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GODFREY AND SEPIA.
When the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at
Durnmelling, in the expectation of joining them in London within
a fortnight at latest. The illness of Mr. Redmain, however,
caused her stay to be prolonged, and she was worn out with
ennui. The self she was so careful over was not by any
means good company: not seldom during her life had she found
herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of
suicide or repentance. This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would
even, occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine,
go for a solitary walk--a thing, I need not say, she hated in
itself, though now it was her forlorn hope, in the poor
possibility of falling in with some distraction. But the hope was
not altogether a vague one; for was there not a man somewhere
underneath those chimneys she saw over the roof of the laundry?
She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she had often talked
about him, and often watched him ride--never man more to her
mind. In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the ha-
ha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of
a neighbor whom the family did not visit. To no such folly would
Sepia be a victim.
The analysis of such a nature as hers, with her story to set it
forth, would require a book to itself, and I must happily content
myself with but a fact here and there in her history.
In one of her rambles on his ground she had her desire, and met
Godfrey Wardour. He lifted his hat, and she stopped and addressed
him by way of apology.
"I am afraid you think me very rude, Mr. Wardour," she said. "I
know I am trespassing, but this field of yours is higher than the
ground about Durnmelling, and seems to take pounds off the weight
of the atmosphere."
For all he had gone through, Godfrey was not yet less than
courteous to ladies. He assured Miss Yolland that Thornwick was
as much at her service as if it were a part of Durnmelling.
"Though, indeed," he added, with a smile, "it would be more
correct to say, 'as if Durnmelling were a part of Thornwick'--for
that was the real state of the case once upon a time."
The statement interested or seemed to interest Miss Yolland,
giving rise to many questions; and a long conversation ensued.
Suddenly she woke, or seemed to wake, to the consciousness that
she had forgotten herself and the proprieties together: hastily,
and to all appearance with some confusion, she wished him a good
morning; but she was not too much confused to thank him again for
the permission he had given her to walk on his ground.
It was not by any intention on the part of Godfrey that they met
several times after this; but they always had a little
conversation before they parted; nor did Sepia find any
difficulty in getting him sufficiently within their range to make
him feel the power of her eyes. She was too prudent, however, to
bring to bear upon any man all at once the full play of her
mesmeric battery; and things had got no further when she went to
London--a week or two before the return of the Redmains,
ostensibly to get things in some special readiness for Hesper;
but that this may have been a pretense appears possible from the
fact that Mary came from Cornwall on the same mission a few days
later.
I have just mentioned an acquaintance of Sepia's, who attracted
the notice and roused the peculiar interest of Mr. Redmain,
because of a look he saw pass betwixt them. This man spoke both
English and French with a foreign accent, and gave himself out as
a Georgian--Count Galofta, he called himself: I believe he was a
prince in Paris. At this time he was in London, and, during the
ten days that Sepia was alone, came to see her several times--
called early in the forenoon first, the next day in the evening,
when they went together to the opera, and once came and staid
late. Whether from her dark complexion making her look older than
she was, or from the subduing air which her experience had given
her, or merely from the fact that she belonged to nobody much,
Miss Yolland seemed to have carte blanche to do as she
pleased, and come and go when and where she liked, as one knowing
well enough how to take care of herself.
Mary, arriving unexpectedly at the house in Glammis Square, met
him in the hall as she entered: he had just taken leave of Sepia,
who was going up the stair at the moment. Mary had never seen him
before, but something about him caused her to look at him again
as he passed.
Somehow, Tom also had discovered Sepia's return, and had gone to
see her more than once.
When Mr. and Mrs. Redmain arrived, there was so much to be done
for Hesper's wardrobe that, for some days, Mary found it
impossible to go and see Letty. Her mistress seemed harder to
please than usual, and more doubtful of humor than ever before.
This may have arisen--but I doubt it--from the fact that, having
gone to church the Sunday before they left, she had there heard a
different sort of sermon from any she had heard in her life
before: sermons have something to do with the history of the
world, however many of them may be no better than a withered leaf
in the blast.
The morning after her arrival, Hesper, happening to find herself
in want of Mary's immediate help, instead of calling her as she
generally did, opened the door between their rooms, and saw Mary
on her knees by her bedside. Now, Hesper had heard of saying
prayers--night and morning both--and, when a child, had been
expected, and indeed compelled, to say her prayers; but to be
found on one's knees in the middle of the day looked to her a
thing exceedingly odd. Mary, in truth, was not much in the way of
kneeling at such a time: she had to pray much too often to kneel
always, and God was too near her, wherever she happened to be,
for the fancy that she must seek him in any particular place; but
so it happened now. She rose, a little startled rather than
troubled, and followed her mistress into her room.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you, Mary," said Hesper, herself a
little annoyed, it is not quite easy to say why; "but people do
not generally say their prayers in the middle of the day."
"I say mine when I need to say them," answered Mary, a little
cross that Hesper should take any notice. She would rather the
thing had not occurred, and it was worse to have to talk about
it.
"For my part, I don't see any good in being righteous overmuch,"
said Hesper.
I wonder if there was another saying in the Bible she would have
been so ready to quote!
"I don't know what that means," returned Mary. "I believe it is
somewhere in the Bible, but I am sure Jesus never said it, for he
tells us to be righteous as our Father in heaven is righteous."
"But the thing is impossible," said Hesper. "How is one with such
claims on her as I have, to attend to these things? Society has
claims: no one denies that."
"And has God none?" asked Mary.
"Many people think now there is no God at all," returned Hesper,
with an almost petulant expression.
"If there is no God, that settles the question," answered Mary.
"But, if there should be one, how then?"
"Then I am sure he would never be hard on one like me. I do just
like other people. One must do as people do. If there is one
thing that must be avoided more than another, it is peculiarity.
How ridiculous it would be of any one to set herself against
society!"
"Then you think the Judge will be satisfied if you say, 'Lord, I
had so many names in my visiting-book, and so many invitations I
could not refuse, that it was impossible for me to attend to
those things'?"
"I don't see that I'm at all worse than other people," persisted
Hesper. "I can't go and pretend to be sorry for sins I should
commit again the next time there was a necessity. I don't see
what I've got to repent of."
Nothing had been said about repentance: here, I imagine, the
sermon may have come in.
"Then, of course, you can't repent," said Mary.
Hesper recovered herself a little.
"I am glad you see the thing as I do," she said.
"I don't see it at all as you do, ma'am," answered Mary, gently.
"Why!" exclaimed Hesper, taken by surprise, "what have I got to
repent of?"
"Do you really want me to say what I think?" asked Mary.
"Of course, I do," returned Hesper, getting angry, and at the
same time uneasy: she knew Mary's freedom of speech upon
occasion, but felt that to draw back would be to yield the point.
"What have I done to be ashamed of, pray?"
Some ladies are ready to plume themselves upon not having been
guilty of certain great crimes. Some thieves, I dare say, console
themselves that they have never committed murder.
"If I had married a man I did not love," answered Mary, "I should
be more ashamed of myself than I can tell."
"That is the way of looking at such things in the class you
belong to, I dare say," rejoined Hesper; "but with us it is quite
different. There is no necessity laid upon you. Our
position obliges us."
"But what if God should not see it as you do?"
"If that is all you have got to bring against me!--" said Hesper,
with a forced laugh.
"But that is not all," replied Mary. "When you married, you
promised many things, not one of which you have ever done."
"Really, Mary, this is intolerable!" cried Hesper.
"I am only doing what you asked me, ma'am," said Mary. "And I
have said nothing that every one about Mr. Redmain does not know
as well as I do."
Hesper wished heartily she had never challenged Mary's judgment.
"But," she resumed, more quietly, "how could you, how could any
one, how could God himself, hard as he is, ask me to fulfill the
part of a loving wife to a man like Mr. Redmain?--There is no use
mincing matters with you, Mary."
"But you promised," persisted Mary. "It belongs, besides, to the
very idea of marriage."
"There are a thousand promises made every day which nobody is
expected to keep. It is the custom, the way of the world! How
many of the clergy, now, believe the things they put their names
to?"
"They must answer for themselves. We are not clergymen, but
women, who ought never to say a thing except we mean it, and,
when we have said it, to stick to it."
"But just look around you, and see how many there are in
precisely the same position! Will you dare to say they are all
going to be lost because they do not behave like angels to their
brutes of husbands?"
"I say, they have got to repent of behaving to their husbands as
their husbands behave to them."
"And what if they don't?"
Mary paused a little.
"Do you expect to go to heaven, ma'am?" she asked
"I hope so."
"Do you think you will like it?"
"I must say, I think it will be rather dull."
"Then, to use your own word, you must be very like lost anyway.
There does not seem to be a right place for you anywhere, and
that is very like being lost--is it not?"
Hesper laughed.
"I am pretty comfortable where I am," she said.
"Husband and all!" thought Mary, but she did not say that. What
she did say was:
"But you know you can't stay here. God is not going to keep up
this way of things for you; can you ask it, seeing you don't care
a straw what he wants of you? But I have sometimes thought, What
if hell be just a place where God gives everybody everything she
wants, and lets everybody do whatever she likes, without once
coming nigh to interfere! What a hell that would be! For God's
presence in the very being, and nothing else, is bliss. That,
then, would be altogether the opposite of heaven, and very much
the opposite of this world. Such a hell would go on, I suppose,
till every one had learned to hate every one else in the same
world with her."
This was beyond Hesper, and she paid no attention to it.
"You can never, in your sober senses, Mary," she said, "mean that
God requires of me to do things for Mr. Redmain that the servants
can do a great deal better! That would be ridiculous--not to
mention that I oughtn't and couldn't and wouldn't do them for any
man!"
"Many a woman," said Mary, with a solemnity in her tone which she
did not intend to appear there, "has done many more trying things
for persons of whom she knew nothing."
"I dare say! But such women go in for being saints, and that is
not my line. I was not made for that."
"You were made for that, and far more," said Mary.
"There are such women, I know," persisted Hesper; "but I do not
know how they find it possible."
"I can tell you how they find it possible. They love every human
being just because he is human. Your husband might be a demon
from the way you behave to him."
"I suppose you find it agreeable to wait upon him: he is
civil to you, I dare say!"
"Not very," replied Mary, with a smile; "but the person who can
not bear with a sick man or a baby is not fit to be a woman."
"You may go to your own room," said Hesper.
For the first time, a feeling of dislike to Mary awoke in the
bosom of her mistress--very naturally, all my readers will
allow. The next few days she scarcely spoke to her, sending
directions for her work through Sepia, who discharged the office
with dignity.
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