36. THE HOUSE IN TOWN
Returning by way of Knollsea, where she remained a week or two,Ethelberta appeared one evening at the end of September before her housein Exonbury Crescent, accompanied by a pair of cabs with the children andluggage; but Picotee was left at Knollsea, for reasons which Ethelbertaexplained when the family assembled in conclave. Her father was there,and began telling her of a surprising change in Menlove--an unasked-forconcession to their cause, and a vow of secrecy which he could notaccount for, unless any friend of Ethelberta's had bribed her.
'O no--that cannot be,' said she. Any influence of Lord Mountclere tothat effect was the last thing that could enter her thoughts. 'However,what Menlove does makes little difference to me now.' And she proceededto state that she had almost come to a decision which would entirelyalter their way of living.
'I hope it will not be of the sort your last decision was,' said hermother.
'No; quite the reverse. I shall not live here in state any longer. Wewill let the house throughout as lodgings, while it is ours; and you andthe girls must manage it. I will retire from the scene altogether, andstay for the winter at Knollsea with Picotee. I want to consider myplans for next year, and I would rather be away from town. Picotee isleft there, and I return in two days with the books and papers Irequire.'
'What are your plans to be?'
'I am going to be a schoolmistress--I think I am.'
'A schoolmistress?'
'Yes. And Picotee returns to the same occupation, which she ought neverto have forsaken. We are going to study arithmetic and geography untilChristmas; then I shall send her adrift to finish her term aspupil-teacher, while I go into a training-school. By the time I have togive up this house I shall just have got a little country school.'
'But,' said her mother, aghast, 'why not write more poems and sell 'em?'
'Why not be a governess as you were?' said her father.
'Why not go on with your tales at Mayfair Hall?' said Gwendoline.
'I'll answer as well as I can. I have decided to give up romancingbecause I cannot think of any more that pleases me. I have been tryingat Knollsea for a fortnight, and it is no use. I will never be agoverness again: I would rather be a servant. If I am a schoolmistress Ishall be entirely free from all contact with the great, which is what Idesire, for I hate them, and am getting almost as revolutionary as Sol.Father, I cannot endure this kind of existence any longer; I sleep atnight as if I had committed a murder: I start up and see processions ofpeople, audiences, battalions of lovers obtained under falsepretences--all denouncing me with the finger of ridicule. Mother'ssuggestion about my marrying I followed out as far as dogged resolutionwould carry me, but during my journey here I have broken down; for Idon't want to marry a second time among people who would regard me as anupstart or intruder. I am sick of ambition. My only longing now is tofly from society altogether, and go to any hovel on earth where I couldbe at peace.'
'What--has anybody been insulting you?' said Mrs. Chickerel.
'Yes; or rather I sometimes think he may have: that is, if a proposal ofmarriage is only removed from being a proposal of a very different kindby an accident.'
'A proposal of marriage can never be an insult,' her mother returned.
'I think otherwise,' said Ethelberta.
'So do I,' said her father.
'Unless the man was beneath you, and I don't suppose he was that,' addedMrs. Chickerel.
'You are quite right; he was not that. But we will not talk of thisbranch of the subject. By far the most serious concern with me is that Iought to do some good by marriage, or by heroic performance of some kind;while going back to give the rudiments of education to remote hamleteerswill do none of you any good whatever.'
'Never you mind us,' said her father; 'mind yourself.'
'I shall hardly be minding myself either, in your opinion, by doingthat,' said Ethelberta dryly. 'But it will be more tolerable than what Iam doing now. Georgina, and Myrtle, and Emmeline, and Joey will not getthe education I intended for them; but that must go, I suppose.'
'How full of vagaries you are,' said her mother. 'Why won't it do tocontinue as you are? No sooner have I learnt up your schemes, and gotenough used to 'em to see something in 'em, than you must needs bewilderme again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind gets no rest atall.'
Ethelberta too keenly felt the justice of this remark, querulous as itwas, to care to defend herself. It was hopeless to attempt to explain toher mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturallyfrom the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as frominherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to itssubject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could lookto tangible outcrops.
'Really, Ethelberta,' remonstrated her mother, 'this is very odd. Makingyourself miserable in trying to get a position on our account is onething, and not necessary; but I think it ridiculous to rush into theother extreme, and go wilfully down in the scale. You may just as wellexercise your wits in trying to swim as in trying to sink.'
'Yes; that's what I think,' said her father. 'But of course Berta knowsbest.'
'I think so too,' said Gwendoline.
'And so do I,' said Cornelia. 'If I had once moved about in largecircles like Ethelberta, I wouldn't go down and be a schoolmistress--notI.'
'I own it is foolish--suppose it is,' said Ethelberta wearily, and with areadiness of misgiving that showed how recent and hasty was the scheme.'Perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat. I wonderif you are right! Well, I will think again of it to-night. Do not letus speak more about it now.'
She did think of it that night, very long and painfully. The argumentsof her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequentlonging for escape from galling trammels. If she had stood alone, thesentiment that she had begun to build but was not able to finish, bywhomsoever it might have been entertained, would have had few terrors;but that the opinion should be held by her nearest of kin, to cause thempain for life, was a grievous thing. The more she thought of it, theless easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. Fromregarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave thatdesire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in trainevents, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with ViscountMountclere?
In one determination she never faltered; to commit her sin thoroughly ifshe committed it at all. Her relatives believed her choice to liebetween Neigh and Ladywell alone. But once having decided to pass overChristopher, whom she had loved, there could be no pausing for Ladywellbecause she liked him, or for Neigh in that she was influenced by him.They were both too near her level to be trusted to bear the shock ofreceiving her from her father's hands. But it was possible that thoughher genesis might tinge with vulgarity a commoner's household,susceptible of such depreciation, it might show as a picturesque contrastin the family circle of a peer. Hence it was just as well to go to theend of her logic, where reasons for tergiversation would be mostpronounced. This thought of the viscount, however, was a secret for herown breast alone.
Nearly the whole of that night she sat weighing--first, the questionitself of marrying Lord Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, forsafety, she might marry him without previously revealing familyparticulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed--a piece of conductshe had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, muchmore prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt theneed of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguouscourse before finally committing herself to it.
She took down a well-known treatise on Utilitarianism which she hadperused once before, and to which she had given her adherence ere anyinstance had arisen wherein she might wish to take it as a guide. Hereshe desultorily searched for argument, and found it; but the applicationof her author's philosophy to the marriage question was an operation ofher own, as unjustifiable as it was likely in
the circumstances.
'The ultimate end,' she read, 'with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality. . . . This being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality.'
It was an open question, so far, whether her own happiness should orshould not be preferred to that of others. But that her personalinterests were not to be considered as paramount appeared further on:--
'The happiness which forms the standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.'
As to whose happiness was meant by that of 'other people,' 'allconcerned,' and so on, her luminous moralist soon enlightened her:--
'The occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale--in other words, to be a public benefactor--are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.'
And that these few persons should be those endeared to her by everydomestic tie no argument was needed to prove. That their happiness wouldbe in proportion to her own well-doing, and power to remove their risksof indigence, required no proving either to her now.
By a sorry but unconscious misapplication of sound and wide reasoning didthe active mind of Ethelberta thus find itself a solace. At about themidnight hour she felt more fortified on the expediency of marriage withLord Mountclere than she had done at all since musing on it. In respectof the second query, whether or not, in that event, to conceal from LordMountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too latefor him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in theway of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint. 'Ah--itis a point for a casuist!' she said.
An old treatise on Casuistry lay on the top shelf. She opened it--morefrom curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed--at achapter bearing on her own problem, 'The disciplina arcani, or, thedoctrine of reserve.'
Here she read that there were plenty of apparent instances of this inScripture, and that it was formed into a recognized system in the earlyChurch. With reference to direct acts of deception, it was argued thatsince there were confessedly cases where killing is no murder, mightthere not be cases where lying is no sin? It could not be right--or,indeed, anything but most absurd--to say in effect that no doubtcircumstances would occur where every sound man would tell a lie, andwould be a brute or a fool if he did not, and to say at the same timethat it is quite indefensible in principle. Duty was the key to conductthen, and if in such cases duties appeared to clash they would be foundnot to do so on examination. The lesser duty would yield to the greater,and therefore ceased to be a duty.
This author she found to be not so tolerable; he distracted her. She puthim aside and gave over reading, having decided on this second point,that she would, at any hazard, represent the truth to Lord Mountclerebefore listening to another word from him. 'Well, at last I have done,'she said, 'and am ready for my role.'
In looking back upon her past as she retired to rest, Ethelberta couldalmost doubt herself to be the identical woman with her who had enteredon a romantic career a few short years ago. For that doubt she had goodreason. She had begun as a poet of the Satanic school in a sweetenedform; she was ending as a pseudo-utilitarian. Was there ever such atransmutation effected before by the action of a hard environment? Itwas not without a qualm of regret that she discerned how the lastinfirmity of a noble mind had at length nearly departed from her. Shewondered if her early notes had had the genuine ring in them, or whethera poet who could be thrust by realities to a distance beyond recognitionas such was a true poet at all. Yet Ethelberta's gradient had beenregular: emotional poetry, light verse, romance as an object, romance asa means, thoughts of marriage as an aid to her pursuits, a vow to marryfor the good of her family; in other words, from soft and playfulRomanticism to distorted Benthamism. Was the moral incline upward ordown?