A question of instinct; an analytical study..

Front matter

MD CCGXCVr

THE LIBRARY

OF

Chapter II

As the result of sitting up so late and eating his heart out, Miller felt anything but fit for work next day, and went to his club instead of doing anything. For he did work a little, in spite of possessing a small competency. His papers and lectures on geographical subjects and his own travels were far above the average in merit, and would have been much better if he had possessed ambition. But it usually seemed to him that the end of life was to live, and industry was not in him.

*' To live is to develop all your faculties and energies, good, bad, and indifferent," he used to say, *'not to strive painfully after some ideal form.'*

''You never had any desire to be a clipped yew in a Dutch garden," said his friend Harmer.

And it was Harmer he wanted to see now. He did not get to the club till quite late in the evening. He found halfa-dozen painters and writers in the Athenians' smoking-room, and Harmer was standing on the hearthrug talking. He dropped a sentence in the middle, and rushed to Miller to shake hands.

''Are you on the stump, then.^" asked the traveller, smiling.

'' Of course he is, said Hale — a man of a worn and dissipated and weary aspect, with finely cut features.

" You ancient cameo, be quiet," said Harmer. ** Of course. Miller, we were at the usual subject of late — I mean women.''

" It has always been a subject of considerable interest to mankind at large. Why *of late'?"

*' Ah, I see," said Harmer ; *' you've been out of England — out of the grim grind of the central world. You have been on the edge of things, under suns and stars and palm trees, while we have been at the perpetual clinic, the sick-room of civilisation. You don't know all the latest symptoms. The women are beginning to get up and howl for liberty. Some of them roar for repression, but they are a pure minority. Their cries are painful; but then, those who are squeezed squeal. And it's my little opinion that women haven't cried out before they were hurt."

*' You're going off the track again," said Hale languidly. *' Orator of the Feminine Human Race, propound your polygamous propositions."

And Miller sat down.

'* What's the trouble, and what's your remedy ? " he asked, laughing, as he lighted his pipe.

Harmer shook his head.

** I've no remedy but mere liberty. And I suggest speaking the truth. I was just remarking as you came in that it's absurd concealing the fact from ourselves any longer that we men are all polygamous by nature ; and until women know it, and know that it's by no means criminal, we shall not get any further."

*'And the corollary is .^" asked

Miller.

'* That they should have liberty too," replied Harmer, like a flash.

'* But many men don't and won't practise polygamy," said a quiet man in a corner.

'' Of course not," said Harmer. ** I mean

that men are all polygamous by nature,

whether they practise it or not. I mean that those who do not practise it deny their natures for various reasons/'

*' Chiefly economical," said Hale cynically.

*' Or moral prepossessions, or mere cowardice," added the original lecturer; *'or even a quasi-artistic prepossession in favour of the beauty, the ideal fitness, of monogamy. I don't think many men can conscientiously deny this."

Miller nodded.

*' It's probably correct, this theory of yours. But then, isn't the real question whether it's right to combat our natures in the matter ? " he asked.

Harmer snorted.

** This kind of thing should be put outside the question of a moral struggle. Til grant you a perpetual moral struggle in man if you like. But the question of eating pig is a moral one. Eating meat on a Friday is a moral one. Eating meat at all may be a moral one. But we grant liberty on this question. Where the morality comes in is in not being greedy and selfish. If liberty, true liberty of the sexes, ever arrives, men and women will have all the opportunity they require for moral training and restraint and self-sacrifice/'

'' How do you make that out, you promiscuous prophet?'' said Hale, astounded.

'' They will have to learn to give up what Is not theirs, and to be fair and just ; that's all the morality I want. However, that's not the present question. If we have an evil it will not cure It to ignore it. Whatever moral doctrines may be preached, the fact remains. Is it best to acknowledge the truth or to go on lying about It ? How shall we cure anything unless we know ? That's the trouble with so many of the writers on the subject. The men don't know the women, and the women don't know the men. I'll sacrifice my beautifial character and be a martyr to truth. Theoretically I'm a polygamist."

*' And practically ? " asked his right-hand neighbour.

'' That's not your business, now, is it ? " urged Harmer, with a twinkle in his eye. *' You see," he went on, *' we delude the poor women into the belief that we are monogamous."

'' Stuff!" said Hale ; ** no woman believes anything of the kind."

Harmer smoked for a moment.

*' You're a debauched character, Hale, and mustn't judge all women by your favourite classes."

*' Harmer's quite right about the average young English woman," said Miller.

'' Of course ; and then, when the truth peeps out, they cry, and are disgusted, and object terribly. They ought to understand men better, and then most of the trouble would disappear,"

*'Are women polyandrous ? " asked Hale quietly.

*' I think so, in a way," said Harmer. '' But we are simultaneous and successive ; they, as a rule, only successive. And I think the sooner a man knows that it's no reason a woman shall love him in five years because she loves him now we shall have made a considerable step forward. Let us abolish lying ; it's a form of paint and powder ; it ruins a good moral skin, and worsens a bad one. As it stands, monogamy means carrying on but one intrigue at a time ; it is mostly confined to innocent young bachelors. Dear, dear me ! how I yearn to speak the truth ! "

And they all laughed at him good-humouredly.

*' But you think the women will put up with polygamy?" asked Hale, who for him was greatly interested in the matter.

Harmer looked at him quizzically.

" Hark to ignorance yearning for the truth ! Why, man alive, half of them have to put up with it ! And many who know the world put up with it with hardly a murmur. Some women will say it's a libel, but I'm sure there are numbers of them not ferociously jealous if they can persuade themselves they are the most loved. And for the matter of that, in cases of violent passion, many will accept the second place if they must, not, I admit, without heartburnings and jealousy and at times a good deal of self-contempt. But the reason of this is, that polygamy is founded not only on the passions but the larger nature of men. It's difficult for a man of wide sympathies to find a correspondence in one woman. This many women see ; and those who accept the truth always feel that they are the chief, or at least a necessary and beautiful, portion of their lovers' lives."

** And when will monogamy really come in ? " asked Miller. *' I suppose, according to your theories, when women are grown up."

** That's it, friend of mine," said Harmer. ** When they have cast themselves adrift from dead convention ; when they have achieved freedom, and have given their embryonic energies time to bud and grow — then, with an opener life, they'll have bigger minds and brains, and wider sympathies. There's a good deal of the parasite, the creeper, about women as they are. By-and-by they will stand on their own feet, and give a big - shade. Then monogamy will stand a show. And, whether I'm right or not, I defy any man to swear solemnly that he has not polygamous instincts deeply rooted in him." He blew a snort of contempt against any one who should declare himself absolutely monogamous. But no one did. The whole room admitted the impeachment in silence. Harmer quitted the hearthrug, and sat down by Miller.

** I suppose you are right," said Miller. *' I think we have progressed from absolute promiscuity into polygamy and then into monogamy, and that we shall get back, on a higher plane, to all these institutions. But you can't make a single suggestion about regulating the sexes which is not to be found somewhere."

^^Oh, come!" cried Harmer. ^^ Why, I'll wager you anything you like that I can make a suggestion you never heard of!"

Miller smiled.

*' I'll bet you a cab fare for the two of us — and, if you live where you did, we can go together — that you can't."

*' I take it," said Harmer. '' Well, my notion is that some day husbands and wives, or whatever name they have, will live in entirely separate houses."

Miller nodded.

'* In South America — I think in Venezuela — there is a tribe where the men live on one side of the village street and the women on the other, and they never enter each other's houses, and only meet in the forests."

Harmer laughed.

** Well, I'm hanged! That's near enough. In fact, it goes further. So, if you are coming, we can go together, and I'll pay."

And the two friends left the club.

Chapter III

They walked from Piccadilly to Knightsbridge before they thought of taking the cab which Harmer owed Miller ; but then, as they had not met for many months, there was a deal of talk to be got through, and many questions to be asked.

** How is your wife ? " asked Harmer finally, as he really hailed a hansom.

** Very well, I think," said Miller. *^ But you remember the old trouble ? " Harmer nodded.

'' I don't think any one but you and she know of it, and sometimes I think it is folly on my part. And yet — no, it can't be ; the desire of offspring is very strong in most of the race who are healthy, so perhaps it's not morbidly strong in me."

'' But it troubles you still ? '' ** It does," said Miller ; ** and perhaps it makes it worse for me that, in her heart, I think she is not dissatisfied about it. Poor girl ! she always pretends, but I fancy I can see through some of her little flimsy pretences."

Harmer smoked, and did not speak for some time as they drove west.

*' Come now," said he at last, ''have you no children ? "

" Not that I'm aware of," said the traveller grimly.

*' Then it seems to me that the lecture which I was delivering when you came into the club might by some men seem extraordinarily a p7^oposr

" It has been a propos in one sense for years," returned Miller; *'but, to tell the truth, it was more than that to-night."

" Why ? " asked his friend eagerly.

** It is difificult to say exactly," said Miller, turning up the end of his beard and taking it between his teeth, *' but let it be that it was. I think you dropped in one word at the psychological moment. I really believe it might be possible for — for my wife, you know, to understand if I did go crooked in this respect. And yet "

** And yet " said Harmer.

'' And yet," went on the other, '' I just adore her. By God ! there's no woman like her, and no woman who ever will be ! She stands alone, separate, distinct, and extraordinary ; it's not my passion for her, though that has never burnt out, but I know it. She knows more, sees more, feels more than any human being I ever met. And she's like day with the sun, and night with rest to me. When I go off into the wilderness it's a wrench that sickens me ; when I come back it's paradise again. But in spite of it all, Harmer, there is polygamy in our blood — there is, and no one will ever believe how I've fought against it. If it had only

been " And he sank back into the

corner of the cab sighing.

Harmer pressed his hand.

'' Good old man ! don't trouble. What does it all matter ? Trust your nature."

** But I've two, man," said Miller desperately.

'' Shout with the larger," returned Harmer irreverently.

** Which is the larger.^" said Miller, thrusting out his under lip.

** Which," said his friend—** which ? Well, as I'm going to get out here, I'll tell you, just as a secret. It's the one that gets the upper hand after a long struggle, my friend."

And, stopping the cab, he jumped down.

'' Come up to my place any time you like, old man," he cried, *' and if you want any help or any word at any psychological moment let me know, and you shall have it. Good-night."

And he slipped off into the darkness, leaving Miller, by an oversight of his impulsive nature, to pay for the cab after all.

** I am done," said John Miller ; '' that's a fact."

Chapter IV

"In any case," Harmer had once said to Miller, *'one can't be very wrong if one speaks the truth. All real immorality is based on lies of some sort, whether they are spoken or not. It's about the only virtue I care to have. A character for truthfulness, even to one's own temporary disadvantage, is better as a permanent possession than any other quality I know. It saves one a great deal of bitterness."

This was in Miller's mind when he went out the next day, and he considered it in all its bearings.

*' I have a good mind to tell Madeline'* he said. *' How would she take it.'* Do I know ? By heavens, no ! Of course an ordinary woman would either rage, or cry, or turn into stone, and stump off, like the Commendatore, to dreadful music. But she might act like an angel, or she might have a fit, or she might sit down and play funeral marches till she fainted with fatigue, or she might coolly suggest that she should commit suicide. Yet she has often said that she would forgive me anything, so long as I really loved her. She knows that, even when she drives me to despair."

He got to his club, and sat down in the quiet tea-room for an hour.

** Of all the other women I know, on my soul I think Isabel Maitland is far and away their superior as far as brains, knowledge, and lack of conventionality go. I don*t suppose she knows how things stand with me — I haven't written to her for two years — and I have no friends who could tell her. I think Harmer is the only man in England who knows anything about it, and he doesn't talk of other men's affairs. I wonder if she's in London still ? "

He ordered tea, and, after drinking a cup, sat down and wrote a letter.

'' I don't know whether you care to see such an irregular correspondent and visitor, but if you do I am in London now for some time, having just returned from Sikkim. If you are at home I could call almost any afternoon or evening.

** Your old friend,

**JoHN Miller.*'

And having dropped this note into the box, he went to the library of the Geographical Society, where he read and wrote the whole of the afternoon. But his mind often left the printed page as he thought of Madeline.

'' I feel like a mean beast," he muttered ; ** and yet, if she were only genuinely sympathetic in this one thing, she might be the all-round ideal companion that Harmer was painting as the woman of the future, when monogamy shall be no longer an ideal."

Then he wrote a little, and dropped his pen to think of Isabel Maitland.

"It is curious how steadily we have been mere friends. I wonder now whether she has got over that fancy for me which I knew she had when I went away two years ago. It was odd how I found that out. If it hadn't been for my mad, intolerable passion for Madeline, which tortured me that once in Madrid to crying out to her as I might have done to any sympathetic soul, I should never have known."

For the story of his courtship had been such as one might expect with a woman of Madeline s strange and tempestuous nature.

When he met her in Malaga she was then engaged to a Spaniard, and he had only succeeded in winning her at the expense of half ruining himself, of making Madeline ill, and of fighting a duel in which both combatants had been desperately wounded,

'' If," thought Miller, ^* Isabel is still fond

of me, why " and then he leant on his

elbows, and stared out of the window.

** She always acted and posed as an advanced woman free from any moral superstitions. She always talked openly of these perpetual questions of sex. Perhaps she would understand. She knows I hate marriage in theory, and if I remember rightly she argued against it herself. And I am certain she feels the emptiness of hei* life. Now her mother is dead she has no one to think of directly ; she is practically as free as any woman can be."

He tried with a certain honesty to think what he could offer this woman, and he shook his head at the prospect.

'' No, it's not fair ; and of course it will come to nothing. I'm only just dreaming, and in my dream playing with fire. But if anything comes of it Til tell her all the truth as far as possible. She shall know me as well as I can tell her, and then I shall be free from the bitterest responsibility of all. She is a woman, not a child ; and a reasonable, intellectual woman, not a stormywhirlwind, half human, half divine, angelic, diabolic, like Madeline."

And somehow he laughed a little and cheered up and smiled.

'' After all, the hunting instinct isn't dead. Madeline told me not long ago she hoped it never would be. I wonder how much she meant it."

He went downstairs and played a game of billiards and laughed almost merrily with Hale.

'* Have you seen the advocate of polygamy about to-day ? " he asked.

But Hale was a wreck. He said gloomily that he felt like a living corpse, and added that drinking brandy and soda up to three in the morning did not appear to suit him. He would only talk of death, and the destruction of dynasties, and the downfall of nations. His lowness of spirits acted like a tonic on Miller, who began to feel as strong as a giant and as eager for combat. There was the promise of one for him in the air.

Chapter V

At the time Miller wrote to Isabel Maitland she was occupying a small Chelsea flat, one of a block originally built for workmen which had been seized on by clerks and many unattached people of the lower middle class. She found this gave her more liberty a a small price than was to be procured in lodgings.

*'So many landladies are apt to assume a guardianship over a single woman's morality," she said.

And feeling sure of herself both physically

and morally, for she was not devoid of

courage, after her mother's death, which left

her with fifty pounds a year, she set up for

herself.

Yet she found it desolate enough work. She had few friends, and many of them lived in far-off quarters of X-ondon. To these she attached herself without enthusiasm for the most part, but with a steady, enduring faith which found a fair reward in certain cases. But of intimate friends she had none ; there was no other woman whom she would ^ have admitted into the inmost circle of her mind. And certainly no one but herself knew how she missed Miller's occasional presence or his rare letters. She even hid from herself the knowledge that her affection for him, often for a moment in revolt against some brutal speech or strange motion of this man's mind, had grown into a concealed passion. She often recalled, however, the day in Madrid, whither she had gone with her mother to see a dying relative, when she discovered that Miller was passionately in Jove with another woman. He had spoken oddly, angrily, with a mixture of emotions, but she could see how he was tortured and wasted by madness and desire and the impossibility of things. She had cried out to herself desolately, for at the sight of him her heart had opened. Now the gates closed again, and in her soul there was the last anguish of a woman's mind. She thought that her life was fixed in its one line ; she expected to yield no more flowers ; she had to renounce love.

Yet if she renounced it, and if she was by no means so beautiful as to command it, she had for some people a charm as subtle and as incapable of satisfactory analysis as an acquired relish for some peculiar sauce or uncommon fruit. Not a single feature of her piquant and mobile face was in accordance with the dignity of ideal art, and none taken by itself was even mediocre inits modelling. Yet her eyes, which were sometimes black and sometimes brown, could sparkle or grow soft ; ^nd when they were tender they gave her a beauty always moving to those intelligent enough to perceive in her an odd personality, which, according to its kind, was perfect, if perhaps a little bizarre. She was small and perfectly formed, and she moved with a certain dainty coquetry rare among English women after their first youth is passed, and it was certain that hers had long gone by ; for she was at least thirty, and when solitude or ennui possessed her she looked it to the full. If anything moved her to disgust or anger, the quaint pouting of her mouth, in her lighter moods of simulated pettishness, gave way to a rigidity which might have seemed characteristic of a religious mind. And yet Isabel Maitland, since she abhorred dogma and professed a crude agnosticism, would have stoutly averred that she was devoid of religion in any of its known forms. But then she believed she was humorous because she could laugh, which was as if a man should show his teeth as proof of his qualities in gastronomic appreciation.

To one without humour life is ever difficult; and if to such a lack be added a lack of fibre and resolution akin to hardness, the world becomes an impossible place of absurd and cruel processes of trial and torture. That Isabel never found it this even in her worst periods of discouragement proved that she possessed the strength to endure and to suffer without yielding. And many years of struggle in surroundings which nothing but her quality of fanatic would have rendered endurable, gave her a tinge of bitterness, discernible to a subtle observer, and a real hardness, obvious to any one with eyes, towards those for whom she had no affection.

To live in perpetual conflict with h^r mother, who was both Puritan and religious, had tried her patience to the utmost. It was only after a prolonged and bitter battle that she achieved the liberty of freedom so far as to be absolved from the outward observance of formal religious duties. For at last she extorted a silent acquiescence in matters of church going which after many years was, owing to her mother's failing strength, converted finally into permission to occasionally speak her own mind and to draw conclusions from a major premiss of belief which the elder woman believed to be essentially damnable. And in addition to the domestic conflict there was a perpetual fight with the world for social recognition. Mrs. Maitland, being ambitious of a circle, was capable of pinching to keep up appearances which her annuity of three hundred a year by no means justified. And in this Isabel was not wholly at two with her mother.

'' Isabel teaches music, my dear," Mrs. Maitland said a thousand times, '' because she has peculiar ideas of independence. And, indeed, with a girl of her strange character, I sometimes think it best that she should do some work : she will take no interest in domestic matters."

Isabel, indeed, knew no more of household work or management than if she had been the daughter of some rich parvenu ; and when in her new life she had to consider such details she went helplessly to shopkeepers and, throwing herself on their mercy, asked for provisions and information with an innocence characteristic of a learned professor in his relations with the common housekeeper.

From her earliest childhood she had buried herself in books, and consumed her hours in the acquisition of knowledge ; and even when her mother s death made it necessary for her to work much harder, in her leisure she still read unceasingly. For, in addition to her love of mere knowledge, she needed an anodyne, and drugged herself with books in order to attain phantasmal possession of lost hope. She thought that Miller had utterly disappeared, and, knowing he was without ', relatives, she could see no great reason for a man of his disposition to return to England. She even believed by now that her passion for him was dead, or at least dying, but when his letter came she saw how she had deceived herself.

'* What of the other woman ? " she asked. *' Ah ! perhaps she has gone out of his life. Such a passion could not last. Did he not himself say that it was murderous and diabolical at times ? And yet he said she was the most beautiful, the sweetest woman he ever knew."

But all lovers say that; and Isabel was not uninclined to look on her unknown rival as some demon — some she-devil of curious, subtle, and poisonous arts, who could suck blood and give madness to a lover, and then laugh. She recalled a chance translation of a poem of Heine's which she had once seen.

" She had them bound And tenderly drowned.

So sorrowful swim the dead."

But at any rate he was not dead, and was in England, and cared to see her. If it meant nothing more than the old friendship, it was good to have him come back. It pleased her to think of the man's lined face, and his pointed beard, and his curiously animal eyes, which were sometimes hawklike and sometimes soft as a tame deer's. And she heard his voice again, with its uncommon timbre ; she saw him stand near her, so much taller than herself, and take her hands, and look at her with at least affection in those eyes ; and she heard him say, ''Well, well, my friend, so we do meet again ? " And her own eyes softened, and her colour rose no little, as she sat down to answer his note. But how carefully and coldly she phrased it !

'* I am not now in Highgate, but your letter came to me here. I am glad to know you are back in England ; and if you care to call some evening during the week I shall be pleased to have a talk with you. Perhaps Thursday would suit me best, about half-past eight*

''Your friend,

" Isabel Maitland."

When it was gone she blamed herself for not saying Monday. Why not Monday, indeed ? Why should she wait so long to see her friend ? For, of course, he was only a friend. No, he would never be more ; it was absurd of her to think of him in any other light. He would no more settle down than the hawk he resembled. Always mad and wild, he would go on through life as a kind of superhuman demon — a queer, strange, out-of-the-way mortal, not to be judged quite as others — a genius who had done nothing but explore unknown parts of far-off lands, a man whose name was unknown save to a very few.

So she passed the time from Saturday to Thursday. But ever and again, when her intellect loosed its hold, either at night or in some moment of dream before the day caught and fixed her soul, her fibres were relaxed, and the senses sang clearer ; she knew her own heart and pleaded for a little joy. Life as it went was so devoid of real pleasure — and how good it seemed to let 4 herself go for a moment ! Her barred emotions cried, like Sterne's starling, for the Elysian fields and the sun and lucid air.