‘Like what?’ cried Mrs. Tracy. ‘Millicent, I have told you again and again that you are falling in love with that boy.’
‘Not such a fool as that,’ said Millicent, with a faint colour on her averted face. ‘Like a swindler; that is what I meant. Why should he care for me? It was not him I was thinking of;—and then to think it should all come to nothing, after one felt so sure!’
‘My dear, I know it was a great disappointment,’ said the mother, with soft sympathy. ‘I don’t wonder you felt it; but there are better than him in the world, after all. I would not vex myself about what’s past. You will enjoy the change, and your spirits will come back, and you’ll find something better before long.’ Millicent did not answer; she made a little impatient movement with her head when her mother spoke of change, and that sullen cloud, which awoke an incipient line in her forehead and frightened Mrs. Tracy, came over her brow. ‘You don’t know what work is,’ resumed the mother. ‘Fancy what it would be to sit still at your needle for hours at a time! But to be sure it is all nonsense, and you don’t mean it. I don’t say it is not of more importance to us than to most people: but of course it’s every young woman’s aim to be married. It’s all nonsense what people talk of women’s work. You may depend upon it, Millicent, it’s only ugly women and old women that talk that stuff. No man can bear to hear it. They like you a great deal best as you are.’
‘As if I cared!’ cried Millicent, with scorn. ‘They are such fools! Just think of Ben Renton,—doing nothing, and losing his time, and never seeing through us all these months, and going on with his nonsense to me, as if I was one to understand it! And all because I’m rather pretty!’ she said with disgust. ‘It is enough to make one sick. I wonder I don’t hate them or despise them,—they are such fools!’
‘Millicent, you are out of temper,’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘I wish you would not talk in that way. If anybody were to hear you——’
‘I wish they could all hear me!’ said Millicent, growing fiercer. ‘Let’s go and gamble at Homburg, mamma. I think I should like it I think I should be lucky. Do I care for a stupid man to come and mumble over my hands? Bah!’ cried Millicent, looking at her own white, rose-tipped fingers, which Ben Renton, in his passion, had kissed. She looked at them with a certain disgust; but it was not Ben who disgusted her. Perhaps in that sudden fit of sullenness and temper she was nearer the purer world than ever she had been before in her life. Other men would kiss those hands,—other voices would tell that same tale in her ear,—while she sat and smiled and considered whether the suitor was rich enough; and, oh, heaven! why was it all? Because she was rather pretty, and had no heart nor womanly soul in her,—and because they were such fools!
Something like this Millicent thought as she sat with her elbows on the table, leaning her head in her hands. It was not that any impulse in favour of her ‘sex’ moved her altogether unintellectual, unspeculative being. She did not care a straw for the sex. Women were not perhaps ‘such fools’ as men in this particular way. Beyond that she had never thought on the subject. ‘How nice it would be to have money of one’s own!’ she said; ‘how nice it would be to win it over a table with no trouble,—and have all the excitement in the bargain! And if one lost, one could always begin again; whereas with men,—I don’t believe I shall ever marry well,’ she said, suddenly. ‘If I marry at all it will be some adventurer who will take us in. Now, mamma, you’ll remember what I say; I feel sure of it in my heart.’
‘I never saw you in such a dreadful temper,’ said her mother. ‘Is it my fault that you go on at me? But I know what is the reason. You are in love with this fellow that has not a penny. I knew how it would be.’
‘In love with him!’ said Millicent. ‘I wonder if I am in love with him! If I were I could not think him such a fool. Poor fellow! he’s gone and robbed himself to send you to the baths, and you don’t want the baths any more than he does. He ought to marry Mary Westbury and settle down, and get back his money. Most likely he would get back his money if he married Mary. And yet I think I should hate her too; but that would be for the sake of the Manor, and not for Ben. I had set my heart on the Manor, and that lovely house in Berkeley Square. Oh, don’t speak to me! It’s too bad! I can’t bear it!’ cried Millicent, suddenly hiding her face in her hands.
Thus confused, not knowing what was in her own mind, Millicent Tracy ran on, driving her mother wild. She did not know what she meant any more than Mrs. Tracy did. Acute disappointment, a kind of reverence and admiration of Ben, mixed strangely with a worldling’s unfeigned astonishment and contempt at his simplicity, were in her mind. And there were other things besides. Regrets, not only for the house in Berkeley Square, but for the lost opportunity of perhaps catching at a different kind of life,—longings quite undefined and inarticulate for something better,—self-disgust, self-pity,—all of which took form somehow in this bitter outburst of ‘temper,’ and supreme, unspeakable discontent. Was she, after all, ‘in love’ with Ben? But how could Millicent answer that question, not knowing what love was? Sometimes she was seized with a sort of passionate kindness for him, gratitude for his devotion, always mingled with half contempt, half pity. In short, she did not know what was in her, vaguely struggling for the mastery. Principles which, perhaps, if good influence had been possible,—if!—poor hypothesis, that hangs about the road to ruin! And yet who knows what tears the angels may weep over those blind strugglings of the human soul towards something better, or of what account they may be in the eyes of One kinder than all angels? Who knows what such agitation means, what hopes rise with it, and in what blank sickening of soul and darkening of the world it comes to an end?