The Emancipated

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"That is a distinction which repeats your distrust. We won't say any
more about it. I will bear in mind my want of experience, and in
future never act without consulting you."

She moved towards the door.

"You are coming?"

"Look here, Ciss, you are not so foolish as to misunderstand me.
When I said that I distrusted your discretion, I meant, of course,
that you might innocently do things which would make people talk
about you. There is no harm in reminding you of the danger."

"Perhaps not; though it would be more like yourself to scorn
people's talk."

"That is only possible if we chose to go back to our life of
solitude. I'm afraid it wouldn't suit you very well now."

"No; I am far too eager to see my name in fashionable lists. Has not
all my life pointed to that noble ambition?"

She regarded him with a smile from her distance, a smile that
trembled a little about her lips, and in which her clear eyes had
small part. Elgar, without replying, began to turn down the lamp.

"This is what has made you so absent and uneasy for the last week or
two?" Cecily added.

The lamp was extinguished

"Yes, it is," answered Elgar's voice in the darkness. "I don't like
the course things have been taking."

"Then you were quite right to speak plainly. Be at rest; you shall
have no more anxiety."

She opened the door, and they went upstairs together. In the bedroom
Cecily found her little boy sleeping quietly; she bent above him for
a few moments, and with soft fingers smoothed the coverlet.

There was no further conversation between them--except that Cecily
just mentioned the news her aunt had received from Mrs. Spence.

At breakfast they spoke of the usual subjects, in the usual way.
Elgar had his ride, amused himself in the library till luncheon,
lolled about the drawing-room whilst Cecily played, went to his
club, came back to dinner,--all in customary order. Neither look
nor word, from him or Cecily, made allusion to last night's
incident.

The next morning, when breakfast was over, he came behind his wife's
chair and pointed to an envelope she had opened.

"What strange writing! Whose is it?"

"From Mrs. Travis."

He moved away, and Cecily rose. As she was passing him, he said:

"What has she to say to you?"

"She acknowledges the letter I sent her yesterday morning, that's
all."

"You wrote--in the way you proposed?"

"Certainly."

He allowed her to pass without saying anything more.

CHAPTER III

GRADATION

During the first six months of her wedded life, Cecily wrote from
time to time in a handsomely-bound book which had a little silver
lock to it. She was then living at the seaside in Cornwall, and
Reuben occasionally went out for some hours with the fishers, or
took a long solitary ride inland, just to have the delight of
returning to his home after a semblance of separation; in his
absence, Cecily made a confidant of the clasped volume. On some of
its fair pages were verses, written when verse came to her more
easily than prose, but read not even to him who occasioned them. A
passage or two of the unrhymed thoughts, with long periods of
interval, will suggest the course of her mental history.

"I have no more doubts, and take shame to myself for those I ever
entertained. Presently I will confess to him how my mind was tossed
and troubled on that flight from Capri; I now feel able to do so,
and to make of the confession one more delight. It was impossible
for me not to be haunted by the fear that I had yielded to impulse,
and acted unworthily of one who could reflect. I had not a doubt of
my lover, but the foolish pride which is in a girl's heart whispered
to me that I had been too eager--had allowed myself to be won too
readily; that I should have been more precious to him if more
difficulty had been put in his way. Would it not have been good to
give him proof of constancy through long months of waiting? But the
secret was that I dreaded to lose him. I reproached him for want of
faith in my steadfastness; but just as well he might have reproached
me. It was horrible to think of his going back into the world and
living among people of whom I knew nothing. I knew in some degree
what his life had been; by force of passionate love I understood, or
thought I understood him; and I feared most ignobly.

"And I was putting myself in opposition to all those older and more
experienced people. How could I help distrusting myself at times? I
saw them all looking coldly and reproachfully at me. Here again my
pride had something to say. They would smile among themselves, and
tell each other that they had held a mistakenly high opinion of me.
That was hard to bear. I like to be thought much of; it is delicious
to feel that people respect me, that they apply other judgments to
me than to girls in general. Mr. Mallard hurt me more than he
thought in pretending--I feel sure he only pretended--to regard
my words as trivial. How it rejoices me that there are some things I
know better than my husband does! I have read of women liking to
humble themselves, and in a way I can understand it; I do like to
_say_ that he is far above me--oh! and I mean it, I believe it;
but the joy of joys is to see him look at me with admiration. I
rejoice that I have beauty; I rejoice that I have read much, and can
think for myself now and then, and sometimes say a thing 'that every
one would not think of. Suppose I were an uneducated girl, not
particularly good-looking, and a man loved me; well, in that case
perhaps the one joy would be mere worship of him and intense
gratitude--blind belief in his superiority to every other man that
lived. But then Reuben would never have loved me; he must have
something to admire, to stand a little in awe of. And for this very
reason, perhaps I feel such constant--self-esteem, for that is the
only word.". . .

"All the doubts and fears are over. I acted rightly, and because I
obeyed my passion. The poets are right, and all the prudent people
only grovel in their worldly wisdom. It may not be true for every
one, but for me to love and be loved, infinitely, with the love that
conquers everything, is the sole end of life. It is enough; come
what will, if love remain nothing else is missed. In the direst
poverty, we should be as much to each other as we are now. If he
died, I would live only to remember the days I passed with him. What
folly, what a crime, it would have been to waste two years, as
though we were immortal!

"I never think of Capri but I see it in the light of a magnificent
sunrise. Beloved, sacred island, where the morning of my life indeed
began! No spot in all the earth has beauty like yours; no name of
any place sounds to me as yours does!"

"I know that our life cannot always be what it is now. This is a
long honeymoon; we do not walk on the paths that are trodden by
ordinary mortals; the sky above us is not the same that others see
as they go about their day's business or pleasure. By what process
shall we fall to the common existence? We have all our wants
provided for; there is no need for my husband to work that he may
earn money, no need for me to take anxious thought about expenses;
so that we are tempted to believe that life will always be the same.
That cannot be; I am not so idle as to hope it.

"He certainly has powers which should be put to use. We have talked
much of things that he might possibly do, and I am sure that before
long his mind will hit the right path. I am so greedy of happiness
that even what we enjoy does not suffice me; I want my husband to
distinguish himself among men, that I may glory in his honour.
Yesterday he told me that my own abilities exceeded his, and that I
was more likely to make use of them; but in this case my ambition
takes a humble form. Even if I were sure that I could, say, write a
good book, I would infinitely prefer him to do it and receive the
reward of it. I like him to _say_ such things, but in fact he must
be more than I. Do I need a justification of the love I bear him?
Surely not; that would be a contradiction of love. But it is true
that I would gladly have him justify to others my belief in his
superiority.

"And yet--why not be content with what is well? If _he_ could
remain so; but will he? We have a long life before us, and I know
that it cannot be all honeymoon."

"I have been reading a French novel that has made me angry--in
spite of my better sense. Of course, it is not the first book of the
kind that I have read, but it comes home to me now. What right has
this author to say that no man was ever absolutely faithful? It is a
commonplace, but how can any one have evidence enough to justify
such a statement? I shall not speak of it to Reuben, for I don't
care to think long about it. Does that mean, I wonder, that I am
afraid to think of it?

"Well, f had rather have been taught to read and think about
everything, than be foolishly ignorant as so many women are. This
French author would laugh at my confidence, but I could laugh back
at his narrow cynicism. He knows nothing of love in its highest
sense. I am firm in my optimism, which has a very different base
from that of ignorance.

"This does not concern me; I won't occupy my mind with it; I won't
read any more of the cynics. My husband loves me, and I believe his
love incapable of receiving a soil. If ever I cease to believe that,
time enough then to be miserable and to fight out the problem."

The end of the six months found them still undecided as to where
they should fix a permanent abode. In no part of England had either
of them relatives or friends whose proximity would be of any value.
Cecily inclined towards London, feeling that there only would her
husband find incentives to exertion; but Reuben was more disposed to
settle somewhere on the Continent. He talked of going back to Italy,
living in Florence, and--writing something new about the
Renaissance. Cecily shook her head; Italy she loved, and she had
seen nothing of it north of Naples, but it was the land of
lotus-eaters. They would go there again, but not until life had
seriously shaped itself.

Whilst they talked and dreamed, decision came to them in the shape
of Mrs. Lessingham. Without warning, she one day presented herself
at their lodgings, having come direct from Paris. Her spirits were
delightful; she could not have behaved more graciously had this
marriage been the one desire of her life. The result of her private
talk with Cecily was that within a week all three travelled down to
London; there they remained for a fortnight, then went on to Paris.
Mrs. Lessingham's quarters were in Rue de Belle Chasse, and the
Elgars found a suitable dwelling in the same street.

Their child was born, and for a few months all questions were
postponed to that of its health and Cecily's. The infant gave a good
deal of trouble, was anything but robust; the mother did not regain
her strength speedily. The first three months of the new year were
spent at Bordighera; then came three months of Paris; then the
family returned to England (without Mrs. Lessingham), and
established themselves in the house in Belsize Park.

The immediate effect of paternity upon Elgar was amusing. His
self-importance visibly increased. He spoke with more gravity;
whatever step he took was seriously considered; if he read a
newspaper, it was with an air of sober reflection.

"This is the turning-point in his life," Cecily said to her aunt.
"He seems to me several years older; don't you notice it? I am quite
sure that as soon as things are in order again he will begin to
work."

And the prophecy seemed to find fulfilment. Not many days after
their taking possession of the English home, Reuben declared a
project that his mind had been forming. It was not, to be sure,
thoroughly fashioned; its limits must necessarily be indeterminate
until fixed by long and serious study; but what he had in view was
to write a history of the English mind in its relation to
Puritanism.

"I have a notion, Ciss, that this is the one thing into which I can
throw all my energies. The one need of my intellectual life is to
deal a savage blow at the influences which ruined all my early
years. You can't look at the matter quite as I do; you don't know
the fierce hatred with which I am moved when I look back. If I am to
do literary work at all, it must be on some subject which deeply
concerns me--me myself, as an individual. I feel sure that my bent
isn't to fiction; I am not objective enough. But I enjoy the study
of history, and I have a good deal of acuteness. If I'm not
mistaken, I can make a brilliant book, a book that will excite
hatred and make my name known."

They were sitting in the library, late at night. As usual when he
was stirred, Reuben paced up and down the room and gesticulated.

"Do you mean it to be a big book!" Cecily asked, after reflection.

"Not very big. I should have French models before me, rather than
English."

"It would take you a long time to prepare."

"Two or three years, perhaps. But what does that matter? I shall
work a good deal at the British Museum. It will oblige me to be away
from you a good deal, but--"

"You mustn't trouble about that. I have my own work. If your
mornings are regularly occupied, I shall be able to make flied plans
of study there are so many things I want to work at."

"Capital! It's high time we came to that. And then, you know, you
might be able to give me substantial help--reading, making notes,
and so on--if you cared to."

Cecily smiled.

"Yes, if I care to.--But hasn't the subject been dealt with
already?"

"Oh, of course, in all sorts of ways. But not in _my_ way. No man
ever wrote about it with such energy of hatred as I shall bring to
the task."

Cecily was musing.

"It won't be a history in the ordinary sense," she said. "You will
make no pretence of historic calm and impartiality."

"Not I, indeed! My book shall be cited as a splendid example of
_odium antitheologicum_. There are passages of eloquence rolling in
my mind! And this is just the time for such a work. Throughout
intellectual England, Puritanism is dead; but we know how vigorously
it survives among the half-educated classes. My book shall declare
the emancipation of all the better minds and be a help to those who
are struggling upwards. It will be a demand, also, for a new
literature, free from the absurd restraints that Puritanism has put
upon us. All the younger writers will rally about me. It shall be a
'movement.' The name of my book shall be a watchword."

They talked about it till one in the morning.

For several weeks Elgar was constantly at the Museum. He read
prodigiously; he brought home a great quantity of notes; every night
Cecily and he talked over his acquisitions, and excited themselves.
But the weather grew oppressively hot, and it was plain that they
could not carry out the project of remaining in town all through the
autumn. Already Reuben was languishing in his zeal, when little
Clarence had a sudden and alarming illness. As soon as possible, all
went off to the seaside.

Since his work had begun, Reuben's interest in the child had fallen
off. Its ailments were soon little more than an annoyance to him;
Cecily perceived this, and seldom spoke on the subject. The fact of
the sudden illness affording an opportunity for rest led him to
express more solicitude than he really felt, but when the child got
back into its normal state, Reuben was more plainly indifferent to
it than ever. He spoke impatiently if the mother's cares occupied
her when he wished for her society.

"A baby isn't a rational creature," he said once. "When he is old
enough to begin to be educated, that will be a different thing. At
present he is only a burden. Perhaps you think me an unfatherly
brute?"

"No; I can understand you quite well. I should very often be
impatient myself if I had no servants to help me."

"What a horrible thought! Suppose, Ciss, we all of a sudden lost
everything, and we had to go and live in a garret, and I had to get
work as a clerk at five-and-twenty shillings a week. How soon should
we hate the sight of each other, and the sound of each other's
voices?"

"It might come to that," replied Cecily, with half a smile.
"Perhaps."

"There's no doubt about it."

Cecily remembered something she had written in the book with the
silver lock--a book which had not been opened for a long time.

"I used to think nothing could bring that about. And I am not sure
yet."

"I should behave like a ruffian. I know myself well enough."

"I think that would kill my love in time."

"Of course it would. How can any one love what is not lovable?"

"Yet we hear," suggested Cecily, "of wretched women remaining
devoted to husbands who all but murder them now and then."

"You are not so foolish as to call _that_ love! That is mere
unreasoning and degraded habit--the same kind of thing one may
find in a dog."

"Has love anything to do with reason, Reuben?"

"As I understand it, it has everything to do with reason. Animal
passion has not, of course; but love is made of that with something
added. Can my reason discover any argument why I should not love
you? I won't say that it might not, some day, and then my love would
by so much be diminished."

"You believe that reason is free to exercise itself, where love is
in possession?"

"I believe that love can only come when reason invites. Of course,
we are talking of love between men and women; the word has so many
senses. In this highest sense, it is one of the rarest of things.
How many wives and husbands love each other? Not one pair in five
thousand. In the average pair that have lived together as long as we
have, there is not only mutual criticism, but something even of
mutual dislike. That makes love impossible. Habit takes its place."

"Happily for the world."

"I don't know. Perhaps so. It is an ignoble necessity; but then, the
world largely consists of ignoble creatures."

Cecily reflected often on this conversation. Was there any
significance in such reasonings? It gave her keen pleasure to hear
Reuben maintain such a view, but did it mean anything? If, in
meditating about him, she discovered characteristics of his which
she could have wished to change, which in themselves were certainly
not lovable, had she in that moment ceased to love him, in love's
highest sense?

But in that case love might be self-deception. In that case, perfect
love was impossible save as a result of perfect knowledge.

What part had reason in the impulses which possessed her from her
first meeting with Reuben in Italy, unless that name were given to
the working of mysterious affinities, afterwards to be justified by
experience?

Cecily had been long content to accept love as an ultimate fact of
her being. But it was not Reuben's arguments only that led her to
ponder its nature and find names for its qualities. By this time she
had become conscious that her love as a wife was somehow altered,
modified, since she had been a mother. The time of passionate
reveries was gone by. She no longer wrote verses. The book was
locked up and kept hidden; if ever she resumed her diary, it must be
in a new volume, for that other was sacred to an undivided love. It
would now have been mere idle phrasing, to say that Reuben was all
in all to her. And she could not think of this without some sadness.

To the average woman maternity is absorbing. Naturally so, for the
average woman is incapable of poetical passion, and only too glad to
find something that occupies her thoughts from morning to night, a
relief from the weariness of her unfruitful mind. It was not to he
expected that Cecily, because she had given birth to a child, should
of a sudden convert herself into a combination of wet and dry nurse,
after the common model. The mother's love was strong in her, but it
could not destroy, nor even keep in long abeyance, those
intellectual energies which characterized her. Had she been
constrained to occupy herself ceaselessly with the demands of
babyhood, something more than impatience would shortly have been
roused in her: she would have rebelled against the conditions of her
sex; the gentle melancholy with which she now looked back upon the
early days of marriage would have become a bitter protest against
her slavery to nature. These possibilities in the modern woman
correspond to that spirit in the modern man which is in revolt
against the law of labour. Picture Reuben Elgar reduced to the
necessity of toiling for daily bread--that is to say, brought down
from his pleasant heights of civilization to the dull plain where
nature tells a man that if he would eat he must first sweat at the
furrow; one hears his fierce objurgations, his haughty railing
against the gods. Cecily did not represent that extreme type of
woman to whom the bearing of children has become in itself
repugnant; but she was very far removed from that other type which
the world at large still makes its ideal of the feminine. With what
temper would she have heard the lady in her aunt's drawing-room, who
was of opinion that she should "stay at home and mind the baby"?
Education had made her an individual; she was nurtured into the
disease of thought This child of hers showed in the frail tenure on
which it held its breath how unfit the mother was for fulfilling her
natural functions. Both parents seemed in admirable health, yet
their offspring was a poor, delicate, nervous creature, formed for
exquisite sensibility to every evil of life. Cecily saw this, and
partly understood it; her heart was heavy through the long anxious
nights passed in watching by the cradle.

When they returned to London, Reuben at first made a pretence of
resuming his work. He went now and then to the reading-room, and at
home shut himself up in the study; but he no longer voluntarily
talked of his task. Cecily knew what had happened; the fatal lack of
perseverance had once more declared itself. For some weeks she
refrained from inviting his confidence, but of necessity they spoke
together at last. Reuben could no longer disguise the ennui under
which he was labouring. Instead of sitting in the library, he
loitered about the drawing-room; he was often absent through the
whole day, and Cecily knew that he had not been at the Museum.

"I'm at a stand-still," he admitted, when the opportunity came. "I
don't see my way so clearly as at first. I must take up some other
subject for a time, and rest my mind."

They had no society worth speaking of. Mrs. Lessingham had supplied
them with a few introductions, but these people were now out of
town. Earlier in the year neither of them had cared to be assiduous
in discharging social obligations, with the natural result that
little notice was taken of them in turn. Reuben had resumed two or
three of his old connections; a bachelor acquaintance now and then
came to dine; but this was not the kind of society they needed.
Impossible for them to utter the truth, and confess that each
other's companionship was no longer all-sufficient. Had Reuben been
veritably engaged in serious work, Cecily might have gone on for a
long time with her own studies before she wearied for lack of
variety and friendly voices; as it was, the situation became
impossible.

"Wouldn't you like to belong to a club?" she one day asked.

And Reuben caught at the suggestion. Not long ago, it would have
caused him to smile rather scornfully.

Cecily had lost her faith in the great militant book on Puritanism.
Thinking about it, when it had been quite out of her mind for a few
days, she saw the project in a light of such absurdity that, in
spite of herself, she laughed. It was laughter that pained her, like
a sob. No, that was not the kind of work for him. What was?

She would think rather of her child and its future. If Clarence
lived--if he lived--she herself would take charge of his
education for the first years. She must read the best books that had
been written on the training of children's minds; everything should
be smoothed for him by skilful methods. There could be little doubt
that he would prove a quick child, and the delight of watching his
progress! She imagined him a boy of ten, bright, trustful, happy; he
would have no nearer friend than his mother; between him and her
should exist limitless confidence. But a firm hand would be
necessary; he would exhibit traits inherited from his father--

Cecily remembered the day when she first knew that she did not wish
him to be altogether like his father. Perhaps in no other way could
she have come to so clear an understanding of Reuben's character--
at all events, of those parts of it which had as yet revealed
themselves in their wedded life. She thought of him with an
impartiality which had till of late been impossible. And then it
occurred to her: Had the same change come over his mind concerning
her? Did he feel secret dissatisfactions? If he had a daughter,
would he say to himself that in this and that he would wish her not
to resemble her mother?

About once in three months they received a letter from Miriam,
addressed always to Cecily. She was living still with the Spences,
and still in Italy. Her letters offered no explanation of this
singular fact; indeed, they threw as little light as was possible on
the state of her mind, so brief were they, and so closely confined
to statements of events. Still, it was clear that Miriam no longer
shrank from the study of profane things. Of Bartles she never spoke.

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