Clytie was confined several days to her room through her sprained
ankle. It was not an unqualified affliction, as it solved the question
of her dining with the Claverings.
Thornton went alone, carrying with him his wife's excuses and regrets,
and returned to her in high spirits. When she was able to get about
again the Claverings had left Paris for Homburg, where they were going
to stay for a few weeks. “And when they return to London we can see just
as much or as little of them as we like,” said Thornton.
The forced confinement also brought Clytie a little more solitude than
usual. Thornton found a race meeting or two to go to, and a nominally
bachelor supper party, and he laughed, in his gay manner, at this
resumption of bachelor habits. Clytie was rather glad, on the whole,
to be left to her own society for a little. She was gradually awakening
from the dream, realising herself. Very often in the ordinary, sober
moments of life Thornton jarred upon her. His absence often was a
relief. She hated herself when this unwelcome and unbidden thought came
into her mind; but it came for all her hating. The sprained ankle marked
definitely the end of this second or false honeymoon in Paris, whose
glamour was the lingering twilight glow of the real one in Bordighera.
It was then that Clytie first thought of the railway journey as a
landmark. After her recovery Thornton continued his bachelor habits as
a matter of course, and as a matter of course discontinued his playful
apologies. Still he took Clytie whithersoever she expressed a desire to
go, and gladly, proud of having his beautiful wife by his side. Only,
if she elected to remain at home, he went out equally cheerfully by
himself.
Occasionally they drove in the Bois in a neat phaeton and pair which he
hired for her from a livery-stable, and he would point out to her the
celebrities whom they passed by. Some of these she had herself met
or seen at the various social functions to which they had received
invitations. They themselves, too, had become known and were pointed
out with some curiosity,--_le beau couple_, as the phrase went,--even
by those who were unacquainted with their name or position. Thornton was
always in his gayest humour on these occasions as he sat by his wife's
side and guided his pair through the crush of magnificent equipages; and
she felt glad too and elated, pleased by the vivid flashes of colouring
in dresses and parasols, and the vague perfumes that filled the air, and
the half-caught scraps of conversation and laughter. Her girlish delight
at the gladness of life came back to her fresh and untainted. She
indulged her old habit of speculation on the life that lay beneath
individual faces, which she stored up in her memory for rapid sketching
when at leisure, and she would draw Thornton into her vein, and then
there were arguments without end. These were some of her happiest
moments in Paris, when she recovered her old self, bright, satirical,
paradoxical, and felt no cold hand on her heart.
One day, towards the end of their stay in Paris, they had drawn up
in the block of carriages by the side of the promenade. The sun was
powerful, and the glaring colours in the carriages contrasted with the
cool tones of white and gray in the deep shade under the chestnut-trees.
Clytie was animatedly observing the bright scene when her eyes met
those of a woman, quietly though expensively dressed, seated in an open
carriage quite close by. For a moment they looked at one another in
silent inquiry, and then came a flash of mutual recognition. It was the
girl whom Clytie had met the summer before in the hotel at Dinan. The
scene, with its mingled associations of wonder and pity, came back
to her, and moved by a strong impulse she smiled and moved her head
slightly. A look of eager wonderment came over the other's face as she
returned Clytie's greeting. And then she turned quickly away to talk to
a man who had just come up to the side of the carriage.
“Confound it, Clytie!” cried Thornton, setting the horses in motion,
“you must really make sure who people are before you bow to them. Do you
know who that woman is?”
“Yes,” said Clytie, “that is to say, I know what she is. I don't know
her name.”
“She is one of the most notorious women in Paris, Loulou Mendès. You
mustn't go playing the fool like this! What did you bow to her for?”
“Because I know her--a little.”
“You--know--her?”
“Oh, yes, Thornton dear; it is somewhat of a story. I met her
accidentally last year in Dinan. She was in trouble, and I took a fancy
for her, and seeing her suddenly here, I showed her that I recognised
her.”
“I sincerely hope you won't do such a thing again,” he said shortly,
giving a vicious cut to the horses that sent them spinning down the
_allée_. “And please to remember that you are not an amateur Bohemian
any longer, but my wife.”
“Oh, Thornton, you mustn't say things like that!” said Clytie, with a
queer little catch at her throat. “They hurt me!”
“Well, you mustn't deserve them,” replied Thornton. And then, mollifying
at the sight of her distress: “You don't understand these things, little
wife.”
“Well, never mind, dear,” said Clytie. “Perhaps it was foolish of me. I
ought to have considered you; I didn't think of it. She kissed my hand
the last time I saw her, and it would have seemed base and hypocritical
to have cut her dead to-day. It seemed such a little matter. Why hurt
the girl's feelings? That's why I did it.”
“Feelings?” echoed Thornton, with a laugh. “Bah! my good child, you are
talking nonsense. She put her feelings up the spout years ago to get
herself champagne and diamonds and the rest of it. With her soul sold
to the devil and her body to men, what the deuce is she going to do with
feelings?”
“What I saw of her was very human, Thornton. And if such women are
brutes, it is men who make them so. If men were only kinder and
tenderer----”
“Like the sentimental idiot in 'Jenny.' That's a poem about it, you
know.”
“Yes--Rossetti; I am very fond of it,” she replied, with a half smile,
wondering somewhat at his explanation. Then she added: “But surely
there's humanity in every human being.”
“That's a very sweet, innocent belief, and you had better keep to it, my
dear.”
“Oh, Thornton, I'm not an ignorant little schoolgirl,” she said, with
hurt vanity. “I have learned something of the world. Perhaps I have been
too eager to acquaint myself with things.”
“Anyhow, you can't know much about them,” he replied shortly. “Leave
such things alone. They don't concern you, so what's the good of prying
into them?”
“They have concerned me,” she insisted. “Believe me, Thornton, it was
something deeper than ordinary morbid curiosity that led me to them.”
“But I can't see what the deuce the Social Question has to do with
girls,” he said. “That is what licks me. What the dickens has it got to
do with your life?”
“But you mistake, Thornton,” she replied eagerly, with a return of her
old earnestness. “It is not the Social Question. Indeed not. I
never have any call to look at things in that aspect. I am neither a
sociologist nor a reformer. I am an artist. I have to express certain
truths about human beings,--the little talent I have lies entirely that
way,--and in order to express the truths I had to set to work to learn
them. How all this corruption affects society, how it is to be done
away with and so on, does not come within my province. But to get to
the hearts and inner feelings of individuals, to see how society affects
them, what justification they have in their struggle with it, how they
contemplate life, what elements of emotion, or passion, or weariness, or
what not form essential parts of their beings that do not form essential
parts of mine--to try to do that, Thornton, _has_ been my business, and,
till I knew you, was the dearest motive of my life. Don't you see?”
“And when you have done it what good will it do to yourself or anybody
else?”
“To answer you I should have to appear conceited. It would be answering
the question, What is the good of art at all?”
“Well, all said and done, what is the good of it? To make pretty and
amusing things to look at. All the rest is cant and humbug--including
your desire to scrape acquaintance with loose women for artistic
purposes. Look here, little wife”--and he turned round, with a sharp
smile that showed his white teeth more than usual--“I didn't fall in
love with you because you were an artist and held highfalutin' theories
about artistic ideals and so forth, but because you were the woman whose
loveliness appealed to me and always fascinated me. And now you are my
wife you have other things to think about.”
“I know that, Thornton,” she replied, staring a little wistfully in
front of her. “Tell me. What is our new life going to be like? You speak
so little of it that I scarcely know.”
“Oh! what's the good of worrying yourself about it yet? I'll tell you
when the time comes. You'll have our position in society to look after,
keep things going straight for me in quarters where a woman can wheedle
out more in an hour than a man in a twelvemonth. I have definitely taken
up politics, you know. Things were settled this morning.”
“Oh, why didn't you tell me before?” she cried involuntarily.
“I never thought of it, my dear. Well, Hernshawe has asked me whether I
would care to be his private secretary. His present man is in the Civil
Service and is resigning owing to some office promotion, so when the
House meets after the Whitsuntide recess Hernshawe will be free to take
me.”
“I don't quite understand,” said Clytie, to whom these details were all
new. She was vaguely aware that Thornton had intentions of aiming at a
parliamentary career, but as he had volunteered no confidences, she had
shrunk from soliciting them.
“I don't understand,” she repeated, “why you should take a
private-secretaryship. You want to enter Parliament.”
“Of course. But I am so out of things that I want to get into training,
so to speak. I shall be this session, perhaps next, with Hernshawe and
learn all the ropes, and then he will run me for a suitable vacancy.
It is as simple as good-morning, as they say in this country. I must do
something, and politics seem about the only mildly exciting thing to
go in for in this severely flat and respectable continent. But beyond
looking after the society side of the matter, I don't see why you need
worry your pretty head about it.”
“Then don't you want me to become a bit of a politician, so as to help
you, and understand you in your career?”
“Oh, of course, to a certain extent,” he replied with cheerful
offhandedness. “But for God's sake, my dear child, don't become a
political woman. If there's one kind of a woman I bar more than another,
its the female politician. Of course you'll have to go round canvassing
for votes at the election, and to humbug people in society, but all that
is rather sport than otherwise? Never mind, little wife; you'll have a
ripping good time in London when the show begins.”
He laughed, in gay good humour again. Clytie echoed with a faint smile.
“Thornton,” she said after a short pause, “I don't want to bother you
about politics if you don't like it”--she felt now a strange hesitation
in speaking to him--“but you know you'll have to convert me, dear. It
has been on my mind for some time. You are a Tory, you know, and I have
been a Radical hitherto in feelings and sympathies.”
He burst out laughing at her little air of seriousness. Perhaps if
he had known how he hurt her, he would not have treated the matter so
cavalierly. This difference in political views had been a question of
some concern to Clytie, who was aware of old-fashioned Tory prejudices.
And Thornton took her Radicalism as a jest, attributing no importance to
the difference of opinion.
“You'll change when we get back and become a shining light in the
Primrose League.”
She was too depressed by the whole of the foregoing conversation to
pursue the subject any further. Thornton started the lighter topic of
personal criticism of their new acquaintances in Paris, and rattled on
in great spirits. He had forgotten entirely the argument that Clytie's
somewhat unconventional action had occasioned, and was as boyishly gay
as ever. But men forget things much more easily than women, especially
when they have no object in remembering, nor any reminiscent twinge of
susceptibility.
That evening Clytie spent alone. Thornton was dining at the Café des
Ambassadeurs with some men from the Embassy. He had kissed her before
he started, called himself a selfish brute for condemning her to a dull
evening, and went away humming a café-concert air. She did not mind his
leaving her, took it now as a matter of course that each should be to
a certain extent independent of the other; for the glamour of the
south had departed, and the practicalities of life had begun to assert
themselves. But it was the first wretched evening of her married life.
She would have liked to cry, but as she was not of those who cry easily,
she sat with eyes all the more painful for being strained and tearless.
She had received a great shock. Ever since she had rebelled against
the Durdleham formula that men were to descend from their intellectual
sublimity when they spoke to women, lest like Semele the latter should
be consumed in the Jovian blaze, she had been accustomed to meet men
freely on an intellectual level. To find herself in a society where this
particular formula was unknown had been one of the earliest joys of her
emancipated life. She had very little vanity in the matter of her own
attainments, but she took it for granted that her associates should
recognise in her a woman of ordinary culture, capable of forming
rational opinions. Her intelligence was keen, her judgment fine. She
had read, thought, observed. Her art was to a certain extent a matter
of intellect as well as of instinctive feeling, and in this respect had
been stimulated by her intercourse with Kent. In the glow of her young,
ardent nature she had committed many extravagances, but they all had
borne the indubitable stamp of a mind strenuous in its endeavours. None
but fools had ever thought of condescending to Clytie because she was a
woman.
And now for the first time she was coolly shown that she was a woman,
that her opinions were not worth serious consideration, that she must
not trouble her pretty-head about things that were too deep for her. And
by the man, above all, whose life she shared. They were hours of dull,
dazed humiliation that she spent alone that evening; hours that were not
lost even in the pain of her after life. Over the absence of sympathy
with her own pursuits she was only a little regretful. It would have
been nicer if Thornton had been able to take a pleasure in her art. But
she was too large-natured not to be able to bridge over this small gap
between them. She was ready to sacrifice her art entirely to her love,
was eager to throw herself into his interests and ambitions. But she
demanded a full, vigorous share. To live an empty life was with her an
impossibility. And to this life Thornton, in his good-natured contempt
for her powers, was condemning her. She was puzzled, humiliated,
frightened.
There is a vague mystery of woe in the dawn of a dreary day.
Meanwhile Thornton was enjoying himself amazingly. The dinner was one
which, as Heine says, “ought to be partaken of kneeling,” and the wine
was excellent; the party well chosen, the talk essentially, broadly
masculine. There is a certain type of man whose conversation is wholly
made up of sport in its various aspects, women, shop, and crude personal
gossip--a type which numbers its tens of thousands in English society.
It can be met with, to utter weariness of the soul, in any heterogeneous
gathering of upper- and middle-class Britons. They are God's creatures,
it is true; many of them are possessed of estimable qualities, some of
them have performed deeds of heroism. But as a type they are a glaring
satire upon the vaunted culture and refinement of our civilisation.
And it is a remarkable thing how little their power and influence are
recognised by writers in their analysis of the spirit of this dying
nineteenth century. This vast overwhelming type does not read, does not
think, does not care for art or music, has no power of penetration to
the heart of delicate things. It is dull, brawny, selfish, and a pillar
of the Church and State. Its main subjective characteristic is the
brutality of its views concerning women--varying from the kindly disdain
of its highest members to the degraded brutality of its lowest.
Of this type, with all his physical charm, his brilliant personality and
splendid capacities for action, was Thornton Hammerdyke. The man whose
magnetism had drawn Clytie irresistibly, headlong into his arms was
only, after all, a representative of this ignoble, commonplace order of
men. The love that had flooded Clytie's being with wild surging tumult
was only, after all, the commonplace, ignoble passion of his type. There
are some things so elementary that analysis quickly comes to an end. Put
in a strip of litmus paper and it is done.
He was honestly glad to be free of Clytie. With unconscious cynicism he
never sought to disguise it from himself. With Carteret of the Hussars
and Swithin and Holyoake of the Embassy he was in his proper sphere.
They were of the type. He had interests in common with them. The fact
that he was a man of high distinction was neither here nor there. Over
the fish and _entrées_ they talked of racing and shooting; over the game
they wandered along the upper galleries of the Cloaca Maxima of Paris;
over the peaches and Château-Mouton they told foul stories. An ignoble,
commonplace dinner party.
And Clytie was alone in her room at the hotel staring at an unknown
future.