The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
her voice as she declaimed the more dictatorial sentences (to imply, one might guess, by a show of personal humility that she would have you to know her preaching was vicarious; that she stood humbly in the pulpit, and was but a vessel for the delivery of the burden of the oracle), all this was beautiful to him who could see it. I cannot think it was wholesome for him; nor that Cornelia was unaware of a naughty wish to glitter temporarily in the eyes of the man who made her feel humble. The sorcery she sent through his blood communicated itself to hers. When she had done, Emilia, convincedly vanquished by big words, said, "I cannot talk," and turned heavily from them without bestowing a smile upon either.
Cornelia believed that the girl would turn back as abruptly as she had retreated; and it was not until Emilia was out of sight that she remembered the impropriety of being alone with Mr. Barrett. The Pitfall of Sentiment yawned visible, but this lady's strength had been too little tried for her to lack absolute faith in it. So, out of deep silences, the two leapt to speech and immediately subsided to the depths again: as on a sultry summer's day fishes flash their tails in the sunlight and leave a solitary circle widening on the water.
Then Cornelia knew what was coming. In set phrase, and as one who performs a duty frigidly pleasant, he congratulated her on her rumored union. One hand was in his buttoned coat; the other hung elegantly loose: not a feature betrayed emotion. He might have spoken it in a ballroom. To Cornelia, who exulted in self-compression, after the Roman method, it was more dangerous than a tremulous tone.
"You know me too well to say this, Mr. Barrett."
The words would come. She preserved her steadfast air, when they had escaped, to conceal her shame. Seeing thus much, he took it to mean that it was a time for plain-speaking. To what end, he did not ask.
"You have not to be told that I desire your happiness above all earthly things," he said: and the lady shrank back, and made an effort to recover her footing. Had he not been so careful to obliterate any badge of the Squire of low degree, at his elbows, cuffs, collar, kneecap, and head-piece, she might have achieved it with better success. For cynicism (the younger brother of sentiment and inheritor of the family property) is always on the watch to deal fatal blows through such vital parts as the hat or the H's, or indeed any sign of inferior estate. But Mr. Barrett was armed at all points by a consummate education and a most serviceable clothesbrush.
"You know how I love this neighbourhood!" said she.
"And I! above all that I have known!"
They left the pathway and walked on mosses--soft yellow beds, run over with grey lichen, and plots of emerald in the midst.
"You will not fall off with your reading?" he recommenced.
She answered "Yes," meaning "No"; and corrected the error languidly, thinking one of the weighty monosyllables as good as the other: for what was reading to her now?
"It would be ten thousand pities if you were to do as so many women do, when...when they make these great changes," he continued.
"Of what avail is the improvement of the mind?" she said, and followed his stumble over the "when," and dropped on it.
"Of what avail! Is marriage to stop your intellectual growth?"
"Without sympathy," she faltered, and was shocked at what she said; but it seemed a necessity.
"You must learn to conquer the need for it."
Alas! his admonition only made her feel the need more cravingly.
"Promise me one thing," he said. "You will not fall into the rut? Let me keep the ideal you have given me. For the sake of heaven, do not cloud for me the one bright image I hold! Let me know always that you are growing, and that the pure, noble intelligence which distinguishes you advances, and will not be subdued."
Cornelia smiled faintly. "You have judged me too generously, Mr. Barrett."
"Too little so! might I tell you!" He stopped short, and she felt the silence like a great wave sweeping over her.
They were nearing the lake, with the stump of the pollard-willow in sight, and toward it they went.
"I shall take the consolation of knowing that I shall hear of you, some day," she said, having recourse to a look of cheerfulness.
He knew her to allude to certain hopes of fame. "I am getting wiser, I fear--too wise for ambition!"
"That is a fallacy, a sophism."
He pointed to the hollow tree. "Is there promise of fruit from that?"
"You...you are young, Mr. Barrett."
"And on a young, forehead it may be written, 'Come not to gather more.'"
Cornelia put her hand out: "Oh, Mr. Barrett! unsay it!" The nakedness of her spirit stood forth in a stinging tear. "The words were cruel."
"But, if they live, and are?"
"I feel that you must misjudge me. When I wrote them...you cannot know! The misery of our domestic life was so bitter! And yet, I have no excuse, none! I can only ask for pity."
"And if you are wretched, must not I be? You pluck from me my last support. This, I petitioned Providence to hear from you--that you would be happy! I can have no comfort but in that."
"Happy!" Cornelia murmured the word musically, as if to suck an irony from the sweetness of the sound. "Are we made for happiness?"
Mr. Barrett quoted the favourite sage, concluding: "But a brilliant home and high social duties bring consolation. I do acknowledge that an eminent station will not only be graced by you, but that you give the impression of being born to occupy it. It is your destiny."
"A miserable destiny!"
It pleased Cornelia to become the wilful child who quarrels with its tutor's teachings, upon this point.
Then Mr. Barrett said quickly: "Your heart is not in this union?"
"Can you ask? I have done my duty."
"Have you, indeed!"
His tone was severe in the deliberation of its accents.
Was it her duty to live an incomplete life? He gave her a definition of personal duty, and shadowed out all her own ideas on the subject; seeming thus to speak terrible, unanswerable truth.
As one who changes the theme, he said: "I have forborne to revert to myself in our interviews; they were too divine for that. You will always remember that I have forborne much."
"Yes!" She was willing at the instant to confess how much.
"And if I speak now, I shall not be misinterpreted?"
"You never would have been, by me."
"Cornelia!"
Though she knew what was behind the door, this flinging of it open with her name startled the lady; and if he had faltered, it would not have been well for him. But, plainly, he claimed the right to call her by her Christian name. She admitted it; and thenceforward they were equals.
It was an odd story that he told of himself. She could not have repeated it to make it comprehensible. She drank at every sentence, getting no more from it than the gratification of her thirst. His father, at least, was a man of title, a baronet. What was meant by estates not entailed? What wild freak of fate put this noble young man in the power of an eccentric parent, who now caressed him, now made him an outcast? She heard of the sum that was his, coming from his dead mother to support him just one hundred pounds annual! Was ever fate so mournful?
Practically, she understood that if Mr. Barrett would write to his father, pledging himself to conform to his mysterious despotic will in something, he would be pardoned and