Jessie was two years older than Frederic. She was just a little austere in temperament, singularly pure and innocent in mind. The wave of religious fervour which follows on confirmation had endured with her, and she had secretly aspired to become a nun until the advent of Frederic. Then, having escaped the wasteful expenditure of affection upon folly that fills the adolescence of most young women, she suffered a tremendous upheaval. Living with a prying, curious family, she thrust her emotion away and tried to cover it, and affected a frivolity which was entirely foreign to her. Alternately she avoided and sought Frederic’s company, as first one and then the other procedure seemed to her the less conspicuous. Her labours were all in vain, for Minna knew her condition almost as soon as she did herself, and made no secret of it. As time went on Jessie grew accustomed to the presence of love in her life, realised that it would be impossible for her to take any other husband than Frederic, and resigned herself with truly Christian fortitude and patience to wait until that happened which she desired should happen. She had never enjoyed any confidence with her mother, whom she had been brought up to regard as the most beautiful lady in the world, the “very pinnacle of human virtue.” (The phrase was her father’s, often on his lips, and Minna always referred to Mrs. Clibran-Bell as “The Pinnacle.”)
It may be ennobling and purifying to idealise your womenkind, but if your womenkind accept the position they are rather apt to believe, with disastrous results, that it is more blessed to receive than to give. Certain it is that if Robert Clibran-Bell had an ideal, he never had a wife, and that his children never had a mother.
Jessie Clibran-Bell in her simplicity believed that the Folyats had all that she had lacked. She was devoted to Francis, and when Mrs. Folyat played her sentimentalist’s game with her she was entirely deceived, saw in Mrs. Folyat a perfect hen of a mother and crept under her wing. All this took some time, and it was not until the change in the Clibran-Bell fortunes that Mrs. Folyat made room for Jessie. She made her snug and warm, and, in sheer gratitude, without making any actual confession, Jessie laid bare her feelings. Mrs. Folyat kissed her and gave her to understand that though Frederic was her favourite child and a paragon among men, yet he was unworthy of such profound, such patient, such unselfish devotion. The more she abused Frederic the more warmly did Jessie’s fondness flow. They both enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and often met in conclave in the Folyat drawing-room. So absorbed did Mrs. Folyat become in the pursuit of this new intrigue that she lost interest in Gertrude’s affair and devoted herself to the snaring of Frederic.
[XVII
FREDERIC SNARED]
| There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. | ||
| HAMLET |
THE snaring of men is the tamest sport in the world. It is so ridiculously easy. Let but the female cast a favourable eye upon the male and he is hers—for as long as she is clever enough to keep him. Whether a prize so easily won is worth the keeping is a matter for every woman to decide for herself. Generally the matter is settled by the advent of children, or by economic complications, or by fear of public opinion. Desire waits upon vanity and vanity is the destroyer of love. Unhappily passion is so exceedingly rare that there would be neither marriage nor giving in marriage if men and women did not hoodwink themselves and each other. Quite clearly the world would be the better without the hoodwinking and the marriages resulting from it, but, these being in the majority, and the ignoble art of hoodwinking being passed on from generation to generation, and commended by eminent divines and popular writers, and since women insist on getting married in all circumstances and at whatever cost of degradation and disappointment, there is nothing to be done but to grin and bear it and applaud every active protest that is made against it.
These were the sentiments roused in Serge Folyat when it was announced that Frederic had entered upon an indefinite engagement to marry Jessie Clibran-Bell.
Quite other and not at all philosophical were the sentiments of Frederic’s father when the announcement was made to him exactly a week after his visit to Miller Street, to the house of Mrs. Lipsett. He was shocked and outraged, but as the announcement was made to him by his wife—in their bedroom—and she seemed to take an extraordinary pleasure in it, he was silent. Mrs. Folyat declared herself entirely taken by surprise. She had made Frederic take her and Jessie to the pantomime, and on the way home Jessie had stolen her hand into hers and said:
“I am so happy.”