Wrecked in Port/Book I, Chapter X
Chapter X.An Interior.
Marian Ashurst had begun, soon after their parting, to feel that she had been somewhat too sanguine in her anticipations of the immediate success of Walter Joyce. Each little difficulty she had had to encounter in her own life until the old home was left behind had aided to depress her, to force her to understand that the battle of life was harder to fight than she had fancied it, and had brought to her mind a shapeless fear that she had mistaken, overvalued, the strength and efficacy of the weapons with which she must fight that battle. Walter's letters had not tended to lift her heart up from its depression. His nature was essentially candid; he had neither the skill nor the inclination to feign, and he had kept her exactly informed. On his return home after his interview with Lord and Lady Hetherington, Joyce found a letter awaiting him. It was from Marian, written to her lover from Mr. Creswell's house, and ran as follows:
"My dearest Walter,—The project I told you of, in my last letter, has been carried out; mamma and I are settled for the present at Woolgreaves. How strange it seems, everything has been done so suddenly when it came to the point, and Mr. Creswell and his nieces turned out so differently from what I expected. I did not look for their taking any notice of us, except in the commonplace way of people in their position to people in ours. I always had a notion that 'womankind' have but a small share in men's friendships. However, these people seem determined to make me out in the wrong, and though I do not give the young ladies credit for more than intelligent docility, making them understand that their best policy is to carry out their uncle's kind intentions—that they have more to gain by obedience in this respect than to lose by anything likely to be alienated from them in our direction, I must acknowledge that their docility is intelligent. They made the invitation most graciously, urged it most heartily, and are carrying out all it implied fully. You will have been surprised at mamma's finding the idea of being in any one's house endurable, under the circumstances, but she really likes it. Maud and Gertrude Creswell, who are the very opposites of me in everything, belong to the 'sweet girl' species, and mamma has found out that she likes sweet girls. Poor mamma, she never had the chance of making the discovery before! I do believe it never occurred to her that her own daughter was not a 'sweet girl,' until she made the conquest of the hearts of these specimens. The truth is, also, that mamma feels, she must feel, every one must feel, the material comfort of living as we are living here, in comparison with the makeshift wretchedness of the lodging into which we shall have to go, when our visit here comes to a conclusion, and still more, as a thoroughly known and felt standard of comparison, with the intense and oppressive sadness, and the perpetual necessity for watchfulness in the least expense, which have characterised our dear old house since our sad loss. She is not herself aware of the good which it has done her to come here, she does not perceive the change it has wrought in her; and it is well she should not, for I really think the simple, devoted, grieving soul would be hurt and angry with herself at the idea that anything should make any difference to her, that she should be 'roused.' How truly my dear father understood, how highly he prized her exquisite sensitiveness of feeling; he was just the man to hold it infinitely above all the strong-mindedness in the world! I am stronger-minded, happily—I wonder if you like to know that I am, or whether you, too, prefer the weaker, the more womanly type, as people say, forgetting that most of the endurance, and a good deal of the work, in this world, is our 'womanly' inheritance, and that some of us, at least, do it with discredit. You don't want moralising, or philosophising, from me, though, dearest Walter, do you? You complain of my matter-of-fact letters as it is. I must not yield to my bad habit of talking to myself, rather than to you on paper.
"Well, then we came to Woolgreaves, and found the heartiest of welcomes, and everything prepared for our comfort. As I don't think you know anything more of the place than could be learned from our summer evening strolls about the grounds, when we always took such good care to keep well out of sight of the windows, I shall describe the house. You will like to know where and how I live, and to see in your fancy my surroundings. How glad I shall be when you, too, can send me a sketch of anything you can call 'home.' Of course, I don't mean that to apply to myself here; I never let any feeling of enjoyment really take possession of me because of its transitoriness, you know exactly in what sense I mean it, a certain feeling of comfort and quiet, of having tomorrow what you have had to-day, of seeing the same people and the same things around, which makes up the idea of home, though it must all vanish soon. I wonder if men get used to alterations in their modes of life so soon as women do? I fancy not. I know there is mamma, and I am sure a more easily pleased, less consciously selfish human being never existed (if her share in the comforts of home was disproportionate, it was my dear father's doing, not of her claiming), and yet she has been a week here, and all the luxury she lives in seems as natural to her, as indispensable as the easy-chair, the especially good tea, the daily glass of wine, the daintiest food, which were allotted to her at home. I saw the girls exchange a look this morning when she said, 'I hope it won't rain, I shall miss my afternoon drive so much!' I wonder what the look meant? Perhaps it meant, 'Listen to that upstart! She never had a carriage of her own in her life, and because she has the use of ours for a few days, she talks as if it were a necessary of life.' Perhaps—and I think they may be sufficiently genuinely sweet girls to make it possible—the look may have meant that they were glad to think they had it in their power to give her anything she enjoyed so much. I like it very much, too; there is more pleasure in driving about leisurely in a carriage, which you have not to pay for, than I imagined, but I should be sorry the girls knew I cared very much about it. I have not very much respect for their intellects, and silly heads are apt to take airs at the mere idea of being in a position to patronise. Decidedly, the best room in the house is mamma's, and she likes it so much. I often see the thought in her face, 'if we could have given him all these comforts, we might have had him with us now.' And so we might, Walter, so we might. Just think of the great age some of the very rich and grand folks live to; I am sure I have seen it in the papers hundreds of times, seventy, eighty, ninety sometimes, just because they are rich; rank has nothing to do with it beyond implying wealth, and if my father had been even a moderately rich man, if he had been anything but a poor man, he would have been alive to-day. We must try to be rich, my dearest Walter, and if that is impossible (and I fear it, I fear it much since I have been here, and Mr. Creswell has told me a good deal about how he made his money, and from all he says it seems indispensable to have some to begin with, there is truth in the saying that money makes money), if that is impossible, at least we must not think of marrying while we are poor. I don't think anything can compensate to oneself for being poor, and I am quite sure nothing can compensate for seeing any one whom one loves exposed to the privations and the humiliations of poverty. I have thought so much of this, dearest Walter, I have been so doubtful whether you think of it seriously enough. It seems absurd for a woman to say to a man that she ponders the exigencies of life more wisely, and sees its truths more fully than he does, but I sometimes think women do so, and in our case I think I estimate the trial and the struggle there is before us more according to their real weight and severity than you do, Walter, for you think of me only, whereas I think of you more than of myself, and as one with myself. I have learned, since I came here, that to understand what poverty really means one must see the details of wealth. We have only a general idea of a fine house and grounds, a luxurious table and a lot of servants. The general idea seems very grand and attractive, but when one sees it all in working order, when one can find out the cost of each department, the price of every article, the scale on which it is all kept up, not for show, but for every day use, then the real meaning of wealth, the awful difficulty of attaining it, realise themselves to one's mind. The Creswell girls know nothing about the mechanism of their splendid home, not much about even their personal expenses. 'Uncle gives us a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and tells us we may send him in any reasonable number of bills besides,' Maud told me. And it is quite true. They keep no accounts. I checked her maid's book for Gertrude, warning her not to let her servant see her ignorance, and she says she does not think she ever had some of the things put down. Just think of that! No dyeing old dresses black for mourning for them, and turning rusty crape! Not that that sort of thing signifies, the calculation is on too large a scale for such small items, they only illustrate the whole story of poverty. The housekeeper and I are quite friendly. She has a notion that ladies ought to understand economy, and she is very civil. She has explained everything to me, and I find the sums which pass through her hands alone would be a fortune to us. There are twenty servants in the house and stables, and their 'hall' is a sight! When I think of the shabby dining-room in which my dear father used to receive his friends—great people, too, sometimes, but not latterly—I do feel that human life is a very unfair thing.
"The great wide hall, floored with marble, and ornamented with pictures, and lamps on pedestals, and stags'-heads, and all the things one sees in pictures of halls, is in the centre of the house, and has a dark carved oak gallery all round it, on which numerous rooms open, but on the ground-floor there is a grand dining-room, and a smaller room where we breakfast, a billiard-room, a splendid library (all my father's books are in it now, and look nothing in the crowd); an ante-room, where people wait who come on business to Mr. Creswell (all his business seems to consist in disposing surplus money to advantage), and at the back of all, opening on the most beautiful flower-garden you can conceive, an immense conservatory. This is a great pleasure to mamma; there are no painful associations with such flowers for her; my father never gave her such bouquets as Gertrude brings to the breakfast-table every morning, and presents to her with a kiss, which her uncle seems to think particularly gracious and kind, for he always smiles at her.
"Indeed, he smiles a good deal at every one, for he is a very good-natured, amiable, and kindly man, and seems to think little of his wealth. I am sure he is dreadfully imposed upon—indeed, I have found out many instances of it. How happy he could make us if he would! I dare say he would not miss the money which would make us comfortable. But I must not think of such a thing. No one could afford to give so much as it would be wise to marry on, and we never should be happy if we were not wise. I don't think Mr. Creswell has a trouble in the world, except his son Tom, and I am not sure that he is a trouble to him—for he doesn't talk much about himself—but I am quite sure he ought to be. The boy is as graceless, selfish, heartless a cub, I think, as ever lived. I remember your thinking him very troublesome and disobedient in school, and he certainly is not better at home, where he has many opportunities of gratifying his evil propensities not afforded him by school. He is very much afraid of me, short a time as I have been here, that is quite evident; and I am inclined to think one reason why Mr. Creswell likes my being here so much is the influence I exercise over Tom. Very likely he does not acknowledge that to himself as a reason, perhaps he does not even know it, but I can discern it, and also that it is a great relief to the girls. They are very kind to Tom, who worries their lives out, I am sure, when they are alone; but 'schoolmaster's daughter' was always an awful personage in the old days, and makes herself felt now, very satisfactorily though silently. I fancy Tom will turn out to be the crook in his father's lot when he grows up. He is an unmannerly, common creature, not to be civilised by all the comfort and luxury of home, or softened by all the gentleness and indulgence of his father. He is doing nothing just now; he did not choose to remain with papa's successor, and is running wild until he can be placed with a private tutor—some clergyman who takes only two or three pupils. Meantime, the coachman and the groom are his favourite associates, and the stable his resort of predilection.
"Do you remember the beech-copse just beyond Hill-side-road? The windows of my room look out in that direction, far away, beyond the Woolgreaves' grounds; I can see the tops of the trees, and the winding road beyond them. I go up to my room every evening, to see the sun set behind the hill there, and to think of the many times we walked there and talked of what was to be. Will it ever be, Walter? Were we not foolish boy and girl—foolish paupers? Ay, the word, hard, ugly, but true. When I look round this room I feel it, oh, so true! Mamma and I have a pretty sitting-room, and a bedroom each on opposite sides of it. Such rooms, the very simplicity and exquisite freshness of their furniture and appointments are more significant of wealth, of the ease of household arrangement, and the perfection of household service, than any amount of rich upholstery. And then the drawing-rooms, and the girls' rooms, and the music-room, and the endless spare rooms—which, by-the-by, are rarely occupied—for so rich a man, and one with such a house, Mr. Creswell seems to me to have singularly little society. No one but the clergyman and his wife has been since we came. I thought it might be out of delicate consideration for us that Mr. Creswell might have signified a wish for especial privacy, but I find that is not the case. He said to me to-day that he feared we found Woolgreaves dull. I do not. I have too much to think of to be affected by anything of that kind; and as my thoughts are rarely of a cheerful order, I should not ingratiate myself by social agreeability. Our life is quietly luxurious. I adhere to my old habit of early rising, but I am the only person in the house who enjoys the beauty of the gardens and grounds in the sweet morning. We breakfast at ten, and mamma and the girls go out into the lawn or into the garden, and they chat to her and amuse her until luncheon. I usually pass the morning in the library, reading and writing, or talking with Mr. Creswell. It is very amusing and interesting to me to hear all about his career, how he made so much money, and how he administers it. I begin to understand it very well now. I don't think I should make a bad woman of business by any means, and I am sure everything of the kind would have a great interest for me, even apart from my desire for money, and my conviction that neither happiness or repose is to be had in this world without it. The old gentleman seems surprised to find me interested and intelligent about what he calls such dry detail, but, just as books and pictures are interesting, though one may never hope to possess them, so money, though it does not belong to myself, and never can, interests me. Oh, my dearest Walter, if we had but a little, just a few hundreds of pounds, and Mr. Creswell could teach you how to employ it with advantage in some commercial undertaking. He began with little more than one thousand pounds, and now! But I might as well wish you had been born an archbishop. In the afternoon, there is our drive. What handsome houses we see, what fine places we pass by! How often I occupy myself with thinking what I should do if I only had them, and the money they represent. And how hard the sight of them makes the past appear! How little, falling to our share, would make the future smiling and happy!
"The girls are not interesting companions to Mr. Creswell. He is fond of them, and very kind to them—in fact, lavishly generous—they never have an ungratified wish, but how can a man, whose whole life has been devoted to business, feel much companionship with young girls like them, who do not know what it means? Of course, they think and talk about their dead parents at least, I suppose so—and their past lives, and neither subject has any charms for their uncle. They read—especially Maud—and, strange to say, they read solid books as well as novels; they excel in fancy-work, which I detest, probably because I can't do it, and could not afford to buy the materials if I understood the art; and they both play and sing. I have heard very little good music, and I am not a judge, except of what is pleasing to myself, but I think I am correct in rating Maud's musical abilities very highly. Her voice thrills me almost to pain, and to see my mother's quiet tears when Maud plays to her in the dim evening, is to feel that the power of producing such salutary, healing emotion is priceless indeed. What a pity it is I am not a good musician! Loving music as you love it, dearest Walter, it will be a privation to you—if ever that time we talked of comes, when we should have a decent home to share—that I shall not be able to make sweet music for you. They are not fond of me, but I did not think they would be, and I am not disappointed. I like them, but they are too young, too happy, and too rich for me not to envy them a little, and though love and jealousy may co-exist, love and envy cannot.
"In all this long letter, my own Walter, I have said nothing of you. You understand why. I dare not. I dare not give utterance to the discouragement which your last vague letter caused me, lest such discouragement should infect you, and by lowering your spirits weaken your efforts. Under these circumstances, and until I hear from you more decisively, I will say nothing, but strive and hope! On my side, there is little striving possible, and I dare not tell you how little hope.
To the strong, loving, and loyal heart of Walter, a letter from Marian was a sacred treasure, a full, intense, solemn delight. She had thought the thoughts, written the words, touched the paper. When disappointment, distress, depression, and uncertainty accumulated upon him most ruthlessly, and bore him most heavily to the ground, he shook them from him at the bidding of a letter from her, and rose more than ever determined not to be beaten in the struggle which was to bring him such a reward. The calmness, the seeming coldness even of her letters did not annoy or disappoint him; theirs was the perfect love that did not need protestation, that was as well and as ill, as fully and as imperfectly expressed by the simplest affirmation as by a score of endearing phrases. No letter of Marian's had ever failed to delight, to strengthen, to encourage Walter Joyce, until this one reached him.
He opened the envelope with an eager touch, his dark cheek flushed, and a tender smile shone in his eyes; he murmured a word of love as the closely-written sheets met his impatient gaze.
"A long letter to-day, Marian, my darling. Did you guess how sadly I wanted it?"
But as Walter read the letter his countenance changed. He turned back, and read some portions twice over, then went on, and when he concluded it began again. But not with the iteration of a lover, refreshing his first feeling of delight, seeking pet passages to dwell on afresh. There was no such pleasurable impulse in the moody re-reading of this letter. Walter frowned more than once while he read it, and struck the hand in which he held it monotonously against his knee when he had acquired the full unmistakable meaning of it.
His face had been sad and anxious when the letter reached him—he had reason for sadness and anxiety—but when he had read it for the last time, and thrust it into his breast-pocket, his face was more than sad and anxious—it was haggard, gloomy, and angry.