George Gissing
The Emancipated
The dialogue seemed to be at an end. Unobservant of each other, they reached the Via Crucis, which leads up to S. Pietro in Montorio. Arrived at the terrace, they stood to look down on Rome.
"After all, you are tired," said Mallard, when he had glanced at her.
"Indeed I am not."
"But you are hungry. We have been forgetting that it is luncheon-time."
"I pay little attention to such hours. One can always get something to eat."
"It's all very well for people like myself to talk in that way," said Mallard, with a smile, "but women have orderly habits of life."
"For which you a little despise them?" she returned, with grave face fixed on the landscape.
"Certainly not. It's only that I regard their life as wholly different from my own. Since I was a boy, I have known nothing of domestic regularity."
"You sometimes visit your relatives?"
"Yes. But their life cannot be mine. It is domestic in such a degree that it only serves to remind me how far apart I am."
"Do you hold that an artist cannot live like other people, in the habits of home?"
"I think such habits are a danger to him. He may find a home, if fate is exceptionally kind."
Pointing northwards to a ridged hill on the horizon, he asked in another voice if she knew its name.
"You mean Mount Soracte?"
"Yes. You don't know Latin, or it would make you quote Horace."
She shook her head, looked down, and spoke more humbly than he had ever yet heard her.
"But I know it in an English translation."
"Well, that's more than most women do."
He said it in a grudging way. The remark itself was scarcely civil, but he seemed all at once to have a pleasure in speaking roughly, in reminding her of her shortcomings. Miriam turned her eyes in another quarter, and presently pointed to the far blue hills just seen between the Alban and the Sabine ranges.
"Through there is the country of the Volsci," she said, in a subdued voice. "Some Roman must have stood here and looked towards it, in days when Rome was struggling for supremacy with them. Think of all that happened between that day and the time when Horace saw the snow on Soracte; and then, of all that has happened since."
He watched her face, and nodded several times. They pursued the subject, and reminded each other of what the scene suggested, point by point. Mallard felt surprise, though he showed none. Cecily, standing here, would have spoken with more enthusiasm, but it was doubtful whether she would have displayed Miriam's accuracy of knowledge.
"Well, let us go," he said at length. "You don't insist on walking home?"
"There is no need to, I think. I could quite well, if I wished."
"I am going to run through a few of the galleries for a morning or two. I wonder whether you would care to come with me to-morrow?"
"I will come with pleasure."
"That is how people speak when they don't like to refuse a troublesome invitation."
"Then what am I to say? I spoke the truth, in quite simple words."
"I suppose it was your tone; you seemed too polite."
"But what is your objection to politeness?" Miriam asked naively.
"Oh, I have none, when it is sincere. But as soon as I had asked you, I felt afraid that I was troublesome."
"If I had felt that, I should have expressed it unmistakably," she replied, in a voice which reminded him of the road from Baiae to Naples.
"Thank you; that is what I should wish."
Having found a carriage for her, and made an appointment for the morning, he watched her drive away.
A few hours later, he encountered Spence in the Piazza Colonna, and they went together into a caffe. Spence had the news that Mrs. Lessingham and her niece would arrive on the third day from now. Their stay would be of a fortnight at longest.
"I met Mrs. Baske at the Vatican this morning," said Mallard presently, as he knocked the ash off his cigar. "We had some talk."
"On Vatican subjects?"
"Yes. I find her views of art somewhat changed. But sculpture still alarms her."
"Still? Do you suppose she will ever overcome that feeling? Are you wholly free from it yourself? Imagine yourself invited to conduct a party of ladies through the marbles, and to direct their attention to the merits that strike you."
"No doubt I should invent an excuse. But it would be weakness."
"A weakness inseparable from our civilization. The nude in art is an anachronism."
"Pooh! That is encouraging the vulgar prejudice."
"No; it is merely stating a vulgar fact. These collections of nude figures in marble have only an historical interest. They are kept out of the way, in places which no one is obliged to visit. Modern work of that kind is tolerated, nothing more. What on earth is the good of an artistic production of which people in general are afraid to speak freely? You take your stand before the Venus of the Capitol; you bid the attendant make it revolve slowly, and you begin a lecture to your wife, your sister, or your young cousin, on the glories of the masterpiece. You point out in detail how admirably Praxiteles has exhibited every beauty of the female frame. Other ladies are standing by you smile blandly, and include them in your audience."
Mallard interrupted with a laugh.
"Well, why not?" continued the other. "This isn't the gabinetto at Naples, surely?"
"But you are well aware that, practically, it comes to the same thing. How often is one half pained, half amused, at the behaviour of women in the Tribune at Florence! They are in a false position; it is absurd to ridicule them for what your own sensations justify. For my own part, I always leave my wife and Mrs. Baske to go about these galleries without my company. If I can't be honestly at my ease, I won't make pretence of being so."
"All this is true enough, but the prejudice is absurd. We ought to despise it and struggle against it."
"Despise it, many of us do, theoretically. But to make practical demonstrations against it, is to oppose, as I said, all the civilization of our world. Perhaps there will come a time once more when sculpture will be justified; at present the art doesn't and can't exist. Its relics belong to museums—in the English sense of the word."
"You only mean by this," said Mallard, "that art isn't for the multitude. We know that well enough."
"But there's a special difficulty about this point. We come across it in literature as well. How is it that certain pages in literature, which all intellectual people agree in pro flouncing just as pure as they are great, could never be read aloud, say, in a family circle, without occasioning pain and dismay? No need to give illustrations; they occur to you in abundance. We skip them, or we read mutteringly, or we say frankly that this is not adapted for reading aloud. Yet no man would frown if he found his daughter bent over the book. There's something radically wrong here."
"This is the old question of our English Puritanism. In France, here in Italy, there is far less of such feeling."
"Far less; but why must there be any at all? And Puritanism isn't a sufficient explanation. The English Puritans of the really Puritan time had freedom of conversation which would horrify us of to-day. We become more and more prudish as what we call civilization advances. It is a hateful fact that, from the domestic point of view, there exists no difference between some of the noblest things in art and poetry, and the obscenities which are prosecuted; the one is as impossible of frank discussion as the other."
"The domestic point of view is contemptible. It means the bourgeois point of view, the Philistine point of view."
"Then I myself, if I had children, should be both bourgeois and Philistine. And so, I have a strong suspicion, would you too."
"Very well," replied Mallard, with some annoyance, "then it is one more reason why an artist should have nothing to do with domesticities. But look here, you are wrong as regards me. If ever I marry, amico mio, my wife shall learn to make more than a theoretical distinction between what is art and what is grossness. If ever I have children, they shall from the first he taught a natural morality, and not the conventional. If I can afford good casts of noble statues, they shall stand freely about my house. When I read aloud, by the fire side, there shall be no skipping or muttering or frank omissions; no, by Apollo! If a daughter of mine cannot describe to me the points of difference between the Venus of the Capitol and that of the Medici, she shall be bidden to use her eyes and her brains better. I'll have no contemptible prudery in my house!"
"Bravissimo!" cried Spenee, laughing. "I see that my cousin Miriam is not the only person who has progressed during these years. Do you remember a certain conversation of ours at Posillipo about the education of a certain young lady?"
"Yes, I do. But that was a different matter. The question was not of Greek statues and classical books, but of modern pruriencies and shallowness and irresponsibility."
"You exaggerated then, and you do so now," said Spence; "at present with less excuse."
Mallard kept silence for a space; then said:
"Let us speak of what we have been avoiding. How has that marriage turned out?"
"I have told you all I know. There's no reason to suppose that things are anything but well."
"I don't like her coming abroad alone; I have no faith in that plea of work. I suspect things are not well."
"A cynic—which I am not—would suggest that a wish had something to do with the thought."
"He would be cynically wrong," replied Mallard, with calmness.
"Why shouldn't she come abroad alone? There's nothing alarming in the fact that they no longer need to see each other every hour. And one takes for granted that they, at all events, are not bourgeois; their life won't be arranged exactly like that of Mr. and Mrs. Jones the greengrocers."
"No," said the other, musingly.
"In what direction do you imagine that Cecily will progress? Possibly she has become acquainted with disillusion."
"Possibly?"
"Well, take it for certain. Isn't that an inevitable step in her education? Things may still be well enough, philosophically speaking. She has her life to live—we know it will be to the end a modern life. Servetur ad imum—and so on; that's what one would wish, I suppose? We have no longer to take thought for her."
"But we are allowed to wish the best."
"What is the best?" said Spenee, sustaining his tone of impartial speculation. "Are you quite sure that Mr. and Mrs. Jones are not too much in your mind?"
"Whatever modern happiness may mean, I am inclined to think that modern unhappiness is not unlike that of old-fashioned people."
"My dear fellow, you are a halter between two opinions. You can't make up your mind in which direction to look. You are a sort of Janus, with anxiety on both faces."
"There's a good deal of truth in that," admitted the artist, with a growl.
"Get on with your painting, and whatever else of practical you have in mind. Leave philosophy to men of large leisure and placid pulses, like myself. Accept the inevitable."
"I do so."
"But not with modern detachment," said Spence, smiling.
"Be hanged with your modernity! I believe myself distinctly the more modern of the two."
"Not with regard to women. When you marry, you will be a rigid autocrat, and make no pretence about it. You don't think of women as independent beings, who must save or lose themselves on their own responsibility. You are not willing to trust them alone."
"Well, perhaps you are right."
"Of course I am. Come and dine at the hotel. I think Seaborne will be there."
"No, thank you."
Mallard had waited but a few minutes in the court of the Palazzo Borghese next morning, when Miriam joined him. There was some constraint on both sides. Miriam looked as if she did not wish yesterday's conversation to be revived in their manner of meeting. Her "Good-morning, Mr. Mallard," had as little reference as possible to the fact of this being an appointment. The artist was in quite another mood than that of yesterday; his smile was formal, and he seemed indisposed for conversation.
"I have the permesso," he said, leading at once to the door of the gallery.
They sauntered about the first room, exchanging a few idle remarks. In the second, a woman past the prime of life was copying a large picture. They looked at her work from a distance, and Miriam asked if it was well done.
"What do you think yourself?" asked Mallard.
"It seems to me skilful and accurate, but I know that perhaps it is neither one nor the other."
He pointed out several faults, which she at once recognized.
"I wonder I could not see them at first That confirms me in distrust of myself. I am as likely as not to admire a thing that is utterly worthless."
"As likely as not—no; at least, I think not. But of course your eye is untrained, and you have no real knowledge to go upon. You can judge an original picture sentimentally, and your sentiment will not be wholly misleading. You can't judge a copy technically, but I think you have more than average observation. How would you like to spend your life like this copyist?"
"I would give my left hand to have her skill in my right."
"You would?"
"I should be able to do something—something definite and tolerably good."
"Why, so you can already; one thing in particular."
"What is that?"
"Learn your own deficiencies; a thing that most people neither will nor can. Look at this Francia, and tell me your thoughts about it."
She examined the picture for a minute or two. Then, without moving her eyes, she murmured:
"I can say nothing that is worth saying."
"Never mind. Say what you think, or what you feel."
"Why should you wish me to talk commonplace?"
"That is precisely what I don't wish you to talk. You know what is commonplace, and therefore you can avoid it. Never mind his school or his date. What did the man want to express here, and how far do you think he has succeeded? That's the main thing; I wish a few critics would understand it."
Miriam obeyed him, and said what she had to say diffidently, but in clear terms. Mallard was silent when she ceased, and she looked up at him. He rewarded her with a smile, and one or two nods—as his manner was.
"I have not made myself ridiculous?"
"I think not."
They had walked on a little, when Mallard said to her unexpectedly:
"Please to bear in mind that I make no claim to infallibility. I am a painter of landscape; out of my own sphere, I become an amateur. You are not bound to accept my judgment."
"Of course not," she replied simply.
"It occurred to me that I had been rather dictatorial."
"So you have, Mr. Mallard," she returned, looking at a picture.
"I am sorry. It's the failing of men who have often to be combative, and who live much in solitude. I will try to use a less offensive tone."
"I didn't mean that your tone was in the least offensive."
"A more polite tone, then—as you taught me yesterday."
"I had rather you spoke just as is natural to you."
Mallard laughed.
"Politeness is not natural to me, I admit. I am horribly uncomfortable whenever I have to pick my words out of regard to polite people. That is why I shun what is called society. What little I have seen of it has been more than enough for me."
"I have seen still less of it; but I understand your dislike."
"Before you left home, didn't you associate a great deal with people?"
"People of a certain kind," she replied coldly. "It was not society as you mean it."
"You will be glad to mix more freely with the world, when you are back in England?"
"I can't tell. By whom is that Madonna?"
Thus they went slowly on, until they came to the little hall where the fountain plays, and whence is the outlook over the Tiber. It was delightful to sit here in the shadows, made cooler and fresher by that plashing water, and to see the glorious sunlight gleam upon the river's tawny flow.
"Each time that I have been in Rome," said Mallard, "I have felt, after the first few days, a peculiar mental calm. The other cities of Italy haven't the same effect on me. Perhaps every one experiences it, more or less. There comes back to me at moments the kind of happiness which I knew as a boy—a freedom from the sense of duties and responsibilities, of work to be done, and of disagreeable things to be faced; the kind of contentment I used to have when I was reading lives of artists, or looking at prints of famous pictures, or myself trying to draw. It is possible that this mood is not such a strange one with many people as with me, when it comes, I feel grateful to the powers that rule life Since boyhood, I have never known it in the north. Out of Rome, perhaps only in fine weather on the Mediterranean. But in Rome is its perfection."
"I thought you preferred the north," said Miriam.
"Because I so often choose to work there? I can do better work when I take subjects in wild scenery and stern climates, but when my thoughts go out for pleasure, they choose Italy. I don't enjoy myself in the Hebrides or in Norway, but what powers I have are all brought out there. Here I am not disposed to work. I want to live, and I feel that life can be a satisfaction in itself without labour. I am naturally the idlest of men. Work is always pain to me. I like to dream pictures; but it's terrible to drag myself before the blank canvas."
Miriam gazed at the Tiber.
"Do these palaces," he asked, "ever make you wish you owned them? Did you ever imagine yourself walking among the marbles and the pictures with the sense of this being your home?"
"I have wondered what that must be. But I never wished it had fallen to my lot."
"No? You are not ambitious?"
"Not in that way. To own a palace such as this would make one insignificant."
"That is admirably true! I should give it away, to recover self-respect. Shakespeare or Michael Angelo might live here and make it subordinate to him; I should be nothing but the owner of the palace. You like to feel your individuality?"
"Who does not?"
"In you, I think, it is strong."
Miriam smiled a little, as if she liked the compliment. Before either spoke again, other visitors came to look at the view, and disturbed them.
"I shan't ask you to come anywhere to-morrow," said Mallard, when they had again talked for awhile of pictures. "And the next day Mrs. Elgar will be here."
She looked at him.
"That wouldn't prevent me from going to a gallery—if you thought of it."
"You will have much to talk of. And your stay in Rome won't be long after that."
Miriam made no reply.
"I wish your brother had been coming," he went on. "I should have liked to hear from him about the book he is writing."
"Shall you not be in London before long?" she asked, without show of much interest.
"I think so, but I have absolutely no plans. Probably it is raining hard in England, or even snowing. I must enjoy the sunshine a little longer. I hope your health won't suffer from the change of climate."
"I hope not," she answered mechanically.
"Perhaps you will find you can't live there?"
"What does it matter? I have no ties."
"No, you are independent; that is a great blessing."
Chatting as if of indifferent things, they left the gallery.
CHAPTER VIII
STUMBLINGS
Rolled tightly together, and tied up with string, at the bottom of one of Miriam's trunks lay the plans of that new chapel for which Bartles still waited. Miriam did not like to come upon them, in packing or unpacking; she had covered them with things which probably would not be moved until she was again in England.
But the thought of them could not be so satisfactorily hidden. It lay in a corner of her mind, and many were the new acquisitions heaped upon it; but in spite of herself she frequently burrowed through all those accumulations of travel, and sought the thing beneath. Sometimes the impulse was so harassing, the process so distressful, that she might have been compared to a murderer who haunts the burial-place of his victim, and cannot restrain himself from disturbing the earth.
It was by no methodic inquiry, no deliberate reasoning, that Miriam had set aside her old convictions and ordered her intellectual life on the new scheme. Of those who are destined to pass beyond the bounds of dogma, very few indeed do so by the way of studious investigation. How many of those who abide by inherited faith owe their steadfastness to a convinced understanding? Convictions, in the proper sense of the word, Miriam had never possessed; she accepted what she was taught, without reflecting upon it, and pride subsequently made her stubborn in consistency. The same pride, aided by the ennui of mental faculties just becoming self-conscious, and the desires of a heart for the first time humanly touched, constrained her to turn abruptly from the ideal she had pursued, and with unforeseen energy begin to qualify herself for the assertion of new claims. No barriers of logic stood in her way; it was a simple matter of facing round about. True, she still had to endure the sense of having chosen the wide way instead of that strait one which is authoritatively prescribed. It was a long time before she made any endeavour to justify herself; but the wide way ran through a country that delighted her, and her progress was so notable that self-commendation and the respect of others made her careless of the occasional stings of conscience.
She was able now to review the process of change, and to compare the two ideals. Without the support of a single argument of logical value, she stamped all the beliefs of her childhood as superstition, and marvelled that they had so long held their power over her. Her childhood, indeed, seemed to her to have lasted until she came to Naples; with hot shame she reflected on her speech and behaviour at that time. What did the Spences think of her? How did they speak of her to their friends? What impression did she make upon Mallard? These memories were torture; they explained the mixture of humility and assumption which on certain days made her company disagreeable to Eleanor, and the dark moods which now and then held her in sullen solitude.
But the word "superstition" was no guarantee against the haunting of superstition itself. Miriam was far from being one of the emancipated, however arrogantly she would have met a doubt of her freedom. Just as little as ever had she genuine convictions, capable of supporting her in hours of weakness and unsatisfied longing. Several times of late she had all but brought herself to speak plainly with Eleanor, and ask on what foundation was built that calm life which seemed independent of supernatural belief; but shame always restrained her. It would be the same as confessing that she had not really the liberty to which she pretended. There was, however, an indirect way of approaching the subject, by which her dignity would possibly be rather enhanced than suffer; and this she at length took. After her return from the Palazzo Borghese, she was beset with a confusion of anxious thoughts. The need of confidential or semi-confidential speech with one of her own sex became irresistible. In the evening she found an opportunity of speaking privately with Eleanor.
"I want to ask your opinion about something. It's a question I am obliged to decide now I am going back to England."
Eleanor smiled inquiringly. She was not a little curious to have a glimpse into her cousin's mind just now.
"You remember," pursued Miriam, leaning forward on a table by which she sat, and playing with a twisted piece of paper, "that I once had the silly desire to build a chapel at Bartles."
She reddened in hearing the words upon her own lips—so strange a sound they had after all this time.
"I remember you talked of doing so," replied Eleanor, with her usual quiet good-nature.
"Unfortunately, I did more than talk about it. I made a distinct promise to certain people gravely interested. The promise was registered in a Bartles newspaper. And you know that I went so far as to have my plans made."
"Do you feel bound by this promise, my dear?"
Miriam propped her cheek on one hand, and with the other kept rolling the piece of paper on the table.
"Yes," she answered, "I can't help thinking that I ought to keep my word. How does it strike you, Eleanor?"
"I am not quite clear how you regard the matter. Are you speaking of the promise only as a promise?"
It was no use. Miriam could not tell the truth; she could not confess her position. At once a smile trembled scornfully upon her lips.
"What else could I mean?"
"Then it seems to me that the obligation has passed away with the circumstances that occasioned it."
Miriam kept her eyes on the table, and for a few moments seemed to reflect.
"A promise is a promise, Eleanor."
"So it is. And a fact is a fact. I take it for granted that you are no longer the person who made the promise. I have a faint recollection that when I was about eight years old, I pledged myself, on reaching maturity, to give my nurse the exact half of my worldly possessions. I don't feel the least ashamed of having made such a promise, and just as little of not having kept it."
Miriam smiled, but still had an unconvinced face.
"I was not eight years old," she said, "but about four-and-twenty."
"Then let us put it in this way. Do you still feel a desire to benefit that religious community in Bartles? Would it distress you to think that they shook their heads in mentioning your name?"
"I do feel rather in that way," Miriam admitted slowly.
"But is this enough to justify you in giving them half or more of all you possess? You spoke of pulling down Redbeck House, and building on the site, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"In any case, should you ever live there again?"
"Never."
"You prefer to be with us in London?"
"I think you have been troubled with me quite long enough. Perhaps I might take rooms."
"If you are as willing to share our house as we are to have you with us, there can be no need for you to live alone."
"I can't make up my mind about that, Eleanor. Let us talk only about the chapel just now. Are you sure that other people would see it as you do?"
"Other people of my way of thinking would no doubt think the same—which is a pretty piece of tautology. Edward would be amazed to hear that you have such scruples. It isn't as if you had promised to support a family in dire need, or anything of that kind. The chapel is a superfluity."
"Not to them."
"They have one already."
"But very small and inconvenient."
"Suppose you ask Mr. Mallard for his thoughts on the subject?" said Eleanor, as if at the bidding of a caprice.
"Does Mr. Mallard know that I once had this purpose?"
"I think so," replied the other, with a little hesitation. "You know that there was no kind of reserve about it when you first came to Naples."
"No, of course not. Do you feel as sure of his opinion as of Edward's?"
"I can't say that I do. There's no foreseeing his judgment about anything. As you are such good friends, why not consult him?"
"Our friendship doesn't go so far as that."
"And after all, I don't see what use other people's opinions can be to you," said Eleanor, waiving the point. "It's a matter of sentiment. Strict obligation you see, of course, that there is none whatever. If it would please you to use a large sum of money in this way, you have a perfect right to do so. But, by-the-bye, oughtn't you to make the Bartles people clearly understand who it is that builds their chapel?"
"Surely there is no need of that?"
"I think so. The scruple, in my case, would be far more on this side than on the other."
Miriam did not care to pursue the conversation. The one result of it was that she had an added uncertainty. She had thought that her proposal to fulfil the promise would at least earn the respect which is due to stern conscientiousness; but Eleanor clearly regarded it as matter for the smile one bestows on good-natured folly. Her questions even showed that she was at first in doubt as to the motives which had revived this project—a doubt galling to Miriam, because of its justification. She said, in going away:
"Please to consider that this was in confidence, Eleanor."
Confidence of a barren kind. It was the same now as it had ever been; she had no one with whom she could communicate her secrets, no friend in the nearer sense. On this loneliness she threw the blame of those faults which she painfully recognized in herself—her frequent insincerity, her speeches and silences calculated for effect, her pride based on disingenuousness. If she could but have disclosed her heart in the humility of love and trust, how would its aching have been eased!
For a long time she had been absorbed, or nearly so, in studying and observing; but Mallard's inquiry whether she found this sufficient touched the source whence trouble was again arising for her. Three years ago it did not cost her much to subdue a desire which had hopelessness for its birthright; the revival of this desire now united itself with disquietudes of the maturing intellect, and she looked forward in dread to a continuation of her loneliness. Some change in her life there must be. Sudden hope had in a day or two brought to full growth the causes of unrest which would otherwise have developed slowly.
It seemed to be her fate to live in pretences. As the mistress of Redbeck House, and the light of dissenting piety in Bartles, she knew herself for less than she wished to appear to others; not a hypocrite, indeed, but a pretender to extraordinary zeal, and at the same time a flagrant instance of spiritual pride. Now she was guilty of like simulation directed to a contrary end. In truth neither bond nor free, she could not suffer herself to seem less liberal-minded than those with whom she associated. And yet her soul was weary of untruth. The one need of her life was to taste the happiness of submission to a stronger than herself. Religious devotion is the resource of women in general who suffer thus and are denied the natural solace; but for Miriam it was impossible. Her temperament was not devout, and, however persistent the visitings of uneasy conscience, she had no longer the power of making her old beliefs a reality. The abstract would not avail her; philosophic comforts had as little to say to her as the Churches' creeds. Only by a strong human band could she be raised from her unworthy position and led into the way of sincerity.
