A Life's Morning

by George Gissing

  She was roused by voices below, and, immediately after, her mother came to her door again.

  ‘Isn’t it vexatious?’ Mrs. Hood whispered. ‘Here are Jessie and Geraldine. I’m obliged to ask them to stay tea. Do you feel well enough to come down?’

  Emily went down at once, almost with a sense of relief, and presented herself to the girls very much in her usual way.

  ‘Now, I know very well you don’t want us,’ said Jessie, with her sprightly frankness. ‘We shouldn’t have thought of coming if it hadn’t been that we met Mr. Hood just this side of the bridge, and he forced us to come on; he said it wouldn’t be very long before he was back himself. But of course we shan’t stay tea, so it’s no use—’

  ‘Oh, of course not,’ put in Geraldine. ‘We know Mrs. Hood’s always far too busy on a Saturday afternoon. I didn’t want to come; I told Jessie it would be far better to put it off till tomorrow—’

  ‘All the same,’ resumed her sister, ‘she wanted to see you very much. She’s got something to tell you. Now you may as well get it out and done with, Jerry; you needn’t expect I’m going to help you.’

  The two giggled together.

  ‘What is it,’ inquired Mrs. Hood. ‘I daresay I could guess if I tried very hard. Couldn’t you, Emily?’

  ‘Now then, Jerry, for the awful news,’ urged her sister.

  ‘No, you’ll have to tell, Jessie,’ said the other, giggling and blushing.

  ‘Well, I suppose one of us must. She’s been and engaged herself to Mr. Baldwin. Of course we all knew—’

  ‘Now, Jessie, you knew nothing of the kind!’

  ‘Didn’t I, though! Oughtn’t she to be ashamed of herself, at her age, Mrs. Hood! I know what Emily’s opinion is; she’s simply disgusted. Look at her, and see if she isn’t.’

  The gabble of the two girls was worthy of the occasion their tongues went like mill-clappers. Whilst her mother busied herself in preparing tea, Emily sat and listened; fortunately there was little need for her to talk. To herself she seemed to be suffering a kind of trance, without detriment to her consciousness. The chattering and grimacing girls appeared before her as grotesque unrealities, puppets animated in some marvellous way, and set to caricature humanity. She tried to realise that one of them was a woman like herself, who had just consented to be a man’s wife; but it was impossible to her to regard this as anything but an aping of things which at other times had a solemn meaning. She found herself gazing at Geraldine as one does at some singular piece of mechanism with a frivolous purpose. And it was not only the individuals that impressed her thus; these two represented life and the world. She had strange, cynical thoughts, imaginings which revolted her pure mind even whilst it entertained them. No endeavour would shake off this ghastly clairvoyance. She was picturing the scene of Geraldine’s acceptance of the offer of marriage; then her thoughts passed on to the early days of wedded life. She rose, shuddering, and moved about the room; she talked to drive those images from her brain. It did but transfer the sense of unreality to her own being. Where was she, and what doing? Had she not dreamed that a hideous choice had been set before her, a choice from which there was no escape, and which, whatever the alternative she accepted, would blast her life? But that was something grave, earnest, and what place was there for either earnestness or gravity in a world where Geraldine represented womanhood wooed and about to be wedded? There was but one way of stopping the gabble which was driving her frantic; she threw open the piano and began to play, to play the first music that came into her mind. It was a passage from the Moonlight Sonata. A few moments, and the ghosts were laid. The girls still whispered together, but above their voices the pure stream of music flowed with gracious oblivion. When Emily ceased, it was with an inward fervour of gratitude to the master and the instrument, To know that, was to have caught once more the point of view from which life had meaning. Now let them chatter and mop and mow; the echo of that music still lived around.

  Hood had not returned when they sat down to tea. Jessie began to ask questions about the strange-looking man they had met in company with him, but Mrs. Hood turned the conversation.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be coming with the same tale next, Jessie,’ she said, with reference to Geraldine.

  ‘Me, Mrs. Hood? No, indeed; I haven’t had lessons from Emily for nothing. It’s all very well for empty-headed chits like Jerry here, but I’ve got serious things to attend to. I’m like Emily, she and I are never going to be married.’

  ‘Emily never going to be married?’ exclaimed Mrs. Hood, half seriously. ‘Ah, you mustn’t believe all Emily tells you.’

  ‘Oh, she hasn’t told me that herself, but I’m quite sure she would be offended if any one thought her capable of such frivolity.’

  ‘Emily will keep it to herself till the wedding-day,’ said Geraldine, with a mocking shake of the bead. ‘She isn’t one to go telling her secrets.’

  At this point Hood made his appearance. His wife paid no heed to him as he entered; Emily glanced at him furtively. He had the look of a man who has predetermined an attitude of easy good-humour, nor had the parting with Cheeseman failed to prove an occasion for fresh recourse to that fiery adjuvant which of a sudden was become indispensable to him. Want of taste for liquor and lifelong habit of abstemiousness had hitherto kept Hood the soberest of men; he could not remember to have felt the warm solace of a draught taken for solace’ sake since the days when Cheeseman had been wont to insist upon the glass of gin at their meetings, and then it had never gone beyond the single glass, for he felt that his head was weak, and dreaded temptation. Four-and-twenty hours had wrought such a change in him, that already to enter a public-house seemed a familiar act, and he calculated upon the courage to be begotten of a smoking tumbler. Previously the mere outlay would have made him miserable, but the command of unearned coin was affecting him as it is wont to affect poor men. The new aid given to Cheeseman left a few shillings out of the second broken sovereign. Let the two pounds—he said to himself—be regarded as gone; eight remained untouched. For the odd shillings, let them serve odd expenses. So when he had purchased Cheeseman’s ticket to King’s Gross, he was free with small change at the station bar. At the last moment it occurred to him that he might save himself a walk by going in the train as far as Pendal. So it was here that the final parting had taken place.

  He seated himself with his legs across a chair, and began to talk to Geraldine of the interesting news which Jessie had just whispered to him when they met on the road. The character of his remarks was not quite what it would have been a day or two ago; he joked with more freedom than was his custom. Studiously he avoided the eyes of his wife and daughter. He declined to sit up to the table, but drank a cup of tea with his hands resting on the back of a chair.

  The Cartwright sisters were anxious to use the evening for a visit to certain other friends; shortly after six o’clock they took their departure. While Emily and Mrs. Hood were seeing them away at the door, Hood went upstairs to his laboratory.

  ‘Emily, come here,’ Mrs. Hood said, with anxious earnestness, leading the way back into the sitting-room. And, when the door was closed—

  ‘My dear, what is the matter with him? Don’t you notice his strangeness?’

  ‘Yes, mother, I do.’

  ‘Can he have—It’s a thing he never does! You know what I mean? That Cheeseman has been taking him to a public-house; I am sure of it.’

  Emily had had no such thought. To her a squalid horror clung about the suggestion. To picture her father in such circumstances was to realise a fresh fall into degradation, no doubt the inevitable consequence of that she already knew of. There was a painful stricture at her heart; a cry of despair all but found utterance.

  Her father’s voice was calling from the stair-head—’Emily!’ She darted to the door in momentary terror and replied.

  ‘Will you come up?’ Hood said; ‘I want you.’

  She ascended to the garret. Hood was standing with his back to the l
ittle window, so that his face was shadowed. Emily moved to the table, and, with her hands resting upon it, her eyes bent, stood waiting.

  ‘Emily,’ he began, still with a remnant of artificial pleasantry, though his voice was not entirely under control, ‘I want to explain that money-matter to you. It doesn’t look well; I am a good deal ashamed of myself; if I was a boy I should deserve a whipping for telling a fib, shouldn’t I?’

  It was impossible to make reply to such words.

  ‘The truth is this,’ he went on more nervously; ‘we’ve been in a little difficulty, your mother and I, that we didn’t see any good in troubling you about. In fact, there’s a raising of rent, and one or two other little things. When I was in Hebsworth yesterday I had an opportunity of borrowing ten pounds, and I thought it better to do so. Then I met Cheeseman, and it was his mention of the debt put into my head the stupid thought of trying to spare your mother anxiety. Of course, such tricks never succeed; I might have known it. But there, that’s the truth of the matter, and I’m easier now—now I’ve told it.’

  Her heart bled for him, so dreadful to her ears was the choking of his voice upon the last words. At the same time she was hot with anguish of shame. He stood before her a wretched culprit, hiding his guilt with lie upon lie; he, her father, whom she had reverenced so, had compassionated so, whom she loved despairingly. She could not raise her head; she could not speak. She longed to spring to him and hold him in her arms, but other thoughts paralysed the impulse. Had there lain nothing in the background, had his falsehood, his weakness, been all, she could have comforted and strengthened him with pure pity and love. But the consciousness of what was before her killed her power to stead him in his misery. She could not speak out her very thought, and to palter with solemn words was impossible. Hypocrisy from her to him at this moment—hypocrisy, however coloured with sincere feeling, would have sunk her in her own eyes beyond redemption.

  ‘Let us speak no more of it, father,’ she replied without raising her head.

  He was sober enough now, and in her voice, her attitude, he read his hopeless condemnation. Between him and this high-hearted woman had conic that which would never be removed; before her he was shamed to eternity. Never again could he speak with her of truth, of justice, of noble aims; the words would mock him. Never again could he take her kiss upon his lips without shrinking. Her way henceforth lay ever further from his own. What part had she in a life become so base? What place had she under a roof dishonoured? If some day she wedded, his existence would be to her a secret shame. For—worst thought of all—it was whispered to his conscience that she did not credit even what he now told her. He seemed to himself to have betrayed the second untruth by his way of speaking it. In the silence which followed upon her words he heard promptings of despair. How could he live in her presence from day to day, not daring to meet her eyes? He looked back upon the years behind him, and they seemed to overflow with peaceful happiness. Irretrievable, his yielding and his shame; irrecoverable, the conscious rectitude bartered so cheaply. He saw now that his life had held vast blessings, and they were for ever lost.

  Emily was speaking.

  ‘Do you wish to stay here this evening, father?’

  ‘No,’ he answered hastily, ‘I only called you up for—for that.’

  Her heart reproached her with cruelty, but what remained save to leave him to himself? They could not face each other, could not exchange a natural word.

  ‘Emily!’

  She turned at the door. He had called her, but did not continue to speak.

  ‘Yes, father?’

  ‘It’s only for to-night. You’ll—you’ll sit with me again as usual?’

  ‘Oh, I hope so!’

  A rush of tears had its way as she closed the door, something so deeply pathetic had there been in that appeal. It was the first time that her misery had found this outlet; unable to calm herself at once, she turned aside into her bedroom. Tears did not come to her readily; indeed, it was years since she had shed them; the fit shook her with physical suffering. The weeping would not stay itself, and to force her sobs into silence was almost beyond her power. She flung herself desperately by the bedside, throwing out her arms in the effort to free her chest from its anguishing constraint.

  In an hour she went down. Her mother was sitting miserably in the kitchen, and Emily, dreading to have to talk again, kept apart in the parlour. When it began to dusk, Hood descended, and supper was prepared for in the usual way. There was small pretence of conversation, and, as soon as possible, Emily bade her parents good-night. It was long before she heard them go to their room; they whispered together in passing her door.

  And now the solemn hours shed about her guardian silence, and she could listen to the voice of her soul. It was incredible that the morning of the day which was not yet dead had witnessed that scene between her and Dagworthy on the Castle Hill; long spaces of featureless misery seem to stretch between. Perforce she had overborne reflection; one torment coming upon another had occupied her with mere endurance; it was as though a ruthless hand tore from her shred after shred of the fair garment in which she had joyed to clothe herself, while a voice mockingly bade her be in congruence with the sordid shows of the world around. For a moment, whilst Beethoven sang to her, she knew the light of faith; but the dull mist crept up again and thickened. Weeping had not eased her bosom; she had only become more conscious of the load of tears surcharging it. Now she lay upon her bed in the darkness, hushing idle echoes of day, waiting upon the spirit that ever yet had comforted and guided her.

  What, divested of all horror due to imagination, was the threat to which her life lay subject? Dagworthy had it in his power to ruin her father, to blast his remaining years with a desolation to which the lifelong struggle with poverty would be the mere pleasantry of fate. She could no longer entertain a doubt of the guilt the first suggestion of which excited her scornful laughter, and she knew it to be more than probable that her father had yielded to temptation purposely put in his way. She was not unconscious of the power of reprisal which so gross a plot put into her hands, though it was true that the secrecy Dagworthy had maintained in his intercourse with her left but her bare assertion for evidence against him. Yet the thought was profitless. Suppose he did not venture to prosecute on the charge of theft, none the less could he work the ruin he menaced; mere dismissal from his employment, with mention of the cause to this and the other person, was all that was needed to render the wretched clerk an outcast, hopeless of future means of livelihood, for ever disgraced in the eyes of all who knew him. She felt the cruelty of which this man, whose passions she had so frenzied, was readily capable. She believed he would not spare her an item of suffering which it was in his power to inflict. She knew that appeal to him was worse than useless, for it was only too clear that for her to approach him was to inflame his resolution. Her instinctive fear of him was terribly justified.

  With her alone, then, it lay to save her parents from the most dreadful fate that could befal them, from infamy, from destitution, from despair. For, even if her father escaped imprisonment, it would be impossible for him to live on in Dunfield, and how, at his age, was a new life to be begun? And it was idle to expect that the last degradation would be spared him; his disgrace would involve her; Dagworthy’s jealousy would not neglect such a means of striking at her engagement. And Wilfrid must needs know; to Emily not even the possibility of hiding such a thing from him suggested itself. Could she become his wife with that stigma upon her, bringing as dowry her beggared parents for him to support?

  Did it mean that? Was this the thought that she had dreaded to face throughout the day? Was it not only her father whose ruin was involved, and must she too bid farewell to hope?

  She let those ghastly eyes stare from the darkness into her own, and tried to exhaust their horror. It overtaxed her courage with a smothered cry of fear she sprang upright, and her shaking hands struck a flame to bring light into the room. Not once, but again and again,
did the chill of terror pass through her whole frame. She caught a passing glimpse of her image in the glass, and was fascinated into regarding it closely. ‘You, who stand there in the pitiless night’—thus did thought speak within her—’you, poor human thing, with the death-white face and eyes staring in all but distraction, is this the very end of the rapturous dream which has lulled you whilst destiny wrought your woe? Is it even now too late to struggle? Is this the wild sorrow of farewell to love, the beginning of an anguish which shall torture your soul to death? Have you lost him?’ For moments it was as though life fought with the last and invincible enemy. On the spot where she had been standing she sank powerless to her knees, clinging to the nearest object, her head falling back.

  The clock outside her door struck one; how long the dull vibration seemed to endure. She was conscious of it, though lying with all but palsied faculties. It was the first of the divisions which marked her long vigil; the hours succeeded each other quickly; between voice and voice there seemed to pass but a single wave of surging thought. But each new warning of coming day found her nearer the calm of resolve.

  Look at this girl, and try to know her. Emily knew but one article of religion, and that bade her preserve, if need be, at the cost of life, the purity of her soul. This was the supreme law of her being. The pieties of kindred were as strong in her as in any heart that ever beat, but respect for them Could not constrain her to a course which opposed that higher injunction. Growing with her growth, nourished by the substance which developed her intellectual force, a sense of all that was involved in her womanhood had conic to be the guiding principle of her existence. Imagine the great artist Nature bent upon the creation of a soul which should hold in subtlest perfection of consciousness every element essential to the successive ideals of maiden, wife, mother, and the soul of this girl is pictured. Her religion of beauty was the symbolic expression of instincts wholly chaste; her body was to her a temple which preserved a sacred flame, and she could not conceive existence if once the shrine had suffered desecration. We are apt to attribute to women indiscriminately at least the outlines of this consciousness; for the vast majority it confuses itself with the prescriptions of a traditional dogma, if not with the mere prejudice of social usage. For Emily no external dogma existed, and the tenor of her life had aided her in attaining independence of ignoble dictation. Her views were often strangely at variance with those of the social tribunal which sits in judgment on virtue and vice. To her, for instance, the woman who sells herself with ecclesiastical sanction differed only in degree of impurity from her whose track is under the street-lamps. She was not censorious, she was not self-righteous; she spoke to no one of the convictions that ruled her, and to herself held them a mystery of holiness, a revelation of high things vouchsafed she knew not whence nor how. Suppose her to have been heart-free at this juncture of her fate, think you she would have found it a whit less impossible to save her father by becoming Dagworthy’s wife. There was in her thought but one parallel to this dire choice which lay before her: it was the means offered to Isabel of rescuing her brother Claudio. That passion of purity which fired Isabel’s speech was the breath of Emily’s life. She knew well that many, and women too, would spare no condemnation of what they would call her heartless selfishness; she knew that the paltriest considerations of worldly estate are deemed sufficient to exact from a woman the sacrifice now demanded of her. That was no law to Emily. The moral sense which her own nature had developed must here alone control her. Purity, as she understood it—the immaculate beauty of the soul—was her religion: if other women would die rather than deny the object of their worship, to her the ideal of chastity was worth no less perfect a zeal. Far removed from the world which theorises, she presented in her character a solution of the difficulties entertained by those who doubtingly seek a substitute for the old religious sanctions. Her motives had the simplicity of elemental faith; they were indeed but the primary instincts of womanhood exalted to a rare perfection and reflected in a consciousness of exceeding lucidity.