Altiora Peto; a novel

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CIIAI*. TAGE

I. altiora’s first.problem 5

n. ALTIORA SOLVES THE PROBLEM 12

Chapter II. Altiora Solves The Problem

I have not seen anybody since yesterday, except the maid, who brought me in some dinner. This does not arise from temper, but from the absolute necessity which I feel imposed upon me by my name to analyze my emotions calmly, review the situation, and think out deliberately what, from the highest point of view, is the right thing for me to do. My brain was so disturbed at first, that after I recovered from my fit of weeping I read an article of Mr. Mallock’s to soothe it; then I reflected. First, there was my duty to my mother; then there was my duty to Ronald; and last, but not least, there was my duty to myself. Then I thought of a higher duty than any of these — one which comprised them all. The problem has, of course, often been presented to young ladies before in some form or other, but it is not until one has to deal with it one’s self that one discovers the extreme difficulty of its solution. I had scarcely begun to reason it out before I found that I was not in possession of all the premises. First, I was in total ignorance of the nature of the sentiment in my own case with which I had to deal. I had, it is true, a certain empirical knowledge of it, but it had only fully and powerfully developed itself in me within the last twenty-four hours, and those had been so stormy that I had been unable to analyze anything. Then, if I could not define exactly what I felt myself, how was it possible to know what Ronald felt? And finally, as the whole affair was purely subjective, and affected only us

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two, what in the world could mamma know about it? It seemed to me that the right course for her to have pursued would have been, first, to give me all her own experience (for she had been married before she married papa, besides, I believe, having been several times in love in her youth) ; and then, when she had told me all she knew about it, she ought to have advised me not to give any definite answer to Ronald or to act hastily, but to explain to him that, the question being one upon which the happiness of our lives depended, we must search ourselves thoroughly, so as to guard against any mere superficial feeling, and put ourselves through various tests and ordeals. My own impression is — but of course I speak without the smallest experience — that it is a matter upon which it would be impossible to come to any safe and definite decision within a year; and if mamma had left it to my judgment, that is what I should have told Ronald, and no amount of supplication on his part would have made me change my resolution. Instead of which, the more I think of it, the more it seems to me that the speech which she made me was utterly irrational and absurd. It amounted, in fact, to this, that I was to have no voice in the selection of my own husband. The only argument in favor of this mode of proceeding is, that I believe it is the one adopted by the French. Perhaps, as they are rather a logical people, they may have a good reason for it ; but I shall certainly ask mamma to explain it to me. In the mean time, it is quite impossible for me to come to any decision until I know why she objects to Ronald. Clearly my course is, therefore, now that I have had a night’s rest and am calm, to discuss the subject with her in all its bearings as fully as I can induce her to do; and then, before acting in any way, to come back and think. I shall, at all events, have more data to go upon.

I had just come to this determination, when a smart tap at the door warned me that the object of my meditations was upon the other side of it. I was glad of this. I have a theory that environment is not altogether without a sort of moral value. As people are made up of forces, by which they are reciprocally affected, either positively or negatively, it is not unnatural that these should be affected by the conditions attaching to certain localities. Thus I should be more positive to my mother in my own room, surrounded, as it were, by my own moral atmosphere, than I should be in hers, where, on the contrary, she would have a corresponding advantage. Dogs — which I take to be remarkably sensitive animals — magnetically furnish so striking an illustration of this that it has become proverbial; and we constantly witness most abject cowardice on the part of a dog, succeeded by defiant confidence, by mere contact with

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liis own door -step. I am always conscious of deriving, in some subtle manner, a moral strength of some sort, conditioned on my surroundings; and hence it was that I said “Come in” to my mother with a feeling of some relief. She was in a very amiable mood — suspiciously so — and came up and kissed me — rather an unusual thing with her.

“My dear,” she said, “you took me so much by surprise yesterday, that I am afraid I spoke with more warmth than I should have done if I had been prepared for the news you communicated so abruptly and unexpectedly. Let us talk it over quietly now, and I think I shall be able to convince you that I am consulting your own interests in refusing to consent to your marriage with Mr. Mac Alpine.”

“I have no doubt,” I replied, “that you would not have spoken so strongly without good reason, and I was just coming down to ask you to tell me what it was when you knocked.”

“Well, dear,” she went on, “from inquiries which I have made, I find Mr. MacAlpine’s income amounts to £300 a year, which his brother allows him. It is true that he has been called to the Bar, but, so far as I am aware, he has never held a brief; and I should say, from what I am informed of his habits of life in London, if he had one he would be extremely at a loss to know what to do with it. Still, as he is the brother of a peer, and has a certain social reputation of a flimsy kind as a dabbler in literature, music, and art — though I am not aware that it adds very materially to his resources — I don’t know that I should have been so decided in my opposition if the baron and I had not formed other plans for you ; and when you know what these are I feel sure that you will quite agree with us. Last year we were obliged to go abroad, so the next will be your first London season; and it would be foolish of you to make up your mind in these barren hills on a question which affects your whole future, until you know what the world has to offer. Believe me, my dear child, we shall spare neither pains nor money to make you a success.”

“But, mamma,” I said, “I don’t want to be a success. I don’t think it likely that I shall find any one in London I like better than Ronald ; and I shall refuse every offer, if any are made, no matter how advantageous they may be, for his sake, if I find, on farther acquaintance, that we thoroughly suit each other. You see, I am not in the least impulsive or romantic on the subject.”

“Well, darling,” she replied, “I don’t wish to press you; I merely wish you to understand the necessity of not committing yourself in that direction, because neither your step-father nor I will ever

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consent to your marrying Mr. Mac Alpine. You will very soon get over the passing sentiment you entertain for him. I know this love from experience. Before my marriage with my first husband, the baron’s partner, I was very much admired, and, indeed, was engaged once to an Italian officer, to whom I was passionately attached ; but his parents would not hear of the match: he was killed afterward in a duel.” And my mother touched her eyes with a corner of her pocket-handkerchief. “And Mr. Crombie, my first husband, attended his funeral; for poor Vittorio had remained my greatest friend after my marriage. There are so many kinds of love, dear, as you will find out when you have more experience, and the one need not necessarily extinguish the other.”

Part of this speech took me so excessively by surprise, and part of it was so enigmatical, that for some moments I felt bereft of the faculty of speech. The idea of having several kinds of love — at least outside of one’s natural affections for one’s relations— was so entirely novel, that I felt I should have to think over the whole matter alone in my room; so I said, “Thank you, dear mamma; I am very much obliged for this explanation, and I will think about it.”

“But, dear, I want you to act upon it. You must not allow Mr. Mac Alpine to remain any longer under a delusion.”

“I can only promise you,” I replied, firmly, “that I will immediately give the matter my most earnest consideration. Until I have done that, I absolutely decline to commit myself to any course of action. ”

“How the child takes after her father!” said my mother, rather snappishly, aloud to herself. Then, seeing I was perfectly fixed in my resolution, she came and kissed me again, and said, as she left the room, “Well, dear, now that you know what my wishes are, I will rely upon your sense of duty to give effect to them, without dictating to you the method in which it is to be done.”

My mother made a mistake when she made that spiteful allusion to my father’s firmness. She would not have been guilty of the indiscretion in her own room ; but I have always felt that mine was pervaded by his influence, and it was forced out of her in spite of herself, as she became instinctively conscious that I was inspired with his fixed determination of will, wThich imposed itself upon hers, and induced her to refrain from pushing me any farther. In all that she had said, it was the one sentence that imparted a profound comfort, and certainly decided me, as far as in me lay, to avoid taking after my mother.

And this, again, led me to ponder upon that strange fate which

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always presented itself to my mind under a veil of mystery, which had snatched the author of my being from this earth before I had appeared upon it; and I gazed upon the photograph, which was my greatest treasure, with a never-flagging wonder and curiosity. My mother was very reticent in regard to my father, with whose pursuits she evidently had had but little sympathy. She says the subject is too painful for her to recur to, and shrinks from all allusion to it with so much feeling, that I have avoided all reference to it for some years past. All that I know of him is, that he was the only son of a superannuated old general, from whom he inherited a large fortune, which had been made in India, and that my grandmother, who had died some years before her husband, was a daughter of the Earl of Sark. I am consequently full second cousin of the present earl — a fact which my mother seems far more alive to than the earl — though he is almost the only relation I have got, at least that I know; for my mother’s belongings all emigrated to Australia when she was young, and, from hints that she has let drop, I think she began life as a governess with an Italian family, and then she married Mr. Crombie, Baron Grandesella’s partner. They were merchants, or in business of some sort — I never could quite make out what ; but after his death she married papa, who died before I was born, and then she married the baron.

Ever since, in my early childhood, my attention was called to a duckling which had been hatched by a hen, I had seemed to occupy the same unnatural relation to my mother. The baron always made the impression upon me of a turkey gobbler in a perpetual state of strut, and Mr. Murkle, the baron’s partner, of a hawk, who only refrained from pouncing upon the hen and the gobbler because they were too big, but who never took his carnivorous eye off me. I feel him perpetually hovering above me. If ever there was a man whom one word could describe, ‘ ‘ Murkle ” is the man, and “pounce ” is the word. This is the sort of domestic barn-yard in which I have been brought up. I have roamed with the gobbler, the hen, and the hawk through all the capitals of Europe. We took contracts, we founded banks, we obtained concessions, we started companies. The baron swelled and strutted through the financial political world of Europe, Mr. Murkle pounced upon it, and my mother made friends with other hens, and scratched its surfaces, and pecked away at what she found with great assiduity. We have always lived with the extravagance of potentates — I don’t mean German princes, but magnates of the highest order. That I was being carefully brought up for something, I soon discovered; but nothing could cure my unfortunate propensity to swim— in other words, to study. I was unable to have a laboratory, and go in for chemistry as I should have wished, because of the regulations against travelling with explosive materials; but I had a trunk full of books on science and philosophy which broke the backs of the railway porters and the heart of my mother — at least, it injured, if not her heart, her temper. I steadily objected to wasting my time on what are termed accomplishments. The baron spared no expense to procure me the best masters, but in vain. Languages came to me as naturally as any other kind of swimming; and I have a taste for art, which is the chief consolation of my mother, who always tries to make me display my erudition on the subject in society, which I naturally decline to do ; in fact, if there is a thing I detest, it is society. As for the purple and fine linen in which both my mother and myself are arrayed, the money spent upon it annually would maintain hundreds of starving pauper families. The baron, who used to allow me an ample allowance of pin-money, cut me down last year because mamma discovered that I made what she called an improper use of it in relieving distress ; but I have, nevertheless, several pensioners in various parts of the world, whom I maintain on the sale of the lace and embroidery which I unpick from the flounces of my petticoats, and send them the money by post-office orders — Johnson, my maid, who enters enthusiastically into my schemes, being pledged to secrecy.

The effect of being so entirely out of sympathy with my belongings, and of finding myself forced into a life so little congenial to me, has been to develop my inherited tendencies in a premature and irregular fashion; and it therefore becomes all the more essential, now that the important question of choosing a partner for life is concerned, to be quite sure that we are thoroughly in accord as to our hopes and aims. So far I had not had any opportunity of discovering whether Ronald, under his agreeable social exterior and varied accomplishments, possessed those qualities and moral aspirations which I longed to find in some one to whom I could unburden my own feelings. These are subjects one does not rush into lightly; and so reticent is my tendency in regard to them, that I did not wonder at his silence on questions affecting the deeper problems of life. It became, therefore, extremely necessary to know what we had in common, and only right that, before going any farther, I should explain to him the conclusions to which my reading and reflections so far had led me, and my notion of what I considered to be the end and object of my existence. I therefore had some luncheon in my own room, and, without going through the farce of taking my sketch-book, strolled down to the rocks, upon one of which I

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perceived him seated, gazing pensively seaward. So absorbed was he in meditation, that he was not aware of my proximity till I spoke to him.

“My darling! how you startled me!” he exclaimed, jumping off his perch with pleased surprise. “ If I had not been thinking about you so deeply I should have heard you. What an agony of suspense I have been in since yesterday ! and now, ” he said, looking at me eagerly, “ the expression on your face tells me nothing to inspire hope.”

“ I do not mean it should,” I answered, calmly, but I felt such a strange tightening across the chest that speech became an effort. “ Mamma is absolutely and firmly opposed to my entertaining any proposal from you, and will listen to no argument on the subject; so it is useless your recurring to it either with her or me. I am bound to obey her wishes in the matter; but even if I were not, I should have other things to say to you before I could arrive at a decision. I think it right to tell you this, lest you should imagine, from what passed yesterday, that, putting her out of the question, I had no difficulties in my own mind to encounter. ”

The intensity of the effort which this speech caused me imparted a harshness to it that I could not have avoided without bursting into tears ; and now, when I saw what suffering it produced, the trial of nerve was in no degree lessened. My knees were trembling, and my heart was beating so violently that it suddenly occurred to me to try and restore the moral balance by a little physical pain. Under this impulse I leaned my whole weight upon my hand, which rested upon an edge of rock. The ragged point was so sharp that it cut me deeply, and under other circumstances I should have been unable to restrain an exclamation of pain. As it was, it acted like a sedative. The effect of physical pain and moral suffering on each other is very curious. First, I have a disagreeable duty to perform, and the moral effort gives me a physically painful constriction of the chest; then I hurt myself by cutting my hand on a rock, and feel morally strengthened, and therefore physically relieved. I suppose these are very crude reflections, and that it is perfectly well known by science exactly what physical pain and moral suffering are, and where they originate. Of course I did not make them at the moment ; but the impulse under which I acted proved a sound one, for Ronald was so taken up bandaging my hand, which was bleeding freely, that we were both able to talk more calmly afterward.

“ I can understand your mother’s objection,” he said; “with her it is probably merely a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence; but

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I don’t understand why, if she had consented, you would still have required time for reflection.”

‘ ‘ I should have required to know more of your character, your aims in life, and your aspirations,” I answered; “ and I should also have needed some more information than I now possess as to your views in regard to those deep and mysterious problems which have ever agitated the bosom of humanity, as it is of the utmost importance that two people who propose to pass their lives together should he in entire sympathy upon subjects so vital.”

I thought it best to come to the point at once, for I was quite prepared to assert my rights as a girl who would soon be a woman, and in a position to defy the maternal authority, if I found him thoroughly satisfactory and sympathetic. An amused smile passed over his countenance as I made this innocent and, as it seemed to me, very pertinent observation.

“ Have you solved the problems of which you speak?” he said.

I had in my pocket notes for an essay which I was engaged in writing on “The Anomalies of Civilized Existence, as Tested by Intuitive Aspirations in Ideal Life,” but I was afraid of boring him by reading them to him ; so I explained to him shortly, that though my experience of life had been brief, I had lived long enough to discover that the popular theology, so far as its practical social working was concerned, failed to satisfy my religious instinct, and that I had therefore determined to adopt a method of moral research which, so far as my investigation went, had not been attempted even by the most eminent reformers of ancient or modern times. Those who endeavored to inculcate a new religious idea, if it had any connection with another world or a future life, had always started with the assumption of an inspiration which it was impossible rationally to verify, and which contained the new moral truths that they offered to the world for its guidance and salvation; while, if it had no such connection with the unknown, it became a cold system of philosophy — as, for instance, those of Confucius and Plato, or Comte— which had never been acceptable to the masses, because they appealed so much more to the intellect than the affections. In other words, the attempt of reformers and philosophers hitherto had been invariably to endeavor to construct the life out of the religion, instead of the religion out of the life, by either an act of faith, or an effort of intellect out of practical experiment.

“Then,” said Ronald, delightedly, “we agree entirely, and sympathize thoroughly. We neither of us know anything, or believe anything — in other words, we are both agnostics.”

He had no sooner made this remark than I felt that all was at an

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end between us. It was evident that, if he could so little understand my principle of thought, after the clear explanation I had offered him, as to confound it with agnosticism, the very foundations of mutual sympathy were wanting. I thought, however, that it was only due to him to explain this; so I observed that I was so very far from being an agnostic, that I could only account for his supposing me to be one on the hypothesis of a weakness of intellect on my part; and I left him to infer that, in my opinion, it included one on his.

“On the contrary,” he replied, “it is considered an evidence of advanced and enlightened thought. How can we know anything more of ourselves than that we are phenomena? And since we are nothing but phenomena, how can there be anything else that isn’t a phenomenon? Everything in the universe, and outside of it — if there is anything outside of it — must be all of one piece.”

“How,” I said, “knowing nothing, and having no means of knowing anything, do you know that you are a phenomenon? And what is a phenomenon? If you start on the assumption that you know nothing, argument becomes impossible ; if you assert that you know anything, you are not an agnostic. ”

“Pardon me,” he replied; “ I know that both you and I exist, but it is impossible for me to know anything as to the cause or nature of our existence.”

“That last assertion is assuming a good deal of knowledge for one who knows nothing. Pray, do you consider love a phenomenon, in regard to the nature and cause of which you know nothing?”

“Ah, it is the most extraordinary and inexplicable of all phenomena, darling, for you. I know that it exists, so far as I am concerned: why should I care to know more?”

“Because, without knowing more, it is evident that we should both make a mess of it,” replied I, somewhat brusquely. “I for one believe that all phenomena, as you call them, are governed by law. How do you account for the world going round the sun?”

“Just as I account for my coming to meet you to-day — by the phenomenon, not the law, of attraction.”

“Well,” I said — for a certain flippancy of presumption in his manner of dealing with so momentous a subject offended me— “it lias produced in me the sensation of repulsion, and I am the less distressed at it, because you know that it is impossible for you to discover the cause of it. It is a simple phenomenon which will not bear discussion ; it exists, that is all either of us know ; farther investigation is hopeless. We met, we were both attracted, we exchanged a few ideas; you remained attracted, while I was repelled.

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Curiously enough, while I am attracting you, and you are repelling me, we both suffer, and shall continue to do so until a new series of phenomena occur. That, I think, is the history of our little romance, looked at from an agnostic point of view.” I concluded bitterly, and felt a suspicious desire to blow my nose, which a false pride prevented my doing at the moment, while my eyes were so full of tears that I scarcely dared to wink them. As far as I could analyze my feelings at the time, this emotion was not the result of any noble or tender sentiment, but of sheer vexation and disappointment.

At this critical moment a step on the shingle arrested our attention, and turning round I saw a large and somewhat ungainly man, dressed in an exaggerated tourist costume of checks and knickerbockers, whom I at once divined to be no less a person than the baron himself. “Ah,” thought I, “he has been telegraphed for.” Mamma evidently began to suspect something some days ago. She must consider the matter serious. I had no idea I was growing into such an important personage.

As he approached he stretched out his arms as though he expected me to rush into them, and his face seemed to beam with affectionate eagerness. “Ah, my little Ora!” he called out (he had adopted the last syllable of my name as a pet appellation, preferring it to Alty, which was the only other alternative; my mother never condescended to abbreviate it), “have I found you at last, hidden away among the rocks like a sea-gull, my picturesque beauty ?” and he folded me slowly in his elephantine embrace. “And, my good friend Mac- Alpine, how well you are looking ! But who would not, in that grand costume ? Ah, how I envy you Highlanders ! What traditions, what poetry, what romance !” And, after shaking hands with him, he drew back, to give him the full benefit of his admiring gaze. He had only seen Mr. MacAlpine once before, but this was too good an opportunity of plunging into familiarity with the brother of a peer to be neglected.

“You are both surprised to see me, no doubt; but, as the French say, there is nothing certain but the unexpected. Murkle telegraphs me from Paris that my presence is required there without delay on business the most important. You have perhaps heard of the nature and extent of our operations, MacAlpine. Everything on these occasions depends upon promptitude of action; but I cannot sever myself from my domestic treasures. Wealth, life itself, is valueless, unless shared by those we love. Is it not so, ma cherie ? What pleasures sacrifices become under such circumstances ! How delightful was my journey rendered by the anticipation of meeting

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my wife and daughter! — though we have not been so long separated.”

“When are we to start, baron?” I asked, anxious to put an end to the torrent which I knew by experience would flow without interruption till we reached the house. I never would call him “papa,” though he had repeatedly urged me to do so; but I felt that the sacred name must not be so profaned.

“I can only allow you one day for packing, puss. You know how expert your mother has become by long practice in these sudden moves. And you, MacAlpine — when shall you tear yourself away from your native heath?”

“ I don’t know,” said Ronald, gloomily, who was evidently a good deal depressed by this second blow to all his hopes. The difficulties I had created he evidently had not thought serious, but the prospect of having to part finally from me now rather overcame him.

“He is an agnostic, and does not know anything,” I added, maliciously, for I was still smarting under a certain self-satisfied presumption he had shown in our argument.

“ Parbleu /” said the baron. “An agnostic in a kilt — what an odd combination! Now, if you had said an aesthete, I could have understood. Is a kilt aesthetic, Ora? You understand art, and ought to know. Why should we not seek to adapt the habits and costumes of our ancestors to the thoughts and tendencies of the day? Why is an agnostic in a kilt more incongruous than a financier in knickerbockers?” and he looked down complacently on his own. “What knight-errant was it who, in the days of chivalry, used to wear a sunflower as his badge? He may have been an aesthete.”