The Emancipated

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"How can you expect foreigners to reason, Jacob?" exclaimed Mrs.
Bradshaw.

"You should take these things as compliments," remarked Spence.
"They see an Englishman coming along, and as a matter of course they
consider him a person of wealth and leisure, who will be grateful to
any one for suggesting how he can kill time. Having nothing in the
world to do but enjoy himself, why shouldn't the English lord drive
to Baiae and back, just to get an appetite?"

"Lord, eh?" growled Mr. Bradshaw, rising on his toes, and smiling
with a certain satisfaction.

Threescore years all but two sat lightly on Jacob Bush Bradshaw. His
cheek was ruddy, his eyes had the lustre of health; in the wrinkled
forehead you saw activity of brain, and on his lips the stubborn
independence of a Lancashire employer of labour. Prosperity had set
its mark upon him, that peculiarly English prosperity which is so
intimately associated with spotless linen, with a good cut of
clothes, with scant but valuable jewellery, with the absence of any
perfume save that which suggests the morning tub. He was a
manufacturer of silk. The provincial accent notwithstanding, his
conversation on general subjects soon declared him a man of logical
mind and of much homely information. A sufficient self-esteem allied
itself with his force of character, but robust amiability prevented
this from becoming offensive; he had the sense of humour, and
enjoyed a laugh at himself as well as at other people. Though his
life had been absorbed in the pursuit of solid gain, he was no
scorner of the attainments which lay beyond his own scope, and in
these latter years, now that the fierce struggle was decided in his
favour, he often gave proof of a liberal curiosity. With regard to
art and learning, he had the intelligence to be aware of his own
defects; where he did not enjoy, he at least knew that he ought to
have done so, and he had a suspicion that herein also progress could
be made by stubborn effort, as in the material world. Finding
himself abroad, he had set himself to observe and learn, with
results now and then not a little amusing. The consciousness of
wealth disposed him to intellectual generosity; standing on so firm
a pedestal, he did not mind admitting that others might have a wider
outlook. Italy was an impecunious country; personally and
patriotically he had a pleasure in recognizing the fact, and this
made it easier for him to concede the points of superiority which he
had heard attributed to her. Jacob was rigidly sincere; he had no
touch of the snobbery which shows itself in sham admiration. If he
liked a thing he said so, and strongly; if he felt no liking where
his guide-book directed him to be enthusiastic, he kept silence and
cudgelled his brains.

Equally ingenuous was his wife, but with results that argued a
shallower nature. Mrs. Bradshaw had the heartiest and frankest
contempt for all things foreign; in Italy she deemed herself among a
people so inferior to the English that even to discuss the relative
merits of the two nations would have been ludicrous. Life "abroad"
she could not take as a serious thing; it amused or disgusted her,
as the case might be--never occasioned her a grave thought. The
proposal of this excursion, when first made to her, she received
with mockery; when she saw that her husband meant something more
than a joke, she took time to consider, and at length accepted the
notion as a freak which possibly would be entertaining, and might at
all events be indulged after a lifetime of sobriety. Entertainment
she found in abundance. Though natural beauty made little if any
appeal to her, she interested herself greatly in Vesuvius, regarding
it as a serio-comic phenomenon which could only exist in a country
inhabited by childish triflers. Her memory was storing all manner of
Italian absurdities--everything being an absurdity which differed
from English habit and custom--to furnish her with matter for
mirthful talk when she got safely back to Manchester and
civilization. With respect to the things which Jacob was
constraining himself to study--antiquities, sculptures, paintings,
stored in the Naples museum--her attitude was one of jocose
indifference or of half-tolerant contempt. Puritanism diluted with
worldliness and a measure of common sense directed her views of art
in general. Works such as the Farnese Hercules and the group about
the Bull she looked upon much as she regarded the wall-scribbling of
some dirty-minded urchin; the robust matron is not horrified by such
indecencies, but to be sure will not stand and examine them. "Oh,
come along, Jacob!" she exclaimed to her husband, when, at their
first visit to the Museum, he went to work at the antiques with his
Murray. "I've no patience you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

The Bradshaws were staying at the _pension_ selected by Mrs.
Lessingham. Naturally the conversation at dinner turned much on that
lady and her niece. With Cecily's father Mr. Bradshaw had been well
acquainted, but Cecily herself he had not seen since her childhood,
and his astonishment at meeting her as Miss Doran was great.

"What kind of society do they live among?" he asked of Spence.
"Tip-top people, I suppose?"

"Not exactly what we understand by tip-top in England. Mrs.
Lessingham's family connections are aristocratic, but she prefers
the society of authors, artists--that kind of thing."

"Queer people for a young girl to make friends of, eh?"

"Well, there's Mallard, for instance."

"Ah, Mallard, to be sure."

Mrs. Bradshaw looked at her hostess and smiled knowingly.

"Miss Doran is rather fond of talking about Mr. Mallard," she
remarked. "Did you notice that, Miriam?"

"Yes, I did."

Jacob broke the silence.

"How does he get on with his painting?" he asked--and it sounded
very much as though the reference were to a man busy on the front
door.

"He's never likely to be very popular," replied Spence, adapting his
remarks to the level of his guests' understanding. "There was
something of his in this year's Academy, and it sold at a tolerable
price."

"That thing of his that I bought, you remember--I find people
don't see much in it. They complain that the colour's so dull. But
then, as I always say, what else could you expect on a bit of
Yorkshire moor in winter? Is he going to paint anything here? Now,
if he'd do me a bit of the bay, with Vesuvius smoking."

"That would be something like!" assented Mrs. Bradshaw.

When the ladies had left the dining-room, Mr. Bradshaw, over his
cigarette, reverted to the subject of Cecily.

"I suppose the lass has had a first-rate education?"

"Of the very newest fashion for girls. I am told she reads Latin."

"By Jove!" cried the other, with sudden animation. "That reminds me
of something I wanted to talk about. When I was leaving Manchester,
I got together a few hooks, you know, that were likely to be useful
over here. My friend Lomax, the bookseller, suggested them. 'Got a
classical dictionary?' says he. 'Not I!' As you know, my schooling
never went much beyond the three R's, and hanged if I knew what a
classical dictionary was. 'Better take one,' says Lomax. 'You'll
want to look up your gods and goddesses.' So I took it, and I've
been looking into it these last few days."

"Well?"

Jacob had a comical look of perplexity and indignation. He thumped
the table.

"Do you mean to tell me that's the kind of stuff boys are set to
learn at school?"

"A good deal of it comes in."

"Then all I can say is, no wonder the colleges turn out such a lot
of young blackguards. Why, man, I could scarcely believe my eyes!
You mean to say that, if I'd had a son, he'd have been brought up on
that kind of literature, and without me knowing anything about it?
Why, I've locked the book up; I was ashamed to let it lay on the
table."

"It's the old Lempriere, I suppose," said Spence, vastly amused.
"The new dictionaries are toned down a good deal; they weren't so
squeamish in the old days."

"But the lads still read the books these things come out of, eh?"

"Oh yes. It has always been one of the most laughable
inconsistencies in English morality. Anything you could find in the
dictionary is milk for babes compared with several Greek plays that
have to be read for examinations."

"It fair caps me, Spence! Classical education that is, eh? That's
what parsons are bred on? And, by the Lord, you say they're
beginning it with girls?"

"Very zealously."

"Nay--!"

Jacob threw up his arms, and abandoned the effort to express
himself.

Later, when the guests were gone, Spence remembered this, and, to
Eleanor's surprise, he broke into uproarious laughter.

"One of the best jokes I ever heard! A fresh, first-hand judgment on
the morality of the Classics by a plain-minded English man of
business." He told the story. "And Bradshaw's perfectly right;
that's the best of it."

CHAPTER III

THE BOARDING-HOUSE ON THE MERGELLINA

The year was 1878. A tourist searching his Baedeker for a genteel
but not oppressively aristocratic _pension_ in the open parts of
Naples would have found himself directed by an asterisk to the
establishment kept by Mrs. Gluck on the Mergellina;--frequented by
English and Germans, and very comfortable. The recommendation was a
just one. Mrs. Gluck enjoyed the advantage of having lived as many
years in England as she had in Germany; her predilections leaned, if
anything, to the English side, and the arrival of a "nice" English
family always put her in excellent spirits. She then exhibited
herself as an Anglicized matron, perfectly familiar with all the
requirements, great and little, of her guests, and, when minutiae
were once settled, capable of meeting ladies and gentlemen on terms
of equality in her drawing-room or at her table, where she always
presided. Indeed, there was much true refinement in Mrs. Gluck. You
had not been long in her house before she found an opportunity of
letting you know that she prided herself on connection with the
family of the great musician, and under her roof there was generally
some one who played or sang well. It was her dire that all who sat
at her dinner-table--the English people, at all events--should
be in evening dress. She herself had no little art in adorning
herself so as to appear, what she was, a lady, and yet not to
conflict with the ladies whose presence honoured her.

In the drawing-room, a few days after the arrival of Mrs. Lessingham
and her niece, several members of the house hold were assembled in
readiness for the second dinner-bell. There was Frau Wohlgemuth, a
middle-aged lady with severe brows, utilizing spare moments over a
German work on Greek sculpture. Certain plates in the book had
caught the eye of Mrs. Bradshaw, with the result that she regarded
this innocent student as a person of most doubtful character, who,
if in ignorance admitted to a respectable boardinghouse, should
certainly have been got rid of as soon as the nature of her reading
had been discovered. Frau Wohlgemuth had once or twice been
astonished at the severe look fixed upon her by the buxom English
lady, but happily would never receive an explanation of this silent
animus. Then there was Fraulein Kriel, who had unwillingly incurred
even more of Mrs. Bradshaw's displeasure, in that she, an unmarried
person, had actually looked over the volume together with its
possessor, not so much as blushing when she found herself observed
by strangers. The remaining persons were an English family, a mother
and three daughters, their name Denyer.

Mrs. Denyer was florid, vivacious, and of a certain size. She had
seen much of the world, and prided herself on cosmopolitanism; the
one thing with which she could not dispense was intellectual
society. This would be her second winter at Naples, but she gave her
acquaintances to understand that Italy was by no means the country
of her choice; she preferred the northern latitudes, because there
the intellectual atmosphere was more bracing. But for her daughters'
sake she abode here: "You know, my gills _adore_ Italy."

Of these young ladies, the two elder--Barbara and Made line were
their seductive names--had good looks. Barbara, perhaps twenty-two
years old, was rather colourless, somewhat too slim, altogether a
trifle limp; but she had a commendable taste in dress. Madeline, a
couple of years younger, presented a more healthy physique and a
less common comeliness, but in the matter of costume she lacked her
sister's discretion. Her colours were ill-matched, her ornaments
awkwardly worn; even her hair sought more freedom than was
consistent with grace. The youngest girl, Zillah, who was about
nineteen, had been less kindly dealt with by nature; like Barbara,
she was of very light complexion, and this accentuated her
plainness. She aimed at no compensation in attire, unless it were
that her sober garments exhibited perfect neatness and complete
inoffensiveness. Zillah's was a good face, in spite of its
unattractive features; she had a peculiarly earnest look, a
reflective manner, and much conscientiousness of speech.

Common to the three was a resolve to be modern, advanced, and
emancipated, or perish in the attempt. Every one who spoke with them
must understand that they were no every-day young ladies, imbued
with notions and prejudices recognized as feminine, frittering away
their lives amid the follies of the drawing-room and of the
circulating library. Culture was their pursuit, heterodoxy their
pride. If indeed it were true, as Mrs. Bradshaw somewhat
acrimoniously declared, that they were all desperately bent on
capturing husbands, then assuredly the poor girls went about their
enterprise with singular lack of prudence.

Each had her _role_. Barbara's was to pose as the adorer of Italy,
the enthusiastic glorifier of Italian unity. She spoke Italian
feebly, but, with English people, never lost an opportunity of
babbling its phrases. Speak to her of Rome, and before long she was
sure to murmur rapturously, "Roma capitale d'Italia!"--the
watch-word of antipapal victory. Of English writers she loved, or
affected to love, those only who had found inspiration south of the
Alps. The proud mother repeated a story of Barbara's going up to the
wall of Casa Guidi and kissing it. In her view, the modern Italians
could do no wrong; they were divinely regenerate. She praised their
architecture.

Madeline--whom her sisters addressed affectionately as "Mad"--
professed a wider intellectual scope; less given to the melting mood
than Barbara, less naive in her enthusiasms, she took for her
province aesthetic criticism in its totality, and shone rather in
censure than in laudation. French she read passably; German she had
talked so much of studying that it was her belief she had acquired
it; Greek and Latin were beyond her scope, but from modern essayists
who wrote in the flamboyant style she had gathered enough knowledge
of these literatures to be able to discourse of them with a very
fluent inaccuracy. With all schools of painting she was, of course,
quite familiar; the great masters--vulgarly so known--interested
her but moderately, and to praise them was, in her eyes, to incur a
suspicion of philistinism. From her preceptors in this sphere, she
had learnt certain names, old and new, which stood for more
exquisite virtues, and the frequent mention of them with a happy
vagueness made her conversation very impressive to the generality of
people. The same in music. It goes without saying that Madeline was
an indifferentist in politics and on social questions; at the
introduction of such topics, she smiled.

Zillah's position was one of more difficulty. With nothing of her
sisters' superficial cleverness, with a mind that worked slowly, and
a memory irretentive, she had a genuine desire to instruct herself,
and that in a solid way. She alone studied with real persistence,
and, by the irony of fate, she alone continually exposed her
ignorance, committed gross blunders, was guilty of deplorable lapses
of memory. Her unhappy lot kept her in a constant state of
nervousness and shame. She had no worldly tact, no command of her
modest resources, yet her zeal to support the credit of the family
was always driving her into hurried speech, sure to end in some
disastrous pitfall. Conscious of aesthetic defects, Zillah had
chosen for her speciality the study of the history of civilization.
But for being a Denyer, she might have been content to say that she
studied history, and in that case her life might also have been
solaced by the companionship of readable books; but, as modernism
would have it, she could not be content to base her historical
inquiries on anything less than strata of geology and biological
elements, with the result that she toiled day by day at perky little
primers and compendia, and only learnt one chapter that it might be
driven out of her head by the next. Equally out of deference to her
sisters, she smothered her impulses to conventional piety, and made
believe that her spiritual life supported itself on the postulates
of science. As a result of all which, the poor girl was not very
happy, but in that again did she not give proof of belonging to her
time?

There existed a Mr. Denyer, but this gentleman was very seldom
indeed in the bosom of his family. Letters--and remittances--
came from him from the most surprising quarters of the globe. His
profession was that of speculator at large, and, with small
encouragement of any kind, he toiled unceasingly to support his wife
and daughters in their elegant leisure. At one time he was eagerly
engaged in a project for making starch from potatoes in the south of
Ireland. When this failed, he utilized a knowledge of Spanish--
casually picked up, like all his acquirements--and was next heard
of at Veer Cruz, where he dealt in cochineal, indigo, sarsaparilla,
and logwood. Yellow fever interfered with his activity, and after a
brief sojourn with his family in the United States, where they had
joined him with the idea of making a definite settlement, he heard
of something promising in Egypt, and thither repaired. A spare,
vivacious, pathetically sanguine man, always speaking of the day
when he would "settle down" in enjoyment of a moderate fortune, and
most obviously doomed never to settle at all, save in the final home
of mortality.

Mrs. Lessingham and her niece entered the room. On Cecily, as usual,
all eyes were more or less openly directed. Her evening dress was
simple--though with the simplicity not to be commanded by every
one who wills--and her demeanour very far from exacting general
homage; but her birthright of distinction could not be laid aside,
and the suave Mrs. Gluck was not singular in recognizing that here
was such a guest as did not every day grace her _pension_. Barbara
and Madeline Denyer never looked at her without secret pangs. In
appearance, however, they were very friendly, and Cecily had met
their overtures from the first with the simple goodwill natural to
her. She went and seated herself by Madeline, who had on her lap a
little portfolio.

"These are the drawings of which I spoke," said Madeline, half
opening the portfolio.

"Mr. Marsh's? Oh, I shall be glad to see them!"

"Of course, we ought to have daylight, but we'll look at them again
to-morrow. You can form an idea of their character."

They were small water-colours, the work--as each declared in
fantastic signature--of one Clifford Marsh, spoken of by the
Denyers, and by Madeline in particular, as a personal friend. He was
expected to arrive any day in Naples. The subjects, Cecily had been
informed, were natural scenery; the style, impressionist.
Impressionism was no novel term to Cecily, and in Paris she had had
her attention intelligently directed to good work in that kind; she
knew, of course, that, like every other style, it must be judged
with reference to its success in achieving the end proposed. But the
first glance at the first of Mr. Marsh's productions perplexed her.
A study on the Roman Campagna, said Madeline. It might just as well,
for all Cecily could determine, have been a study of cloud-forms, or
of a storm at sea, or of anything. or of nothing; nor did there seem
to be any cogent reason why it should be looked at one way up rather
than the other. Was this genius, or impudence?

"You don't know the Campagna, yet," remarked Madeline, finding that
the other kept silence. "Of course, you can't appreciate the
marvellous truthfulness of this impression; but it gives you new
emotions, doesn't it?"

Mrs. Lessingham would have permitted herself to reply with a pointed
affirmative. Cecily was too considerate of others' feelings for
that, yet had not the habit of smooth falsehood.

"I am not very familiar with this kind of work," she said. "Please
let me just look and think, and tell me your own thoughts about
each."

Madeline was not displeased. Already she had discovered that in most
directions Miss Doran altogether exceeded her own reach, and that it
was not safe to talk conscious nonsense to her. The tone of modesty
seemed unaffected, and, as Madeline had reasons for trying to
believe in Clifford Marsh, it gratified her to feel that here at
length she might tread firmly and hold her own. The examination of
the drawings proceeded, with the result that Cecily's original
misgiving was strongly confirmed. What would Ross Mallard say?
Mallard's own work was not of the impressionist school, and he might
suffer prejudice to direct him; but she had a conviction of how his
remarks would sound were this portfolio submitted to him. Genius--
scarcely. And if not, then assuredly the other thing, and that in
flagrant degree.

Most happily, the dinner-bell came with its peremptory interruption.

"I must see them again to-morrow," said Cecily, in her pleasantest
voice.

At table, the ladies were in a majority. Mr. Bradshaw was the only
man past middle life. Next in age to him came Mr. Musselwhite, who
looked about forty, and whose aquiline nose, high forehead, light
bushy whiskers, and air of vacant satisfaction, marked him as the
aristocrat of the assembly. This gentleman suffered under a truly
aristocratic affliction--the ever-reviving difficulty of passing
his day. Mild in demeanour, easy in the discharge of petty social
obligations, perfectly inoffensive, he came and went like a vivified
statue of gentlemanly _ennui_. Every morning there arrived for him a
consignment of English newspapers; these were taken to his bedroom
at nine o'clock, together with a cup of chocolate. They presumably
occupied him until he appeared in the drawing-room, just before the
hour of luncheon, when, in spite of the freshness of his morning
attire, he seemed already burdened by the blank of time, always
sitting down to the meal with an audible sigh of gratitude.
Invariably he addressed to his neighbour a remark on the direction
of the smoke from Vesuvius. If the neighbour happened to be
uninformed in things Neapolitan, Mr. Musselwhite seized the occasion
to explain at length the meteorologic significance of these varying
fumes. Luncheon over, he rose like one who is summoned to a painful
duty; in fact, the great task of the day was before him--the
struggle with time until the hour of dinner. You would meet him
sauntering sadly about the gardens of the Villa Nazionale, often
looking at his watch, which he always regulated by the cannon of
Sant' Elmo: or gazing with lack-lustre eye at a shop-window in the
Toledo; or sitting with a little glass of Marsala before him in one
of the fashionable _cafes_, sunk in despondency. But when at length
he appeared at the dinner-table, once more fresh from his toilet,
then did a gleam of animation transform his countenance; for the
victory was won; yet again was old time defeated. Then he would
discourse his best. Two topics were his: the weather, and "my
brother the baronet's place in Lincolnshire." The manner of his
monologue on this second and more fruitful subject was really
touching. When so fortunate as to have a new listener, he began by
telling him or her that he was his father's fourth son, and
consequently third brother to Sir Grant Musselwhite--"who goes in
so much for model-farming, you know." At the hereditary "place in
Lincolnshire" he had spent the bloom of his life, which he now
looked back upon with tender regrets. He did not mention the fact
that, at the age of five-and-twenty, he had been beguiled from that
Arcadia by wily persons who took advantage of his innocent youth,
who initiated him into the metropolitan mysteries which sadden the
soul and deplete the pocket, who finally abandoned him upon the
shoal of a youngest brother's allowance when his father passed away
from the place in Lincolnshire, and young Sir Grant, reigning in the
old baronet's stead, deemed himself generous in making the family
scapegrace any provision at all. Yet such were the outlines of Mr.
Musselwhite's history. Had he been the commonplace spendthrift, one
knows pretty well on what lines his subsequent life would have run;
but poor Mr. Musselwhite was at heart a domestic creature. Exiled
from his home, he wandered in melancholy, year after year, round a
circle of continental resorts, never seeking relief in dissipation,
never discovering a rational pursuit, imagining to himself that he
atoned for the disreputable past in keeping far from the track of
his distinguished relatives.

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