He turned round and looked at her somewhat sternly. “What do you expect to be obliged to give up?” he said.
Between her fear of doing harm to him, whose tranquillity she had been charged to preserve, and her fear of precipitating matters and bringing upon herself at once the prohibition she feared—and that natural nervous desire to forestall a catastrophe which was entirely contradictory of the other sentiments, Winifred paused and replied to him with troubled looks rather than with speech. When she found her voice, she answered, faltering—
“What you said to me yesterday, meant giving up the truth and all I have ever cared for in my life. I have always wanted, desired, more than my life, to be of use to—the boys—and to be made to appear as if I were against them”—
Her voice was interrupted with sobs. Ah, but was not this the beginning of treachery? It was the truth, but not the whole truth; the boys were much, but there was something which was still more. Already in the first outset and beginning she was but falsely true.
“This is all about the boys, is it?” he said coldly—“as you call them. I should say the men—who have taken their own way, and had their own will, and like it, I hope. If it comes to a bargain between you and me, Winnie, there must be something more than that.”
“There can be no bargain between you and me,” said Winifred. In the meantime, looking at him, she had thought his colour varied, and that a slight stumble he made over a stone was a sign of weakness; and her heart sank with sudden compunction. “Oh, no bargain, papa! It is yours to tell me what to do, and mine to—to obey you.” Her voice weakened and grew low as she said these words. She felt as if it were a solemn promise she was making, instead of the most ordinary of dutiful speeches. He nodded his head repeatedly as she spoke.
“That’s as it should be, Winnie,—that’s as it should be; continue like that, my dear, and you shall hear no more of the new wife. So long as you are reasonable, I am quite content with my daughter, who does me credit. It is your duty to do me credit. I am going to do a great deal for you, and I have more claim than just the ordinary claim. Go in now, the rain’s coming. As for me, for all that young fellow says, I don’t believe it matters. I feel as fit as ever I did in my life. Still, bronchitis is a nuisance,” he added, coughing a little, as he followed her indoors.
Winifred did not appear again till the hour of dinner. She was, like every one who hears a sentence of death for the first time, apprehensive that the event which seemed at one moment incredible might happen the next, and she stole along the corridor at least half a dozen times, to make sure that her father was in the room called the library, in which he read his newspapers. If any sound was heard in the silence of the house, she conjured up terrible visions of a sudden fall and catastrophe.
How was it possible to oppose him in anything? If he told her to abandon Edward, she would have to reply—as if he had asked her to go out for a walk, or drive with him in his carriage—“Yes, papa.” It would not matter what he asked, she must make the same answer, conventional, meaning as little as if it had been a request for a cup of tea. And about his will the same assent would have to be necessary. She must appear to him and to the world to be very willing to supplant her brothers; she must appear to give up her lover because now she was too great and too rich to marry a poor man. This was the charge her lover himself had laid upon her. She must consent to everything. The true feelings of her mind, and all her intentions and hopes, must be laid aside, and she must appear as if she were another woman, a creature influenced by the will of others without any of her own.
Even that was a possible position. A girl might give up all natural will and impulse. She might be a passive instrument in other people’s hands. She might take passively what was given to her, and passively allow something else to be taken away: that might be weak, miserable, and unworthy—but it need not be false. What was required of her was more than this. It was required of her that she should pretend to be all this till her father should die, and then turn round and deceive him in his grave. The thought made Winifred shiver with a chill which penetrated her very heart. After, could she undo all she had done, baulk him after he was dead, proclaim to all the world that she had deceived him? Was that what Edward meant by being falsely true? She said to herself that she could not do it, that it would be impossible. In the case of her brothers, perhaps, where only renunciation was necessary, she might do it; but to gain happiness for herself she could not do it. “I cannot, I cannot!” she cried to herself under her breath; and then lower still, with an anguish of resolution and determination, “I will not!” If she gave him up, it should be for ever. She would not play a part, and pretend submission, and deceive.