Neighbours on the Green; My Faithful Johnny

I had a long time to wait before Mrs. Harwood came. The morning sun was shining into the room, making everything more dingy. No doubt it had been dusted that morning as well as the little maid could dust it; but nothing looked pure or fresh in the brightness of the light, which was full of motes, and seemed to find out dust in every corner. The dingy cover on the table, the old-fashioned Books of Beauty, the black horsehair chairs, stood out remorselessly shabby in the sunshine. I wondered what kind of house Ellen would have when she furnished one for herself. Would John and she show any ‘taste’ between them—would they ‘pick up’ pretty things at sales and old furniture shops, or would they buy a drawing-room suite for twenty-five pounds, such as the cheap upholsterers offer to the unwary? This question amused me while I waited, and I was sorry to think that the new household was to be planted in the Levant, and we should not see how it settled itself. There was a good deal of commotion going on overhead, but I did not pay any attention to it. I pleased myself arranging a little home for the new pair—making it pretty for them. Of her own self Ellen would never, I felt sure, choose the drawing-room suite in walnut and blue rep—not now, at least, after she had been so much with us. As for John, he would probably think any curtain tolerable so long as she sat under its shadow. I had been somewhat afraid of confronting the mother, and possibly the father; but these thoughts put my panic out of my head. These horsehair chairs! was there ever such an invention of the evil one? Ellen could not like them; it was impossible. When I had come this length my attention was suddenly attracted by the sounds up-stairs; for there came upon the floor over my head the sound of a foot stamped violently in apparent fury. There were voices too; but I could not make out what they said. As to this sound however it was easy enough to make out what it meant: nothing could be more suggestive. I trembled and listened, my thoughts taking an entirely new direction; a stamp of anger, of rage, and partially of impotence too. Then there was a woman’s voice rising loud in remonstrance. The man seemed to exclaim and denounce violently; the woman protested, growing also louder and louder. I listened with all my might. It was not eavesdropping; for she, at least, knew that I was there; but, listen as I might, I could not make out what they said. After a while there was silence, and I heard Mrs. Harwood’s step coming down the stairs. She paused to do something, perhaps to her cap or her eyes, before she opened the door. She was in a flutter of agitation, the flowers in her black cap quivering through all their wires, her eyes moist, though looking at me with a suspicious gaze. She was very much on her guard, very well aware of my motive, determined to give me no encouragement. All this I read in her vigilant eyes.

‘Mrs. Harwood, I came to speak to you—I promised to come and speak to you—about Mr. Ridgway, who is a great friend of mine, as perhaps you know.’

The poor woman was in great agitation and trouble; but this only quickened her wits. ‘I see John Ridgway every day of my life,’ she said, not without a little dignity. ‘He might say whatever he pleased to me without asking anybody to speak for him.’

‘Won’t you give your consent to this marriage?’ I asked. It seemed wisest to plunge into it at once. ‘It is my own anxiety that makes me speak. I have always been anxious about it, almost before I knew them.’

‘There are other things in the world besides marriages,’ she said. ‘In this house we have a great deal to think of. My husband—no doubt you heard his voice just now—he is a great sufferer. For years he has been confined to that little room up-stairs. That is not a very cheerful life.’

Here she made a pause, which I did not attempt to interrupt; for she had disarmed me by this half-appeal to my sympathy. Then suddenly, with her voice a little shaken and unsteady, she burst forth: ‘The only company he has is Ellen. What can I do to amuse him—to lead his thoughts off himself? I have as much need of comfort as he has. The only bright thing in the house is Ellen. What would become of us if we were left only the two together all these long days? They are long enough as it is. He has not a very good temper, and he is weary with trouble—who wouldn’t be in his case? John Ridgway is a young man with all the world before him. Why can’t he wait? Why should he want to take our only comfort away from us?’

Her voice grew shrill and broken; she began to cry. Poor soul! I believe she had been arguing with her husband on the other side; but it was a little comfort to her to pour out her own grievances, her alarm and distress, to me. I was silenced. How true it had been what John Ridgway said: How could he, so gentle a man, assert himself in the face of this, and claim Ellen as of chief importance to him? Had not they a prior claim?—was not her duty first to her father and mother? I was put to silence myself. I did not know what to say.

‘The only thing is,’ I said timidly at last, ‘that I should think it would be a comfort to you to feel that Ellen was settled, that she had a home of her own, and a good husband who would take care of her when—She ought to outlive us all,’ I added, not knowing how to put it. ‘And if it were to be always as you say,’ I went on, getting a little courage, ‘there would be no marriages, no new homes. We have all had fathers and mothers who had claims upon us. What can it be but a heartbreak to bring up a girl for twenty years and more, and think everything of her, and then see her go away and give her whole heart to some one else, and leave us with a smile on her face?’ The idea carried me away—it filled my own heart with a sort of sweet bitterness; for had not my own girl just passed that age and crisis? ‘Oh! I understand you; I feel with you; I am not unsympathetic. But when one thinks—they must live longer than we; they must have children too, and love as we have loved. You would not like, neither you nor I, if no one cared—if our girls were left out when all the others are loved and courted. You like this good John to be fond of her—to ask you for her. You would not have been pleased if Ellen had just lived on and on here, your daughter and nothing more.’

This argument had some weight upon her. She felt the truth of what I said. However hard the after consequences may be, we still must have our ‘bairn respectit like the lave.’ But on this point Mrs. Harwood maintained her position on a height of superiority which few ordinary mortals, even when the mothers of attractive girls, can attain. ‘I have never made any objection,’ she said, ‘to his coming in the evening. Sometimes it is rather inconvenient; but I do not oppose his being here every night.’

‘And you expect him to be content with this all his life?’

‘It would be better to say all my life,’ she replied severely; ‘no, not even that. As for me, it does not matter much. I am not one to put myself in anybody’s way; but all her father’s life—which can’t be very long now,’ she added, with a sudden gush of tears. They were so near the surface that they flowed at the slightest touch, and besides, they were a great help to her argument. ‘I don’t think it is too much,’ she cried, ‘that she should see her poor father out first. She has been the only one that has cheered him up. She is company to him, which I am not. All his troubles are mine, you see. I feel it when his rheumatism is bad; but Ellen is outside: she can talk and be bright. What should I do without her! What should I do without her! I should be nothing better than a slave! I am afraid to think of it; and her father—her poor father—it would break his heart; it would kill him. I know that it would kill him,’ she said.

Here I must acknowledge that I was very wicked. I could not but think in my heart that it would not be at all a bad thing if Ellen’s marriage did kill this unseen father of hers who had tired their patience so long, and who stamped his foot with rage at the idea that the poor girl might get out of his clutches. He was an old man, and he was a great sufferer. Why should he be so anxious to live? And if a sacrifice was necessary, old Mr. Harwood might just as well be the one to make it as those two good young people from whom he was willing to take all the pleasure of their lives. But this of course was a sentiment to which I dared not give utterance. We stood and looked at each other while these thoughts were going through my mind. She felt that she had produced an impression, and was too wise to say anything more to diminish it—while I, for my part, was silenced, and did not know what to say.

‘Then they must give in again,’ I said at last. ‘They must part; and if she has to spend the rest of her life in giving music lessons, and he to go away, to lose heart and forget her, and be married by any one who will have him in his despair and loneliness—I hope you will think that a satisfactory conclusion—but I do not. I do not!’

Mrs. Harwood trembled as she looked at me. Was I hard upon her? She shrank aside as if I had given her a blow. ‘It is not me that will part them,’ she said. ‘I have never objected. Often it is very inconvenient—you would not like it yourself if every evening, good or bad, there was a strange man in your house. But I never made any objection. He is welcome to come as long as he likes. It is not me that says a word–’

‘Do you want him to throw up his appointment?’ I cried, ‘his means of life.’

She looked at me with her face set. I might have noticed, had I chosen, that all the flowers in her cap were shaking and quivering in the shadow cast upon the further wall by the sunshine, but did not care to remark, being angry, this sign of emotion. ‘If he is so fond of Ellen, he will not mind giving up a chance,’ she said; ‘if some one must give in, why should it be Harwood and me?’

After this I left Pleasant Place hurriedly, with a great deal of indignation in my mind. Even then I was not quite sure of my right to be indignant; but I was so. ‘If some one must give in, why should it be Harwood and me?’ I said to myself that John had known what he would encounter, that he had been right in distrusting himself; but he had not been right in trusting me. I had made no stand against the other side. When you come to haggle about it, and to be uncertain which should give in, how painful the complications of life become! To be perfect, renunciation must be without a word; it must be done as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The moment it is discussed and shifted from one to another, it becomes vulgar, like most things in this universe. This was what I said to myself as I came out into the fresh air and sunshine, out of the little stuffy house. I began to hate it with its dingy carpets and curtains, its horsehair chairs, that shabby, shabby little parlour—how could anybody think of it as home? I can understand a bright little kitchen, with white hearth and floor, with the firelight shining in all the pans and dishes. But this dusty place with its antimacassars! These thoughts were in my mind when, turning the corner, I met Ellen full in the face, and felt like a traitor, as if I had been speaking ill of her. She looked at me, too, with some surprise. To see me there, coming out of Pleasant Place, startled her. She did not ask me, Where have you been? but her eyes did, with a bewildered gleam.

‘Yes; I have been to see your mother,’ I said; ‘you are quite right, Ellen. And why? Because I am so much interested; and I wanted to see what mind she was in about your marriage.’

‘My—marriage! there never was any question of that,’ she said quickly, with a sudden flush.

‘You are just as bad as the others,’ said I, moved by this new contradiction. ‘What! after taking that poor young man’s devotion for so long, you will let him go away—go alone, break off everything.’

Ellen had grown pale as suddenly as she had blushed. ‘Is that necessary?’ she said, alarmed. ‘Break off everything? I never thought of that. But, indeed, I think you are making a mistake. If he goes, we shall have to part, but only—only for a time.’

‘How can you tell,’ I cried, being highly excited, ‘how long he may be there? He may linger out his life there, always thinking about you, and longing for you—unless he gets weary and disgusted, and asks himself what is the use, at the last. Such things have been; and you on your side will linger here, running out and in to your lessons with no longer any heart for them; unable to keep yourself from thinking that everybody is cruel, that life itself is cruel—all because you have not the courage, the spirit–’

She put her hand on mine and squeezed it suddenly, so that she hurt me. ‘Don’t!’ she cried; ‘you don’t know; there is nothing, not a word to be said. It is you who are cruel—you who are so kind; so much as to speak of it, when it cannot be! It cannot be—that is the whole matter. It is out of the question. Supposing even that I get to think life cruel, and supposing he should get weary and disgusted. Oh! it was you that said it, you that are so kind. Supposing all that, yet it is impossible; it cannot be; there is nothing more to be said.’

‘You will see him go away calmly, notwithstanding all?’

‘Calmly,’ she said, with a little laugh, ‘calmly—yes, I suppose that is the word. I will see him go calmly. I shall not make any fuss if that is what you mean.’

‘Ellen, I do not understand. I never heard you speak like this before.’

‘You never saw me like this before,’ she said with a gasp. She was breathless with a restrained excitement which looked like despair. But when I spoke further, when I would have discussed the matter, she put up her hand and stopped me. There was something in her face, in its fixed expression, which was like the countenance with which her mother had replied to me. It was a startling thought to me that Ellen’s soft fresh face, with its pretty bloom, could ever be like that other face surmounted by the black cap and crown of shabby flowers. She turned and walked with me along the road to my own door, but nothing further was said. We went along side by side silent till we reached my house, when she put out her hand and touched mine suddenly, and said that she was in a hurry and must run away. I went in more disturbed than I can say. She had always been so ready to yield, so cheerful, so soft, independent indeed, but never harsh in her independence. What did this change mean? I felt as if some one to whom I had turned in kindness had met me with a blow. But by and by, when I thought better of it, I began to understand Ellen. Had not I said to myself, a few minutes before, that self-renunciation, when it had to be, must be done silently without a word? better perhaps that it should be done angrily than with self-demonstration, self-assertion. Ellen had comprehended this; she had perceived that it must not be asked or speculated upon, which was to yield. She had chosen her part, and she would not have it discussed or even remarked. I sat in my window pondering while the bright afternoon went by, looking out upon the distant depths of the blue spring atmosphere, just touched by haze, as the air, however bright, always is in London, seeing the people go by in an endless stream without noticing them, without thinking of them. How rare it is in human affairs that there is not some one who must give up to the others, some one who must sacrifice himself or be sacrificed! And the one to whom this lot falls is always the one who will do it; that is the rule so far as my observation goes. There are some whom nature moves that way, who cannot stand upon their rights, who are touched by the claims of others and can make no resistance on their own account. The tools are to him that can handle them, as our philosopher says; and likewise the sacrifices of life to him who will bear them. Refuse them, that is the only way; but if it is not in your nature to refuse them, what can you do? Alas! for sacrifice is seldom blessed. I am saying something which will sound almost impious to many. Human life is built upon it, and social order; yet personally in itself it is seldom blessed; it debases those who accept it; it harms even those who, without wilfully accepting it, have a dim perception that something is being done for them which has no right to be done. It may, perhaps—I cannot tell—bear fruit of happiness in the hearts of those who practise it. I cannot tell. Sacrifices are as often mistaken as other things. Their divineness does not make them wise. Sometimes, looking back, even the celebrant will perceive that his offering had better not have been made.

All this was going sadly through my mind when I perceived that some one was passing slowly, endeavouring to attract my attention. By this time it was getting towards evening—and as soon as I was fully roused I saw that it was John Ridgway. If I could have avoided him I should have done so, but now it was not possible; I made him a sign to come up-stairs. He came into the drawing-room slowly, with none of the eagerness that there had been in his air on the previous day, and it may easily be believed that on my side I was not eager to see him to tell him my story. He came and sat down by me, swinging his stick in his usual absent way, and for a minute neither of us spoke.

‘You do not ask me if I have any news for you; you have seen Ellen!’

‘No; it is only because I have news on my side. I am not going after all.’

‘You are not going!’

‘You are disappointed,’ he said, looking at me with a face which was full of interest and sympathy. These are the only words I can use. The disappointment was his, not mine; yet he was more sympathetic with my feeling about it than impressed by his own. ‘As for me, I don’t seem to care. It is better in one way, if it is worse in another. It stops any rise in life; but what do I care for a rise in life? they would never have let me take Ellen. I knew that even before I saw it in your eyes.’

‘Ellen ought to judge for herself,’ I said, ‘and you ought to judge for yourself; you are of full age; you are not boy and girl. No parents have a right to separate you now. And that old man may go on just the same for the next dozen years.’

‘Did you see him?’ John asked. He had a languid, wearied look, scarcely lifting his eyes.

‘I saw only her; but I know perfectly well what kind of man he is. He may live for the next twenty years. There is no end to these tyrannical, ill-tempered people; they live for ever. You ought to judge for yourselves. If they had their daughter settled near, coming to them from her own pleasant little home, they would be a great deal happier. You may believe me or not, but I know it. Her visits would be events; they would be proud of her, and tell everybody about her family, and what a good husband she had got, and how he gave her everything she could desire.’

‘Please God,’ said John, devoutly; his countenance had brightened in spite of himself. But then he shook his head. ‘If we had but got as far as that,’ he said.

‘You ought to take it into your own hands,’ cried I in all the fervour of a revolutionary. ‘If you sacrifice your happiness to them, it will not do them any good; it will rather do them harm. Are you going now to tell your news?’

He had got up on his feet, and stood vaguely hovering over me with a faint smile upon his face. ‘She will be pleased,’ he said; ‘no advancement, but no separation. I have not much ambition; I think I am happy too.’

‘Then, if you are all pleased,’ I cried, with annoyance which I could not restrain, ‘why did you send me on such an errand? I am the only one that seems to be impatient of the present state of affairs, and it is none of my business. Another time you need not say anything about it to me.’

‘There will never be a time when we shall not be grateful to you,’ said John; but even his mild look of appealing reproach did not move me. It is hard to interest yourself in people and find after all that they like their own way best.

CHAPTER VI

He was quite right in thinking Ellen would be pleased. And yet, after it was all over, she was a little wounded and disappointed, which was very natural. She did not want him to go away, but she wanted him to get the advancement all the same. This was foolish, but still it was natural, and just what a woman would feel. She took great pains to explain to us that it was not hesitation about John, nor even any hesitation on the part of John in going—for Ellen had a quick sense of what was desirable and heroic, and would not have wished her lover to appear indifferent about his own advancement, even though she was very thankful and happy that in reality he was so. The reason of the failure was that the firm had sent out a nephew, who was in the office, and had a prior claim. ‘Of course he had the first chance,’ Ellen said, with a countenance of great seriousness; ‘what would be the good of being a relation if he did not have the first chance?’ And I assented with all the gravity in the world. But she was disappointed, though she was so glad. There ought not to have been any one in the world who had the preference over John! She carried herself with great dignity for some time afterwards, and with the air of a person superior to the foolish and partial judgments of the world; and yet in her heart how thankful she was! from what an abyss of blank loneliness and weary exertion was her life saved! For now that I knew it a little better I could see how little that was happy was in her home. Her mother insisted that she should have that hour’s leisure in the evening. That was all that any one thought of doing for her. It was enough to keep her happy, to keep her hopeful. But without that, how long would Ellen’s brave spirit have kept up? Perhaps had she never known John, and that life of infinite tender communion, her natural happy temperament would have struggled on for a long time against all the depressing effects of circumstances, unaided. But to lose is worse than never to have had. If it is

Better to have loved and lost,Than never to have loved at all,

yet it is at the same time harder to lose that bloom of existence out of your lot, than to have struggled on by mere help of nature without it. She had been so happy—making so little go such a long way!—that the loss of her little happiness would have been appalling to her. And yet she was dissatisfied that this heartbreak did not come. She had strung herself up to it. It would have been advancement, progress, all that a woman desires for those belonging to her, for John. Sacrificing him for the others, she was half angry not to have it in her power to sacrifice herself to his ‘rise in life.’ I think I understood her, though we never talked on the subject. She was dissatisfied, although she was relieved. We have all known these mingled feelings.

This happened at the beginning of summer; but all its agitations were over before the long sweet days and endless twilights of the happy season had fully expanded upon us. It seems to me as I grow older that a great deal of the comfort of our lives depends upon summer—upon the weather, let us say, taking it in its most prosaic form. Sometimes indeed to the sorrowful the brightness is oppressive; but to all the masses of ordinary mortals who are neither glad nor sad, it is a wonderful matter not to be chilled to the bone; to be able to do their work without thinking of a fire; without having a sensation of cold always in their lives never to be got rid of. Ellen and her lover enjoyed that summer as people who have been under sentence of banishment enjoy their native country and their home.

You may think there is not much beauty in a London suburb to tempt any one: and there is not for those who can retire to the beautiful fresh country when they will, and surround themselves with waving woods and green lawns, or taste the freshness of the mountains or the saltness of the sea. We, who go away every year in July, pined and longed for the moment of our removal; and my neighbour in the great house which shut out the air from Pleasant Place, panted in her great garden (which she was proud to think was almost unparalleled for growth and shade in London), and declared herself incapable of breathing any longer in such a close and shut up locality. But the dwellers in Pleasant Place were less exacting. They thought the long suburban road very pleasant. Where it streamed off into little dusty houses covered with brown ivy and dismal trellis work, and where every unfortunate flower was thick with dust, they gazed with a touch of envy at the ‘gardens,’ and felt it to be rural. When my pair of lovers went out for their walk they had not time to go further than to the ‘Green Man,’ a little tavern upon the roadside, where one big old elm tree, which had braved the dust and the frost for more years than any one could recollect, stood out at a corner at the junction of two roads, with a bench round it, where the passing carters and cabmen drank their beer, and a trough for the horses, which made it look ‘quite in the country’ to all the inhabitants of our district. Generally they got as far as that, passing the dusty cottages and the little terrace of new houses. A great and prolonged and most entertaining controversy went on between them as they walked, as to the kind of house in which they should eventually settle down. Ellen, who was not without a bit of romance in her, of the only kind practicable with her upbringing, entertained a longing for one of the dusty little cottages. She thought, like all inexperienced persons, that in her hands it would not be dusty. She would find means of keeping the ivy green. She would see that the flowers grew sweet and clean, and set blacks and dust alike at defiance. John, for his part, whose lodging was in one of those little houses, preferred the new terrace. It was very new—very like a row of ginger-bread houses—but it was very clean, and for the moment bright, not as yet penetrated by the dust. Sometimes I was made the confidante of these interminable, always renewed, always delightful discussions. ‘They are not dusty yet,’ Ellen would say, ‘but how long will it be before they are dusty? whereas with the villas’ (they had a great variety of names—Montpellier Villas, Funchal Villas, Mentone Mansions—for the district was supposed to be very mild) ‘one knows what one has to expect; and if one could not keep the dust and the blacks out with the help of brushes and dusters, what would be the good of one? I should sow mignonette and Virginia stock,’ she cried with a firm faith; ‘low-growing flowers would be sure to thrive. It is only roses (poor roses!) and tall plants that come to harm.’ John, for his part, dwelt much upon the fact that in the little front parlours of the terrace houses there were shelves for books fitted into a recess. This weighed quite as much with him as the cleanness of the new places. ‘The villas are too dingy for her,’ he said, looking admiringly at her fresh face. ‘She could never endure the little gray, grimy rooms.’ That was his romance, to think that everything should be shining and bright about her. He was unconscious of the dinginess of the parlour in Ellen’s home. It was all irradiated with her presence to him. These discussions however all ended in a sigh and a laugh from Ellen herself. ‘It is all very fine talking,’ she would say.