CHAPTER XXI. MR YULE LEAVES TOWN
Since the domestic incidents connected with that unpleasant
review in The Current, the relations between Alfred Yule and his
daughter had suffered a permanent change, though not in a degree
noticeable by any one but the two concerned. To all appearances, they worked together and conversed very much as they had been wont to do; but Marian was made to feel in many subtle ways that her father no longer had complete confidence in her, no longer took the same pleasure as formerly in the skill and conscientiousness of her work, and Yule on his side perceived too clearly that the girl was preoccupied with something other than her old wish to aid and satisfy him, that she had a new life of her own alien to, and in some respects irreconcilable with, the existence in which he desired to confirm her. There was no renewal of open disagreement, but their conversations frequently ended by tacit mutual consent, at a point which threatened divergence; and in Yule's case every such warning was a cause of intense irritation. He feared to provoke Marian, and this fear was again a torture to his pride.
Beyond the fact that his daughter was in constant communication
with the Miss Milvains, he knew, and could discover, nothing of
the terms on which she stood with the girls' brother, and this
ignorance was harder to bear than full assurance of a
disagreeable fact would have been. That a man like Jasper
Milvain, whose name was every now and then forced upon his notice
as a rising periodicalist and a faithful henchman of the
unspeakable Fadge—that a young fellow of such excellent
prospects should seriously attach himself to a girl like Marian
seemed to him highly improbable, save, indeed, for the one
consideration, that Milvain, who assuredly had a very keen eye to
chances, might regard the girl as a niece of old John Yule, and
therefore worth holding in view until it was decided whether or
not she would benefit by her uncle's decease. Fixed in his
antipathy to the young man, he would not allow himself to admit
any but a base motive on Milvain's side, if, indeed, Marian and
Jasper were more to each other than slight acquaintances; and he
persuaded himself that anxiety for the girl's welfare was at
least as strong a motive with him as mere prejudice against the
ally of Fadge, and, it might be, the reviewer of 'English Prose.'
Milvain was quite capable of playing fast and loose with a girl, and Marian, owing to the peculiar circumstances of her position, would easily be misled by the pretence of a clever speculator.
That she had never spoken again about the review in The Current
might receive several explanations. Perhaps she had not been able
to convince herself either for or against Milvain's authorship; perhaps she had reason to suspect that the young man was the author; perhaps she merely shrank from reviving a discussion in which she might betray what she desired to keep secret. This last was the truth. Finding that her father did not recur to the subject, Marian concluded that he had found himself to be misinformed. But Yule, though he heard the original rumour denied by people whom in other matters he would have trusted, would not lay aside the doubt that flattered his prejudices. If Milvain were not the writer of the review, he very well might have been; and what certainty could be arrived at in matters of literary gossip?
There was an element of jealousy in the father's feeling. If he
did not love Marian with all the warmth of which a parent is
capable, at least he had more affection for her than for any
other person, and of this he became strongly aware now that the
girl seemed to be turning from him. If he lost Marian, he would
indeed be a lonely man, for he considered his wife of no account.
Intellectually again, he demanded an entire allegiance from his
daughter; he could not bear to think that her zeal on his behalf
was diminishing, that perhaps she was beginning to regard his
work as futile and antiquated in comparison with that of the new
generation. Yet this must needs be the result of frequent
intercourse with such a man as Milvain. It seemed to him that he
remarked it in her speech and manner, and at times he with
difficulty restrained himself from a reproach or a sarcasm which
would have led to trouble.