ELIZABETH GASKELL Premium Collection: 10 Novels & 40+ Short Stories; Including Poems, Essays & Biographies (Illustrated). Elizabeth Gaskell
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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.
"Oh, 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 connexion 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 connexion 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 connexion 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 once set out on such a career) by a recollection that Jemima must not feel too secure, as she might become if he dwelt too much on the advantages of her being her father's daughter. Accordingly, he said: "But you must be aware, Jemima, that you do very little credit to the education I have given you, when you make such an impression as you must have done to-day, before Mr Farquhar could have said what he did of you!"
"What did he say?" asked Jemima, still in the low, husky tone of suppressed anger.
"Your mother says he remarked to her, 'What a pity it is, that Jemima cannot maintain her opinions without going into a passion; and what a pity it is, that her opinions are such as to sanction, rather than curb, these fits of rudeness and anger!'"
"Did he say that?" said Jemima, in a still lower tone, not questioning her father, but speaking rather to herself.
"I have no doubt he did," replied her father, gravely. "Your mother is in the habit of repeating accurately to me what takes place in my absence; besides which, the whole speech is not one of hers; she has not altered a word in the repetition, I am convinced. I have trained her to habits of accuracy very unusual in a woman."
At another time, Jemima might have been inclined to rebel against this system of carrying constant intelligence to headquarters, which she had long ago felt as an insurmountable obstacle to any free communication with her mother; but now, her father's means of acquiring knowledge faded into insignificance before the nature of the information he imparted. She stood quite still, grasping the chair-back, longing to be dismissed.
"I have said enough now, I hope, to make you behave in a becoming manner to Mr Farquhar; if your temper is too unruly to be always under your own control, at least have respect to my injunctions, and take some pains to curb it before him."
"May I go?" asked Jemima, chafing more and more.
"You may," said her father. When