George Gissing
In the Year of Jubilee
Part III: Into Bontage
CHAPTER 1
During his daughter’s absence, Stephen Lord led a miserable life. The wasting disease had firm hold upon him; day by day it consumed his flesh, darkened his mind. The more need he had of nursing and restraint, the less could he tolerate interference with his habits, invasion of his gloomy solitude. The doctor’s visits availed nothing; he listened to advice, or seemed to listen, but with a smile of obstinate suspicion on his furrowed face which conveyed too plain a meaning to the adviser.
On one point Mary had prevailed with him. After some days’ resistance, he allowed her to transform the cabin-like arrangements of his room, and give it the appearance of a comfortable bed-chamber. But he would not take to his bed, and the suggestion of professional nursing excited his wrath.
‘Do you write to Nancy?’ he asked one morning of his faithful attendant, with scowling suspicion.
‘No.’
‘You are telling me the truth?’
‘I never write to any one.’
‘Understand plainly that I won’t have a word said to her about me.’
This was when Horace had gone away to Scarborough, believing, on his father’s assurance, that there was no ground whatever for anxiety. Sometimes Mr. Lord sat hour after hour in an unchanging position, his dull eyes scarcely moving from one point. At others he paced his room, or wandered about the house, or made an attempt at gardening—which soon ended in pain and exhaustion. Towards night he became feverish, his hollow cheeks glowing with an ominous tint. In the morning he occasionally prepared himself as if to start for his place of business; he left the house, and walked for perhaps a couple of hundred yards, then slackened his pace, stopped, looked about him in an agony of indecision, and at length returned. After this futile endeavour, he had recourse to the bottles in his cupboard, and presently fell into a troubled sleep.
At the end of the second week, early one evening, three persons came to him by appointment: his partner Samuel Barmby, Mr. Barmby, senior, and a well-dressed gentleman whom Mary—she opened the door to them—had never seen before. They sat together in the drawing-room for more than an hour; then the well-dressed gentleman took his leave, the others remaining for some time longer.
The promoted servant, at Mr. Lord’s bidding, had made a change in her dress; during the latter part of the day she presented the appearance of a gentlewoman, and sat, generally with needlework, sometimes with a book, alone in the dining-room. On a Sunday, whilst Nancy and her brother were away, the Barmby family—father, son, and two daughters—came to take tea and spend the evening, Mary doing the honours of the house; she bore herself without awkwardness, talked simply, and altogether justified Mr. Lord’s opinion of her. When the guests were gone, Stephen made no remark, but, in saying good-night to her, smiled for an instant—the first smile seen upon his face for many days.
Mary remained ignorant of the disease from which he was suffering; in the matter of his diet, she consulted and obeyed him, though often enough it seemed to her that his choice suited little with the state of an invalid. He ate at irregular times, and frequently like a starving man. Mary suspected that, on the occasions when he went out for half-an-hour after dark, he brought back food with him: she had seen him enter with something concealed beneath his coat. All his doings were to her a subject of ceaseless anxiety, of a profound distress which, in his presence, she was obliged to conceal. If she regarded him sadly, the sufferer grew petulant or irate. He would not endure a question concerning his health.
On the day which was understood to be Nancy’s last at Teignmouth, he brightened a little, and talked with pleasure, as it seemed, of her return on the morrow. Horace had written that he would be home this evening, but Mr. Lord spoke only of his daughter. At about six o’clock he was sitting in the garden, and Mary brought him a letter just delivered; he looked at the envelope with a smile.
‘To tell us the train she’s coming by, no doubt.’
Mary waited. When Mr. Lord had read the brief note, his face darkened, first with disappointment, then with anger.
‘Here, look at it,’ he said harshly. ‘What else was to be expected?’
‘Dearest Father,’ wrote Nancy, ‘I am sorry that our return must be put off; we hope to get back on Friday evening. Of course this will make no difference to you.—With best love, dear father, and hoping I shall find you much better—’
‘What does she mean by behaving in this way?’ resumed the angry voice, before Mary had read to the end. ‘What does she mean by it? Who gave her leave to stay longer? Not a word of explanation. How does she know it will make no difference to me? What does she mean by it?’
‘The fine weather has tempted them,’ replied Mary. ‘I daresay they want to go somewhere.’
‘What right has she to make the change at a moment’s notice?’ vociferated the father, his voice suddenly recovering its old power, his cheeks and neck suffused with red wrath. ‘And hopes she will find me better. What does she care whether she finds me alive or dead?’
‘Oh, don’t say that! You wouldn’t let her know that you were worse.’
‘What does it mean? I hate this deceitful behaviour! She knew before, of course she knew; and she left it to the last moment, so that I couldn’t write and prevent her from staying. As if I should have wished to! As if I cared a brass farthing how long she stays, or, for that matter, whether I ever see her again!’
He checked the course of his furious speech, and stood staring at the letter.
‘What did you say?’ He spoke now in a hoarse undertone. ‘You thought they were going somewhere?’
‘Last year there used to be steamers that went to places on certain days—’
‘Nonsense! She wouldn’t alter all their plans for that. It’s something I am not to know—of course it is. She’s deceitful—like all women.’
He met Mary’s eye, suddenly turned upon him. His own fell before it, and without speaking again he went into the house.
In half-an-hour’s time his bell rang, and not Mary, but the young servant responded. According to her directions, she knocked at the door, and, without opening it, asked her master’s pleasure. Mr. Lord said that he was going out, and would not require a meal till late in the evening.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he returned. Mary, sitting in the front room, rose at his entrance.
‘I want nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ve been to the Barmbys’.’ Voice and movements proved how the effort had taxed him. In sitting down, he trembled; fever was in his eyes, and pain in every line of his countenance.
Mary handed him a letter; it came from Horace, and was an intimation that the young gentleman would not return to-night, but to-morrow. When Mr. Lord had read it, he jerked a contemptuous laugh, and threw the sheet of note-paper across the table.
‘There you are. Not much to choose between daughter and son. He’s due at business in the morning; but what does that matter? It doesn’t suit his lordship to keep time.’
He laughed again, his emphasis on ‘lordship’ showing that he consciously played with the family name.
‘But I was a fool to be angry. Let them come when they will.’
For a few minutes he lay back in the chair, gazing at vacancy.
‘Has the girl gone to bed?’
‘I’ll tell her she can go.’
Mary soon returned, and took up the book with which she had been engaged. In a low voice, and as if speaking without much thought, Stephen asked her what she was reading. It was a volume of an old magazine, bought by Mr. Lord many years ago.
‘Yes, yes. Nancy laughs at it—calls it old rubbish. These young people are so clever.’
His companion made no remark. Unobserved, he scrutinised her face for a long time, and said at length:
‘Don’t let us fall out, Mary. You’re not pleased with me, and I know why. I said all women were deceitful, and you took it too seriously. You ought to know me better. There’s something comes on me every now and then, and makes me say the worst I can no matter who it hurts. Could I be such a fool as to think ill of you?’
‘It did hurt me,’ replied the other, still bent over her book. ‘But it was only the sound of it. I knew you said more than you meant.’
‘I’m a fool, and I’ve been a fool all my life. Is it likely I should have wise children? When I went off to the Barmbys’, I thought of sending Samuel down to Teignmouth, to find out what they were at. But I altered my mind before I got there. What good would it have done? All I can do I’ve done already. I made my will the other day; it’s signed and witnessed. I’ve made it as I told you I should. I’m not much longer for this world, but I’ve saved the girl from foolishness till she’s six-and-twenty. After that she must take care of herself.’
They sat silent whilst the clock on the mantelpiece ticked away a few more minutes. Mr. Lord’s features betrayed the working of turbid thought, a stern resentment their prevailing expression. When reverie released him, he again looked at his companion.
‘Mary, did you ever ask yourself what sort of woman Nancy’s mother may have been?’
The listener started, like one in whom a secret has been surprised. She tried to answer, but after all did not speak.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Stephen pursued. ‘Yes, I’ll tell you. You must know it. Not a year after the boy’s birth, she left me. And I made myself free of her—I divorced her.’
Their eyes just met.
‘You needn’t think that it cost me any suffering. Not on her account; not because I had lost my wife. I never felt so glad, before or since, as on the day when it was all over, and I found myself a free man again. I suffered only in thinking how I had fooled away some of the best years of my life for a woman who despised me from the first, and was as heartless as the stones of the street. I found her in beggary, or close upon it. I made myself her slave—it’s only the worthless women who accept from a man, who expect from him, such slavish worship as she had from me. I gave her clothing; she scarcely thanked me, but I thought myself happy. I gave her a comfortable home, such as she hadn’t known for years; for a reward she mocked at my plain tastes and quiet ways—but I thought no ill of it—could see nothing in it but a girlish, lighthearted sort of way that seemed one of her merits. As long as we lived together, she pretended to be an affectionate wife; I should think no one ever matched her in hypocrisy. But the first chance she had—husband, children, home, all flung aside in a moment. Then I saw her in the true light, and understood all at once what a blind fool I had been.’
He breathed quickly and painfully. Mary sat without a movement.
‘I thought I had done a great thing in marrying a wife that was born above me. Her father had been a country gentleman; horse-racing and such things had brought him down, and from her twelfth year his daughter lived—I never quite knew how, but on charity of some kind. She grew up without trying to earn her own living; she thought herself too good for that, thought she had a claim to be supported, because as a child she was waited upon by servants. When I asked her once if she couldn’t have done something, she stared at me and laughed in my face. For all that she was glad enough to marry a man of my sort—rough and uneducated as I was. She always reminded me of it, though—that I had no education; I believe she thought that she had a perfect right to throw over such a husband, whenever she chose. Afterwards, I saw very well that her education didn’t amount to much. How could it, when she learnt nothing after she was twelve? She was living with very poor people who came from my part of the country—that’s how I met her. The father led some sort of blackguard life in London, but had no money for her, nor yet for his other girl, who went into service, I was told, and perhaps made herself a useful, honest woman. He died in a hospital, and he was buried at my expense—not three months before his daughter went off and left me.’
‘You will never tell your children,’ said Mary, when there had been a long pause.
‘I’ve often thought it would only be right if I told them. I’ve often thought, the last year or two, that Nancy ought to know. It might make her think, and do her good.’
‘No, no,’ returned the other hurriedly. ‘Never let her know of it—never. It might do her much harm.’
‘You know now, Mary, why I look at the girl so anxiously. She’s not like her mother; not much like her in face, and I can’t think she’s like her in heart. But you know what her faults are as well as I do. Whether I’ve been right or wrong in giving her a good education, I shall never know. Wrong, I fear—but I’ve told you all about that.’
‘You don’t know whether she’s alive or not?’ asked Mary, when once more it was left to her to break silence.
‘What do I care? How should I know?’
‘Don’t be tempted to tell them—either of them!’ said the other earnestly.
‘My friend Barmby knows. Whether he’s told his son, I can’t say; it’s twenty years since we spoke about it. If he did ever mention it to Samuel, then it might somehow get known to Horace or the girl, when I’m gone.—I won’t give up the hope that young Barmby may be her husband. She’ll have time to think about it. But if ever she should come to you and ask questions—I mean, if she’s been told what happened—you’ll set me right in her eyes? You’ll tell her what I’ve told you?’
‘I hope it may never—’
‘So do I,’ Stephen interrupted, his voice husky with fatigue. ‘But I count on you to make my girl think rightly of me, if ever there’s occasion. I count on you. When I’m dead, I won’t have her think that I was to blame for her mother’s ill-doing. That’s why I’ve told you. You believe me, don’t you?’
And Mary, lifting her eyes, met his look of appeal with more than a friend’s confidence.
CHAPTER 2
From chambers in Staple Inn, Lionel Tarrant looked forth upon the laborious world with a dainty enjoyment of his own limitless leisure. The old gables fronting upon Holborn pleased his fancy; he liked to pass under the time-worn archway, and so, at a step, estrange himself from commercial tumult,—to be in the midst of modern life, yet breathe an atmosphere of ancient repose.
He belonged to an informal club of young men who called themselves, facetiously, the Hodiernals. Vixi hodie! The motto, suggested by some one or other after a fifth tumbler of whisky punch, might bear more than a single interpretation. Harvey Munden, the one member of this genial brotherhood who lived by the sweat of his brow, proposed as a more suitable title, Les Faineants; that, however, was judged pedantic, not to say offensive. For these sons of the Day would not confess to indolence; each deemed himself, after his own fashion, a pioneer in art, letters, civilisation. They had money of their own, or were supported by some one who could afford that privilege; most of them had, ostensibly, some profession in view; for the present, they contented themselves with living, and the weaker brethren read in their hodiernity an obligation to be ‘up to date.’
Tarrant professed himself critical of To-day, apprehensive of To-morrow; he cast a backward eye. None the less, his avowed principle was to savour the passing hour. When night grew mellow, and the god of whisky inspired his soul, he shone in a lyrical egoism which had but slight correspondence with the sincerities of his solitude. His view of woman—the Hodiernals talked much of woman—differed considerably from his thoughts of the individual women with whom he associated; protesting oriental sympathies, he nourished in truth the chivalry appropriate to his years and to his education, and imaged an ideal of female excellence whereof the prime features were moral and intellectual.
He had no money of his own. What could be saved for him from his father’s squandered estate—the will established him sole inheritor—went in the costs of a liberal education, his grandmother giving him assurance that he should not go forth into the world penniless. This promise Mrs. Tarrant had kept, though not exactly in the manner her grandson desired. Instead of making him a fixed allowance, the old lady supplied him with funds at uncertain intervals; with the unpleasant result that it was sometimes necessary for him to call to her mind his dependent condition. The cheques he received varied greatly in amount,—from handsome remittances of a hundred pounds or so, down to minim gifts which made the young man feel uncomfortable when he received them. Still, he was provided for, and it could not be long before this dependency came to an end.
He believed in his own abilities. Should it ever be needful, he could turn to journalism, for which, undoubtedly, he had some aptitude. But why do anything at all, in the sense of working for money? Every year he felt less disposed for that kind of exertion, and had a greater relish of his leisurely life. Mrs. Tarrant never rebuked him; indeed she had long since ceased to make inquiry about his professional views. Perhaps she felt it something of a dignity to have a grandson who lived as gentleman at large.
But now, in the latter days of August, the gentleman found himself, in one most important particular, at large no longer. On returning from Teignmouth to Staple Inn he entered his rooms with a confused, disagreeable sense that things were not as they had been, that his freedom had suffered a violation, that he could not sit down among his books with the old self-centred ease, that his prospects were completely, indescribably changed, perchance much for the worse. In brief, Tarrant had gone forth a bachelor, and came back a married man.
Could it be sober fact? Had he in very deed committed so gross an absurdity?
He had purposed no such thing. Miss. Nancy Lord was not by any means the kind of person that entered his thoughts when they turned to marriage. He regarded her as in every respect his inferior. She belonged to the social rank only just above that of wage-earners; her father had a small business in Camberwell; she dressed and talked rather above her station, but so, now-a-days, did every daughter of petty tradesfolk. From the first he had amused himself with her affectation of intellectual superiority. Miss. Lord represented a type; to study her as a sample of the pretentious half-educated class was interesting; this sort of girl was turned out in thousands every year, from so-called High Schools; if they managed to pass some examination or other, their conceit grew boundless. Craftily, he had tested her knowledge; it seemed all sham. She would marry some hapless clerk, and bring him to bankruptcy by the exigencies of her ‘refinement.’
So had he thought of Nancy till a few months ago. But in the spring-time, when his emotions blossomed with the blossoming year, he met the girl after a long interval, and saw her with changed eyes. She had something more than prettiness; her looks undeniably improved. It seemed, too, that she bore herself more gracefully, and even talked with, at times, an approximation to the speech of a lady. These admissions signified much in a man of Tarrant’s social prejudice—so strong that it exercised an appreciable effect upon his every-day morals. He began to muse about Miss. Lord, and the upshot of his musing was that, having learnt of her departure for Teignmouth, he idly betook himself in the same direction.
But as for marriage, he would as soon have contemplated taking to wife a barmaid. Between Miss. Lord and the young lady who dispenses refreshment there were distinctions, doubtless, but none of the first importance. Then arose the question, in what spirit, with what purpose, did he seek her intimacy? The answer he simply postponed.
And postponed it very late indeed. Until the choice was no longer between making love in idleness, and conscientiously holding aloof; but between acting like a frank blackguard, and making the amends of an honest man.
The girl’s fault, to be sure. He had not credited himself with this power of fascination, and certainly not with the violence of passion which recklessly pursues indulgence. Still, the girl’s fault; she had behaved—well, as a half-educated girl of her class might be expected to behave. Ignorance she could not plead; that were preposterous. Utter subjugation by first love; that, perhaps; she affirmed it, and possibly with truth; a flattering assumption, at all events. But, all said and done, the issue had been of her own seeking. Why, then, accuse himself of blackguardly conduct, if he had turned a deaf ear to her pleading? Not one word of marriage had previously escaped his lips, nor anything that could imply a promise.
Well, there was the awkward and unaccountable fact that he felt himself obliged to marry her; that, when he seemed to be preparing resistance, downright shame rendered it impossible. Her face—her face when she looked at him and spoke! The truth was, that he had not hesitated at all; there was but one course open to him. He gave glances in the other direction; he wished to escape; he reviled himself for his folly; he saw the difficulties and discontents that lay before him; but choice he had none.
Love, in that sense of the word which Tarrant respected, could not be said to influence him. He had uttered the word; yes, of course he had uttered it; as a man will who is goaded by his raging blood. But he was as far as ever from loving Nancy Lord. Her beauty, and a certain growing charm in her companionship, had lured him on; his habitual idleness, and the vagueness of his principles, made him guilty at last of what a moralist would call very deliberate rascality. He himself was inclined to see his behaviour in that light; yet why had Nancy so smoothed the path of temptation?
That her love was love indeed, he might take for granted. To a certain point, it excused her. But she seemed so thoroughly able to protect herself; the time of her green girlhood had so long gone by. For explanation, he must fall back again on the circumstances of her origin and training. Perhaps she illustrated a social peril, the outcome of modern follies. Yes, that was how he would look at it. A result of charlatan ‘education’ operating upon crude character.
Who could say what the girl had been reading, what cheap philosophies had unsettled her mind? Is not a little knowledge a dangerous thing?
Thus far had he progressed in the four and twenty hours which followed his—or Nancy’s—conquest. Meanwhile he had visited the office of the registrar, had made his application for a marriage licence, a proceeding which did not tend to soothe him. Later, when he saw Nancy again, he experienced a revival of that humaner mood which accompanied his pledge to marry her, the mood of regret, but also of tenderness, of compassion. A tenderness that did not go very deep, a half-slighting compassion. His character, and the features of the case, at present allowed no more; but he preferred the kindlier attitude.
Of course he preferred it. Was he not essentially good-natured? Would he not, at any ordinary season, go out of his way to do a kindness? Did not his soul revolt against every form of injustice? Whom had he ever injured? For his humanity, no less than for his urbanity, he claimed a noteworthy distinction among young men of the time.
And there lay the pity of it. But for Nancy’s self-abandonment, he might have come to love her in good earnest. As it was, the growth of their intimacy had been marked with singular, unanticipated impulses on his side, impulses quite inconsistent with heartless scheming. In the compunctious visitings which interrupted his love-making at least twice, there was more than a revolt of mere honesty, as he recognised during his brief flight to London. Had she exercised but the common prudence of womanhood!
Why, that she did not, might tell both for and against her. Granting that she lacked true dignity, native refinement, might it not have been expected that artfulness would supply their place? Artful fencing would have stamped her of coarse nature. But coarseness she had never betrayed; he had never judged her worse than intellectually shallow. Her self-surrender might, then, indicate a trait worthy of admiration. Her subsequent behaviour undeniably pleaded for respect. She acquainted him with the circumstances of her home life, very modestly, perhaps pathetically. He learnt that her father was not ill to do, heard of her domestic and social troubles, that her mother had been long dead, things weighing in her favour, to be sure.
If only she had loved him less!
It was all over; he was married. In acting honourably, it seemed probable that he had spoilt his life. He must be prepared for anything. Nancy said that she should not, could not, tell her father, yet awhile; but that resolution was of doubtful stability. For his own part, he thought it clearly advisable that the fact should not become known at Champion Hill; but could he believe Nancy’s assurance that Miss. Morgan remained in the dark? Upon one catastrophe, others might naturally follow.
Here, Saturday at noon, came a letter of Nancy’s writing. A long letter, and by no means a bad one; superior, in fact, to anything he thought she could have written. It moved him somewhat, but would have moved him more, had he not been legally bound to the writer. On Sunday she could not come to see him; but on Monday, early in the afternoon—
Well, there were consolations. A wise man makes the best of the inevitable.
