Mrs. Oliphant

“ Renton,’ she said, ‘I have put myself into a false position by taking your money; and what is life itself in comparison with one’s true character? I cannot let you despise Millicent’s mother. Here it is; you shall have it back.’
‘Mrs. Tracy, forgive me, for heaven’s sake! I did not know what I was saying,’ cried Ben.
‘There it is,’ said his opponent, laying the pocket-book on the table between them. ‘Now I can speak. Millicent is an innocent girl, Mr. Renton. She is not one of the kind who fall in love without being asked. ”

“ Ben, who was so superior, who had borne his trial so nobly, who was going to work like a hero,—Ben, who had always been, more than she knew, her own ideal of man,—to think that Millicent Tracy with her pretty face——! ‘Why, even Laurie would have seen through her!’ Mary said to herself, and wept with the poignant prick of self-knowledge, which gives the chief bitterness to such a discovery,—not self-esteem, but that indignant, sorrowful, honest insight which, on such a provocation, reveals one’s worth to oneself in pain and not in vanity. ”

“ But yet the meeting with them was the event of the day to him,—the only one that gave life or colour to it. It was the sole gleam of light within his range of vision, and naturally his eye fixed on that gleam. Sometimes it seemed to him that, instead of being the fallen man he was, he had come there in a voluntary abandonment of luxury and pleasantness for Millicent Tracy’s sake. Though the young men of the nineteenth century are not given to romance, such a proceeding is still possible among them. And there were moments in which Ben forgot that he had any other motive for his seclusion. ”

“ I thought I was already something of a painter,—at least to you,—or why should I be encouraged to attempt anything? Why didn’t you say to me, “Go and be a shoemaker?”—as, indeed, Welby was honest enough to do.’
‘Now, Laurie, don’t be unjust,’ said the padrona. ‘Don’t you see it is because I expect you to do something worth while that I want you to study hard and learn everything? What is a year’s work to you at your age? When one gets old one would give everything for the chance of such a preparation. What am I but an amateur myself, not half instructed as I ought to be? ”

“ A man cannot be twisted out of his socket and set into another without feeling it, Mary; though I do not dwell upon that now.’
‘Oh, I know,’ cried Mary, with all her heart; ‘and there has never been a day that I have not thought of you, Ben; but you have overcome it nobly,’ the girl cried in her enthusiasm, with tears in her eyes. Dear, little, soft, foolish creature!—what did she mean?
‘Put on your hat and come down with me to the river,’ said Ben. ‘My mother says you have no variety, nor even air. And she is to be left by herself till dinner. Come, and I will row you up to the Swan’s Nest. ”

“ It is a very dull time of year to be in town. My poor boy has made it impossible for me to take Millicent to the sea this year; and if you are going to be in town, Mr. Renton, as you and she are almost old friends, I shall be very glad to see you; and you too, Mr. Hillyard,’ she added, turning half round to him. Hillyard muttered ‘By Jove!’ to himself, under his breath. But as for Ben, so suddenly and enthusiastically received into the bosom of the family, his eyes brightened, and his face crimsoned over with pleasure. ”

“ Suffolk had care on her brow, as she sat with her sister in art and war, in the little drawing-room down-stairs, discussing the inexpediency of those wanderings to and fro over the earth, which probably both had gone through and enjoyed, but which ofttimes made the public and the picture-dealers oblivious of a young painter’s name. Up-stairs, however, there would probably be five or six young fellows, of a Bohemian race, bearded, and bronzed, and full of talk, who had not yet taken the responsibilities of life on their shoulders, and laughed at the wolf when he approached their door. ”

“ Not his the force or the passion to resist fate. It was one of the might-have-beens which gave so strange, so shadowy a character to this existence. Strange to stand amid the unalterable laws of nature and see what caprice moves the fate of the chief of nature’s works. If Aunt Lydia had held her peace! If Mr. Renton had not changed his mind! We are such stuff as dreams are made of! Laurie said to himself as he turned from the scentless China asters in his window and the empty Park, and this concluded phase of life. ”

“ A big balance against him in some big tradesman’s books seldom, unless he comes to the point of desperation, is very deeply afflictive to a young man; but your little, greasy, weekly bill,—handed in by your poor, greasy, termagant landlady, with hungry, or wistful, or furious eyes,—and not a penny in your pocket to pay it,—this is, indeed, to look poverty in the face.
And this is what happened to Ben Renton the day he took leave of Millicent. If it had been a snake in his path he could not have looked at the poor little crumpled envelope on his table with greater horror. ”

“ Renton, don’t speak so!’ she said, ‘you don’t know what you are saying. Though I am a woman I know the world better than you do. It is very, very hard to make your way. Look at poor Fitzgerald. And when you have tied a burden round your neck to begin with! Ah, no; you must not talk of this any more.’
‘Burden!’ cried Ben, all glowing and brightening. ‘I like that! Divine cordial, you mean;—elixir of life, to make a man twice as strong, twice as able. Ah, look here, Millicent—you said round my neck!’
‘I said nonsense,’ she said, withdrawing from him; ‘and so do you. Double nonsense,—folly! ”

“ She was fond of Laurie, as everybody was, poor fellow; but Ben—Ben was different; and how noble of him to come home with that easy look, that unconstrained smile! Poor Mary made out a whole little romance as she came and went—an innocent, ingenuous creature, with summer in her face and in her heart—under the silken greenness of the lime-trees. No doubt he must have had a hard fight to subdue himself at first—not an easy, facile temper like Laurie—not a boy like Frank—but a man with settled plans of his own, and strong feelings, and an almost stern character. ”

“ She was angry, and her heart was sore; she had seemed so near comfort, and prosperity, and happiness. ‘Even I could have been fond of him!’ she said to herself, bitterly. And now he could tell her calmly that he was disinherited! Such a disappointment after such a delicious sense of security was more than Millicent could bear. She could govern herself, as a man guides a horse, when she chose; but when she did not choose, her self-abandonment was absolute. Since he was to be good for nothing to her, she cared no longer for what Ben Renton might think. ”

“ Do you want work? or is it only a makebelief about Renton and all that? How can I tell? You bury yourself out of the world, and never throw yourself in the way of anything, so far as one can see. You may be contenting yourself with what you have. You may be above taking a share of one’s good fortune. I say again, how can I tell?’
‘I am ready to work at anything. It is the height of my wishes,’ said Ben, with a huskiness in his voice. ”

“ I wish one could paint without drawing; it is hard upon an uneducated person; and I am sure if it was not for those horrid critics, the British public does not care if one’s arm is out of drawing or not.’
‘Welby does not think so,’ said Laurie. ‘Have you seen his tibia that he is raving about?’
‘Ah, but then that wounds his own eye,’ said Mrs. Severn, half turning round; ‘just as a false note in music wounds my child, though it does not disturb me much. The dreadful thing is not to know when you’re out of drawing or out of tune. ”

“ Tracy swelled to such heights of moral indignation as would have annihilated Ben had he been present, when she heard this. ‘Disinherited!’ she cried. ‘Millicent, you may say what you like, but it is nothing less than swindling. Good heavens, to think of such a thing! Disinherited! Do you mean to tell me it is a man without a penny that one has been paying such attention to? Oh, what a world this is! He might just as well have robbed me of fifty pounds,—not that fifty pounds would pay the expense I have been at. ”

“ He sat down on the child’s stool, and held out his hands to the fire, and looked up at the padrona’s face, which shone out in glimpses by the cheerful firelight. Sometimes little Edith, with her wreath of hair, would come between him and her mother like a little golden, rose-tinted, cloud; sometimes the fitful blaze would decline for a moment, and throw the whole scene into darkness. But Mrs. Severn did not change her attitude, or put down the child from her lap, or ring for the lamp, on Laurie’s arrival. ”

“ Nobody knew whether old Welby’s admiration for his pet master was genuine, or was his way of jeering at a partially educated amateur public. That and his pure white canvas were his favourite show-pieces, and these accordingly were the most prominent objects in the studio when Laurie went in. The painter himself was a little man with refined features, but many wrinkles; his eyes were very keen and bright under the shaggy mobile eyebrows with which he almost talked, and the colour on his cheek was as fresh as a winter apple. ”