‘Never. You think me wretchedly weak, but
you shall see—’
‘It’s of your own free will you undertake
it?’
‘Yes, of my own free will,’ she answered
firmly. ’I won’t come to you penniless.
It isn’t right I should do so. My father
didn’t mean that. If I had had the sense
and the courage to tell him, all this misery would
have been spared. That money is mine by every
right, and I won’t lose it. Not only for
your sake and my own—there is some one
else to think of.’
Tarrant gave her a kind look.
‘Don’t count upon it. Trust to me.’
’I like to hear you say that, but I don’t
wish you to be put to proof. You are not the
kind of man to make money.’
‘How do you mean it?’
’As you like to take it. Silly boy, don’t
I love you just because you are not one of
the money-making men? If you hadn’t a penny
in the world, I should love you just the same; and
I couldn’t love you more if you had millions.’
The change which Tarrant expected did not come.
To the end, she was brave and bright, her own best
self. She said good-bye without a tear, refused
to let him accompany her, and so, even as she had
resolved, left in her husband’s mind an image
beckoning his return.
Before his admission to a partnership in Mr. Lord’s
business, Samuel Barmby lived with his father and
two sisters in Coldharbour Lane. Their house
was small, old and crumbling for lack of repair; the
landlord, his ground-lease having but a year or two
to run, looked on with equanimity whilst the building
decayed. Under any circumstances, the family
must soon have sought a home elsewhere, and Samuel’s
good fortune enabled them to take a house in Dagmar
Road, not far from Grove Lane; a new and most respectable
house, with bay windows rising from the half-sunk
basement to the second storey. Samuel, notwithstanding
his breadth of mind, privately admitted the charm
of such an address as ‘Dagmar Road,’ which
looks well at the head of note-paper, and falls with
sonority from the lips.
The Barmby sisters, Lucy and Amelia by name, were
unpretentious young women, without personal attractions,
and soberly educated. They professed a form of
Dissent; their reading was in certain religious and
semi-religious periodicals, rarely in books; domestic
occupations took up most of their time, and they seldom
had any engagements. At appointed seasons, a
festivity in connection with ‘the Chapel’
called them forth; it kept them in a flutter for many
days, and gave them a headache. In the strictest
sense their life was provincial; nominally denizens
of London, they dwelt as remote from everything metropolitan
as though Camberwell were a village of the Midlands.
If they suffered from discontent, no one heard of it;
a confession by one or the other that she ‘felt
dull’ excited the sister’s surprise, and
invariably led to the suggestion of ’a little
medicine.’
