The Emancipated

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The next morning Mallard called. He came into a room where Mrs.
Lessingham, Eleanor, and Miriam were waiting for Cecily to join
them, that all might go out together. Miriam had never seen him
behave with such ease of manner. He was in good spirits, and talked
with a facility most unusual in him. Mrs. Lessingham said she would
go and see why Cecily delayed; Eleanor also made an excuse for
leaving the room. But Miriam remained, standing by the window and
looking into the street; Mallard stood near her, but did not speak.
The silence lasted for a minute or two; then Cecily entered, and at
once the artist greeted her with warm friendliness. Miriam had
turned, but did not regard the pair directly; her eye caught their
reflection in a mirror, and she watched them closely without seeming
to do so. Cecily had made her appearance with a face of pleased
anticipation; she looked for the first moment with much earnestness
at her old friend, and when she spoke to him it was with the
unmistakable accent of emotion. Mallard was gentle, reverent; he
held her hand a little longer than was necessary, but his eyes
quickly fell from her countenance.

"Your husband is well?" he asked in a full, steady voice.

They seated themselves, and Miriam again turned to the window.
Cecily's voice made a jarring upon her ear; it was so much sweeter
and more youthful, so much more like the voice of Cecily Doran, than
when it addressed other people. Mallard, too, continued in a soft,
pleasant tone, quite different from his usual speech; Miriam
thrilled with irritation as she heard him.

"They have told me of the picture you painted at Paestum. When may
Mrs. Lessingham and I come and see it?"

"I haven't a place in which I could receive you. I'll bring the
thing here, whenever you like."

Miriam moved. She wished to leave the room, but could not decide
herself to do so. In the same moment Mallard glanced round at her.
She interpreted his look as one of impatience, and at once said to
Cecily:

"I think I'll change my mind, and write some letters this morning.
Perhaps you could persuade Mr. Mallard to take my place for the
drive."

"Oh!" exclaimed Cecily, with a laugh, "I'm quite sure Mr. Mallard
has no desire to go to the English cemetery." She added in
explanation, to Mallard himself, "My aunt has promised to visit a
certain grave, and copy the inscription for a friend at Florence."

Whilst she was speaking, Mrs. Lessingham and Eleanor returned.
Mallard, rising, looked at Miriam with a singular smile; then talked
a little longer, and, with a promise to come again, soon took his
leave.

"Don't disappoint us," said Cecily to Miriam, in the most natural
tone.

"It was only that I felt we were making Mr. Mallard's visit very
short," answered Miriam, constrained by shame.

"He detests ceremony. You couldn't please him better than by saying,
'Please don't hinder me now, but come when I'm at leisure.'"

It was peculiarly distasteful to Miriam to have information
concerning the artist's character offered her by Cecily, in spite of
the playful tone. During the drive, she persuaded herself that
Cecily's improved spirits were entirely due to the conversation with
Mallard, and this stirred fresh resentment in her. She had foreseen
the effect upon her own feelings of the meeting which had just come
about; it was extreme folly, but she could not control it.

The next day Mallard brought his picture again to the hotel, and
spent nearly an hour with Mrs. Lessingham and Cecily in their
sitting-room. Miriam heard of this on her return from a. solitary
walk, and heard, moreover, that Mallard had been showing his friends
a number of little drawings which he had never offered to let her or
the Spences see. In the afternoon she again went out by herself,
and, whilst looking into a shop-window in the Piazza di Spagna,
became aware of Mallard's face reflected in the glass. She drew
aside before looking round at him.

"That is a clever piece of work," he said, indicating a water-colour
in the window, and speaking as if they had already been in
conversation. He had not even made the hat-salute.

"I thought so," Miriam replied, very coldly, looking at something
else.

"Are you going home, Mrs. Baske?"

"Yes. I only came out to buy something."

"I am just going to see the studio of an Italian to whom Mr.
Seaborne introduced me yesterday. It's in the Quattro-Fontane. Would
it interest you?"

"Thank you, Mr. Mallard; I had rather not go this afternoon."

He accepted the refusal with a courteous smile, raised his hat in
approved manner, and turned to cross the Piazza as she went her way.

This evening they had a visit from Seaborne, who met Mrs. Lessingham
and Cecily for the first time. These ladies were predisposed to like
him, and before he left they did so genuinely. In his pleasantly
quiet way, he showed much respectful admiration of Mrs. Elgar.

"Now, isn't there a resemblance to Mr. Mallard?" asked Eleanor, when
the visitor was gone.

"Just--just a little," admitted Cecily, with fastidiousness and an
amused smile. "But Mr. Seaborne doesn't impress me as so original,
so strong."

"Oh, that he certainly isn't," said Spence. "But acuter, and perhaps
a finer feeling in several directions."

Miriam listened, and was tortured.

She had suffered all the evening from observing Cecily, whose powers
of conversation and charms of manner made her bitterly envious. How
far she herself was from this ideal of the instructed and socially
trained woman! The presence of a stranger had banished Cecily's
despondent mood, and put all her capacities in display. With a
miserable sense of humiliation, Miriam compared her own
insignificant utterances and that bright, often brilliant, talk
which held the attention of every one. Beside Cecily, she was still
indeed nothing but a school-girl, who with much labour was getting a
smattering of common knowledge; for, though Cecily had no profound
acquirements, the use she made of what she did know was always
suggestive, intellectual, individual.

What wonder that Mallard brought out his drawings to show them to
Cecily? There would be nothing commonplace in _her_ remarks and
admiration.

She felt herself a paltry pretender to those possibilities of modern
womanhood which were open to Cecily from her birth. In the course of
natural development, Cecily, whilst still a girl, threw for ever
behind her all superstitions and harassing doubts; she was in the
true sense "emancipated"--a word Edward Spence was accustomed to
use jestingly. And this was Mallard's conception of the admirable in
woman.

CHAPTER IX

SILENCES

Cecily was seeing Rome for the first time, but she could not enjoy
it in the way natural to her. It was only at rare moments that she
_felt_ Rome. One of the most precious of her life's anticipations
was fading into memory, displaced by a dull experience, numbered
among disillusionings. Not that what she beheld disappointed her,
but that she was not herself in beholding. Had she stayed here on
her first visit to Italy, on what a strong current of enthusiasm
would the hours and the days have borne her! What a light would have
glowed upon the Seven Hills, and how would every vulgarity of the
modern streets have been transformed by her imagination! But now she
was in no haste to visit the most sacred spots; she was content to
take each in its turn, and her powers of attention soon flagged. It
had been the same in Florence. She felt herself reduced to a lower
level of existence than was native to her. Had she lived her life--
all that was worth calling life?

Her chief solace was in the society of Mrs. Spence. Formerly she had
not been prepared for appreciating Eleanor, but now she felt the
beauties of that calm, self-reliant character, rich in a mode of
happiness which it seemed impossible for herself ever to attain.
Fortune had been Eleanor's friend. Disillusion had come to her only
in the form of beneficent wisdom; no dolorous dead leaves rustled
about her feet and clogged her walk. Happy even in the fact that she
had never been a mother. She was a free woman; free in the love of
her husband, free in the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of
all her tastes. She had outlived passion without mourning it; what
greater happiness than that can a woman expect? Cecily had once
believed that life was to be all passion, or a failure. She
understood now that there was a middle path. But against her it was
closed.

In a few days she could talk with Eleanor even of bygone things in a
perfectly simple tone, without danger of betraying the thoughts she
must keep secret. One such conversation reminded her of something
she had learnt shortly before she left London.

"Do you remember," she asked, "a family named Denyer, who were at
Mrs. Gluck's?"

Eleanor recollected the name, and the characteristics attached to
it.

"An acquaintance of mine who has rooms at Hampstead happened to
speak of the people she is with, and it surprised me to discover
that they were those very Denyers. One of the daughters is
paralyzed, poor girl; I was shocked to remember her, and think of
her visited by such a fate. I believe she was to have married that
artist, Mr. Marsh, who gave Mr. Bradshaw so much amusement. And the
eldest--"

She broke off to inquire why Eleanor had looked at her so
expressively.

"I'll tell you when you have finished your story. What of the
eldest?"

"She has recently married Mr. Musselwhite, who was also one of our
old acquaintances. Mrs. Travis--the lady who tells me all this--
says that Mrs. Denyer is overjoyed at this marriage, for Mr.
Musselwhite is the brother of a baronet!"

"Very satisfactory indeed. Well, now for Mr. Marsh. Edward heard
from Mr. Bradshaw when we were in Sicily, and this young gentleman
had a great part in the letter. It seems he has long abandoned his
artistic career, and gone into commerce."

"That most superior young man? But I remember something about that."

"His business takes him often to Manchester, and he has been
cultivating the acquaintance of the Bradshaws. And now there is an
engagement between him and their eldest daughter."

"Charlotte? What a queer thing to happen! Isn't she about my age?"

"Yes; and, if she fulfils her promise, one of the plainest girls in
existence. Her father jokes about the affair, but evidently doesn't
disapprove."

It was Thursday, and the Spences had decided to start for London on
Friday night. Miriam had been keeping much alone these last few
days, and this morning was out by herself in the usual way. Spence
was engaged with Seaborne. Mrs. Lessingham, Eleanor, and Cecily went
to the Vatican.

Where also was Mallard. He had visited the chapel, and the Stanze,
and the Loggia, and the picture-gallery, not looking at things, but
seeming to look for some one; then he came out, and walked round St.
Peter's to the Museum. In the Sala Rotonda he encountered his
friends.

They talked about the busts. Cecily was studying them with the
catalogue, and wished Mallard to share her pleasure.

"The empresses interest me most," she said. "Come and do homage to
them."

They look with immortal eyes, those three women who once saw the
world at their feet: Plotina, the wife of Trajan; Faustina, the wife
of Antoninus Pius; Julia, the wife of Septimius Severus. Noble
heads, each so unlike the other. Plotina, with her strong, not
beautiful, features, the high cheek-bones, the male chin; on her
forehead a subdued anxiety. Faustina, the type of aristocratic
self-consciousness, gloriously arrogant, splendidly beautiful, with
her superb coronet of woven hair. Julia Domna, a fine, patrician
face, with a touch of idleness and good-natured scorn about her
lips, taking her dignity as a matter of course.

"These women awe me," Cecily murmured, as Mallard stood beside her.
"They are not of our world. They make me feel as if I belonged to an
inferior race."

"Glorious barbarians," returned Mallard.

"We of to-day have no right to say so."

Then the Antinous, the finest of all his heads. It must be caught in
profile, and one stands marvelling at the perfection of soulless
beauty. And the Jupiter of Otricoli, most majestic of marble faces;
in that one deep line across the brow lies not only profound
thought, but something of the care of rule, or something of pity for
mankind; as though he had just uttered his words in Homer: "For
verily there is no creature more afflicted than man, of all that
breathe and move upon the earth." But that other, the Serapis, is
above care of every kind; on his countenance is a divine placidity,
a supernal blandness; he gazes for ever in sublime and passionless
reverie.

Thence they passed to the Hall of the Muses, and spoke of Thalia,
whose sweet and noble face, with its deep, far-looking eyes, bears
such a weary sadness, Comedy? Yes; comedy itself, when comedy is
rightly understood.

And whilst they stood here, there came by a young priest, holding
open a missal or breviary or some such book, and muttering from it,
as if learning by heart. Cecily followed him with her gaze.

"What a place for study of that kind!" she exclaimed, looking at
Mallard.

He also had felt the incongruity, and laughed.

Two or three chambers of the Vatican sufficed for one day. Cecily
would not trust herself to remain after her interest had begun to
weary; it was much that she had won two hours of intellectual calm.
Her companions had no wish to stay longer. Just as they came again
into the Sala Rotonda, they found themselves face to face with
Miriam.

"Did you know we were coming here?" asked Eleanor.

"I thought it likely."

She shook hands with Mallard, but did not speak to him. Eleanor
offered to stay with her, as this would be their last visit, but
Miriam said in a friendly manner that she preferred to be alone. So
they left her.

At the exit, Mallard saw his companions into a carriage, and himself
walked on; but as soon as the carriage was out of sight, he turned
back. He had taken care to recover his _permesso_ from the
attendant, in the common way, when he came out, so that he could
enter again immediately. He walked rapidly to the place where they
had left Miriam, but she was gone. He went forward, and discovered
her sitting before the Belvedere Apollo. As his entrance drew her
attention, he saw that she had an impulse to rise; but she overcame
it, and again turned her eyes upon him, with a look in which
self-control was unconsciously like defiance.

He sat down by her, and said:

"I came to the Vatican this morning for the chance of meeting you."

"I hope that was not your only reason for coming," she returned, in
a voice of ordinary civility.

"It was, in fact I should have asked you to let me have your company
for an hour to-day, as it is practically your last in Rome; but I
was not sure that you would grant it, so I took my chance instead."

She waited a moment before replying.

"I am afraid you refer to your invitation of a few days ago. I
didn't feel in the mood for going to a studio, Mr. Mallard."

"Yes, I was thinking of that. You refused in a way not quite like
yourself. I began to be afraid that you thought me too regardless of
forms."

His return had gratified her; it was unexpected, and she set her
face in a hard expression that it might not betray her sudden
gladness. But the look of thinly-masked resentment which succeeded
told of what had been in her mind since she encountered him in the
company of Cecily. That jealous pain was uncontrollable; the most
trivial occasions had kept exciting it, and now it made her sick at
heart. The effort to speak conventionally was all but beyond her
strength.

They had in common that personal diffidence which is one of the
phases of pride, and which proves so fruitful a source of
misunderstandings. For all her self-esteem, Miriam could not obtain
the conviction that, as a woman, she strongly interested Mallard;
and the artist found it very hard to persuade himself that Miriam
thought of him as anything but a man of some talent, whose attention
was agreeable, and perhaps a little flattering. Still, he could not
but notice that her changed behaviour connected itself with Cecily's
arrival. It seemed to him extraordinary, almost incredible, that she
should be jealous of his relations with her sister-in-law. Had she
divined his passion for Cecily at Naples? (He cherished a delusion
that the secret had never escaped him.) But to attribute jealousy to
her was to assume that she set a high value on his friendship.

Miriam had glanced at the Apollo as he spoke. Conscious of his eyes
upon her, she looked away, saying in a forced tone:

"I had no such thought. You misunderstood me."

"It was all my fault, then, and I am sorry for it. You said just now
that you preferred to be alone. I shall come to the hotel to-morrow,
just to say good-bye."

He rose; and Miriam, as she did the same, asked formally:

"You are still uncertain how long you remain here?"

"Quite," was his answer, cheerfully given.

"You are not going to work?"

"No; it is holiday with me for a while. I wish you were staying a
little longer."

"You will still have friends here."

Mallard disliked the tone of this.

"Oh yes," he replied. "I hope to see Mrs. Lessingham and Mrs. Elgar
sometimes."

He paused; then added:

"I dare say I shall return to England about the same time that they
do. May I hope to see you in London?"

"I am quite uncertain where I shall be."

"Then perhaps we shall not meet for a long time.--Will you let me
give you one or two little drawings that may help to remind you of
Italy?"

Miriam's cheeks grew warm, and she east down her eyes.

"Your drawings are far too valuable to be given as one gives
trifles, Mr. Mallard."

"I don't wish you to receive them as trifles. One of their values to
me is that I can now and then please a friend with them. If you had
rather I did not think of you as a friend, then you would be right
to refuse them."

"I will receive them gladly."

"Thank you. They shall be sent to the hotel."

They shook hands, and he left her.

On the morrow they met again for a few minutes, when he came to say
good-bye. Miriam made no mention of the packet that had reached her.
She was distant, and her smile at leave-taking very cold.

So the three travelled northwards.

Their departure brought back Cecily's despondent mood. With
difficulty she restrained her tears in parting from Eleanor; when
she was alone, they had their way. She felt vaguely miserable--was
troubled with shapeless apprehensions, with a sense of desolateness.

The next day brought a letter from her husband, "Dear Ciss," he
wrote, "I am sorry its so long since I sent you a line, but really
there's no news. I foresee that I shall not have much manuscript to
show you; I am reading hugely, but I don't feel ready to write. Hope
you are much better; give me notice of your return. My regards to
Mallard; I expect you will see very little of him." And so, with a
"yours ever," the epistle ended.

This was all Reuben had to say to her, when she had been absent
nearly a month. With a dull disappointment, she put the arid thing
out of her sight. It had been her intention to write to-day, but now
she could not. She had even less to say than he.

He expressed no wish for her return, and felt none. Perhaps, it was
merely indifferent to him how long she stayed away; but she had no
assurance that he did not prefer to be without her. And, for her own
part, had she any desire to be back again? Here she was not
contented, but at home she would be even less so.

The line in his letter which had reference to the much-talked-of
book only confirmed her distrust. She had no faith in his work. The
revival of his energy from time to time was no doubt genuine enough,
but she knew that its subsequent decline was marked with all manner
of pretences. Possibly he was still "reading hugely," but the
greater likelihood was that he had fallen into mere idleness. It was
significant of her feeling towards him that she never made surmises
as to how he spent his leisure; her thoughts, consciously and
unconsciously, avoided such reflections; it was a matter that did
not concern her. He had now a number of companions, men of whom her
own knowledge was very vague; that they were not considered suitable
acquaintances for her, of course meant that Reuben could have no
profit from them, and would probably suffer from their contact. But
in these things she had long been passive, careless. Experience had
taught her how easy it was for husband and wife to live parted
lives, even whilst their domestic habits seemed the same as ever; in
books, that situation had formerly struck her as inconceivable, but
now she suspected that it was the commonest of the results of
marriage. Habit, habit; how strong it is!

And how degrading! To it she attributed this bluntness in her
faculties of perception and enjoyment, this barrenness of the world
about her. It was dreadful to look forward upon a tract of existence
thus vulgarized. Already she recognized in herself the warnings of a
possible future in which she would have lost her intellectual
ambitions. There is a creeping paralysis of the soul, and did she
not experience its symptoms? Already it was hard to apply herself to
any study that demanded real effort; she was failing to pursue her
Latin; she avoided German books, because they were more exacting
than French; her memory had lost something of its grasp. Was she to
become a woman of society, a refined gossip, a pretentious echo of
the reviews and of clever people's talk? If not, assuredly she must
exert a force of character which she had begun to suspect was not in
her.

Strange that the one person to whom she had disclosed something of
her real mind was also the one who seemed at the greatest distance
from her in this circle of friends. Involuntarily, she had spoken to
Miriam as to no one else. This might be a result of old
associations. But had it a connection with that curious surmise she
had formed during the first hour of her conversation with the
Spences, and with Miriam herself--that an unexpected intimacy was
coming about between Miriam and Mallard? For, in her frequent
thoughts of Mallard, she had necessarily wondered whether he would
ever perceive the true issue of her self-will; and, so far from
desiring to blind him, she had almost a hope that one day he might
know how her life had shaped itself. Mallard's position in her mind
was a singular one; in some such way she might have regarded a
brother who had always lived remote from her, but whom she had every
reason to love and reverence. Her esteem for him was boundless; he
was the ideal of the artist, and at the same time of the nobly
strong man. Had such a thing been possible, she would have sought to
make _him_ her confidant. However it was to be explained, she felt
no wound to her self-respect in supposing him cognizant of all her
sufferings; rather, a solace, a source of strength.

Was it, in a measure, woman's gratitude for love? In the course of
three years she had seen many reasons for believing that Reuben was
right; that the artist had loved her, and gone through dark
struggles when her fate was being decided. That must have added
tenderness to her former regard and admiration. But she was glad
that he had now recovered his liberty; the first meeting, his look
and the grasp of his hand, told her at once that the trouble was
long gone by. She was glad of this, and the proof of her sincerity
came when she watched the relations between him and Miriam.

On the last evening, Miriam came to her room, carrying a small
portfolio, which she opened before her, disclosing three
water-colours.

"You have bought them?" Cecily asked, as the other said nothing.

"No. Mr. Mallard has given me them," was the answer, in a voice
which affected a careless pleasure.

"They are admirable. I am delighted that you take such a present
away with you."

Cecily expected no confidences, and received none; she could only
puzzle over the problem. Why did Miriam behave with so strange a
coldness? Her new way of regarding life ought to have resulted in
her laying aside that austerity. Mrs. Lessingham hinted an opinion
that the change did not go very deep; Puritanism, the result of
birth and breeding, was not so easily eradicated.

Mallard stayed on in Rome, but during this next week Cecily only saw
him twice--the first time, for a quarter of an hour on the Pincio;
then in the Forum. On that second occasion he was invited to dine
with them at the hotel the next day, Mr. Seaborne's company having
also been requested. The result was a delightful evening. Seaborne
was just now busy with a certain period of Papal history; he talked
of some old books he had been reading in the Vatican library, and
revealed a world utterly strange to all his hearers.

Here were men who used their lives to some purpose; who rot only
planned, but executed. When the excitement of the evening had
subsided, Cecily thought with more bitterness than ever yet of the
contrast between such workers and her husband. The feeling which had
first come upon her intensely when she stood before Mallard's
picture at the Academy was now growing her habitual mood. She had
shut herself out for ever from close communion with this world of
genuine activity; she could only regard it from behind a barrier,
instead of warming her heart and brain in free enjoyment of its
emotions. And the worst of it was that these glimpses harmed her,
injured her morally. One cannot dwell with discontent and keep a
healthy imagination. She knew her danger, and it increased the
misery with which she looked forward.

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