Returning by way of Knollsea, where she remained a week or two,
Ethelberta appeared one evening at the end of September before her house
in Exonbury Crescent, accompanied by a pair of cabs with the children and
luggage; but Picotee was left at Knollsea, for reasons which Ethelberta
explained when the family assembled in conclave. Her father was there,
and began telling her of a surprising change in Menlove--an unasked-for
concession to their cause, and a vow of secrecy which he could not
account for, unless any friend of Ethelberta's had bribed her.
'O no--that cannot be,' said she. Any influence of Lord Mountclere to
that effect was the last thing that could enter her thoughts. 'However,
what Menlove does makes little difference to me now.' And she proceeded
to state that she had almost come to a decision which would entirely
alter their way of living.
'I hope it will not be of the sort your last decision was,' said her
mother.
'No; quite the reverse. I shall not live here in state any longer. We
will let the house throughout as lodgings, while it is ours; and you and
the girls must manage it. I will retire from the scene altogether, and
stay for the winter at Knollsea with Picotee. I want to consider my
plans for next year, and I would rather be away from town. Picotee is
left there, and I return in two days with the books and papers I
require.'
'What are your plans to be?'
'I am going to be a schoolmistress--I think I am.'
'A schoolmistress?'
'Yes. And Picotee returns to the same occupation, which she ought never
to have forsaken. We are going to study arithmetic and geography until
Christmas; then I shall send her adrift to finish her term as
pupil-teacher, while I go into a training-school. By the time I have to
give up this house I shall just have got a little country school.'
'But,' said her mother, aghast, 'why not write more poems and sell 'em?'
'Why not be a governess as you were?' said her father.
'Why not go on with your tales at Mayfair Hall?' said Gwendoline.
'I'll answer as well as I can. I have decided to give up romancing
because I cannot think of any more that pleases me. I have been trying
at Knollsea for a fortnight, and it is no use. I will never be a
governess again: I would rather be a servant. If I am a schoolmistress I
shall be entirely free from all contact with the great, which is what I
desire, for I hate them, and am getting almost as revolutionary as Sol.
Father, I cannot endure this kind of existence any longer; I sleep at
night as if I had committed a murder: I start up and see processions of
people, audiences, battalions of lovers obtained under false
pretences--all denouncing me with the finger of ridicule. Mother's
suggestion about my marrying I followed out as far as dogged resolution
would carry me, but during my journey here I have broken down; for I
don't want to marry a second time among people who would regard me as an
upstart or intruder. I am sick of ambition. My only longing now is to
fly from society altogether, and go to any hovel on earth where I could
be at peace.'
'What--has anybody been insulting you?' said Mrs. Chickerel.
'Yes; or rather I sometimes think he may have: that is, if a proposal of
marriage is only removed from being a proposal of a very different kind
by an accident.'
'A proposal of marriage can never be an insult,' her mother returned.
'I think otherwise,' said Ethelberta.
'So do I,' said her father.
'Unless the man was beneath you, and I don't suppose he was that,' added
Mrs. Chickerel.
'You are quite right; he was not that. But we will not talk of this
branch of the subject. By far the most serious concern with me is that I
ought to do some good by marriage, or by heroic performance of some kind;
while going back to give the rudiments of education to remote hamleteers
will do none of you any good whatever.'
'Never you mind us,' said her father; 'mind yourself.'
'I shall hardly be minding myself either, in your opinion, by doing
that,' said Ethelberta dryly. 'But it will be more tolerable than what I
am doing now. Georgina, and Myrtle, and Emmeline, and Joey will not get
the education I intended for them; but that must go, I suppose.'
'How full of vagaries you are,' said her mother. 'Why won't it do to
continue as you are? No sooner have I learnt up your schemes, and got
enough used to 'em to see something in 'em, than you must needs bewilder
me again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind gets no rest at
all.'
Ethelberta too keenly felt the justice of this remark, querulous as it
was, to care to defend herself. It was hopeless to attempt to explain to
her mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturally
from the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as from
inherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to its
subject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could look
to tangible outcrops.
'Really, Ethelberta,' remonstrated her mother, 'this is very odd. Making
yourself miserable in trying to get a position on our account is one
thing, and not necessary; but I think it ridiculous to rush into the
other extreme, and go wilfully down in the scale. You may just as well
exercise your wits in trying to swim as in trying to sink.'
'Yes; that's what I think,' said her father. 'But of course Berta knows
best.'
'I think so too,' said Gwendoline.
'And so do I,' said Cornelia. 'If I had once moved about in large
circles like Ethelberta, I wouldn't go down and be a schoolmistress--not
I.'
'I own it is foolish--suppose it is,' said Ethelberta wearily, and with a
readiness of misgiving that showed how recent and hasty was the scheme.
'Perhaps you are right, mother; anything rather than retreat. I wonder
if you are right! Well, I will think again of it to-night. Do not let
us speak more about it now.'
She did think of it that night, very long and painfully. The arguments
of her relatives seemed ponderous as opposed to her own inconsequent
longing for escape from galling trammels. If she had stood alone, the
sentiment that she had begun to build but was not able to finish, by
whomsoever it might have been entertained, would have had few terrors;
but that the opinion should be held by her nearest of kin, to cause them
pain for life, was a grievous thing. The more she thought of it, the
less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From
regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that
desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train
events, which, if not abortive, would take her to the altar with Viscount
Mountclere?
In one determination she never faltered; to commit her sin thoroughly if
she committed it at all. Her relatives believed her choice to lie
between Neigh and Ladywell alone. But once having decided to pass over
Christopher, whom she had loved, there could be no pausing for Ladywell
because she liked him, or for Neigh in that she was influenced by him.
They were both too near her level to be trusted to bear the shock of
receiving her from her father's hands. But it was possible that though
her genesis might tinge with vulgarity a commoner's household,
susceptible of such depreciation, it might show as a picturesque contrast
in the family circle of a peer. Hence it was just as well to go to the
end of her logic, where reasons for tergiversation would be most
pronounced. This thought of the viscount, however, was a secret for her
own breast alone.
Nearly the whole of that night she sat weighing--first, the question
itself of marrying Lord Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for
safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family
particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed--a piece of conduct
she had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, much
more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the
need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous
course before finally committing herself to it.
She took down a well-known treatise on Utilitarianism which she had
perused once before, and to which she had given her adherence ere any
instance had arisen wherein she might wish to take it as a guide. Here
she desultorily searched for argument, and found it; but the application
of her author's philosophy to the marriage question was an operation of
her own, as unjustifiable as it was likely in the circumstances.
'The ultimate end,' she read, 'with reference to and for the sake of
which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our
own good or that of other people) is an existence exempt as far as
possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in
point of quantity and quality. . . . This being, according to the
utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the
standard of morality.'
It was an open question, so far, whether her own happiness should or
should not be preferred to that of others. But that her personal
interests were not to be considered as paramount appeared further on:--
'The happiness which forms the standard of what is right in conduct is
not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned. As between
his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to
be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.'
As to whose happiness was meant by that of 'other people,' 'all
concerned,' and so on, her luminous moralist soon enlightened her:--
'The occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it
in his power to do this on an extended scale--in other words, to be a
public benefactor--are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone
is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case
private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all
he has to attend to.'
And that these few persons should be those endeared to her by every
domestic tie no argument was needed to prove. That their happiness would
be in proportion to her own well-doing, and power to remove their risks
of indigence, required no proving either to her now.
By a sorry but unconscious misapplication of sound and wide reasoning did
the active mind of Ethelberta thus find itself a solace. At about the
midnight hour she felt more fortified on the expediency of marriage with
Lord Mountclere than she had done at all since musing on it. In respect
of the second query, whether or not, in that event, to conceal from Lord
Mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too late
for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the
way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint. 'Ah--it
is a point for a casuist!' she said.
An old treatise on Casuistry lay on the top shelf. She opened it--more
from curiosity than from guidance this time, it must be observed--at a
chapter bearing on her own problem, 'The disciplina arcani, or, the
doctrine of reserve.'
Here she read that there were plenty of apparent instances of this in
Scripture, and that it was formed into a recognized system in the early
Church. With reference to direct acts of deception, it was argued that
since there were confessedly cases where killing is no murder, might
there not be cases where lying is no sin? It could not be right--or,
indeed, anything but most absurd--to say in effect that no doubt
circumstances would occur where every sound man would tell a lie, and
would be a brute or a fool if he did not, and to say at the same time
that it is quite indefensible in principle. Duty was the key to conduct
then, and if in such cases duties appeared to clash they would be found
not to do so on examination. The lesser duty would yield to the greater,
and therefore ceased to be a duty.
This author she found to be not so tolerable; he distracted her. She put
him aside and gave over reading, having decided on this second point,
that she would, at any hazard, represent the truth to Lord Mountclere
before listening to another word from him. 'Well, at last I have done,'
she said, 'and am ready for my role.'
In looking back upon her past as she retired to rest, Ethelberta could
almost doubt herself to be the identical woman with her who had entered
on a romantic career a few short years ago. For that doubt she had good
reason. She had begun as a poet of the Satanic school in a sweetened
form; she was ending as a pseudo-utilitarian. Was there ever such a
transmutation effected before by the action of a hard environment? It
was not without a qualm of regret that she discerned how the last
infirmity of a noble mind had at length nearly departed from her. She
wondered if her early notes had had the genuine ring in them, or whether
a poet who could be thrust by realities to a distance beyond recognition
as such was a true poet at all. Yet Ethelberta's gradient had been
regular: emotional poetry, light verse, romance as an object, romance as
a means, thoughts of marriage as an aid to her pursuits, a vow to marry
for the good of her family; in other words, from soft and playful
Romanticism to distorted Benthamism. Was the moral incline upward or
down?