MR THURSLEY came heavily up the stair, with intention, not simply to warn the lovers of his coming, but to send before him a certain intimation of the temper of mind, not soft or yielding, in which he was approaching. It was time that this matter should be settled one way or another. He was not thinking sentimentally of what people might call the happiness of his daughter—that is, of letting her have her own way whatever might happen—but, as he thought, wisely, judiciously, of what was best for her,—of her proper establishment in life. He gave them warning, by his heavy deliberate approach, that he had assumed this judicial position, and both of them understood by instinct that it was so. They drew a little apart to prepare for him, and felt that the crisis had come. It must be added, however, that underlying all the bitter excitement of this meeting, and of the father’s judgment, there lay a consciousness in all their minds that no judgment could settle the matter; and that after the most serious decision that could be made by the natural authority, there was yet another veto more important, in the will of the person chiefly concerned.
Mr Thursley, however, did everything that was most adapted to impress the minds of the young people with the idea of a supreme and decisive judgment. He put himself into a great chair, which he drew into the centre of the room, facing them. He rung for another lamp, which changed the twilight of the large room into a circle of full light round the group: and having made these preparations, he bade Gervase speak. “We have all been going on in a sort of happy-go-lucky way,” he said; “but this can’t last any longer. It will be better for you to tell me what you intend, and where this is to lead to. For Madeline’s sake, I feel that it is my duty to interfere.”
“I am very glad, sir, of the opportunity,” Gervase said; and he made his statement, as he had already made it to Madeline, Mr Thursley listening without interrupting by a word the concise report. When the young man had ended, there was a brief pause.
“What you have to tell me,” said Mr Thursley at length, “is that you want to marry my daughter, a girl accustomed to every luxury; but that having wasted every penny you had, against my advice, in a quixotic and quite unnecessary act, you have now nothing, absolutely nothing——”
“Except the house and its contents, which means——”
“Three or four thousand pounds at the outside—perhaps not so much, making a forced sale, as you will have to do. Is Madeline to live and have a proper maintenance provided for her on the interest, say, of four thousand pounds?”
“I am in your hands, sir,” said Gervase. “No such danger as this seemed possible at the time when we first loved each other. Had I been a poor man then, I should not have presumed to ask Madeline to share my fate. Things have gone against me, without any fault of mine, and now——” He made a momentary pause. Madeline, leaning forward, put her hand upon his. He clasped it tight, and continued, in a more vigorous voice: “The only thing that has not changed is our love for each other,—and nothing can change that.”
There are few things more irritating than those signs of mutual agreement between two who are on the other side from that occupied by the judicial authority. Mr Thursley was warmly moved by this irritation and annoyance. He was left alone in his dignity, while these two conspired against him. He said, with an accent of contempt, made acrid by his daughter’s mute adhesion to the foe, “Without any fault of yours!—entirely by your fault, I should say; because, in the first place, you deserted your father; and in the second, because you refused to take my advice,—because your sense of honour, forsooth—and honesty I think you called it—was more keen than mine. Honour, to my thinking,” said Mr Thursley, with lowering brows, “should keep a man even from contemplating the idea of living on his wife’s money, having none of his own.”
Hot words were on Gervase’s lips, but Madeline gave a hasty pressure to his hand, and he made no reply.
“Papa,” she said, “I appeal to your good feeling. Are these words to be said to us, in the position we are in?”
“Whom do you mean by ‘us’? I am speaking to Gervase Burton, who wants to marry you, a girl with a large fortune, having nothing.”
Once more Madeline kept him silent by the pressure of her hand. “We both recognise,” she said, “that the position is a difficult one. I can speak better than Gervase, for what can he be but angry when you taunt him in that ungenerous way? Papa, whatever you say, you are our best friend. We are not such fools as to think you are really against us. It is you we must turn to for advice. He has nothing; and I have, thanks to you, a large fortune. We see all the difficulties—what are we to do?”
Her father stared at her for a moment blankly, then he burst into a laugh. “This is turning the tables with a vengeance,” he said. “I advise you! When it is I that am the offended party.”
“Surely Madeline is right, sir,” said Gervase; “you are her father, and my friend, since ever I remember anything. If I were in any difficulty, unconnected with her, to whom should I go for advice but to you?”
“By—George!” cried the bewildered father, “you came to me for advice once, or at least I thrust my advice upon you, and a great deal of attention you paid to it! Had you taken my advice then, you would have been in a better position now.”
“Papa, you know the trouble he was in then, half mad with all the strangeness of misfortune. Gervase, let me speak! There is advice that is impossible; if you tell us to separate, to give each other up—I speak for myself—that is impossible. Advise us how we are to live, how it is to be done. I will never believe,” cried Madeline, with tears in her eyes, keeping back her lover with the pressure of her imperative hand, “that you are not our best and only friend. Tell us how to do it, and not merely that we are not to do it; any stranger could do that. But you are our best and only friend——”
This is not the usual kind of appeal to an obdurate father; but obdurate fathers are not consistent perhaps with daughters who have counted all the costs, and in the last resort are aware that they themselves are free agents, not bound more than reason and affection dictate. Mr Thursley made still a faint attempt to brave it out, to adopt the tone of centuries past, to denounce the youth and threaten the girl; but it was only a faint attempt. The look which Madeline fixed upon him, regretful not for herself but for him, grieved by the violence which, her serious eyes said, diminished her respect for her father, without disturbing her resolution, was too much for Mr Thursley. And he knew very well, to begin with, that some mode of arranging matters must be found; that no violence on his part could induce his daughter to abandon her purpose, which takes the heart out of resistance. He came at last to the terms, which he had vaguely settled in his own mind from the beginning, which were that Gervase should enter his own office, and work there, abandoning all his follies, and betaking himself to a business life. This was his ultimatum. “It is of no use telling me,” he said, “that you have no turn for business, for nobody could have managed better with that West Indian affair; and let me tell you, my boy, there is no character in the world more honourable than that of an English merchant—whatever false ideas you may have got into your head.”
“I think so too, Gervase,” said Madeline in a whisper, with once more a pressure of his hand.
“I will make one concession,” said the triumphant father, now feeling that the positions were reversed, and that he had attained his fit supremacy. “If you should find yourself in a position to settle £10,000 on Madeline, I will withdraw my opposition; if not, the office and a wife, or your freedom without her. That’s my last word—and I don’t think one father in a hundred would say as much. It is to take or to leave.”
Gervase went home to his empty echoing house with the subdued sensations of a struggle past. It was past, and his fate decided—a thing in which there is always a certain solace after a conflict. No need to enter into all the vicissitudes of argument again; no need for any more pros and cons. To take or to leave. To have Madeline with her father’s consent, and without any painful breach of the enthralling customs and traditions of life, or to drag her through all the harassing contradictions and trials of rebellion—to fret her mind with opposition to all the rules of established life. Gervase concluded with himself that it was now his certain duty to give up all those, perhaps fantastical, objections—that reluctance and rebellion which had already cost him so much. It was no longer even possible to fight. He had renounced that tenor of life which ought to have been second nature to a merchant’s son—almost arrogantly, imperatively, hearing no reason when his father had suggested it; now he could not even struggle against a necessity which involved Madeline as well as himself. The house sounded very empty as he came into it. There was an echo through and through it of the clanging of the door. He went into the library, in which he had held that last conference with his father, and sat down, sadly thinking of all that had come and gone. Had he yielded then, how different all might have been!—the house of Burton still intact; the old traditions unbroken; his father a man prosperous and respected; himself independent of all such remark as that which would now, he was painfully aware, be made everywhere. A man with nothing marrying a girl with a large fortune. When the wealth is on the other side there are no such remarks. But the moment that the woman has wealth, interest and not love is supposed to be the motive on the man’s side. How unjust, how miserable, how horrible! But however his heart might rebel against this cruel judgment, it would be made, he knew, and he would have to bear it.
If he had only done this thing which he must now do—from which there was no escape—a year ago!—if he had but consented, and pleased his father and satisfied those calls of nature and birth which, after all, it would appear no man could escape! His own father was more to him than Madeline’s, though Madeline was more than all the world. Had he but insisted more strongly, been more urgent, commanded even! Gervase sat with his head in his hands, and thought. But he knew, at the same time, that however much his father had commanded, he would not have obeyed. He would have had no faith in these paternal commands. He would have been sure, as Madeline had been, that in the end his own will would carry the day. As Madeline had been: yet Madeline had not stood out against this compromise; even her sympathy had deserted him at the last. It was by her ordinance, as well as her father’s, that his will was to be subjugated—at the last.
Gervase had many renewed impulses of rebellion as he waked and watched during that long night. He was tempted to go away to the end of the world, to disappear into the darkness, and leave them—to repent, perhaps, of their attempted coercion. He had moments of resolution to withstand all compromise, to refuse the expedient held out to him, to maintain his own way—followed by sinkings of heart and courage, by questionings with himself who was he that self-sacrifice should be demanded from every one but him? Self-sacrifice for Madeline—that was a very different thing, after all, from yielding up his own enlightened will to the obstinate insistence of his father—or of her father. A man may stand against every other claim upon him, but to prefer his own will to the woman he loves—to sacrifice her rather than do something he did not like—was very different. For her he had vowed to do everything that man could do—to die for her, to live for her, to think of nothing in comparison with her happiness. And this that was required of him was clearly for her happiness. If to release her from himself would make her happy, then it would be time for him to disappear, to go away, and leave no trace, as his father had done; but that would make her miserable. It was Madeline that had to be considered, not himself or his pride, or his preference of one kind of work to another. The young man walked about the lonely library half the night fighting with himself. He had refused his father there—the father of whom he scarcely knew how to think, whether to pity or to blame, whether to approve or censure; but who had now passed away from his horizon, leaving nothing but Madeline,—no other influence, no other hope. Madeline was all he had in the world—no family, no sympathy, no home but her. What could the answer be when the question was to sacrifice her—or himself?
Next morning he saw her, very sweet and anxious, wistfully interrogating his looks. “Nothing will make you like it, Gervase?” “No,” he said, “nothing. It is hateful always. I cannot change in my conviction; but I will do it, and make the best of it—for you, Madeline.” She asked him again before he left her, after they had talked and talked for hours. “Don’t you think, as you get used to it, you will like it better, Gervase?” “I don’t think I shall ever do anything but hate it; but never mind. I shall grumble at nothing when I have you.” She looked after him with a curious light in her eyes as he went away. She was thinking very likely what she would do were she in his place. How little she would mind! how she would conquer any antipathy she had and put it under her feet, and scorn to confess it! Women have such sentiments often, thinking how differently they would conduct themselves were they men. But then the things that are required of men are not often required of women. And Madeline reminded herself that she had no antipathy to overcome. She watched him, herself hidden among the curtains, as he went along the street, without any of the old spring and elasticity in his step. Poor Gervase! he had never known any trouble till now; but now it had come in a flood, and it was no wonder he was broken down. He was not perhaps the strongest of men by nature; but he was Gervase, which said all—and there was no other in the world.