In the Year of Jubilee | Page 9

father's hope that he would choose some professional
career, by preference the law; he idled away his schooldays, failed at
examinations, and ultimately had to be sent into 'business.' Mr Lord
obtained a place for him in a large shipping agency; but it still seemed
doubtful whether he would make any progress there, notwithstanding
the advantage of his start; at two-and-twenty he was remunerated with a
mere thirty shillings a week, a nominal salary,' his employers called it.
Nancy often felt angry with her brother for his lack of energy and
ambition; he might so easily, she thought, have helped to establish, by
his professional dignity, her own social status at the level she desired.
There came into view a familiar figure, crossing from the other side of
the way. Nancy started, waved her hand, and went to open the door.
Her look had wholly altered; she was bright, mirthful, overflowing with

affectionate welcome.
This friend of hers, Jessica Morgan by name, had few personal
attractions. She looked overwrought and low-spirited; a very plain and
slightly-made summer gown exhibited her meagre frame with undue
frankness; her face might have been pretty if health had filled and
coloured the flesh, but as it was she looked a ghost of girlhood, a
dolorous image of frustrate sex. In her cotton-gloved hand she carried
several volumes and notebooks.
'I'm so glad you're in,' was her first utterance, between pants after hasty
walking and the jerks of a nervous little laugh. 'I want to ask you
something about Geometrical Progression. You remember that
formula--'
'How can I remember what I never knew?' exclaimed Nancy. 'I always
hated those formulas; I couldn't learn them to save my life.'
'Oh, that's nonsense! You were much better at mathematics than I was.
Do just look at what I mean.'
She threw her books down upon a chair, and opened some pages of
scrawled manuscript, talking hurriedly in a thin falsetto.
Her family, a large one, had fallen of late years from a position of
moderate comfort into sheer struggle for subsistence. Jessica, armed
with certificates of examinational prowess, got work as a visiting
governess. At the same time, she nourished ambitions, discernible
perhaps in the singular light of her deep-set eyes and a something of
hysteric determination about her lips. Her aim, at present, was to
become a graduate of London University; she was toiling in her leisure
hours--the hours of exhaustion, that is to say--to prepare herself for
matriculation, which she hoped to achieve in the coming winter. Of her
intimate acquaintances only one could lay claim to intellectual
superiority, and even she, Nancy Lord to wit, shrank from the ordeals
of Burlington House. To become B.A., to have her name in the
newspapers, to be regarded as one of the clever, the uncommon
women--for this Jessica was willing to labour early and late, regardless
of failing health, regardless even of ruined complexion and hair that
grew thin beneath the comb.
She talked only of the 'exam,' of her chances in this or that 'paper,' of
the likelihood that this or the other question would be 'set.' Her brain
was becoming a mere receptacle for dates and definitions, vocabularies

and rules syntactic, for thrice-boiled essence of history, ragged scraps
of science, quotations at fifth hand, and all the heterogeneous rubbish
of a 'crammer's' shop. When away from her books, she carried scraps of
paper, with jottings to be committed to memory. Beside her plate at
meals lay formulae and tabulations. She went to bed with a manual and
got up with a compendium.
Nancy, whose pursuit of 'culture' followed a less exhausting track,
regarded the girl with a little envy and some compassion. Esteeming
herself in every respect Jessica's superior, she could not help a slight
condescension in the tone she used to her; yet their friendship had
much sincerity on both sides, and each was the other's only confidante.
As soon as the mathematical difficulty could be set aside, Nancy began
to speak of her private troubles.
'The Prophet was here last night,' she said, with a girlish grimace. 'He's
beginning again. I can see it coming. I shall have to snub him awfully
next time.'
'Oh, what a worry he is!'
'Yes, but there's something worse. I suspected that the Pasha knew of it;
now I feel sure he's encouraging him.'
By this oriental style Nancy signified her father. The Prophet was her
father's partner in business, Mr. Samuel Bennett Barmby.
'I feel sure now that they talked it over when the Prophet was taken into
partnership. I was thrown in as a "consideration."'
'But how could your father possibly think--?'
'It's hard to say what he does think about me. I'm afraid I shall have to
have a talk with him. If so, it will