The Woman who Wouldn't. A novel ... Second edition

Preface

. Some years ago, in a speech in the House of Commons, Mr. Labouchere exclaimed, " If any one contradicts me, I will con tradict him again." And I must confess that I was possessed with a little of this spirit when I began this work, and so I fancy have been all those who have an swered Mr. Grant Allen's admirable work, the " Woman Who Did." As someone has said, there is no reason that these answers should ever stop. " The Man Who Did Not," " The Woman Who Did Not," and others have followed each other in quick succession, and there is no reason that the " Man Who Did," and the " Man Who Wouldn't" should not follow. I cannot, however, help feeling that the subject is exhausted, that the question of Preface. IV sex has been threshed out, and that no definite conclusions have been come to, and that the public, wearying of the ana tomical dissections of human nature that have lately been placed before them, are hankering after the fleshpots of Thackeray and Dickens once more.

If, therefore, I venture to weary the public, I must quote Mr. Labouchere's excuse, or liken myself to the woman of the nursery tale who, while drowning and speechless, still moved her fingers in the shape of scissors, that in death she might still protest against her husband's assertion that the string had been cut with a knife. Mr. Grant Allen's book, in its assertions, is so far above all the contradictions in style, that it is with diffidence that one ventures on Mr. Labouchere's method, but if I so venture to add my quota to the many arguments his book has given rise to, I have a twofold reason. In the first place, I wish to take up the cudgels for Mr. Grant Allen against all those who with bated breath have called his book Preface. V " improper." Mr. Allen in his book does not advocate the absence of the marriage service ; he, on the contrary, illustrates the miseries that ensue from any divergence from the orthodox path mapped out by God and man, and surely the punishment of the heroine through her child was greater than she could bear.

My second reason takes the form of an appeal to all those who have daughters. The age of ignorance (miscalled innocence) is over, and it behoves those who can influence our women to influence them rightly, and to give them some good reason for marriage. The spirit of maternity, doctors tell us, is dying out. Marriage is merely a profession, and women care less for men than they did, while more lax in their morals. The revolt of women is beginning to ruin men's lives, and all I can say is that when women cease to care for men and for children, God help the men ! If my poor efforts succeed in affording a few moments of interest to the reading Preface. VI world ; if one young girl is kept from a loveless, mistaken marriage ; if one frivolous nature is checked in her career of flirtation by the remembrance of Lady Morris, I shall perhaps be forgiven by the public for raising my feeble voice in answer to the "Woman Who Did." Lucas Cleeve.

PREFACE.

to the SECOND EDITION As a rule one treats with contempt all criticisms that are adverse to one, but in this particular case I feel that it behoves me to take some slight notice of the exaggerated and narrow-minded, not to say uncultivated and badly expressed, re views of my book in some of the inferior newspapers, criticisms which amount almost to libel, and this for two reasons. In the first place I desire to thank these critics for so kindly advertising my book, with the result that in less than three weeks from publica tion the whole of the edition is exhausted, and the second is being printed as rapidlv as possible to meet the demand (for the credit of England's reading population let us hope that there would not be such a run on an indecent book !) ; and secondly, I feel that I must vindicate the most unwarrantable and outrageous attack on Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., in the St. James's Gazette, for Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., as clear-headed, sensible men of the world, Preface.

VIII would not have lent themselves to the publication of anything unworthy of the British public. If the question of marriage and the relations between husband and wife are indecent, then my book has indeed hit the right nail on the head, and as "II n'y'a que la verite qui blesse," I am left to imagine that the critic of the "Woman who Wouldn't" is probably the " Man who Couldn't " lead the life Opalia desired, and I can only say that the greatest praise of my book I could possibly have received is the certainty of the spirit of bitter animosity it has aroused in men. I expected this, and rejoice at the realization of my ex pectations, and it is now with renewed zeal, and with far less diffidence, that I offer the fresh edition to the public, feeling sure that if the book had one line of immorality or indecency in it, the dear, pure-minded, Sunday-loving, cleanly British public would not clamour for it as they are doing now. Lucas Cleeve.

Chapter I

Beach and cliff and sea were only each different shades of the same hue ; here and there a lingering reflection of departed sun set touched the cliffs, making the rest look still more uniform and sad. The cliffs and the sea and the sand were grey as evening descended, the sea breeze was rising, and the waves curled more fiercely and foamed more, as if to frighten away any lingering stroller before night came, and every time the waves went a little nearer B the cliffs and left their wet kisses on the sand a little higher than before. It was chilly even for a spring evening. It was that mystic hour between tea and dinner, an hour so pregnant with great results, when the plotting parent sends her daughter out for a short stroll, in the hope that the decisive moment will come, the hour the fond maiden either dreads or longs for, when her lover invokes the growing darkness to hide the ardour of his suit, or the shame and agony of his dis appointment ; but to Opalia Woodgate and Alan D'Arcy it was only an hour they had both anticipated, an hour for which each was prepared, and when both sought by tacit consent the scenery and the colouring that would best harmonize with their mood, and the words each knew the other had to say.

What they had to say was not the result of any mercenary or worldly consideration, nor the result of parental coercion. It was only the result of a six weeks' sojourn under the same roof of two young people with some similarity of taste, or enough liking for each other not to notice the dissimilarities, enough youth to enjoy the present, enough brains and culture to interest each other. They were both passing through that now almost universal phase of dissection of feelings and thought. Sometimes their dissections were original, but sometimes they were borrowed dissections which they had read and used as if their own, really forgetting that they were other people's, because they suited them so well, because they expressed what they had long wished to say. They had both come to the conclusion of what life ought to be, as a great many of us have, but unfortunately you cannot seize life by the collar and push it in front of B you as you would an unwilling schoolboy on the road to school.

Just when you think you have settled life, and thought, and action into one groove, life's realities come like a sudden gust of wind and carry off, metaphorically speaking, the hat of all your illusions and plans and theories, and blow your hair about, and ruffle your appearance and your feelings, and upset your ideas, and it is long before you settle yourself again. The man or woman who worships the " Eternal Beautiful " has just arranged his or her yellow roses in a copper bowl, and placed lilies at the feet of the Delia Robia Madonna, and scattered " white lilac " on the air, when from the open window come wafted gusts of garlic and onion from his neighbour's kitchen, and looking out to find out whence this unholy odour that thus desecrates the abode of Beauty, his eye alights on a dead cat rotting in the street, or a costermonger hitting a drunken wife over the head, and all his dreams are disturbed.

Thus he is happiest who makes no plan for life, but contemplates with reverence the surprises and revelations life brings him. One surprise and revelation, the greatest, the most beautiful to Alan D'Arcy was Opalia Woodgate. She was like the heroine of every novel put together, for her hair was neither black nor gold, but more like brown-tinted leaves held against the setting sun. Her eyes were neither blue nor grey, violet nor hazel, but like the corner of a stream where violets and forget me-nots grow, and her cheeks were like a peach that has hung too long on a southern wall, and her strong, straight limbs were like those of a goddess, and from her eyes and hair and mouth there arose a fragrance of youth and health that was like the incense of the beauty that Eros loved, and her gesture and gait, her whole being expressed " Hope," undying energy, earnestness and delight.

If ever there was a goddess of " Expectation," she was such an one as Opalia. " I love you, I love you, I love you," is what Alan thought and longed a hundred times a day to say — and she, too, longed to hear — longed, yet dreaded, for the pain she knew it would bring him. Would it be the beginning of the end? Had he understood all she had endeavoured to convey in her maidenly, modest way, or would she have to ask her mother to say it ? No, she could not entrust her dear old common-place mother to say the things she wished to say. She could not trust her mother to say it as she meant it. She had tried to discuss it with her mother once, but it was a hopeless task, her mother had seemed shocked, and had said, — " In my day girls knew nothing of these things, still less spoke of them." " What is the use of quoting ' your day,' dear mother, when things are quite altered now ?

I have been to Girton, and there we had a lecture and a meeting once a term on ' The Relations of the Sexes,' and I was president, dear mother. It is not the knowing, dear mother, it is the not knowing that is the suicide of women's happiness, it is the not acting on that knowledge. It is everyone knowing but yourself that is the mischief." But to poor, dear Mrs. Woodgate these ideas were dreadful. She worshipped and admired Opalia, but with a sort of wonder as a hen who has hatched, not a duckling, but a beautiful proud peacock, with green and gold eyes, that has no similarity with her, and yet that she is proud of having brought forth. "You are an extraordinary girl," her mother and a thousand others would say over and over again, but Opalia would say, with earnestness, " What is the good of feeling as I do if I do not carry it out ?

" " You will be wretched," someone had said. " Then I must be wretched, there is no salvation without crucifixion. We all shrink from open martyrdom, and our silent private ones do no good to women as a body. I am ready to sacrifice myself, if sacrifice it is. Real love will be ready to sacrifice itself to my whim," Many years afterwards she told her hus band what it was had given her these thoughts. It was not the Girton teaching, but a conversation she had overheard with out her wishing it between her brother and a man cousin the day of a wedding. Opalia had been bridesmaid. Oh, how miserable she felt to be a woman at all. How she had crept to her room with ting ling, flaming cheeks, to think that during that day and night that was what people thought about. The clergy, the verger, the guests, all knew the ordeal that was to come.

Oh, to think that the end of their prayers in God's House, the lovely music, the lovely flowers, the pure white robes, the lovely faces of the bridesmaids, all that was sweetest and purest was to end thus. And all the world knew it. Surely if such things must needs be, " if man's and woman's fidelity" must needs have other than the ties of love — (for, after all, what is the marriage service but the anticipation of the change of love? It seems to say, " Ah ! you love him or her now, but you may change, and we must bind you so that even if your heart changes, you must still feed and clothe this woman ; even if your heart changes, you must still obey this man ! " And a service which gave scope to such possibilities marred perfect love, just as the binding down of duties makes the precious offering of love of no value.

If the heart changed, who would care for the outward show of it ?) Then why call together all your friends to tell them ? There were many other thoughts that sprang out of these thoughts. Was it neces sary that the desire for the companionship and love of a man should end thus ? Surely all the poetry of lovers ended thus ? She thought of companions of her own who had married, and whom she had met again. How commonplace their relations had grown ; how utterly different were the conjugal pecks to the loving kisses of the past ; how the daily and nightly com panionship had put an end to all the modest maidenly ways of her former com panion. Surely a woman was still a woman. What was the good of educating a girl to purity and modesty, if in one night that education was negatived ? " Surely this familiarity was the death of love !

" Later came other thoughts, all spring ing from the one idea, as the white cle matis throws out branch after branch of its white bloom till the original stem is hardly seen, grasping on to chink and stone and window-lattice, enveloping everything with its rich fragrance. The man was half a woman, and the woman was almost man when they met. Surely both born of a woman must needs be alike. The very rivalry lay in its similarity. Then he told her, with all the passionate words that cultivation and civilization have put into the mouth of man, the story of his love, how she represented love to him and life, how she alone was the very woman who could ever be his ideal. The sea grew quite angry and jealous then, and the sea ever after filled Opalia with strange feelings, for what is romance but the poetry of association ?

Then, with her head on his breast to hide her blushes, she told him what she would do, what she would be. He smiled, amused. " You do not know what you are asking," he said. " There is no love without passion ; you, yourself, would not have it so. What can you know of these things ? " He did not consent yet to her terms. Then, pulling him gently to her side, she said, — " Sit by my side and' listen before you deride, just try and put aside all the customs and prejudices of your youth and bringing up. Try and realize that a great revolution has taken place, ' the revolt of woman,' not against man, but against two thousand years of hypocrisy and ignorance. The ignorance far less than the hypocrisy. For years girls have known these things, unless they married at sixteen." " What things ? " asked Alan, still doubtful, still hesitating.

" Do not press me too hard," she said, laying her head on his heart again ; then she murmured, " What marriage means." It was so unexpected, so unnecessary, he thought, but he belonged to the new school. It was a phase to go through. " Well, darling, it means love." " No, not exactly," said the girl. " It means the woman giving up everything in the world, and the , man swearing he is her slave when he is about to become her master." " No, my sweet, that depends ; it is the one moment when a woman rules man's destiny and can do with him as she likes." " Do you mean that, Alan ? " " Darling, I am your absolute slave ; do with me what you will." " Then, dear one, if that is so, would you be content if I were your sister only ? " " Certainly not ! " said Alan. It was growing almost dark, and Opalia's two eyes glowed like two beacons on a distant hill.

" Ah ! there it is," she said. " Do you mean that you won't marry me ? " he said. " I will marry you in church," she said, " but that is all. Do not make it too difficult for me to explain." '' Speak, little one," he said; " explain, and whatever is said to-night shall be buried by the sea; none shall know, none shall remember," for her short, halting speech was beginning to enlighten him. With tears in her eyes and pressing his fingers almost to pain, she spoke, and her words were worse, though she knew it not, than her bridal night need have been to her. The darkness alone made it possible to say. " Listen, dear," she said ; " years ago girls did not know what marriage meant ; they knew, indeed, of a terrible sacrifice, but it was all closed. No one told them, no one helped them ; it was like death that one meets alone.

They were helped to the very door of the church, to the very steps of the altar — but after that. Oh ! Alan, if you knew the things girls have told me!" " Curse them," said Alan between his teeth, but aloud he said, — " But they did not love each other, darling, as we do." " I don't know," she said thoughtfully, " I should like time to find out." "To find out if you love me ? " No, I cannot tell what ; but, dear one, there is so much in life, and one sees so much of how people change and how they look back on life, and say, ' Oh, had I acted differently.' That has always seemed to me because they rushed into events." " Then you would like time to think, dear, and yet you seem to love me, and I " he stooped down and kissed her two knees passionately, yet reverently, but did not finish his phrase.

" Darling, listen," she said, but her voice was less steady after his kiss. " I have been trying to study the problems of life ; they are very difficult, but everywhere I have seen that people failed because they had no principles, no scheme of life laid down. They were all theories and no practice — their life being a living contradic tion to their words and writings. No one will ever sacrifice themselves, because they know that others will not, and so, with the excuse that their small sacrifice would do no good, they too give themselves up to the same ways. I read a book once," she went on, " in which the heroine would not go through the form of marriage in church for fear she should lose her liberty, yet every action of her life showed that her liberty had gone, whether she defied the conventional laws of society or not.

Her life was an utter failure." " And yet you would do the same." " No, no, Alan ; her life was a failure, because it was defiance, not sacrifice. She c was simply following her impulses, and indulging in them." "And you follow yours, darling," said her lover impetuously, and laughing. " Don't weary yourself with so much self analysis and analysis of life ; you are placed in this world to enjoy yourself and to be happy, to take what the gods have given you in the shape of a charming, good-looking young husband, with great ability, to say the least ; now be thankful and don't let some foolish ideas mar our future happiness." By this time there was darkness every where, only a glow over sand and sea like the eye of Providence shining dimly. She laughed at his description of himself, then her voice changed.

"No, darling," she said, "those are my principles. I must abide by them. Mine must be the tiny sacrifice that is of so little avail, but which is needed to build up the future. I can only marry you, darling, in church, and afterwards be a true, loving sister to you, and be with you always in health and in sickness, in life and in death." The disappointment was terrible to him, and in his grief and rage he said, " Then you do not love me." She stood up and felt that all was over. She stood dark and still against the sky, and something in the man's heart raged and roared like the waves that were coming in more fiercely now and reaching almost to their feet. " I love you," she murmured, " better than life, better than happiness ; but I must be true to my principles. Love and passion must have no part in each other.

The blessing of God is not for human gratifica tion, but for the union of man and woman for the purposes of greatness and perfection. c The Church cannot make holy what would otherwise be unholy." He was silent, a wild despair was coupled with the impossibility of arguing. It all seemed so true when she said it ; he had a horrible shameful feeling that now that she had offered love which he had pretended was all he coveted, it was no good to him. It revealed to him what his thoughts had been since he had met this beautiful woman, only a longing for possession unacknow ledged to himself. She offered what was supposed to be the most beautiful thing, " Love," and it was like Dead Sea fruit to him. And she ! Tears of blood seemed to flow to and from the back of her throat to her heart, and then upwards, but none came to her eyes.

She had feared and dreaded this moment, but the possibility of his not accepting her terms had never occurred to her. She thought from her conversations with him that this was the one man who would unite with her to establish her principles and to help her. They had had such long talks, and he had so seemed to acquiesce. She had still to learn that when a man listens to a woman he loves expounding her theories, it is only because he enjoys the sound of her voice, not because he either agrees with her or that her words bring conviction. It is the mere conclusion come to that because she is so sweet all that she says must be sweet too, as one stoops to smell the fragrance of a lovely rose ; but she in her ignorance had imagined that his heart beat with hers, and when its single throb beat without hers, it caused a pain which was like death.

All her hopes, her sweet dreams, her ambitions, the great plans which she had evoked in the night, the sweet aspirations, the companionship, the very thoughts of passion which would come, though unbidden. All was night in her heart, dark as the night that was float ing down, and her teeth chattered, half with cold, half with misery. " Let us go," and her voice sounded as if she said, " Let us each go on our way forth into the world." If Alan failed, all men would fail ; Alan had been nearer in ideas to her than anything she had ever read or anyone she had ever spoken to ; and many men had made love to her ; and if Alan failed, then all, indeed, was lost. Yet the idea of ever swerving from her principles never occurred to her. And he ; he stood with his hand to his head, searching for some argument, yet all he said was, — " This cannot be the end."

He could find no other words ; then, man-like, he took her in his arms and whispered what to him seemed the one appeal left to a woman's heart — but that too is dying out. " What about little children, Opalia — do you want no little children ? " She thanked the darkness that hid the hot wave that came to her brow. The emotion made her almost angry with him. Why did he try her so hard ? for she loved little children ; that, too, must be thought of, the responsibility. How dare people create a living soul that may be cursed or saved, that must suffer and live, and think and feel, without first hesitating. That, too, is too great, too beautiful, to be the result of passion. The purest, ten derest, most thoughtful love should create a being for God's will and purposes. "Even that, Alan "Ah, you break my heart, Opalia," he said ; " you break the heart that was so happy this morning.

Oh, little one, let us go back to yesterday ; let us put off this marriage." For once she wavered ; to go back to be as yesterday, to live yet a little longer in that warm delirious dream, and to put off the marriage. But that would be treachery. To-morrow and the next day and the next, whensoever the moment came, she would be the same. "We could not go back," she said. In the distance they saw the figure of the servant, who had been sent to meet them, and struggling against the breeze, they walked back and up the chine silently. When they reached the foot of the garden he stopped. " Tell me, darling, that it is not true. One day, perhaps — " For very sickness of heart she wavered. " One day, perhaps," she murmured ; but it was said doubtfully, yet it gave him hope. But later, when in her little room, she felt that her wavering was insincerity, the result of physical and moral weariness.

She took out a sheet of paper and wrote : — " Darling, — I misled you when I said ' one day, perhaps.' The very words were treachery to my principles — to the aims of my life. I love you dearly, ten derly, but I can be nothing more to you than a sister. If that ' one day, perhaps ' were to come, I should despise myself and you. If I married you, and you took advantage of one moment of weakness — for the moment would come — I know I should leave you for ever. I feel brutal as I write this. Oh ! Alan, forgive me if I pain you, if I mislead you. We have mis led each other. I thought you and I agreed. Forgive me, and believe, darling, now and always, that never love again. I love you as I can " Opalia." her room, and walked Noiselessly she left along the passage to his door ; quietly she slipped the letter under his bedroom door for fear it should wake him, and he should read it to-night; for she knew that the " one day, perhaps " had comforted him and revived his hopes.

Then she returned to her room, and throwing herself on the bed, wept till she fell asleep, all dressed. Happiness is for none. Those that would welcome it, it passes by. Those at whose door it knocks, do not raise the latch, or push it away from the threshold. There must be a great store of happiness waiting somewhere " to be called for."

Chapter II

If for one moment Alan had doubted that she loved him, during his restless night, or when he read her letter in the morning, those thoughts were dispelled when he saw her face. It was as if the waves had rolled up from the beach and dashed on it all night. The day before she had been a bright, blooming maiden. To-day she was a woman who had bidden farewell to love and happiness. His heart was wrung with grief for her. But if she was sincere, he was truth itself. He could not agree, he could not in all the passionate vigour of his manhood promise what she asked. He would not lie to her. One day he felt sure one or the other would give in ; he wished it would be himself, but he thought it more likely that it would be her. When the fly rolled out of the gar den gate, Mrs. Woodgate turned to her daughter, — " Why is it all at an end between you ?