‘There is nothing to forgive, my boy—nothing to forgive, Edward. And now, of course, you will go back to England?’
Edward answered quickly: ‘Yes, yes, father; they have conquered—they have conquered—I shall go back to England; and you, too, shall come with me. If it were for my own sake alone, I would stop here even so, and fight it out with them to the end till I gained the victory. But I can’t expose Marian—dear, gently nurtured, tender Marian—to the gibes and scorn of these ill-mannered planter people. She shall never again submit to the insult and contumely she has had to endure this morning.—No, no, Marian darling, we shall go back to England—back to England—back to England!’
‘And why,’ Marian asked, looking up at her father-in-law suddenly, ‘didn’t you yourself leave the country long ago? Why didn’t you go where you could mix on equal terms with your natural equals? Why have you stood so long this horrible, wicked, abominable injustice?’
The old man straightened himself up, and fire flashed from his eyes like an old lion’s as he answered proudly: ‘For Edward! First of all, I stopped here and worked to enable me to bring up my boy where his talents would have the fullest scope in free England. Next, when I had grown rich and prosperous here at Agualta, I stayed on because I wouldn’t be beaten in the battle and driven out of the country by the party of injustice and social intolerance. I wouldn’t yield to them; I wouldn’t give way to them; I wouldn’t turn my back upon the baffled and defeated clique of slave-owners, because, though my father was an English officer, my mother was a slave, Marian!’ He looked so grand and noble an old man as he uttered simply and unaffectedly those last few words—the pathetic epitaph of a terrible dead and buried wrong, still surviving in its remote effects—that Marian threw her arms around his neck passionately, and kissed him with one fervent kiss of love and admiration, almost as tenderly as she had kissed Edward himself in the heat of the first strange discovery.
‘Edward,’ she cried, with resolute enthusiasm, ‘we will not go home! We will not return to England. We, too, will stay and fight out the cruel battle against this wicked prejudice. We will do as your father has done. I love him for it—I honour him for it! To me, it’s less than nothing, my darling, that you should seem to have some small little taint by birth in the eyes of these miserable, little, outlying islanders. To me, it’s less than nothing that they should dare to look down upon you, and to set themselves up against you—you, so great, so learned, so good, so infinitely nobler than them, and better than them in every way! Who are they, the wretched, ignorant, out-of-the-way creatures, that they venture to set themselves up as our superiors? I will not yield, either. I’m my father’s daughter, and I won’t give way to them. Edward, Edward, darling Edward, we will stop here still, we shall stop here and defeat them!’
‘My darling,’ Edward answered, kissing her forehead tenderly, ‘you don’t know what you say; you don’t realise what it would be like for us to live here. I can’t expose you to so much misery and awkwardness. It would be wrong of me—unmanly of me—cowardly of me—to let my wife be constantly met with such abominable, undeserved insult!’
‘Cowardly! Edward,’ Marian cried, stamping her pretty little foot upon the ground impatiently with womanly emphasis, ‘cowardly—cowardly! The cowardice is all the other way, I fancy. I’m not ashamed of my husband, here or anywhere. I love you; I admire you; I respect you. But I can never again respect you so much if you run away, even for my sake, from this unworthy prejudice. I don’t want to live here always, for ever; God forbid! I hate and detest it; but I shall stay here a year—two years—three years, if I like, just to show the hateful creatures that I’m not afraid of them!’
‘No, no, my child,’ old Mr Hawthorn murmured tenderly, smoothing her forehead; ‘this is no home for you, Marian. Go back to England—go back to England!’
Marian turned to him with feverish energy. ‘Father,’ she cried, ‘dear, good, kind, gentle, loving father! You’ve taught me better yourself; your own words have taught me better. I won’t give way to them; I’ll stay in the land where you have stayed, and I’ll show them I’m not ashamed of you or of Edward either! Ashamed! I’m only ashamed to say the word. What is there in either of you for a woman not to be proud of with all the deepest and holiest pride in her whole nature!’
‘My darling,’ Edward answered thoughtfully, ‘we shall have to think and talk more with one another about this wretched, miserable business.’