The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Galaxy, May, 1877This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Galaxy, May, 1877Author: VariousRelease date: May 31, 2010 [eBook #32617]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY, MAY, 1877 ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Galaxy, May, 1877Author: VariousRelease date: May 31, 2010 [eBook #32617]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Galaxy, May, 1877
Author: Various
Author: Various
Release date: May 31, 2010 [eBook #32617]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY, MAY, 1877 ***
A PROGRESSIVE BABY.
Ober Lahnstein, Jan. 16, 1875.
Somuch, Susie dear, for our small miseries between Blackwall and Rotterdam. Nurse's sickness and the crowd of Cook's tourists (Cook-oos!) aggravated matters; but it is always a tedious bit of way, though I never minded it in my solitary artist days, when either Dresden and happy work or home and happy rest were at end of the hard journey. What it is to be young, gay, and heart-free! For then I went always second class—when I didn't go third!—(except of course on the steamers, where the cheaper accommodation is too rude, and rough companionship too intimate)—and once managed the entire distance from Dresden to London for fifty thalers!—taking it leisurely too; stopping en route to "do" Frankfort, Weimar, Heidelberg, Lourain, Bruges, and Antwerp, and to pay two or three visits at grand houses, where they didn't dream I was fresh from the peasants' compartments!
And I'd no shillings and sixpences then to fee guards and porters, so had to dodge them, look at them as if I didn't see them, lug about my own parcels, and freeze without a foot-warmer!
Now the way is all padded. I always go first-class if Ronayne's along, haven't to lift so much as a hand satchel, am fairly smothered in comforts, as beseems the true English Philistine I'm become. I've the delightfullest husband and baby the round world can show; a nurse fit to command the channel fleet (if that meant wisdom in babies, and she weren't such an outrageously bad sailor!); and I've about as much vim as a syllabub; am so nervous that I weep if Ronayne gets out of my sight when we go for a stroll, if too little toast comes up for my breakfast, or the chocolate isn't frothed, or the trunk won't lock, and have aphasia to that degree that I say cancel when I mean endorse, hair-brush when I want a biscuit, and go stumping down to dinner in a boot and a slipper, being incapable of the connected effort of memory and will that would get both feet into fellow shoes.
But I'm blissfully happy all the same, and we've beheld a spectacle lately that reconciles me perfectly with my own absurdity, and my awkwardness with my precious tot.
Coming up the Rhine we had a pair of fellow voyagers, circumstanced somewhat like ourselves: first baby, not over young (the couple, not the baby, which was only six weeks old!), but travelling without a nurse. This mighty functionary had struck almost at the moment of their departure from London, and a charitable but inexperienced friend came to their aid and set forth with them in charge of the baby.
We missed them on the Batavier, which wasn't strange, and first had our attention drawn to them by the slow Dutch landlord's asking Ronayne, as we stood looking idly out into the formal little garden of the new Bath hotel at Rotterdam, if that washisbaby a young woman seated on one of the garden benches was jerking up and down so violently? "Because it was shaken about too much. Young babies couldn't be kept too quiet." This young woman was the benevolent friend, and I suppose the parents were off sight-seeing in the town; for every now and then the whole day through one or another of us reported encountering the young woman alone somewhere, always tossing the baby more or less about.
But next day, after we had embarked on the Rhine boat, and I had helped nurse turn our tiny state-room into a tolerable nursery (that folding bassinnette is justinvaluable, and lulled by the motion and the breezy air, my lammie slept better in it than in her own quarters at home), I went upon deck to find Ronayne, and on the way came upon a most piteous, persistent wail, and the wail's father and mother in abject, helpless tendance upon it.
Of course my newly-found mother's heart took me straight to the miserable group; and after a few sympathetic inquiries, I sat down beside the mother, and took the querulous little creature in my arms, where presently it hushed off to sleep. How proud I felt! for that's more than my own baby often condescends to do for my clumsy soothing! The father skulked away with an immensely relieved look, soon after I sat down, and the mother grew quite confidential. She told me of the perfidious nurse's behavior, of the friend's heroic offer, and that they had not had a wink of sleep the night before at the hotel, for nursing the baby had made the friend so ill that they had had to send her back to London that morning. She didn't know but it would have been better if she and baby had turned back with the overdone friend; but it was her husband's holiday—six weeks he had—and he worked so hard the rest of the year—her husband was an author, a journalist (at sight I had guessed him a literary cus—tomer!—hair parted in the middle, crease—y clothes, spectacles, a sparse, pointed beard, and narrow, sloping shoulders, with a stoop in 'em)—and she thought his vacation oughtn't to be spoiled or deferred by the child; and as he would enjoy it all a great deal more with her than alone, she had "trusted to luck," and was going off up the Rhine with him to make a long excursion, before proceeding to some quiet little town on the Moselle, where another nurse was in waiting for her. It was their first baby—yes; they had not been married much over a year. She was fond of it, poor baby! but it was such a pity it had come! They had not wanted children—children would utterly interfere with their plan of life. Both its father and herself were busy people. Oh, there was so much work to be done! and they had married to help each other in toil for the world, and babies were a sad hindrance.
I suggested that the work of moulding an immortal soul, fashioning the character and destinies of a little human creature, seemed to me labor mighty enough for any one's energies and ambition. But she answered me a little sharply, that there were souls enough in the world already; she wanted to be responsible for no more mistakes and wretchedness. However, she fortunately was well and strong, and if she got a good nurse, she would be able to devote herself to work, and to help her husband as she had done before the child came. Was I interested in the woman question? I answered somewhat tamely, that I was very much interested in whatever made women better; that I believed in women, and that this rather wearisome planet wouldn't even be worth condemning without them.
Ah! Then she supposed I had attended the suffrage meetings in London? Her marriage had brought her to London. Before that she had lived in B——, and was secretary of the Woman's Suffrage Association there. Perhaps I had seen her name—Alice Thorpe? Now it was Malise. Her husband was Clement Malise of "The Aurora."
This was said a little proudly, but with the pretty pride a wife has a right to show when she believes she has a clever husband. And a good woman I am sure she was beside whom I sat—kindly, conscientious, earnest, spirited, full of aspiration and zeal gone astray. Pleasant to look upon, too, when I came to separate her from her disfiguring and thoroughly British travelling costume—a hat like an inverted basin, with a long white ostrich feather, dingy, uncurled, and forlornly drooping; a violet stuff gown all bunchy and tormented with woollen ruffles, ruches, and knobby rosettes, and a dark blue bag of a waterproof garment which I took to be the feminine correspondent of that masculine wrap, the Ulster coat—a covering that would turn Apollo himself into a bagman. Not very tall, solidly rather than gracefully made, with a rather driven-together face, the excessively bulging forehead crowding down upon a nose curved like a bird's beak, and a pair of deep-set eyes of wonderful beauty—clear, gray, intense, brilliant, and shaded by long dark lashes. Add a delicate, rather sarcastic mouth, a complexion of exquisite fairness, dark brown hair without any warmth in its color, hanging in slender short curls down her neck, and that is Mrs. Malise.
We had a great many conversations after this initial one, and I believe I have promised to look them up this winter in London. They're not so very far from us—going by the underground; Notting Hill Gate's their station, and I really feel a call to look after that baby. He's a fine child, but was generally so miserable and cross that almost nobody took other than offensive notice of him. At first I pitied his poor mother when passengers and crew, even, made much of my baby when she came up all placid, white as a snowdrop, daintily fresh, and feathery, and soft, with her lace frills, like a little queen in nurse's arms; but my pity was thrown away, for Mrs. Malise only said, "I cannot spare the time to keep my baby in white, so made that gray flannel dressing gown for him to travel in. It's capital, and not showing the dirt, will last the whole journey." And the little thing was so untidy! For he was treated exactly like a parcel; his parents handled him like one, a rather dangerous one, at arm's length, and like a parcel he was deposited about, sometimes among rolls of carpeting on the deck, or on beer casks, while his father and mother were hanging over the boat's rail staring at castles and ruins, or reading up in the guide-book; sometimes happed up in a shawl on the floor, or on a bed made up on chairs, his head on the lowest one, his mother craning her head out at window to lose no bit of river scenery. One day I nearly sat down upon him, as he was left, quite by himself, lying across a camp-chair; wherever, in unexpected, impossible corners, one stumbled upon a solitary gray object, it was sure to be this poor mite, bemoaning himself for having come into a place so full of cold, wet, sour smells and stomach-ache—a place where he wasn't wanted, and nobody had time to look after him.
"Name's Malise, eh?" said Ronayne. "Malaise, if that poor little beggar knows anything about it"; and "little Malaise" we always call the child.
"Cries? What's he to do but cry?" burst out nurse one day in high indignation. "There's that silly woman as thinks a young baby must only have three meals a day like grown folks; and so she's off a-tramping about the deck, and leaving him here a-sucking at an empty bottle, and filling himself as full of wind as he can hold! And there'sthem things(nurse's favorite euphuism for an article of attire she detests) as is hardly ever changed, and him sopping wet most of the time! I should like to whip her!"
I think Mrs. Malise is a good deal drawn toward me for two or three reasons. She has found out that I've been an artist—lived by myself, had my studio, paid my way—and she accordingly respects me as a member of the sisterhood who's at least tried to do something. Then I agree far too closely with St. Paul, and she "don't altogether hold with Paul," and wants to convert me to whatever form of kaleidoscopic non-belief she cherishes. Then I'm too luke-warm about the suffrage. I admit that I see no reason why I shouldn't have it, but I don't and can't see in my having it the panacea for all social ills. I'm asked what I think of Hodge in England, and Terence and Scip in the United States getting rights withheld educated women citizens; and I can only plead pitifully that while Hodge and Terence and Scip are ignorant and boorish, I, having already roughed it a good deal, would rather individually not contest anything very closely with them—a plea which is most justly scouted as a mere get-off—a bit of heartless fine-ladyism. Have I read Mill? No. From the time my school days ended, at seventeen, for ten—no, twelve years, until I married, two years ago, I had neither time nor eyes for reading. Why, I could almost count upon my fingers the books I had read—"after school-books, of course, and then some anatomical reading which don't count; there's—let me see—'The Improvisatore,' Vasari's 'Lives of Painters,' 'Charles Auchester,' Rio's 'Lectures on Christian Art,' 'Christie Johnstone,' 'La Mare au Diable,' two or three of Balzac's novels, and all of poetry and of Ruskin I could ever lay hands on!"
She looked astonished for a moment; then her face brightened. "Here's richness!" I'm sure her thought might have been translated. "Here's a virgin soil with nothing to dispute the growth of good seed." And I feel I'm to be taken in hand. I'm quite ready. It is even something to look forward to in the horrible London winter. She told me "little Malaise" is to be brought up after the most recently approved scientific manner, by weight, measure, and clockwork. His birth, even, was a triumph of principle, for on that occasion Mrs. Malise was attended by a young woman who had been unsuccessful in her medical studies, and failed to obtain her degree—"Because I believed it jealousy, you know, and I wished to encourage her!"
When he is three or four years old (certainly as early as they take them!) he is to be put in the kindergarten at Geneva, and left there for some years. It's a consolation to think that he can't be anywhere more desolate than he's sure to be at home.
Meanwhile, work for papa and mamma, and bouts of colic for him, poor little chap!
Last night I assisted at a distance at his nightly bath. The combined forces of father and mother were required for this process, and the ceremony was so utterly whimsical that I should have enjoyed it without a pang if the small object most concerned had only been a dog. The pair had stationed themselves in a strong draught, and the child, cold, unhappy, lay stripped and squirming on his mother's lap, while from a cup full of water in a tiny basin shedabbedhim with a bit of flannel precisely as if he were an ink splash which she was essaying to soak up with blotting paper before it should spread about much!
The father's part was to try and present an available surface for the dabbing, which he did by drawing out first an arm, then a leg of the child at full length, just as one pulls an elastic cord to find how far it will stretch, letting it go with a snap when at full tension—as he dropped arm or leg when little Malaise resented such unwarrantable experiments on his ductility by a sudden, louder-than-usual roar. It was piteous! But to see that father and mother—he lanky, spectacled, grave as an owl, she serious, abstracted, revolving doubtless some scheme of work, mechanically getting through this piece of business, recognized as necessary by their conscientiousness, but perplexing in its nature, and unaccountable as having fallen to their lot—no propriety, no indignant sympathy for the baby, could quite withstand the drollery of the scene.
But nothing could pacify nurse! "The idiots!" she almost screamed. "The child will die, and I hope it will, for she's not fit to have it. I hope it will die!"
Biebrich, 21st.
I have kept this open, thinking I could tell you definitely when we shall get into our quarters at Schwalbach, but nothing is settled yet, and we've been pottering about in these river towns. As Schlangenbad and Wiesbaden are very full, I counsel my lord to stop here where we are well off; for this is a very comfortable hotel, and I don't want to do any more unpacking till we are finally bestowed in our rooms at the Villa Authës.
There is an abandoned palace of the Grand Duke of Nassau here—one of the ruins in King William's track of '66. It is so melancholy to see these ruined principalities. Union's a very nice word, but forced union, matrimonial or political, is not comfortable either to see or endure. However, here's the palace, with its lovely neglected gardens, grass uncut, wild flowers flaunting where should be trim velvet turf only, fountains plashing in weedy ponds—and an admirable resort we find the shaded avenues and deserted parterres for ourselves and our small queen. We could scarce be better provided for.
To-day, watching from our windows the steamer coming down the river, we spied, on its deck, our travelling companions again—Mr. and Mrs. Malise—and, sure enough, the little gray parcel on the bench not far from mamma! Going at last, I hope, toward that nurse on the Moselle. Poor little Malaise!
Address your next as last year. And with fond love to the whole household,
Your Lil.
At last I've seen my "poor little Malaise" again. Your questions would have kept him in my memory if there had been a chance of my forgetting the woful baby; and so soon as we were warmly settled into house, home habits, and friendly circle again (and O how charming even London in winter is after seven mortal weeks in Ireland, where scarce anybody has two pence, and everybody is lazy, and everything above the peasant rank is saturated with conventionality and the poorest pride! For the Great Mogul approves of his grandchild, and was pleased to insist on the prolongation of our visit till I was nearly wild with having to behave myself, and during the last week was a dozen times on the very brink of "breaking out." Oh, that horrid life of buckram, inanity, and do-nothing-ism! Even Ronayne, who knows pretty much the worst of me, thought I had gone crazy when we were once fairly off in the train—a carriage all to ourselves. I sang, I whistled, I gnawed chicken-bones, I talked all the slang I could remember, I smoked a cigarette—I went generally to the mischief. And when we had really got back to dear No. 18, and were cosy in the dining-room over our dessert, no speering servant by, I put my elbows on the table; I made a tipsy after-dinner speech, Ronayne applauding, and calling, "Hear! hear!" I rushed around to his end of the table and hugged him, making a "cheese" on my way back—in short, the Bohemian Lil Graham avenged liberally the suffocations the Great Mogul's daughter-in-law had nearly died of. If ever I stop one hour over a fortnight in the home of my husband's fathers again! A fortnight is just supportable)—and to go back to my first-page sentence, I set forth one morning to hunt up the little man. I found my people easily enough—a good house in a good street—"A large house, that must require much thought and care," I said to Mrs. Malise; whereupon she told me the care did not fall upon her, as the house was, after an imperfect fashion, conducted as a coöperative boarding-house—a germ, she hoped, of a coöperative hotel or family club. Half a dozen or so of their friends occupied the house with them, and they paid an admirable housekeeper to manage for them. It was only a make-shift—not what one liked to mention when speaking of future possibilities of confederated homes—had I read the article in a late number of the "Victoria Magazine" containing a magnificent picture of coöperative living?—but better than dreary lodgings or isolated homes, especially when a woman devoted her life to other than household duties. I replied that I believed every ardent spirit at some time or another was discontented with the beaten way, and dreamed of glorious possibilities of associate life and labor, wherein all selfishness should be suppressed, justice and all the beatitudes reign, and souls develop all their capabilities scarce conscious of even the body's hampering; but that practically the only successful lay experiment in communism I had ever heard of was that early one of the Indians in Paraguay under the care of the Jesuit missionaries—Phalansterians who wore their rosaries around their necks because they had no pockets in which to carry them!
And I thought that people without bonds of kinship or close sympathy would not happily bear being forced into incessant, intimate companionship unless they were either saints or prodigies of imperturbable courtesy.
Well, life was a choice of evils, she answered me, and their experiment had so far succeeded very well. But I might judge for myself a little: would I, with my husband, dine with them on either one of such and such days the next week, to meet this confederate household assembled? This was an advance I had not counted on. My especial interest was in the child, and though I liked well enough for myself accepting an invitation that promised to be something out of the common way in dinners, I was hardly prepared to pledge Ronayne. He not only likes a good dinner, and feels injured when he doesn't get it, but he is very particular as to the society in which he eats it. He can be gloriously jolly and informal when he likes; but he wouldn't be his father's son if he weren't what I call just a bit snobbish about the people he will know in England—London especially.
But if he was going in for the correct thing, why on earth did he insist upon marrying me? Because I never was the correct thing, and he fell it love with me when he was quite old enough to know better; and after his friends had for years reckoned him as a fastidious, foreordained bachelor;hesays because I was so wholly unlike the young ladies of his generation that he was surprised out of himself. And mamma told him all my faults that he didn't know already, and how people had insisted before upon marrying me, and two or three times I had been silly enough to half think I would let them, and then backed out and vowed I would have no husband but Art—and was generally so impressed with the risks he ran that I believe she even wept over his prospective unhappiness. But he would have his way; he didn't want a housekeeper; he didn't want a well informed young lady; his shirt-buttons and stocking-darning weren't likely to depend upon his wife; he should hate a patient Grizzle; he didn't marry for his friends—you can imagine the rash arguments. But I gave him a last chance of escape, for the night before we were married; when I'd given away all my old clothes, and the license was bought, the ring in his breast-pocket, and the wedding breakfast being laid in the next room, I said to him before all of them in papa's study:
"Ronayne, don't you want one more chance of freedom? Are you frightened about to-morrow morning, and the pell-mell household mamma promises you? Because if you are, I'll let you off now. You may run away in the night. I'll be a forsaken maiden, and papa shan't have the loch dragged, or advertise a 'Mysterious and Heart-Rending Disappearance.'"
"Too late. It's a hopeless case. I'm much too far gone for that. And I'm not going to help you to get rid of me, Mistress Lil."
Iwasfrightened rather, and then and there I made papa give me a five-pound note to run away from Ronayne with in case I found, during our wedding journey, that I'd made a mistake and Art was my only true husband after all. Ronayne added five pounds more so that I could run away first-class, and have something with which to bribe accomplices! And that ten pounds is in my jewel-case now, and I think I shall keep it for my daughter, and give it her on her wedding-day as a reserve fund, in case she needs it as her mother once pretended to fear she herself might do.
However, for once I was discreet, and answered Mrs. Malise that I should like to come, but must see my husband before promising ourselves. Then I asked to see my small friend; but his mother, consulting her watch, begged me to excuse his non-appearance to-day, for this was just the moment when his nurse would be laying him down for his nap; and though often he would not sleep at all, yet system was everything, and he had to lie in his little bed two hours, though his eyes were broad open all the while.
"But will he lie there so long without crying?"
"Oh, two or three times he nearly cried himself into spasms because he was not taken up; but once he found he could not conquer Johanna he gave up trying, and now lies peaceably enough. He had to learn early that there are things more important in the world than his little self. Nothing do I object to more than a household revolving around children as a centre. Marriageoughtto double powers—make people unselfish; while, as a rule, it only enlarges the sphere of egotistic concentration and absorption. If I gave up my time and thoughts to Mill (we've named him for this generation's great English apostle of liberty), as ordinary mothers do, it would seem to me a wickedness. But I scarcely find him the least hindrance. I have begun to speak a little in our suffrage meetings this winter, and have been away a good deal from home for that purpose—once for three weeks at Liverpool and in the north of Ireland."
"But you do not mean without your baby?"
"Oh, certainly. He is only a little animal as yet, requiring animal cares which I can provide without making the sacrifice of ability for higher work. Johanna attends to him far better than I could, and is not above such uses. I believe in economizing forces. By and by, when his intellect begins to develop, he will be far more interesting to me, and I shall be of use to him."
"You weaned him, then, very early?"
"Oh, dear, yes. Since he was three months old, he's been brought up as Pip was. But perhaps 'Great Expectations' was not among your books read."
"No; but I suppose you mean your baby's brought up by hand? But I can't think how you could bear to put him away from you if it wasn't actually needful. Why, my heart's broken only to think that in a month or so more my baby will not depend upon me, humanly, for all her little life."
"Ah, plainly you have a vocation to be a mother. I haven't; and if I had to care for Mill in all things, it would be simple slavery to me. But it must be a great step from art to the nursery too."
"That means a stepdown. I suppose I should have thought so once, but never since I held my baby in my arms, and she's a far more wonderful creation to me than any old master's cherub I ever copied. And not my baby alone, but all babies. I never pass one in the street now, ever so ugly or dirty, without a warm feeling for it, and no charity opens my purse so quickly as acrêche, or a foundling, or orphan asylum. I could have been very happy as an artist always. Art is full of the noblest strength and compensations, and I own that the ordinary life of the English Philistine is irksome to me to the last degree; but what should I do now without a husband and child? And what would I not give up or bear for them? You see I'm only a very humdrum woman, Mrs. Malise."
"Whatever I see, I don't despair of winning you over to our side. I think it only needs that this great movement for woman's freedom and enlightenment, all that underlies it, all it implies, be fairly brought before you, to receive your assent and coöperation. And, to be unwisely frank, perhaps, it is such women as you we ought to gain, must gain—women of sentiment, tenderness, tact, suave manner—sympathetic women, to bring a gracious element into the contest. The workers already in the field have fought so long, against such odds and obloquy, that it is no wonder all the softness, conciliation are gone out of them, and that their aspect and address suggest only warfare, aggressive and unsparing."
And so on during the call. I wish I could photograph for you Mrs. Malise's drawing-room. You will not suppose it cumbered with the ordinary pretty feminine litter; but I can tell you Aunt Janet's sewing-room couldn't begin to rival it in grim dead-in-earnestness: straight up and down chairs that mean work; a writing-table big enough for a board-room, and fitted with suitably mighty writing implements; a slippery green leather couch upon which no laziness could be so desperate as to court repose; books lining one wall, and papers, stacks of papers everywhere—manuscripts and newspapers; no ornaments, unless a clock, a Cleopatra's needle in black marble, a skull, a wild-eyed, shock-headed oil portrait of a man I guessed to be the father of my hostess, and photographs of Mill, Mazzini, and Swinbourne be considered decorative.
Once at home again, I flew up stairs to Ronayne's dressing-room to run over his engagement tablet. One of the days named by Mrs. Malise was clear, so I said quietly at dinner, "Oh, Ronayne, don't make any engagement for Friday, for we are to dine at the Coming Events New Era Peep o'Day Associate Club."
"Plaît-il, madame?"
So I told him all about it. He groaned, made two or three pathetic observations about grocer's wine, raw meat, greasy, pepperedentrées, and the cantankerous woman who would fall to his share at dinner, but resigned himself like a lamb—or a well-trained husband, which is much the same thing.
And once I had fairly sent off our acceptance to Mrs. Malise, I didn't spare him one bit. I told him that for once in his life he was to part company with his fossil world, and find himself in the vanguard of civilization, breathing another atmosphere in the high fellowship of the evangels of religious and social liberty. I besought him not to mortify me by any expression of his limited ideas and convictions upon the topics we should probably hear discussed, and above all not to betray horror at any enunciation that seemed to his feeble apprehension to strike at the root of all possible or endurable tarrying on this planet. "Don't let it be known," I entreated, "what a clog you are upon my soarings after the illimitable. Iama victim, but the anguish and humiliation of my lot are too recent and painful for publicity—as yet!
"Let them think you idiotic, dear—that goes without saying because you're a man—but not that you're a tyrant to whom a poor-spirited wife must succumb.
"And you'll see Americans, dear, who've come over to find out why these effete regions and peoples still linger on the earth, and to them you'll only be a 'blarsted Britisher,' and you're not to resent it if they treat you accordin'. And there'll be Internationalists, to whom you're a 'bloated aristocrat,' and they won't have, to say nice manners. Then if you don't take Mrs. Malise down, you'll may be squire some grand new light. I can't tell you how to behave, for I don't know if the men of the future are to be deferential, or free and easy; but you must take a hint from the behavior of the other men. She'll wear a garnet-silk gown trimmed with white Yak lace, a pea-green ostrich feather, and ribbons in her hair, and a profusion of jingling Berlin steel ornaments, and she'll either trample you under foot and heap you over with wisdom, or she'll find you're her affinity. And if that happens, never mind me, love. If youwishto go after affinities, go!Ishall always be the same—the meek, forgiving woman who knows that a wife's duty is to smile always—to upbraid never. Leave me and your poor angel child if you will! We both believed in indissoluble marriage once, but that needn't hinder you. Renounce——"
And about here, I think it was, my eloquence and pathos were suddenly checked in their flow. Men, husbands especially, take such mean advantages! And reasoning, and calm, intellectual conversation have, somehow, so little charm for them! I tell you painful truths, my Susie, but they're for your good and guidance. I know that long-legged, yellow-haired laddie out in New Zealand is a demi-god. Of course he is—they all are—but it's best not to marry 'em—if one can help it!
But the dinner. I was dreadfully puzzled what to wear—whether to get myself up as a severe matron, or appear in the costume suited to me—a frivolous woman,jeune encore, and with a mind not above millinery—when a little note from Mrs. Malise, felicitating herself and me that the day of our dinner was also their reception evening, turned the scale against the brown silk in favor of a quite celestial palest green-blue Irish poplin I got in Dublin this last visit. The tint suits my pale dark face admirably, and with rather a profusion of white lace, and pink coral ornaments that Ronayne's brother Gus, the major, just home from India, gave me at Christmas—exquisite swinging fuchsias, with golden stamens and leaves—the toilette was so effective that I was quite ready to hear Ronayne's, "Oh, what a gorgeous swell!" when I exhibited myself just before starting. And, "Ould Ireland for ever!" as his eye fell on the gown he helped me to choose. "And are these the laces my father gave you?" taking hold of one of my frills. "Do they look like antimacassars? Because if they don't, they never were fabricated in your tight little island, my Paddy. I'd do a deal for you. You couldn't help being born there, poor boy;mais toute chose a son terme, and even my devotion won't stretch to the wearing Irish lace."
Our host and hostess received us in the confederate drawing-room, where were three or four other guests already, and the greater number of the associate household and the lacking members presented themselves before dinner was announced. Fourteen or fifteen people in all, and not, to the casual glance, differing strikingly from unassociate dwellers in "isolate homes and dreary lodgings."
There were, first, a brusque-mannered but uncommonly handsome Lady —— ——. If there's a lord, or plain mister —— ——, I don't know, but certainly he's noten evidence. Lady —— —— is an authoress on the woman question and on marriage, and is generally given to the most forward of "advanced" opinions and ideas. Ronayne insultingly says they won't harm me, for I should never get a notion of what they really are—a speech which I treated with the oblivious contempt it deserved, though inwardly tickled at the lucky shot; for it's quite true that, attracted by her great beauty—the most singular combination you can fancy—boldly cut features, softened by babyish roundness of curves, and enchanting dimples, not a wrinkle or crow-foot to be traced, an infantine complexion, all transparent and softly pink, and this grownup baby's face surmounted by a mass of crisp-waved, snowy, but glitteringly snowy hair!—I hovered around her for awhile during the evening, and could make nothing whatsoever of the oracular sentences she let fall. With her her son, a man of twenty-six to thirty, priggish, argumentative, contrary-minded—altogether the most cub-like young Briton I have lately encountered. Next, a widow with two daughters—the mother what, of all things, but a Plymouth sister!—given to hospital and prison work, tract distribution, and mothers' meetings—a tall, spare, gentle-faced woman, dressed with almost Quakerish simplicity. And run over and away with by her daughters, no question—two monstrous girls of thirty, if a day; real grenadiers, nearly six feet high; one painfully thin and large-eyed, the other as stout as tall, and both overpowering in spirits and flippant or cynic smartness of talk. One, the thin one, whom I liked best, amused me during the evening by telling me how she got rid of bores—young, feeble little society men, brief of stature and of wit. "I endure the little creature as long as I can, and when he has buzzed all his little buzzes about the weather, and subjects suited to his size, there comes a pause—a long pause, for I don't help him. Then, if he is too young to know that he should take himself off, and he begins desperately upon some other threadbare topic, then I act. I am seated on a low lounge or ottoman; I begin to rise as if I caught sight of some one I knew at a distance; and I rise, rise, slowly, slowly, but up, up, up I go, till sometimes I stand on tiptoe, or on a hassock, my long skirts hiding all that, and the little man, who has watched me first idly, then curiously, gradually gets horror-struck, and finally bursts desperately away, absolutely tongue-tied with fright."
"And no wonder!" I couldn't help saying, for she had mounted and mounted as she described the scene, until there really was something supernatural and alarming in the slim, white-draped length of lady, and the height from which the big blue eyes in their hollow orbits shone down upon me.
Then an editor and his wife—the editor of "The Food Regenerator," if you please—and a dark, unwholesome looking, wizened little man, who I am sure would have been the better for a good rubbing with sand-paper and emery powder. His wife was a plaintive, helpless, hapless, washed-out woman, who, sidling apologetically about in a frowsy costume of some yellow-white woollen stuff, made me think of a dirty white cat—a likeness I was sorry to have forced on me when I had heard a bit of her history; for the only wonder is how she's kept courage enough to go on dressing or living at all. It seems thatM. le mariis by way of being a social as well as dietetic regenerator, and is as full of uncomfortable fads as man can be. They have no fortune, unless you reckon as such seven small children, and over and over again he's thrown up a good appointment or salary because he "must be free to write his convictions—great truths the world needs." And to lighten matters still further, he believes that service should be bartered, not paid for in coin; so they could almost never have a servant, and when they did get one it was of course some poor wretch who was glad to shelter herself on any terms for the moment, but who could be trusted no more than puss in the dairy. Besides carrying her own fardel, this poor wife was expected to fold and direct wrappers for her husband's precious journal, he finding "mechanical writing too exhausting and stultifying."
Next—let me see—two gentlemen, bachelors, one a pugnacious fellow-countryman to whose tremendous r-r's my heart warmed in this lisping land of Cockaigne—a proof-reader at one of the great publishing houses; the other as curious a specimen as I've encountered—a man of sixty or so, of courtly manners, an ex-Anglican parson, an ex-Catholic convert, a present "seeker after truth"—a man who knows something about everything and believes the last thing—but sure of nothing save that this world's a comfortable place, and loving nothing, one would swear, but his pug dog, a superb creature, fairly uncanny for wisdom, but a vilely ill-tempered beast, gurr-ing if one but looked at it.
And three ladies make up, I believe, the tale of the household: a rather young widow, charming in an unearthly, seeress-like fashion—finest porcelain to her finger-tips, but frail as a breath; a handsome, solid blonde girl, with cold blue eyes, and no gold in her fair hair, studying to be what she calls "a healer"—an earnest advocate of the food-regenerating editor's views upon diet, but quite out-Heroding Herod in her practice, for her fare seems only to lag a pace behind Nebuchadnezzar's in simplicity; and last a wittyAmericaine, an art student at the South Kensington school, with whom I fraternized directly, and from whom I had all the information my own eyes didn't glean. A girl twenty-four or five years old, I fancy, and oh, so satisfyingly handsome—not tall, but majestic in proportions and pose: a beautifully shaped head whose outlines were only revealed by closely-pinned braids of fine dark hair, and a face like a lily for calm and purity—too pale, indeed, for brilliant health, but the faint shadows under the eyes, about the temples and mouth that she owes to months in dimly-lighted rooms are really most effective aids to her peculiar beauty. She captivated me quite; Ronayne, too, who is a great conquest, for usually he dislikes Americans, finding them, he says, so shallow and yet so cockahoop. And the other guests at dinner were a lady lecturer, American, too, young, decidedly pretty, but pert as a pigeon, an Englishwoman who's doing something very notable in reformatories and kindergartens, a Liberal M.P. dancing attendance on the young lady lecturer, and a grand old white-headed lion of a man, a famous literary M.D.—heterodox to a frightful degree, I'm told, but certainly one of the most delightful neighbors I ever had at a dinner table.
And a very enjoyable dinner-party it was, altogether: a simple but carefully arranged menu, the dishes thoroughly well cooked—two or three foreign touches,maccaroni aux tomates, American-trimmed peaches with cream, and little fairy cakes—cat tongues—do you know them?—and roasted almonds in Spanish fashion, and as good claret Sauterne and sparkling Mosel (for I know a good glass of wine when I get it) as one need wish for.
The food-regenerator and his wife and the blonde "healer" had seats together, and were helped only to vegetables and fruits—the girl, indeed, taking only unbolted bread, of which an enormous supply in the shape of hard little cakes was placed before her, together with a large vegetable-dish full of stewed prunes; and the two mountains of bread and fruit had disappeared when the meal was ended—how many pounds I don't know, but then dinner is her sole meal in the twenty-four hours.
"Did you see that young woman's dinner?" burst out my liege that night when we were discussing our late experiences. "Disgusting! It ought to have been served in a trough! I looked every instant to see her fall from her chair and have to be carried out. If one is to gorge oneself like an anaconda once a day upon fruit and chopped straw in order to live to a good old age, I think we'll elect to be cut off in our youthful bloom."
But the talk at table was clever and gay, and thoroughly un-English in that it was general instead of being broken up into a dozen depressingsotto-vocedialogues. The "healer," indeed, was too busy eating to open her mouth much uselessly, and the white cat was too timid for speech. But her editor made amends. He talked for three; not ill, but with a flavor of bitterness, and not enough in the third person.
"Oh, women are the stronghold of superstition," he exclaimed apropos of some passage between himself and the American art-student—"fettered hard and fast by hoary prejudices," he went on with rather a confusion of metaphors, "else the world might move."
"But we bind you, upon a man's testimony, but by a single hair," answered his opponent: "why not burst so slight a shackle?"
"And you to talk of freedom!" he went on as if unhearing. "Why do you wear that emblem at your throat?" (A plain gold cross which came into bold relief against her black velvet bodice.)
"Possibly because I'm a Christian." She answered without change of voice, but stopping the conversation by addressing some one nearer her. But the little porcelain widow, with a pretty upward movement, like the flutter of a bird on her nest, caught at a floating thread, and said in her tiny flute voice.
"But, Mr. Ridley, if he is interested in symbolism, will remember that the cross is a very ancient symbol, typifying the active and passive forces in nature—good and evil, light and darkness. And is it not very curious how everywhere the sign is impressed on external nature—in the heavens, in crystals, in flowers, in a bird's flight? In the arts too."
"And the legends, fables, and touching or droll superstitions concerning it are endless," said the white-headed doctor beside me. "And yet I'm often struck with the comparative newness of what may be termed literature of the cross. This dwelling on apparition in so many forms of the Story of the Cross is quite modern, and I fancy that a Good Friday service, a following through the Three Hours' Agony with a colloquial soliloquy, if one may use such an expression, upon the Seven Last Words, would have seemed as novel to the early Christians as it does now to the Low Church portion of our beautifully consistent Establishment."
"Though the symbol was always probably in private use among the early Christians," struck in the truth-seeker, "I believe its first public appearance would not date further back than its triumphant one upon the Roman eagles. In the Catacombs, I'm told, the Virgin and Child appear in the oldest work, or symbolism—the Cross never save as executed by late hands."
"May there not be subjective reasons for that?" asked my porcelain widow. "I mean for the modern adoration of the Cross? Do you not think we are much softer hearted, much more keenly susceptible of all the finer emotions than were those old Greek, Roman, and Jewish converts? One feels the same thing, it seems to me, in mystic reading. The old visions were triumphant, simple, or, so to say, material—the very A B C of mysticism; while the visions of later mystics are complicated, involved, like the soul-life of this time, often agonizing beyond natural power of endurance. And the stigmatized saints are of these later times."
"And then," said the art-student, "I think they didn't realize in those early days how long time was going to be, and how tough and many-headed, evil. The faith was but young then. Perhaps they couldn't have borne to know the length and fluctuations of the fight—and they felt so sure of speedy victory, that our Lord's resurrection and ascension appealed to them more keenly than His passion."
"All reasonable theories," replied my neighbor. "But, apropos of some of the legends concerning the Tragedy of the Cross, the weeping willow, the trembling aspen, the robin redbreast, the red crossbill, the passion flower, and so many more, I hardly know a more naïve example of the way in which our forefathers pressed the exterior world into testimony for their belief than occurs in an old picture in an Augustinian monastery in Sussex.
"It is a fresco on the wall of a chamber—subject, the Nativity—and the animals therein are made to publish the event in words supposed to resemble their characteristic sounds and cries. A cock, crowing, is perched at the top, and a label from out his mouth has the words, 'Christus natus est!' 'Quando, quando?' quacks the duck. Hoarsely the raven, 'In hæ nocte.' 'Ubi? ubi?' inquires the cow. And, 'Bethlehem,' bleats out the lamb."
"Oh, Mrs. Stainton, I beg your pardon," suddenly called out the ex-Anglican parson from the foot of the table, and despatching a servant with a plate to the little widow. "I quite forgot your predilection."
"But somebody else may like theinner consciousnesstoo," returned she, transferring to her own plate the fowl's gizzard sent. "You make me feel like a terrible old French aunt of mine—agourmandewho spent two or three hours every day in consultation with her cook, a man, concerning her for the most part solitary dinner, and who was at the last found dead with her cook-book lying open on her knee! My oldest brother, when a little fellow, dined with her one day. In his helping of fowl was included the inner consciousness. Childlike, he put this tid-bit carefully aside as a delicious last morsel. But the old lady eyed his plate with great discontent, growing every moment more grim. Finally she could bear it no longer, and, poising her fork, she dexterously harpooned thebonne-bouche, and triumphantly transferred it to her own plate, remarking to the dreadfully disappointed child, 'I see, my nephew, that you don't love this little portion. NowIdo, so it is best I should have it.' We none of us could tolerate this aunt, but my brother's feeling toward her ever after was really venomous in its spitefulness."
"That reminds me," said the Scotchman, "that I saw a photograph of Dixblanc to-day, and was astonished to find her not at all an evil-looking person. I quite believe now that she murdered her mistress in a fit of passion, as she says, and not at all for robbery. And there must have been awful provocation. Fancy living with a disreputable, avaricious, nagging old Frenchwoman!"
"But how worse than with an old Englishwoman of like characteristics?" asked somebody.
"Oh, because theFrançaiseis morefine, exasperating, and utterly unrestrained by terrors of Mrs. Grundy and thedecent," replied the ex-Anglican, ex-things-in-general truth-seeker.
You will easily imagine that the talk, as it ran from one thing to another, was now and then upon topics of which I haven't the faintest gleam of knowledge—the doctrines of Swedenborg, the philosophizings of Spinoza and Vaurenargues. (Ronayne as usual spells the hard names for me, but you, as a wise and much-reading damsel, will know who was meant and all about it.)
After the ladies had returned to the drawing-room (for even in this New Light house the stupid fashion remains of gentlemen lingering alone, or together, or however you like it—you know what I mean—over their wine) I made a little tour of inspection of the public parts of the establishment with Mrs. Malise. They've a common library and reading-room, and most of the associates have their individual sitting-rooms. Dinner is a fixed meal, and all the members meet thereat, but breakfast and lunch may be taken at any time within certain hours, to suit the convenience of each member. "We are too small in number to make it possible to order our mealsà la carte, or to economize in general living expenses as it might suit us individually to do. We can only reduce household costs in the mass, and then share these pretty equally. But this is only a beginning. By and by we shall have splendid confederate homes, under whose roofs the simplest and the costliest fashions of living may go on side by side. But to prove so much as we have done is a gain, and in separate homes the same amount of comfort we have here would cost us at least double, and would be, for some of us who have neither time nor talent for domesticity, quite unattainable at any price. What, under my administration, a little home would be upon our income of £500 a year, I shouldn't like to experience. And Mrs. Stainton! (The little widow.) Why, she comes of one of the oldest of the county families in Somerset; was reared like an exotic, lived chiefly upon cream and forced fruit, though now and then she trifled with something solid—an almond soup, a clear jelly, a bit of game, or an intricateentrée! Never dreamed of going beyond their pleasure gardens on her own feet, and knew how to do no earthly thing save to read, write, talk. She read 'Alton Locke,' and by way of comment married a national schoolmaster, the son of a brickmaker on her father's estate! There was a grand hubbub, and before she'd had time to be too much disgusted with her martyr rôle—martyrdom to break down the barriers of caste—her husband left her a penniless widow, and since then her father allows her a small income, but sentences her to banishment from that decorous household whose proprieties she outraged. She can endure nothing, knows nothing of any practical matters. What would she do with £150 a year, in a dingy parlor 'let,' with a flock bed, a burnt chop, a long-brewed cup of tea, and a frowsy-haired, smutty-faced 'slavey' to open the door and attend grudgingly and slatternly upon her?
"But we are not all chiefly moved by economic considerations. Some of our members have very considerable incomes, and might live where and how they pleased, but they seem not less satisfied with our experiment than are the poorer associates. There is such relief from care, and we may see as much or as little society as we choose without offence or burden."
Something interrupted Mrs. Malise's argument here, and I asked to see baby.
"Mill? Oh, certainly, if you like; but we shall find him asleep."
And asleep he was in one of those dreary back rooms that are sure to be sunless—a room that is both day and night nursery, I suppose, for there was a hot fire, a close smell, and the German nurse sat making lace under a gas jet flaming away unshaded.
He was very pale, poor little man! and has grown very fat—a soft, sagging flesh! I remarked upon his pallor to his mother, and she answered that he had measles about the time he was weaned, and that he had never had much color since. But he seemed well, and was he not a great stout fellow?
What treatment had he in measles? I asked. Oh, none! They didn't believe in doctors over much, and thought nature managed best unhindered. Mill was scrubbed with carbolic soap, and that was all the special treatment he had.
Returning to the drawing-rooms, we found them rapidly filling with the evening guests, and a busy hum of conversation going on. A slender, graceful, feeble-looking young man entered just before us. "That is Dodge, the famous medium," whispered my companion; but the words were hardly uttered before the young man gave a sharp cry, flung his arms wildly out, then sank as if prostrated on a near-by lounge. "Oh, what is it? what is it, Mr. Dodge?" cried several persons, rushing to him.
"She! she!" was the answer, with difficulty, and then he languidly pointed to a group of eager talkers under the chandelier. At the moment Lady ——, one of the group, her white hair startlingly gleaming under the full blaze of light, turned, with some sense of the commotion, and as she did so called out, "Why, Dodge! Is it my old friend Dodge?" and came toward him. The young man rallied, rose, and gave her his hand. "It was so sudden," he explained. "Four years ago Lady ——'s hair had not a white thread in it; and when I first caught sight of her, crowned by that mass of snow, I quite believed it was her spirit I saw."
"A great deal may happen in four years," answered Lady ——. "But how are you in these days, Mr. Dodge?"
"Oh, wretchedly ill, as usual," he replied. "The Duc de —— insisted upon it that I must come over to England and try cold water again, and the Emperor, when I left, engaged me to meet him next season at Ems on condition that I had a more respectable body for my spirit to travel about in. Here's a little souvenir he gave me at parting," showing a magnificent diamond on his finger; and I moved on and lost the gorgeous reminiscences. There was a crowd before the evening was over, and I was introduced to a score or so of notables in the unorthodox world. But I seemed destined to funny little dramatic surprises. I had drawn near the piano to listen to Miss Hedges's "Drink to Me Only," etc., and was sitting quietly when the song was ended, speaking to no one, not consciously looking at any one, when a voice near me said, "That is my wife!" and I woke up to find a roly-poly, little old fellow, all smiles, insinuation, and plausibility, with a fringe of venerable white hair around a head round as an apple, bald and shining, smooth, evidently addressing himself to me. "Yes, that is my wife," he went on, and I looked with some bewilderment at a young woman his gaze indicated—a very young woman in a brilliant pink evening dress, the young woman brilliantly colored herself in solid white and red, with black eyes, black hair in rebellious tight curls, and a face with about as much expression as a plate. "Looks rather young for me, don't she? But it's all right, for the spirits give her to me!"
"And pray, Mr. Wardle, what did the spirits do for the old wife you left in Terre Haute?" inquired Miss Hedges, wheeling about toward us. "I am Anna Hedges, and two years ago I painted a portrait of your grandchild, Benny Davis, for Mrs. Wardle in New York."
"Er—er—I was not aware—er—I remember, that is—er—I think I have seen—er, er—yes! yes! A very worthy woman, the first Mrs. Wardle—very worthy. But narrer, narrer! too undeveloped, in fact, to—er—receive the new gospel, or to—er—make any use of the freedom I gave her to find a more harmonious partner, as I have done," and the old creature having floundered into a little more self-possession, smiled amiably, and retreated in tolerable order.
"Idobeg your pardon," went on Miss Hedges to me impulsively; "but that sleek old villain! I really couldn't help my outburst. His real wife is one of the nicest, gentlest of simple old women, and dying of shame, I heard the other day, for what has befallen herself and her children through the delusions and misconduct of an infatuated man who has grandchildren older than this 'harmonious partner' he introduces as his wife here abroad. The 'first Mrs. Wardle!' It made me think of one of our Jerseymen who begged that a certain hymn might be sung at his wife's funeral 'because the corpse was particular fond of that hymn!'"
When I could speak for laughter, I inquired, "But is this then a spiritualistic headquarters? Because Mrs. Malise pointed out Dodge, the medium, to me early in the evening?"
"No, not more than of all other insanities, crudities, and unconventionalities—conventionalities too; for with perhaps one exception, all the members of the household, whatever their opinions, are to the last degree rigid as to the proprieties. But at one time or another one meets here all shades of belief and non-belief—much of the orthodox and I should say all the heterodox London. Very curious I find it, and though sometimes outraged, as to-night, I'm oftener amused with my 'proper study of mankind.' But you, as an Englishwoman, would hardly conceive how droll to me was my first experience of one of these receptions. You know, of course, at once, as everybody does, that I'm a Yankee? I came in rather late one evening with an English artist friend, and found, enthroned in the other room, the centre of a throng of bowing gentlemen, a woman as black as the chimney back, her neck and arms bare, white gloves, a gilt comb and white ostrich feather in her woolly hair—a genuine darkey! and Mme. V.—the artist, Mme. V.—hurried up to me. 'Oh, do you know your accomplished countrywoman, Miss Symonds? No? Then pray let me introduce you to her, we find her so charming!' And I dare say she was charming, only it was very queer at first to encounter Chloeen reme!"
Then we had a long talk, getting speedily away from persons and things to the old familiar subject—art. How the girl is working! And how happy and absorbed in her work she is.
"Oh, Ronayne," I said, as we settled back in the carriage for our drive home, "do I smell of turpentine and paint rags? I had such a good time! Miss Hedges and I talked shop for a whole hour."
And then, and later, we compared notes. He was critical, but had been amused, and, trust me, I had the wit to hold my tongue about "the first Mrs. Wardle!"
For over and above my interest in that poor baby, several things draw me toward this associate household, and I should not like to pursue an acquaintance there if Ronayne manifested any decided contempt or hostility. He bursts out about the food-reforming trio, and the young lady-lecturer's manners are not to his fancy—too free and easy. She boasts of her superiority to hampered Englishwomen.Shelives here by herself in lodgings, and has gentlemen visiting and dining with her alone, or goes alone, in full dress, to dine, at 7 or 8 o'clock, with a gentleman friend stopping at the Langham Hotel. These are American fashions—innocent permitted freedoms of our republican sisters, she says. She is a pretty little boaster, with ready wit and a sharp tongue; but there are Americans and Americans, and I hardly think it would occur to an English gentleman to stand flicking a heavy curtain-tassel playfully into Miss Hedges's face while chatting with her at a public reception, even if he were anéprisLiberal, M.P.—as Ronayne says Mr. Vane did in the little orator's the other night.
But there! there! With love from each to all, not another word this time of my little New Light baby or his expansive household, from
Your own Lil.
(To be continued.)