‘They will never consent,’ said Mrs. Egerton, after the girl had gone, ‘Oh, Jack, I wish I could believe as she does, that my brother—— But I will not deceive you, Jack. He will never, never consent. He is a proud man, though she does not know it—there are no such proud people as these simple people. I wish, I wish I could think as she does: but I can’t, I can’t, Jack!’
‘Do you really wish it, Mrs. Egerton,’ said John, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘I could not have expected that. It is more than I had any right to hope.’
‘Did I say I wished it? I can’t tell. She and you draw the heart out of my breast. I ought not to wish it. Oh, Jack, my poor Jack, this is a dreadful thing to bear.’
He let her hand go with a deep sigh. ‘Who can feel that as I do?’ he said.
‘You; oh, but it is different with you. The man (I am sure I beg your pardon) is your father. It is your duty to put up with him: it is not for you to bring up his sins against him. But we that have nothing to do with him—Jack, oh, Jack, the cases are different! and you say yourself that Elly ought not—that she knows nothing of the world.’
It was ungenerous to appeal to what he had himself said. But he consented with a melancholy movement of his head.
‘The rector has always been very kind to me. Oh, yes, I know that’s a different thing altogether. It is not like giving me—— Mrs. Egerton, I think I had better go away, for what is the use of talking. He is my father, it is true. It is my business to put up with it, to bear it—to bear everything that follows from it—but it is hard. You can’t say but what it is hard.’
‘Oh, Jack, my poor boy! She took his hand in both of hers, and, that not being enough, bent forward and kissed him in the anguish of her sympathy. ‘But what can I say to you? I can’t deceive you. I know they will never, never consent.’
John went away, not knowing where he went, as if he were following his own funeral. He felt like that, he said to himself, sadly—the funeral of all his hopes. He had his work, but what would that be, what could it matter if he made his fortune, without Elly? And then he went on reflecting, as many a man has done before him, on the spite of fate. If this had all happened before he went to Edgeley, how much less would the misery have been! It would have been bad enough, but he could have thrown it off, and perhaps in time have forgotten it: for then Elly was but a light of his childhood faint and far-off, and had not become a necessity of his life. Why was he permitted to go and see her again, to discover all that she was to him, only to lose her for ever? For Elly had been right in what she had said in her indignation, ‘A girl’s own mind is nothing.’ Even John, though he had perfect trust in her, though for a moment he had been carried away by the flash of her resolution and certainty, did not take much comfort now from Elly’s pledge. She did not understand (how should she?) what thing it was that so lightly, so easily, she made up her mind to take upon herself. Poor John put that aside in the deep despondency that overwhelmed him. And, when his mind recurred to his momentary triumph of the morning, it but added a pang the more. To think that this success had secured the only thing that had been needed a little while ago; and, now he had got it, it was nothing. He went slowly, slowly away, following (he said to himself again) his own funeral, not able to hold up his head.