The Yellow Book Volume II Part 11

You say you want to get work as a governess; but that's only an excuse for not going away with me."

"You never let me do anything for you."

"I don't ask you to. I never demand anything of you. I'm not a tyrant; but that's no reason why you should want to desert me; you're the last person I have."

Janet hated arguments and talk about affairs which were obviously settled. They had talked for almost an hour, they could neither of them gain anything from the conversation, and yet her father seemed to delight in prolonging it. She did not wish to defend her course. She would willingly have allowed her father to put her in the wrong, if only he had left her alone to do what both of them wanted.

"You want to pose as a kind of martyr, I suppose. Your father hasn't treated you well, he only loved your sister; you've a grievance against him."

"No, indeed; you know it's not so."

The impossibility of answering such charges, all the unnecessary fatigue, had brought her very near crying: she felt the lump in her throat, the aching in her breast. Be a governess? Why, she would willingly be a factory girl, working her life out for a few s.h.i.+llings a week, if only she could be left alone to be straightforward. The picture of the girls with shawl and basket leaving the factory came before her eyes. She really envied them, and pictured herself walking home to her lonely garret, forgotten and in peace.

"But that's how our relations and friends will look upon your conduct."

"Oh no," she answered, trying to smile and say something amusing after the manner of Gertrude; "they will only shake their heads at their daughters and say, 'There goes another rebel who isn't content to be beautiful, innocent, and protected.'"

But Janet's attempts to be amusing were not successful with her father.

"They won't at all. They'll say, 'At any rate her father is well off enough to give her enough to live upon, and not make her work as a governess.'"

"_We_ know that's got nothing to do with it. If I were dependent, I should feel I'd less right to choose----"

"But you're mistaken; that's not honesty, but egoism, on your part."

Janet had nothing to answer; there was a pause, as if her father wished her to argue the point. She thought, perhaps, she had better say something, else she would show too plainly that she saw he was in the wrong; but she said nothing, and he went on: "And what will people say at the idea of your being a governess? Practically a servant in a stranger's house, with a pretence of equality, but less pay than a good cook. What will all our friends say?"

Janet did not wish to say to herself in so many words that her father was a sn.o.b. If he had left her alone, she would have been satisfied with the unacknowledged feeling that he attached importance to certain things.

"Surely people of understanding know there's no harm in being a governess, and I'm quite willing to be ignored by anyone who can't see that."

These were the first words she spoke with any warmth.

"Selfishness again. It's not only your concern: what will your sister think and feel about it?"

"Gerty is sensible enough to think as I do; besides, she is very happy, and so has no right to dictate to other people about their affairs; indeed, she won't trouble about it--why should she? I'm not part of her."

"You're unjust to Gertrude: your sister is too sweet and modest to wish to dictate to any one."

"Exactly." Janet could not help saying this one word, and yet she knew that it would irritate her father still more.

"And who would take you as a governess? You don't find it easy to live even with your own people, and I don't know what you can teach.

Perhaps you will reproach me as Laura did her mother, and say it was my fault you didn't go to Girton?"

"Oh, I think I can manage. My music is not much, I know; but I think it's good enough to be useful."

"Are you going to say that I was wrong in not encouraging you to train for a professional musician?"

"I hadn't the faintest notion of reproaching you for anything: it was only modesty."

She knew that having pa.s.sed the period when she might have cried, she was being fatigued into the flippant stage, and her father hated that above everything.

"Now you're beginning to sneer in your superior way," Dr. Worgan said, walking up the room, "talking to me as if I were an idiot----"

He was interrupted by the maid who came in to ask Janet whether she could put out the light in the hall. Janet looked questioningly at her father, who had faced round when he heard the door open, and he said yes.

"And, Callant," Janet cried after her, and then went on in a lower tone as she reappeared, "we shall want breakfast at eight to-morrow; Dr. Worgan is going out early."

The door was shut once more. Her father seemed vexed at the interruption so welcome to her.

"Well, I never could persuade you in anything; but I resent the way in which you look on my advice as if it were selfish--I'm only anxious for your own welfare."

In bed Janet lay awake thinking over the conversation. She had an instinctive dislike to judging any one, especially her father. Why couldn't people who understood each other remain satisfied with their tacit understanding, and each go his own way without pretence? She was sure her father did not really want her, he was only opposing her desertion to justify himself in his own eyes, trying to persuade himself that he did love her. If he had just let things take their natural course and made no objections against his better judgment, she would not have criticised him; she had never felt aggrieved at his preference for Gertrude: it so happened that she was not sympathetic to him, and they both knew it. Over and over again as she lay in bed, she argued out all these points with herself. If he had said, "You're a good girl, you're doing the right thing; I admire you, though we're not sympathetic," his humanity would have given her deep pleasure, and they might have felt more loving towards each other than ever before.

Perhaps that was too much to expect; but at any rate he might have left her alone. Anything rather than all this pretence, which forced her to criticise him and defend herself.

But perhaps she had not given him a chance? She knew that every movement and look of hers irritated him: if only she could have not been herself, he might have been generous. But then, as if to make up for this thought, she said aloud to herself:

"Generosity, logic, and an objection to unnecessary talking are manly qualities." And then she repented for becoming bitter.

"But why must all the hateful things in life be defined and printed on one's mind in so many words? I could face difficulties quite well without being forced to set all the unpleasantnesses in life clearly out. And this makes me bitter."

She was terribly afraid of becoming bitter. Bitterness was for the failures, and why should she own to being a failure; surely she was not aiming very high? She was oppressed by the horrible fear of becoming old-maidish and narrow. Perhaps she would change gradually without being able to prevent, without even noticing the change. Every now and then she spoke her thoughts aloud.

"I can't have taking ways: some people think I'm superior and crus.h.i.+ng, father says I'm selfish;" and yet she could not think of any great pleasures which she had longed for and claimed. Gerty had never hidden her wishes or sacrificed anything to others, and she always got everything she fancied; yet she was not selfish.

Then the old utter dejection came over her as she thought of her life; if no one should love her, and she should grow old and fixed in desolation? This was no sorrow at an unfortunate circ.u.mstance, but a dejection so far-reaching that its existence seemed to her more real than her own; it must have existed in the world before she was born, it must have been since the beginning. The smaller clouds which had darkened her day were forced aside, and the whole heaven was black with this great hopelessness. If any sorrow had struck her, death, disgrace, crime, that would have been a laughing matter compared with this.

Perhaps life would be better when she was a governess; she would be doing something, moulding her own life, ill-treated with actual wrongs perhaps. In the darkness of her heaven there came a little patch of blue sky, the hopefulness which was always there behind the cloud, and she fell asleep, dreamily looking forward to a struggle, to real life with possibilities--dim pictures.

III

A month afterwards, on a bitterly cold February day, Janet was wandering miserably about the house. She was to start in a few days for Bristol, where she had got a place as governess to two little girls, the daughters of a widower, a house-master at the school. Her father had left the day before. Janet could not help crying as she sat desolately in her cold bedroom trying to concern herself with packing and the arrangements for her journey. She was to dine that evening with Lady Beamish, to meet Gerty and her husband and say good-bye. She did not want to go a bit, she would rather have stayed at home and been miserable by herself. She had, as usual, asked nothing of any of her friends; she felt extraordinarily alone, and she grew terrified when she asked herself what connected her with the world at all, how was she going to live and why? What hold had she on life? She might go on as a governess all her life and who would care? What reason had she to suppose that anything would justify her living? From afar the struggle had looked attractive, there was something fine and strong in it; that would be life indeed when she would have to depend entirely upon herself and work her way; but now that the time was close at hand, the struggle only looked very bitter and prosaic. In her imagination beforehand she had always looked on at herself admiringly as governess and been strengthened by the picture. Now she was acting to no gallery. Whatever strength and virtue there was in her dealing met no one's approval; and all she had before her in the immediate future was a horrible sense of loneliness, a dreaded visit, two more days to be occupied with details of packing, a cab to the station, the dull east wind, the journey, the leave-taking all the more exquisitely painful because she felt that no one cared. The sense of being neglected gave her physical pain all over her body until her finger-tips ached. How is it possible, she thought, that a human being in the world for only a few years can be so hopeless and alone?

In the cab on her way to Lady Beamish she began to think at once of the evening before her. She tried to comfort herself with the idea of seeing Gerty, sweet Gerty, who charmed every one, and what close friends they had been! But the thought of Lady Beamish disturbed and frightened her. Lady Beamish was a very handsome woman of sixty, with gorgeous black hair showing no thread of white. She had been a great beauty, and a beauty about whom no one could tell any stories; she had married a very brilliant and successful man, and seconded him most ably during his lifetime. Those who disliked her declared she was fickle, and set too much value on her social position. Janet had always fancied that she objected from the beginning to her second son's engagement to Gertrude; but there was no understanding her, and if Janet had been asked to point to some one who was radically unsimple, she would at once have thought of Lady Beamish. She had been told of many charming things which she had done, and she had heard her say the sweetest things; but then suddenly she was stiff and unforgiving. There was no doubt about her cleverness and insight; many of her actions showed complete disregard of convention, and yet, whenever Janet had seen her, she had always been lifted up on a safe height by her own high birth, her dead husband's distinctions, her imposing appearance, and hedged round by all the social duties which she performed so well. Janet saw that Lady Beamish's invitation was kind; but she was the last person with whom she would have chosen to spend that evening. But here she was at the door, there was no escape.

Lady Beamish was alone in the drawing-room. "I'm very sorry, I'm afraid I've brought you here on false pretences. I've just had a telegram from Gertrude to say that Charlie has a cold. I suppose she's afraid it may be influenza, and so she's staying at home to look after him. And Harry has gone to the play, so we shall be quite alone."

Janet's heart sank. Gerty had been the one consoling circ.u.mstance about that evening; besides, Lady Beamish would never have asked her if Gerty had not been coming. How would she manage with Lady Beamish all alone? She made up her mind to go as soon after dinner as she could.

They talked about Gertrude; that was a good subject for Janet, and she clung to it; she was delighted to hear Lady Beamish praise her warmly.

As they sat down to dinner Lady Beamish said:

"You're not looking well, Janet?"

"I'm rather tired," she answered lightly; "I've been troubled lately, the weight of the world----but I'm quite well."