“I forgive you because you are so coarse in fibre that you can never learn. I do but waste breath. It is not your fault; after a fashion. Yes. I forgive you. But to say that I can forget is impossible. These things shape my view of your character, in which I own myself mistaken from the beginning.”
She dared say no more, and the episode passed into silence, but it is not too much to say that from that hour Emma’s fate was fixed, though her lord and master would take his own time to announce his decision. And as little did she think as he that Sir William Hamilton, whose coming now drew near, was to be the very arbiter of that fate.
CHAPTER VI
THE FAIR TEA MAKER
Emma had cause to realize how deeply she had offended, during the next few days, for Greville assumed what she called his touch-me-not manner and was coldly polite and distant. She dreaded that attitude with all her soul for she knew neither what alienation it covered nor how to meet it. In the class from which she sprang politeness is not uncommonly the herald of fury, and she was always in expectation of a devastating hurricane which never had come as yet but was surely due one day if she could not control herself, and control herself she could not. It was impossible for her to understand why the kiss-and-be-friends reconciliation should not immediately follow a quarrel, for she “bore no malice” herself, and could not imagine why any one else should do so. She had no way of understanding the cleavage, the deep settled distaste and alienation which her outbreaks produced in a man like Greville. To him vulgarity and want of taste were more unpardonable than the fracture of any commandment of the ten, and in his cool review of Emma the fact that she had so much taste, and all of it so bad, set them universes apart.
Beauty, economy, an oddly consorted pair, pleaded alike for Emma in the calm rationalism of Greville’s mind. He knew very well he would not meet that impassioned loveliness elsewhere—loveliness that might so easily walk in satin and jewels, but for his sake contented itself with dimity and a little gold chain stringing a miniature of himself. And he knew also that never, never again would his needs be met with such comfortable economy, and never again a cook like Mrs. Cadogan be at his service without a salary that must bulk largely in his carefully kept accounts. And yet, he was certain he was nearing the end of his tether and could not endure the connection much longer.
Emma loved him passionately, tenderly, and that was but an aggravation of the offense, for if a man cares no longer for a woman her love is the last unbearable burden. She cannot realize her love as any other than a precious gift which common gratitude must repay with tenderness; she will not, cannot understand that it has in it a touch of the revolting to the man who desires her no longer. The immortal Don Juan seeking the rainbow beauty always in the next field or on the dim horizon, confident of finding her sooner or later, whispers in every man’s ear to have done with this threadbare passion and find happiness in the next soft bosom that the Eternal Feminine eternally offers—a field away, no more.
And at this time Miss Middleton’s quiet coldness and perfect restraint of manner were contrasting almost daily with Emma’s floridity of speech and over-emphasis of every gesture and attitude; or so it seemed to him. For Greville possessed even to an extreme that fastidiousness which is a kind of austerity in men who, having no austerity in morals, stress it the more in taste. He required that women should be virginal in allure though not in physical response, that they should be shy, cool, with a frozen delicate sweetness to be melted difficultly by the most polished approaches, and then enfolding the white snowdrop blossom in green leaves even from a favoured lover or husband. Such was Miss Middleton as far as he could judge. But Emma, all tropical perfumed luxuriance, expanding a warm bosom to lavish sunlight, repelled him. He was incapable of responding to such advances even in the first gust of possession. There was far too much nature in her, whereas he wanted a woman drilled by careful mother, school-mistress and dancing-master to the last perfection of self-restraint for the sake of the adored; a dainty figure of hoops and brocade in the costliest porcelain, and as cold. Nature itself must be hooped, stay-laced, and set on high heels before he could at all respect such an earth-smelling goddess.
Therefore Emma’s advances for pardon and love did but increase his discontent. What he really would have chosen would be to retain the invaluable Mrs. Cadogan and let the divine lady go, so oddly are some of us constituted. But as the way to this was not clear at present he merely chilled Emma with coldest reserve and waited on events.
“Can you never forgive me, Greville?” she said wistfully one morning, leaning over his chair after clearing away the breakfast china, and setting a bowl of red roses at his elbow, as he read a catalogue of antiques. He wore a dressing-gown of lavender silk with faint French flowering and looked unapproachably aloof and distinguished in his great chair. He turned a leaf calmly. As Romney had remarked with much shrewdness, the most unforgivable offense was that Emma had now lived with him for more than three years and yet had absorbed so little of his teaching and the high example he set her of nature discouraged with cool forms and ceremonies. The very word nature was disagreeable to Greville and the thing itself, exemplified under his nose every moment, was rapidly becoming unbearable.
“Forgiveness is scarcely the word,” he answered without raising his eyes. “I am not in the least angry with you, if that is your meaning. I merely feel that your and my dispositions are worlds apart. Exhibitions which give you pleasure to me appear odious, vulgar, revolting. Would you have the kindness to draw the curtain a little over the right window? The breeze comes in too strongly.”