‘I saw only her; but I know perfectly well what kind of man he is. He may live for the next twenty years. There is no end to these tyrannical, ill-tempered people; they live for ever. You ought to judge for yourselves. If they had their daughter settled near, coming to them from her own pleasant little home, they would be a great deal happier. You may believe me or not, but I know it. Her visits would be events; they would be proud of her, and tell everybody about her family, and what a good husband she had got, and how he gave her everything she could desire.’
‘Please God,’ said John, devoutly; his countenance had brightened in spite of himself. But then he shook his head. ‘If we had but got as far as that,’ he said.
‘You ought to take it into your own hands,’ cried I in all the fervour of a revolutionary. ‘If you sacrifice your happiness to them, it will not do them any good; it will rather do them harm. Are you going now to tell your news?’
He had got up on his feet, and stood vaguely hovering over me with a faint smile upon his face. ‘She will be pleased,’ he said; ‘no advancement, but no separation. I have not much ambition; I think I am happy too.’
‘Then, if you are all pleased,’ I cried, with annoyance which I could not restrain, ‘why did you send me on such an errand? I am the only one that seems to be impatient of the present state of affairs, and it is none of my business. Another time you need not say anything about it to me.’
‘There will never be a time when we shall not be grateful to you,’ said John; but even his mild look of appealing reproach did not move me. It is hard to interest yourself in people and find after all that they like their own way best.
CHAPTER VI
He was quite right in thinking Ellen would be pleased. And yet, after it was all over, she was a little wounded and disappointed, which was very natural. She did not want him to go away, but she wanted him to get the advancement all the same. This was foolish, but still it was natural, and just what a woman would feel. She took great pains to explain to us that it was not hesitation about John, nor even any hesitation on the part of John in going—for Ellen had a quick sense of what was desirable and heroic, and would not have wished her lover to appear indifferent about his own advancement, even though she was very thankful and happy that in reality he was so. The reason of the failure was that the firm had sent out a nephew, who was in the office, and had a prior claim. ‘Of course he had the first chance,’ Ellen said, with a countenance of great seriousness; ‘what would be the good of being a relation if he did not have the first chance?’ And I assented with all the gravity in the world. But she was disappointed, though she was so glad. There ought not to have been any one in the world who had the preference over John! She carried herself with great dignity for some time afterwards, and with the air of a person superior to the foolish and partial judgments of the world; and yet in her heart how thankful she was! from what an abyss of blank loneliness and weary exertion was her life saved! For now that I knew it a little better I could see how little that was happy was in her home. Her mother insisted that she should have that hour’s leisure in the evening. That was all that any one thought of doing for her. It was enough to keep her happy, to keep her hopeful. But without that, how long would Ellen’s brave spirit have kept up? Perhaps had she never known John, and that life of infinite tender communion, her natural happy temperament would have struggled on for a long time against all the depressing effects of circumstances, unaided. But to lose is worse than never to have had. If it is
Better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all,
yet it is at the same time harder to lose that bloom of existence out of your lot, than to have struggled on by mere help of nature without it. She had been so happy—making so little go such a long way!—that the loss of her little happiness would have been appalling to her. And yet she was dissatisfied that this heartbreak did not come. She had strung herself up to it. It would have been advancement, progress, all that a woman desires for those belonging to her, for John. Sacrificing him for the others, she was half angry not to have it in her power to sacrifice herself to his ‘rise in life.’ I think I understood her, though we never talked on the subject. She was dissatisfied, although she was relieved. We have all known these mingled feelings.