John Ingerfield | Page 6

the many who remembered opening their
eyes and seeing her bending down over them could never recognise the
portrait of the beautiful sneering lady, even when they were told whom
it represented.
But at the time of John Ingerfield's strange wooing she was the Anne
Singleton of Sir Joshua's portrait, and John Ingerfield liked her the
better that she was.
He had no feeling of sentiment in the matter himself, and it simplified
the case that she had none either. He offered her a plain bargain, and
she accepted it. For all he knew or cared, her attitude towards this
subject of marriage was the usual one assumed by women. Very young
girls had their heads full of romantic ideas. It was better for her and for
him that she had got rid of them.
"Ours will be a union founded on good sense," said John Ingerfield.
"Let us hope the experiment will succeed," said Anne Singleton.
CHAPTER II.
But the experiment does not succeed. The laws of God decree that man
shall purchase woman, that woman shall give herself to man, for other

coin than that of good sense. Good sense is not a legal tender in the
marriage mart. Men and women who enter therein with only sense in
their purse have no right to complain if, on reaching home, they find
they have concluded an unsatisfactory bargain.
John Ingerfield, when he asked Anne Singleton to be his wife, felt no
more love for her than he felt for any of the other sumptuous household
appointments he was purchasing about the same time, and made no
pretence of doing so. Nor, had he done so, would she have believed
him; for Anne Singleton has learned much in her twenty-two summers
and winters, and knows that love is only a meteor in life's sky, and that
the true lodestar of this world is gold. Anne Singleton has had her
romance and buried it deep down in her deep nature and over its grave,
to keep its ghost from rising, has piled the stones of indifference and
contempt, as many a woman has done before and since. Once upon a
time Anne Singleton sat dreaming out a story. It was a story old as the
hills--older than some of them--but to her, then, it was quite new and
very wonderful. It contained all the usual stock material common to
such stories: the lad and the lass, the plighted troth, the richer suitors,
the angry parents, the love that was worth braving all the world for.
One day into this dream there fell from the land of the waking a letter, a
poor, pitiful letter: "You know I love you and only you," it ran; "my
heart will always be yours till I die. But my father threatens to stop my
allowance, and, as you know, I have nothing of my own except debts.
Some would call her handsome, but how can I think of her beside you?
Oh, why was money ever let to come into the world to curse us?" with
many other puzzling questions of a like character, and much severe
condemnation of Fate and Heaven and other parties generally, and
much self-commiseration.
Anne Singleton took long to read the letter. When she had finished it,
and had read it through again, she rose, and, crushing it her hand, flung
it in the fire with a laugh, and as the flame burnt up and died away felt
that her life had died with it, not knowing that bruised hearts can heal.
So when John Ingerfield comes wooing, and speaks to her no word of
love but only of money, she feels that here at last is a genuine voice

that she can trust. Love of the lesser side of life is still left to her. It will
be pleasant to be the wealthy mistress of a fine house, to give great
receptions, to exchange the secret poverty of home for display and
luxury. These things are offered to her on the very terms she would
have suggested herself. Accompanied by love she would have refused
them, knowing she could give none in return.
But a woman finds it one thing not to desire affection and another thing
not to possess it. Day by day the atmosphere of the fine house in
Bloomsbury grows cold and colder about her heart. Guests warm it at
times for a few hours, then depart, leaving it chillier than before.
For her husband she attempts to feel indifference, but living creatures
joined together cannot feel indifference for each other. Even two dogs
in a leash are compelled to think of one another. A man and wife must
love or hate, like or dislike, in degree as the bond connecting them is
drawn tight or allowed