The Fallen Leaves | Page 2

daughters. The elder had mortally offended her father by marrying imprudently--in a pecuniary sense. He had declared that she should never enter his house again; and be had mercilessly kept his word. The younger daughter (now eighteen years of age) proved to be also a source of parental inquietude, in another way. She was the passive cause of the revolt which set her father's authority at defiance. For some little time past she had been out of health. After many ineffectual trials of the mild influence of persuasion, her mother's patience at last gave way. Mrs. Ronald insisted--yes, actually insisted--on taking Miss Emma to the seaside.
"What's the matter with you?" Old Ronald asked; detecting something that perplexed him in his wife's look and manner, on the memorable occasion when she asserted a will of her own for the first time in her life.
A man of finer observation would have discovered the signs of no ordinary anxiety and alarm, struggling to show themselves openly in the poor woman's face. Her husband only saw a change that puzzled him. "Send for Emma," he said, his natural cunning inspiring him with the idea of confronting the mother and daughter, and of seeing what came of that. Emma appeared, plump and short, with large blue eyes, and full pouting lips, and splendid yellow hair: otherwise, miserably pale, languid in her movements, careless in her dress, sullen in her manner. Out of health as her mother said, and as her father saw.
"You can see for yourself," said Mrs. Ronald, "that the girl is pining for fresh air. I have heard Ramsgate recommended."
Old Ronald looked at his daughter. She represented the one tender place in his nature. It was not a large place; but it did exist. And the proof of it is, that he began to yield--with the worst possible grace.
"Well, we will see about it," he said.
"There is no time to be lost," Mrs. Ronald persisted. "I mean to take her to Ramsgate tomorrow."
Mr. Ronald looked at his wife as a dog looks at the maddened sheep that turns on him. "You mean?" repeated the stationer. "Upon my soul--what next? You mean? Where is the money to come from? Answer me that."
Mrs. Ronald declined to be drawn into a conjugal dispute, in the presence of her daughter. She took Emma's arm, and led her to the door. There she stopped, and spoke. "I have already told you that the girl is ill," she said to her husband. "And I now tell you again that she must have the sea air. For God's sake, don't let us quarrel! I have enough to try me without that." She closed the door on herself and her daughter, and left her lord and master standing face to face with the wreck of his own outraged authority.
What further progress was made by the domestic revolt, when the bedroom candles were lit, and the hour of retirement had arrived with the night, is naturally involved in mystery. This alone is certain: On the next morning, the luggage was packed, and the cab was called to the door. Mrs. Ronald spoke her parting words to her husband in private.
"I hope I have not expressed myself too strongly about taking Emma to the seaside," she said, in gentle pleading tones. "I am anxious about our girl's health. If I have offended you--without meaning it, God knows!--say you forgive me before I go. I have tried honestly, dear, to be a good wife to you. And you have always trusted me, haven't you? And you trust me still?"
She took his lean cold hand, and pressed it fervently: her eyes rested on him with a strange mixture of timidity and anxiety. Still in the prime of her life, she preserved the personal attractions--the fair calm refined face, the natural grace of look and movement--which had made her marriage to a man old enough to be her father a cause of angry astonishment among all her friends. In the agitation that now possessed her, her colour rose, her eyes brightened; she looked for the moment almost young enough to be Emma's sister. Her husband opened his hard old eyes in surly bewilderment. "Why need you make this fuss?" he asked. "I don't understand you." Mrs. Ronald shrank at those words as if he had struck her. She kissed him in silence, and joined her daughter in the cab.
For the rest of that day, the persons in the stationer's employment had a hard time of it with their master in the shop. Something had upset Old Ronald, He ordered the shutters to be put up earlier that evening than usual. Instead of going to his club (at the tavern round the corner), he took a long walk in the lonely and lifeless streets of the City