"And you know equally well, Nannie, it was utterly hopeless to think of any marriage whatever when papa was alive. We hardly ever saw a man. Papa snubbed every one who came near us. No one dared propose, even if they wished to do so. Remember all the Andrew Merriman business?"
"Pray don't refer to that again," Joanna said.
"I only wanted to give you an instance—Nannie, would you mind sitting down? It makes me so dreadfully hot to watch you roaming about in that way. We could talk ever so much better if you would only keep still.—And there is a great deal which has to be talked over some time. As we have begun to-night, we may as well go on and get through with it. The heat makes me fidgety. I'm not inclined to go to bed."
Thus admonished, Joanna sank into the easy-chair once more. She doubled herself together, working her hands nervously, ball-and-socket fashion, in her lap. The perception that this was a new Margaret, a Margaret wholly unreckoned with, grew upon her. And along with that perception an apprehension of fronting things unknown yet of vital significance, things which, when known, must inevitably color all her future outlook, grew upon her likewise. As yet the screen of ignorance, dense though impalpable as the dense thunder-thickened sky there outside, interposed between her and those fateful things veiling them. But Margaret, the new, composed, practical, highly perfumed Margaret, was in act of drawing that screen aside. Then what would she, Joanna, see? What concourse of cruel verities lurked behind, waiting to jump on her?—Asking herself this, she shivered, notwithstanding the heat of the atmosphere and of her woolen gown, with premonition of coming chill—chill of loneliness, chill of disaster, of which such loneliness was at once the bitter flower and the root.
Her sister had followed her to the window, and stood just within it, nonchalant and comely, fanning herself with a little fan hanging by a ribbon from her waistband. The silver spangles upon the black gauze sparkled sharply in the candle-light, and the ebony sticks ticked as she waved it to and fro.
"I do so wish you wouldn't make a tragedy of all this, Nannie," she said. "But of course I knew you would, because you always think it your duty to get into a wild state of mind over everything I say or do. It would be so much more comfortable for both of us if you could get it into your head once and for all that you're not responsible for me in any way. We are equals. We're the same age—you always seem to forget that—and I'm quite as competent to manage my affairs as you are to manage yours. You have no authority over me of any description, legal or moral, none whatsoever, you know."
"I am only too well aware that I have failed to influence you, Margaret," Joanna returned, while waves of scented air, set in motion by the black and silver fan, played upon her face. "I had been thinking of that to-night, before I overheard your and Marion's conversation. I had been reproaching myself. I know we are the same age; but our dispositions are different, and I have always occupied an elder sister's position toward you. It is very distressing to me to realize how entirely I have failed to influence you. This contemplated marriage of yours gives the measure of my non-success."
"Oh! dear me! Influence—failure—really, you know, Nannie, you are most awfully provoking!" the other exclaimed. "I don't want to lose my temper and be cross, but I am so frightfully sick of this whole responsibility mania. It's been the bugbear of our lives ever since we were children. Papa and mamma sacrificed themselves and sacrificed us to it, with the result that we've always been in an unnatural attitude, like dogs trying to walk on their hind legs."
"Margaret, Margaret!" Joanna protested, scandalized by the filial profanity of the suggested picture.
"So we have, Nannie. And in what has this everlasting preaching of responsibility ended? Why, simply in making papa believe he was doing right by being rude and arrogant and dreadfully disagreeable over trifles. In making mamma a hopeless invalid. In ruining Bibby, body and soul, making him untruthful and dishonest, and inclined to do all sorts of horrid, ungentlemanly things. Hush? No, I am not going to hush, Joanna. You asked me to come here, and you asked me a question. Now you really must listen till I have said all I have to say in answer. I want to get it over. It's far too unpleasant to go through twice. And this mania about responsibility has been disastrous for you too—you know that perfectly well. It has spoiled your life by keeping you in a perpetual state of fuss and worry, and of dissatisfaction with your own conduct and everybody else's. As for me, it made me hysterical and fretful, and deceitful too. How could one help being deceitful when one was always dodging some silly trumped-up fault-finding or bother? I believe it would have broken up my nerves altogether if it had gone on much longer. And what on earth does it all mean? What were we responsible for? Who were we responsible to?" she went on contemptuously. "I don't know. And I don't believe you know either, Joanna, if you would only use your common-sense and give up worshiping words and phrases. The whole thing is nonsense, and rather lying nonsense—just a pretending to oneself that one is better and cleverer than other people. When you come to think of it, this craze for superiority is so frightfully conceited! For who cares, or ever has cared, whether we Smyrthwaites were intellectual, and high-minded, and cultured, and well-read, and all the rest of it, or not? In my opinion the system on which our parents brought us up, and on which their parents brought them up, is nothing but an excuse for self-adulation and pharisaism. I am sick to death of the whole thing, and I mean to break away from it. And the simplest way to do so is to marry Challoner. He's about as far away from it all as anybody well can be—just a modern, practical man, who cares for real things, not for advanced thought, and reform, and political economy, and questions of morals, and so on. He isn't a bit intellectual. He only reads the newspapers, or an occasional novel in the train when he's traveling, I am thankful to say. And, I am awfully glad he belongs to the Church of England, for I mean to break with the Unitarian Connection, Joanna. I don't care about doctrine one way or another; but I can see how narrow-minded and exclusive it makes people when they belong to a small sect. Unitarians are always so frightfully pleased with themselves because they believe less than other people. They're always living up to their own cleverness in not believing; and it does make them awfully hind-leggy and boring.—And then, of course, being a Nonconformist cuts one out of a lot. Socially it is no end of a disadvantage to one. It didn't signify so much in the North, but here it has stood horridly in our way. Lots of nice people would have called on us when we first came if we hadn't been dissenters. And, please understand, I mean to know everybody now and be popular. I should enjoy giving away prizes and opening bazaars, and entertaining on a big scale, and taking part in all that goes on here. It would amuse me. I can give large subscriptions, and I mean to give them. As I say, I intend to be popular and to be talked about. I intend to make myself a power in the place. And then, Joanna, there's something more—I dare say you'll think it necessary to be scandalized—but there's this—"