After ten minutes’ vociferous discussion, during which Emily held her peace, this plan was eventually agreed upon.
Jessie ran upstairs to prepare herself to go forth.
‘Now don’t you let her waste your time, Emily,’ said Mrs. Cartwright, in the girl’s absence. ‘If you see she’s doing no good, just give it up. I don’t half like the thought of making you drudge in this way in your holidays. I’m sure it’s very kind of you to have offered to do it, and it’s certain she’ll mind you more than she would any one else. She doesn’t care a scrap for all I say to her, though she knows well enough it’s as much as her father can do to keep things going at all. There never was such bad times in my recollection! How are things in London? Did you hear much complaint?’
Emily found it hard to resist a smile at the thought of Mr. Athel or any of those belonging to him indulging in complaints of this nature.
‘And what sort of people are they you’ve got with this time?’ the other went on to ask. ‘Do they treat you well?’
‘Very well indeed.’
It would have been difficult for a stranger, comparing Emily, her tone and bearing, with the members of the Cartwright family, to believe that she came of the same class and had lived through her girlhood under precisely similar conditions. So marked a difference could not but impress even the Cartwrights themselves; the girls did not behave with entire freedom in her presence, and influences to which they were anything but readily susceptible were apparent in the tone they adopted in addressing her. In spite of themselves, they bowed to a superiority but vaguely understood. Jessie, perhaps, exhibited less of this instinctive reverence than the others, although, in point of fact, her endowments were decidedly above those of her sisters; the reason being, no doubt, that acknowledged precedence in intellect had fostered in her the worst kind of self-confidence. The girl was intolerably conceited. Emily almost disliked her; she would have found it a more agreeable task to endeavour to teach any one of the more stupid sisters. It was in the certainty of a couple of hours’ moral suffering that she left the house with Jessie.
The garden which was to be the scene of study was ten minutes’ walk away from the house. To reach it, they had to pass along a road which traversed the cattle market, a vast area of pens, filled on one day in each week with multitudes of oxen, sheep, and swine. Beyond the market, and in the shadow of the railway viaduct previously referred to, lay three or four acres of ground divided up by hedges into small gardens, leased by people who had an ambition to grow their own potatoes and cabbages, but had no plot attached to their houses. Jessie opened a rough wooden door, made fast by a padlock, and, closing it again behind them, led the way along a narrow path between high hedges, a second wooden door was reached, which opened into the garden itself. This was laid out with an eye less to beauty than to usefulness. In the centre was a patch of grass, lying between two pear trees; the rest of the ground was planted with the various requisites of the kitchen, and in one corner was a well. In the tool house were kept several Windsor chairs; two of these were now brought forth and placed on the grass between the pear trees. But Jessie was not disposed to apply herself on the instant to the books which she had brought in a satchel; her first occupation was to hunt for the ripest gooseberries and currants, and to try her teeth in several pears which she knocked down with the handle of a rake. When at length she seated herself, her tongue began to have its way.
‘How I do dislike that Mr. Dagworthy!’ she said, with transparent affectation. ‘I wonder what he came for this morning. He said he wanted father’s address, but I know that was only an excuse. He hasn’t been to see us for months. It was like his impudence to ever come at all, after the way he behaved when he married that stuck-up Miss Hanmer.’
‘Will you tell me how many of these French exercises you have written?’ Emily asked as soon as a pause gave her the opportunity.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ was the answer; ‘about ten, I think. Do you know, I really believe he thinks himself good-looking? And he’s as plain as he can be. Don’t you think so, Emily?’
‘I really have no opinion.’
‘It was strange he should come this morning. It was only yesterday I met him over there by the mill,’—Dagworthy’s mill stood at one end of the cattle-market,—’and you can’t think the impudent way he talked. And, oh, how did he know that you were going to give me lessons?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Well, he did know, somehow; I was astonished. Perhaps your father told him?’
‘That is not very likely.’
‘Well, he knew. I wonder who he’ll marry next. You may depend upon it he did treat his wife badly; everybody said so. If he were to propose to me, I should answer like that woman did to Henry the Eighth, you know.’ She tittered. ‘I can’t fancy marrying a man who’s been married before, could you? I said that to Mrs. Tichborne one day, at Bridlington, and what do you think she answered? Oh, she said, they’re the best husbands. Only a good-natured fool marries a second time.’
This was the kind of talk that Emily knew she would have to endure; it was unutterably repugnant to her. She had observed in successive holidays the growth of a spirit in Jessie Cartwright more distinctly offensive than anything which declared itself in her sisters’ gabble, however irritating that might be. The girl’s mind seemed to have been sullied by some contact, and previous indications disposed Emily to think that this Mrs. Tichborne was very probably a source of evil. She was the wife of an hotel-keeper, the more vulgar for certain affectations of refinement acquired during bar-maidenhood in London, and her intimacy with the Cartwrights was now of long standing. It was Jessie whom she specially affected; with her Jessie had just been spending a fortnight at the seaside. The evil caught from Mrs. Tichborne, or from some one of similar character, did not associate itself very naturally with the silly naivete which marked the girl; she had the air of assuming the objectionable tone as a mark of cleverness. Emily could not trust herself to utter the kind of comment which would naturally have risen to her lips; it would be practically useless, and her relations to Jessie were not such as could engender affectionate zeal in a serious attempt to overcome evil influences. Emily was not of the women whose nature it is to pursue missionary enterprise; instead of calling forth her energies, a situation like the present threw her back upon herself; she sought a retreat from disgust in the sheltered purity of her own heart. Outwardly she became cold; her face expressed that severity which was one side of her character.
‘Don’t you think it would be better if we made a beginning this morning?’ she said, as soon as another pause in the flow of chatter gave her opportunity.
‘What a one you are for work!’ Jessie protested. ‘You seem to take to it naturally, and yet I’m sure it isn’t a natural thing. Just think of having to muddle over French grammar at my age! And I know very well it ‘ll never come to anything. Can you imagine me teaching? I always hated school, and I hate the thought of being a governess. It’s different with you; you’re right down clever, and you make people take an interest in you. But just think of me! Why I should be thought no more of than a servant. I suppose I should have to make friends with the milkman and the butcher’s boy; I don’t see who else I should have to talk to. How’s a girl to get married if she spends all her time in a nursery teaching children grammar? You don’t seem to care whether you’re ever married or not, but I do, and it’s precious hard to have all my chances taken away.
This was Jessie’s incessant preoccupation; she could not talk for five minutes without returning to it. Herein she only exaggerated her sisters’ habits of mind. The girls had begun to talk of ‘sweethearts’ and husbands before they were well out of the nursery. In earlier years Emily had only laughed at what she called such foolishness; she could not laugh now. Such ways of thinking and speaking were a profanation of all she held holiest; words which she whispered in trembling to her heart were vulgarised and defiled by use upon these tinkling tongues; it was blasphemy
against her religion.
Once more she endeavoured to fix the girl’s thoughts on the work in hand, and by steady persistence conquered at length some semblance of attention. But an hour proved the utmost limit of Jessie’s patience, then her tongue got its way again, and the inevitable subjects were resumed. She talked of the ‘gentlemen’ whose acquaintance, in a greater or less degree, she had made at the seaside; described their manoeuvres to obtain private interviews with her, repeated jokes of their invention, specified her favourites, all at headlong speed of disjointed narrative. Emily sat beneath the infliction, feeling that to go through this on alternate days for some weeks would be beyond her power. She would not rise and depart, for a gathering warmth within encouraged her to await a moment when speech would come to her aid. It did so at length; her thought found words almost involuntarily.
‘Jessie, I’m afraid we shall not do much good if we always spend our mornings like this!’
‘Oh, but I thought we’d done enough for to-day.’
‘Perhaps so, but—What I want to say is this. Will you, as a kindness to me, forget these subjects when we are together? I don’t mind what else you talk about, but stories of this kind make me fidgety; I feel as if I should be obliged to get up and run away.’
‘Do you really mean it? You don’t like me to talk about gentlemen? What a queer girl you are, Emily! Why, you’re not settling down to be an old maid at your age, are you?’
‘We’ll say so; perhaps that explains it.’
‘Well, that’s queer. I can’t see, myself, what else there is to talk about. Grammar’s all very well when we’re children, but it seems to me that what a grown-up girl has to do is to look out for a husband. How you can be satisfied with books’—the infinite contempt she put into the word!—’is more than I can make out.’
‘But you will do what I ask, as a kindness? I am in earnest; I shall be afraid of seeing you if you can’t help talking of such things.’
Jessie laughed extravagantly; such a state of mind was to her comical beyond expression.
‘You are a queer one! Of course I’ll do as you wish; you shan’t hear me mention a single gentleman’s name, and I’ll tell all the others to be careful whenever you come.’
Emily averted her face; it was reddened with annoyance at the thought of being discussed in this way by all the Cartwright household.
‘You can do that if you like,’ she said coldly, ‘though it’s no part of my wish. I spoke of the hours when we are together for study.’
‘Very well, I won’t say anything,’ replied the girl, who was good-natured enough beneath all her vulgarities. ‘And now what shall we do till dinner-time?’
‘I must make the best of my way home.’
‘Oh, nonsense! Why, you’re going to have dinner with us; of course that was understood.’
Not by Emily, however. It cost a good deal of firmness, for the Cartwrights one and all would lay hands on you rather than lose a guest; but Emily made good her escape. Once well on her way to Banbrigg, she took in great breaths of free air, as if after a close and unwholesome atmosphere. She cried mentally for an ounce of civet. There was upon her, too, that uneasy sense of shame which is apt to possess a reticent nature when it has been compelled, or tempted, to some unwonted freedom of speech. Would it not have been better, she asked herself, to merely avoid the talk she found so hateful by resolutely advancing other topics? Perhaps not; it was just possible that her words might bear some kind of fruit. But she wished heartily that this task of hopeless teaching had never been proposed to her; it would trouble her waking every other day, and disturb with a profitless annoyance the ideal serenity for which she was striving.
Yet it had one good result; her mother’s follies and weaknesses were very easy to bear in comparison, and, when the midday meal was over, she enjoyed with more fulness the peace of her father’s room upstairs, where she had arranged a table for her own work. Brilliant sunlight made the bare garret, with its outlook over the fields towards Pendal, a cheerful and homelike retreat. Here, whilst the clock below wheezed and panted after the relentless hours, Emily read hard at German, or, when her mind called for rest, sheltered herself beneath the wing of some poet, who voiced for her the mute hymns of her soul. But the most sacred hour was when her parents had gone to rest, and she sat in her bedroom, writing her secret thoughts for Wilfrid some day to read. She had resolved to keep for him a journal of her inner life from day to day. In this way she might hope to reveal herself more truthfully than spoken words would ever allow; she feared that never, not even in the confidence of their married life, would her tongue learn to overcome the fear of its own utterances. How little she had told him of herself, of her love! In Surrey she had been so timid; she had scarcely done more than allow him to guess her thoughts; and at their last meeting she had been compelled into opposition of his purpose, so that brief time had been left for free exchange of tenderness. But some day she would put this little book of manuscript into his hands, and the shadowy bars between him and her would vanish. She could only write in it late at night, when the still voice within spoke clearly amid the hush. The only sound from the outer world was that of a train now and then speeding by, and that carried her thoughts to Wilfrid, who had journeyed far from her into other countries. Emily loved silence, the nurse of the soul; the earliest and the latest hours were to her most dear. It had never been to her either an impulse or a joy to realise the existence of the mass of mankind; she had shrunk, after the first excitement, from the thronged streets of London, passing from them with delight to the quiet country. Others might find their strength in the sense of universal human fellowship; she would fain live apart, kindly disposed to all, but understanding well that her first duty was to tend the garden of her mind. That it was also her first joy was, by the principles of her religion, justification in pursuing it.
In a few days she obliged her mother to concede to her a share in the work of the house. She had nothing of the common feminine interest in such work for its own sake, but it was a pleasure to lessen her mother’s toil. There was very little converse between them; for evidently they belonged to different worlds. When Mrs. Hood took her afternoon’s repose, it was elsewhere than in the room where Emily sat, and Emily herself did not seek to alter this habit, knowing that she often, quite involuntarily, caused her mother irritation, and that to reduce their intercourse as far as could be without marked estrangement was the best way to make it endurable to both. But the evening hours she invariably devoted to her father; the shortness of the time that she was able to give him was a reason for losing no moment of this communion. She knew that the forecast of the evening’s happiness sustained him through the long day, and even so slight a pleasure as that she bestowed in opening the door at his arrival, she would not willingly have suffered him to lose. It did not appear that Mrs. Hood reflected on this exclusive attachment in Emily; it certainly troubled her not at all. This order in the house was of long standing; it had grown to seem as natural as poverty and hopelessness. Emily and her father reasoned as little about their mutual affection; to both it was a priceless part of life, given to them by the same dark powers that destroy and deprive. It behoved them to enjoy it while permitted to do so.
Had she known the recent causes of trouble which weighed upon her parents, Emily would scarcely have been able to still keep her secret from them. The anxiety upon her father’s face and her mother’s ceaseless complaining were too familiar to suggest anything unusual. She had come home with the resolve to maintain silence, if only because her marriage seemed remote and contingent upon many circumstances; and other reasons had manifested themselves to her even before Wilfrid’s visit. At any time she would find a difficulty in speaking upon such a subject with her mother; strange though it may sound, the intimacy between them was not near enough to encourage such a disclosure, with all the explanations it would involve. Nor yet to her father would she willingly speak of what had happened, until it became necessary to do so. Emily�
��s sense of the sanctity of relations such as those between Wilfrid and herself had, through so different a cause, very much the same effects as what we call false shame. The complex motives of virgin modesty had with her become a conscious sustaining power, a faith; of all beautiful things that the mind could conceive, this mystery was the loveliest, and the least capable of being revealed to others, however near, without desecration. Perhaps she had been aided in the nurturing of this ideal by her loneliness; no friend had ever tempted her to confidences; her gravest and purest thoughts had never been imparted to any. Thus she had escaped that blunting of fine perceptions which is the all but inevitable result of endeavouring to express them. Not to speak of mere vulgarity such as Jessie Cartwright exhibited, Emily’s instinct shrank from things which usage has, for most people, made matters of course; the public ceremony of marriage, for instance, she deemed a barbarism. As a sacrament, the holiest of all, its celebration should, she felt, be in the strictest privacy; as for its aspect as a legal contract, let that concession to human misery be made with the smallest, not the greatest, violation of religious feeling. Thinking thus, it was natural that she should avail herself of every motive for delay. And in that very wretchedness of her home which her marriage would, she trusted, in a great measure alleviate, she found one of the strongest. The atmosphere of sordid suffering depressed her; it was only by an effort that she shook off the influences which assailed her sadder nature; at times her fears were wrought upon, and it almost exceeded her power to believe in the future Wilfrid had created for her. The change from the beautiful home in Surrey to the sad dreariness of Banbrigg had followed too suddenly upon the revelation of her blessedness. It indisposed her to make known what was so dreamlike. For the past became more dreadful viewed from the ground of hope. Emily came to contemplate it as some hideous beast, which, though she seemed to be escaping its reach, might even yet spring upon her. How had she borne that past so lightly? Her fear of all its misery was at moments excessive. Looking at her unhappy parents, she felt that their lot would crush her with pity did she not see the relief approaching. She saw it, yet too often trembled with the most baseless fears. She tried to assure herself that she had acted rightly in resisting Wilfrid’s proposal of an immediate marriage, yet she often wished her conscience had not spoken against it. Wilfrid’s own words, though merely prompted by his eagerness, ceaselessly came back to her—that it is ill to refuse a kindness offered by fate, so seldom kind. The words were true enough, and their truth answered to that melancholy which, when her will was in abeyance, coloured her views of life.
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