THE PROUD LOVER.
Thence I proceeded straight to Robert. Man, I discovered, is in these
matters more difficult than woman. Pride, to begin with--you shall see
how horrid an obstacle was pride. Never before had I understood the
ecclesiastical hatred of pride. I went about my business in the grand
or diplomatic style. That is, I concealed the real object, and worked
round to it. I believe that it is always easy to deceive a strong mind.
That is to say, it is a part of strength to proclaim a purpose and to
march straight towards it. It is your weak, knock-kneed persons who,
having always to crawl and wriggle for themselves, see through the
wrigglings of some and divine the intentions of others.
Robert was at work, of course. Nobody ever found him doing nothing. He
looked up, welcomed his visitor, and carefully covered his papers. He
never liked anyone to know what he was forging and contriving.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘let us talk for half an hour. Then we will go and get
some dinner; after that we will stroll about. What are you going to do
this evening?’
‘I thought of going to Lady Frances’s.’
‘Good. You see her pretty often, don’t you?’
‘Very often. It is quite impossible to see her too often.’
‘Quite impossible,’ I replied mechanically, watching his face. He was
nervous when he spoke; he took up things and put them down. I had never
seen him nervous before.
‘I wonder if there are many other women like her,’ he said slowly.
‘There is no other woman like her in the whole world, my cousin.’
‘She understands--that is the extraordinary thing--she understands
everything; an argument; a position; a combination: one hasn’t to
explain or to talk about it--she understands. If she were in the House,
she would lead it. She suggests a policy; she confers with Ministers;
she catches the drift of the public mind; she knows how far they can
go, and what they should attempt. George, I declare that I never before
imagined it possible that such a woman could be found!’
All these things he had said before. Robert was not accustomed so to
repeat himself.
‘And now you have found her, Robert, and she is your fast friend. Of
course, I’ve known her all my life; she has become a kind of sister,
you know, by long habit; but my admiration of her is quite equal to
yours. And have you nothing to say about her beauty?’
‘She is the most perfect woman I have ever seen,’ said Robert, his
voice dropping, because when a man feels strongly on such a subject
he doesn’t like to talk loudly about it. ‘Tall and queenly: she looks
born to command’--the quality which he most desired for himself he must
needs admire in a woman.
‘But her beauty, Robert? Her eyes--her face--her features.’
‘Yes. I think less of them--that is, of course, they belong to
her--they make up the greatness and the splendour of her. If it were
not for her beauty, she would not be half so queenly.’
‘She advises you in your public work; does she talk to you ever of your
more private affairs?’
‘She knows my history, such as it is, of course. I was not going to her
under false pretences. Besides, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I
told her at the outset that I am but a Craftsman--a Master Craftsman.’
‘Have you told her that you once--a good long time ago--promised to
marry Isabel?’
Robert changed colour. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘There was no need to
tell her that.’
‘I think, if I were you, Robert, I should tell her.’
‘Why? What is the use of telling her such an insignificant fact?’
‘Insignificant? Your marriage an insignificant fact to your best
friend? Why, Robert, it is the most significant fact in the world. All
your future depends upon your marriage.’
‘It will not come off for years; I must make my position first. You
must know I cannot take upon me for ever so long the burden of a
wife--and a wife who would only pull me down instead of helping me up.’
‘I know that very well. You want a wife who would help you up.’
‘What does Isabel understand about these things? Nothing. What does she
care? Nothing.’ His voice showed the bitterness within him. ‘Has she
shown the least interest in my ambitions? Why, from the very first she
has been content to be my clerk when she might have been my companion.’
‘Come--come--you have never given her any encouragement. You never
suffered her to think of being a companion. She has always been afraid
of you. She is afraid of you still. Robert, I shouldn’t like to marry a
woman who was afraid of me.’
So it began all over again; but this time with results.
‘There is no question of like or dislike, unfortunately.’
‘I would let her go before the wedding-bells began to ring.’
‘You forget, George. I have promised to marry her. I will keep my
promise--some day.’
‘All very well. But there is her side of the question. Is it fair or
right to keep this girl waiting for you year after year--living almost
alone in that corner of the earth, wasting her youth, wasting her
beauty, longing for love, every year widening the distance between you,
while you chafe at the chain you drag and she droops and languishes in
bondage?’
‘I must keep my word,’ he repeated obstinately. ‘And, besides, Isabel
promised to wait for me as long as I choose. She knows she has got
to wait. As for my marrying now, she knows, and you know, that it is
impossible. What have I got to live upon? The money which you paid for
your share, and about two hundred pounds a year for my share. Do you
suppose that I can marry and live among my new friends on two or three
hundred pounds a year?’
‘Then let Isabel go,’ I repeated, as obstinate as my cousin for once.
‘If I do, who is to protect the child? Am I to turn her, penniless,
into the street? No, George, I am bound to her; and I must make the
best of it. Otherwise----’ His head fell.
I became more hopeful. When a man--any man, the most obstinate of
men--talks about making the best of it, he would certainly like to get
rid of it.
‘A man like you, Robert,’ I went on after a bit, saying the thing which
was in his mind at the time (there’s a diplomatic move for you; always,
if you can, make use of the other man’s own mind), ‘wants above all
things a wife who will stand by him, and think for him, and advance
him by her influence and her personality. The wife for you, or for any
man with such ambitions as yours, should supplement your qualities;
she should be well-born, well-mannered, influential; well-considered,
beautiful, and rich.’
‘Should be--yes, should be. But there is only one such woman that I
know of----’
‘Yes. There is only one that I know of. Her name is Lady Frances.’
He sprang to his feet and began to walk about.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘I believe you’ve got something or other
up your sleeve. Out with it, man. Don’t let us have any fencing here.’
‘I mean that with such a wife as Lady Frances to back you up, and with
your own abilities to help you on, you would be quite certain to step
into your place in the front before very long--far sooner, Robert, than
you can hope to do by your unaided efforts. That is all I mean.’
‘It is impossible. There is, first--Isabel in the way. You are a good
fellow to think about me--I don’t believe any other man in the world
would do so much for me. But no----’
‘Never mind Isabel for the moment. Let us talk only about yourself. Do
you--do you----’ I remembered the stipulation in the other engagement
about the foolishness of kisses: did the man, when he made that
stipulation, understand, the least in the world, the meaning of love?
Had he ever felt any kind of love at all for poor Isabel? and I put a
leading question: ‘Have you the--the kind of regard for Lady Frances
which you ought to have for the woman you would marry? I don’t mean the
kind of regard which you have for Isabel, because she is not the woman
you would marry.’
‘Man!’ he cried passionately; ‘you don’t know--I haven’t told you.
Nobody would think it possible that I should have the presumption.’
One has seen the passion of love represented on the stage, with
exaggeration, as we think everything on the stage must be exaggerated.
One has read of the passion of love in the older poets, with their
hot flames, and darts, and swoons, and fierce consuming fires, and
ecstatics, and raptures--exaggeration, we say. One reads of love in
modern novels, and sometimes we ask how these writers can set down
the exaggeration of passion with which they do sometimes regale their
readers. Henceforth I declare that I shall never witness a love scene
on the stage, never read an Elizabethan love poem, never read a burning
page in a novel, and be able to call it exaggeration. Because the
confession, the scene, the monologue, the unfolding of a heart, which
now I witnessed, proved to me that there can be no exaggeration in poet
and dramatist. Imagination cannot cross the bounds of possibility in
love. They spoke of flames and fires, because there are no words with
which to speak of the strength of the passion which may sometimes seize
and hold the heart.
Yet only in the nobler natures, in the strongest men, and in the men
who have never known before the smarting of love, nor wasted the
passion that is in them on objects unworthy.
This man, hitherto so cold to love, so contemptuous of women, now raged
about the room like a caged wild beast. It seems a breach of confidence
only to hint at his broken voice, his distorted face, his features
aflame, half shamed, while he confessed the passion which possessed him.
‘George!’ he cried, ‘I worship her. Yes, for every quality that she
possesses--for her quickness, for her sympathy, for her insight, for
her beauty, for all, for all, I worship her.’
‘You do well,’ I said weakly.
But he regarded not what I said.
‘Good heavens!’ he went on; ‘I count the hours between my visits. I
make a thousand excuses to go there. When I reach the door, I remember
that I was there only yesterday, and I creep away again. I lie awake at
nights thinking of her. The only time when I am not thinking of her is
when I am at work, for then I am doing what I know she would approve.’
I murmured something, I know not what.
‘I confess to you, George, I want no other music than her voice. I
think I could gaze upon her face and in her eyes for ever, and never
grow tired. Only to pass other women in the street makes me angry to
think that they look so small and common.’
‘They are small and common, perhaps, because they are meant for small
and common lovers.’
‘If you come to think about her beauty, why, I hardly ever think of
it except that it is a part of her, always a part of her; and she is
always in my mind.’
‘Poor Robert! Yet perhaps there may be hope; no woman is so far above
you as to be impossible.’
‘Hope? How can there be hope? Don’t talk nonsense!’
‘I should think--but, then, I am not a woman--that love like this, so
real, so full of worship, does not come often in the way of a woman. I
can tell you, if the fact afford you any hope, that Frances has refused
men by scores. She will never marry any man--I am quite sure; she has
told me as much--unless he is a strong and able man. Why should such a
woman give herself away to a man of the lower nature?’
‘What hope can that bring me? George----’ And here he broke out into a
torrent of passionate cries and ejaculations. For my own part, I kept
myself in hand. I let him bring it all out. Every ejaculation, every
word of the confession, strengthened my position.
‘Always in my mind,’ he concluded, throwing himself into a chair,
‘always in my mind, day and night. There! now you know!’
‘Yes, now I know. I have guessed as much a long time. Of course it
was inevitable. You were bound to fall in love with her, from the
beginning. That was certain.’
‘I might ask why you took me, then, if it was certain. But I don’t ask.
For I would rather go on hopelessly all my life, than never meet and
speak with her at all. Yes, I have had to thank you for many things,
George, but for nothing so much as this.’
‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said. ‘Well, you are in love at last. That is
the cardinal fact. Poor Isabel! You never thought of her like this.’
‘Never. Poor child! Don’t imagine that I ever thought of Isabel in
this way at all. I was only sorry for her. I thought that her father
was dying--and she was a very good clerk--so I said I would marry
her, partly to keep her on as a clerk, and partly to protect her from
poverty. It didn’t seem to me that it would make any difference to my
future. But as for love! How could one love a girl and despise her for
her intellect?’
‘You have no cause to despise Isabel,’ I replied, with some wrath. ‘Let
me tell you that. You never took the trouble to consider her intellect
at all. Well, the long and the short of it is that, whatever else
happens, you must let her go.’
‘No, she must release herself. I will never go back from my word.’
‘Well then, Robert, here is a bargain. If I bring you her release--by
her own wish, written in her own hand; if I show you that she will not
suffer but rather gain in the long-run for her release; if I can assure
you that she will be happier for the present by being released--will
you accept that letter of hers and let her go?’
Anybody else would have understood at once what I meant. Robert
did not. He had not yet acquired the habit of thinking about other
people and their motives and minds. That would come by contact with
a sympathetic woman. He told me afterwards that it seemed to him the
very last thing possible, for me to fall in love with Isabel--whom
he himself could not love--and to desire to marry a girl without any
knowledge of society. Perhaps, being new to the thing, he thought at
this moment too much about society. Perhaps I knew a great deal more
about society, and therefore thought too little of its advantages.
Besides, I was now a boat-builder, quite disconnected from society, and
I really never asked whether Isabel was a woman who might be relied
upon to shine at her own receptions, and to receive at her dinner-table
the most distinguished people in political circles.
‘You make three conditions,’ he said. ‘Every one of these seems to
me impossible. Yet you have a way of your own. I do not believe that
Isabel will send me a release; after these five years she has grown
accustomed to consider me as her future husband. She moves in a groove;
she considers me as her guardian, and her father as my dependent. No;
Isabel will never release me--she cannot.’
‘But,’ I insisted, ‘supposing these conditions to be fulfilled?’
‘Oh, if they are fulfilled, of course I am the last man in the world to
keep a woman against her wish. If she would rather marry a foreman of
works----’
There was the least touch of coldness; perhaps no man, not even my
cousin Robert, likes to be dismissed by any woman.
‘That is settled, then. And now to return to Lady Frances.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh, that is hopeless.’
‘I am not so sure. Consider the thing from a political point of view.
You offer yourself, with your career; she brings herself, with all that
it means--an immense contribution. Perhaps she may think in her modesty
that your side of the balance lifts up her side.’
Robert shook his head again, but with less firmness. The shaking of
a man’s head is a most expressive gesture, because there are so many
shades in it.
‘Next, we will consider the situation from a personal point of view.
Frances is in every way admirable and delightful, it is true.’
‘Yes,’ he sighed--‘admirable and delightful.’
‘But you, my cousin, are not a bad specimen of a man--well set up,
and well looking, and well mannered. And you are a masterful kind of
creature, and women admire masterfulness in a man. And you have already
shown cleverness, and women admire cleverness.’
‘Yes. It is all very well, but----’
‘And then the lady is a young widow, her own mistress; free to please
herself, and she has shown herself difficult to please. She is wealthy,
and----’
Here he jumped up again. He was very jumpy this afternoon. ‘Yes,’ he
cried; ‘she is wealthy, and there--there you have the whole difficulty.
We will suppose that she might possibly get over the differences of
birth and rank, and all that, because they mean nothing.’ You perceive
that Robert was as yet imperfectly acquainted with the true inwardness
of things--birth and rank to mean nothing? Dear me! And to hear these
words from my own pupil! ‘They mean nothing,’ he repeated. ‘She is the
daughter of an Earl, and I am a boat-builder. What do I care about
that, eh?’ He turned upon me quite fiercely. ‘As if that could be any
real obstacle! I am a man, I say’--he snorted in his wrath--‘I say, a
man in whom a woman may take pride. I know that very well. I believe
that even Lady Frances--though she is all that she is--might take a
pride in me. Lesser women,’ he added, with his usual arrogance, ‘would.
Of course they would.’
‘Well, what bee have you got in your bonnet now?’
‘Can’t you understand? You say she is rich. I know she is rich. And
that’s the real obstacle. As for the rest, I have thought over all that
you said by myself. Only I liked to hear it from you as well. It’s the
money, George.’
‘What about the money? Now, don’t go raising foolish ghosts about
Frances’s money. What if she is rich? What does that matter?’
‘I have tried to get over it, and I can’t. One must keep some
self-respect. George, how would you like to live in your wife’s
palace--your wife’s, not your own?’
‘Her country house isn’t a palace.’ But it is, as Robert knew.
‘How would you like to be every day sitting at your wife’s table, not
your own; drinking your wife’s wine, not your own; waited on by your
wife’s servants, not your own; spending the money that your wife--your
wife--chose to give you? No, I could not--I could not--say no more
about it. I would rather remain as I am, and go on thinking about her
without hope all my life, than marry her for her money--for her money!
Pah!’
‘If you come to that, you might just as well say to another woman, “How
would you like, all your life, going about enjoying honour--not your
own, but your husband’s; a name not your own, but your husband’s?”’
‘Nonsense!’ said Robert; ‘the things are not parallel. Of course a
woman may take all that a man has to give.’
‘And a man all that a woman has to give.’
What was it my solicitor had told me? ‘Marry money--marry money.’ And
I despised that advice, and now I was trying to make Robert do just
exactly that very same thing. Well, it was quite certain that this
proud, independent person would never become a dependent on his wife.
Fortunately I had a card up my sleeve.
‘You are perhaps right,’ I said, with assumed thoughtfulness. ‘You
could never become that unhappy creature--the man who lives upon his
wife’s money. You have got some hundreds a year, however.’
‘And she has how many thousands a year? My whole income would not pay
my share of the servants.’
‘Then, again, a man and wife are not obliged to have equal fortunes. If
one is a little richer than the other----’
‘A little--oh, he says a little!’
‘Go on; you will give me a chance presently.’
‘Let her give away all but two hundred pounds a year; then we should
start on equal terms.’
‘No, because you would have still before you your ambition, with its
solid side, and she would have nothing left. In ten years’ time you
might be drawing five thousand pounds a year official salary, and she
have nothing more than her three hundred. No, Robert; the equitable way
would be to reckon your future prospects and your future position as an
asset worth ten thousand pounds a year, or anything you please a year.’
Robert shook his head. ‘An asset is something that can be realized.
No one would advance a farthing on the security of my prospects. As a
business man, George, you really ought to know by this time what an
asset means.’
‘You are not going to a pawnbroker or a bank. You have an asset, I say,
that in a certain lady’s eyes would outweigh all her own advantages.’
‘All the same, George,’ he replied doggedly, ‘I shall not stoop to live
upon my wife.’
‘You are nothing but a perverse, obstinate, and pig-headed _bourgeois_.
You had better come back to Wapping. Come, then; I will meet you on
your own ground. You admit that a few thousands more or less matter
nothing.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know. All I do know is, that I’ve got about two
hundred pounds a year, and that Lady Frances has got twenty thousand
pounds a year, and that the thing is impossible on that ground alone.’
‘It isn’t impossible on that ground, if you could rise to the
situation. You have done very well, Robert, so far; but you ought to
throw off the last vestige of the shop.’
‘What the devil has the shop got to do with Lady Frances and her money?’
‘Why, you are not going into partnership! Her money would be simply a
means of keeping you in a set of people and style of life necessary
for your ambitions. It is a detail. You feel that you belong to
that kind of life. You don’t want to use her money for gambling, or
for horse-racing, or anything at all. The roof, which would perhaps
be hers, and the food, and the wine, and the rest of it, would be
nothing--nothing at all--in comparison with the solid advantages of
society and influence. You ought to rise above such considerations,
really. I am ashamed that you are tied down by such unworthy
considerations. They belong to Wapping-in-the-Ouse, believe me, not to
Piccadilly.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘I cannot live upon my wife,’ he said
doggedly. ‘Wapping or Piccadilly, I care not where I live, so that I do
not live upon my wife.’
‘Well, then----’
‘Say no more about it, George; she is as far from me now as if I were
at Wapping. I am sorry I told you. Yet, I don’t know; it’s a relief to
tell somebody, and you are the only man to whom I ever told anything.
Meantime, there’s an end. She doesn’t suspect, at any rate.’
I was for the moment diplomatically doubtful. I might tell him at once
of the wonderful find that would clear away one obstacle at least. But,
then, I knew so well beforehand the lofty scorn with which Frances
would sweep away such an obstacle; how she would make him understand
the paltry nature of her own wealth compared with the riches and
abundance of his own abilities; how she would make him ashamed of his
own weakness in not perceiving this fact for himself, and how he could
become converted and resigned and submissive, this strong, proud man.
Knowing all this, I would not tell him--yet.
‘There are,’ I summed up, ‘three obstacles in the way. There is
Isabel. Very good; you shall be released. Oh, I am not guessing. I
tell you plainly that she does not care for you, except as a generous
benefactor. You can’t marry a girl who is only grateful. You have never
made love to her.’
‘Of course not; I had no time.’
‘And therefore you cannot expect her to be in love with you. Moreover,
my dear cousin, I have reason to believe that, if she were free to-day,
she would be engaged to-morrow.’
‘Oh! To some little clerk in the docks, I suppose. Isabel has no
greater ambition than that.’
‘Perhaps.’ He had no suspicion at all, yet he knew that I had been
wandering about with this girl all the summer evenings. ‘Girls,’ I
said, ‘are sometimes singularly free from ambition. Some of them want
nothing but love and a tranquil home; they are easily contented.’
‘I suppose that is so,’ he said with pity. ‘And so Isabel really wants
to be released. That is the meaning of your mysterious offer, is it?’
‘At least, she has always been afraid of you, as well as grateful. She
would never want to be released unless she knew that you wished it. I
shall fill her heart with happiness to-night when I tell her what you
really want.’
‘Then let her be happy--with her dock clerk.’ His face cleared
immediately, and he laughed. ‘Poor child!’ he said. ‘She was a good
clerk and a good accountant. How should her mind soar any higher?’
‘As for the other obstacle, Robert, that objection, I tell you again,
on the score of wealth--it is unworthy of you; it is also unpractical.
You ought to be quite above such considerations.’
‘All the same, George,’ he repeated, ‘to live upon my wife would choke
me.’
‘You shall not be choked, my dear Robert. This obstacle, too, shall be
removed. Trust me--believe me--when I tell you, on my word of honour,
that it shall be removed.’
I had, I say, the greatest confidence in Lady Frances and in the
arguments which I knew she would employ to break down this heart of
stone; but there was also the additional comfort of feeling that the
bag of precious jewels was in that seaman’s chest. How beautiful
is the working out of the Doctrine of Chances! When one takes up a
hand at cards there are millions to one against the particular hand
that turns up; yet it does turn up--it always turns up--in the face
of those overwhelming odds. So with that bag of diamonds. Everybody
in the Wapping branch of the Burnikel family had examined that
chest--turned it upside down, taken everything out--yet had never
found that hiding-place. If it had been found at any time it would
have changed the fortune and altered the future of the whole family.
Robert would have been impossible. Had Robert been born, brought up
and trained otherwise, he would have been quite another Robert. He
would have understood, for instance--which he has never yet perfectly
succeeded in understanding--the audacity of his ambition, and, as
it would seem to those who know the world--but not to himself--its
impossibility. Why do young men of obscure birth and poverty succeed so
often and so greatly? Because they do not understand the audacity of
their own ambition. ‘I will win scholarships; I will go to Cambridge;
I will be Senior Wrangler; I will be Master of my college; I will be
Vice-Chancellor of the University,’ says the lad of parts, low down in
the world. The lad of parts higher up understands that the very flower
of the English-speaking youth are his rivals; that he must beat the
best; that he must actually be the best; and he is discouraged. For
climbing--for nerve and hand and eye--the poor boy has a far better
chance than the rich. All our boys, before they are born, ought to pray
for poverty--with brains and courage.
All these fine reflections passed through my head between my last
speech and Robert’s reply. He held out his hand. ‘Trust you, George?’
he said. ‘Isn’t it rather late in the day to ask that question? But
how--how can that obstacle be removed?’
‘I shall not tell you. Now go on without any misgiving, and conquer--if
you can. Only, Robert, pray remember, this is not quite the same thing
as the other venture, you know. Then you had to do with a schoolgirl--a
child; now you have an equal. You cannot understand; you must stoop to
woo, even you, O Samson.’
‘Only an equal? An equal? Don’t speak like a fool, George--you who know
her!’
‘You think that way at last. You have found someone to whom you are not
equal. So much the better. But--I say, how about the foolishness of
fondling and kisses?’
‘Oh!’ There rose upon his cheek the roseate hues of early dawn, yet
he was six-and-twenty. ‘Of course this is different--quite different.
Isabel was only a schoolgirl, as you say. That kind of thing would only
unsettle her at that age. This is quite different.’