Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family

by George Manville Fenn

Once she had allowed that terrible idea—that it was her fate—to obtain entrance, and she was lost, for it produced a weak submission that stifled every hope. Drift, drift, drift—resigning herself to what she thought was the inevitable. Some day, she told herself, Jock would come and order her to leave home and all she loved, and follow him wheresoever he willed; and she would have to go. He was her master, her fate; and mingled with her horror of him there was that inexplicable fascination that exercised upon her will the power of the mesmerist upon his patient, and she could fight no more. When it would be she knew not, thought not; only she knew that the time would come, and when it did she could no more resist, no more battle with it, than against that other inevitable point that would end her weary life—when the angel of death would overshadow her with his heavy wings, touch her with icy finger, and bid her away.

Always brooding now over these two fixed points in her career—the coming of Jock Morrison and the coming of the end; and so she drifted on. She heard the talk of the wedding that she knew would never be; for if the day did come, and she were taken to the church, she felt that her fate would pluck her from the very altar, or even from her husband’s arms.

She knew of the love of James Magnus, and she felt a curious kind of pity for one whom she liked and esteemed; but she closed her eyes with a weary smile as she thought of him, for she knew that she was drifting away, and that even to look at him was to give him pain.

Drifting still when taken to see the talked-of home, asked opinions upon decorations, and taken by father and sister where she was prepared to be decked for the sacrifice. Drifting, too, at party or ball, where she met Perry-Morton, who always seemed to her like some nebulous mist, that was absorbed and died away in the presence of the giant ever filling her imagination.

Go where she would, she felt that she would see him somewhere, though often it was but imagination. Still it kept Jock Morrison always in her mind, and he knew that he was secure of his prize, waiting patiently till she came back from abroad.

At first she had felt a kind of sorrow for Perry-Morton, and wanted to warn him of what her fate would be; but the pity gave place to contempt, the contempt to disgust, the disgust to dread; for she felt that if she warned him he would take steps to assert himself, and if he did, she knew in her heart that her fate, as she called him, would not stop at taking his life.

And so by slow degrees Julia drifted from active opposition into a morbid belief that resistance was vain, nursing her horror in her own racked breast, and waiting for the fulfilment of her fate. As Cynthia had complained, she had grown reticent, and made no confidante of her sister; in fact, there were times, after seeing Morrison, when she felt with a sigh that she should be glad when all was over, and she need think no more. For she was weary of thinking, weary of this keeping up appearances, weary of Perry-Morton, of his sisters, of home, of her own life.

There were times when she looked from her window longingly towards where she knew the long lake lay in the hollow of the Park, and wondered whether it would not be better to flee from the house some evening, go down to the bridge, and throw herself in. She shuddered as she formed the idea; not from dread of death, which would have been like rest to her; but because she felt that she would be only hastening her fate, and that she did fear. For so surely as she left the house to cross the Park, so surely she knew that Jock Morrison would start up from the grass and take her away.

And so it had come to the wedding-eve, and the great burly form had shown itself in the garden. She had seen it early in the evening, and she had felt that it was there hour after hour, till Perry-Morton had left, and she had gone to the window, drawn there in spite of herself. Later on she had obeyed Jock’s signals, feeling as if he were speaking to her—telling her that the time had come, and dressing herself in her plainest things, she had sat down and waited by the open window, acting mechanically, till the deep voice came up to where she sat, bidding her come down now.

She felt no emotion, for it was all as if she were in a dream. She obeyed, however, going out on to the landing, after closing her window, to find that all was very silent in the house. Then for a moment she went and kneeled down upon the mat by her sister’s door, laid her cheek against it, sighed heavily and kissed the panel that separated them, and slowly descended the stairs, entered the dining-room, and, still as if drawn by her fate, unfastened the shutters and window, which latter was thrown open, and Jock Morrison stepped boldly into the room.