The Quality of Mercy

38



In the silence of her apartment, seated at the small writing desk, Jane Ashton strove to compose the promised letter, the main labor of which lay in the effort to understand herself.

There were things about Erasmus Kemp that she could not admire. The way he set the achievement of his aims on the same, unqualified, identical plane of success, whatever their nature, the way he neglected to consider the cost to others. However, she felt that she understood these things better now, after their last talk together. Something of the compassion she had felt for him on that occasion returned to her mind. He was endlessly seeking to fulfill the vow he had made to his father, as if in the end his successes would leave no room for any sense of inadequacy or guilt. Like trying to fill a pit with gold, not knowing that the pit was bottomless … Or was she simply trying to find excuses for this lack of care he showed, this overriding devotion to his own purposes? Finding excuses for him was easy; he was attractive to her in a way no other man had ever been, she was stirred by the thought of lovemaking between them, his imagined touch upon her. His desire was so strong, so evident in his looks and behavior. Sometimes she had found it hard to meet his eyes, fierce with need in that dark-complexioned face. He was relentless …

It came to her, in this room where she had thought so much about him from the very first, where from girlhood she had tried to understand life and the world and her place in things, where she had thrilled to Gray’s Pindaric odes and wrestled with Hume and Voltaire, that perhaps it was this, the relentlessness, something merciless in him, that attracted her so. She reviewed all she knew of him, what she had sensed and what he had told her, the wishes, the ambitions. His life had been a series of aims imposed on himself. Was she no more than this, something to achieve and possess and then lay indifferently aside among the other trophies? Like the mission of justice that had taken him in pursuit of the survivors of the Liverpool Merchant, like this Durham coal mine that he would take over and then perhaps lose interest in and relinquish.

No, she did not believe he would let the mine go; he had found something to devote himself to. He wanted to improve things, bring more efficiency, reduce the harshness of the labor. Was not this a desire to improve the lot of his fellow men? Even if he himself did not altogether regard it in this light, or at least refer to it in this way, was not this perhaps what underlay his ambitions, the desire to be a benefactor? Profit, efficiency, material improvement—was not this the way forward? She had always believed in measures that would bring more independence, more well-being to those who were deprived, whose lives were all toil, who were ignorant and kept in ignorance and helpless because of it, always at the mercy of those richer and more powerful.

She could help him in this; it was something she had always dreamed of, practical measures, practical solutions, looking to see what could be done. The boys went to work in the mine at seven years of age! It was appalling—they were children still, they were not grown, their bones were not properly formed. For children to be racked with toil and have no remedy, it cried out for betterment. She could speak of it to Erasmus if they were married, she could prevail upon him to see things with more tenderness. For love of her—and she could not doubt the love—he would be prepared to change. For her sake, for what he would see as the sake of her happiness. Guided by her, he would come to see what was due, what was just—not the justice of the courts, but the justice of human dealings, where the quality of mercy entered more closely and decisively. She could press for the setting-up of a school; it was an ambition close to her heart to teach people to read and write—the children, anyone else who wanted to attend and learn. A kind of Sunday school. The working people would benefit; they would be able to understand what was happening in the world, discuss things, form opinions. But what leisure would they have for reading, what energy left over from their work? She had been assuming a way of life not far different from her own. The answer, of course, was to reduce the hours of labor, but she could not imagine Erasmus agreeing to this. However, he had other ideas for making things better. The men worked by candlelight at present, but he had spoken of a kind of lamp that might be devised, which they could attach to their caps in some way; no, not caps, they would wear a sort of metal helmet, a modified version of what soldiers sometimes wore. It would be safer, he had said, but the main thing was that better light would save time and so increase production. He sometimes put things in what seemed to her the wrong order …

These things might take time, but all manner of more immediate reforms could be introduced. She and Erasmus together would make this colliery village a happier place. Other collieries would imitate them, follow suit.

He would listen to her. She had been struck from the first by the way he listened to her, hung on her words. She had been flattered by this attention, the way he confided his plans and designs to her, made her a partner in them.

It was now, thinking this, that a shadow of fear came to her. What he had always sought was her accord, her complete approval and endorsement. Not once had he consulted her on the grounds of opinion, not truly. She remembered his face as it had been when she had taken the pitman’s part and defended his choice—and his right—to keep the land and cultivate it for his father’s sake, as a memorial to his father. He had not seemed to see the similarity with his own case. He had assumed an air of amusement, which she had not much liked, but he had been surprised and displeased—it had shown in his expression—because she had not seen things exactly as he did. Unendurable to be trapped forever in his expectations of her, his need for her blessing. Like an imprisonment … Her only role the invariable one of support and assent. But he could be supported in a deeper, more meaningful way; he would come to recognize the value of her independent judgment, which would be exercised for his good. Even disagreeing, always for his sake. He would know she had his interests at heart, his true interests.

The fear, however, persisted. In the toils of guilt and debt and obligation that had long lost all reason, possessed by the need for successes that might silence the voices but never did, he had made a cage for himself, and now he wanted to draw her into it. But to draw her in, he would have to open the cage door and take the risk of freedom.

She looked round the room, the objects in it so familiar, accompanying her through all the stages of her life so far. It was time for a new stage, it was time for her to marry. With this recognition, a kind of partial yielding, Erasmus’s face and figure invaded her mind, as if they had been waiting only for that, endowed with an extraordinary vividness and immediacy. She was enveloped in thoughts of him; there was no closing them off. The sense of him—what she knew and what she surmised—was too potent, there was no door that could be closed on it. She knew herself to be strong, not easily daunted or browbeaten; she would not consent to be imprisoned in his judgments; she would give battle if need be. In the fear that she felt there was love and a sense of rising to challenge, a sense that such a moment, such a desire, would never come to her again. She drew the sheet of paper toward her and wrote the first words of the letter: My Dearest Erasmus …