New Grub Street Part 112

'In other words, if you can't do that as my wife, you must remain Marian Yule.'

After a silence, Marian regarded him steadily.

'You see only the difficulties in our way,' she said, in a colder voice.

'They are many, I know. Do you think them insurmountable?'

'Upon my word, they almost seem so,' Jasper exclaimed, distractedly.

'They were not so great when we spoke of marriage a few years hence.'

'A few years!' he echoed, in a cheerless voice. 'That is just what I have decided is impossible. Marian, you shall have the plain truth. I can trust your faith, but I can't trust my own. I will marry you now, but--years hence--how can I tell what may happen? I don't trust myself.'

'You say you "will" marry me now; that sounds as if you had made up your mind to a sacrifice.'

'I didn't mean that. To face difficulties, yes.'

Whilst they spoke, the sky had grown dark with a heavy cloud, and now spots of rain began to fall. Jasper looked about him in annoyance as he felt the moisture, but Marian did not seem aware of it.

'But shall you face them willingly?'

'I am not a man to repine and grumble. Put up your umbrella, Marian.'

'What do I care for a drop of rain,' she exclaimed with pa.s.sionate sadness, 'when all my life is at stake! How am I to understand you?

Every word you speak seems intended to dishearten me. Do you no longer love me? Why need you conceal it, if that is the truth? Is that what you mean by saying you distrust yourself?

If you do so, there must be reason for it in the present. Could I distrust myself? Can I force myself in any manner to believe that I shall ever cease to love you?'

Jasper opened his umbrella.

'We must see each other again, Marian. We can't stand and talk in the rain--confound it! Cursed climate, where you can never be sure of a clear sky for five minutes!'

'I can't go till you have spoken more plainly, Jasper! How am I to live an hour in such uncertainty as this? Do you love me or not? Do you wish me to be your wife, or are you sacrificing yourself?'

'I do wish it!' Her emotion had an effect upon him, and his voice trembled. 'But I can't answer for myself--no, not for a year. And how are we to marry now, in face of all these--'

'What can I do? What can I do?' she sobbed. 'Oh, if I were but heartless to everyone but to you! If I could give you my money, and leave my father and mother to their fate! Perhaps some could do that. There is no natural law that a child should surrender everything for her parents.

You know so much more of the world than I do; can't you advise me? Is there no way of providing for my father?'

'Good G.o.d! This is frightful, Marian. I can't stand it. Live as you are doing. Let us wait and see.'

'At the cost of losing you?'

'I will be faithful to you!'

'And your voice says you promise it out of pity.'

He had made a pretence of holding his umbrella over her, but Marian turned away and walked to a little distance, and stood beneath the shelter of a great tree, her face averted from him. Moving to follow, he saw that her frame was shaken by soundless sobbing. When his footsteps came close to her, she again looked at him.

'I know now,' she said, 'how foolish it is when they talk of love being unselfish. In what can there be more selfishness? I feel as if I could hold you to your promise at any cost, though you have made me understand that you regard our engagement as your great misfortune. I have felt it for weeks--oh, for months! But I couldn't say a word that would seem to invite such misery as this. You don't love me, Jasper, and that's an end of everything.

I should be shamed if I married you.'

'Whether I love you or not, I feel as if no sacrifice would be too great that would bring you the happiness you deserve.'

'Deserve!' she repeated bitterly. 'Why do I deserve it? Because I long for it with all my heart and soul? There's no such thing as deserving.

Happiness or misery come to us by fate.'

'Is it in my power to make you happy?'

'No; because it isn't in your power to call dead love to life again. I think perhaps you never loved me. Jasper, I could give my right hand if you had said you loved me before--I can't put it into words; it sounds too base, and I don't wish to imply that you behaved basely. But if you had said you loved me before that, I should have it always to remember.'

'You will do me no wrong if you charge me with baseness,' he replied gloomily. 'If I believe anything, I believe that I did love you. But I knew myself and I should never have betrayed what I felt, if for once in my life I could have been honourable.'

The rain pattered on the leaves and the gra.s.s, and still the sky darkened.

'This is wretchedness to both of us,' Jasper added. 'Let us part now, Marian. Let me see you again.'

'I can't see you again. What can you say to me more than you have said now? I should feel like a beggar coming to you. I must try and keep some little self-respect, if I am to live at all.'

'Then let me help you to think of me with indifference. Remember me as a man who disregarded priceless love such as yours to go and make himself a proud position among fools and knaves--indeed that's what it comes to.

It is you who reject me, and rightly. One who is so much at the mercy of a vulgar ambition as I am, is no fit husband for you. Soon enough you would thoroughly despise me, and though I should know it was merited, my perverse pride would revolt against it. Many a time I have tried to regard life practically as I am able to do theoretically, but it always ends in hypocrisy. It is men of my kind who succeed; the conscientious, and those who really have a high ideal, either perish or struggle on in neglect.'

Marian had overcome her excess of emotion.

'There is no need to disparage yourself' she said. 'What can be simpler than the truth? You loved me, or thought you did, and now you love me no longer. It is a thing that happens every day, either in man or woman, and all that honour demands is the courage to confess the truth. Why didn't you tell me as soon as you knew that I was burdensome to you?'

'Marian, will you do this?--will you let our engagement last for another six months, but without our meeting during that time?'

'But to what purpose?'

'Then we would see each other again, and both would be able to speak calmly, and we should both know with certainty what course we ought to pursue.'

'That seems to me childish. It is easy for you to contemplate months of postponement. There must be an end now; I can bear it no longer.'

The rain fell unceasingly, and with it began to mingle an autumnal mist.

Jasper delayed a moment, then asked calmly:

'Are you going to the Museum?'

'Yes.'

'Go home again for this morning, Marian. You can't work--'

'I must; and I have no time to lose. Good-bye!'

She gave him her hand. They looked at each other for an instant, then Marian left the shelter of the tree, opened her umbrella, and walked quickly away. Jasper did not watch her; he had the face of a man who is suffering a severe humiliation.

A few hours later he told Dora what had come to pa.s.s, and without extenuation of his own conduct. His sister said very little, for she recognised genuine suffering in his tones and aspect. But when it was over, she sat down and wrote to Marian.