The Passionate Heart (Timeless Classics Collection) by Ursula Bloom

Author:Ursula Bloom [Bloom, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: women's literary fiction, classic women's fiction, literary fiction, vintage fiction, classic literary fiction, Victorian fiction, women's fiction
Publisher: Wyndham Books
Published: 2021-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

PART IV: JASMINE

I

War broke out.

The three preceding years had been strenuous for Mary. Although George had apparently remained faithful, she had been haunted by the terror of a crash to come. She had decided that she must do something and lay aside a nest-egg for the catastrophe. For six months she wavered as to what she could do. Through a Church paper she attempted to sell the lace that she made, but the remuneration was a mere pittance and her eyes suffered. After a while her constant headaches warned her that this means was futile. She sent large baskets of flowers to the market in the town, but the largest basket only fetched a shilling or so, and the carriage left but a few pence profit. She was at her wits’ end. Nowadays girls were equipped with far more efficiency to face the world. Her education had been veneered by a certain Victorianism which had hall-marked it with a smug gentility which eradicated any knowledge that could be a financial asset. She gave up the idea of flowers and lace, and concentrated upon blouse-making. This was distinctly more profitable. She advertised under a box number, as a clergyman’s wife who recommended a certain young person, and was in point of fact both the clergyman’s wife and the certain young person. There was no need to tell George anything about it, and he did not suspect. She did not work too arduously, and her charges were of necessity cheaper than other people’s, therefore she defied competition. She reckoned that she could save at the most eight pounds a year; it was a very modest sum, but it would be something, and she felt convinced that ahead lay a menace, where money would be needed. And supposing that it were never needed, it would buy Muriel a trousseau, the loveliest in the world. For of course Muriel would marry. Mary hated to think that they must be parted, but it would happen. Muriel would make a brilliant match; she would be radiantly happy.

Mary coveted Muriel’s eternal happiness with a deep and hungry covetousness, for Muriel was all that mattered.

Then the war came, suddenly, with a sinister headline in the paper one morning, a grimmer one next, and on the third ‒ war. George, grown a little fatter and certainly flabbier, unfurled the paper over his breakfast table and said pompously:

‘I do believe there’s going to be a war.’

Muriel said: ‘A real war, or a funny one, like they have at Olympia?’

‘A real war,’ said George, ‘and I shall join up. I have always longed to serve my country. I ought to have been a soldier, never a clergyman. A soldier’s is a man’s job.’

That was what he had said about sailors long, long ago, on an afternoon when they had walked back from tea in the Jasmine.

Mary sighed heavily and said: ‘When shall you join up?’

But of course he did nothing of the kind. The war did not affect them very much,

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