The Emancipated

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"Is he waiting?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The note was of two or three lines:--"Will you let me see you? Of
course I mean alone. It's a long time since we saw each other.--R.
E."

"I will see him in this room."

The footstep of the maid as she came back along the tiled corridor
was accompanied by one much heavier. Miriam kept her eyes turned to
the door; her look was of pained expectancy and of sternness. She
stood close by the window, as if purposely drawing as far away as
possible. The visitor was introduced, and the door closed behind
him.

He too, stood still, as far from Miriam as might be. His age seemed
to be seven- or eight-and-twenty, and the cast of his features so
strongly resembled Miriam's that there was no doubt of his being her
brother. Yet he had more beauty as a man than she as a woman. Her
traits were in him developed so as to lose severity and attain a
kind of vigour, which at first sight promised a rich and generous
nature; his excellent forehead and dark imaginative eyes indicated a
mind anything but likely to bear the trammels in which Miriam had
grown up. In the attitude with which he waited for his sister to
speak there was both pride and shame; his look fell before hers, but
the constrained smile on his lips was one of self-esteem at issue
with adversity. He wore the dress of a gentleman, but it was
disorderly. His light overcoat hung unbuttoned, and in his hand he
crushed together a bat of soft felt.

"Why have you come to see me, Reuben?" Miriam asked at length,
speaking with difficulty and in an offended Lone.

"Why shouldn't I, Miriam?" he returned quietly, stepping nearer to
her. "Till a few days ago I knew nothing of the illness you have
had, or I should, at all events, have written. When I heard you had
come to Naples, I--well, I followed. I might as well be here as
anywhere else, and I felt a wish to see you."

"Why should you wish to see me? What does it matter to you whether I
am well or ill?"

"Yes, it matters, though of course you find it hard to believe."

"Very, when I remember the words with which you last parted from me.
If I was hateful to you then, how am I less so now?"

"A man in anger, and especially one of my nature, often says more
than he means. It was never _you_ that were hateful to me, though
your beliefs and your circumstances might madden me into saying such
a thing."

"My beliefs, as I told you then, are a part of myself--_are_
myself."

She said it with irritable insistence--an accent which would
doubtless have been significant in the ears of Eleanor Spence.

"I don't wish to speak of that. Have you recovered your health,
Miriam?"

"I am better."

He came nearer again, throwing his hat aside.

"Will you let me sit down? I've had a long journey in third-class,
and I feel tired. Such weather as this doesn't help to make me
cheerful. I imagined Naples with a rather different sky."

Miriam motioned towards a chair, and looked drearily from the window
at the dreary sea. Neither spoke again for two or three minutes.
Reuben Elgar surveyed the room, but inattentively.

"What is it you want of me?" Miriam asked, facing him abruptly.

"Want? You hint that I have come to ask you for money?"

"I shouldn't have thought it impossible. If you were in need--you
spoke of a third-class journey--I am, at all events, the natural
person for your thoughts to turn to."

Reuben laughed dispiritedly.

"No, no, Miriam; I haven't quite got to that. You are the very last
person I should think of in such a case."

"Why?"

"Simply because I am not quite so contemptible as you think me. I
don't quarrel with my sister, and come back after some years to make
it up just because I want to make a demand on her purse."

"You haven't accustomed me to credit you with high motives, Reuben."

"No. And I have never succeeded in making you understand me. I
suppose it's hopeless that you ever will. We are too different. You
regard me as a vulgar reprobate, who by some odd freak of nature
happens to be akin to you. I can picture so well what your
imagination makes of me. All the instances of debauchery and general
blackguardism that the commerce of life has forced upon your
knowledge go towards completing the ideal. It's a pity. I have
always felt that you and I might have been a great deal to each
other if you had had a reasonable education. I remember you as a
child rebelling against the idiocies of your training, before your
brain and soul had utterly yielded; then you were my sister, and
even then, if it had been possible, I would have dragged you away
and saved you."

"I thank Heaven," said Miriam, "that my childhood was in other hands
than yours!"

"Yes; and it is very bitter to me to hear you say so."

Miriam kept silence, but looked at him less disdain fully.

"I suppose," he said, "the people you are staying with have much the
same horror of my name as you have."

"You speak as loosely as you think. The Spences can scarcely respect
you."

"You purpose remaining with them all the winter?"

"It is quite uncertain. With what intentions have you come here? Do
you wish me to speak of you to the Spences or not?"

He still kept looking about the room. Perhaps upon him too the
baleful southern wind was exercising its influence, for he sat
listlessly when he was not speaking, and had a weary look.

"You may speak of me or not, as you like. I don't see that
anything's to be gained by my meeting them; but I'll do just as you
please."

"You mean to stay in Naples?"

"A short time. I've never been here before, and, as I said, I may as
well be here as anywhere else."

"When did you last see Mr. Mallard?"

"Mallard? Why, what makes you speak of him?"

"You made his acquaintance, I think, not long after you last saw
me."

"Ha! I understand. That was why he sought me out. You and your
friends sent him to me as a companion likely to 'do me good.'"

"I knew nothing of Mr. Mallard then--nothing personally. But be
doesn't seem to be the kind of man whose interest you would resent."

"Then you know him?" Reuben asked, in a tone of some pleasure.

"He is in Naples at present."

"I'm delighted to hear it. Mallard is an excellent fellow, in his
own way, Somehow I've lost sight of him for a long time. He's
painting here, I suppose? Where can I find him?"

"I don't know his address, but I can at once get it for you. You are
sure that he will welcome you?"

"Why not? Have you spoken to him about me?"

"No," Miriam replied distantly.

"Why shouldn't he welcome me, then? We were very good friends. Do
you attribute to him such judgments as your own?"

His way of speaking was subject to abrupt changes. When, as in this
instance, he broke forth impulsively, there was a corresponding
gleam in his fine eyes and a nervous tension in all his frame. His
voice had an extraordinary power of conveying scornful passion; at
such moments he seemed to reveal a profound and strong nature.

"I am very slightly acquainted with Mr. Mallard," Miriam answered,
with the cold austerity which was the counterpart in her of Reuben's
fiery impulsiveness, "but I understand that he is considered
trustworthy and honourable by people of like character."

Elgar rose from his chair, and in doing so all but flung it down.

"Trustworthy and honourable! Why, so is many a greengrocer. How the
artist would be flattered to hear this estimate of his personality!
The honourable Mallard! I must tell him that."

"You will not dare to repeat words from my lips!" exclaimed Miriam,
sternly. "You have sunk lower even than I thought."

"What limit, then, did you put to my debasement? In what direction
had I still a scrap of trustworthiness and honour left?"

"Tell me that yourself, instead of talking to no purpose in this
frenzied way. Why do you come here, if you only wish to renew our
old differences?"

"You were the first to do so."

"Can I pretend to be friendly with you, Reuben? What word of
penitence have you spoken? In what have you amended yourself? Is not
every other sentence you speak a defence of yourself and scorn upon
me?"

"And what right have you to judge me? Of course I defend myself, and
as scornfully as you like, when I am despised and condemned by one
who knows as little of me as the first stranger I pass on the road.
Cannot you come forward with a face like a sister's, and leave my
faults for my own conscience? _You_ judge me! What do you, with your
nun's experiences, your heart chilled, your paltry view of the world
through a chapel window, know of a man whose passions boil in him
like the fire in yonder mountain? I should subdue my passions.
Excellent text for a copy book in a girls' school! I should be
another man than I am; I should remould myself; I should cool my
brain with doctrine. With a bullet, if you like; say that, and you
will tell the truth. But with the truth you have nothing to do; too
long ago you were taught that you must never face that. Do you deal
as truthfully with yourself as I with my own heart? I wonder, I
wonder."

Miriam's eyes had fallen. She stood quite motionless, with a face of
suffering.

"You want me to confess my sins?" Reuben continued, walking about in
uncontrollable excitement. "What is your chapel formula? Find one
comprehensive enough, and let me repeat it after you; only mind that
it includes hypocrisy, for the sake of the confession. I tell you I
am conscious of no sins. Of follies, of ignorances, of miseries--
as many as you please. And to what account should they all go? Was I
so admirably guided in childhood and boyhood that my subsequent life
is not to be explained? It succeeded in your case, my poor sister.
Oh, nobly! Don't be afraid that I shall outrage you by saying all I
think. But just think of _me_ as a result of Jewish education
applied to an English lad, and one whose temperament was plain
enough to eyes of ordinary penetration. My very name! Your name,
too! You it has made a Jew in soul; upon me it weighs like a curse
as often as I think of it. It symbolizes all that is making my life
a brutal failure--a failure--a failure!"

He threw himself upon the couch and became silent, his strength at
an end, even his countenance exhausted of vitality, looking haggard
and almost ignoble. Miriam stirred at length, for the first time,
and gazed steadily at him.

"Reuben, let us have an end of this," she said, in a voice half
choked. "Stay or go as you will; but I shall utter no more
reproaches. You must make of your life what you can. As you say, I
don't understand you. Perhaps the mere fact of my being a woman is
enough to make that impossible. Only don't throw your scorn at me
for believing what you can't believe. Talk quietly; avoid those
subjects; tell me, if you wish to, what you are doing or think of
doing."

"You should have spoken like this earlier, Miriam. It would have
spared my memory its most wretched burden."

"How?"

"You know quite well that I valued your affection, and that it had
no little importance in my life. Instead of still having my sister,
I had only the memory of her anger and injustice, and of my own
cursed temper."

"I had no influence for good."

"Perhaps not in the common sense of the words. I am not going to
talk humbug about a woman's power to make a man angelic; that will
do for third-rate novels and plays. But I shouldn't have thrown
myself away as I have done if you had cared to know what I was
doing."

"Did I not care, Reuben?"

"If so, you thought it was your duty not to show it. You thought
harshness was the only proper treatment for a case such as mine. I
had had too much of that."

"What did you mean just now by speaking as though you were poor?"

"I have been poor for a long time--poor compared with what I was.
Most of my money has gone--on the fool's way. I haven't come here
to lament over it. It's one of my rules never, if I can help it, to
think of the past. What has been, has been; and what will be, will
be. When I fume and rage like an idiot, that's only the blood in me
getting the better of the brain; an example of the fault that always
wrecks me. Do you think I cannot see myself? Just now, I couldn't
keep back the insensate words--insensate because useless--but I
judged myself all the time as distinctly as I do now it's over."

"Your money gone, Reuben?" murmured his sister, in consternation.

"You might have foreseen that. Come and sit down by me, Miriam. I am
tired and wretched. Where is the sun? Surely one may have sunshine
at Naples!"

He was now idly fretful. Miriam seated herself at his side, and he
took her hand.

"I thought you might perhaps receive me like this at first. I came
only with that hope. I wish you looked better, Miriam. How do you
employ yourself here?"

"I am much out of doors. I get stronger."

"You spoke of old Mallard. I'm glad he is here, really glad. You
know, Mallard's a fellow of no slight account; I should think you
might even like him."

"But yourself, Reuben?"

"No, no; let me rest a little. I'm sick and tired of myself. Let's
talk of old Mallard. And what's become of little Cecily Doran?"

"She is here--with her aunt."

"She here too! By Jove! Well, of course, I shall have nothing to do
with them. Mallard still acting as her guardian, I suppose. Rather a
joke, that. I never could get him to speak on the subject. But I
feel glad you know him. He's a solid fellow, tremendously
conscientious; just the things you would like in a man, no doubt.
Have you seen any of his paintings?"

Miriam shook her head absently, unable to find voice for the topic,
which was remote from her thoughts.

"He's done fine things, great things. I shall look him up, and we'll
drink a bottle of wine together."

He kept stroking Miriam's hand, a white hand with blue veins--a
strong hand, though so delicately fashioned. The touch of the
wedding-ring again gave a new direction to his discursive thoughts.

"After this, shall you go back to that horrible hole in Lancashire?"

"I hope to go back home, certainly."

"Home, home!" he muttered, impatiently. "It has made you ill, poor
girl. Stay in Italy a long time, now you are once here. For you to
he here at all seems a miracle; it gives me hopes."

Miriam did not resent this, in word at all events. She was
submitting again to physical oppression; her head drooped, and her
abstracted gaze was veiled with despondent lassitude. Reuben talked
idly, in loose sentences.

"Do you think of me as old or young, Miriam?" he asked, when both
had kept silence for a while.

"I no longer think of you as older than myself."

"That is natural. I imagined that. In one way I am old enough, but
in another I am only just beginning my life, and have all my
energies fresh. I shall do something yet; can you believe it?"

"Do what?" she asked, wearily.

"Oh, I have plans; all sorts of plans."

He joined his hands together behind his head, and began to stir with
a revival of mental energy.

"But plans of what sort?"

"There is only one direction open to me. My law has of course gone
to--to limbo; it was always an absurdity. Most of my money has
gone the same way, and I'm not sorry for it. If I had never had
anything, I should have set desperately to work long ago. Now I am
bound to work, and you will see the results. Of course, in our days,
there's only one road for a man like me. I shall go in for
literature."

Miriam listened, but made no comment.

"My life hitherto has not been wasted," Elgar pursued, leaning
forward with a new light on his countenance. "I have been gaining
experience. Do you understand? Few men at my age have seen more of
life--the kind of life that is useful as literary material. It's
only quite of late that I have begun to appreciate this, to see all
the possibilities that are in myself. It has taken all this time to
outgrow the miserable misdirection of my boyhood, and to become a
man of my time. Thank the fates, I no longer live in the Pentateuch,
but at the latter end of the nineteenth century. Many a lad has to
work this deliverance for himself nowadays. I don't wish to speak
unkindly any more, Miriam, but I must tell you plain facts. Some
fellows free themselves by dint of hard study. In my case that was
made impossible by all sorts of reasons--temperament mainly, as
you know. I was always a rebel against my fetters; I had not to
learn that liberty was desirable, but how to obtain it, and what use
to make of it. All the disorder through which I have gone was a
struggle towards self-knowledge and understanding of my time. You
and others are wildly in error in calling it dissipation,
profligacy, recklessness, and so on. You at least, Miriam, ought to
have judged me more truly; you, at all events, should not have
classed me with common men."

His eyes were now agleam, and the beauty of his countenance fully
manifest. He held his head in a pose of superb confidence. There was
too much real force in his features to make this seem a
demonstration of idle vanity. Miriam regarded him, and continued to
do so.

"To be sure, my powers are in your eyes valueless," he pursued; "or
rather, your eyes have never been opened to anything of the kind.
The nineteenth century is nothing to you; its special opportunities
and demands and characteristics would revolt you if they were made
clear to your intelligence. If I tell you I am before everything a
man of my time, I suppose this seems only a cynical confession of
all the weaknesses and crimes you have already attributed to me? It
shall not always be so! Why, what are you, after all, Miriam?
Twenty-three, twenty-four--which is it? Why, you are a child
still; your time of education is before you. You are a child come to
Italy to learn what can be made of life!"

She averted her face, but smiled, and not quite so coldly as of
wont. She could not but think of Cecily, whose words a few days ago
had been in spirit so like these, so like them in the ring of
enthusiasm.

"Some day," Elgar went on, exalting himself more and more, "you
shall wonder in looking back on this scene between us--wonder how
you could have been so harsh to me. It is impossible that you and I,
sole brother and sister, should move on constantly diverging paths.
Tell me--you are not really without some kind of faith in my
abilities?"

"You know it has always been my grief that you put the in to no
use."

"Very well. But it remains for you to learn what my powers really
are, and to bring yourself to sympathize with my direction. You are
a child--there is my hope. You shall be taught--yes, yes! Your
obstinacy shall be overcome; you shall be made to see your own
good!"

"And who is to be so kind as to take charge of my education?" Miriam
asked, without looking at him, in an idly contemptuous tone.

"Why not old Mallard?" cried Reuben, breaking suddenly into jest.
"The tutorship of children is in his line."

Miriam showed herself offended.

"Please don't speak of me. I am willing to hear what you purpose for
yourself, but don't mix my name with it."

Elgar resumed the tone of ambition. Whether he had in truth definite
literary schemes could not be gathered from the rhetoric on which he
was borne. His main conviction seemed to be that he embodied the
spirit of his time, and would ere long achieve a work of notable
significance, the fruit of all his experiences. Miriam, though with
no sign of strong interest, gave him her full attention.

"Do you intend to work here?" she asked at length.

"I can't say. At present I am anything but well, and I shall get
what benefit I can from Naples first of all. I suppose the sun will
shine again before long? This sky is depressing."

He stood up, and went to the windows; then came back with uncertain
step.

"You'll tell the Spences I've been?"

"I think I had better. They will know, of course, that I have had a
visitor."

"Should I see them?" he asked, with hesitation.

"Just as you please."

"I shall have to, sooner or later. Why not now?"

Miriam pondered.

"I'll go and see if they are at leisure."

During her absence, Elgar examined the books on the table. He turned
over each one with angry mutterings. The chapel plans were no longer
lying about; only yesterday Miriam had rolled them up and put them
away--temporarily. Before the "St. Cecilia" he stood in thoughtful
observation, and was still there when Miriam returned. She had a
look of uneasiness.

"Miss Doran and her aunt are with Mrs. Spence, Reuben."

"Oh, in that case--" he began carelessly, with a wave of the arm.

"But they will be glad to see you."

"Indeed? I look rather seedy, I'm afraid."

"Take off your overcoat."

"I'm all grimy. I came here straight from the railway."

"Then go into my bedroom and make yourself presentable."

A few moments sufficed for this. As she waited for his return,
Miriam stood with knitted brows, her eyes fixed on the floor. Reuben
reappeared, and she examined him.

"You're bitterly ashamed of me, Miriam."

She made no reply, and at once led the way along the corridor.

Mrs. Spence had met Reuben in London, since her marriage; by
invitation he came to her house, but neglected to repeat the visit.
To Mrs. Lessingham he was personally a stranger. But neither of
these ladies received the honour of much attention from him for the
first few moments after he had entered the room; his eyes and
thoughts were occupied with the wholly unexpected figure of Cecily
Doran. In his recollection, she was a slight, pale, shy little girl,
fond of keeping in corners with a book, and seemingly marked out for
a life of dissenting piety and provincial surroundings. She had
interested him little in those days, and seldom did anything to
bring herself under his notice. He last saw her when she was about
twelve. Now he found himself in the presence of a beautiful woman,
every line of whose countenance told of instruction, thought,
spirit; whose bearing was refined beyond anything he had yet
understood by that word; whose modest revival of old acquaintance
made his hand thrill at her touch, and his heart beat confusedly as
he looked into her eyes. With difficulty he constrained himself to
common social necessities, and made show of conversing with the
elder ladies. He wished to gaze steadily at the girl's face, and
connect past with present; to revive his memory of six years ago,
and convince himself that such development was possible. At the same
time he became aware of a reciprocal curiosity in Cecily. When he
turned towards her she met his glance, and when he spoke she gave
him a smile of pleased attentiveness. The consequence was that he
soon began to speak freely, to pick his words, no balance his
sentences and shun the commonplace.

"I saw Florence and Rome in '76," he replied to a question from Mrs.
Lessingham. "In Rome my travelling companion fell ill, and we
returned without coming further south. It is wrong, however, to say
that I _saw_ anything; my mind was in far too crude a state to
direct my eyes to any purpose. I stared about me a good deal, and
got some notions of topography, and there the matter ended for the
time."

"The benefit came with subsequent reflection, no doubt," said Mrs.
Lessingham, who found one of her greatest pleasures in listening to
the talk of young men with brains. Whenever it was possible, she
gathered such individuals about her and encouraged them to discourse
of themselves, generally quite as much to their satisfaction as to
her own. Already she had invited with some success the confidence of
Mr. Clifford Marsh, who proved interesting, but not unfathomable; he
belonged to a class with which she was tolerably familiar. Reuben
Elgar, she perceived at once, was not without characteristics
linking him to that same group of the new generation, but it seemed
probable that its confines were too narrow for him. There was
comparatively little affectation in his manner, and none in his
aspect; his voice rang with a sincerity which claimed serious
audience, and his eyes had something more than surface gleamings.
Possibly he belonged to the unclassed and the unclassable, in which
case the interest attaching to him was of the highest kind.

"Subsequent reflection," returned Elgar, "has, at all events,
enabled me to see myself as I then was; and I suppose self-knowledge
is the best result of travel."

"If one agrees that self-knowledge is ever a good at all," said the
speculative lady, with her impartial smile.

"To be sure." Elgar looked keenly at her, probing the significance
of the remark. "The happy human being will make each stage of his
journey a phase of more or less sensual enjoyment, delightful at the
time and valuable in memory. The excursion will be his life in
little. I envy him, but I can't imitate him."

"Why envy him?" asked Eleanor.

"Because he is happy; surely a sufficient ground."

"Yet you give the preference to self-knowledge."

"Yes, I do. Because in that direction my own nature tends to develop
itself. But I envy every lower thing in creation. I won't pretend to
say how it is with other people who are forced along an upward path;
in my own case every step is made with a groan, and why shouldn't I
confess it?"

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