Our own precedent passions do instruct us What levity is in youth.         
TIMON OF ATHENS.

YOUNG people must for ever be trying to fall in love, and in this ancient sport young women are every bit as active as young men. For the matter of that, the greater part of humanity remain adolescent in this affair, that is, hemmed in by a thick-set hedge of prejudice and unsatisfied emotion and convention and childish theory, so that they are for ever in a state of uneasy curiosity about love, always ready to put salt on its tail, but unable to come within reach of it. For that reason they are always confusing love with being in love, an active state of living which can be permanent with an emotional condition which must be transitory.

Mrs. Folyat had the most beautiful illusions about her household. She was not entirely deceived by them when she came face to face with herself, but in her relations with her husband, her friends and her daughters she always exhibited the most profound faith in them. Though her daughters were grown women she never troubled to discover the state of their minds, but assumed their innocence and purity, and she never referred back to her own state of mind at the same age and the same maiden condition. In short, she burked the difficulty and the responsibility, though she was secretly alarmed at their slowness in finding husbands. She had no notion of their finding any career outside marriage, and took no steps to prepare them even for that.

There was a constant stream of young men passing through the house, and they all seemed to do their best [Pg 59]to fall in love with Gertrude and Mary, but they either fell victims to Minna, who played with them and squeezed their young hearts dry between her finger and thumb, or they disappeared and were caught in the toils elsewhere. There were so many young women and so few eligible young men. They flirted, they danced, they paid visits to the theatres, and Gertrude sang and Mary played her violin, but nothing happened. It was very annoying. The Clibran-Bell girls did not marry either, but there was no comfort in that. They had such large noses; and they were not Folyats. They had not the charm of high gentility. . . . Neither Gertrude nor Mary was pretty, but they could be amusing and they seemed to attract attention. Minna was decidedly pretty, with a wide delightful grin and a mocking humour. The most serious and solemn young men were devoted to her. They were always proposing to her, but she always refused them or became engaged to them for about a week. Her betrothals hardly ever seemed to survive the visit to their families. She invariably seemed to see them in caricature, and had amassed quite a large collection of mental pictures of North-country families who received her at high tea and welcomed her with shy effusiveness.

Mrs. Folyat was fonder of Minna than of her other daughters. She was easier to get on with and much less expensive. Mary and Gertrude had acquired the habit of visiting relations in the South much richer than themselves, and every year they demanded an exorbitant outlay on clothes, and they came back rather scornful of life in Fern Square and rather rebellious at having to resume their household duties or work in the church and Sunday-school. Also, for a time, they would assume a lofty tone with the young men of their acquaintance, and they used to prick at Frederic and tell him he was becoming provincial. Minna used to lash them with her tongue, dealing out the wickedest malice with the most urbane good-humour, and deliberately annex any young men whom they brought to the house. She called Gertrude “Mother Bub” and Mary “Mottle-tooth.” From their superiority in years they affected to ignore her, but they lost no opportunity [Pg 60]of annoying her and upsetting her plans for her own comfort and enjoyment.

The money-cloud had grown darker over Francis. It seemed impossible to make his expenditure acknowledge even a bowing acquaintance with his income. He had credit with the tradespeople but it was abused. Fifty pounds had become a large sum of money to him, because the payment of it meant dislocation of his finances. Frederic was always sending in small bills that were too large for his slender earnings. The girls—Mary and Gertrude were still called “the girls”—were always wanting money. Annette in Edinburgh hardly ever wrote without wanting money, and Mrs. Folyat seemed to have no notion of the decreasing elasticity of his resources. It was perfectly clear to him that a change must be made, and quickly. He went into his accounts, found that he owed three hundred and fifty pounds—nearly a year’s stipend—and wrote the figures down on a scrap of paper and laid it before his wife.

“We owe that,” he said. “It’s a lot of money.”

Mrs. Folyat turned the piece of paper round and round in her fingers, and Francis stood above her pulling at his beard.

“It’s a big sum,” he said.

Mrs. Folyat pulled out her handkerchief and began to whimper, as she always did when Francis was masterful.

“I’m sure,” she said, “I’m sure it’s not my fault. I’m sure I wish we’d never come to this hateful pace. I don’t know why we did.”

Francis felt a gust of exasperation.

“We came here,” he said, “to marry the girls. They’re not married.”

Mrs. Folyat saw reproach in what was only a statement of fact, and she protested with some vehemence. The failure of her daughters hurt her. She felt it as keenly as Sarah, the wife of Abraham, felt her barrenness, for she saw life altogether in terms of marriage, romantic marriage. Her own life had fallen into the lines laid down by the fiction with which she refreshed herself—as a girl she had dreamed of a romantic lover—he had come—a parson, [Pg 61]a creature of noble birth—and she had married him. She had borne him a truly biblical number of children and looked for them to follow a similar destiny. She had regarded it as a thing that happened automatically, for she was in mind a child, and life was to her a toy presented to her by a beneficent Creator, already wound up and prepared to go indefinitely. When apparently it ran down she could do nothing but weep and make things as uncomfortable as possible for those nearest her. She hated facts, and Francis, her husband, had the most odious habit of plumping them down in front of her.

Always before when they had been presented with any financial difficulty they had sold a house at Potsham, for the reduction of their private income by twenty or thirty pounds had seemed no great matter. But they had already sold five houses, and the loss of one hundred and fifty pounds a year had, as Francis now pointed out, played a considerable part in bringing them to their present quandary. He was loth to sacrifice another house and more income, and nervously proposed that they should raise the required sum by selling some of their valuable china and perhaps a piece or two of Martha’s jewellery. She hardly ever wore her jewellery, but she loved to hoard it, and whenever she was particularly pleased with her women friends she used to reward them by displaying the contents of her treasure-drawers, jewels, old lace, silks and brocades and fans, acquired and inherited—things valuable and trumpery all lying higgledy-piggledy.

Her husband’s suggestion acted like salt rubbed into the wounds occasioned by his statement of fact. She asked why she should always be the sufferer for the delinquencies of her family, and almost persuaded herself that she was their scapegoat. She went back over the years and raked over the ashes of old resentments and grievances, even going so far as to disinter the sacrifice of her carriage at St. Withans.

“The fact remains,” said Francis, “that we owe a large sum of money. I am a clergyman, and my house should be free of the sordid troubles that beset the laity. It is not free of them and I am ashamed.”

[Pg 62]

“Very well, then,” said Martha, “Let us sell everything, spend everything—the girls will do that easily enough—and then go into the workhouse.”

“Please be reasonable,” rejoined Francis. “We must pay our debts and reduce our expenditure. If necessary, the girls must go out and earn what they can.”

“The girls!”

“There is no shame in honest work, whatever it may be.”

“But they will never marry if they work.”

“Half the women I marry are working women.”

“I won’t discuss it. You have never been the same since we came to this hateful place.”

“I was thinking chiefly of Mary. She could teach music. And Annette has had a better education than the others. She could . . .”

“What?”

“She could obtain a situation as a governess.”

“A governess! Annette! A governess!”

In Mrs. Folyat’s eyes to send your daughter out as a governess was a confession of poverty. There could be no glossing it over. Of course the clergy were miserably paid, but Francis had always risen superior to that reproach in public opinion by the general belief in the amplitude of his private means. It could be little short of disaster then to confess to inadequacy. And a governess! Poor Annette! though to be sure when she was a child her godmother had looked at her sadly and observed that she must assuredly be prepared for a convent. She was so plain—a remark which Minna had never ceased to brandish over poor Annette’s head whenever their wills clashed. . . .

Francis at length cut short his wife’s protestations with a sigh and said:

“My dear, I’m sorry. That’s the position. We have to swallow it. We can’t give the girls the opportunities they ought to have. We must let them fight their own way. At present anything is better than the sort of life they are leading. We’ll sell another house, but that shall be the last. We’ll make a fresh start. Be patient with me, my dear.”

[Pg 63]

“And am I to tell Mary?”

“No. I’ll do that, and I’ll find a family for Annette.”

Francis went away feeling that there was a great deal to be said for the celibacy of the clergy. Other men, of course, did not see so much of their families, and perhaps, for that reason, could understand them better, be better friends with them, and not so acutely conscious of their irritating peculiarities. The relation between a father and daughter should be a very beautiful thing, and indeed there were moments when the house in Fern Square was a place of happiness and affectionate unity. Only—only, there was the future. Martha growing more and more helpless, and the household duties and responsibilities devolving more and more upon Gertrude and Mary, and they losing their bloom.

Francis had a vague feeling of injustice which was harshly in disaccord with his professional teaching of acceptance—“Whatever is, is right” and “It’s all for the best.” At any rate there was still abundant laughter in his house, and that was better than the grim smile which was all these Northerners would for the most part allow themselves. The days of violent opposition were gone, but the Puritans still looked askance at the Proud Priest—for the nickname clung—and his family. The grocer with an off-licence round the corner spread tales of the large quantities of beer that were consumed in the parson’s house.

Mary took the suggestion very well, and soon she had five pupils, little boys and girls, whom she taught to fumble on the piano and to extract horrible noises from the violin. She went to their houses and enjoyed making new friends. Annette was brought home from Edinburgh at the end of the term and was found a situation with an ironmaster’s family named Fender. She had one pupil, a little hunchbacked girl who alternately adored her and bullied her. Annette was very happy. At home she had been so mercilessly teased by Minna that she was glad to get away. The Fenders lived in Burnley, ten miles away, and in summer they moved to a lovely house they had in Westmoreland, high-perched on a hill looking [Pg 64]down on Grasmere and Rydal. She read enormous quantities of novels, and devoured the pounds and pounds of sweets and chocolates that were lavished on her pupil. Once a week she wrote dutiful letters to her parents and surreptitiously she began to write a novel in the manner of Mr. James Payn. She wrote three chapters, and then found the labour of writing too exhausting and continued the story mentally in her many idle moments.

At home in Fern Square the conduct of Gertrude had been causing some astonishment and alarm. For five consecutive Sundays she failed to put in an appearance at morning service, and once she neglected her Sunday-school class. Whe............