The Emancipated

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"To do so enhances the merit of progress," observed Mrs. Lessingham,
mischievously.

"Merit? I know nothing of merit. I spoke of myself being _forced_
upwards. If ever I feel that I am slipping back, I shall state it
with just as little admission of shame."

Miriam heard this modern dialogue with grave features. At Bartles,
such talk would have qualified the talker for social
excommunication, and every other pain and penalty Bartles had in its
power to inflict. She observed that Cecily's interest increased. The
girl listened frankly; no sense of anything improper appeared in her
visage. Nay, she was about to interpose a remark.

"Isn't there a hope, Mr. Elgar, that this envy of which you speak
will be one of the things that the upward path leaves behind?"

"I should like to believe it, Miss Doran," he answered, his eyes
kindling at hers. "It's true that I haven't yet gone very far."

"I like so much to believe it that I _do_ believe it," the girl
continued impulsively.

"Your progress in that direction exceeds mine."

"Don't be troubled by the compliment," interjected Eleanor, before
Cecily could speak. "There is no question of merit."

Mrs. Lessingham laughed.

The rain still fell, and the grey heavens showed no breaking.
Shortly after this, Elgar would have risen to take his leave, but
Mrs. Spence begged him to remain and lunch with them. The visitors
from the Mergellina declined a similar invitation.

Edward Spence was passing his morning at the Museum. On his return
at luncheon-time, Eleanor met him with the intelligence that Reuben
Elgar had presented himself, and was now in his sister's room.

"_In forma pauperis_, presumably," said Spence, raising his
eyebrows.

"I can't say, but I fear it isn't impossible. Cecily and her aunt
happened to call this morning, and he had some talk with them."

"Is he very much of a blackguard?" inquired her husband,
disinterestedly.

"Indeed, no. That is to say, externally and in his conversation.
It's a decided improvement on our old impressions of him."

"I'm glad to hear it," was the dry response.

"He has formed himself in some degree. Hints that he is going to
produce literature."

"Of course." Spence laughed merrily. "The last refuge of a
scoundrel."

"I don't like to judge him so harshly, Ned. He has a fine face."

"And is Miriam killing the fatted calf?"

"His arrival seems to embarrass rather than delight her."

"Depend upon it, the fellow has come to propose a convenient
division of her personal property."

When he again appeared, Elgar was in excellent spirits. He met
Spence with irresistible frankness and courtesy; his talk made the
luncheon cheery, and dismissed thought of sirocco. It appeared that
he had as yet no abode; his luggage was at the station. A suggestion
that he should seek quarters under the same roof with Mallard
recommended itself to him.

"I feel like a giant refreshed," he declared, in privately taking
leave of Miriam. "Coming to Naples was an inspiration."

She raised her lips to his for the first time, but said nothing.

CHAPTER V

THE ARTIST ASTRAY

From the Strada di Chiaia, the narrow street winding between immense
houses, all day long congested with the merry tumult of Neapolitan
traffic, where herds of goats and much cows placidly make their way
among vehicles of every possible and impossible description; where
_cocchieri_ crack their whips and belabour their hapless cattle, and
yell their "Ah--h--h! Ah--h--h!"--where teams of horse,
ox, and ass, the three abreast, drag piles of country produce,
jingling their fantastic harness, and primitive carts laden with
red-soaked wine-casks rattle recklessly along; where bare-footed,
girdled, and tonsured monks plod on their no-business, and every
third man one passes is a rotund ecclesiastic, who never in his life
walked at more than a mile an hour; where, at evening, carriages
returning from the Villa Nazionale cram the thoroughfare from side
to side, and make one aware, if one did not previously know it, that
parts of the street have no pedestrians' pavement;--from the
Strada di Chiaia (now doomed, alas! by the exigencies of _lo
sventramento_ and _il risanamento_) turn into the public staircase
and climb through the dusk, with all possible attention to where you
set your foot, past the unmelodious beggars, to the Ponte di Chiaia,
bridge which spans the roadway and looks down upon its crowd and
clamour as into a profound valley; thence proceed uphill on the lava
paving, between fruit-shops and sausage-shops and wine-shops, always
in an atmosphere of fried oil and roasted chestnuts and baked
pine-cones; and presently turn left into a still narrower street,
with tailors and boot-makers and smiths all at work in the open air;
and pass through the Piazzetta Mondragone, and turn again to the
left, but this time downhill; then lose yourself amid filthy little
alleys, where the scent of oil and chestnuts and pine-cones is
stronger than ever; then emerge on a little terrace where there is a
noble view of the bay and of Capri; then turn abruptly between walls
overhung with fig-trees and orange-trees and lemon-trees,--and you
will reach Casa Rolandi.

It is an enormous house, with a great arched entrance admitting to
the inner court, where on the wall is a Madonna's shrine,
lamp-illumined of evenings. A great staircase leads up from floor to
floor. On each story are two tenements, the doors facing each other.
In 1878, one of the apartments at the very top--an ascent equal to
that of a moderate mountain--was in the possession of a certain
Signora Bassano, whose name might be read on a brass plate. This
lady had furnished rooms to let, and here it was that Ross Mallard
established himself for the few days that he proposed to spend at
Naples.

Already he had lingered till the few days were become more than a
fortnight, and still the day of his departure was undetermined. This
was most unwonted waste of time, not easily accounted for by Mallard
himself. A morning of sunny splendour, coming after much cloudiness
and a good deal of rain, plucked him early out of bed, strong in the
resolve that to-morrow should see him on the road to Amalfi. He had
slept well--an exception in the past week--and his mind was open
to the influences of sunlight and reason. Before going forth for
breakfast he had a letter to write, a brief account of himself
addressed to the murky little town of Sowerby Bridge, in Yorkshire.
This finished, he threw open the big windows, stepped out on to the
balcony, and drank deep draughts of air from the sea. In the street
below was passing a flock of she-goats, all ready to be milked, each
with a bell tinkling about her neck. The goat-herd kept summoning
his customers with a long musical whistle. Mallard leaned over and
watched the clean-fleeced, slender, graceful animals with a smile of
pleasure. Then he amused himself with something that was going on in
the house opposite. A woman came out on to a balcony high up, bent
over it, and called, "Annina! Annina!" until the call brought
another woman on to the balcony immediately below; whereupon the
former let down a cord, and her friend, catching the end of it, made
it fast to a basket which contained food covered with a cloth. The
basket was drawn up, the women gossiped and laughed for a while in
pleasant voices, then they disappeared. All around, the familiar
Neapolitan clamour was beginning. Church bells were ringing as they
ring at Naples--a great crash, followed by a rapid succession of
quivering little shakes, then the crash again. Hawkers were crying
fruit and vegetables and fish in rhythmic cadence; a donkey was
braying obstreperously.

Mallard had just taken a light overcoat on his arm, and was ready to
set out, when some one knocked. He turned the key in the door, and
admitted Reuben Elgar.

"I'm off to Pompeii," said Elgar, vivaciously.

"All right. You'll go to the 'Sole'? I shall be there myself
to-morrow evening."

"I'm right to stay several days, so we shall have more talk."

They left the house together, and presently parted with renewed
assurance of meeting again on the morrow.

Mallard went his way thoughtfully, the smile quickly passing from
his face. At a little _caffe_, known to him of old, he made a simple
breakfast, glancing the while over a morning newspaper, and watching
the children who came to fetch their _due soldi_ of coffee in tiny
tins. Then he strolled away and supplemented his meal with a fine
bunch of grapes, bought for a penny at a stall that glowed and was
fragrant with piles of fruit. Heedless of the carriage-drivers who
shouted at him and even dogged him along street after street, he
sauntered in the broad sunshine, plucking his grapes and relishing
them. Coming out by the sea-shore, he stood for a while to watch the
fishermen dragging in their nets--picturesque fellows with swarthy
faces and suntanned legs of admirable outline, hauling slowly in
files at interminable rope, which boys coiled lazily as it came in;
or the oyster-dredgers, poised on the side of their boats over the
blue water. At the foot of the sea-wall tumbled the tideless
breakers; their drowsy music counselled enjoyment of the hour and
carelessness of what might come hereafter.

With no definite purpose, he walked on and on, for the most part
absorbed in thought. He passed through the long _grotta_ of
Posillipo, gloomy, chilly, and dank; then out again into the
sunshine, and along the road to Bagnoli. On walls and stone-heaps
the little lizards darted about, innumerable; in vineyards men were
at work dismantling the vine-props, often singing at their task.
From Bagnoli, still walking merely that a movement of his limbs
might accompany his busy thoughts, he went along by the seashore,
and so at length, still long before midday, had come to Pozzuoli. A
sharp conflict with the swarm of guides who beset the entrance to
the town, and again he escaped into quietness, wandered among narrow
streets, between blue, red, and yellow houses, stopping at times to
look at some sunny upper window hung about with clusters of _sorbe_
and _pomidori_. By this time he had won appetite for a more
substantial meal. In the kind of eating-house that suited his mood,
an obscure _bettola_ probably never yet patronized by Englishman, he
sat down to a dish of maccheroni and a bottle of red wine. At
another table were some boatmen, who, after greeting him, went on
with their lively talk in a dialect of which he could understand but
few words.

Having eaten well and drunk still better, he lit a cigar and
sauntered forth to find a place for dreaming. Chance led him to the
patch of public garden, with its shrubs and young palm-trees, which
looks over the little port. Here, when once he had made it clear to
a succession of rhetorical boatmen that he was not to be tempted on
to the sea, he could sit as idly and as long as he liked, looking
across the sapphire bay and watching the bright sails glide hither
and thither With the help of sunlight and red wine, he could imagine
that time had gone back twenty centuries--that this was not
Pozzuoli, but Puteoli; that over yonder was not Baia, but Baiae;
that the men among the shipping talked to each other in Latin, and
perchance of the perishing Republic.

But Mallard's fancy would not dwell long in remote ages As he
watched the smoke curling up from his cigar, he slipped back into
the world of his active being, and made no effort to obscure the
faces that looked upon him. They were those of his mother and
sisters, thought of whom carried him to the northern island, now
grim, cold, and sunless beneath its lowering sky. These relatives
still lived where his boyhood had been passed, a life strangely
unlike his own, and even alien to his sympathies, but their house
was still all that he could call home. Was it to be always the same?

Fifteen years now, since, at the age of twenty, he painted his first
considerable landscape, a tract of moorland on the borders of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. This was his native ground. At Sowerby
Bridge, a manufacturing town, which, like many others in the same
part of England, makes a blot of ugliness on country in itself
sternly beautiful, his father had settled as the manager of certain
rope-works. Mr. Mallard's state was not unprosperous, for he had
invented a process put in use by his employers, and derived benefit
from it. He was a man of habitual gravity, occasionally severe in
the rule of his household, very seldom unbending to mirth. Though
not particularly robust, he employed his leisure in long walks about
the moors, walks sometimes prolonged till after midnight, sometimes
begun long before dawn. His acquaintances called him unsociable, and
doubt less he was so in the sense that he could not find at Sowerby
Bridge any one for whose society be greatly cared. It was even a
rare thing for him to sit down with his wife and children for more
than a few minutes; if he remained in the house, he kept apart in a
room of his own, musing over, rather than reading, a little
collection of books--one of his favourites being Defoe's "History
of the Devil." He often made ironical remarks, and seemed to have a
grim satisfaction when his hearers missed the point. Then he would
chuckle, and shake his head, and go away muttering.

Young Ross, who made no brilliant figure at school, and showed a
turn for drawing, was sent at seventeen to the factory of Messrs.
Gilstead, Miles and Doran, to become a designer of patterns. The
result was something more than his father had expected, for Mr.
Doran, who had his abode at Sowerby Bridge, quickly discovered that
the lad was meant for far other things, and, by dint of personal
intervention, caused Mr. Mallard to give his son a chance of
becoming an artist.

A remarkable man, this Mr. Doran. By nature a Bohemian, somehow made
into a Yorkshire mill-owner; a strong, active, nobly featured man,
who dressed as no one in the factory regions ever did before or
probably ever will again--his usual appearance suggesting the
common notion of a bushranger; an artist to the core; a purchaser of
pictures by unknown men who had a future--at the sale of his
collection three Robert Cheeles got into the hands of dealers, all
of them now the boasted possessions of great galleries; a passionate
lover of music--he had been known to make the journey to Paris
merely to hear Diodati sing; finally, in common rumour a profligate
whom no prudent householder would admit to the society of his wife
and daughters. However, at the time of young Mallard's coming under
his notice he had been married about a year. Mrs. Doran came from
Manchester; she was very beautiful, but had slight education, and
before long Sowerby Bridge remarked that the husband was too often
away from home.

Doran and the elder Mallard, having once met, were disposed to sec
more of each other; in spite of the difference of social standing,
they became intimates, and Mr. Mallard had at length some one with
whom he found pleasure in conversing. He did not long enjoy the new
experience. In the winter that followed, he died of a cold
contracted on one of his walks when the hills were deep in snow.

Doran remained the firm friend of the family. Local talk had
inspired Mrs. Mallard with a prejudice against him, but substantial
services mitigated this, and the widow was in course of time less
uneasy at her son's being practically under the guardianship of this
singular man of business. Mallard, after preliminary training, was
sent to the studio of a young artist whom Doran greatly admired,
Cullen Banks, then struggling for the recognition he was never to
enjoy, death being beforehand with him. Mrs. Mallard was given to
understand that no expenses were involved save those of the lad's
support in Manchester, where Banks lived, and Mallard himself did
not till long after know that his friend had paid the artist a fee
out of his own pocket. Two things did Mallard learn from Doran
himself which were to have a marked influence on his life--a
belief that only in landscape can a painter of our time hope to do
really great work, and a limitless contempt of the Royal Academy. In
Manchester he made the acquaintance of several people with whom
Doran was familiar, among them Edward Spence, then in the
shipping-office, and Jacob Bush Bradshaw, well on his way to making
a fortune out of silk. On Banks's death, Mallard, now nearly
twenty-one, went to London for a time. His patrimony was modest, but
happily, if the capital remained intact, sufficient to save him from
the cares that degrade and waste a life. His mother and sisters had
also an income adequate to their simple habits.

In the meantime, Mrs. Doran was dead. After giving birth to a
daughter, she fell into miserable health; her husband took her
abroad, and she died in Germany. Thereafter Sowerby Bridge saw no
more of its bugbear; Doran abandoned commerce and became a Bohemian
in earnest--save that his dinner was always assured. He wandered
over Europe; he lived with Bohemian society in every capital; he
kept adding to his collection of pictures (stored in a house at
Woolwich, which he freely lent as an abode to a succession of
ill-to-do artists); and finally he was struck with paralysis whilst
conducting to their home the widow and child of a young painter who
had suddenly died in the Ardennes. The poor woman under his
protection had to become his guardian. He was brought to the house
at Woolwich, and there for several months lay between life and
death. A partial recovery followed, and he was taken to the Isle of
Wight, where, in a short time, a second attack killed him.

His child, Cecily, was twelve years old. For the last five years she
had been living in the care of Mrs. Elgar at Manchester. This lady
was an intimate friend of Mrs. Doran's family, and in entrusting his
child to her, Doran had given a strong illustration of one of the
singularities of his character. Though by no means the debauchee
that Sowerby Bridge declared him, he was not a man of conventional
morality; yet, in the case of people who were in any way entrusted
to his care, he showed a curious severity of practice. Ross Mallard,
for instance; no provincial Puritan could have instructed the lad
more strenuously in the accepted moral code than did Mr. Doran on
taking him from home to live in Manchester. In choosing a wife, he
went to a family of conventional Dissenters; and he desired his
daughter to pass the years of her childhood with people who he knew
would guide her in the very straitest way of Puritan doctrine. What
his theory was in this matter (if he had one) he told nobody. Dying,
he left it to the discretion of the two trustees to appoint a
residence for Cecily, if for any reason she could not remain with
Mrs. Elgar. This occasion soon presented itself, and Cecily passed
into the care of Doran's sister, Mrs. Lessingham, who was just
entered upon a happy widowhood. Mallard, most unexpectedly left sole
trustee, had no choice but to assent to this arrangement; the only
other home possible for the girl was with Miriam at Redbeck House,
but Mr. Baske did not look with favour on that proposal. Hitherto,
Mr. Trench, the elder trustee, who lived in Manchester, had alone
been in personal relations with Mrs. Elgar and little Cecily; even
now Mallard did not make the personal acquaintance of Mrs. Elgar
(otherwise he would doubtless have met Miriam), but saw Mrs.
Lessingham in London, and for the first time met Cecily when she
came to the south in her aunt's care. He knew what an extreme change
would be made in the manner of the girl's education, and it caused
him some mental trouble; but it was clear that Cecily might benefit
greatly in health by travel, and, as for the moral question, Mrs.
Lessingham strongly stirred his sympathies by the dolorous account
she gave of the child's surroundings in the north. Cecily was being
intellectually starved; that seemed clear to Mallard himself after a
little conversation with her. It was wonderful how much she had
already learnt, impelled by sheer inner necessity, of things which
in general she was discouraged from studying. So Cecily left
England, to return only for short intervals, spent in London.
Between that departure and this present meeting, Mallard saw her
only twice; but the girl wrote to him with some regularity. These
letters grew more and more delightful. Cecily addressed herself with
exquisite frankness as to an old friend, old in both senses of the
word; collected, they made a history of her rapidly growing mind
such as the shy artist might have glorified in possessing. In
reality, he did nothing of the kind; he wished the letters would not
come and disturb him in his work. He sent gruff little answers, over
which Cecily laughed, as so characteristic.

Yes, there was a distinct connection between those homely memories
and picturings which took him in thought to Sowerby Bridge, and the
image of Cecily Doran which had caused him to waste all this time in
Naples. They represented two worlds, in both of which he had some
part; but it was only too certain with which of them he was the more
closely linked. What but mere accident put him in contact with the
world which was Cecily's? Through her aunt she had aristocratic
relatives; her wealth made her a natural member of what is called
society; her beauty and her brilliancy marked her to be one of
society's ornaments. What could she possibly be to him, Ross
Mallard, landscape-painter of small if any note, as unaristocratic
in mind and person as any one that breathed? To put the point with
uncompromising plainness, and therefore in all its absurdity, how
could he possibly imagine Cecily Doran called Mrs. Mallard?

The thing was flagrantly, grossly, palpably absurd. He tingled in
the ears in trying to represent to himself how Cecily would think of
it, if by any misfortune it were ever suggested to her.

Then why not, in the name of common sense, cease to ponder such
follies, and get on with the work which waited for him? Why this
fluttering about a flame which scorched him more and more
dangerously? It was not the first time that he had experienced
temptations of this kind; a story of five years ago, its scene in
London, should have reminded him that he could stand a desperate
wrench when convinced that his life's purpose depended upon it. Here
were three years of trusteeship before him--he could not, or would
not, count on her marrying before she came of age. Her letters would
still come; from time to time doubtless he must meet her. It had all
resulted from this confounded journey taken together! Why, knowing
himself sufficiently, did he consent to meet the people at Genoa,
loitering there for a couple of days in expectancy? Why had he come
to Italy at all just now?

The answers to all such angry queries were plain enough. however he
had hitherto tried to avoid them. He was a lonely man like his
father, but not content with loneliness; friendship was always
strong to tempt him, and when the thought of something more than
friendship had been suffered to take hold upon his imagination, it
held with terrible grip, burning, torturing. He had come simply to
meet Cecily; there was the long and short of it. It was a weakness,
such as any man may be guilty of, particularly any artist who groans
in lifelong solitude. Let it he recognized; let it be flung savagely
into the past, like so many others encountered and overcome on his
course.

The other day, when it was rainy and sunless, he had seemed all at
once to find his freedom. In a moment of mental languor, he was able
to view his position clearly, as though some other man were
concerned, and to cry out that he had triumphed; but within the same
hour an event befell which revived all the old trouble and added
new. Reuben Elgar entered his room, coming directly from Villa
Sannazaro, in a state of excitement, talking at once of Cecily Doran
as though his acquaintance with her had been unbroken from the time
when she was in his mother's care to now. Irritation immediately
scattered the thoughts Mallard had been ranging; he could barely
make a show of amicable behaviour; a cold fear began to creep about
his heart. The next morning he woke to a new phase of his conflict,
the end further off than ever. Unable to command thought and
feeling, he preserved at least the control of his action, and could
persevere in the resolve not to see Cecily; to avoid casual meetings
he kept away even from the Spences. He shunned all places likely to
be visited by Cecily, and either sat at home in dull idleness or
strayed about the swarming quarters of the town, trying to entertain
himself with the spectacle of Neapolitan life. To-day the delicious
weather had drawn him forth in a heedless mood. And, indeed, it did
not much matter now whether he met his friends or not; he had spoken
the word--to-morrow he would go his way.

At the very moment of thinking this thought, when his cigar was
nearly finished and he had begun to stretch his limbs, wearied by
remaining in one position. shadows and footsteps approached him. He
looked up, and--

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