Ruth - Elizabeth Gaskell (romantic books to read txt) 📗

had excited in his partner’s mind, to determine him in considering their future marriage as a settled affair. The fitness of the thing had long ago struck him; her father’s partner—so the fortune he meant to give her might continue in the business; a man of such steadiness of character, and such a capital eye for a desirable speculation, as Mr. Farquhar—just the right age to unite the paternal with the conjugal affection, and consequently the very man for Jemima, who had something unruly in her, which might break out under a regime less wisely adjusted to the circumstances than was Mr. Bradshaw’s (in his own opinion)—a house ready furnished, at a convenient distance from her home—no near relations on Mr. Farquhar’s side, who might be inclined to consider his residence as their own for an indefinite time, and so add to the household expenses—in short, what could be more suitable in every way? Mr. Bradshaw respected the very self-restraint he thought he saw in Mr. Farquhar’s demeanour, attributing it to a wise desire to wait until trade should be rather more slack, and the man of business more at leisure to become the lover.

As for Jemima, at times she thought she almost hated Mr. Farquhar.

“What business has he,” she would think, “to lecture me? Often I can hardly bear it from papa, and I will not bear it from him. He treats me just like a child, and as if I should lose all my present opinions when I know more of the world. I am sure I should like never to know the world, if it was to make me think as he does, hard man that he is! I wonder what made him take Jem Brown on as gardener again, if he does not believe that above one criminal in a thousand is restored to goodness. I’ll ask him, some day, if that was not acting on impulse rather than principle. Poor impulse! how you do get abused! But I will tell Mr. Farquhar I will not let him interfere with me. If I do what papa bids me, no one has a right to notice whether I do it willingly or not.”

So then she tried to defy Mr. Farquhar, by doing and saying things that she knew he would disapprove. She went so far that he was seriously grieved, and did not even remonstrate and “lecture,” and then she was disappointed and irritated; for, somehow, with all her indignation at interference, she liked to be lectured by him; not that she was aware of this liking of hers, but still it would have been more pleasant to be scolded than so quietly passed over. Her two little sisters, with their wide-awake eyes, had long ago put things together, and conjectured. Every day they had some fresh mystery together, to be imparted in garden walks and whispered talks.

“Lizzie, did you see how the tears came into Mimie’s eyes when Mr. Farquhar looked so displeased when she said good people were always dull? I think she’s in love.” Mary said the last words with grave emphasis, and felt like an oracle of twelve years of age.

“I don’t,” said Lizzie. “I know I cry often enough when papa is cross, and I’m not in love with him.”

“Yes! but you don’t look as Mimie did.”

“Don’t call her Mimie—you know papa does not like it?”

“Yes; but there are so many things papa does not like I can never remember them all. Never mind about that; but listen to something I’ve got to tell you, if you’ll never, never tell.”

“No, indeed I won’t, Mary. What is it?”

“Not to Mrs. Denbigh?”

“No, not even to Mrs. Denbigh.”

“Well, then, the other day—last Friday, Mimie–-”

“Jemima!” interrupted the more conscientious Elizabeth.

“Jemima, if it must be so,” jerked out Mary, “sent me to her desk for an envelope, and what do you think I saw?”

“What?” asked Elizabeth, expecting nothing else than a red-hot Valentine, signed Walter Farquhar, pro Bradshaw, Farquhar, & Co., in full.

“Why, a piece of paper, with dull-looking lines upon it, just like the scientific dialogues; and I remember all about it. It was once when Mr. Farquhar had been telling us that a bullet does not go in a straight line, but in a something curve, and he drew some lines on a piece of paper; and Mimie–-”

“Jemima!” put in Elizabeth.

“Well, well! She had treasured it up, and written in corner, ‘W. F., April 3rd.’ Now, that’s rather like love, is not it? For Jemima hates useful information just as much as I do, and that’s saying a great deal; and yet she had kept this paper, and dated it.”

“If that’s all, I know Dick keeps a paper with Miss Benson’s name written on it, and yet he’s not in love with her; and perhaps Jemima may like Mr. Farquhar, and he may not like her. It seems such a little while since her hair was turned up, and he has always been a grave, middle-aged man ever since I can recollect; and then, have you never noticed how often he finds fault with her—almost lectures her?”

“To be sure,” said Mary; “but he may be in love, for all that. Just think how often papa lectures mamma; and yet, of course, they’re in love with each other.”

“Well! we shall see,” said Elizabeth.

Poor Jemima little thought of the four sharp eyes that watched her daily course while she sat alone, as she fancied, with her secret in her own room. For, in a passionate fit of grieving, at the impatient, hasty temper which had made her so seriously displease Mr. Farquhar that he had gone away without remonstrance, without more leave-taking than a distant bow, she had begun to suspect that, rather than not be noticed at all by him, rather than be an object of indifference to him—oh! far rather would she be an object of anger and upbraiding; and the thoughts that followed this confession to herself stunned and bewildered her; and for once that they made her dizzy with hope, ten times they made her sick with fear. For an instant she planned to become and to be all he could wish her; to change her very nature for him. And then a great gush of pride came over her, and she set her teeth tight together, and determined that he should either love her as she was or not at all. Unless he could take her with all her faults, she would not care for his regard; “love” was too noble a word to call such cold, calculating feeling as his must be, who went about with a pattern idea in his mind, trying to find a wife to match. Besides, there was something degrading, Jemima thought, in trying to alter herself to gain the love of any human creature. And yet, if he did not care for her, if this late indifference were to last, what a great shroud was drawn over life! Could she bear it?

From the agony she dared not look at, but which she was going to risk encountering, she was aroused by the presence of her mother.

“Jemima! your father wants to speak to you in the dining-room.”

“What for?” asked the girl.

“Oh! he is fidgeted by something Mr. Farquhar said to me and which I repeated. I am sure I thought there was no harm in it, and your father always likes me to tell him what everybody says in his absence.”

Jemima went with a heavy heart into her father’s presence.

He was walking up and down the room, and did not see her at first.

“O Jemima! is that you? Has your mother told you what I want to speak to you about?”

“No!” said Jemima. “Not exactly.”

“She has been telling me what proves to me how very seriously you must have displeased and offended Mr. Farquhar, before he could have expressed himself to her as he did, when he left the house. You know what he said?”

“No!” said Jemima, her heart swelling within her. “He has no right to say anything about me.” She was desperate, or she durst not have said this before her father.

“No right!—what do you mean, Jemima?” said Mr. Bradshaw, turning sharp round. “Surely you must know that I hope he may one day be your husband; that is to say, if you prove yourself worthy of the excellent training I have given you. I cannot suppose Mr. Farquhar would take any undisciplined girl as a wife.” Jemima held tight by a chair near which she was standing. She did not speak; her father was pleased by her silence—it was the way in which he liked his projects to be received.

“But you cannot suppose,” he continued, “that Mr. Farquhar will consent to marry you–-”

“Consent to marry me!” repeated Jemima, in a low tone of brooding indignation; were those the terms upon which her rich woman’s heart was to be given, with a calm consent of acquiescent acceptance, but a little above resignation on the part of the receiver?—

“If you give way to a temper which, although you have never dared to show it to me, I am well aware exists, although I hoped the habits of self-examination I had instilled had done much to cure you of manifesting it. At one time, Richard promised to be the more headstrong of the two; now, I must desire you to take pattern by him. Yes,” he continued, falling into his old train of thought, “it would be a most fortunate connection for you in every way. I should have you under my own eye, and could still assist you in the formation of your character, and I should be at hand to strengthen and confirm your principles. Mr. Farquhar’s connection with the firm would be convenient and agreeable to me in a pecuniary point of view. He–-” Mr. Bradshaw was going on in his enumeration of the advantages which he in particular, and Jemima in the second place, would derive from this marriage, when his daughter spoke, at first so low that he could not hear her, as he walked up and down the room with his creaking boots, and he had to stop to listen.

“Has Mr. Farquhar ever spoken to you about it?” Jemima’s cheek was flushed as she asked the question; she wished that she might have been the person to whom he had first addressed himself.

Mr. Bradshaw answered—

“No, not spoken. It has been implied between us for some time. At least, I have been so aware of his intentions that I have made several allusions, in the course of business, to it, as a thing that might take place. He can hardly have misunderstood; he must have seen that I perceived his design, and approved of it,” said Mr. Bradshaw, rather doubtfully; as he remembered how very little, in fact, passed between him and his partner which could have reference to the subject, to any but a mind prepared to receive it. Perhaps Mr. Farquhar had not really thought of it; but then again, that would imply that his own penetration had been mistaken, a thing not impossible certainly, but quite beyond the range of probability. So he reassured himself, and (as he thought) his daughter, by saying—

“The whole thing is so suitable—the advantages arising from the connection are so obvious; besides which, I am quite aware, from many little speeches of Mr. Farquhar’s, that he contemplates marriage at no very distant time; and he seldom leaves Eccleston, and visits few families besides our own—certainly, none that can compare with ours in the advantages you have all received in moral and religious training.” But then Mr. Bradshaw was checked in his implied praises of himself (and only himself could be his martingale when he