Arthur Mervyn | Page 8

great resentment was
expressed, and obscure insinuations were made that her aim was not
quite so low as that. These denials I supposed to be customary on such
occasions, and considered the continuance of his visits as a sufficient
confutation of them.
I frequently spoke of Betty, her newly-acquired dignity, and of the

probable cause of her change of manners, to my father. When this
theme was started, a certain coldness and reserve overspread his
features. He dealt in monosyllables, and either laboured to change the
subject or made some excuse for leaving me. This behaviour, though it
occasioned surprise, was never very deeply reflected on. My father was
old, and the mournful impressions which were made upon him by the
death of his wife, the lapse of almost half a year seemed scarcely to
have weakened. Betty had chosen her partner, and I was in daily
expectation of receiving a summons to the wedding.
One afternoon this girl dressed herself in the gayest manner and seemed
making preparations for some momentous ceremony. My father had
directed me to put the horse to the chaise. On my inquiring whither he
was going, he answered me, in general terms, that he had some
business at a few miles' distance. I offered to go in his stead, but he said
that was impossible. I was proceeding to ascertain the possibility of this
when he left me to go to a field where his workmen were busy,
directing me to inform him when the chaise was ready, to supply his
place, while absent, in overlooking the workmen.
This office was performed; but before I called him from the field I
exchanged a few words with the milkmaid, who sat on a bench, in all
the primness of expectation, and decked with the most gaudy plumage.
I rated her imaginary lover for his tardiness, and vowed eternal hatred
to them both for not making me a bride's attendant. She listened to me
with an air in which embarrassment was mingled sometimes with
exultation and sometimes with malice. I left her at length, and returned
to the house not till a late hour. As soon as I entered, my father
presented Betty to me as his wife, and desired she might receive that
treatment from me which was due to a mother.
It was not till after repeated and solemn declarations from both of them
that I was prevailed upon to credit this event. Its effect upon my
feelings may be easily conceived. I knew the woman to be rude,
ignorant, and licentious. Had I suspected this event, I might have
fortified my father's weakness and enabled him to shun the gulf to
which he was tending; but my presumption had been careless of the

danger. To think that such a one should take the place of my revered
mother was intolerable.
To treat her in any way not squaring with her real merits; to hinder
anger and scorn from rising at the sight of her in her new condition,
was not in my power. To be degraded to the rank of her servant, to
become the sport of her malice and her artifices, was not to be endured.
I had no independent provision; but I was the only child of my father,
and had reasonably hoped to succeed to his patrimony. On this hope I
had built a thousand agreeable visions. I had meditated innumerable
projects which the possession of this estate would enable me to execute.
I had no wish beyond the trade of agriculture, and beyond the opulence
which a hundred acres would give.
These visions were now at an end. No doubt her own interest would be,
to this woman, the supreme law, and this would be considered as
irreconcilably hostile to mine. My father would easily be moulded to
her purpose, and that act easily extorted from him which should reduce
me to beggary. She had a gross and perverse taste. She had a numerous
kindred, indigent and hungry. On these his substance would speedily be
lavished. Me she hated, because she was conscious of having injured
me, because she knew that I held her in contempt, and because I had
detected her in an illicit intercourse with the son of a neighbour.
The house in which I lived was no longer my own, nor even my father's.
Hitherto I had thought and acted in it with the freedom of a master; but
now I was become, in my own conceptions, an alien and an enemy to
the roof under which I was born. Every tie which had bound me to it
was dissolved or converted into something which repelled me to a
distance from it. I was a guest whose presence was borne with anger
and impatience.
I was fully impressed