The Three Brides

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  "Yes, you are right there."

  "But there are thousands of other little cases of right and wrong, and altogether I have come to such a spirit of opposition that I find it easier to resist than to do anything with a good grace."

  "You cannot always tell when resistance is principle, and when temper or distaste."

  "There's distaste enough always," said poor Lenore.

  "To gaieties?" he said, amazed as one habituated to his wife's ravenous appetite for any sort of society or amusement.

  "Of course," she answered sadly. "A great deal of trouble just for a little empty babble. Often not one word worth remembering, and a general sense of having been full of bad feelings."

  "No enjoyment?" he asked in surprise.

  "Only by the merest chance and exception," she answered, surprised at his surprise; "what is there to enjoy?"

  The peculiar-looking clergyman might have seemed more likely to ask such a question than the beautiful girl, but he looked at her anxiously and said, "Don't nourish morbid dislike and contempt, my dear Lena, it is not a safeguard. There are such things as perilous reactions. Try to weigh justly, and be grateful for kindness, and to like what is likeable."

  At that moment, after what had been an interval of weary famine to all but these two, host and hostess appeared, the lady as usual, picturesque, though in the old black silk, with a Roman sash tied transversely, and holly in her hair; and gaily shaking hands- "That's right, Lady Rosamond; so you are trusted here! Your husband hasn't sent you to represent him?"

  "I'm afraid his confidence in me did not go so far," said Rosamond.

  "Ah! I see-Lady Tyrrell, how d'ye do-you've brought Lena? Well, Rector, are you prepared?"

  "That depends on what you expect of me."

  "Have you the convinceable spot in your mind?"

  "We must find it. It is very uncommon, and indurates very soon, so we had better make the most of our opportunity," said the American lady, who had entered as resplendent as before, though in so different a style that Rosamond wondered how such a wardrobe could be carried about the world; and the sporting friend muttered, "Stunning! she has been making kickshaws all day, and looks as if she came out of a bandbox! If all women were like that, it might pay."

  It was true. Mrs. Tallboys was one of those women of resource whose practical powers may well inspire the sense of superiority, and with the ease and confidence of her country.

  The meal was a real success. That some portion had been procured, ready dressed, at Backsworth, was evident, but all that had been done at home had a certain piquant Transatlantic flavour, in which the American Muse could be detected; and both she and her husband were polished, lively, and very agreeable, in spite of the twang in their voices. Miss Moy, the Captain and his friend, talked horses at one end of the table, and Rosamond faltered her woman's horror for the rights of her sex, increased by this supposed instance.

  When the ladies rose at dessert, Mrs. Duncombe summoned him: "Come, Rector!-come, Professor! you're not to sit over your wine."

  "We rise so far above the ordinary level of manhood!" said Julius, obediently rising.

  "Once for all, Mr. Charnock," said Mrs. Duncombe, turning on him with flashing eyes and her Elizabethan majesty, "if you come prepared to scoff, we can have nothing to do with you."

  Rosamond's eyes looked mischievous, and her brow cocked, but Julius answered in earnest, "Really, I assure you I have not come in a spirit of sarcasm; I am honestly desirous of hearing your arguments."

  "Shall I stay in your stead?" added Miss Moy. "They'll be much more amusing here!"

  "Come, Gussie, you're on your good behaviour," said Mrs. Duncombe. "Bob kept you to learn the right way of making a sensation."

  As they entered the drawing-room two more guests arrived, namely, Joanna Bowater, and Herbert, who walked in with a kind of grim submission, till he saw Lady Tyrrell, when he lighted up, and, on a little gracious gesture with her hand, he sat down on the sofa beside her; and was there solaced by an occasional remark in an undertone; for indeed the boy was always in a trance wherever she was, and she had a fair amount of by-play wherewith to entertain herself and him during the discussion.

  "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 cathedra?" 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 Song

  The 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, soirees, 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.