CHAPTER XXIV. JASPER’S MAGNANIMITY
Occasionally Milvain met his sisters as they came out of church
on Sunday morning, and walked home to have dinner with them. He
did so to-day, though the sky was cheerless and a strong
north-west wind made it anything but agreeable to wait about in
open spaces.
‘Are you going to Mrs Wright’s this afternoon?’ he asked, as they
went on together.
‘I thought of going,’ replied Maud. ‘Marian will be with Dora.’
‘You ought both to go. You mustn’t neglect that woman.’
He said nothing more just then, but when presently he was alone
with Dora in the sitting-room for a few minutes, he turned with a
peculiar smile and remarked quietly:
‘I think you had better go with Maud this afternoon.’
‘But I can’t. I expect Marian at three.’
‘That’s just why I want you to go.’
She looked her surprise.
‘I want to have a talk with Marian. We’ll manage it in this way.
At a quarter to three you two shall start, and as you go out you
can tell the landlady that if Miss Yule comes she is to wait for
you, as you won’t be long. She’ll come upstairs, and I shall be
there. You see?’
Dora turned half away, disturbed a little, but not displeased.
‘And what about Miss Rupert?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Miss Rupert may go to Jericho for all I care. I’m in a
magnanimous mood.’
‘Very, I’ve no doubt.’
‘Well, you’ll do this? One of the results of poverty, you see;
one can’t even have a private conversation with a friend without
plotting to get the use of a room. But there shall be an end of
this state of things.’
He nodded significantly. Thereupon Dora left the room to speak
with her sister.
The device was put into execution, and Jasper saw his sisters
depart knowing that they were not likely to return for some three
hours. He seated himself comfortably by the fire and mused. Five
minutes had hardly gone by when he looked at his watch, thinking
Marian must be unpunctual. He was nervous, though he had believed
himself secure against such weakness. His presence here with the
purpose he had in his mind seemed to him distinctly a concession
to impulses he ought to have controlled; but to this resolve he
had come, and it was now too late to recommence the arguments
with himself. Too late? Well, not strictly so; he had committed
himself to nothing; up to the last moment of freedom he could
always—
That was doubtless Marian’s knock at the front door. He jumped
up, walked the length of the room, sat down on another chair,
returned to his former seat. Then the door opened and Marian came
in.
She was not surprised; the landlady had mentioned to her that Mr
Milvain was upstairs, waiting the return of his sisters.
‘I am to make ‘Dora’s excuses,’ Jasper said. ‘She begged you
would forgive her—that you would wait.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And you were to be sure to take off your hat,’ he added in a
laughing tone; ‘and to let me put your umbrella in the corner—
like that.’
He had always admired the shape of Marian’s head, and the beauty
of her short, soft, curly hair. As he watched her uncovering it,
he was pleased with the grace of her arms and the pliancy of her
slight figure.
‘Which is usually your chair?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘When one goes to see a friend frequently, one gets into regular
habits in these matters. In Biffen’s garret I used to have the
most uncomfortable chair it was ever my lot to sit upon; still, I
came to feel an affection for it. At Reardon’s I always had what
was supposed to be the most luxurious seat, but it was too small
for me, and I eyed it resentfully on sitting down and rising.’
‘Have you any news about the Reardons?’
‘Yes. I am told that Reardon has had the offer of a secretaryship
to a boys’ home, or something of the kind, at Croydon. But I
suppose there’ll be no need for him to think of that now.’
‘Surely not!’
‘Oh there’s no saying.’
‘Why should he do work of that kind now?’
‘Perhaps his wife will tell him that she wants her money all for
herself.’
Marian laughed. It was very rarely that Jasper had heard her
laugh at all, and never so spontaneously as this. He liked the
music.
‘You haven’t a very good opinion of Mrs Reardon,’ she said.
‘She is a difficult person to judge. I never disliked her, by any
means; but she was decidedly out of place as the wife of a
struggling author. Perhaps I have been a little prejudiced
against her since Reardon quarrelled with me on her account.’
Marian was astonished at this unlooked-for explanation of the
rupture between Milvain and his friend. That they had not seen
each other for some months she knew from Jasper himself but no
definite cause had been assigned.
‘I may as well let you know all about it,’ Milvain continued,
seeing that he had disconcerted the girl, as he meant to. ‘I met
Reardon not long after they had parted, and he charged me with
being in great part the cause of his troubles.’
The listener did not raise her eyes.
‘You would never imagine what my fault was. Reardon declared that
the tone of my conversation had been morally injurious to his
wife. He said I was always glorifying worldly success, and that
this had made her discontented with her lot. Sounds rather
ludicrous, don’t you think?’
‘It was very strange.’
‘Reardon was in desperate earnest, poor fellow. And, to tell you
the truth, I fear there may have been something in his complaint.
I told him at once that I should henceforth keep away from Mrs
Edmund Yule’s; and so I have done, with the result, of course,
that they suppose I condemn Mrs Reardon’s behaviour. The affair
was a nuisance, but I had no choice, I think.’
‘You say that perhaps your talk really was harmful to her.’
‘It may have been, though such a danger never occurred to me.’
‘Then Amy must be very weak-minded.’
‘To be influenced by such a paltry fellow?’
‘To be influenced by anyone in such a way.’
‘You think the worse of me for this story?’ Jasper asked.
‘I don’t quite understand it. How did you talk to her?’
‘As I talk to everyone. You have heard me say the same things
many a time. I simply declare my opinion that the end of literary
work— unless one is a man of genius—is to secure comfort and
repute. This doesn’t seem to me very scandalous. But Mrs Reardon
was perhaps too urgent in repeating such views to her husband.
She saw that in my case they were likely to have solid results,
and it was a misery to her that Reardon couldn’t or wouldn’t work
in the same practical way.
‘It was very unfortunate.’
‘And you are inclined to blame me?’
‘No; because I am so sure that you only spoke in the way natural
to you, without a thought of such consequences.’
Jasper smiled.
‘That’s precisely the truth. Nearly all men who have their way to
make think as I do, but most feel obliged to adopt a false tone,
to talk about literary conscientiousness, and so on. I simply say
what I think, with no pretences. I should like to be
conscientious, but it’s a luxury I can’t afford. I’ve told you
all this often enough, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘But it hasn’t been morally injurious to you,’ he said with a
laugh.
‘Not at all. Still I don’t like it.’
Jasper was startled. He gazed at her. Ought he, then, to have
dealt with her less frankly? Had he been mistaken in thinking
that the unusual openness of his talk was attractive to her? She
spoke with quite unaccustomed decision; indeed, he had noticed
from her entrance that there was something unfamiliar in her way
of conversing. She was so much more self-possessed than of wont,
and did not seem to treat him with the same deference, the same
subdual of her own personality.
‘You don’t like it?’ he repeated calmly. ‘It has become rather
tiresome to you?’
‘I feel sorry that you should always represent yourself in an
unfavourable light.’
He was an acute man, but the self-confidence with which he had
entered upon this dialogue, his conviction that he had but to
speak when he wished to receive assurance of Marian’s devotion,
prevented him from understanding the tone of independence she had
suddenly adopted. With more modesty he would have felt more
subtly at this juncture, would have divined that the girl had an
exquisite pleasure in drawing back now that she saw him
approaching her with unmistakable purpose, that she wished to be
wooed in less off-hand fashion before confessing what was in her
heart. For the moment he was disconcerted. Those last words of
hers had a slight tone of superiority, the last thing he would
have expected upon her lips.
‘Yet I surely haven’t always appeared so—to you?’ he said.
‘No, not always.’
‘But you are in doubt concerning the real man?’
‘I’m not sure that I understand you. You say that you do really
think as you speak.’
‘So I do. I think that there is no choice for a man who can’t
bear poverty. I have never said, though, that I had pleasure in
mean necessities; I accept them because I can’t help it.’
It was a delight to Marian to observe the anxiety with which he
turned to self-defence. Never in her life had she felt this joy
of holding a position of command. It was nothing to her that
Jasper valued her more because of her money; impossible for it to
be otherwise. Satisfied that he did value her, to begin with, for
her own sake, she was very willing to accept money as her ally in
the winning of his love. He scarcely loved her yet, as she
understood the feeling, but she perceived her power over him, and
passion taught her how to exert it.
‘But you resign yourself very cheerfully to the necessity,’ she
said, looking at him with merely intellectual eyes.
‘You had rather I lamented my fate in not being able to devote
myself to nobly unremunerative work?’
There was a note of irony here. It caused her a tremor, but she
held her position.
‘That you never do so would make one think—but I won’t speak
unkindly.’
‘That I neither care for good work nor am capable of it,’ Jasper
finished her sentence. ‘I shouldn’t have thought it would make
you think so.’
Instead of replying she turned her look towards the door. There
was a footstep on the stairs, but it passed.
‘I thought it might be Dora,’ she said.
‘She won’t be here for another couple of hours at least,’ replied
Jasper with a slight smile.
‘But you said—?’
‘I sent her to Mrs Boston Wright’s that I might have an
opportunity of talking to you. Will you forgive the stratagem?’
Marian resumed her former attitude, the faintest smile hovering
about her lips.
‘I’m glad there’s plenty of time,’ he continued. ‘I begin to
suspect that you have been misunderstanding me of late. I must
set that right.’
‘I don’t think I have misunderstood you.’
‘That may mean something very disagreeable. I know that some
people whom I esteem have a very poor opinion of me, but I can’t
allow you to be one of them. What do I seem to you? What is the
result on your mind of all our conversations?’
‘I have already told you.’
‘Not seriously. Do you believe I am capable of generous feeling?’
‘To say no, would be to put you in the lowest class of men, and
that a very small one.’ ‘Good! Then I am not among the basest. But
that doesn’t give me very distinguished claims upon your
consideration. Whatever I am, I am high in some of my ambitions.’
‘Which of them?’
‘For instance, I have been daring enough to hope that you might
love me.’
Marian delayed for a moment, then said quietly:
‘Why do you call that daring?’
‘Because I have enough of old-fashioned thought to believe that a
woman who is worthy of a man’s love is higher than he, and
condescends in giving herself to him.’
His voice was not convincing; the phrase did not sound natural on
his lips. It was not thus that she had hoped to hear him speak.
Whilst he expressed himself thus conventionally he did not love
her as she desired to be loved.
‘I don’t hold that view,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t surprise me. You are very reserved on all subjects,
and we have never spoken of this, but of course I know that your
thought is never commonplace. Hold what view you like of woman’s
position, that doesn’t affect mine.’
‘Is yours commonplace, then?’
‘Desperately. Love is a very old and common thing, and I believe
I love you in the old and common way. I think you beautiful, you
seem to me womanly in the best sense, full of charm and
sweetness. I know myself a coarse being in comparison. All this
has been felt and said in the same way by men infinite in
variety. Must I find some new expression before you can believe
me?’
Marian kept silence.
‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said. ‘The thought is as
inevitable as my consciousness of it.’
For an instant she looked at him.
‘Yes, you look the thought. Why have I not spoken to you in this
way before? Why have I waited until you are obliged to suspect my
sincerity?’
‘My thought is not so easily read, then,’ said Marian.
‘To be sure it hasn’t a gross form, but I know you wish—whatever
your real feeling towards me—that I had spoken a fortnight ago.
You would wish that of any man in my position, merely because it
is painful to you to see a possible insincerity. Well, I am not
insincere. I have thought of you as of no other woman for some
time. But—yes, you shall have the plain, coarse truth, which is
good in its way, no doubt. I was afraid to say that I loved you.
You don’t flinch; so far, so good. Now what harm is there in this
confession? In the common course of things I shouldn’t be in a
position to marry for perhaps three or four years, and even then
marriage would mean difficulties, restraints, obstacles. I have
always dreaded the thought of marriage with a poor income. You
remember?
Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is—Love forgive us!—
cinders, ashes, dust.
You know that is true.’
‘Not always, I dare say.’
‘But for the vast majority of mortals. There’s the instance of
the Reardons. They were in love with each other, if ever two
people were; but poverty ruined everything. I am not in the
confidence of either of them, but I feel sure each has wished the
other dead. What else was to be expected? Should I have dared to
take a wife in my present circumstances—a wife as poor as
myself?’
‘You will be in a much better position before long,’ said Marian.
‘If you loved me, why should you have been afraid to ask me to
have confidence in your future?’
‘It’s all so uncertain. It may be another ten years before I can
count on an income of five or six hundred pounds—if I have to
struggle on in the common way.’
‘But tell me, what is your aim in life? What do you understand by
success?’
‘Yes, I will tell you. My aim is to have easy command of all the
pleasures desired by a cultivated man. I want to live among
beautiful things, and never to be troubled by a thought of vulgar
difficulties. I want to travel and enrich my mind in foreign
countries. I want to associate on equal terms with refined and
interesting people. I want to be known, to be familiarly referred
to, to feel when I enter a room that people regard me with some
curiosity.’
He looked steadily at her with bright eyes.
‘And that’s all?’ asked Marian.
‘That is very much. Perhaps you don’t know how I suffer in
feeling myself at a disadvantage. My instincts are strongly
social, yet I can’t be at my ease in society, simply because I
can’t do justice to myself. Want of money makes me the inferior
of the people I talk with, though I might be superior to them in
most things. I am ignorant in many ways, and merely because I am
poor. Imagine my never having been out of England! It shames me
when people talk familiarly of the Continent. So with regard to
all manner of amusements and pursuits at home. Impossible for me
to appear among my acquaintances at the theatre, at concerts. I
am perpetually at a disadvantage; I haven’t fair play. Suppose me
possessed of money enough to live a full and active life for the
next five years; why, at the end of that time my position would
be secure. To him that hath shall be given—you know how
universally true that is.’
‘And yet,’ came in a low voice from Marian, ‘you say that you
love me.’
‘You mean that I speak as if no such thing as love existed. But
you asked me what I understood by success. I am speaking of
worldly things. Now suppose I had said to you:
My one aim and desire in life is to win your love. Could you have
believed me? Such phrases are always untrue; I don’t know how it
can give anyone pleasure to hear them. But if I say to you: All
the satisfactions I have described would be immensely heightened
if they were shared with a woman who loved me—there is the
simple truth.’
Marian’s heart sank. She did not want truth such as this; she
would have preferred that he should utter the poor, common
falsehoods. Hungry for passionate love, she heard with a sense of
desolation all this calm reasoning. That Jasper was of cold
temperament she had often feared; yet there was always the
consoling thought that she did not see with perfect clearness
into his nature. Now and then had come a flash, a hint of
possibilities. She had looked forward with trembling eagerness to
some sudden revelation; but it seemed as if he knew no word of
the language which would have called such joyous response from
her expectant soul.
‘We have talked for a long time,’ she said, turning her head as
if his last words were of no significance. ‘As Dora is not
coming, I think I will go now.’
She rose, and went towards the chair on which lay her out-of-door
things. At once Jasper stepped to her side.
‘You will go without giving me any answer?’
‘Answer? To what?’
‘Will you be my wife?’
‘It is too soon to ask me that.’
‘Too soon? Haven’t you known for months that I thought of you
with far more than friendliness?’
‘How was it possible I should know that? You have explained to me
why you would not let your real feelings be understood.’
The reproach was merited, and not easy to be outfaced. He turned
away for an instant, then with a sudden movement caught both her
hands.
‘Whatever I have done or said or thought in the past, that is of
no account now. I love you, Marian. I want you to be my wife. I
have never seen any other girl who impressed me as you did from
the first. If I had been weak enough to try to win anyone but
you, I should have known that I had turned aside from the path of
my true happiness. Let us forget for a moment all our
circumstances. I hold your hands, and look into your face, and
say that I love you. Whatever answer you give, I love you!’
Till now her heart had only fluttered a little; it was a great
part of her distress that the love she had so long nurtured
seemed shrinking together into some far corner of her being
whilst she listened to the discourses which prefaced Jasper’s
declaration. She was nervous, painfully self-conscious, touched
with maidenly shame, but could not abandon herself to that
delicious emotion which ought to have been the fulfilment of all
her secret imaginings. Now at length there began a throbbing in
her bosom. Keeping her face averted, her eyes cast down, she
waited for a repetition of the note that was in that last ‘I love
you.’ She felt a change in the hands that held hers—a warmth, a
moist softness; it caused a shock through her veins.
He was trying to draw her nearer, but she kept at full arm’s
length and looked irresponsive.
‘Marian?’
She wished to answer, but a spirit of perversity held her tongue.
‘Marian, don’t you love me? Or have I offended you by my way of
speaking?’
Persisting, she at length withdrew her hands. Jasper’s face
expressed something like dismay.
‘You have not offended me,’ she said. ‘But I am not sure that you
don’t deceive yourself in thinking, for the moment, that I am
necessary to your happiness.’
The emotional current which had passed from her flesh to his
whilst their hands were linked, made him incapable of standing
aloof from her. He saw that her face and neck were warmer hued,
and her beauty became more desirable to him than ever yet.
‘You are more to me than anything else in the compass of life!’
he exclaimed, again pressing forward. ‘I think of nothing but
you—you yourself—my beautiful, gentle, thoughtful Marian!’
His arm captured her, and she did not resist. A sob, then a
strange little laugh, betrayed the passion that was at length
unfolded in her.
‘You do love me, Marian?’
‘I love you.’
And there followed the antiphony of ardour that finds its first
utterance—a subdued music, often interrupted, ever returning
upon the same rich note.
Marian closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the luxury of the
dream. It was her first complete escape from the world of
intellectual routine, her first taste of life. All the pedantry
of her daily toil slipped away like a cumbrous garment; she was
clad only in her womanhood. Once or twice a shudder of strange
self-consciousness went through her, and she felt guilty,
immodest; but upon that sensation followed a surge of passionate
joy, obliterating memory and forethought.
‘How shall I see you?’ Jasper asked at length. ‘Where can we
meet?’
It was a difficulty. The season no longer allowed lingerings
under the open sky, but Marian could not go to his lodgings, and
it seemed impossible for him to visit her at her home.
‘Will your father persist in unfriendliness to me?’
She was only just beginning to reflect on all that was involved
in this new relation.
‘I have no hope that he will change,’ she said sadly.
‘He will refuse to countenance your marriage?’
‘I shall disappoint him and grieve him bitterly. He has asked me
to use my money in starting a new review.’
‘Which he is to edit?’
‘Yes. Do you think there would be any hope of its success?’
Jasper shook his head.
‘Your father is not the man for that, Marian. I don’t say it
disrespectfully; I mean that he doesn’t seem to me to have that
kind of aptitude. It would be a disastrous speculation.’
‘I felt that. Of course I can’t think of it now.’
She smiled, raising her face to his.
‘Don’t trouble,’ said Jasper. ‘Wait a little, till I have made
myself independent of Fadge and a few other men, and your father
shall see how heartily I wish to be of use to him. He will miss
your help, I’m afraid?’
‘Yes. I shall feel it a cruelty when I have to leave him. He has
only just told me that his sight is beginning to fail. Oh, why
didn’t his brother leave him a little money? It was such
unkindness! Surely he had a much better right than Amy, or than
myself either. But literature has been a curse to father all his
life. My uncle hated it, and I suppose that was why he left
father nothing.’
‘But how am I to see you often? That’s the first question. I know
what I shall do. I must take new lodgings, for the girls and
myself, all in the same house. We must have two sitting-rooms;
then you will come to my room without any difficulty. These
astonishing proprieties are so easily satisfied after all.’
‘You will really do that?’
‘Yes. I shall go and look for rooms to-morrow. Then when you come
you can always ask for Maud or Dora, you know. They will be very
glad of a change to more respectable quarters.’
‘I won’t stay to see them now, Jasper,’ said Marian, her thoughts
turning to the girls.
‘Very well. You are safe for another hour, but to make certain
you shall go at a quarter to five. Your mother won’t be against
us?’
‘Poor mother—no. But she won’t dare to justify me before
father.’
‘I feel as if I should play a mean part in leaving it to you to
tell your father. Marian, I will brave it out and go and see
him.’
‘Oh, it would be better not to.’
‘Then I will write to him—such a letter as he can’t possibly
take in ill part.’
Marian pondered this proposal.
‘You shall do that, Jasper, if you are willing. But not yet;
presently.’
‘You don’t wish him to know at once?’
‘We had better wait a little. You know,’ she added laughing,
‘that my legacy is only in name mine as yet. The will hasn’t been
proved. And then the money will have to be realised.’
She informed him of the details; Jasper listened with his eyes on
the ground.
They were now sitting on chairs drawn close to each other. It was
with a sense of relief that Jasper had passed from dithyrambs to
conversation on practical points; Marian’s excited sensitiveness
could not but observe this, and she kept watching the motions of
his countenance. At length he even let go her hand.
‘You would prefer,’ he said reflectively, ‘that nothing should be
said to your father until that business is finished?’
‘If you consent to it.’
‘Oh, I have no doubt it’s as well.’
Her little phrase of self-subjection, and its tremulous tone,
called for another answer than this. Jasper fell again into
thought, and clearly it was thought of practical things.
‘I think I must go now, Jasper,’ she said.
‘Must you? Well, if you had rather.’
He rose, though she was still seated. Marian moved a few steps
away, but turned and approached him again.
‘Do you really love me?’ she asked, taking one of his hands and
folding it between her own.
‘I do indeed love you, Marian. Are you still doubtful?’
‘You’re not sorry that I must go?’
‘But I am, dearest. I wish we could sit here undisturbed all
through the evening.’
Her touch had the same effect as before. His blood warmed again,
and he pressed her to his side, stroking her hair and kissing her
forehead.
‘Are you sorry I wear my hair short?’ she asked, longing for more
praise than he had bestowed on her.
‘Sorry? It is perfect. Everything else seems vulgar compared with
this way of yours. How strange you would look with plaits and
that kind of thing!’
‘I am so glad it pleases you.’
‘There is nothing in you that doesn’t please me, my thoughtful
girl.’
‘You called me that before. Do I seem so very thoughtful?’
‘So grave, and sweetly reserved, and with eyes so full of
meaning.’
She quivered with delight, her face hidden against his breast.
‘I seem to be new-born, Jasper. Everything in the world is new to
me, and I am strange to myself. I have never known an hour of
happiness till now, and I can’t believe yet that it has come to
me.’
She at length attired herself, and they left the house together,
of course not unobserved by the landlady. Jasper walked about
half the way to St Paul’s Crescent. It was arranged that he
should address a letter for her to the care of his sisters; but
in a day or two the change of lodgings would be effected.
When they had parted, Marian looked back. But Jasper was walking
quickly away, his head bent, in profound meditation.
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