The Emancipated

G >> George Gissing >> The Emancipated

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

A silence of some duration followed. Elgar sat with bent head,
twisting his moustaches. At length:

"I believe you are right, Mallard. Not in your judgment of me, but
in your practical resolve."

Mallard examined him from under his eyebrows.

"You are prepared to wait?" he asked, in an uncertain voice.

"Prepared, no. But I grant the force of your arguments. I will try
to bring myself to patience."

Mallard sat unmoving. His legs were crossed, and he held his soft
felt hat crushed together in both his hands. Elgar glanced at him
once or twice, expecting him to speak, but the other was mute.

"Your judgment of me," Elgar resumed, "is harsh and unfounded. I
don't know how you have formed it. You know nothing of what it means
to me to love such a girl as Cecily. Here I have found my rest. It
supplies me with no new qualities, but it strengthens those I have.
You picture me being unfaithful to Cecily--deserting her, becoming
brutal to her? There must be a strange prejudice in your mind to
excite such images." He examined Mallard's face. "Some day I will
remind you of your prophecies."

Mallard regarded him, and spoke at length, in a strangely jarring,
discordant voice.

"I said that hastily. I make no prophecies. I wished to say that
those seemed to me the probabilities."

"Thank you for the small mercy, at all events," said Elgar, with a
laugh.

"What do you intend to do?" Mallard proceeded to ask, changing his
position.

"I can make no plans yet. I have pretended to only too often. You
have no objection to my remaining here?"

"You must take your own course--with the understanding to which we
have come."

"I wish I could make you look more cheerful, Mallard. I owe it to
you, for you have given me more gladness than I can utter."

"You can do it."

"How?"

"See her to-morrow morning, and then go back to England, and make
yourself some kind of reputable existence."

"Not yet. That is asking too much. Not so soon."

"As you please. We understand each other on the main point."

"Yes. Are you going back to Amalfi?"

"I don't know."

They talked for a few minutes more, in short sentences of this kind,
but did not advance beyond the stage of mutual forbearance. Mallard
lingered, as though not sure that he had fulfilled his mission. In
the end he went away abruptly.

CHAPTER XII

ON THE HEIGHTS

In vain, at each meal, did Clifford Marsh await Cecily's appearance.
A trifling indisposition kept her to her room, was Mrs. Lessingham's
reply to sympathetic inquiries. Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, who were
seriously making their preparations for journeying northward, held
private talk concerning the young lady, and felt they would like to
stay a week longer, just to see if their suspicions would be
confirmed. Mrs. Denyer found it difficult to assume the becoming air
when she put civil questions to Mrs. Lessingham, for she was now
assured that to Miss Doran was attributable the alarming state of
things between Clifford and Madeline; Marsh would never have been so
intractable but for this new element in the situation. Madeline
herself on the other hand, was a model of magnanimity; in Clifford's
very hearing, she spoke of Cecily with tender concern, and then
walked past her recreant admirer with her fair head in a pose of
conscious grace.

Even Mr. Musselwhite, at the close of the second day, grew aware
that the table lacked one of its ornaments. It was his habit now--
a new habit came as a blessing of Providence to Mr. Musselwhite--
on passing into the drawing-room after dinner, to glance towards a
certain corner, and, after slow, undecided "tackings," to settle in
that direction. There sat Barbara Denyer. Her study at present was
one of the less-known works of Silvio Pellico, and as Mr.
Musselwhite approached, she looked up with an air of absorption. He
was wont to begin conversation with the remark, flatteringly toned,
"Reading Italian as usual, Miss Denyer?" but this evening a new
subject had been suggested to him.

"I hope Miss Doran is not seriously unwell, Miss Denyer?"

"Oh, I think not."

Mr. Musselwhite reflected, stroking his whiskers in a gentlemanly
way.

"One misses her," was his next remark.

"Yes, so much. She is so charming--don't you think, Mr.
Musselwhite?"

"Very." He now plucked at the whiskers uneasily. "Oh yes, very."

Barbara smiled and turned her attention to the book, as though she
could spare no more time. Mr. Musselwhite, dimly feeling that this
topic demanded no further treatment, racked his brains for something
else to say. He was far towards Lincolnshire when a rustle of the
pages under Barbara's finger gave him a happy inspiration.

"I don't know whether you would care to see English papers now and
then, Miss Denyer? I always have quite a number. The _Field_, for
instance, and--"

"You are very kind, I don't read much English, but I shall be glad
to see anything you like to bring me."

Mrs. Denyer was not wholly without consolation in her troubles about
Clifford Marsh.

On the following morning, as she and her daughters were going out,
they came face to face with a gentleman who was announcing to the
servant his wish to see Miss Doran. Naturally they all glanced at
him. Would he be admitted? With much presence of mind, Madeline
exclaimed,--

"Oh dear, mamma! I have forgotten that letter. Please wait for me; I
won't be a minute."

And she disappeared, the others moving out on to the staircase. When
Madeline rejoined them, it was with the intelligence that the
visitor _had_ been admitted.

"Who can he be?"

"Rather a strange-looking person."

"Miss Doran cannot be ill. She has no brother. What an odd thing!"

They walked on, close serried, murmuring to each other discreetly. .
. .

For several minutes there had been perfect stillness in the room, a
hush after the music of low, impassioned voices. It was broken, yet
scarcely broken, by the sound of lips touching lips--touching to
part sweetly, touching again to part more slowly, more sweetly
still.

"They will not influence you against me?"

"Never! never!"

"They will try, Cecily. You will hear endless things to my
disadvantage--things that I cannot contradict if you ask me."

"I care for nothing, Reuben. I am yours for ever and ever, hear what
I may, happen what may!"

"Don't call me by my hateful name, dearest. We will find some other,
if I must have a name for you."

"Why, that is like Romeo!"

"So it is; I wish I had no worse than Romeo's reason. I had rather
have had the vulgarest Anglo-Saxon name than this Jewish one.
Happily, I need have no fear in telling you that; _you_ are no
Puritan."

"As little as a girl could be." She laughed in her happiness. "Have
you the same dislike for your sister's name?"

"Just the same. I believe it partly explains her life."

"She will not be against us, though?"

"Neither for nor against, I am afraid. Yet I have to thank her for
the meeting with you at Pompeii. Why haven't you asked me how I came
there?"

"I never thought to ask. It seemed so natural. I longed for you, and
you stood before me. I could almost believe that my longing had
power to bring you, so strong it was. But tell me."

He did so, and again they lost themselves in rapturous dreamland.

"Do you think Mr. Mallard will wish to see me?" she asked timidly.

"I can't be sure. I half think not."

"Yet I half wish he would. I should find it strange and a little
difficult, but he couldn't be harsh with me. I think it might do
good if he came to see me--in a day or two."

"On what terms have you always been with him? How does he behave to
you?"

"Oh, you know him. He still looks upon me rather too much as a
child, and he seems to have a pleasure in saying odd, half-rude
things; but we are excellent friends--or have been. Such a
delightful day as we had at Baiae! I have always liked him."

"At Baiae? You didn't go alone with him?"

"No; Miriam was there and Mr. Spence. We found him dreaming at
Pozzuoli, and carried him off in the boat with us."

"He never thought much of me, and now he hates me."

"No; that is impossible."

"If you had heard him speaking to me last night, you would think
differently. He makes it a crime that I should love you."

"I don't understand it."

"What's more, he has feared this ever since I came; I feel sure of
it. When I was coming back from Pompeii, he took me with him to
Amalfi all but by force. He dreaded my returning and seeing you."

"But why should he think of such a thing?"

"Why?"

Elgar led her a few paces, until they stood before a mirror.

"Don't look at me. The other face, which is a little paler than it
should be."

She hid it against him.

"But you don't love me for my face only? You will see others who
have more beauty."

"Perhaps so. Mallard hopes so, in the long time we shall have to
wait."

She fixed startled eyes on him.

"He cannot wish me so ill--he cannot! That would be unlike him."

"He wishes _you_ no ill, be sure of it."

"Oh, you haven't spoken to him as you should! You haven't made him
understand you. Let me speak to him for you."

"Cecily."

"Dearest?"

"Suppose he doesn't wish to understand me. Have you never thought,
when he has pretended to treat you as a child, that there might be
some reason for it? Did it never occur to you that, if he spoke too
roughly, it might be because he was afraid of being too gentle?"

"Never! That thought has never approached my mind. You don't speak
in earnest?"

Why could he not command his tongue? Why have suggested this to her
imagination? He did not wholly mean to say it, even to the last
moment; but unwisdom, as so often, overcame him. It was a way of
defending himself; he wished to imply that Mallard had a powerful
reason for assailing his character. He had been convinced since last
night that Mallard was embittered by jealousy, and he half credited
the fear lest jealousy might urge to the use of any weapons against
him; he was tempted by the satisfaction of putting Cecily on her
guard against interested motives. But he should not have troubled
her soul with such suspicions. He read on her face how she was
pained, and her next word. proved his folly.

"If you are right, I can never speak to him as I might have done. It
alters everything; it makes everything harder. You are mistaken."

"I may be. Let us hope I am."

"How I wish I had never seen that possibility! I cannot believe it;
yet it will prevent me from looking honestly in his face, as I
always have done."

"Forget it. Let us speak only of ourselves."

But she was troubled, and Elgar, angry with himself, spoke
impatiently.

"In pity for him, you would love me less. I see that."

"You are not yet satisfied? You find new ways of forcing me to say
that I love you. Seem to distrust me, that I may say it over and
over; make me believe you really doubt if I can be constant, just
that I may hear what my heart says in its distress, and repeat it
all to you. Be a little unkind to me, that I may show how your
unkindness would wound me, and may entreat you back into your own
true self. You can do nothing, say nothing, but I will make it
afford new proofs of hew I love you."

"I had rather you made yourself less dear to me. The time will be so
long. How can I live through it?"

"Will it not help you a little to help me? To know that you are
unhappy would make it so much longer to me, my love."

"It will be hell to live away from you! I cannot make myself another
man. If you knew what I have suffered only in these two days!"

"There was uncertainty."

"Uncertainty? Then what certainty could I ever have? Every hour
spent at a distance from you will be full of hideous misgivings.
Remember that every one will he doing the utmost to part us."

"Let them do the utmost twice over! You must have faith in me. Look
into my eyes. Is there no assurance, no strength for you? Do they
look too happy? That is because you are still here; time enough for
sadness when you are gone. Oh, you think too humbly of yourself!
Having loved you, and known your love, what else can the world offer
me to live for?"

"Wherever you are, I must come often."

"Indeed you must, or for me too the burden will be heavier than I
can bear."

As the Denyers were coming home, it surprised them to pass, at a
little distance from the house, Clifford Marsh in conversation with
the gentleman who had called upon Miss Doran. Madeline, exercising
her new privilege of perfect _sang-froid_, took an opportunity not
long after to speak to Clifford in the drawing-room.

"Who was the gentleman we saw you with?"

"I met him at Pompeii, but didn't know his name till today. He's
asked me to dine with him."

"He is a friend of Miss Doran's, I believe?"

"I believe so."

"You accepted his invitation?"

"Yes; I am always willing to make a new acquaintance."

"A liberal frame of mind. Did he give you news of Miss Doran's
health?"

"No."

He smiled mysteriously, only to appear at his ease; and Madeline,
smiling also, turned away.

Cecily reappeared this evening at the dinner-table. She was changed;
Mrs. Gluck and her guests were not again to behold the vision to
which their eyes had become accustomed; that supremacy of simple
charm which some of them had recognized as English girlhood at its
best, had given place to something less intelligible, less instant
in its attractiveness. Perhaps the climate of Naples was proving not
well suited to her.

After dinner, she and Mrs. Lessingham at once went to their private
room. Cecily sat down to write a letter. When she moved, as if the
letter were finished, her aunt looked up from a newspaper.

"I've been thinking, Cecily. Suppose we go over to Capri for a
change?"

"I am quite willing, aunt."

"I think Mr. Elgar has not been there yet. He might accompany us."

Unprepared for this, Cecily murmured an assent.

"Do you know how much longer he thinks of staying in Italy?"

"We haven't spoken of it."

"Has he given up his literary projects?"

"I'm afraid we didn't speak of that either."

"Shall you be satisfied if he continues to live quite without
occupation?"

"I don't for a moment think he purposes that."

"And yet it will certainly be the ease as long as he remains here--
or wherever else we happen to be living."

Mrs. Lessingham allowed her to ponder this for a few minutes. Then
she resumed the train of thought.

"Have you had leisure yet to ask yourself, my dear, what use you
will make of the great influence you have acquired over Mr. Elgar's
mind?"

"That is not quite the form my thoughts would naturally take, aunt,"
Cecily replied, with gentleness.

"Yet may it not be the form they should? You are accustomed to think
for yourself to a greater extent than girls whose education has been
more ordinary; you cannot take it ill if I remind you now of certain
remarks I have made on Mr. Elgar lately, and remind you also that I
am not alone in my view of him. Don't fear that I shall say anything
unkind; but if you feel equal to a woman's responsibilities, you
must surely exercise a woman's good sense. Let us say nothing more
than that Mr. Elgar has fallen into habits of excessive indolence;
doesn't it seem to you that you might help him out of hem?"

"I think he may not need help as you understand it, now."

"My dear, he needs it perhaps five hundred times more than he did
before. If you decline to believe me, I shall be only too much
justified by your experience hereafter."

"What would you have me do?"

"What must very soon occur to your own excellent wits, Cecily--for
I won't give up all my pride in you. Mr. Elgar should, of course, go
back to England, and do something that becomes him; he must decide
what. Let him have a few days with us in Capri; then go, and so far
recommend himself in our eyes. No one can make him see that this is
what his dignity--if nothing else--demands, except yourself.
Think of it, dear."

Cecily did think of it, long and anxiously. Thanks to Elgar, her
meditations had a dark background such as her own fancy would never
have supplied.

He knew not how sadly the image of him had been blurred in Cecily's
mind, the man who lay that night in his room overlooking the port.
Whether such ignorance were for his aid or his disadvantage, who
shall venture to say?

To a certain point, we may follow with philosophic curiosity, step
by step, the progress of mental anguish, but when that point is
passed, analysis loses its interest; the vocabulary of pain has
exhausted itself, the phenomena already noted do but repeat
themselves with more rapidity, with more intensity--detail is lost
in the mere sense of throes. Perchance the mind is capable of
suffering worse than the fiercest pangs of hopeless love combined
with jealousy; one would not pretend to put a limit to the
possibilities of human woe; but for Mallard, at all events this
night did the black flood of misery reach high-water mark.

What joy in the world that does not represent a counter-balance of
sorrow? What blessedness poured upon one head but some other must
therefore lie down under malediction? We know that with the
uttermost of happiness there is wont to come a sudden blending of
troublous humour. May it not be that the soul has conceived a subtle
sympathy with that hapless one but for whose sacrifice its own
elation were impossible?

CHAPTER XIII

ECHO AND PRELUDE

At Villa Sannazaro, the posture of affairs was already understood.
When Eleanor Spence, casually calling at the _pension_, found that
Cecily was unable to receive visitors, she at the same time learnt
from Mrs. Lessingham to what this seclusion was due. The ladies had
a singular little conversation, for Eleanor was inwardly so amused
at this speedy practical comment on Mrs. Lessingham's utterances of
the other day, that with difficulty she kept her countenance; while
Mrs. Lessingham herself, impelled to make the admission without
delay, that she might exhibit a philosophic acceptance of fact, had
much ado to hide her chagrin beneath the show of half-cynical
frankness that became a woman of the world. Eleanor--passably
roguish within the limits of becoming mirth--acted the scene to
her husband, who laughed shamelessly. Then came explanations between
Eleanor and Miriam.

The following day passed without news, but on the morning after,
Miriam had a letter from Cecily; not a long letter, nor very
effusive, but telling all that was to be told. And it ended with a
promise that Cecily would come to the villa that afternoon. This was
communicated to Eleanor.

"Where's Mallard, I wonder?" said Spence, when his wife came to talk
to him. "Not, I suspect, at the old quarters, It would be like him
to go off somewhere without a word. Confound that fellow Elgar!"

"I'm half disposed to think that it serves Mr. Mallard right," was
Eleanor's remark.

"Well, for heartlessness commend me to a comfortable woman."

"And for folly commend me to a strong-minded man."

"Pooh! He'll growl and mutter a little, and then get on with his
painting."

"If I thought so, my liking for him would diminish. I hope he is
tearing his hair."

"I shall go seek him."

"Do; and give my best love to him, poor fellow."

Cecily came alone. She was closeted with Miriam for a long time,
then saw Eleanor. Spence purposely kept away from home.

Dante lay unread, as well as the other books which Eleanor placed
insidiously in her cousin's room. Letters lay unanswered--among
them several relating to the proposed new chapel at Bartles. How did
Miriam employ herself during the hours that she spent alone?

Not seldom, in looking back upon her childhood and maidenhood.

Imagine a very ugly cubical brick house of two stories, in a suburb
of Manchester. It stands a few yards back from the road. On one
side, it is parted by a row of poplars from several mean cottages;
on the other, by a narrow field from a house somewhat larger and
possibly a little uglier than itself. Its outlook, over the highway,
is on to a tract of country just being broken up by builders, beyond
which a conglomerate of factories, with chimneys ever belching heavy
fumes, closes the view; its rear windows regard a scrubby meadow,
grazed generally by broken-down horses, with again a limitary
prospect of vast mills.

Imagine a Sunday in this house. Half an hour later than on profane
days, Mrs. Elgar descends the stairs. She is a lady of middle age,
slight, not ungraceful, handsome; the look of pain about her
forehead is partly habitual, but the consciousness of Sunday
intensifies it. She moves without a sound. Entering the
breakfast-room, she finds there two children, a girl and a boy, both
attired in new-seeming garments which are obviously stiff and
uncomfortable. The little girl sits on an uneasy chair, her
white-stockinged legs dangling, on her lap a large copy of
"Pilgrim's Progress;" the boy is half reclined on a shiny sofa, his
hands in his pockets, on his face an expression of discontent. The
table is very white, very cold, very uninviting.

Ten minutes later appears the master of the house, shaven, also in
garments that appear now and uncomfortable, glancing hither and
thither with preoccupied eyes. There is some talk in a low voice
between the little girl and her mother; then the family seat
themselves at table silently. Mr. Elgar turns a displeased look on
the boy, and says something in a harsh voice which causes the
youngster to straighten himself, curl his lip precociously, and
thereafter preserve a countenance of rebellion subdued by fear. His
father eats very little, speaks scarcely at all, but thinks,
thinks-and most assuredly not of sacred subjects.

Breakfast over, there follows an hour of indescribable dreariness,
until the neighbourhood begins to sound with the clanging of
religious bells. Mr. Elgar has withdrawn to a little room of his
own, where perhaps, he gives himself up to meditation on the duties
of a Christian parent, though his incredulous son has ere now had a
glimpse at the door, and observed him in the attitude of
letter-writing. Mrs. Elgar moves about silently, the pain on her
brow deepening as chapel-time approaches. At length the boy and girl
go upstairs to be "got ready," which means that they indue other
garments yet more uncomfortable than those they already wear. This
process over, they descend again to the breakfast-room, and again
sit there, waiting for the dread moment of departure. The boy is
more rebellious than usual; he presently drums with his feet, and
even begins to whistle, very low, a popular air. His sister looks at
him, first with astonished reproach, then in dread.

_Satis superque_. Again and again Miriam revived these images of the
past. And the more she thought of herself as a child, the less was
she pleased with what her memory presented. How many instances came
back to her of hypocrisy before her father or mother, hypocrisy
which, strangely enough, she at the time believed a merit, though
perfectly aware of her own insincerity! How many a time had she
suffered from the restraints imposed upon her, and then secretly
allowed herself indulgences, and then again persuaded herself that
by severe attention to formalities she blotted out her sin!

But the worst was when Cecily Doran came to live in the house.
Cecily was careless in religion, had been subjected to no proper
severity, had not been taught to probe her con science. At once
Miriam assumed an attitude of spiritual pride--the beginning of an
evil which was to strengthen its hold upon her through years. She
would be an example to the poor little heathen; she talked with her
unctuously; she excited herself, began to find a pleasure in
asceticism, and drew the susceptible girl into the same way. They
would privately appoint periods of fasting, and at several
successive meals irritate their hunger by taking only one or two
morsels; when faintness came upon them, they gloried in the misery.

And from that stage of youth survived memories far more painful than
those of childhood. Miriam shut her mind against them.

Her marriage came about in the simplest way; nothing easier to
understand, granted these circumstances. The friends of the family
were few, and all people of the same religious sect, of the same
commercial sphere. Miriam had never spoken with a young man whom she
did not in her heart despise; the one or two who might possibly have
been tempted to think of her as a desirable wife were repelled by
her austerity. She had now a character to support; she had made
herself known for severe devotion to the things of the spirit. In
her poor little world she could not submit to be less than
pre-eminent, and only by the way of religion was pre-eminence to be
assured. When the wealthy and pious manufacturer sought her hand,
she doubted for a while, but was in the end induced to consent by
the reflection that not only would she be freer, but at the same
time enjoy a greatly extended credit and influence. Her pride
silenced every other voice.

Religious hypocrisy is in our day a very rare thing; so little is to
be gained by it. To be sure, the vast majority of English people are
constantly guilty of hypocritical practices, but that, as a rule, is
mere testimony to the rootedness of their orthodox faith. Mr. Elgar.
shutting himself up between breakfast and chapel to write business
letters--which he pre- or post-dated--was ignoble enough, but
not therefore a hypocrite. Had a fatal accident happened to one of
his family whilst he was thus employed, he would not have succeeded
in persuading his conscience that the sin and the calamity were
unconnected. His wife had never admitted a doubt of its being
required by the immutable law of God that she should be sad and
severe on Sunday, that Reuben should be sternly punished for
whistling on that day, that little Miriam should be rewarded when
she went through the long services with unnatural stillness and
demureness. Nor was Miriam herself a hypocrite when, mistress of
Redbeck House, she began to establish her reputation and authority
throughout dissenting Bartles.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32