In the Year of Jubilee Part 41

'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.

Part IV: The Veiled Figure

CHAPTER 1

Before his admission to a partners.h.i.+p 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sumption 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 s.e.x, 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 partners.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.surance 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 c.u.m Dignitate.' When he took a holiday at the seaside, unwonted leisure and novel circ.u.mstances 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 m.u.f.fin-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.