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Updated: May 22, 2025
On my way home, I passed some days at Eppington, in Chesterfield, the residence of my friend and connection, Mr. My wish had been to return to Paris, where I had left my household establishment, as if there myself, and to see the end of the Revolution, which, I then thought, would be certainly and happily closed in less than a year.
The father, always a cautious man, felt inclined to blame his child for her want of prudence. "She'll ruin everything," he said. "Why the devil can't she be careful?" "I believe the man is deliberately plotting to get rid of her," said Mrs. Eppington. "I shall tell him plainly what I think." "You're a fool, Hannah," replied her husband, allowing himself the licence of the domestic hearth.
Was the man completely under his wife's thumb; or, tired of her, was he playing some devil's game of his own? To most of his acquaintances the latter explanation seemed the more plausible. The gossip, in due course, reached the parental home. Mrs. Eppington shook the vials of her wrath over the head of her son-in-law.
Accustomed to bid for what he wanted, he offered his price. The Eppington family was poor and numerous. The girl, bred up to the false notions of duty inculcated by a narrow conventionality, and, feminine like, half in love with martyrdom for its own sake, let her father bargain for a higher price, and then sold herself.
Do you know what I am, and have been for two years?" The elder woman rose, with a frightened pleading look upon her face, and the other stopped and turned away towards the window. "We all thought it for the best," continued Mrs. Eppington meekly. The girl spoke wearily without looking round. "Oh! every silly thing that was ever done, was done for the best.
Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy, had intended. Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman, when the moment came for talk, and so palpably were his pointless remarks mere efforts to delay an unpleasant subject, that Blake, always direct bluntly though not ill-naturedly asked him, "How much?" Mr. Eppington was disconcerted.
Blake rose. He had an ugly look when angry, and his language was apt to be coarse. "Tell them to mind their own business, and leave me and my wife alone." That was the sense of what he said; he expressed himself at greater length, and in stronger language. "But, my dear Blake," urged Mr. Eppington, "for your own sake, is it wise?
Eppington was a beautiful princess, bewitched by a wicked dragon, so that she seemed to be an old, worn woman. But curly-headed Edith fought the dragon, represented by the three-legged rocking-horse, and slew him with much shouting and the toasting-fork. Then Mrs. Eppington became again a beautiful princess, and went away with Edith back to her own people.
Eppington was conventionally moral; Edith had been thinking for herself, and thinking in a bad atmosphere. Mrs. Eppington, grew angry at the girl's callousness. "Have you no sense of shame?" she cried. "I had once," was Edith's reply, "before I came to live here. Do you know what this house is for me, with its gilded mirrors, its couches, its soft carpets?
"It's not that at least that's not what I have come about," he answered confusedly. "What have you come about?" Inwardly Mr. Eppington cursed himself for a fool, for the which he was perhaps not altogether without excuse. He had meant to act the part of a clever counsel, acquiring information while giving none; by a blunder, he found himself in the witness-box.
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