EDITH'S DECISION.
Such was young Jacob's piety, that rather than remain all the Sunday at Twistle Farm with that heterodox father of his, he rode over to Wenderholme in order to attend divine service there.
He got to church in very good time; and when he took his seat in Mrs. Stanburne's pew, the ladies had not yet arrived. Indeed, even the Prigleys had not taken their places, so that young Jacob had something to interest him in watching the gradual arrival of the members of the congregation.
The reader may remember that Mrs. Stanburne had a small pew of her own appertaining to the Cottage, whereas there was a large pew appertaining to the Hall. Mrs. Stanburne still remained faithful to her little pew, and the great comfortable enclosure (a sort of drawing-room without ceiling, and with walls only four feet high) had been empty since the departure of the Colonel and Lady Helena.
The congregation gradually constituted itself; the Prigleys soon filled the pew belonging to the vicarage; the principal farmers on the Wenderholme estate penned themselves like sheep (Mr. Prigley's sheep) in their narrow wooden partitions; and lastly came Mrs. Stanburne and Edith. When people meet in a pew at church, their greetings are considerably abridged; and if Edith's face was more than usually sad, her lover might, if he liked, attribute the expression to religious seriousness.
Young Jacob kneeled whilst Mr. Prigley read the general confession, and when he got up again his eyes wandered over the pews before him, before they settled again upon his prayer-book.
He gave a start of astonishment. In the great Wenderholme pew, quietly in one corner of it, sat the present owner of the estate!
Young Jacob's heart beat. He knew that the plot was thickening, and that a great struggle was at hand. But he was in a better position to meet his uncle to-day than he had been yesterday. Yesterday he had been undecided, and though inwardly rebellious, had had no plans; to-day he was resolved, and had plans. The conversation with the Doctor had been succeeded by another conversation with his father, and the consequence was that young Jacob was resolved that, rather than give up Edith, he would go to the length of a rupture with the authorities at Milend.
Mr. Prigley preached one of his best sermons that day, but neither of the two Jacob Ogdens paid very much attention to it, I am afraid. They were polishing their weapons for the combat. Each was taking the gravest resolutions, each was resolving upon the sacrifice of long-cherished hopes; for, notwithstanding the hardness of the manufacturer's nature, he had still rather tender feelings about "little Jacob," as he still habitually called him, and it was painful to think that a youth in all respects so perfectly the gentleman should not succeed to a splendid position for which he had been expressly and elaborately prepared. On the other hand, the manufacturer could not endure that anybody should thwart his will and not be sufficiently punished for it; and if little Jacob persisted in marrying in opposition to the authorities at Milend, the only punishment adequate to an offence so heinous was the extreme one of disinheritance.
Both the hostile parties were made aware that the service was at an end by the general movement of the congregation. Jacob Ogden left his pew before anybody else, and walked straight to that of Mrs. Stanburne. He bowed slightly to the ladies, and beckoned to young Jacob, who came to the pew-door. Then he whispered in his ear,—
"Come and have your dinner with me at Wendrum 'All."
"I cannot, uncle. I've promised to lunch at the Cottage."
"You'd better have your dinner with me. If you stop at the Cottage, it'll be worse for you and it'll be worse for 'er."
"Do what you like, sir; my mind is made up."
"Very well; you'll rue it."
And the owner of Wenderholme walked alone across the park, and dined alone in the great dining-room. During dinner (an extravagance very rare at all times with him, and in solitude unprecedented), he ordered a bottle of champagne.
Meanwhile young Jacob lunched with the two ladies at the Cottage. Mrs. Stanburne saw that there was something wrong, some cause of trouble and anxiety, so she did her best to remove the burden which seemed to oppress the minds of the young people. Old Mrs. Stanburne had great powers of conversation, and made young Jacob talk. She made him talk about Oxford, and then she made him talk about his present occupations, and of the transition from one to the other. Finally she asked him how he liked the life of a cotton-manufacturer.
"Not much, Mrs. Stanburne. But it signifies very little whether I liked it or not, for I have left it."
"Left it! Well, but is not that very imprudent? When gentlemen have a great deal of property in factories, they ought to know all about it, and I have always heard that the only way to do that is to pass a year or two in the trade."
"Very true. But then I shall never have any property in factories, so there is no occasion for me to learn the trade."
Mrs. Stanburne was much astonished, but her good-breeding struggled against curiosity. Edith did not seem to be paying any attention to what was going forward; she looked out of the window, and it was evident that she was mentally absent.
"Edith," Mrs. Stanburne said at last, "do you hear what Jacob says? He says he has left business. I think it is very imprudent; and when I say so, he tells me that he will never have any factories."
Edith lent the most languid attention to her grandmother's piece of information. Her whole conduct was just the reverse of her usual way of behaving. Formerly she had taken the liveliest interest in every thing that concerned her lover, so, to make her listen, he blurted out the truth suddenly in one sentence.
"My uncle has disinherited me. I am going to be a doctor. I am going to learn the profession with Mr. Bardly in Shayton."
Mrs. Stanburne was more surprised by this news than Edith was. "But why?" she asked, emphatically; "why has he disinherited you? I thought you were on the best possible terms. He spoke to you to-day as he was going out of church."
Young Jacob was silent for a minute. Mrs. Stanburne came back to the charge. "But why, I say—why?"
"My uncle wants me to marry a girl of his own choosing, called Sally Smethurst."
Here young Jacob paused, then he took courage and added,—"and I, Mrs. Stanburne, have ventured for some years past to indulge dreams and hopes which may never be realized. You know what my dreams have been. I had hoped that perhaps my plain common name might have been forgotten, and that as you and Colonel Stanburne had always been very kind to me, and Miss Edith had never wounded me by any haughtiness or coldness, I had hoped that perhaps some day any difficulties which existed might be overcome, and that she would accept me with the consent of her parents."
Edith Stanburne rose from her seat and quietly left the room. There was no agitation visible in her face, but it was very pale.
"My dear Jacob," Mrs. Stanburne said decidedly, "we like you very much—we have always liked you very much, and you have always behaved honorably, and as a gentleman. But I am sure that Edith would not sacrifice your prospects. Every thing forbids it; our esteem for yourself forbids it, and our pride forbids it. Besides, I have not authority to allow you two young people to engage yourselves without the consent of the Colonel and Lady Helena."
"May I not speak to Miss Stanburne?"
"It would be better that you should not speak to her in private, but you may speak to her if you like in my presence."
"I should be glad to know what she herself really thinks."
Mrs. Stanburne left the room, and after ten minutes had elapsed, which seemed to young Jacob like a century, she returned, accompanied by her grand-daughter.
Edith was still pale, but she had a look of great self-possession. What was going on in her mind just then may be best expressed by the following little soliloquy:—
"Poor, dear Jacob, how I do love him! What a paradise it would be, that simple, quiet life with him—at Shayton, anywhere in the world! But I love him too much to ruin him, so I must be hard now." And then she acted her part.
Looking at her lover coldly, she was the first to speak. "Mr. Ogden," she said, "I may sink a good deal in your esteem by what I am going to say to you, but my own future must be considered as well as yours. We should be sorry to sacrifice your prospects, but I am thinking of myself also. I do not think that I could live contentedly as a surgeon's wife at Shayton."
Young Jacob was astounded. This from Edith! The very last thing he had ever anticipated was an objection of the selfish kind from her. He had counted upon all obstacles but this; and all other obstacles were surmountable, but this was insurmountable. He saw at once that it would be madness to marry a young lady who despised his life, and the labors which he went through for her sake.
If he could only have known! She, poor thing, was new in this game of cruelty with a kind intention, and she played it with even more than necessary hardness. Perhaps she felt that without this overstrung hardness she could not deceive him at all; that the least approach to tenderness would be fatal to her purpose. She had imagination enough to conceive and act a part utterly foreign to her character, but not imagination enough to act a part only just sufficiently foreign to herself to serve her immediate end. So there was a harsh excess in what she did.
"Miss Stanburne," he said at last, "this gives me great pain."
The poor girl writhed inwardly, but she maintained a serene countenance, and, looking young Jacob full in the face, said, with a well-imitated sneer,—
"I may say with truth that it has latterly been agreeable to me to think that the daughter of Colonel Stanburne would one day live at Wenderholme.—But I confess I have not the sort of heroism which would consent to be a surgeon's wife in such a place as Shayton."
"If these are your reasons, Miss Stanburne, I have done. A man would be a fool to sacrifice his prospects, and slave at a profession all his life, for a woman who paid him with contempt. And I think I may say that you dismiss me with uncommon coolness. I've loved you these twelve years—I've loved you ever since I was a child. I never loved any other woman; and the reward of this devotion is, that I am sent away when my prospects are clouded, without a sign of emotion or a syllable to express regret. I think you might say you are sorry, at any rate."
"Very well, I will say that. I am sorry."
By a supreme effort of acting, Edith put an expression into her face which conveyed the idea that she considered emotion ridiculous, and young Jacob's own conduct as verging slightly upon the absurd. This stung him to the quick.
"Miss Stanburne," he said, after a pause, "this conversation is leading to no good. It is useless to prolong it."
"I quite agree with you."
And he was gone.
If he could have seen what passed after his departure, he would have gone back to Shayton in a very different frame of mind. Edith had acted her part and held out bravely to the last, but when Jacob was once fairly out of the house, the faithful heart could endure its self-inflicted torture no longer, and she ran upstairs to her bedroom and locked the door, and burst into bitter tears. "How good and brave he is, and how he loves me! It is hard, it is very hard, to have to throw away a heart like his. But I will not be his ruin—I never will be his ruin!" Then a thousand tender recollections came into her memory—recollections of the long years of his faithful love and service. It had begun in their childhood, when first she called him "Charley," giving him one of her own names; it had continued year after year until this very day, when he would have sacrificed all for her, and she had treated him with coldness and cruelty—she who so loved him! And to think that he would never know the truth—that the long dreary future would wear itself gradually out until both of them were in their graves, and that he would never know how her heart yearned to him, and remained faithful to him always! That thought was the hardest and bitterest of them all, that he would never know; that all his life he would retain that misconception about her which she herself had so carefully created! It is easy to bear the bad opinion of people we care nothing about, but when those we most love disapprove, how eagerly we desire their absolution!
Edith was not quite so strong as she herself believed. The late events had tried her courage to the utmost, and outwardly she seemed to have borne them well; but they had strained her nervous system a good deal, and this last trial of her fortitude had been too much, even for her. Her agony rapidly passed from mental grief into an uncontrollable crisis of the nerves. She went through this alone, lying upon her bed, sobbing and moaning, her face on the pillow, her hands convulsively agitated. Then came utter vacancy, and after the vacancy a slow, painful awakening to the new sadness of her life.