‘A woman, naturally born to fears.’ — King John.

                                ‘Methinks

Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune’s womb,

Is coming towards me; and my inward soul

With nothing trembles.’ — King Richard II.

MATTHEW JERMYN approached Mrs Transome taking off his hat and smiling. She did not smile, but said — ‘You knew Harold was not at home?’

‘Yes; I came to see you, to know if you had any wishes that I could further, since I have not had an opportunity of consulting you since he came home.’

‘Let us walk towards the Rookery, then.’

They turned together, Mr Jermyn still keeping his hat off and holding it behind him; the air was so soft and agreeable that Mrs Transome herself had nothing but a large veil over her head.

They walked for a little while in silence till they were out of sight, under tall trees, and treading noiselessly on fallen leaves. What Jermyn was really most anxious about, was to learn from Mrs Transome whether anything had transpired that was significant of Harold’s disposition towards him, which he suspected to be very far from friendly. Jermyn was not naturally flinty-hearted: at five-and-twenty he had written verses, and had got himself wet through in order not to disappoint a dark-eyed woman whom he was proud to believe in love with him; but a family man with grown-up sons and daughters, a man with a professional position and complicated affairs that make it hard to ascertain the exact relation between property and liabilities, necessarily thinks of himself and what may be impending.

‘Harold is remarkably acute and clever,’ he began at last, since Mrs Transome did not speak. ‘If he gets into parliament, I have no doubt he will distinguish himself. He has a quick eye for business of all kinds.’

‘That is no comfort to me,’ said Mrs Transome. To-day she was more conscious than usual of that bitterness which was always in her mind in Jermyn’s presence, but which was carefully suppressed: — suppressed because she could not endure that the degradation she inwardly felt should ever become visible or audible in acts or words of her own — should ever be reflected in any word or look of his. For years there had been a deep silence about the past between them: on her side, because she remembered; on his, because he more and more forgot.

‘I trust he is not unkind to you in any way. I know his opinions pain you; but I trust you find him in everything else disposed to be a good son.’

‘O, to be sure — good as men are disposed to be to women, giving them cushions and carriages, and recommending them to enjoy themselves, and then expecting them to be contented under contempt and neglect. I have no power over him — remember that — none.’

Jermyn turned to look in Mrs Transome’s face: it was long since he had heard her speak to him as if she were losing her self-command.

‘Has he shown any unpleasant feeling about your management of the affairs?’

‘My management of the affairs?’ Mrs Transome said, with concentrated rage, flashing a fierce look at Jermyn. She checked herself: she felt as if she were lighting a torch to flare on her own past folly and misery. It was a resolve which had become a habit, that she would never quarrel with this man — never tell him what she saw him to be. She had kept her woman’s pride and sensibility intact: through all her life there had vibrated the maiden need to have her hand kissed and be the object of chivalry. And so she sank into silence again, trembling.

Jermyn felt annoyed — nothing more. There was nothing in his mind corresponding to the intricate meshes of sensitiveness in Mrs Transome’s. He was anything but stupid; yet he always blundered when he wanted to be delicate or magnanimous; he constantly sought to soothe others by praising himself. Moral vulgarity cleaved to him like an hereditary odour. He blundered now.

‘My dear Mrs Transome,’ he said in a tone of bland kindness, ‘you are agitated — you appear angry with me. Yet I think, if you consider, you will see that you have nothing to complain of in me, unless you will complain of the inevitable course of man’s life. I have always met your wishes both in happy circumstances and in unhappy ones. I should be ready to do so now, if it were possible.’

Every sentence was as pleasant to her as if it had been cut in her bared arm. Some men’s kindness and love-making are more exasperating, more humiliating than others’ derision; but the pitiable woman who has once made herself secretly dependent on a man who is beneath her in feeling, must bear that humiliation for fear of worse. Coarse kindness is at least better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dulness. Mrs Transome knew in her inmost soul that those relations which had sealed her lips on Jermyn’s conduct in business matters, had been with him a ground for presuming that he should have impunity in any lax dealing into which circumstances had led him. She knew that she herself had endured all the more privation because of his dishonest selfishness. And now, Harold’s long-deferred heirship, and his return with startlingly unexpected penetration, activity, and assertion of mastery, had placed them both in the full presence of a difficulty which had been prepared by the years of vague uncertainty as to issues. In this position, with a great dread hanging over her, which Jermyn knew, and ought to have felt that he had caused her, she was inclined to lash him with indignation, to scorch him with the words that were just the fit names for his doings — inclined all the more when he spoke with an insolent blandness, ignoring all that was truly in her heart. ............