The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

‘He put her to school.  In a secret, dark, oppressive, ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous woman.  “My worthy lady,” he said, “here is a mind to be formed; will you help me to form it?”  She accepted the trust.  For which she, too, wanted compensation in Money, and had it.

‘The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction, that there was no escape from him.  She was taught, from the first, to regard him as her future husband—the man who must marry her—the destiny that overshadowed her—the appointed certainty that could never be evaded.  The poor fool was soft white wax in their hands, and took the impression that they put upon her.  It hardened with time.  It became a part of herself.  Inseparable from herself, and only to be torn away from her, by tearing life away from her.

‘Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden.  He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her close.  He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks.  He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation.  He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark.  When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole resource.

‘Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured.  She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive Bride of three weeks.

‘He had dismissed the governess by that time—what he had left to do, he could best do alone—and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation.  She turned to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping from the porch, and said:

‘“O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!”

‘“Well!” he answered.  “And if it were?”

‘“O sir!” she returned to him, “look kindly on me, and be merciful to me!  I beg your pardon.  I will do anything you wish, if you will only forgive me!”

‘That had become the poor fool’s constant song: “I beg your pardon,” and “Forgive me!”

‘She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for her.  But, she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary, and the work was near its end, and had to be worked out.

‘“You fool,” he said.  “Go up the stairs!”

‘She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, “I will do anything you wish!”  When he came into the Bride’s Chamber, having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings of the great door (for they were alone in the house, and he had arranged that the people who attended on them should come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there standing pressed against the paneling as if she would have shrunk through it: her flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes staring at him in vague terror.

‘“What are you afraid of?  Come and sit down by me.”

‘“I will do anything you wish.  I beg your pardon, sir.  Forgive me!”  Her monotonous tune as usual.

‘“Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow, in your own hand.  You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged upon it.  When you have written it all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any two people there may be about the house, and sign your name to it before them.  Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, and when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.”

‘“I will do it all, with the greatest care.  I will do anything you wish.”

‘“Don’t shake and tremble, then.”

‘“I will try my utmost not to do it—if you will only forgive me!”

‘Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been told.  He often passed in and out of the room, to observe her, and always saw her slowly and laboriously writing: repeating to herself the words she copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without caring or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task.  He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all particulars; and at night, when they were alone again in the same Bride’s Chamber, and he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat, took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his hand.

‘It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her death.  He put her before him, face to face, that he might look at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that?