The Merry-go-round

by W. Somerset Maugham

“If he does that,” cried Grace, “I shall go too.”

“Grace!” cried Mr. Castillyon, “what do you mean?”

She looked at him with shining eyes, but did not answer. They were too many against her, and she knew it useless to attempt anything more till next day, when Paul’s mother departed. Yet it was almost impossible to hold her tongue, and she was desperately tempted to cry out before them all the story of her own shameful misery.

“Oh, these virtuous people!” she muttered to herself. “They’re never content unless they see us actually roasting in hell! As if hell were needed when every sin brings along with it its own bitter punishment. And they never make excuses for us. They don’t know how many temptations we resist for the one we fall to.”

IX

But Grace found her husband more obstinate than ever before, and though she used every imaginable device he remained unmoved; by turns she was caressing and persuasive, scornful, bitter, and angry, but at length, because of his unperturbed complacency, was seized with indignant wrath. He was a man who prided himself on the accomplishment of every resolve he formed, and his determination once made, that the Bridgers at the end of their week’s warning should go, no appeals to his reason or to his emotion would induce him to another mind. Though it hurt him infinitely to thwart his wife, though it was very painful to feel her cold antagonism, his duty seemed to point clearly in one direction, and the suffering it caused made him only more resolute to do it. Paul Castillyon had a very high opinion both of the claims his tenants had upon him and of his great responsibilities towards them; and he never imagined for a moment that their private lives could be no concern of his: on the contrary, convinced that a merciful Providence had given him a trust of much consequence, he was fully prepared to answer for all who were thus committed to his charge; and he took his office so seriously that even in London he was careful to inform himself of the smallest occurrences on his estate. To all these people he was a just and not ungenerous master, charitable in their need, sympathetic in their sickness, but arrogated to himself in return full authority over their way of life. In this instance his moral sense was sincerely outraged; the presence of Fanny Bridger appeared a contamination, and with the singular prudery of some men, he could not think of her case without a nausea of disgust. It horrified him somewhat that Grace not only could defend, but even visit her; it seemed to him that a pure woman should feel only disdain for one who had so fallen.

The week passed, and Grace had been able to effect nothing; bitterly disappointed, angry with her husband and with herself, she made up her mind that no pecuniary difficulties should add to Fanny’s distress; if she had to go, at least it was possible so to provide that some measure of happiness should not be unattainable. But here she was confronted by Bridger’s obstinate determination not to be separated from his daughter; he had got it into his slow brain that the trouble came only because she had gone away, and no argument would convince him that in future little need be feared; somehow, also, he was filled with sullen resentment against the Squire, and, himself no less self-willed, refused to yield one inch. He repeated over and over that if the girl went, he and his sons must go too.

Late in the afternoon of the day before that on which Fanny was to leave for ever the village of her birth, Mrs. Castillyon sat moodily in the drawing-room, turning over the pages of a periodical, while Paul, now and then glancing at her anxiously, read with difficulty a late-published Blue-Book. A servant came in to say that Bridger would like to speak with the Squire. Paul rose to go to him, but Mrs. Castillyon begged that he might come there.

“Send him in,” said the Squire.

Bridger entered the room somewhat timidly, and stood at the door cap in hand; it was raining, and the wet of his clothes gave out an unpleasant odour. There was a certain grim savagery about the man, as though his life spent among wild things in the woods had given him a sort of fawnlike spirit of the earth.