Mrs Yule's speech was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as with hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile such propriety of phrase as she owed to years of association with educated people. In the same degree did her bearing fall short of that which distinguishes a lady. The London work-girl is rarely capable of raising herself or being raised, to a place in life above that to which she was born; she cannot learn how to stand and sit and move like a woman bred to refinement, any more than she can fashion her tongue to graceful speech. Mrs Yule's behaviour to Marian was marked with a singular diffidence; she looked and spoke affectionately, but not with a mother's freedom; one might have taken her for a trusted servant waiting upon her mistress. Whenever opportunity offered, she watched the girl in a curiously furtive way, that puzzled look on her face becoming very noticeable. Her consciousness was never able to accept as a familiar and unimportant fact the vast difference between herself and her daughter. Marian's superiority in native powers, in delicacy of feeling, in the results of education, could never be lost sight of. Under ordinary circumstances she addressed the girl as if tentatively; however sure of anything from her own point of view, she knew that Marian, as often as not, had quite a different criterion. She understood that the girl frequently expressed an opinion by mere reticence, and hence the carefulness with which, when conversing, she tried to discover the real effect of her words in Marian's features.
'Hungry, too,' she said, seeing the crust Marian was nibbling.
'You really must have more lunch, dear. It isn't right to go so long; you'll make yourself ill.'
'Have you been out?' Marian asked.
'Yes; I went to Holloway.'
Mrs Yule sighed and looked very unhappy. By 'going to Holloway'
was always meant a visit to her own relatives--a married sister with three children, and a brother who inhabited the same house.
To her husband she scarcely ever ventured to speak of these persons; Yule had no intercourse with them. But Marian was always willing to listen sympathetically, and her mother often exhibited a touching gratitude for this condescension--as she deemed it.
'Are things no better?' the girl inquired.
'Worse, as far as I can see. John has begun his drinking again, and him and Tom quarrel every night; there's no peace in the 'ouse.'
If ever Mrs Yule lapsed into gross errors of pronunciation or phrase, it was when she spoke of her kinsfolk. The subject seemed to throw her back into a former condition.
'He ought to go and live by himself' said Marian, referring to her mother's brother, the thirsty John.
'So he ought, to be sure. I'm always telling them so. But there!
you don't seem to be able to persuade them, they're that silly and obstinate. And Susan, she only gets angry with me, and tells me not to talk in a stuck-up way. I'm sure I never say a word that could offend her; I'm too careful for that. And there's Annie; no doing anything with her! She's about the streets at all hours, and what'll be the end of it no one can say. They're getting that ragged, all of them. It isn't Susan's fault; indeed it isn't. She does all that woman can. But Tom hasn't brought home ten shillings the last month, and it seems to me as if he was getting careless. I gave her half-a-crown; it was all I could do. And the worst of it is, they think I could do so much more if I liked. They're always hinting that we are rich people, and it's no good my trying to persuade them. They think I'm telling falsehoods, and it's very hard to be looked at in that way; it is, indeed, Marian.'
'You can't help it, mother. I suppose their suffering makes them unkind and unjust.'
'That's just what it does, my dear; you never said anything truer. Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why there's so much of it in the world, I'm sure I can't see.'
'I suppose father will be back soon?'
'He said dinner-time.'
'Mr Quarmby has been telling me something which is wonderfully good news if it's really true; but I can't help feeling doubtful.
He says that father may perhaps be made editor of The Study at the end of this year.'
Mrs Yule, of course, understood, in outline, these affairs of the literary world; she thought of them only from the pecuniary point of view, but that made no essential distinction between her and the mass of literary people.
'My word!' she exclaimed. 'What a thing that would be for us!'
Marian had begun to explain her reluctance to base any hopes on Mr Quarmby's prediction, when the sound of a postman's knock at the house-door caused her mother to disappear for a moment.
'It's for you,' said Mrs Yule, returning. 'From the country.'
Marian took the letter and examined its address with interest.
'It must be one of the Miss Milvains. Yes; Dora Milvain.'
After Jasper's departure from Finden his sisters had seen Marian several times, and the mutual liking between her and them had been confirmed by opportunity of conversation. The promise of correspondence had hitherto waited for fulfilment. It seemed natural to Marian that the younger of the two girls should write;Maud was attractive and agreeable, and probably clever, but Dora had more spontaneity in friendship.