THE MOTHER
1
The happiness Mrs. Hilary now enjoyed was of the religious type--a deep,
warm glow, which did not lack excitement. She felt as those may be
presumed to feel who have just been converted to some church--newly
alive, and sunk in spiritual peace, and in profound harmony with life.
Where were the old rubs, frets, jars and ennuis? Vanished, melted like
yesterday's snows in the sun of this new peace. It was as if she had cast
her burden upon the Lord. That, said her psycho-analyst doctor, was quite
in order; that was what it ought to be like. That was, in effect, what
she had in point of fact done; only the place of the Lord was filled by
himself. To put the matter briefly, transference of burden had been
effected; Mrs. Hilary had laid all her cares, all her perplexities, all
her grief, upon this quiet, acute-looking man, who sat with her twice a
week for an hour, drawing her out, arranging her symptoms for her,
penetrating the hidden places of her soul, looking like a cross between
Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Henry Ainley. Her confidence in him was, he told
her, the expression of the father-image, which surprised Mrs. Hilary a
little, because he was twenty years her junior.
Mrs. Hilary felt that she was getting to know herself very well indeed.
Seeing herself through Mr. Cradock's mind, she felt that she was indeed a
curious jumble of complexes, of strange, mysterious impulses, desires and
fears. Alarming, even horrible in some ways; so that often she thought
"Can he be right about me? Am I really like that? Do I really hope that
Marjorie (Jim's wife) will die, so that Jim and I may be all in all to
each other again? Am I really so wicked?" But Mr. Cradock said that it
was not at all wicked, perfectly natural and normal--the Unconscious
_was_ like that. And worse than that; how much worse he had to break to
Mrs. Hilary, who was refined and easily shocked, by gentle hints and slow
degrees, lest she should be shocked to death. Her dreams, which she had
to recount to him at every sitting, bore such terrible significance--they
grew worse and worse in proportion, as Mrs. Hilary could stand more.
"Ah well," Mrs. Hilary sighed uneasily, after an interpretation into
strange terms of a dream she had about bathing, "it's very odd, when I've
never even thought about things like that."
"Your Unconscious," said Mr. Cradock, firmly, "has thought the more. The
more your Unconscious is obsessed by a thing, the less your conscious
self thinks of it. It is shy of the subject, for that very reason."
Mrs. Hilary was certainly shy of the subject, for that reason or others.
When she felt too shy of it, Mr. Cradock let her change it. "It may be
true," she would say, "but it's very terrible, and I would rather not
dwell on it."
So he would let her dwell instead on the early days of her married life,
or on the children's childhood, or on her love for Neville and Jim, or on
her impatience with her mother.
2
They were happy little times, stimulating, cosy little times. They spoke
straight to the heart, easing it of its weight of tragedy. A splendid
man, Mr. Cradock, with his shrewd, penetrating sympathy, his kind
firmness. He would listen with interest to everything; the sharp words
she had had with Grandmama, troubles with the maids, the little rubs
of daily life (and what a rubbing business life is, to be sure!) as
well as to profounder, more tragic accounts of desolation, jealousy,
weariness and despair. He would say "Your case is a very usual one,"
so that she did not feel ashamed of being like that. He reduced it all,
dispassionately and yet not unsympathetically, and with clear scientific
precision, to terms of psychical and physical laws. He trained his
patient to use her mind and her will, as well as to remember her dreams
and to be shocked at nothing that they signified.
Mrs. Hilary would wake each morning, or during the night, and clutch at
the dream which was flying from her, clutch and secure it, and make it
stand and deliver its outlines to her. She was content with outlines; it
was for Mr. Cradock to supply the interpretation. Sometimes, if Mrs.
Hilary couldn't remember any dreams, he would supply, according to a
classic precedent, the dream as well as the interpretation. But on the
whole, deeply as she revered and admired him, Mrs. Hilary preferred to
remember her own dreams; what they meant was bad enough, but the meaning
of the dreams that Mr. Cradock told her she had dreamt was beyond all
words.... That terrible Unconscious! Mrs. Hilary disliked it excessively;
she felt rather as if it were a sewer, sunk beneath an inadequate
grating.
But from Mr. Cradock she put up with hearing about it. She would have put
up with anything. He was so steadying and so wonderful. He enabled her to
face life with a new poise, a fresh lease of strength and vitality. She
told Grandmama so. Grandmama said "Yes, my dear, I've observed it in you.
It sounds to me an unpleasing business, but it is obviously doing you
good, so far. I only wish it may last. The danger may be reaction, after
you have finished the course and lost touch with this young man." (Mr.
Cradock was forty-five, but Grandmama, it must be remembered, was
eighty-four.) "You will have to guard against that. In a way it was a
pity you didn't take up church-going instead; religion lasts."
"And these quackeries do not," Grandmama finished her sentence to
herself, not wishing to be discouraging.
"Not always," Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning that religion did not
always last.
"No," Grandmama agreed. "Unfortunately not always. Particularly when it
is High Church. There was your uncle Bruce, of course...."
Mrs. Hilary's uncle Bruce, who had been High Church for a season, and had
even taken Orders in the year 1860, but whose faith had wilted in the
heat and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic barrister,
took Grandmama back through the last century, and she became reminiscent
over the Tractarian movement, and, later, the Ritualists.
"The Queen never could abide them," said Grandmama. "Nor could Lord
Beaconsfield, nor your father, though he was always kind and tolerant.
I remember when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked about
it.... Ah well, they've become very prominent since then, and done a
great deal of good work, and there are many very able, excellent men and
women among them.... But they're not High Church any longer, they tell
me. They're Catholics in these days. I don't know enough of them to judge
them, but I don't think they can have the dignity of the old High Church
party, for if they had I can't imagine that Gilbert's wife, for instance,
would have joined them, even for so short a time as she did.... Well, it
suits some people, and psycho-analysis obviously suits others. Only I do
hope you will try to keep moderate and balanced, my child, and not
believe all this young man tells you. Parts of it do sound so very
strange."
(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeating to Grandmama the
strangest parts of all.)
"I feel a new woman," she said, fervently, and Grandmama smiled, well
pleased, thinking that it certainly did seem rather like the old
evangelical conversions of her youth. (Which, of course, did not always
last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.)
All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly caution, which came
however less from age than from having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three
years, was "Well, well, we must see."
3
And then Rosalind's letter came. It came by the afternoon post--the big,
mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner.
"Gilbert's wife," pronounced Grandmama, non-committally from her easy
chair, and, said in that tone, it was quite sufficient comment. "Another
cup of tea, please, Emily."
Mrs. Hilary gave it to her, then began to read aloud the letter from
Gilbert's wife. Gilbert's wife was one of the topics upon which she and
Grandmama were in perfect accord, only that Mrs. Hilary was irritated
when Grandmama pushed the responsibility for the relationship onto her by
calling Rosalind "your daughter-in-law."
Mrs. Hilary began to read the letter in the tone used by well-bred women
when they would, if in a slightly lower social stratum, say "Fancy that
now! Did you ever, the brazen hussy!" Grandmama listened, cynically
disapproving, prepared to be disgusted yet entertained. On the whole she
thoroughly enjoyed letters from Gilbert's wife. She settled down
comfortably in her chair with her second cup of tea, while Mrs. Hilary
read two pages of what Grandmama called "foolish chit-chat." Rosalind's
letters were really like the gossipping imbecilities written by Eve of
the Tatler, or the other ladies who enliven our shinier-paper weeklies
with their bright personal babble. She did not often waste one of them on
her mother-in-law; only when she had something to say which might annoy
her.
"Do you hear from Nan?" the third page of the letter began. "I hear from
the Bramertons, who are wintering in Rome--the Charlie Bramertons, you
know, great friends of mine and Gilbert's (he won a pot of money on the
Derby this year and they've a dinky flat in some palace out there--), and
they meet Nan about, and she's always with Stephen Lumley, the painter
(rotten painter, if you ask me, but he's somehow diddled London into
admiring him, don't expect you've heard of him down at the seaside).
Well, they're quite simply _always_ together, and the Brams say that
everyone out there says it isn't in the least an ambiguous case--no two
ways about it. He doesn't live with his wife, you know. You'll excuse me
passing this on to you, but it does seem you ought to know. I mentioned
it to Neville the other day, just before the poor old dear went down with
the plague, but you know what Neville is, she always sticks up for Nan
and doesn't care _what_ she does, or what people say. People are talking;
beasts, aren't they! But that's the way of this wicked old world, we all
do it. Gilbert's quite upset about it, says Nan ought to manage her
affairs more quietly. But after all and between you and me it's not the
first time Nan's been a Town Topic, is it.
"How's the psycho going? Isn't Cradock rather a priceless pearl? You're
over head and ears with him by now, of course, we all are. Psycho
wouldn't do you any good if you weren't, that's the truth. Cradock told
me himself once that transference can't be effected without the patient
being a little bit smitten. Personally I should give up a man patient at
once if he didn't rather like me. But isn't it soothing and comforting,
and doesn't it make you feel good all over, like a hot bath when you're
fagged out...."
But Mrs. Hilary didn't get as far as this. She stopped at "not the first
time Nan's been a Town Topic...." and dropped the thin mauve sheets onto
her lap, and looked at Grandmama, her face queerly tight and flushed, as
if she were about to cry.
Grandmama had finished her tea, and had been listening quietly.
Mrs. Hilary said "Oh, my God," and jerked her head back, quivering like
a nervous horse who has had a shock and does not care to conceal it.
"Your daughter-in-law," said Grandmama, without excitement, "is an
exceedingly vulgar young woman."
"Vulgar? Rosalind? But of course.... Only that doesn't affect Nan...."
"Your daughter-in-law," Grandmama added, "is also a very notorious liar."
"A liar ... oh yes, yes, yes.... But this time it's true. Oh I feel,
I know, it's true. Nan _would_. That Stephen Lumley--he's been hanging
about her for ages. ... Oh yes, it's true what they say. The very
worst...."
Grandmama glanced at her curiously. The very worst in that direction
had become strangely easier of credence by Mrs. Hilary lately. Grandmama
had observed that. Mr. Cradock's teaching had not been without its
effect. According to Mr. Cradock, people were usually engaged either in
practising the very worst, or in desiring to practise it, or in wishing
and dreaming that they had practised it. It was the nature of mankind,
and not in the least reprehensible, though curable. Thus Mr. Cradock.
Mrs. Hilary had, against her own taste, absorbed part of his teaching,
but nothing could ever persuade her that it was not reprehensible: it
quite obviously was. Also disgusting. Mr. Cradock might say what he
liked. It _was_ disgusting. And when the man had a wife....
"It is awful," said Mrs. Hilary. "Awful.... It must be stopped. I shall
go to Rome. At once."
"That won't stop it, dear, if it is going on. It will only irritate the
young people."
"Irritate! You can use a word like that! Mother, you don't realise this
ghastly thing."
"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on with this artist. And
very wrong it is, if so. All I say is that your going to Rome won't stop
it. You know that you and Nan don't always get on very smoothly. You rub
each other up.... It would be far better if someone else went. Neville,
say."
"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tightly on that. She was
glad Neville was ill; she had always hated (she could not help it) the
devotion between Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood,
flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful and perverse,
long before she could have put into words the qualities in Mrs. Hilary
which made her like that, had always gone to Neville, nine years older,
to be soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had reprimanded the
little naughty sister, had told her she must be "decent to mother--feel
decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put
it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of
scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter
to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of
Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who
gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional,
spasmodic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness, should to
Neville give all.
"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be fit to travel out
of England this winter. Influenza coming on the top of that miserable
breakdown is a thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when she
is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak till the summer. I am
really anxious about her. No; Neville is quite out of the question."
"Well, what about Pamela?"
"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work.... Besides, why should Pamela go,
or Neville, rather than I? A girl's mother is obviously the right person.
I may not be of much use to my children in these days, but at least I
hope I can save them from themselves."
"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said Grandmama, who
doubtless knew.
"But, mother, what would you _have_ me do? Sit with my hands before me
while my daughter lives in sin? What's _your_ plan?"
"I'm too old to make plans, dear. I can only look on at the world. I've
looked at the world now for many, many years, and I've learnt that only
great wisdom and great love can change people's decisions as to their way
of life, or turn them from evil courses. Frankly, my child, I doubt if
you have, where Nan is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough
sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But do you feel you
understand the child enough to interfere wisely and successfully?"
"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know you've always thought
me a fool. Good God, if a mother can't interfere with her own daughter to
save her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should like to know?"
"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama said, sadly.
"Perhaps you'd like to go yourself," Mrs. Hilary shot at her, quivering
now with anger and feeling.
"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome I should know that I was
too old to interfere with the lives of the young. I don't understand them
enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose you must go and try. I
can't stop you."
"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me.... You're singularly
unsympathetic, mother, about this awful business."
"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very
sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have
always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be
great provocation to it."
"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what he liked on that
subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary that it was not awful except in so
far as any other yielding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law
of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like many other people,
she set that particular sin apart, in a special place by itself; she
would talk of "a bad woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost
her character," and mean merely the one kind of badness, the one
manifestation of immorality, the one element in character. Dishonesty
and cruelty she could forgive, but never that.
"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically
resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock to-morrow."
"That young man? Must he know about Nan's affairs, my dear?"
"I have to tell him everything, mother. It's part of the course. He is as
secret as the grave."
Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the grave, would have to ease
herself of the sad tale to someone or other in the course of the next
day, and supposed that it had better be to Mr. Cradock, who seemed to be
a kind of hybrid of doctor and clergyman, and so presumably was more
discreet than an ordinary human being. Emily must tell. Emily always
would. That was why she enjoyed this foolish psycho-analysis business so
much.
At the very thought of it a gleam had brightened Mrs. Hilary's eyes,
and her rigid, tense pose had relaxed. Oh the comfort of telling Mr.
Cradock! Even if he did tell her how it was all in the course of nature,
at least he would sympathise with her trouble about it, and her annoyance
with Grandmama. And he would tell her how best to deal with Nan when
she got to her. Nan's was the sort of case that Mr. Cradock really
did understand. Any situation between the sexes--he was all over it.
Psycho-analysts adored sex; they made an idol of it. They communed with
it, as devotees with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their
whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes vaguely felt. But as,
like the gods of the other devotees, it was to them immanent, everywhere
and in everything; they could be always happy. If they went up into
heaven it was there; if they fled down into hell it was there also. Once,
when Mrs. Hilary had tentatively suggested that Freud, for instance,
over-stated its importance, Mr. Cradock had said firmly "It is impossible
to do that," which settled it once and for all.
Mrs. Hilary stood up. Her exalted, tragic mood clothed her like a flowing
garment.
"I shall write to Cook," she said. "Also to Nan, to tell her I am
coming."
Grandmama, after a moment's silence, seemed to gather herself together
for a final effort.
"Emily, my child. Is your mind set to do this?"
"Absolutely, mother. Absolutely and entirely."
"Shall I tell you what I think? No, you don't want to hear it, but you
drive me to it.... If you go to that foolish, reckless child and attempt
to interfere with her, or even to question her, you will run the risk, if
she is innocent, of driving her into what you are trying to prevent. If
she is already committed to it, you run the risk of shutting the door
against her return. In either case you will alienate her from yourself:
that is the least of the risks you run, though the most certain.... That
is all. I can say no more. But I ask you, my dear.... I beg you, for the
child's sake and your own ... to write neither to Cook nor to Nan."
Grandmama's breath came rather fast and heavily; her heart was troubling
her; emotion and effort were not good for it.
Mrs. Hilary stood looking down at the old shrunk figure, shaking a little
as she stood, knowing that she must be patient and calm.
"You will please allow me to judge. You will please let me take the steps
I think necessary to help my child. I know that you have no confidence in
my judgment or my tact; you've always shown that plainly enough, and done
your best to teach my children the same view of me...."
Grandmama put up her hand, meaning that she could not stand, neither she
nor her heart could stand, a scene. Mrs. Hilary broke off. For once she
did not want a scene either. In these days she found what vent was
necessary for her emotional system in her interviews with Mr. Cradock.
"I daresay you mean well, mother. But in this matter I must be the judge.
I am a mother first and foremost. It is the only thing that life has left
for me to be." (Scarcely a daughter, she meant: that was made too
difficult for her; you would almost imagine that the office was not
wanted.)
She turned to the writing table.
"First of all I shall write to Rosalind, and tell her what I think of her
and her abominable gossip."
She began to write.
Grandmama sat shrunk and old and tired in her chair.
Mrs. Hilary's pen scratched over the paper, telling Rosalind what she
thought.
"Dear Rosalind," she wrote, "I was very much surprised at your
letter. I do not know why you should trouble to repeat to me these
ridiculous stories about Nan. You cannot suppose that I am likely to
care either what you or any of your friends are saying about one of my
children...." And so on. One knows the style. It eases the mind of the
writer and does not deceive the reader. When the reader is Rosalind
Hilary it amuses her vastly.
4
Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cradock all about it. Mr.
Cradock was not in the least surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the
remotest doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing what Mrs. Hilary
called living in sin, what he preferred to call obeying the natural ego.
(After all, as any theologian would point out, the terms are synonymous
in a fallen world.)
"I must have your advice," Mrs. Hilary said. "You must tell me what line
to take with her."
"Shall you," Mr. Cradock enquired, thoughtful and intelligent, "find your
daughter in a state of conflict?"
Mrs. Hilary spread her hands helplessly before her.
"I know nothing; nothing."
"A very great deal," said Mr. Cradock, "depends on that. If she is torn
between the cravings of the primitive ego and the inhibitions put upon
these cravings by the conventions of society--if, in fact, her censor,
her endopsychic censor, is still functioning...."
"Oh, I doubt if Nan's got an endopsychic censor. She is so lawless
always."
"Every psyche has a censor." Mr. Cradock was firm. "Regarded, of course,
by the psyche with very varying degrees of respect. Well, what I mean to
say is, if your daughter is in a state of conflict, with forces pulling
her both ways, her case will be very much easier to deal with than if she
has let her primitive ego so take possession of the situation that she
feels in a state of harmony. In the former case, you will only have to
strengthen the forces which are opposing her sexual craving...."
Mrs. Hilary fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, I don't think Nan feels _that_
exactly. None of my children...."
Mr. Cradock gave her an amused glance. It seemed sometimes that he would
never get this foolish lady properly educated.
"Your children, I presume, are human, Mrs. Hilary. Sexual craving means
a craving for intimacy with a member of another sex."
"Oh well, I suppose it does. I don't care for the _name_, somehow. But
please go on."
"I was going to say, if you find, on the other hand, that your daughter's
nature has attained harmony in connection with this course she is
pursuing, your task will be far more difficult. You will then have to
_create_ a discord, instead of merely strengthening it.... May I ask your
daughter's age?"
"Nan is thirty-three."
"A dangerous age."
"All Nan's ages," said Mrs. Hilary, "have been dangerous. Nan is like
that."
"As to that," said Mr. Cradock, "we may say that all ages are dangerous
to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a
specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shynesses
and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and
discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or
unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them
the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.... Has passion always
been a strong element in your daughter's life?"
"Oh, passion...." (Another word not liked by Mrs. Hilary.) "Not quite
that, I should say. Nan has been reckless; she has got into scrapes, got
herself talked about. She has played about with men a good deal always.
But as to passion...."
"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were reassuringly.
"Nothing to fight shy of, or be afraid of. But something to be regulated
of course.... Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular desire of
your daughter's for this man a new and a stronger set of desires. Fight
one group of complexes with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her
to be analysed? There are good analysts in Rome."
"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at everything of that sort."
"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow and foolish people.
They might as well laugh at surgery.... Well now, to go into this
question of the battle between the complex-groups...."
He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His phrases drifted over
Mrs. Hilary's head.
"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from
stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent
up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic
modes ... conflict with the progress of human society ... inhibitory and
repressive power of the censor...." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary,
to be able to talk so like a book for so long together!) ... "give the
censor all the help we can ... keep the Unconscious in order by turning
its energies into some other channel ... give it a substitute.... The
energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another sex can be
diverted ... employed on some useful work. Libido ... it should all be
used. Find another channel for your daughter's libido.... Her life is
perhaps a rather vacant one?"
That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to.
"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of energy. Too full. Always
doing a thousand things. And she writes, you know."
"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of libido is used up by that.
Well, her present strong desire for this man should be sublimated into a
desire for something else. I gather that her root trouble is lawlessness.
That can be cured. You must make her remember her first lawless action."
(Man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.)
"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be impossible. When she was
a month old she used to attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor."
"People have even remembered their baptisms, when driven back to them by
analysis."
"Our children were not baptised. My husband was something of a Unitarian.
He said he would not tie them up with a rite against which they might
react in later life. So they were merely registered."
"Ah. In a way that is a pity. Baptism is an impressive moment in the
sensitive consciousness of the infant. It has sometimes been found
to be a sort of lamp shining through the haze of the early memory.
Registration, owing to the non-participation of the infant, is useless
in that way."
"Nan might remember how she kicked me when I short-coated her," Mrs.
Hilary mused, hopefully.
Mr. Cradock flowed on. Mrs. Hilary, listened, assented, was impressed. It
all sounded so simple, so wonderful, even so beautiful. But she thought
once or twice, "He doesn't know Nan."
"Thank you," she said, rising to go when her hour was over. "You have
made me feel so much stronger, as usual. I can't thank you enough for all
you do for me. I could face none of my troubles and problems but for your
help."
"That merely means," said Mr. Cradock, who always got the last word,
"that your ego is at present in what is called the state of infantile
dependence or tutelage. A necessary but an impermanent stage in its
struggle towards the adult level of the reality-principle."
"I suppose so," Mrs. Hilary said. "Good-bye."
"He is too clever for me," she thought, as she went home. "He is often
above my head." But she was used to that in the people she met.