Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  “What?” asked Elizabeth, expecting nothing less than a red-hot Valentine, signed Walter Farquhar, pro Bradshaw, Farquhar, and Co., in full.

  “Why, a piece of paper, with dull-looking lines upon it, just like the scientific dialogues; and I remembered all about it. It was once when Mr Farquhar had been telling us that a bullet does not go in a straight line, but in a something curve, and he drew some lines on a piece of paper; and Mimie — ”

  “Jemima,” put in Elizabeth.

  “Well, well! she had treasured it up, and written in a corner, ‘W. F., April 3rd.’ Now, that’s rather like love, is not it? For Jemima hates useful information just as much as I do, and that’s saying a great deal; and yet she had kept this paper, and dated it.”

  “If that’s all, I know Dick keeps a paper with Miss Benson’s name written on it, and yet he’s not in love with her; and perhaps Jemima may like Mr Farquhar, and he may not like her. It seems such a little while since her hair was turned up, and he has always been a grave middle-aged man ever since I can recollect; and then, have you never noticed how often he finds fault with her — almost lectures her?”

  “To be sure,” said Mary; “but he may be in love, for all that. Just think how often papa lectures mamma; and yet, of course, they’re in love with each other.”

  “Well! we shall see,” said Elizabeth.

  Poor Jemima little thought of the four sharp eyes that watched her daily course while she sat alone, as she fancied, with her secret in her own room. For, in a passionate fit of grieving, at the impatient, hasty temper which had made her so seriously displease Mr Farquhar that he had gone away without remonstrance, without more leave-taking than a distant bow, she had begun to suspect that rather than not be noticed at all by him, rather than be an object of indifference to him — oh! far rather would she be an object of anger and upbraiding; and the thoughts that followed this confession to herself, stunned and bewildered her; and for once that they made her dizzy with hope, ten times they made her sick with fear. For an instant she planned to become and to be all he could wish her; to change her very nature for him. And then a great gush of pride came over her, and she set her teeth tight together, and determined that he should either love her as she was, or not at all. Unless he could take her with all her faults, she would not care for his regard; “love” was too noble a word to call such cold, calculating feeling as his must be, who went about with a pattern idea in his mind, trying to find a wife to match. Besides, there was something degrading, Jemima thought, in trying to alter herself to gain the love of any human creature. And yet, if he did not care for her, if this late indifference were to last, what a great shroud was drawn over life! Could she bear it?

  From the agony she dared not look at, but which she was going to risk encountering, she was aroused by the presence of her mother.

  “Jemima! your father wants to speak to you in the dining-room.”

  “What for?” asked the girl.

  “Oh! he is fidgeted by something Mr Farquhar said to me, and which I repeated. I am sure I thought there was no harm in it, and your father always likes me to tell him what everybody says in his absence.”

  Jemima went with a heavy heart into her father’s presence.

  He was walking up and down the room, and did not see her at first.

  “Oh, Jemima! is that you? Has your mother told you what I want to speak to you about?”

  “No!” said Jemima. “Not exactly.”

  “She has been telling me what proves to me how very seriously you must have displeased and offended Mr Farquhar, before he could have expressed himself to her as he did, when he left the house. You know what he said?”

  “No!” said Jemima, her heart swelling within her. “He has no right to say anything about me.” She was desperate, or she durst not have said this before her father.

  “No right! — what do you mean, Jemima?” said Mr Bradshaw, turning sharp round. “Surely you must know that I hope he may one day be your husband; that is to say, if you prove yourself worthy of the excellent training I have given you. I cannot suppose Mr Farquhar would take any undisciplined girl as a wife.”

  Jemima held tight by a chair near which she was standing. She did not speak; her father was pleased by her silence — it was the way in which he liked his projects to be received.

  “But you cannot suppose,” he continued, “that Mr Farquhar will consent to marry you — ”

  “Consent to marry me!” repeated Jemima, in a low tone of brooding indignation; were those the terms upon which her rich woman’s heart was to be given, with a calm consent of acquiescent acceptance, but a little above resignation on the part of the receiver?

  — ”if you give way to a temper which, although you have never dared to show it to me, I am well aware exists, although I hoped the habits of self-examination I had instilled had done much to cure you of manifesting it. At one time, Richard promised to be the more headstrong of the two; now, I must desire you to take pattern by him. Yes,” he continued, falling into his old train of thought, “it would be a most fortunate connexion for you in every way. I should have you under my own eye, and could still assist you in the formation of your character, and I should be at hand to strengthen and confirm your principles. Mr Farquhar’s connexion with the firm would be convenient and agreeable to me in a pecuniary point of view. He — ” Mr Bradshaw was going on in his enumeration of the advantages which he in particular, and Jemima in the second place, would derive from this marriage, when his daughter spoke, at first so low that he could not hear her, as he walked up and down the room with his creaking boots, and he had to stop to listen.

  “Has Mr Farquhar ever spoken to you about it?” Jemima’s cheek was flushed as she asked the question; she wished that she might have been the person to whom he had first addressed himself.

  Mr Bradshaw answered,

  “No, not spoken. It has been implied between us for some time. At least, I have been so aware of his intentions that I have made several allusions, in the course of business, to it, as a thing that might take place. He can hardly have misunderstood; he must have seen that I perceived his design, and approved of it,” said Mr Bradshaw, rather doubtfully; as he remembered how very little, in fact, passed between him and his partner which could have reference to the subject, to any but a mind prepared to receive it. Perhaps Mr Farquhar had not really thought of it; but then again, that would imply that his own penetration had been mistaken, a thing not impossible certainly, but quite beyond the range of probability. So he reassured himself, and (as he thought) his daughter, by saying,

  “The whole thing is so suitable — the advantages arising from the connexion are so obvious; besides which, I am quite aware, from many little speeches of Mr Farquhar’s, that he contemplates marriage at no very distant time; and he seldom leaves Eccleston, and visits few families besides our own — certainly, none that can compare with ours in the advantages you have all received in moral and religious training.” But then Mr Bradshaw was checked in his implied praises of himself (and only himself could be his martingale when he once set out on such a career) by a recollection that Jemima must not feel too secure, as she might become if he dwelt too much on the advantages of her being her father’s daughter. Accordingly, he said: “But you must be aware, Jemima, that you do very little credit to the education I have given you, when you make such an impression as you must have done to-day, before Mr Farquhar could have said what he did of you!”

  “What did he say?” asked Jemima, still in the low, husky tone of suppressed anger.

  “Your mother says he remarked to her, ‘What a pity it is, that Jemima cannot maintain her opinions without going into a passion; and what a pity it is, that her opinions are such as to sanction, rather than curb, these fits of rudeness and anger!’“

  “Did he say that?” said Jemima, in a still lower tone, not questioning her father, but speaking rather to herself.

  “I have no doubt he did,” replied her father, gravely. “You
r mother is in the habit of repeating accurately to me what takes place in my absence; besides which, the whole speech is not one of hers; she has not altered a word in the repetition, I am convinced. I have trained her to habits of accuracy very unusual in a woman.”

  At another time, Jemima might have been inclined to rebel against this system of carrying constant intelligence to headquarters, which she had long ago felt as an insurmountable obstacle to any free communication with her mother; but now, her father’s means of acquiring knowledge faded into insignificance before the nature of the information he imparted. She stood quite still, grasping the chair-back, longing to be dismissed.

  “I have said enough now, I hope, to make you behave in a becoming manner to Mr Farquhar; if your temper is too unruly to be always under your own control, at least have respect to my injunctions, and take some pains to curb it before him.”

  “May I go?” asked Jemima, chafing more and more.

  “You may,” said her father. When she left the room he gently rubbed his hands together, satisfied with the effect he had produced, and wondering how it was, that one so well brought up as his daughter could ever say or do anything to provoke such a remark from Mr Farquhar as that which he had heard repeated.

  “Nothing can be more gentle and docile than she is when spoken to in the proper manner. I must give Farquhar a hint,” said Mr Bradshaw to himself.

  Jemima rushed upstairs, and locked herself into her room. She began pacing up and down at first, without shedding a tear; but then she suddenly stopped, and burst out crying with passionate indignation.

  “So! I am to behave well, not because it is right — not because it is right — but to show off before Mr Farquhar. Oh, Mr Farquhar!” said she, suddenly changing to a sort of upbraiding tone of voice, “I did not think so of you an hour ago. I did not think you could choose a wife in that cold-hearted way, though you did profess to act by rule and line; but you think to have me, do you? because it is fitting and suitable, and you want to be married, and can’t spare time for wooing” (she was lashing herself up by an exaggeration of all her father had said). “And how often I have thought you were too grand for me! but now I know better. Now I can believe that all you do is done from calculation; you are good because it adds to your business credit — you talk in that high strain about principle because it sounds well, and is respectable — and even these things are better than your cold way of looking out for a wife, just as you would do for a carpet, to add to your comforts, and settle you respectably. But I won’t be that wife. You shall see something of me which shall make you not acquiesce so quietly in the arrangements of the firm.” She cried too vehemently to go on thinking or speaking. Then she stopped, and said:

  “Only an hour ago I was hoping — I don’t know what I was hoping — but I thought — oh! how I was deceived! — I thought he had a true, deep, loving, manly heart, which God might let me win; but now I know he has only a calm, calculating head — ”

  If Jemima had been vehement and passionate before this conversation with her father, it was better than the sullen reserve she assumed now whenever Mr Farquhar came to the house. He felt it deeply; no reasoning with himself took off the pain he experienced. He tried to speak on the subjects she liked, in the manner she liked, until he despised himself for the unsuccessful efforts.

  He stood between her and her father once or twice, in obvious inconsistency with his own previously expressed opinions; and Mr Bradshaw piqued himself upon his admirable management, in making Jemima feel that she owed his indulgence or forbearance to Mr Farquhar’s interference; but Jemima — perverse, miserable Jemima — thought that she hated Mr Farquhar all the more. She respected her father inflexible, much more than her father pompously giving up to Mr Farquhar’s subdued remonstrances on her behalf. Even Mr Bradshaw was perplexed, and shut himself up to consider how Jemima was to be made more fully to understand his wishes and her own interests. But there was nothing to take hold of as a ground for any further conversation with her. Her actions were so submissive that they were spiritless; she did all her father desired; she did it with a nervous quickness and haste, if she thought that otherwise Mr Farquhar would interfere in any way. She wished evidently to owe nothing to him. She had begun by leaving the room when he came in, after the conversation she had had with her father; but at Mr Bradshaw’s first expression of his wish that she should remain, she remained — silent, indifferent, inattentive to all that was going on; at least there was this appearance of inattention. She would work away at her sewing as if she were to earn her livelihood by it; the light was gone out of her eyes as she lifted them up heavily before replying to any question, and the eyelids were often swollen with crying.

  But in all this there was no positive fault. Mr Bradshaw could not have told her not to do this, or to do that, without her doing it; for she had become much more docile of late.

  It was a wonderful proof of the influence Ruth had gained in the family, that Mr Bradshaw, after much deliberation, congratulated himself on the wise determination he had made of requesting her to speak to Jemima, and find out what feeling was at the bottom of all this change in her ways of going on.

  He rang the bell.

  “Is Mrs Denbigh here?” he inquired of the servant who answered it.

  “Yes, sir; she is just come.”

  “Beg her to come to me in this room as soon as she can leave the young ladies.”

  Ruth came.

  “Sit down, Mrs Denbigh; sit down. I want to have a little conversation with you; not about your pupils, they are going on well under your care, I am sure; and I often congratulate myself on the choice I made — I assure you I do. But now I want to speak to you about Jemima. She is very fond of you, and perhaps you could take some opportunity of observing to her — in short, of saying to her, that she is behaving very foolishly — in fact, disgusting Mr Farquhar (who was, I know, inclined to like her) by the sullen, sulky way she behaves in, when he is by.”

  He paused for the ready acquiescence he expected. But Ruth did not quite comprehend what was required of her, and disliked the glimpse she had gained of the task very much.

  “I hardly understand, sir. You are displeased with Miss Bradshaw’s manners to Mr Farquhar.”

  “Well, well! not quite that; I am displeased with her manners — they are sulky and abrupt, particularly when he is by — and I want you (of whom she is so fond) to speak to her about it.”

  “But I have never had the opportunity of noticing them. Whenever I have seen her, she has been most gentle and affectionate.”

  “But I think you do not hesitate to believe me, when I say that I have noticed the reverse,” said Mr Bradshaw, drawing himself up.

  “No, sir. I beg your pardon if I have expressed myself so badly as to seem to doubt. But am I to tell Miss Bradshaw that you have spoken of her faults to me?” asked Ruth, a little astonished, and shrinking more than ever from the proposed task.

  “If you would allow me to finish what I have got to say, without interruption, I could then tell you what I do wish.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Ruth, gently.

  “I wish you to join our circle occasionally in an evening; Mrs Bradshaw shall send you an invitation when Mr Farquhar is likely to be here. Warned by me, and, consequently, with your observation quickened, you can hardly fail to notice instances of what I have pointed out; and then I will trust to your own good sense” (Mr Bradshaw bowed to her at this part of his sentence) “to find an opportunity to remonstrate with her.”

  Ruth was beginning to speak, but he waved his hand for another minute of silence.

  “Only a minute, Mrs Denbigh. I am quite aware that, in requesting your presence occasionally in the evening, I shall be trespassing upon the time which is, in fact, your money; you may be assured that I shall not forget this little circumstance, and you can explain what I have said on this head to Benson and his sister.”

  “I am afraid I cannot do it,” Ruth began; but while she was c
hoosing words delicate enough to express her reluctance to act as he wished, he had almost bowed her out of the room; and thinking that she was modest in her estimate of her qualifications for remonstrating with his daughter, he added, blandly,

  “No one so able, Mrs Denbigh. I have observed many qualities in you — observed when, perhaps, you have little thought it.”

  If he had observed Ruth that morning, he would have seen an absence of mind, and depression of spirits, not much to her credit as a teacher; for she could not bring herself to feel that she had any right to go into the family purposely to watch over and find fault with any one member of it. If she had seen anything wrong in Jemima, Ruth loved her so much that she would have told her of it in private; and with many doubts, how far she was the one to pull out the mote from any one’s eye, even in the most tender manner; — she would have had to conquer reluctance before she could have done even this; but there was something undefinably repugnant to her in the manner of acting which Mr Bradshaw had proposed, and she determined not to accept the invitations which were to place her in so false a position.

  But as she was leaving the house, after the end of the lessons, while she stood in the hall tying on her bonnet, and listening to the last small confidences of her two pupils, she saw Jemima coming in through the garden-door, and was struck by the change in her looks. The large eyes, so brilliant once, were dim and clouded; the complexion sallow and colourless; a lowering expression was on the dark brow, and the corners of her mouth drooped as with sorrowful thoughts. She looked up, and her eyes met Ruth’s.

  “Oh! you beautiful creature!” thought Jemima, “with your still, calm, heavenly face, what are you to know of earth’s trials! You have lost your beloved by death — but that is a blessed sorrow; the sorrow I have pulls me down and down, and makes me despise and hate every one — not you, though.” And, her face changing to a soft, tender look, she went up to Ruth, and kissed her fondly; as if it were a relief to be near some one on whose true, pure heart she relied. Ruth returned the caress; and even while she did so, she suddenly rescinded her resolution to keep clear of what Mr Bradshaw had desired her to do. On her way home she resolved, if she could, to find out what were Jemima’s secret feelings; and if (as, from some previous knowledge, she suspected) they were morbid and exaggerated in any way, to try and help her right with all the wisdom which true love gives. It was time that some one should come to still the storm in Jemima’s turbulent heart, which was daily and hourly knowing less and less of peace. The irritating difficulty was to separate the two characters, which at two different times she had attributed to Mr Farquhar — the old one, which she had formerly believed to be true, that he was a man acting up to a high standard of lofty principle, and acting up without a struggle (and this last had been the circumstance which had made her rebellious and irritable once); the new one, which her father had excited in her suspicious mind, that Mr Farquhar was cold and calculating in all he did, and that she was to be transferred by the former, and accepted by the latter, as a sort of stock-in-trade — these were the two Mr Farquhars who clashed together in her mind. And in this state of irritation and prejudice, she could not bear the way in which he gave up his opinions to please her; that was not the way to win her; she liked him far better when he inflexibly and rigidly adhered to his idea of right and wrong, not even allowing any force to temptation, and hardly any grace to repentance, compared with that beauty of holiness which had never yielded to sin. He had been her idol in those days, as she found out now, however much at the time she had opposed him with violence.