The Emancipated

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Elgar was one of the company. When he became aware of Mallard's
arrival, he stood up with a cry of "All hail!" and pointed to a seat
near him.

"I began to be afraid you wouldn't come this evening. Try the
risotto; it's excellent. Ye gods! what an appetite I had when I sat
down! To-day have I ascended Vesuvius. How many bottles of wine I
drank between starting and returning I cannot compute; I never knew
before what it was to be athirst. Why, their vino di Vesuvio is for
all the world like cider; I thought at first I was being swindled--
not an impossible thing in these regions. I must tell you a story
about a party of Americans I encountered at Bosco Reale."

The guests numbered seven or eight; with one exception besides
Elgar, they were Germans, all artists of one kind or another,
fellows of genial appearance, loud in vivacious talk. The exception
was a young Englishman, somewhat oddly dressed, and with a great
quantity of auburn hair that rolled forward upon his distinguished
brow. At a certain _pension_ on the Mergellina he was well known. He
sat opposite Elgar, and had been in conversation with him.

Mallard cared little what he ate, and ate little of any thing.
Neither was he in the mood for talk; but Elgar, who had finished his
solid meal, and now amused himself with grapes (in two forms),
spared him the necessity of anything but an occasional monosyllable.
The young man was elated, and grew more so as he proceeded with his
dessert; his cheeks were deeply flushed; his eyes gleamed
magnificently.

In the meantime Clifford Marsh had joined in conversation with the
Germans; his use of their tongue was far from idiomatic, but by
sheer determination to force a way through linguistic obstacles, he
talked with a haphazard fluency which was amusing enough. No false
modesty imposed a check upon his eloquence. It was to the general
table that he addressed himself on the topic that had arisen; in an
English dress his speech ran somewhat as follows:--

"Gentlemen, allow me to say that I have absolutely no faith in the
future of which you speak! It is my opinion that democracy is the
fatal enemy of art. How can you speak of ancient and mediaeval
states? Neither in Greece nor in Italy was there ever what we
understand by a democracy."

"Factisch! Der Herr hat Recht!" cried some one, and several other
voices strove to make themselves heard; but the orator raised his
note and overbore interruption.

"You must excuse me, gentlemen, if I say that--however it may be
from other points of view--from the standpoint of art, democracy
is simply the triumph of ignorance and brutality." ("Gewisz!"--
"Nimmermehr!"--"Vortrefflich!") "I don't care to draw distinctions
between forms of the thing. Socialism, communism, collectivism,
parliamentarism,--all these have one and the same end: to put men
on an equality; and in proportion as that end is approached, so will
art in every shape languish. Art, gentlemen, is nourished upon
inequalities and injustices!" ("Ach!"--"Wie kann man so etwas
sagen!"--"Hoch! verissime!") "I am not representing this as either
good or bad. It may be well that justice should be established, even
though art perish. I simply state a fact!" ("Doch!"--"Erlauben
Sie!") "Supremacy of the vulgar interest means supremacy of ignoble
judgment in all matters of mind. See what plutocracy already makes
of art!"

Here one of the Germans insisted on a hearing; a fine fellow, with
Samsonic locks and a ringing voice.

"Sir! sir! who talks of a genuine democracy with mankind in its
present state? Before it comes about, the multitude will be
instructed, exalted, emancipated, humanized!"

"Sir!" shouted Marsh, "who talks of the Millennium? I speak of
things possible within a few hundred years. The multitude will
_never_ be humanized. Civilization is attainable only by the few;
nature so ordains it."

"Pardon me for saying that is a lie! I use the word
controversially."

"It is a manifest truth!" cried the other. "Who ever doubted it but
a _Dummkopf_? I use the word with reference to this argument only."

So it went on for a long time. Mallard and Elgar knew no German, so
could derive neither pleasure nor profit from the high debate.

"Are you as glum here as in London?" Reuben asked of his companion,
in a bantering voice. "I should have pictured you grandly jovial,
wreathed perhaps with ruddy vine-leaves, the light of inspiration in
your eye, and in your hand a mantling goblet! Drink, man, drink! you
need a stimulant, an exhilarant, an anti-phlegmatic, a
counter-irritant against English spleen. You are still on the other
side of the Alps, of the Channel; the fogs yet cling about you.
Clear your brow, O painter of Ossianic wildernesses! Taste the foam
of life! We are in the land of Horace, and _nunc est bibendum_!--
Seriously, do you never relax?"

"Oh yes. You should see me over the fifth tumbler of whiskey at
Stornoway."

"Bah! you might as well say the fifth draught of fish-oil North
Cape. How innocent this wine is! A gallon of it would give one no
more than a pleasant glow, the faculty of genial speech. Take a
glass with me to the health of your enchanting ward."

"Please to command your tongue," growled Mallard, with a look that
was not to be mistaken.

"I beg your pardon. It shall be to the health of that superb girl we
saw in the Mercato. But, as far as I can judge yet, the Neapolitan
type doesn't appeal to me very strongly. It is finely animal, and of
course that has its value; but I prefer the suggestion of a soul,
don't you? I remember a model old Langton had in Rome, a girl fresh
from the mountains; by Juno! a glorious creature! I dare say you
have seen her portrait in his studio; he likes to show it. But it
does her nothing like justice; she might have sat for the genius of
the Republic. Utterly untaught, and intensely stupid; but there were
marvellous things to be read in her face. Ah, but give me the girls
of Venice! You know them, how they walk about the piazza; their
tall, lithe forms, the counterpart of the gondolier; their splendid
black hair, elaborately braided and pierced with large ornaments;
their noble, aristocratic, grave features; their long shawls! What
natural dignity! What eloquent eyes! I like to imagine them
profoundly intellectual, which they are unhappily not."

Marsh had withdrawn from colloquy with the Germans, and kept
glancing across the table at his compatriots, obviously wishing that
he might join them. Mallard, upon whom Elgar's excited talk jarred
more and more, noticed the stranger's looks, and at length leaned
forward to speak to him.

"As usual, we are in a minority among the sun-worshippers."

"Sun-worshippers! Good!" laughed the other. "Yes, I have never met
more than one or two chance Englishmen at the 'Sole.'"

"But you are at your case with our friends there.--I think you
know as little German as I do, Elgar?"

"Devilish bad at languages! To tell you the truth, I can't endure
the sense of inferiority one has in beginning to smatter with
foreigners. I read four or five, but avoid speaking as much as
possible."

Marsh took an early opportunity of alluding to the argument in which
he had recently taken part. The subject was resumed. At Elgar's
bidding the waiter had brought cigars, and things looked
comfortable; the Germans talked with more animation than ever.

"One of the worst evils of democracy in England," said Reuben,
forcibly, "is its alliance with Puritan morality."

"Oh, that is being quickly outgrown," cried Marsh. "Look at the
spread of rationalism."

"You take it for granted that Puritanism doesn't survive religious
dogma? Believe me, you are greatly mistaken. I am sorry to say I
have a large experience in this question. The mass of the English
people have no genuine religious belief, but none the less they are
Puritans in morality. The same applies to the vastly greater part of
those who even repudiate Christianity."

"One must take account of the national hypocrisy," remarked the
younger man, with an air of superiority, shaking his head as his
habit was.

"It's a complicated matter. The representative English bourgeois is
a hypocrite in essence, but is perfectly serious in his judgment of
the man next door; and the latter characteristic has more weight
than the former in determining his life. Puritanism has aided the
material progress of England; but its effect on art! But for it, we
should have a school of painters corresponding in greatness to the
Elizabethan dramatists. Depend upon it, the democracy will continue
to be Puritan. Every picture, every book, will be tried by the same
imbecile test Enforcement of Puritan morality will be one of the
ways in which the mob, come to power, will revenge itself on those
who still remain its superiors."

Marsh was not altogether pleased at finding his facile eloquence
outdone. In comparing himself with Elgar, he was conscious of but
weakly representing the tendencies which were a passionate force in
this man with the singularly fine head, with such a glow of wild
life about him. He abandoned the abstract argument, and struck a
personal note.

"However it may be in the future, I grant you the artist has at
present no scope save in one direction. For my own part, I have
fallen back on landscape. Let those who will, paint Miss Wilhelmina
in the nursery, with an interesting doll of her own size; or a
member of Parliament rising to deliver a great speech on the liquor
traffic; or Mrs. What-do-you-call-her, lecturing on woman's rights.
These are the subjects our time affords."

Mallard eyed with fresh curiosity the gentleman who had "fallen back
on landscape."

"What did you formerly aim at?" he inquired, with a sort of suave
gruffness.

"Things which were hopelessly out of the question. I worked for a
long time at a 'Death of Messalina.' That was in Rome. I had a
splendid inspiration for Messalina's face. But my hand was paralyzed
when I thought of the idiotic comments such a picture would occasion
in England. One fellow would say I had searched through history in a
prurient spirit for something sensational; another, that I read a
moral lesson of terrible significance; and so on."

"A grand subject, decidedly!" exclaimed Elgar, with genuine
enthusiasm, which restored Marsh to his own good opinion. "Go on
with it! Bid the fools be hanged! Have you your studies here?"

"Unfortunately not. They are in Rome."

Mallard delivered himself of a blunt opinion.

"That is no subject for a picture. Use it for literature, if you
like."

The inevitable discussion began, the discussion so familiar
nowadays, and which would have sounded so odd to the English
painters who were wont to call themselves "historical," Where is the
line between subjects for the easel and subjects for the desk? What
distinguishes the art of the illustrator from the art of the artist?

That was a great evening round the table at the Albergo del Sole.
How gloriously the air thickened with tobacco-smoke! What removal of
empty bottles and replacing them with full! The Germans were making
it a set _Kneipe_; the Englishmen, unable to drink quite so
heroically, were scarce behind in vehemence of debate. Mallard,
grimly accepting the help of wine against his inner foes, at length
earned Elgar's approval; he had relaxed indeed, and was no longer
under the oppression of English fog. But with him such moods were of
brief duration; he suddenly quitted the table, and went out into the
night air.

The late moon was rising, amber-coloured on a sky of dusky azure. He
walked from the garden, across the road, and towards the ruins of
the Amphitheatre, which lie some distance apart from the Pompeian
streets that have been unearthed; he passed beneath an arch, and
stood looking down into the dark hollow so often thronged with
citizens of Latin speech. Small wonder that Benvenuto's necromancer
could evoke his myriads of flitting ghosts in the midnight
Colosseum; here too it needed but to stand for a few minutes in the
dead stillness, and the air grew alive with mysterious presences,
murmurous with awful whisperings. Mallard enjoyed it for awhile, but
at length turned away abruptly, feeling as if a cold hand had
touched him.

As he re-entered the inn-precincts, he heard voices still uproarious
in the dining-room; but he had no intention of going among them
again. His bedroom was one of a row which opened immediately upon
the garden. He locked himself in, went to bed, but did not sleep for
a long time. A wind was rising, and a branch of a tree constantly
tapped against the pane. It might have been some centuries-dead
inhabitant of Pompeii trying to deliver a message from the silent
world.

The breakfast-party next morning lacked vivacity. Clifford Marsh was
mute and dolorous of aspect; no doubt his personal embarrassments
were occupying him. Yesterday's wine had become his foe, instead of
an ally urging him to dare all in the cause of "art." He consumed
his coffee and roll in the manner of ordinary mortals, not once
flourishing his dainty hand or shaking his ambrosial hair. Elgar was
very stiff from his ascent of Vesuvius, and he too found that "the
foam of life" had an unpleasant after-taste, suggestive of wrecked
fortunes and a dubious future. Mallard was only a little gruffer
than his wonted self.

"I am going on at once to Sorrento," he said, meeting Elgar
afterwards in the garden. "To-morrow I shall cross over the hills to
Positano and Amalfi. Suppose you come with me?"

The other hesitated.

"You mean you are going to walk?"

"No. I have traps to carry on from the station. We should have a
carriage to Sorrento, and to-morrow a donkey for the baggage."

They paced about, hands in pockets. It was a keen morning; the
tramontana blew blusterously, causing the smoke of Vesuvius to lie
all down its long slope, a dense white cloud, or a vast turbid
torrent, breaking at the foot into foam and spray. The clearness of
the air was marvellous. Distance seemed to have no power to dim the
details of the landscape. The Apennines glistened with new-fallen
snow.

"I hadn't thought of going any further just now," said Elgar, who
seemed to have a difficulty in simply declining the invitation, as
he wished to do.

"What should you do, then?"

"Spend another day here, I think,--I've only had a few hours among
the ruins, you know,--and then go back to Naples."

"What to do there?" asked Mallard, bluntly.

"Give a little more time to the museum, and see more of the
surroundings."

"Better come on with me. I shall be glad of your company."

It was said with decision, but scarcely with heartiness. Elgar
looked about him vaguely.

"To tell you the truth," he said at last, "I don't care to incur
much expense."

"The expenses of what I propose are trivial."

"My traps are at Naples, and I have kept the room there. No, I don't
see my way to it, Mallard."

"All right."

The artist turned away. He walked about the road for ten minutes.--
Very well; then he too would return to Naples. Why? What was
altered? Even if Elgar accompanied him to Amalfi, it would only be
for a few days; there was no preventing the fellow's eventual
return--his visits to the villa, perhaps to Mrs. Gluck's. Again imbecile
and insensate What did it all matter?

He stopped short. He would sit down and write a letter to Mrs.
Baske.--A pretty complication, that! What grounds for such a
letter as he meditated?

The devil! Had he not a stronger will than Reuben Elgar? If he
wished to carry a point with such a weakling, was he going to let
himself be thwarted? Grant it was help only for a few days, no
matter; Elgar should go with him.

He walked back to the garden. Good; there the fellow loitered,
obviously irresolute.

"Elgar, you'd better come, after all," he said, with a grim smile.
"I want to have some talk with you. Let us pay our shot, and walk on
to the station."

"What kind of talk, Mallard?"

"Various. Get whatever you have to carry; I'll see to the bill."

"But how can I go on without a shirt?"

"I have shirts in abundance. A truce to your obstacles. March!"

And before very long they were side by side in the vehicle, speeding
along the level road towards Castellammare and the mountains. This
exertion of native energy had been beneficial to Mallard's temper;
he talked almost genially. Elgar, too, had subdued his restiveness,
and began to look forward with pleasure to the expedition.

"I only wish this wind would fall!" he exclaimed. "It's cold, and I
hate a wind of any kind."

"Hate a wind? You're effeminate; you're a boulevardier. It would do
you good to be pitched in a gale about the coast of Skye. A fellow
of your temperament has no business in these relaxing latitudes. You
want tonics."

"Too true, old man. I know myself at least as well as you know me."

"Then what a contemptible creature you must be! If a man knows his
weakness, he is inexcusable for not overcoming it."

"A preposterous contradiction, allow me to say. A man is what he is,
and will be ever the same. Have you no tincture of philosophy? You
talk as though one could govern fate."

"And you, very much like the braying jackass in the field there."

Mallard had a savage satisfaction in breaking all bounds of
civility. He overwhelmed his companion with abuse, revelled in
insulting comparisons. Elgar laughed, and stretched himself on the
cushions so as to avoid the wind as much as possible.

They clattered through the streets of Castellammare, pursued by
urchins, crying, "Un sordo, signori!" Thence on by the seaside road
to Vico Equense, Elgar every now and then shouting his ecstasy at
the view. The hills on this side of the promontory climb, for the
most part, softly and slowly upwards, everywhere thickly clad with
olives and orange-trees, fig-trees and aloes. Beyond Vico comes a
jutting headland; the road curves round it, clinging close on the
hillside, turns inland, and all at once looks down upon the Piano di
Sorrento. Instinctively, the companions rose to their feet, as
though any other attitude on the first revelation of such a prospect
were irreverent. It is not really a plain. but a gently rising wide
and deep lap, surrounded by lofty mountains and ending at a line of
sheer cliffs along the sea-front. A vast garden planted for Nature's
joy; a pleasance of the gods; a haunt of the spirit of beauty set
between sun-smitten crags and the enchanted shore.

"Heaven be praised that you forced me to come!" muttered Elgar, in
his choking throat.

Mallard could say nothing. He had looked upon this scene before, but
it affected him none the less.

They drove into the town of Tasso, and to an inn which stood upon
the edge of a profound gorge, cloven towards the sea-cliffs.
Sauntering in the yard whilst dinner was made ready, they read an
inscription on a homely fountain:

"Sordibus abstersis, instructo marmore, priscus
Fons nitet, et manat gratior unda tibi."

"Eternal gratitude to our old schoolmasters," cried Elgar, "who
thrashed us through the Eton Latin grammar! What is Italy to the man
who cannot share our feelings as we murmur that distich? I marvel
that I was allowed to learn this heathen tongue. Had my parents
known what it would mean to me, I should never have chanted my _hic,
haec, hoc_."

He was at his best this afternoon; Mallard could scarcely identify
him with the reckless, and sometimes vulgar, spendthrift who had
been rushing his way to ruin in London. His talk abounded in
quotation, in literary allusion, in high-spirited jest, in poetical
feeling. When had he read so much? What a memory he had! In a world
that consisted of but one sex, what a fine fellow he would have
been!

"What do you think of my sister?" he asked, _a propos_ of nothing,
as they idled about the Capo di Sorrento and on the road to Massa.

"An absurd question."

"You mean that I cannot suppose you would tell me the truth."

"And just as little the untruth. I do not know your sister."

"We had a horrible scene that day I turned up. I behaved brutally to
her, poor girl."

"I'm afraid you have often done so."

"Often. I rave at her superstition; how can she help it? But she's a
good girl, and has wit enough if she might use it. Oh, if some
generous, large-brained man would drag her out of that slough of
despond!--What a marriage that was! Powers of darkness, what a
marriage!"

Mallard was led to no question.

"I shall never understand it, never," went on Elgar, in excitement.
"If you had seen that oily beast! I don't know what criterion girls
have. Several of my acquaintance have made marriages that set my
hair on end. Lives thrown away in accursed ignorance--that's my
belief."

Mallard waited for the next words, expecting that they would torture
him. There was a long pause, however, and what he awaited did not
come.

"Do you hate the name Miriam, as I do?"

"Hate it, no."

"I wonder they didn't call her Keziah, and me Mephibosheth. It isn't
a nice thing to detest the memory of one's parents, Mallard. It
doesn't help to make one a well-balanced man. How on earth did I get
my individuality? And you mustn't think that Miriam is just what she
seems--I mean, there _are_ possibilities in her; I am convinced of
it."

"Did it ever occur to you that your own proceedings may have acted
as a check upon those possibilities?"

"I don't know that I ever thought of it," said Elgar, ingenuously.

"You never reflected that her notion of the liberated man is
yourself?"

"You are right, Mallard. I see it. What other example had she?"

They walked as far as Massa Lubrense, a little town on the steep
shore; over against it the giant cliffs of Capri, every cleft and
scar and jutting rock discernible through the pellucid air, every
minutest ruggedness casting its clear-cut shadow. But the surpassing
glory was the prospect at the Cape of Sorrento when they reached it
on their walk back. Before them the entire sweep of the gulf, from
Ischia to Capri; Naples in its utmost extent, an unbroken line of
delicate pink, from Posillipo to Torre Annunziata. Far below their
feet the little _marina_ of Sorrento, with its row of boats drawn up
on the strand; behind them noble limestone heights. The sea was
foaming under the tramontana, and its foam took colour from the
declining sun.

Next morning they set forth again as Mallard had proposed, their
baggage packed on a donkey, a guide with them to lead the way over
the mountains to the other shore. A long climb, and at the
culminating point of the ridge they rested to look the last on
Naples; thenceforward their faces were set to the far blue hills of
Calabria.

"Yonder lies Paestum," said Mallard, pointing to the dim plain
beyond the Gulf of Salerno; and his companion's eyes were agleam.

Early in the afternoon they reached the coast at Positano, and
thence took boat for Amalfi. Elgar was like one possessed at his
first sight of the wonderful old town, nested in its mountain gorge,
overlooked by wild crags; this relic saved from the waste of
mediaeval glory. When they had put up at an inn less frequented and
much cheaper than the "Cappuccini," he would not rest until he had
used the last hour of sunlight in clambering about the little maze
of streets, or rather of mountain paths and burrows beneath houses
piled one upon another indistinguishably. Forced back by hunger, he
still lingered upon the window-balcony, looking' up at the hoary
riven tower set high above the town on what seems an inaccessible
peak, or at the cathedral and its many-coloured campanile.

How could Mallard help comparing these manifestations of ardent
temper with what he had witnessed in Cecily? The resemblance was at
moments more than he could endure; once or twice he astonished Elgar
with a reply of unprovoked savageness. The emotions of the day, even
more than its bodily exercise, had so wearied him that he went early
to bed. They had a double-bedded room, and Elgar continued talking
for hours. Even without this, Mallard felt that he would have been
unable to sleep. To add to his torments, the clock of the cathedral,
which was just on the opposite side of the street, had the terrible
southern habit of striking the whole hour after the chime at each
quarter; by midnight the clangour was all but incessant. Elgar sank
at length into oblivion, but to his companion sleep came not. Very
early in the morning there sounded the loud blast of a horn, all
through the town and away into remoteness. Signify what it might,
the practical result seemed to be a rousing of the population to
their daily life; lively voices, the tramp of feet, the clatter of
vehicles began at once, and waxed with the spread of daylight.

The sun rose, but only to gleam for an hour on clouds and vapours
which it had not power to disperse. The mountain summits were
hidden, and down their sides crept ominously the ragged edges of
mist; a thin rain began to fall, and grew heavier as the sky dulled.
Having breakfasted, the two friends spent an hour in the cathedral,
which was dark and chill and gloomy. Two or three old people knelt
in prayer, their heads bowed against column or wall; remarking the
strangers, they came 'up to them and begged.

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