‘I am obliged to you for your instruction.’
‘Will you tell me, father, in plain words, why you dislike Mr Milvain?’
‘I am not inclined to repeat what I have already fruitlessly told you. For the sake of a clear understanding, however, I will let you know the practical result of my dislike. From the day of your marriage with that man you are nothing to me. I shall distinctly forbid you to enter my house. You make your choice, and go your own way. I shall hope never to see your face again.’
Their eyes met, and the look of each seemed to fascinate the other.
‘If you have made up your mind to that,’ said Marian in a shaking voice, ‘I can remain here no longer. Such words are senselessly cruel. Tomorrow I shall leave the house.’
‘I repeat that you are of age, and perfectly independent. It can be nothing to me how soon you go. You have given proof that I am of less than no account to you, and doubtless the sooner we cease to afflict each other the better.’
It seemed as if the effect of these conflicts with her father were to develop in Marian a vehemence of temper which at length matched that of which Yule was the victim. Her face, outlined to express a gentle gravity, was now haughtily passionate; nostrils and lips thrilled with wrath, and her eyes were magnificent in their dark fieriness.
‘You shall not need to tell me that again,’ she answered, and immediately left him.
She went into the sitting-room, where Mrs Yule was awaiting the result of the interview.
‘Mother,’ she said, with stern gentleness, ‘this house can no longer be a home for me. I shall go away tomorrow, and live in lodgings until the time of my marriage.’
Mrs Yule uttered a cry of pain, and started up.
‘Oh, don’t do that, Marian! What has he said to you? Come and talk to me, darling—tell me what he’s said— don’t look like that!’
She clung to the girl despairingly, terrified by a transformation she would have thought impossible.
‘He says that if I marry Mr Milvain he hopes never to see my face again. I can’t stay here. You shall come and see me, and we will be the same to each other as always. But father has treated me too unjustly. I can’t live near him after this.’
‘He doesn’t mean it,’ sobbed her mother. ‘He says what he’s sorry for as soon as the words are spoken. He loves you too much, my darling, to drive you away like that. It’s his disappointment, Marian; that’s all it is. He counted on it so much. I’ve heard him talk of it in his sleep; he made so sure that he was going to have that new magazine, and the disappointment makes him that he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Only wait and see; he’ll tell you he didn’t mean it, I know he will. Only leave him alone till he’s had time to get over it. Do forgive him this once.’
‘It’s like a madman to talk in that way,’ said the girl, releasing herself. ‘Whatever his disappointment, I can’t endure it. I have worked hard for him, very hard, ever since I was old enough, and he owes me some kindness, some respect. It would be different if he had the least reason for his hatred of Jasper. It is nothing but insensate prejudice, the result of his quarrels with other people. What right has he to insult me by representing my future husband as a scheming hypocrite?’
‘My love, he has had so much to bear—it’s made him so quick-tempered.’
‘Then I am quick-tempered too, and the sooner we are apart the better, as he said himself’
‘Oh, but you have always been such a patient girl.’
‘My patience is at an end when I am treated as if I had neither rights nor feelings. However wrong the choice I had made, this was not the way to behave to me. His disappointment? Is there a natural law, then, that a daughter must be sacrificed to her father? My husband will have as much need of that money as my father has, and he will be able to make far better use of it. It was wrong even to ask me to give my money away like that. I have a right to happiness, as well as other women.’
She was shaken with hysterical passion, the natural consequence of this outbreak in a nature such as hers. Her mother, in the meantime, grew stronger by force of profound love that at length had found its opportunity of expression. Presently she persuaded Marian to come upstairs with her, and before long the overburdened breast was relieved by a flow of tears. But Marian’s purpose remained unshaken.
‘It is impossible for us to see each other day after day,’ she said when calmer. ‘He can’t control his anger against me, and I suffer too much when I am made to feel like this. I shall take a lodging not far off where you can see me often.’
‘But you have no money, Marian,’ replied Mrs Yule, miserably.
‘No money? As if I couldn’t borrow a few pounds until all my own comes to me! Dora Milvain can lend me all I shall want; it won’t make the least difference to her. I must have my money very soon now.’
At about half-past eleven Mrs Yule went downstairs, and entered the study.
‘If you are coming to speak about Marian,’ said her husband, turning upon her with savage eyes, ‘you can save your breath. I won’t hear her name mentioned.’
She faltered, but overcame her weakness.
‘You are driving her away from us, Alfred. It isn’t right! Oh, it isn’t right!’
‘If she didn’t go I should, so understand that! And if I go, you have seen the last of me. Make your choice, make your choice!’
He had yielded himself to that perverse frenzy which impels a man to acts and utterances most wildly at conflict with reason. His sense of the monstrous irrationality to which he was committed completed what was begun in him by the bitterness of a great frustration.
‘If I wasn’t a poor, helpless woman,’ replied his wife, sinking upon a chair and crying without raising her hands to her face, ‘I’d go and live with her till she was married, and then make a home for myself. But I haven’t a penny, and I’m too old to earn my own living; I should only be a burden to her.’
