The Three Brides
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“You are just in time, Jenny,” said Rosamond; “the great question is going to be started.”
“And it is—?”
“The Equality of the Sexes,” pronounced Mrs. Duncombe.
“Ex cathedrâ?” said Julius, as the graceful Muse seated herself in a large red arm-chair. “This scene is not an easy one in which to dispute it.”
“You see, Bessie,” said Mrs. Tallboys, “that men are so much afraid of the discussion that they try to elude it with empty compliment under which is couched a covert sneer.”
“Perhaps,” returned Julius, “we might complain that we can’t open our lips without compliments and sneers being detected when we were innocent of both.”
“Were you?” demanded Mrs. Tallboys.
“Honestly, I was looking round and thinking the specimens before us would tell in your favour.”
“What a gallant parson!” cried Miss Moy.
But a perfect clamour broke out from others.
“Julius, that’s too bad! when you know—”
“Mr Charnock, you are quite mistaken. Bob is much cleverer than I, in his own line—”
“Quite true, Rector,” affirmed Herbert; “Joan has more brains than all the rest of us—for a woman, I mean.”
“For a woman!” repeated Mrs. Tallboys. “Let a human being do or be what she will, it is disposed of in a moment by that one verdict, ‘Very well for a woman!’”
“How is it with the decision of posterity?” said Jenny. “Can you show any work of woman of equal honour and permanence with that of men?”
“Because her training has been sedulously inferior.”
“Not always,” said Jenny; “not in Italy in the cinque cento, nor in England under Elizabeth.”
“Yes, and there were names—!”
“Names, yes, but that is all. The lady’s name is remembered for the curiosity of her having equalled the ordinary poet or artist of her time, but her performances either are lost or only known to curious scholars. They have not the quality which makes things permanent.”
“What do you say to Sappho?”
“There is nothing of her but a name, and fragments that curious scholars read.”
“Worse luck to her if she invented Sapphics,” added Herbert.
“One of womankind’s torments for mankind, eh?” said his neighbour.
“And there are plenty more such,” asserted Mrs. Duncombe, boldly (for these were asides). “It is only that one can’t recollect—and the men have suppressed them.”
“I think men praised them,” said Jenny, “and that we remember the praise, not the works. For instance, Roswitha, or Olympia Morata, or Vittoria Colonna. Vittoria’s sonnets are extant, but we only value them as being hers, more for what she was than for their intrinsic merit.”
“And,” added Eleonora, “men did not suppress Hannah More, or Joanna Baillie. You know Scott thought Miss Baillie’s dramas would rank with Shakespeare’s.”
Mrs. Tallboys was better read in logic and mathematics than in history, and did not follow Jenny, but she turned her adversary’s argument to her own advantage, by exclaiming, “Are the gentlemen present familiar with these bright lights?”
“I confess my ignorance of some of them,” said Julius.
“But my youngest brother knows all that,” said Rosamond at a brave venture.
“Macaulay’s school-boy,” murmured Lady Tyrrell, softly.
“Let us return to the main point,” said Mrs. Tallboys, a little annoyed. “It is of the present and future that I would speak, not of the past.”
“Does not the past give the only data on which to form a conclusion?” said Julius.
“Certainly not. The proposition is not what a woman or two in her down-trodden state may have exceptionally effected, but her natural equality, and in fact superiority, in all but the physical strength which has imposed an unjust bondage on the higher nature.”
“I hardly know where to meet you if you reject all arguments from proved facts,” said Julius.
“And the Bible. Why don’t you say the Bible?” exclaimed his wife in an undertone; but Mrs. Tallboys took it up and said, “The precepts of Scripture are founded on a state of society passed away. You may find arguments for slavery there.”
“I doubt that,” said Julius. “There are practical directions for an existing state of things, which have been distorted into sanction for its continuance. The actual precepts are broad principles, which are for all times, and apply to the hired servant as well as to the slave. So again with the relations of man and wife; I can nowhere find a command so adapted to the seclusion and depression of the Eastern woman as to be inapplicable to the Christian matron. And the typical virtuous woman, the valiant woman, is one of the noblest figures anywhere depicted.”
“I know,” said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently been waiting impatiently again to declaim, “that men, even ministers of religion, from Paul if you like downwards, have been willing enough to exalt woman so long as they claim to sit above her. The higher the oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor. Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but only as their own appendage, adorning themselves; and while society with religious ministers at the head of it call on woman to submit, and degrade the sex, we shall continue to hear of such disgraces to England as I see in your police reports—brutal mechanics beating their wives.”
“I fear while physical force is on the side of the brute,” said Julius, “no abstract recognition of equality would save her.”
“Society would take up her cause, and protect her.”
“So it is willing to do now, if she asks for protection.”
“Yes,” broke in Rosamond, “but nothing would induce a woman worth sixpence to take the law against her husband.”
“There I think Lady Rosamond has at once demonstrated the higher nature of the woman,” said Mrs. Tallboys. “What man would be capable of such generosity?”
“No one denies,” said Julius, “that generous forbearance, patience, fortitude, and self-renunciation, belong almost naturally to the true wife and mother, and are her great glory; but would she not be stripped of them by self-assertion as the peer in power?”
“Turning our flank again with a compliment,” said Mrs. Duncombe. “These fine qualities are very convenient to yourselves, and so you praise them up.”
“Not so!” returned Julius, “because they are really the higher virtues!”
“Patience!” at once exclaimed the American and English emancipators with some scorn.
“Yes,” said Julius, in a low tone of thorough earnest. “The patience of strength and love is the culmination of virtue.”
Jenny knew what was in his mind, but Mrs. Tallboys, with a curious tone, half pique, half triumph, said, “You acknowledge this which you call the higher nature in woman—that is to say, all the passive qualities,—and you are willing to allow her a finer spiritual essence, and yet you do not agree to her equal rights. This is the injustice of the prejudice which has depressed her all these centuries.”
“Stay,” broke in Jenny, evidently not to the lady’s satisfaction. “That does not state the question. Nobody denies that woman is often of a higher and finer essence, as you say, than man, and has some noble qualities in a higher degree than any but the most perfect men; but that is not the question. It is whether she have more force and capacity than man, is in fact actually able to be on an equality.”
“And, I say,” returned Mrs. Tallboys, “that man has used brute force to cramp woman’s intellect and energy so long, that she has learnt to acquiesce in her position, and to abstain from exerting herself, so that it is only where she is partially emancipated, as in my own country, that any idea of her powers can be gained.”
“I am afraid,” said Julius, “that more may be lost to the world than is gained! No; I am not speaking from the tyrant point of view. I am thinking whether free friction with the world way not lessen that sweetness and tender innocence and purity that make a man’s home an ideal and a sanctuary—his best earthly influence.”
“This is only sentiment. Innocence is worthless if it cannot stand alone and protect itself!” said Mrs. Tallboys.
“I do not mean innocence unable to stand alone. It should be strong and trustworthy, but should have the bloom on it still, not rubbed off by contact or knowledge of evil. Desire of shielding that bloom from the slightest breath of contamination is no small motive for self-restraint, and therefore a great preservative to most men.”
“Women purify the atmosphere wherever they go,” said the lady.
“Many women do,” returned Julius; “but will they retain that power universally if they succeed in obtaining a position where there will be less consideration for them, and they must be exposed to a certain hardening and roughening process?”
“If so,” exclaimed Mrs. Tallboys, “if men are so base, we would soon assert ourselves. We are no frail morning glories for you to guard and worship with restraint, lest forsooth your natural breath should wither us away.”
As she spoke the door opened, and, with a strong reek of tobacco, in came the two other gentlemen. “Well, Rector, have you given in?” asked the Captain. “Is Lady Rosamond to mount the pulpit henceforth?”
“Ah! wouldn’t I preach you a sermon,” returned Rosamond.
“To resume,” said Mrs. Tallboys, sitting very upright. “You still go on the old assumption that woman was made for you. It is all the same story: one man says she is for his pleasure, another for his servant, and you, for—for his refinement. You would all have us adjectives. Now I defy you to prove that woman is not a substantive, created for herself.”
“If you said ‘growed,’ Mrs. Tallboys, it would be more consistent,” said Jenny. “Her creation and her purpose in the world stand upon precisely the same authority.”
“I wonder at you, Miss Bowater,” said Mrs. Tallboys. “I cannot understand a woman trying to depreciate her sex.”
“No,” thrust in Gussie Moy; “I want to know why a woman can’t go about without a dowager waddling after her” (“Thank you,” breathed Lady Tyrrell into Herbert’s ear), “nor go to a club.”
“There was such a club proposed in London,” said Captain Duncombe, “and do you know, Gussie, the name of it?”
“No!”
“The Middlesex Club!”
“There! it is just as Mrs. Tallboys said; you will do nothing but laugh at us, or else talk sentiment about our refining you. Now, I want to be free to amuse myself.”
“I don’t think those trifling considerations will be great impediments in your way,” said Lady Tyrrell in her blandest tone. “Is that actually the carriage? Thank you, Mrs. Tallboys. This is good-bye, I believe. I am sorry there has not been more time for a fuller exposition to-night.”
“There would have been, but I never was so interrupted,” said Mrs. Tallboys in an undertone, with a displeased look at Jenny at the other end of the room.
Declamation was evidently more the Muse’s forte than argument, but her aside was an aside, and that of the jockey friend was not. “So you waited for us to give your part of the lecture, Miss Moy?”
“Of course. What’s the use of talking to a set of women and parsons, who are just the same?”
Poor Herbert’s indignant flush infinitely amused the party who were cloaking in the hall. “Poor Gussie; her tongue runs fast,” said Mrs. Duncombe.
“Emancipated!” said Jenny. “Good-bye, Mrs. Duncombe. Please let us be educated up to our privileges before we get them.”
“A Parthian shot, Jenny,” said Julius, as they gave her a homeward lift in the carriage. “You proved yourself the fittest memberess for the future parliament to-night.”
“To be elected by the women and parsons,” said Jenny, with little chuckle of fun. “Poor Herbert!”
“I only wish that girl was a man that I might horsewhip her,” the clerical sentiment growled out from Herbert’s corner of the carriage. “Degradation of her sex! She’s a standing one!”
CHAPTER XX
Vivienne
Of all the old women that ever I saw,Sweet bad luck to my mother in law.—Irish SongThe Parliamentary Session had reached the stage that is ended by no power save that of grouse, and the streets were full of vans fantastically decorated with baths, chairs, bedsteads, and nursery gear.
Cecil could see two before different house-doors as she sat behind her muslin curtains, looking as fresh and healthful as ever, and scarcely more matronly, except that her air of self-assertion had become more easy and less aggressive now that she was undisputed mistress of the house in London.
There was no concern on her part that she was not the mother of either of the two latest scions of the house of Charnock. Certainly she did not like to be outdone by Rosamond; but then it was only a girl, and she could afford to wait for the son and heir; indeed, she did not yet desire him at the cost of all the distinguished and intellectual society, the concerts, soirées, and lectures that his non-arrival left her free to enjoy. The other son and heir interested her nearly, for he was her half-brother. There had been something almost ludicrous in the apologies to her. His mother seemed to feel like a traitor to her, and Mr. Charnock could hardly reconcile his darling’s deposition with his pride in the newcomer. Both she and Raymond had honestly rejoiced in their happiness and the continuance of the direct line of Dunstone, and had completed the rejoicing of the parents by thorough sympathy, when the party with this unlooked-for addition had returned home in the spring. Mrs. Charnock had insisted on endowing his daughter as largely as he justly could, to compensate for this change in her expectations, and was in doubt between Swanmore, an estate on the Backsworth side of Willansborough, and Sirenwood itself, to purchase and settle on her. Raymond would greatly have preferred Sirenwood, both from its adjoining the Compton property and as it would be buying out the Vivians; but there were doubts about the involvements, and nothing could be done till Eleonora’s majority. Mr. Charnock preferred Swanmore as an investment, and Raymond could, of course, not press his wishes.
A short visit had been made at Dunstone to join in the festivities in honour of the little heir, but Cecil had not been at Compton since Christmas, though Raymond had several times gone home for a Sunday when she had other companionship. Charlie had been with them preparing his outfit for India whither he had been gone about a month; and Frank, though living in lodgings, was the more frequently at his sister-in-law’s service, because wherever she was the Vivian sisters might be looked for.
No sooner had Raymond taken the house in – Square than Lady Tyrrell had engaged the opposite one, so that one household could enjoy evening views of the other’s interior, and Cecil had chiefly gone into society under her friend’s auspices. Her presentation at Court had indeed been by the marchioness; she had been staying with an old friend of Mrs. Poynsett’s, quite prepared to be intimate with Raymond Poynsett’s wife, if only Cecil would have taken to her. But that lady’s acceptance of any one recommended in this manner was not to be thought of, and besides, the family were lively, merry people, and Cecil was one of those who dislike and distrust laughter, lest it should be at themselves. So she remained on coldly civil terms with that pleasant party, and though to a certain degree following her husband’s lead as to her engagements, all her ways were moulded by her friend’s influence. Nor was the effect otherwise than becoming. Nothing could be in better taste than all in Mrs. Charnock Poynsett’s establishment, and London and Lady Tyrrell together had greatly improved her manners. All her entertainments went off well, and she filled her place in the world with grace and skill, just as she had always figured herself doing.
Yet there was a sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction, which increased upon her as the time drew nearer for returning to be again only a guest in her married home. It was a tangible grievance on which her mind could fix itself. Surely it was hard on her that her husband should require it of her, and yet she perceived that he could not avoid it, since his mother was mistress. She knew too that he was unfailingly kind, attentive, and indulgent, except on that one occasion when he had sharply reproved her for her behaviour in the Tallboys matter; and strange to say, a much stronger feeling towards him had been setting in ever since that one time when she had seen him thoroughly angry. She longed and craved to stir that even, gentle courtesy to frowns or smiles; and yet there was a perversity in her nature that seem to render it impossible to her to attempt to win a smile from him, far more so to lay aside any device or desire of her own to gratify him. All she did know was, that to be all that her ambition had sought, a Charnock by marriage as well as birth, and with a kind, considerate husband, was not enough to hinder a heartsickness she had never known or supposed possible.
Presently, through the flowers in her balcony, Cecil saw the opening and closing of the opposite house-door, and a white parasol unfurled, and she had only time to finish and address her letter to Mrs. Duncombe before Lady Tyrrell was announced.
“Here I am after a hard morning’s work, winding up accounts, &c.”
“You go to-morrow?”
“Yes, trusting that you will soon follow; though you might be a cockney born, your bloom is town-proof.”
“We follow as soon as the division on the Education Question is over, and that will not be for ten days. You are come to look at my stores for the bazaar; but first, what are you going to do this afternoon?”
“What are your plans?”
“I must leave cards at half-a-dozen people’s at the other end of the park. Will you come with me? Where is Lenore?”
“She is gone to take leave of the Strangeways’ party; Lady Susan insisted on having her for this last day. Poor Frank! I confess impartially that it does not look well for him.”
“Poor Frank!” repeated Cecil, “he does look very forlorn when he hears where she is.”
“When, after all, if the silly boy could only see it, it is the most fortunate thing that could happen to him, and the only chance of keeping his head above water. I have made Lady Susan promise me two of her daughters for the bazaar. They thoroughly know how to make themselves useful. Oh, how pretty!”
For Cecil was producing from the shelves of various pieces of furniture a large stock of fancy articles—Swiss carvings, Spa toys, Genevese ornaments, and Japanese curiosities, which, as Lady Tyrrell said, “rivalled her own accumulation, and would serve to carry off the housewives and pen-wipers on which all the old maids of Wil’sbro’ were employed.”
“We must put out our programmes,” Cecil added; “people will not work in earnest till the day is fixed and they know the sellers.”
“Yes, the lady patronesses are most important,” said Lady Tyrrell, writing them down: “Mrs. Raymond Charnock Poynsett; Lady Rosamond, eh?”
“Oh no, Julius won’t hear of it.”
“And opposition is sweet: so we lose her romantic name, and the stall of the three brides. Mrs. Miles Charnock is too much out of the world to be worth asking. Then myself—Mrs. Duncombe, Mrs. Fuller, as a matter of necessity, Mrs. Moy.”
“Oh!”
“Needful, my dear, to propitiate that set. Also that mayoress, Mrs. Truelove, isn’t she? Six. We’ll fill up with country people!”
Six more distinguished names were soon supplied of ladies who would give their patronage, provided neither toil nor care was required of them; and still consulting, the two friends took their seats in the carriage. The time of the bazaar was to be fixed by the opening of the town-hall, which was to take place on the 12th of September—a Thursday, the week before the races; and the most propitious days appeared to be the Tuesday and Wednesday before the Great Backsworth Cup Day, since the world would then be in an excited, pleasure-seeking state, favourable to their designs.
“I shall have a party in the house,” said Lady Tyrrell: “shall you be able?”
“I can’t tell; you know it does not depend on me, and I certainly shall not ask it as a favour. Camilla, did I tell you that I tried to make my father understand the state of things, and speak to Raymond? But he would only say, that while I am so young and inexperienced, it is a great advantage for me to live with Mrs. Poynsett, and that I must be the greatest comfort to her. Papa is an intense believer in Mrs. Poynsett, and when he once has taken up a notion nothing will convince him.”
“You can’t even make capital of this purchase of a house of your own?”
“I don’t like to do that.”
“My dear, I see your delicacy and forbearance, and I would not urge you, if I did not see how deeply your happiness is concerned. Of course I don’t mean merely the authority over the wirthschaft, though somehow the cares of it are an ingredient in female contentment; but forgive me, Cecil, I am certain that you will never take your right place—where you care for it more—till you have a home of your own.”
“Ah!” The responsive sound burst from the very depths of Cecil’s heart, penetrated as they had never been before; but pride and reserve at once sprang up, and she answered coldly, “I have no reason to complain.”
“Right, my dear Cecil, I like you the better;” and she pressed her hand.
“It is quite true,” said Cecil, withdrawing hers.
“Quite, absolutely true. He would die rather than give you any reason for the slightest murmur; but, Cecil, dearest, that very heedfulness shows there is something he cannot give you.”
“I don’t know why you should say so,” answered a proud but choked voice.
“I say so,” replied the clear tones, firmly, though with a touch of pity, “because I see it. Cecil, poor child, they married you very young!”
“I missed nothing,” exclaimed Cecil; but she felt that she could only say so in the past, and her eyes burnt with unshed tears.
“No, my dear, you were still a girl, and your deeper woman’s heart had not grown to perceive that it was not met.”
“He chose me,” she faintly said.
“His mother needed a daughter. It was proper for him to marry, and you were the most eligible party. I will answer for it that he warned you how little he could give.”
“He did,” cried Cecil. “He did tell me that he could not begin in freshness and warmth, like a young man; but I thought it only meant that we were too sensible to care about nonsense, and liked him for it. He always must have been staid and reserved—he could never have been different, Camilla. Don’t smile in that way! Tell me what you mean.”
“My dear Cecil, I knew Raymond Poynsett a good many years before you did.”
“And—well? Then he had a first love?” said Cecil, in a voice schooled into quiet. “Was he different then? Was he as desperate as poor Frank is now?”
“Frank is a very mild copy of him at that age. He overbore every one, wrung consent from all, and did everything but overcome his mother’s calm hostility and self-assertion.”
“Did that stop it? She died of course,” said Cecil. “She could not have left off loving him.”
“She did not die, but her family were wearied out by the continual objections to their overtures, and the supercilious way of treating them. They thought it a struggle of influence, and that he was too entirely dominated for a daughter-in-law to be happy with her. So they broke it off.”
“And she—” Cecil looked up with searching eyes.
“She had acutely felt the offence, the weakness, the dutifulness, whatever you may choose to call it, and in the rebound she married.”
“Who is she?” gasped Cecil.
“It is not fair to tell you,” was the gentle answer, with a shade of rebuke. “You need not look for her. She is not in the county.”
“I hope I shall never see her!”
“You need not dread doing so if you can only have fair play, and establish the power that belongs rightly to you. She would have no chance with you, even if he had forgiven her.”
“Has not he?”
“Never!”
“And he used up all his heart?” said Cecil in a low, musing tone.
“All but what his mother absorbed. She was a comparatively young and brilliant woman, and she knew her power. It is a great ascendancy, and only a man’s honest blindness could suppose that any woman would be content under it.”
Cecil’s tongue refused to utter what oppressed her heart—those evenings beside the sofa, those eager home expeditions for Sunday, the uniform maintenance of his mother’s supremacy.