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was burning against these ignorant designs? How could I wonder, when I

saw their innocent faces shrinking away, and their arms twining round

her neck, instead of mine? Then she would look up at me, shaking their

curls from her face, and say, 'They'll come round soon, Miss Wade;

they're very simple and loving, ma'am; don't be at all cast down about

it, ma'am'--exulting over me!

There was another thing the woman did. At times, when she saw that she

had safely plunged me into a black despondent brooding by these means,

she would call the attention of the children to it, and would show them

the difference between herself and me. 'Hush! Poor Miss Wade is not

well. Don't make a noise, my dears, her head aches. Come and comfort

her. Come and ask her if she is better; come and ask her to lie down. I

hope you have nothing on your mind, ma'am. Don't take on, ma'am, and be

sorry!'

It became intolerable. Her ladyship, my Mistress, coming in one day when

I was alone, and at the height of feeling that I could support it no

longer, I told her I must go. I could not bear the presence of that

woman Dawes.

'Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for you!'

I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only

answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must go.

'I hope, Miss Wade,' she returned, instantly assuming the tone of

superiority she had always so thinly concealed, 'that nothing I have

ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of

that disagreeable word, "Mistress." It must have been wholly inadvertent

on my part. Pray tell me what it is.'

I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to

my Mistress; but I must go.

She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand

on mine. As if that honour would obliterate any remembrance!

'Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no

influence.'

I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, 'I

have an unhappy temper, I suppose.' 'I did not say that.'

'It is an easy way of accounting for anything,' said I.

'It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something

very different. My husband and I have exchanged some remarks upon the

subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy

with us.'

'Easy? Oh! You are such great people, my lady,' said I.

'I am unfortunate in using a word which may convey a meaning--and

evidently does--quite opposite to my intention.' (She had not expected

my reply, and it shamed her.) 'I only mean, not happy with us. It is

a difficult topic to enter on; but, from one young woman to another,

perhaps--in short, we have been apprehensive that you may allow some

family circumstances of which no one can be more innocent than yourself,

to prey upon your spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to make them

a cause of grief. My husband himself, as is well known, formerly had a

very dear sister who was not in law his sister, but who was universally

beloved and respected.

I saw directly that they had taken me in for the sake of the dead woman,

whoever she was, and to have that boast of me and advantage of me; I

saw, in the nurse's knowledge of it, an encouragement to goad me as

she had done; and I saw, in the children's shrinking away, a vague

impression, that I was not like other people. I left that house that

night.

After one or two short and very similar experiences, which are not to

the present purpose, I entered another family where I had but one pupil:

a girl of fifteen, who was the only daughter. The parents here were

elderly people: people of station, and rich. A nephew whom they had

brought up was a frequent visitor at the house, among many other

visitors; and he began to pay me attention.

I was resolute in repulsing him; for I had determined when I went

there, that no one should pity me or condescend to me. But he wrote me a

letter. It led to our being engaged to be married.

He was a year younger than I, and young-looking even when that allowance

was made. He was on absence from India, where he had a post that was

soon to grow into a very good one. In six months we were to be married,

and were to go to India. I was to stay in the house, and was to be

married from the house. Nobody objected to any part of the plan.

I cannot avoid saying he admired me; but, if I could, I would. Vanity

has nothing to do with the declaration, for his admiration worried me.

He took no pains to hide it; and caused me to feel among the rich people

as if he had bought me for my looks, and made a show of his purchase to

justify himself. They appraised me in their own minds, I saw, and were

curious to ascertain what my full value was. I resolved that they

should not know. I was immovable and silent before them; and would have

suffered any one of them to kill me sooner than I would have laid myself

out to bespeak their approval.

He told me I did not do myself justice. I told him I did, and it was

because I did and meant to do so to the last, that I would not stoop to

propitiate any of them. He was concerned and even shocked, when I added

that I wished he would not parade his attachment before them; but he

said he would sacrifice even the honest impulses of his affection to my

peace.

Under that pretence he began to retort upon me. By the hour together, he

would keep at a distance from me, talking to any one rather than to me.

I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an evening, while he conversed with

his young cousin, my pupil. I have seen all the while, in people's eyes,

that they thought the two looked nearer on an equality than he and I.

I have sat, divining their thoughts, until I have felt that his young

appearance made me ridiculous, and have raged against myself for ever

loving him.

For I did love him once. Undeserving as he was, and little as he thought

of all these agonies that it cost me--agonies which should have made him

wholly and gratefully mine to his life's end--I loved him. I bore with

his cousin's praising him to my face, and with her pretending to think

that it pleased me, but full well knowing that it rankled in my breast;

for his sake. While I have sat in his presence recalling all my slights

and wrongs, and deliberating whether I should not fly from the house at

once and never see him again--I have loved him.

His aunt (my Mistress you will please to remember) deliberately,

wilfully, added to my trials and vexations. It was her delight to

expatiate on the style in which we were to live in India, and on the

establishment we should keep, and the company we should entertain when

he got his advancement. My pride rose against this barefaced way of

pointing out the contrast my married life was to present to my then

dependent and inferior position. I suppressed my indignation; but I

showed her that her intention was not lost upon me, and I repaid her

annoyance by affecting humility. What she described would surely be

a great deal too much honour for me, I would tell her. I was afraid

I might not be able to support so great a change. Think of a mere

governess, her daughter's governess, coming to that high distinction! It

made her uneasy, and made them all uneasy, when I answered in this way.

They knew that I fully understood her.

It was at the time when my troubles were at their highest, and when

I was most incensed against my lover for his ingratitude in caring as

little as he did for the innumerable distresses and mortifications I

underwent on his account, that your dear friend, Mr Gowan, appeared

at the house. He had been intimate there for a long time, but had been

abroad. He understood the state of things at a glance, and he understood

me.

He was the first person I had ever seen in my life who had understood

me. He was not in the house three times before I knew that he

accompanied every movement of my mind. In his coldly easy way with all

of them, and with me, and with the whole subject, I saw it clearly.

In his light protestations of admiration of my future husband, in his

enthusiasm regarding our engagement and our prospects, in his hopeful

congratulations on our future wealth and his despondent references to

his own poverty--all equally hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery--I

saw it clearly. He made me feel more and more resentful, and more and

more contemptible, by always presenting to me everything that surrounded

me with some new hateful light upon it, while he pretended to exhibit

it in its best aspect for my admiration and his own. He was like the

dressed-up Death in the Dutch series; whatever figure he took upon his

arm, whether it was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, whether he danced

with it, sang with it, played with it, or prayed with it, he made it

ghastly.

You will understand, then, that when your dear friend complimented me,

he really condoled with me; that when he soothed me under my vexations,

he laid bare every smarting wound I had; that when he declared my

'faithful swain' to be 'the most loving young fellow in the world, with

the tenderest heart that ever beat,' he touched my old misgiving that

I was made ridiculous. These were not great services, you may say. They

were acceptable to me, because they echoed my own mind, and confirmed

my own knowledge. I soon began to like the society of your dear friend

better than any other.

When I perceived (which I did, almost as soon) that jealousy was growing

out of this, I liked this society still better. Had I not been subject

to jealousy, and were the endurances to be all mine? No. Let him know

what it was! I was delighted that he should know it; I was delighted

that he should feel keenly, and I hoped he did.

More than that. He was tame in comparison with Mr Gowan, who knew how

to address me on equal terms, and how to anatomise the wretched people

around us.

This went on, until the aunt, my Mistress, took it upon herself to speak

to me. It was scarcely worth alluding to; she knew I meant nothing; but

she suggested from herself, knowing it was only necessary to suggest,

that it might be better if I were a little less companionable with Mr

Gowan.

I asked her how she could answer for what I meant? She could always

answer, she replied, for my meaning nothing wrong. I thanked her,

but said I would prefer to answer for myself and to myself. Her other

servants would probably be grateful for good characters, but I wanted

none.

Other conversation followed, and induced me to ask her how she knew that

it was only necessary for her to make a suggestion to me, to have it

obeyed? Did she presume on my birth, or on my hire? I was not bought,

body and soul. She seemed to think that her distinguished nephew had

gone into a slave-market and purchased a wife.

It would probably have come, sooner or later, to the end to which it did

come, but she brought it to its issue at once. She told me, with assumed

commiseration, that I had an unhappy temper. On this repetition of the

old wicked injury, I withheld no longer, but exposed to her all I had

known of her and seen in her, and all I had undergone within myself

since I had occupied the despicable position of being engaged to her

nephew. I told her that Mr Gowan was the only relief I had had in my

degradation; that I had borne it too long, and that I shook it off too

late; but that I would see none of them more. And I never did. Your dear

friend followed me to my retreat, and was very droll on the severance of

the connection; though he was sorry, too, for the excellent people

(in their way the best he had ever met), and deplored the necessity of

breaking mere house-flies on the wheel. He protested before long, and

far more truly than I then supposed, that he was not worth acceptance

by a woman of such endowments, and such power of character; but--well,

well--!

Your dear friend amused me and amused himself as long as it suited

his inclinations; and then reminded me that we were both people of the

world, that we both understood mankind, that we both knew there was no

such thing as romance, that we were both prepared for going different

ways to seek our fortunes like people of sense, and that we both foresaw

that whenever we encountered one another again we should meet as the

best friends on earth. So he said, and I did not contradict him.

It was not very long before I found that he was courting his present

wife, and that she had been taken away to be out of his reach. I hated

her then, quite as much as I hate her now; and naturally, therefore,

could desire nothing better than that she should marry him. But I was

restlessly curious to look at her--so curious that I felt it to be one

of the few sources of entertainment left to me. I travelled a little:

travelled until I found myself in her society, and in yours. Your dear

friend, I think, was not known to you then, and had not given you any of

those signal marks of his friendship which he has bestowed upon you.

In that company I found a girl, in various circumstances of whose

position there was a singular likeness to my own, and in whose character

I was interested and pleased to see much of the rising against swollen

patronage and selfishness, calling themselves kindness, protection,

benevolence, and other fine names, which I have described as inherent in

my nature. I often heard it said, too, that she had 'an unhappy temper.'

Well understanding what was meant by the convenient phrase, and wanting

a companion with a knowledge of what I knew, I thought I would try to

release the girl from her bondage and sense of injustice. I have no

occasion to relate that I succeeded.

We have been together ever since, sharing my small means.

CHAPTER 22. Who passes by this Road so late?

Arthur Clennam had made his unavailing expedition to Calais in the midst

of a great pressure of business. A certain barbaric Power with valuable