The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope (top 5 books to read txt) 📗

life, was pervaded by a conviction that as she grew older from year to year, the struggle should be more intense. The swimmer when first he finds himself in the water, conscious of his skill and confident in his strength, can make his way through the water with the full command of all his powers. But when he begins to feel that the shore is receding from him, that his strength is going, that the footing for which he pants is still far beneath his feet⁠—that there is peril where before he had contemplated no danger⁠—then he begins to beat the water with strokes rapid but impotent, and to waste in anxious gaspings the breath on which his very life must depend. So it was with poor Georgey Longestaffe. Something must be done at once, or it would be of no avail. Twelve years had been passed by her since first she plunged into the stream⁠—the twelve years of her youth⁠—and she was as far as ever from the bank; nay, farther, if she believed her eyes. She too must strike out with rapid efforts, unless, indeed, she would abandon herself and let the waters close over her head. But immersed as she was here at Caversham, how could she strike at all? Even now the waters were closing upon her. The sound of them was in her ears. The ripple of the wave was already round her lips; robbing her of breath. Ah!⁠—might not there be some last great convulsive effort which might dash her on shore, even if it were upon a rock!

That ultimate failure in her matrimonial projects would be the same as drowning she never for a moment doubted. It had never occurred to her to consider with equanimity the prospect of living as an old maid. It was beyond the scope of her mind to contemplate the chances of a life in which marriage might be well if it came, but in which unmarried tranquillity might also be well should that be her lot. Nor could she understand that others should contemplate it for her. No doubt the battle had been carried on for many years so much under the auspices of her father and mother as to justify her in thinking that their theory of life was the same as her own. Lady Pomona had been very open in her teaching, and Mr. Longestaffe had always given a silent adherence to the idea that the house in London was to be kept open in order that husbands might be caught. And now when they deserted her in her real difficulty⁠—when they first told her to live at Caversham all the summer, and then sent her up to the Melmottes, and after that forbade her marriage with Mr. Brehgert⁠—it seemed to her that they were unnatural parents who gave her a stone when she wanted bread, a serpent when she asked for a fish. She had no friend left. There was no one living who seemed to care whether she had a husband or not. She took to walking in solitude about the park, and thought of many things with a grim earnestness which had not hitherto belonged to her character.

“Mamma,” she said one morning when all the care of the household was being devoted to the future comforts⁠—chiefly in regard to linen⁠—of Mrs. George Whitstable, “I wonder whether papa has any intention at all about me.”

“In what sort of way, my dear?”

“In any way. Does he mean me to live here for ever and ever?”

“I don’t think he intends to have a house in town again.”

“And what am I to do?”

“I suppose we shall stay here at Caversham.”

“And I’m to be buried just like a nun in a convent⁠—only that the nun does it by her own consent and I don’t! Mamma, I won’t stand it. I won’t indeed.”

“I think, my dear, that that is nonsense. You see company here, just as other people do in the country;⁠—and as for not standing it, I don’t know what you mean. As long as you are one of your papa’s family of course you must live where he lives.”

“Oh, mamma, to hear you talk like that!⁠—It is horrible⁠—horrible! As if you didn’t know! As if you couldn’t understand! Sometimes I almost doubt whether papa does know, and then I think that if he did he would not be so cruel. But you understand it all as well as I do myself. What is to become of me? Is it not enough to drive me mad to be going about here by myself, without any prospect of anything? Should you have liked at my age to have felt that you had no chance of having a house of your own to live in? Why didn’t you, among you, let me marry Mr. Brehgert?” As she said this she was almost eloquent with passion.

“You know, my dear,” said Lady Pomona, “that your papa wouldn’t hear of it.”

“I know that if you would have helped me I would have done it in spite of papa. What right has he to domineer over me in that way? Why shouldn’t I have married the man if I chose? I am old enough to know surely. You talk now of shutting up girls in convents as being a thing quite impossible. This is much worse. Papa won’t do anything to help me. Why shouldn’t he let me do something for myself?”

“You can’t regret Mr. Brehgert!”

“Why can’t I regret him? I do regret him. I’d have him tomorrow if he came. Bad as it might be, it couldn’t be so bad as Caversham.”

“You couldn’t have loved him, Georgiana.”

“Loved him! Who thinks about love nowadays? I don’t know anyone who loves anyone else. You won’t tell me that Sophy is going to marry that idiot because she loves him! Did Julia Triplex love that man with the large fortune? When you wanted Dolly to marry Marie Melmotte you never thought of his loving her. I had got the better