Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell [read this if TXT] 📗

consistent with honesty; if he had not been her father, she would, perhaps, have thought some of his sayings inconsistent with true Christian honesty. He was for driving hard bargains, exacting interest and payment of just bills to a day. That was (he said) the only way in which trade could be conducted; once allow a margin of uncertainty, or where feelings, instead of maxims, were to be the guide, and all hope of there ever being any good men of business was ended.

“Suppose a delay of a month in requiring payment might save a man’s credit—prevent his becoming a bankrupt?” put in Mr. Farquhar.

“I would not give it him. I would let him have money to set up again as soon as he had passed the Bankruptcy Court; if he never passed, I might, in some cases, make him an allowance; but I would always keep my justice and my charity separate.”

“And yet charity (in your sense of the word) degrades; justice, tempered with mercy and consideration, elevates.”

“That is not justice—justice is certain and inflexible. No! Mr. Farquhar, you must not allow any Quixotic notions to mingle with your conduct as a tradesman.”

And so they went on; Jemima’s face glowing with sympathy in all Mr. Farquhar said; till once, on looking up suddenly with sparkling eyes, she saw a glance of her father’s, which told her, as plain as words can say, that he was watching the effect of Mr. Farquhar’s speeches upon his daughter. She was chilled thenceforward; she thought her father prolonged the argument, in order to call out those sentiments which he knew would most recommend his partner to his daughter. She would so fain have let herself love Mr. Farquhar; but this constant manoeuvring, in which she did not feel clear that he did not take a passive part, made her sick at heart. She even wished that they might not go through the form of pretending to try to gain her consent to the marriage, if it involved all this premeditated action and speech-making—such moving about of every one into their right places, like pieces at chess. She felt as if she would rather be bought openly, like an Oriental daughter, where no one is degraded in their own eyes by being parties to such a contract. The consequences of all this “admirable management” of Mr. Bradshaw’s would have been very unfortunate to Mr. Farquhar (who was innocent of all connivance in any of the plots—indeed would have been as much annoyed at them as Jemima, had he been aware of them), but that the impression made upon him by Ruth on the evening I have so lately described was deepened by the contrast which her behaviour made to Miss Bradshaw’s on one or two more recent occasions.

There was no use, he thought, in continuing attentions so evidently distasteful to Jemima. To her, a young girl hardly out of the schoolroom; he probably appeared like an old man; and he might even lose the friendship with which she used to regard him, and which was, and ever would be, very dear to him, if he persevered in trying to be considered as a lover. He should always feel affectionately towards her; her very faults gave her an interest in his eyes, for which he had blamed himself most conscientiously and most uselessly when he was looking upon her as his future wife, but which the said conscience would learn to approve of when she sank down to the place of a young friend, over whom he might exercise a good and salutary interest. Mrs. Denbigh, if not many months older in years, had known sorrow and cares so early that she was much older in character. Besides, her shy reserve, and her quiet daily walk within the lines of duty, were much in accordance with Mr. Farquhar’s notion of what a wife should be. Still, it was a wrench to take his affections away from Jemima. If she had not helped him to do so by every means in her power, he could never have accomplished it.

Yes! by every means in her power had Jemima alienated her lover, her beloved—for so he was in fact. And now her quick-sighted eyes saw he was gone for ever—past recall: for did not her jealous, sore heart feel, even before he himself was conscious of the fact, that he was drawn towards sweet, lovely, composed, and dignified Ruth—one who always thought before she spoke (as Mr. Farquhar used to bid Jemima do)—who never was tempted by sudden impulse, but walked the world calm and self-governed. What now availed Jemima’s reproaches, as she remembered the days when he had watched her with earnest, attentive eyes, as he now watched Ruth; and the times since, when, led astray by her morbid fancy, she had turned away from all his advances!

“It was only in March—last March, he called me ‘dear Jemima.’ Ah! don’t I remember it well? The pretty nosegay of greenhouse flowers that he gave me in exchange for the wild daffodils—and how he seemed to care for the flowers I gave him—and how he looked at me, and thanked me—that is all gone and over now.”

Her sisters came in bright and glowing.

“O Jemima, how nice and cool you are, sitting in this shady room!” (she had felt it even chilly). “We have been such a long walk! We are so tired. It is so hot.”

“Why did you go, then?” said she.

“Oh! we wanted to go. We would not have stayed at home on any account. It has been so pleasant,” said Mary.

“We’ve been to Scaurside Wood, to gather wild strawberries,” said Elizabeth.

“Such a quantity! We’ve left a whole basketful in the dairy. Mr. Farquhar says he’ll teach us how to dress them in the way he learnt in Germany, if we can get him some hock. Do you think papa will let us have some?”

“Was Mr. Farquhar with you?” asked Jemima, a dull light coming into her eyes.

“Yes; we told him this morning that mamma wanted us to take some old linen to the lame man at Scaurside Farm, and that we meant to coax Mrs. Denbigh to let us go into the wood and gather strawberries,” said Elizabeth.

“I thought he would make some excuse and come,” said the quick-witted Mary, as eager and thoughtless an observer of one love-affair as of another, and quite forgetting that, not many weeks ago, she had fancied an attachment between him and Jemima.

“Did you? I did not,” replied Elizabeth. “At least I never thought about it. I was quite startled when I heard his horse’s feet behind us on the road.”

“He said he was going to the farm, and could take our basket. Was it not kind of him?” Jemima did not answer, so Mary continued—

“You know it’s a great pull up to the farm, and we were so hot already. The road was quite white and baked; it hurt my eyes terribly. I was so glad when Mrs. Denbigh said we might turn into the wood. The light was quite green there, the branches are so thick overhead.”

“And there are whole beds of wild strawberries,” said Elizabeth, taking up the tale now Mary was out of breath. Mary fanned herself with her bonnet, while Elizabeth went on—

“You know where the grey rock crops out, don’t you, Jemima? Well, there was a complete carpet of strawberry-runners. So pretty! And we could hardly step without treading the little bright scarlet berries under foot.”

“We did so wish for Leonard,” put in Mary.

“Yes! but Mrs. Denbigh gathered a great many for him. And Mr. Farquhar gave her all his.”

“I thought you said he bad gone on to Dawson’s farm,” said Jemima.

“Oh yes! he just went up there; and then he left his horse there, like a wise man, and came to us in the pretty, cool, green wood. O Jemima! it was so pretty-little flecks of light coming down here and there through the leaves, and quivering on the ground. You must go with us to-morrow.”

“Yes,” said Mary, “we’re going again to-morrow. We could not gather nearly all the strawberries.”

“And Leonard is to go too, to-morrow.”

“Yes! we thought of such a capital plan. That’s to say, Mr. Farquhar thought of it—we wanted to carry Leonard up the hill in a king’s cushion, but Mrs. Denbigh would not hear of it.”

“She said it would tire us so; and yet she wanted him to gather strawberries!”

“And so,” interrupted Mary, for by this time the two girls were almost speaking together, “Mr. Farquhar is to bring him up before him on his horse.”

“You’ll go with us, won’t you, dear Jemima?” asked Elizabeth: “it will be at–-”

“No! I can’t go,” said Jemima abruptly. “Don’t ask me—I can’t.”

The little girls were hushed into silence by her manner; for whatever she might be to those above her in age and position, to those below her Jemima was almost invariably gentle She felt that they were wondering at her.

“Go upstairs and take off your things. You know papa does not like you to come into this room in the shoes in which you have been out.”

She was glad to out her sisters short in the details which they were so mercilessly inflicting—details which she must harden herself to, before she could hear them quietly and unmoved. She saw that she had lost her place as the first object in Mr. Farquhar’s eyes—a position she had hardly cared for while she was secure in the enjoyment of it; but the charm of it now was redoubled, in her acute sense of how she had forfeited it by her own doing, and her own fault. For if he were the cold, calculating man her father had believed him to be, and had represented him as being to her, would he care for a portionless widow in humble circumstances like Mrs. Denbigh—no money, no connection, encumbered with her boy? The very action which proved Mr. Farquhar to be lost to Jemima reinstated him on his throne in her fancy. And she must go on in hushed quietness, quivering with every fresh token of his preference for another? That other, too, one so infinitely more worthy of him than herself; so that she could not have even the poor comfort of thinking that he had no discrimination, and was throwing himself away on a common or worthless person. Ruth was beautiful, gentle, good, and conscientious. The hot colour flushed up into Jemima’s sallow face as she became aware that, even while she acknowledged these excellences on Mrs. Denbigh’s part, she hated her. The recollection of her marble face wearied her even to sickness; the tones of her low voice were irritating from their very softness. Her goodness, undoubted as it was, was more distasteful than many faults which had more savour of human struggle in them.

“What was this terrible demon in her heart?” asked Jemima’s better angel. “Was she, indeed, given up to possession? Was not this the old stinging hatred which had prompted so many crimes? The hatred of all sweet virtues which might win the love denied to us? The old anger that wrought in the elder brother’s heart, till it ended in the murder of the gentle Abel, while yet the world was young?”

“O God! help me! I did not know I was so wicked,” cried Jemima aloud in her agony. It had been a terrible glimpse into the dark, lurid gulf—the capability for evil, in her heart. She wrestled with the demon, but he would not depart: it was to be a struggle whether or not she was to be given up to him, in this her time of sore temptation.

All the next day long she sat and pictured the happy strawberry-gathering