himself, and awaiting the issue afar off, he gained time and opportunity for reflection. Of course his wife could not come to want; that, after all, was the one clearly comforting thought. Her old servant would take good care of her, happen what might.
He must taste of liberty again before sinking into the humdrum of married life. The thought of an ocean voyage, of the new life amid tropic splendours, excited his imagination all the more because it blended with the thought of recovered freedom. Marriage had come upon him with unfair abruptness; for such a change as that, even the ordinary bachelor demands a season preparative; much more, then, the young man who revelled in a philosophic sense of detachment, who wrote his motto ‘Vixi hodie!’ For marriage he was simply unfit; forced together, he and his wife would soon be mutually detestable. A temporary parting might mature in the hearts of both that affection of which the seed was undeniably planted. With passion they had done; the enduring tenderness of a reasonable love must now unite them, were they to be united at all. And to give such love a chance of growing in him, Tarrant felt that he must lose sight of Nancy until her child was born.
Yes, it had begun already, the trial he dreaded. A letter from Nancy, written and posted only an hour or two after her return home—a long, distracted letter. Would he forgive her for seeming to be an obstacle in the way of what he had proposed? Would he promise her to be faithful? Would he—
He had hardly patience to read it through.
The next evening, on returning home about ten o’clock, he was startled by the sight of Nancy’s figure at the foot of his staircase.
‘What has happened?’
‘Nothing—don’t be frightened. But I wanted to see you tonight.’
She gripped his hand.
‘How long have you waited? What! Hours? But this is downright madness—such a night as this! Couldn’t you put a note for me in the letter-box?’
‘Don’t—don’t speak so! I wanted to see you.’ She hurried her words, as if afraid he would refuse to listen. ‘I have told Mary—I wanted you to know—’
‘Come in. But there’s no fire, and you’re chilled through. Do you want to be ill? What outrageous silliness!’
Her vitality was indeed at a low ebb, and reproaches made her weep. Tarrant half carried her up to his room, made a light, and fell to his knees at fire-building.
‘Let me do it,’ Nancy exclaimed. ‘Let me wait upon you—’
‘If you don’t sit still and keep quiet, you’ll make me angry in earnest.’
‘Then you’re not really angry with me? I couldn’t help it.’
‘No, I’m afraid you couldn’t,’ Tarrant muttered cheerlessly.
‘I wanted to tell you that Mary will be our friend. She was speechless with astonishment; at first I didn’t know what she would say; she looked at me as she had never looked before—as if she were the mistress, and I the servant. But see what I have come to; all I felt was a dread lest she should think it her duty to cast me off. I haven’t a bit of pride left. I could have fallen on my knees before her; I almost did. But she was very good and kind and gentle at last. She’ll do everything she can for me.’
The fire in a blaze, Tarrant stood up and regarded it gloomily.
‘Well, did she think it possible?’ he asked at length.
‘Yes, she did. She said it would be very difficult, but the secret might be kept—if I were strong enough. And I am strong enough—I will be—’
‘It doesn’t look like it,’ said Tarrant, taking the edge off his words with a smile.
‘I won’t come again in this way. Where have you been tonight?’
‘Oh, with friends.’
‘Which friends? where?’
He moved impatiently.
‘People you don’t know, Nancy, and wouldn’t care about if you did. Do you know what time it is?’
‘Do tell me where you have been. It isn’t prying into your affairs. Your friends ought to be mine; at least, I mean, I ought to know their names, and something about them. Suppose I were to tell you I had been spending the evening with friends—’
‘My dear girl, I shouldn’t ask a question, unless you invited it. However, it’s better to tell you that I have been making arrangements to sublet these chambers. I can’t afford to keep them, even if there were any use in it. Harvey Munden has introduced me to a man who is likely to relieve me of the burden. I shall warehouse my books and furniture—’
‘Then you are going? Really going to leave England?’
He affected astonishment; in truth, nothing now could surprise him.
‘But wasn’t it all decided between us? Didn’t you repeat it in your letter?’
‘Yes—I know—but I didn’t think it would come so soon.’
‘We won’t talk about it to-night,’ said Tarrant firmly. ‘For one thing, there’s no time. Come closer to the fire, and get warm through; then I must see you home.’
Nancy hung her head. When, in a few moments, she looked up again, it was to say drily:
‘There’s no need for you to see me home.’
‘I’m going to, at all events.’
‘Why? You don’t care much about me. I might as well be run over—or anything—’
To this remark no sort of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent on this process of combustion.
‘Now you’re quite warm,’ said the young man, as if speaking to a child, ‘and it’s time to go.’
Nancy rose obediently, gazed at him with dreaming eyes, and suffered herself to be led away by the arm. In Chancery Lane, Tarrant hailed a crawling hansom. When they were driving rapidly southward, Nancy began to question him about the date of his departure; she learnt that he might be gone in less than a week.
‘If you could behave quietly and sensibly, we would have an evening to make final arrangements.’
‘I can,’ she answered, with a calm that surprised him. ‘If you go without letting me see you again, I don’t know what I might do. But I can be as sensible as you are, if I’m treated fairly.’
He grasped her hand.
‘Remember, dear girl, that I have a good deal to worry me just now. Do you suppose I leave you with a light heart?’
‘If you can persuade me that you care—’
‘I care a good deal more than I can easily say. Your position is a very hard one,—harder than mine. But I’m going away to work for your future. I see clearly that it’s the best thing I could do. Whether Vawdrey’s ideas come to anything or not, I shall make profit out of the journey; I mean to write,—I think it’s all I can do to any purpose,—and the material I shall get together over there will give me a start. Don’t think I am cold-hearted because I talk in this way; if I broke down, so much the worse for both of us. The time has come for serious work.’
‘But we shan’t lose my money. I’ve made up my mind we shan’t.’
‘It’s impossible for you to guard against every danger. We must be prepared for the worst, and that responsibility rests on me. Try and keep your mind at ease; whatever happens, to protect you is my duty, and I shall not fail in it.’
Speaking thus, Tarrant felt the glow of virtue. His words were perfectly sincere, but had reference to a future which his thoughts left comfortably vague.
They were to meet again, probably for the definite parting, three days hence. Tarrant, whose desire for escape had now become incontrollable, used the intervening time in a rush of preparations. He did not debate with himself as to the length of his sojourn in the West Indies; that must be determined by circumstances. Explicitly he had avoided a promise on the subject. What money he possessed he would take with him; it might be to his interest, for Nancy’s likewise, to exceed the term of absence provided for in his stipulations with Mr. Vawdrey. But all he deliberately thought of was the getting away. Impatient with Nancy, because of the vagaries resultant from her mental and physical state, he himself exhibited a flagrant triumph of instinct over reason. Once in enjoyment of liberty, he would reflect, like a practical man, on the details of his position, review and recognise his obligations, pay his debt to honour; but liberty first of all. Not his the nature to accept bondage; it demoralised him, made him do and say things of which he was ashamed. Only let him taste the breezes of ocean, and the healthful spirit which is one with rectitude would again inspire him.
Much to his surprise, he neither saw nor heard from Nancy until the hour appointed. She came very punctually. On opening the door to her, with an air of resolute cheerfulness, he saw something in her face that removed the necessity for playing a part. It was the look which had so charmed him in their love-days, the indescribable look, characteristic of Nancy, and of her alone; a gleam between smile and laughter, a glance mingling pride with submission, a silent note of personality which thrilled the senses and touched the heart.
‘What now?’ he asked, holding her hand and gazing at her. ‘Some good news?’
‘None that I know of. How hot your room is! Why, you look glad to see me!’
‘Was I ever anything else?’
She answered him with a smile.
‘It’s a very pleasant surprise,’ he continued, watching her as she threw off her out-door things. ‘I expected a doleful visage, eyes red with weeping.’
‘Did you? See how much a man thinks of himself! If you choose to go away, I choose to think as little of you as possible. That’s common sense—isn’t it?’
‘I don’t want you to cry about it.’
‘Oh yes, you do. It flatters you, and you like flattery. But I’ve been too obliging. I feel myself again, and there’s no more flattery for you—till you come back. I don’t ask you when that will be. I ask you nothing at all. I am independent of you.’
Tarrant grew uneasy. He feared that this mood of jest would change only too suddenly, and her collapse into feminine feebleness be the more complete.
‘Be as independent as you like,’ he said; ‘only keep your love for me.’
‘Oh, indeed! It’s your experience, is it, that the two things can go together? That’s the difference between man and woman, I suppose. I shall love you just as little as possible—and how little that will be, perhaps I had better not tell you.’
Still he stood gazing at her.
‘You look very beautiful to-day.’
‘I know. I saw it for myself before I left home. But we won’t talk about that. When do you go?’
‘My goods will be warehoused to-morrow, and the next day I go to Liverpool.’
‘I’m glad it’s so soon. We shan’t need to see each other again. Smoke your pipe. I’m going to make a cup of tea.’
‘Kiss me first. You forgot when you came in.’
‘You get no kiss by ordering it. Beg for it prettily, and we’ll see.’
‘What does it all mean, Nancy? How can you have altered like this?’
‘You prefer me as I was last time?’
‘Not I, indeed. You make me feel that it will be very hard to leave you. I shall carry away a picture of you quite different from the dreary face that I had got to be afraid of.’
Nancy laughed, and of a sudden held out her hands to him.
‘Haven’t I thought of that? These were the very words I hoped to hear from you. Now beg for a kiss, and you shall have one.’
Never, perhaps, had they spent together so harmonious an evening. Nancy’s tenderness took at length a graver turn, but she remained herself, face and speech untroubled by morbid influence.
‘I won’t see you again,’ she said, ‘because I mightn’t be able to behave as I can to-day. To-day I am myself; for a long time I have been living I don’t know how.’
Tarrant murmured something about her state of health.
‘Yes, I know all about that. A strange thought came to me last night. When my father was alive I fretted because I couldn’t be independent; I wanted to be quite free, to live as I chose; I looked forward to it as the one thing desirable. Now, I look back on that as a time of liberty. I am in bondage, now—threefold bondage.’
‘How threefold?’
‘To you, because I love you, and couldn’t cease loving you, however I tried. Then, to my father’s will, which makes me live in hiding, as if I were a criminal. And then—’
‘What other tyranny?’
‘You mustn’t expect all my love. Before long some one else will rule over me.—What an exchange I have made! And I was going to be so independent.’
To the listener, her speech seemed to come from a maturer mind than she had hitherto revealed. But he suffered from the thought that this might be merely a pathological phase. In reminding him of her motherhood, she checked the flow of his emotion.
‘You’ll remember,’ Nancy went on, ‘that I’m not enjoying myself whilst you are away. I don’t want you to be unhappy—only to think of me, and keep in mind what I’m going through. If you do that, you won’t be away from me longer than you can help.’
It was said with unforced pathos, and Tarrant’s better part made generous reply.
‘If you find it too hard, dear, write to me, and tell me, and there shall be an end of it.’
‘Never. You think me wretchedly weak, but you shall see—’
‘It’s of your own free will you undertake it?’
‘Yes, of my own free will,’ she answered firmly. ‘I won’t come to you penniless. It isn’t right I should do so. My father didn’t mean that. If I had had the sense and the courage to tell him, all this misery would have been spared. That money is mine by every right, and I won’t lose it. Not only for your sake and my own—there is some one else to think of.’
Tarrant gave her a kind look.
‘Don’t count upon it. Trust to me.’
‘I like to hear you say that, but I don’t wish you to be put to proof. You are not the kind of man to make money.’
‘How do you mean it?’
‘As you like to take it. Silly boy, don’t I love you just because you are not one of the money-making men? If you hadn’t a penny in the world, I should love you just the same; and I couldn’t love you more if you had millions.’
The change which Tarrant expected did not come. To the end, she was brave and bright, her own best self. She said good-bye without a tear, refused to let him accompany her, and so, even as she had resolved, left in her husband’s mind an image beckoning his return.
Before his admission to a partnership in Mr. Lord’s business, Samuel Barmby lived with his father and two sisters in Coldharbour Lane. Their house was small, old and crumbling for lack of repair; the landlord, his ground-lease having but a year or two to run, looked on with equanimity whilst the building decayed. Under any circumstances, the family must soon have sought a home elsewhere, and Samuel’s good fortune enabled them to take a house in Dagmar Road, not far from Grove Lane; a new and most respectable house, with bay windows rising from the half-sunk basement to the second storey. Samuel, notwithstanding his breadth of mind, privately admitted the charm of such an address as ‘Dagmar Road,’ which looks well at the head of note-paper, and falls with sonority from the lips.
The Barmby sisters, Lucy and Amelia by name, were unpretentious young women, without personal attractions, and soberly educated. They professed a form of Dissent; their reading was in certain religious and semi-religious periodicals, rarely in books; domestic occupations took up most of their time, and they seldom had any engagements. At appointed seasons, a festivity in connection with ‘the Chapel’ called them forth; it kept them in a flutter for many days, and gave them a headache. In the strictest sense their life was provincial; nominally denizens of London, they dwelt as remote from everything metropolitan as though Camberwell were a village of the Midlands. If they suffered from discontent, no one heard of it; a confession by one or the other that she ‘felt dull’ excited the sister’s surprise, and invariably led to the suggestion of ‘a little medicine.’
Their brother they regarded with admiration, tempered by anxiety. ‘Great talents,’ they knew by report, were often perilous to the possessor, and there was reason to fear that Samuel Bennett Barmby had not resisted all the temptations to which his intellect exposed him. At the age of one-and-twenty he made a startling announcement; ‘the Chapel’ no longer satisfied the needs of his soul, and he found himself summoned to join the Church of England as by law established. Religious intolerance not being a family characteristic, Mr. Barmby and his daughters, though they looked grave over the young man’s apostasy, admitted his freedom in this matter; their respected friend Mr. Lord belonged to the Church, and it could not be thought that so earnest-minded a man walked in the way to perdition. At the same time, Samuel began to exhibit a liking for social pleasures, which were, it might be hoped, innocent, but, as they kept him from home of evenings, gave some ground for uneasiness. He had joined a society of young men who met for intellectual debate, and his success as an orator fostered the spiritual pride already discernible in him. His next step could not be regarded without concern, for he became a member of the National Sunday League. Deceptive name! At first the Miss. Barmbys supposed this was a union for safe-guarding the Sabbath-day; it appalled them to discover that the League had quite an opposite tendency, that its adherents sallied forth together on ‘Sunday excursions,’ that they received tickets for Sunday admission to picture galleries, and in various other ways offended orthodox feeling. But again the father and sisters gave patient ear to Samuel’s elaborate arguments. They became convinced that he had no evil intentions. The elder girl, having caught up a pregnant phrase in some periodical she approved, began to remark that Samuel had ‘a modern mind;’ and this eventually consoled them.
When it began to be observed that Samuel talked somewhat frequently of Miss. Lord, the implied suggestion caused a tremor of confused feeling. To the Miss. Barmbys, Nancy seemed an enigmatic person; they had tried to like her, but could not; they objected to her assumption of superiority, and were in grave doubt as to her opinions on cardinal points of faith and behaviour. Yet, when it appeared a possibility that their brother might woo Miss. Lord and win her for a wife, the girls did their best to see her in a more favourable light. Not for a moment did it occur to them that Nancy could regard a proposal from Samuel as anything but an honour; to them she might behave slightingly, for they were of her own sex, and not clever; but a girl who prided herself on intellectual attainments must of course look up to Samuel Bennett with reverence. In their unworldliness—of a truth they were good, simple creatures—the slight difference of social position seemed unimportant. And with Samuel’s elevation to a partnership, even that one shadowy obstacle was removed. Henceforth they would meet Nancy in a conciliatory spirit, and, if she insisted upon it, bow down before her.
Mr. Barmby, senior, whose years drew nigh to three-score, had a great advantage in point of physical health over his old friend Stephen Lord, and his mind enjoyed a placidity which promised him length of days. Since the age of seventeen he had plied a pen in the office of a Life Assurance Company, where his salary, by small and slow increments, had grown at length to two hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,—points of character which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of his son,—he loved to write letters to the newspapers. At very long intervals one of these communications achieved the honour of type, and then Mr Barmby was radiant with modest self-approval. He never signed such letters with his own name, but chose a pseudonym befitting the subject. Thus, if moved to civic indignation by pieces of orange-peel on the pavement, he styled himself ‘Urban Rambler;’ if anxious to protest against the overcrowding of ‘bus or railway-carriage, his signature was ‘Otium cum Dignitate.’ When he took a holiday at the seaside, unwonted leisure and novel circumstances prompted him to address local editors at considerable length. The preservation of decency by bathers was then his favourite topic, and he would sign ‘Pudor,’ or perchance ‘Paterfamilias.’ His public epistles, if collected, would have made an entertaining and instructive volume, so admirably did they represent one phase of the popular mind. ‘No, sir,’—this sentence frequently occurred,—‘it was not thus that our fathers achieved national and civic greatness.’ And again: ‘All the feelings of an English parent revolt,’ &c. Or: ‘And now, sir, where is this to end?’—a phrase applied at one moment to the prospects of religion and morality, at another to the multiplication of muffin-bells.
On a Sunday afternoon, Mr. Barmby often read aloud to his daughters, and in general his chosen book was ‘Paradise Lost.’ These performances had an indescribable solemnity, but it unfortunately happened that, as his fervour increased, the reader became regardless of aspirates. Thus, at the culmination of Satanic impiety, he would give forth with shaking voice—
‘Ail, orrors, ail! and thou profoundest Ell, Receive thy new possessor!’’
This, though it did not distress the girls, was painful to Samuel Bennett, who had given no little care to the correction of similar lapses in his own speech.
Samuel conceived himself much ahead of his family. Quite uneducated, in any legitimate sense of the word, he had yet learnt that such a thing as education existed, and, by dint of busy perusal of penny popularities, had even become familiar with names and phrases, with modes of thought and of ambition, appertaining to a world for ever closed against him. He spoke of Culture, and imagined himself far on the way to attain it. His mind was packed with the oddest jumble of incongruities; Herbert Spencer jostled with Charles Bradlaugh, Matthew Arnold with Samuel Smiles; in one breath he lauded George Eliot, in the next was enthusiastic over a novel by Mrs. Henry Wood; from puerile facetiae he passed to speculations on the origin of being, and with equally light heart. Save for Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe, he had read no English classic; since boyhood, indeed, he had probably read no book at all, for much diet of newspapers rendered him all but incapable of sustained attention. Whatever he seemed to know of serious authors came to him at second or third hand. Avowing his faith in Christianity when with orthodox people, in the society of sceptics he permitted himself to smile at the old faiths,—though he preferred to escape this temptation, the Nonconformist conscience still reigning within him. At home he posed as a broad-minded Anglican, and having somewhere read that Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ represented this attitude, he spoke of the poem as ‘one of the books that have made me what I am.’
His circle of acquaintances lay apart from that in which the Lords moved; it consisted for the most part of young men humbly endowed in the matter of income, and making little pretence of social dignity. When others resorted to theatre or public-house, or places not so readily designated, Samuel and his friends met together to discourse on subjects of which they knew somewhat less than nothing. Some of them occasionally held audacious language, especially when topics such as the relations of the sexes invited their wisdom; they had read something somewhere which urged them to cast off the trammels of conventional thought; they ‘ventured to say’ that in a very few years ‘surprising changes of opinion would come about.’ These revolutionaries, after startling the more sober of their hearers, went quietly home to mother or landlady, supped on cheese and cocoa, and next day plied the cleric pen with exemplary zeal.
Samuel believed himself in love. That he should conceive matrimonial intentions with regard to Stephen Lord’s daughter was but the natural issue of circumstance; from that conception resulted an amorous mood, so much inflamed by Nancy’s presence that a young man, whose thoughts did not often transgress decorum, had every reason to suppose himself her victim. When Nancy rejected his formal offer of devotion, the desire to wed her besieged him more vigorously; Samuel was piqued at the tone of lofty trifling in which the girl answered his proposal; for assuredly he esteemed himself no less remarkable a person than he appeared in the eyes of his sisters, and his vanity had been encouraged by Mr. Lord’s favour. Of his qualities as a man of business there was no doubt; in one direction or another, he would have struck the road to fortune; why Nancy should regard him with condescension, and make him feel at once that his suit was hopeless, puzzled him for many a day. He tried flattery, affecting to regard her as his superior in things of the intellect, but only with the mortifying result that Miss. Lord accepted his humility as quite natural. Then he held apart in dignified reserve, and found no difficulty in maintaining this attitude until after Mr. Lord’s death. Of course he did not let his relatives know of the repulse he had suffered, but, when speaking to them of what had happened on Jubilee night, he made it appear that his estimate of Miss. Lord was undergoing modification. ‘She has lost him, all through her flightiness,’ said the sisters to each other. They were not sorry, and felt free again to criticise Nancy’s ideas of maidenly modesty.
The provisions of Mr. Lord’s will could not but trouble the intercourse between Grove Lane and Dagmar Road. Mr. Barmby, senior, undertook with characteristic seriousness the guardianship conferred upon him. He had long interviews with Horace and Nancy, in which he acquitted himself greatly to his own satisfaction. Samuel, equally a trustee, showed his delicacy by holding aloof save when civility dictated a call upon the young people. But his hopes had revived; he was quite willing to wait three years for Nancy, and it seemed to him more than probable that this period of reflection would bring the young lady to a sense of his merits. In the meantime, he would pursue with energy the business now at his sole direction, and make it far more lucrative than when managed on Mr. Lord’s old-fashioned principles.
As the weeks went on, it seemed more clear than at first that Nancy resented the authority held by Samuel and his father. They were not welcome at the house in Grove Lane; the Miss. Barmbys called several times without being admitted, though they felt sure that Nancy was at home. Under these circumstances, it became desirable to discover some intermediary who would keep them acquainted with the details of Nancy’s life and of her brother’s. Such intermediary was at hand, in the person of Miss. Jessica Morgan.
Until of late there had existed a bare acquaintance between Jessica and the Barmby family. The two or three hours which she perforce spent in Samuel’s company on Jubilee night caused Jessica no little embarrassment; as a natural result, their meetings after that had a colour of intimacy, and it was not long before Miss. Morgan and the Miss. Barmbys began to see more of each other. Nancy, on a motive correspondent with that which actuated her guardians, desired Jessica’s familiarity with the household in Dagmar Road; her friend could thus learn and communicate sundry facts of importance, else hidden from her in the retirement to which she was now condemned. How did the Barmbys regard her behaviour to them? Did they, in their questioning, betray any suspicion fraught with danger? Jessica, enjoying the possession of a most important secret, which she had religiously guarded even from her mother, made time to accept the Barmbys’ invitations pretty frequently, and invited the girls to her own home as often as she could afford a little outlay on cakes and preserves.
It made a salutary distraction in her life. As December drew near, she exhibited alarming symptoms of over-work, and but for the romance which assured to her an occasional hour of idleness, she must have collapsed before the date of her examination. As it was, she frightened one of her pupils, at the end of a long lesson, by falling to the floor and lying there for ten minutes in unconsciousness. The warning passed unheeded; day and night she toiled at her insuperable tasks, at times half frenzied by the strangest lapses of memory, and feeling, the more she laboured, only the more convinced that at the last moment every fact she had acquired would ruthlessly desert her.
Her place of abode favoured neither health nor mental tranquillity. It was one of a row of new houses in a new quarter. A year or two ago the site had been an enclosed meadow, portion of the land attached to what was once a country mansion; London, devourer of rural limits, of a sudden made hideous encroachment upon the old estate, now held by a speculative builder; of many streets to be constructed, three or four had already come into being, and others were mapped out, in mud and inchoate masonry, athwart the ravaged field. Great elms, the pride of generations passed away, fell before the speculative axe, or were left standing in mournful isolation to please a speculative architect; bits of wayside hedge still shivered in fog and wind, amid hoardings variegated with placards and scaffolding black against the sky. The very earth had lost its wholesome odour; trampled into mire, fouled with builders’ refuse and the noisome drift from adjacent streets, it sent forth, under the sooty rain, a smell of corruption, of all the town’s uncleanliness. On this rising locality had been bestowed the title of ‘Park.’ Mrs. Morgan was decided in her choice of a dwelling here by the euphonious address, Merton Avenue, Something-or-other Park.
The old mansion—not very old, and far from beautiful, but stoutly built—stood grim and desolate, long dismantled, and waiting only to be torn down for the behoof of speculative dealers in old material. What aforetime was a tree-bordered drive, now curved between dead stumps, a mere slushy cartway; the stone pillars, which had marked the entrance, damaged in the rending away of metal with a market value, drooped sideways, ready at a touch to bury themselves in slime.
Through summer months the Morgans had suffered sufficiently from the defects of their house; with the coming on of winter, they found themselves exposed to miseries barely endurable. At the first slight frost, cistern and water-pipes went to ruin; already so damp that unlovely vegetation had cropped up on cellar walls, the edifice was now drenched with torrents of water. Plaster fell from the ceilings; paper peeled away down the staircase; stuccoed portions of the front began to crack and moulder. Not a door that would close as a door should; not a window that would open in the way expected of it; not a fireplace but discharged its smoke into the room, rather than by the approved channel. Everywhere piercing draughts, which often entered by orifices unexplained and unexplainable. From cellar floor to chimney-pot, no square inch of honest or trustworthy workmanship. So thin were the parti-walls that conversation not only might, but must, be distinctly heard from room to room, and from house to house; the Morgans learnt to subdue their voices, lest all they said should become common property of the neighbourhood. For the privilege of occupying such a residence, ‘the interior,’ said advertisement, ‘handsomely decorated,’ they were racked with an expenditure which, away in the sweet-scented country, would have housed them amid garden graces and orchard fruitfulness.
At this time, Mr. Morgan had joined an acquaintance in the establishment of a debt-collecting agency; his partner provided the modest capital needful for such an enterprise, and upon himself fell the disagreeable work. A man of mild temper and humane instincts, he spent his day in hunting people who would not or could not pay the money they owed, straining his wits to circumvent the fraudulent, and swooping relentlessly upon the victims of misfortune. The occupation revolted him, but at present he saw no other way of supporting the genteel appearances which—he knew not why—were indispensable to his life. He subsisted like a bird of prey; he was ever on the look out for carrion which the law permitted him to seize. From the point of view forced upon him, society became a mere system of legalised rapine. ‘You are in debt; behold the bond. Behold, too, my authority for squeezing out of you the uttermost farthing. You must beg or starve? I deplore it, but I, for my part, have a genteel family to maintain on what I rend from your grip.’ He set his forehead against shame; he stooped to the basest chicanery; he exposed himself to insult, to curses, to threats of violence. Sometimes a whole day of inconceivably sordid toil resulted in the pouching of a few pence; sometimes his reward was a substantial sum. He knew himself despised by many of the creditors who employed him. ‘Bad debts? For how much will you sell them to me?’ And as often as not he took away with his bargain a glance which was equivalent to a kick.
The genteel family knew nothing of these expedients. Mrs. Morgan talked dolorously to her friends of ‘commercial depression,’ and gave it to be vaguely understood that her husband had suffered great losses because he conducted his affairs in the spirit of a gentleman. Her son was in an office;’ her elder daughter was attempting the art of fiction, which did not promise to be lucrative; Jessica, more highly educated, would shortly matriculate at the University of London—a consoling prospect, but involving the payment of a fee that could with difficulty be afforded.
Every friend of the family held it a matter of course that Jessica would succeed in the examination. It seemed probable that she would have a place in Honours.
And, meanwhile, the poor girl herself was repenting of the indiscreet boastfulness with which she had made known her purpose. To come out in an inferior class would be painful enough; how support the possibility of absolute failure? Yet she knew only too well that in certain ‘subjects’ she was worse than shaky. Her Greek—her Chemistry—her Algebra—
By way of propitiating the stern fates, she began to talk with Lucy and Amelia Barmby in a tone of diffidence. Half a year ago, she would have held her head very high in such company; now the simple goodness of the old-fashioned girls made an appeal to her aching heart, and their homely talk soothed her exhausted brain.
‘It’s fearfully difficult,’ she said to them one evening, as she sat in their parlour. ‘And I lose so much time with my pupils. Really, you know, I haven’t a fair chance. I was showing Nancy Lord the Algebra paper set last summer, and she confessed she could hardly do a single question.’
‘She couldn’t?’ exclaimed one of the sisters in astonishment. ‘But we always thought she was so very clever.’
‘So she is—in many things. But she never dreamt of going in for such an examination as this.’
‘And do you really know more than she does?’
Jessica smiled with affected modesty.
‘Oh, I have studied so much more.’
It was sweet to gain this triumph over her friend, whose progress in the school of life she watched with the jealousy of a girl condemned to sterile passions.
Their talk was interrupted by the entrance of Samuel Barmby, and his elder sister, addressing him without reflection, said wonderingly:
‘Sam, did you know that Nancy Lord couldn’t pass the examination that Miss. Morgan is going in for?’
Jessica blushed, and hastened to extenuate this crude statement.
‘Oh, I didn’t say that. Only that she would have to study very hard if she went in for the matriculation.’
‘Of course she would,’ Samuel assented, largely, as he took his stand before the fireplace and beamed upon the female trio. ‘Miss Lord goes in for broad culture; that’s quite a different thing from studying for examinations.’
To the hearers, Jessica not excepted, this seemed to argue the spirit of broad culture in Samuel himself. Miss. Morgan pursued nervously:
‘Examinations are nothing. I believe very stupid people often do well in them, and clever people often fail.’
Her voice sank on the last word, and she tried to read Barmby’s face without meeting his look. Of late, a change had come about in her estimation of Samuel. Formerly she spoke of him with contemptuous amusement, in the tone set by Nancy; since she had become a friend of the family, his sisters’ profound respect had influenced her way of thinking, and in secret she was disposed rather to admire ‘the Prophet.’ He had always struck her as a comely man, and, her education notwithstanding, she never perceived in his remarks that downright imbecility which excited Nancy’s derision. On Jubilee night he was anything but a tedious companion; apart from her critical friend, Jessica had listened without impatience to his jests, his instructive facts, his flowing rhetoric. Now-a-days, in her enfeebled state of body and mind, she began to look forward with distinct pleasure to her occasional meetings with Samuel, pleasure which perhaps was enhanced by the air of condescension wherewith he tempered his courtesy. Morbid miseries brought out the frailty of her character. Desiring to be highly esteemed by Mr. Barmby, she found herself no less willing to join his sisters in a chorus of humbly feminine admiration, when he discoursed to them from an altitude. At moments, after gazing upon his eloquent countenance, she was beset by strange impulses which brought blood to her cheek, and made her dread the Miss. Barmbys’ scrutiny.
‘I look upon examinations,’ Samuel was saying, ‘as a professional matter. I never went in for them myself, simply because I—I turned my energies in another direction.’
‘You could have passed them,’ remarked one of his sisters, ‘easily enough.’
‘In Miss. Morgan’s presence,’—he stroked his chin, and smiled with delicious fatuity—‘I prefer to say nothing on that point.’
‘Oh but of course you could, Mr. Barmby,’ sounded Jessica’s voice, in an unsteady falsetto, whilst her eyes were turned upon the floor. ‘You would have thought nothing of this matriculation, which seems to me so dreadful.’
Profoundly flattered, Samuel addressed the girl in his suavest tones.
‘I have a theory, Miss. Morgan, that young ladies ought not to undergo these ordeals. The delicacy of their nervous system unfits them for such a strain. I’m sure we shall all feel very glad when you are successfully through the trial. After it, you ought to have a long rest.’
‘Oh, you ought—indeed you ought,’ assented the girls.
‘By the bye,’ said Samuel, ‘my father has heard from Miss. Lord that she is going away for a month or two. She says her health requires it.’
Jessica sat silent, still with downcast eyes.
‘But it’s a new thing, isn’t it,’ remarked Amelia, ‘for Miss. Lord to be in bad health?’
‘She has suffered a good deal, I’m afraid,’ said Jessica, ‘since her father’s death. The doctor tells her she oughtn’t to live in that dull house through the winter.’
‘In that case,’ Samuel exclaimed, ‘of course she must go at once—of course!’
He never spoke of Nancy but with stress of unctuous generosity. This, if his hearers knew what he had suffered at her hands, must tell greatly to his credit; if they were not aware of the circumstances, such a tone would become him as the young lady’s hopeful admirer.
‘I fear her nerves are affected,’ pursued Jessica. ‘She can’t bear society. So unlike her, isn’t it? She goes out very little indeed,—sometimes not for days together. And really she sees nobody. I’m getting quite anxious about her.’
The subject was an awkward one in this house, and it soon gave place to freer conversation. On her way home, though mechanically repeating dates and formulae, Jessica could not resist the tendency of her thoughts, to dwell on Samuel’s features and Samuel’s eloquence. This was a new danger; she had now little more than a fortnight for her final ‘cram,’ and any serious distraction meant ruin.
In a day or two she took leave of Nancy, who had chosen for her winter retreat no less remote a spot than Falmouth. Horace having settled himself in lodgings, the house was to be shut up; Mary Woodruff of course went down into Cornwall. Nancy had written a letter to Mr. Barmby, senior, excusing herself for not being able to see him before her departure; it was an amiable letter, but contained frank avowal of pain and discontent at the prospect of her long pupilage. ‘Of course I submit to the burden my father chose to lay upon me, and before long, I hope, I shall be able to take things in a better spirit. All I ask of you, dear Mr. Barmby, is to have forbearance with me until I get back my health and feel more cheerful. You know that I could not be in better hands whilst Mary is with me. I shall write frequently, and give you an account of myself. Let me hear sometimes, and show me that you make allowance for my very trying position.’
Jessica heard the letter discussed by its recipient and his family. Samuel spoke with his wonted magnanimity; his father took a liberal view of the matter. And in writing to her friend a few days later, Jessica was able to say: ‘I think you may safely stay at Falmouth for the whole winter. You will not be interfered with if you write nicely. I shouldn’t wonder if they would let you keep out of their reach as long as it is necessary.’
The week of Jessica’s ordeal was now at hand. She had had another fainting-fit; her sleep was broken every night with hideous dreams; she ate scarce enough to keep herself alive; a perpetual fever parched her throat and burned at her temples.
On the last day of ‘cram,’ she sat from morning to night in her comfortless little bedroom, bending over the smoky fire, reading desperately through a pile of note-books. The motive of vanity no longer supported her; gladly she would have crept away into a life of insignificance; but the fee for the examination was paid, and she must face the terrors, the shame, that waited her at Burlington House. No hope of ‘passing.’ Perhaps at the last moment a stroke of mortal illness would come to her relief.
Not so. She found herself in the ghastly torture-hall, at a desk on which lay sheets of paper, not whiter than her face. Somebody gave her a scroll, stereotyped in imitation of manuscript—the questions to be answered. For a quarter of an hour she could not understand a word. She saw the face of Samuel Barmby, and heard his tones—‘The delicacy of a young lady’s nervous system unfits her for such a strain.’
That evening she went home with a half-formed intention of poisoning herself.
But the morrow saw her seated again before another scroll of stereotype, still thinking of Samuel Barmby, still hearing his voice. The man was grown hateful to her; he seemed to haunt her brain malignantly, and to paralyse her hand.
Day after day in the room of torture, until all was done. Then upon her long despair followed a wild, unreasoning hope. Though it rained, she walked all the way home, singing, chattering to herself, and reached the house-door without consciousness of the distance she had traversed. Her mother and sister came out into the hall; they had been watching for her.
‘I did a good paper to-day—I think I’ve passed after all—yes, I feel sure I’ve passed!’
‘You look dreadful,’ exclaimed Mrs. Morgan. ‘And you’re wet through—’
‘I did a good paper to-day—I feel sure I’ve passed!’
She sat down to a meal, but could not swallow.
‘I feel sure I’ve passed—I feel sure—’
And she fell from the chair, to all appearances stone-dead.
They took her upstairs, undressed her, sent for the doctor. When he came, she had been lying for half-an-hour conscious, but mute. She looked gravely at him, and said, as if repeating a lesson:
‘The delicacy of a young lady’s nervous system unfits her for such a strain.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ repeated the doctor, with equal gravity.
‘But,’ she added eagerly, ‘let Mr. Barmby know at once that I have passed.’
‘He shall know at once,’ said the doctor.