The first news that Evadne received on arriving in Malta was contained in
a letter from her mother. It announced that her father had determined to
cut her off from all communication with her family until she came to her
senses.
She had remained quiety with Mrs. Orton Beg until it was time to leave
England. She did not want to go to Fraylingay. She shrank from occupying
her old rooms in her new state of mind, and she would not have thought of
proposing such a thing herself; but she did half expect to be asked. This
not liking to return home, not recognizing it as home any longer, or
herself as having any right to go there uninvited, marked the change in
her position, and made her realize it with a pang. Her mother came and
went, but she brought no message from her father nor ever mentioned him.
Something in ourselves warns us at once of any change of feeling in a
friend, and Evadne asked no questions, and sent no messages either. But
this attitude did not satisfy her father at all. He thought it her duty
clearly to throw herself at his feet and beg for mercy and forgiveness;
and he waited for her to make some sign of contrition until his patience
could hold out no longer, and then he asked his wife: "Has
Evadne--eh--what is her attitude at present?"
"She is perfectly cheerful and happy," Mrs. Frayling replied.
"She expresses no remorse for her most unjustifiable conduct?"
"She thinks she only did what is right," Mrs. Frayling reminded him.
"Then she is quite indifferent to my opinion?" he began, swelling visibly
and getting red in the face. "Has she asked what I think? Does she ever
mention me?"
"No, never," Mrs. Frayling declared apprehensively.
"A most unnatural child," he exclaimed in his pompous way; "a most
unnatural child."
It was after this that he became obstinately determined to cut Evadne off
from all communication with her friends until she should become reconciled
to Colonel Colquhoun as a husband. Mr. Frayling was not an astute man. He
was simply incapable of sitting down and working out a deliberate scheme
of punishment which should have the effect of bringing Evadne's unruly
spirit into what he considered proper subjection. In this matter he acted,
not upon any system which he could have reduced to writing, but rather as
the lower animals do when they build nests, or burrow in the ground, or
repeat, generation after generation, other arrangements of a like nature
with a precision which the cumulative practice of the race makes perfect
in each individual. He possessed a certain faculty, transmitted from
father to son, that gives the stupidest man a power in his dealings with
women which the brightest intelligence would not acquire without it; and
he used to obtain his end with the decision of instinct, which is always
neater and more effectual than reason and artifice in such matters. He
denied hotly, for instance, that Evadne had any natural affection, and yet
it was upon that woman's weakness of hers that he set to work at once,
proving himself to be possessed of a perfect, if unconscious, knowledge of
her most vulnerable point; and he displayed much ingenuity in his manner
of making it a means of torture. He let no hint of the cruel edict be
breathed before she went abroad; she might have altered her arrangements
had she known of it before, and remained with Mrs. Orton Beg--and there
was something of foresight too, in timing her mother's tear-stained letter
of farewell, good advice, pious exhortation, and plaintive reproach to
meet her on her arrival, to greet her on the threshold of her new life,
and make her realize the terrible gulf which she was setting between
herself and those who were dearest to her, by her obstinacy.
The object was to make her suffer, and she did suffer; but her father's
cruelty did not alter the facts of the case, or appeal to her reason as an
argument worthy to influence her decision.
Mrs. Orton Beg ventured to express her opinion to Mr. Frayling on the
subject seriously. She often said more to him in her quiet way than most
people would have dared to.
"I think you are making a mistake," she said.
"What!" he exclaimed, ready to bluster; "Would you have me countenance
such conduct? Why, it is perfectly revolutionary. If other women follow
her example, not one man in ten will be able to get a wife when he wants
to marry."
"It is very terrible," she answered in her even way, "to hear that so
large a majority will be condemned to celibacy; but I have no doubt you
have good grounds for making the assertion. That is not the point,
however. What I was thinking of was the risk you run of bringing more
serious trouble on yourself by cutting Evadne adrift from every influence
of her happy childhood, and casting her lot among strangers, and into a
world of intrigue alone."
"She will come to her senses when she finds herself so situated, perhaps,"
he retorted testily; "and if she does not, it will just show that she is
incorrigible."
Evadne answered this last letter of her mother's with dignity.
"Of course I regret my father's decision [she wrote], and I consider it
neither right nor wise. But I shall take the liberty of writing to you
regularly every mail nevertheless. I know my letters will be a pleasure to
you although you cannot answer them. But where is the reason and right,
mother, in this decision of my father's? We both know, you and I, that it
is merely the outcome of irritation caused by a difference of opinion, and
no more binding in reason upon you than upon me."
When Mrs. Frayling received this letter, she wrote a hurried note to
Evadne, saying that she did think her husband unreasonable, and also that
he had no right to separate her from any of her children, and that
therefore she should write to Evadne as often as she liked, but without
letting him know it. She thought his injustice quite justified such
tactics; but Evadne answered, "No!"
"There has been too much of that kind of cowardice among women already
[she wrote]. Whatever we do we should do openly and fearlessly. We are not
the property of our husbands; they do not buy us. We are perfectly free
agents to write to whomsoever we please, and so long as we order our lives
in all honour and decency, they have no more right to interfere with us
than we with them. Tell him once for all that you see no reason in his
request, and write openly. What can he do? Storm, I suppose. But storming
is no proof of his right to interfere between you and me. Once on a time
the ignorant were taught to believe that the Lord spoke in the thunder,
and they could be influenced through their terror and respect to do
anything while an opportune storm was raging; and when women were weak and
ignorant men used their wrath in much the same way to convince them of
error. To us, educated as we are, however, an outburst of rage is about as
effectual an argument as a clap of thunder would be. Both are startling I
grant, but what do they prove? I have seen my father in a rage. His face
swells and gets very red, he prances up and down the room, he shouts at
the top of his voice, and presents altogether a very disagreeable
spectacle which one never quite forgets. But he cannot go like that
forever, mother. So tell him gently you have been thinking about his
proposition, and are sorry that you find you must differ from him, but you
consider that it is clearly your duty to correspond with me. Then sit
still, and say nothing, and let him storm till he is tired; and when he
goes out and bangs the door, finish your letter, and put it in a
conspicuous position on the hall table to be posted. He will scarcely tear
it up, but if he does, write another, send it to the post yourself, and
tell him you have done so, and shall continue to do so. Be open before
everything, and stand upon your dignity. Things have come to a pretty
pass, indeed, when an honourable woman only dares to write to her own
daughter surreptitiously, as if she were doing something she should be
ashamed of."
Poor Mrs. Frayling was not equal to such opposition. She would rather have
faced a thunderstorm than her husband in his wrath, so she concealed
Evadne's letter from him, and wrote to her again surreptitiously in order
to reproach her for seeming to insinuate that she, her mother, would stoop
to do anything underhand. Evadne sighed when she received this letter, and
thought of letting the matter drop. Why should she dislike to see her
father in the position unreasonable husbands and fathers usually occupy,
that of being ostensibly obeyed while in reality they are carefully kept
in the dark as to what is going on about them? And why should she object
to allow her mother to act as so many other worthy but weak women daily do
in self-defence and for the love of peace and quietness? There seemed to
be no great good to be gained by persisting, and she might perhaps have
ended by acquiescing under protest if her mother had not added by way of
postscript: "I doubt very much if I shall be allowed to receive your
letters. Your father will probably send any he may capture straight back
to you; and, at any rate, he will insist upon seeing them, so do not, my
dear child, allude to having heard from me. I earnestly entreat you to
remember this."
But the request only made Evadne's blood boil again. She did not belong to
the old corrupt state of things herself, and she would not submit to
anything savouring of deceit. If her mother were too weak to assert her
own independence she felt herself forced to do it for her, so she wrote to
her father sharply:
"My mother tells me that you intend to stop all communication between her
and myself. I consider that you have no right to do anything of the kind,
and unless I hear from her regularly in answer to my letters, I shall be
reluctantly compelled to send a detailed statement of my case to every
paper in the kingdom in order to find out from my fellow countrywomen what
their opinion of your action in the matter is, and also what they would
advise us to do. You know my mother's affection for you. You have never
had any reason to complain of want of devotion on her part, and when you
make your disagreement with me a whip to scourge her with, you are guilty
of an unjustifiable act of oppression."
This letter arrived at Fraylingay late one afternoon, and was handed to
Mr. Frayling on his return from a pleasant country ride. He read it
standing in the hall, and lost his equanimity at once.
"Where is Mrs. Frayling?" he asked a servant who happened to be passing,
speaking in a way which caused the man to remark afterward that "Mrs.
Frayling was going to catch it about somethin'; and 'e seemed to think I'd
made away with 'er."
Mrs. Frayling was in the drawing room, writing one of her pleasant chatty
letters to a friend in India, with a cheerful expression on her comely
countenance, and all recollections of her domestic difficulties banished
for the moment.
When Mr. Frayling entered in his riding dress, with his whip in his hand
and his hat on his head (he was one of those men who are most punctilious
with strange ladies, but do not feel it necessary to behave like gentlemen
in the presence of their own wives, making it appear as if the latter had
lost cast and forfeited all claim to their respect by marrying them) Mrs.
Frayling looked round from her writing and smiled.
"Have you had a nice ride, dear?" she said.
"Read that!" he exclaimed, slapping Evadne's letter with his whip, and
then throwing it down on the table before her rudely: "Read that, and tell
me what you think of your daughter now!" Mrs. Frayling's fair face clouded
on the instant, and her affectionate heart, which had been so happily
expanded the moment before by the kind thoughts about her absent friend
that came crowding as she wrote to her, contracted now with a painful
spasm of nervous apprehension.
She read the letter through, and then put it down on the table beside her
without a word. She did not look at her husband, but at some miniatures
which hung on the wall before her. They were portraits of her own people,
father, mother, grandmother, a great aunt and uncle, and other near
relations, together with a brother and sister much older than herself, and
both dead, and forgotten as a rule: but at that moment all that she had
ever known of them, details of merry games together, and childish
naughtinesses which got them into trouble at the time but made them appear
to have been only amusingly mischievous now, recurred to her in one great
flash of memory, which showed her also some lost illusions of her early
girlhood about a husband's love and tenderness, his constant friendship,
the careful, patient teaching of the more powerful mind which was to
strengthen her mind and enlarge it too, and the constant companionship
which would banish for ever the indefinite gnawing sense of loneliness
from which all healthy, young, unmated creatures suffer. She had actually
expected at one time to be more to her husband than the mere docile female
of his own kind which was all he wanted his wife to be. She had had
aspirations which had caused her to yearn for help to develop something
beyond the animal side of her, proving the possession in embryo of
faculties other than those which had survived Mr. Frayling's rule; but her
nature was plastic; one of those which requires the strong and delicate
hand of a master to mould it into distinct and lovely form. Motherhood, as
it had appeared to her in the delicate dreams of those young days, had
promised to be a beautiful and blessed privilege, but then the children of
her happy imaginings had been less her own than those of the shadowy
perfection who was to have been her husband. She had little sense of
humour, but yet she could have smiled when, in this moment of absolute
insight, she saw the ideal compared with the real husband, this great fat
country gentleman. The folly of having expected even motherhood with such
a father for her children to be anything but unsatisfactory and
disappointing at the best, dawned upon her for an instant with
disheartening effect. But, fortunately, the outlook was so hopeless there
seemed nothing more to sigh for, and so she sat for once, looking up at
the miniatures without washing out with tears the little mental strength
she had left.
Mr. Frayling waited impatiently for her to make some remark when she had
read Evadne's letter. Almost anything she could have said must have given
him some further food for provocation, and there is nothing more
gratifying to an angry man than fresh fuel for his wrath. However, silence
sometimes fans the flame as effectually as words, and it did so on this
occasion, for, having waited till he could contain himself no longer, he
burst out so suddenly that Mrs. Frayling raised her large soft white hand
to the heavy braids which it was then the fashion to pile high on the head
and have hanging down in two rows to the nape of the neck behind, as if
she expected them to be disarranged by the concussion.
"May I ask if you approve of that letter?" he demanded.
But she only set her lips.
Mr. Frayling took a turn about the room with his hands behind his back,
holding his riding whip upright, and flicking himself between the
shoulders with it as he went.
"Let her write to the papers!" he exclaimed, addressing the pictures on
the walls as if he were sure of their sympathy. "Let her write to the
papers. I don't care what she does. I cast her off forever. This comes of
the higher education of women; a promising specimen! Woman's rights,
indeed! Woman's shamelessness and want of common decency once she is let
loose from proper control. She'll make the matter public, will she? A girl
of nineteen! and take the opinion of her fellow countrywomen on the
subject, egad! because I won't let her mother write to her: and my not
doing so is an unjustifiable act of oppression, is it? What do you
consider it yourself?" he demanded of his wife, striding up to her, and
standing over her in a way which, with a flourish of the whip, was
unpleasantly suggestive of an impulse to visit her daughter's offence upon
her shoulders actually as well as figuratively.
Mrs. Frayling did not shrink, but her comely pink and white face, usually
so lineless in its healthy matronly plumpness, suddenly took on a look of
age and hardness, the one moment of horrid repulsion marking it more
deeply than years of those household cares which write themselves on the
mind without contracting the heart had done.
"Do you consider," he repeated, "that I have been guilty of an unmanly act
of oppression?"
"I think you have been very unkind," she answered, meaning the same thing.
"Her conduct was bad enough to begin with, but now it will be ten times
worse. She will write to the papers, if she says she will. Evadne is as
brave--! You can't understand her courage. She will do anything she thinks
right. And now there will be a public scandal after all we have done to
prevent it, and you will never be able to show your face again anywhere,
for there isn't a mother in the country from her Majesty downward, who
will not take my part and say you have no right to separate me from my
daughter."
"I know what the end of it will be." he roared. "I know what happens when
women leave the beaten track. They go to the bad altogether. That's what
will happen, you'll see. She'll write a volume next to prove that she has
a right to be an immoral woman if she chooses. She'll be a common hussey
yet, I promise you."
"_Sir!_" said Mrs. Frayling, stung into dignity for a moment, and
rising to her feet in order to confront him boldly while she spoke. "Sir,
I have been a good and loyal wife to you, as my daughter says, and it
seems she was right too, when she declared that you are capable of making
your disapproval of her opinions a whip to scourge me with; but I warn
you, if you do not instantly retract that cowardly insult, I shall walk
straight out of your house, and make the matter public myself."
Mr. Frayling stared at her. "I--I beg your pardon, Elizabeth," he faltered
in sheer astonishment. "What with you and your daughter, I am provoked
past endurance. I don't know what I am saying."
"No amount of provocation justifies such an attack upon your daughter's
reputation," Mrs. Frayling rejoined, following up her advantage. "If she
had been that kind of girl she would not have objected to Colonel
Colquhoun; and at any rate she has every right to as much of your charity
as you give him."
"Women are different," Mr. Frayling ventured feebly.
"Are they?" said Mrs. Frayling, some of Evadne's wisdom occurring to her
with the old worn axiom upon which for untold ages the masculine excuse
for self-indulgence at the expense of the woman has rested. "I believe
Evadne is right after all. I shall get out her letters, and read them
again. And what is more, I shall write to her just as often as I please."
Mr. Frayling stared again in his amazement, and then he walked out of the
room without uttering another word. He had not foreseen the possibility of
such spirited conduct on the part of his wife; but since she had ventured
to revolt, the question of a public scandal was disposed of, and that
being a consummation devoutly to be wished, he said no more, salving his
lust of power with the reflection that, by deciding the question for
herself, she had removed all responsibility from his shoulders, and proved
herself to be a contumacious woman and blameworthy. So long as there is no
risk of publicity the domestic tyrannies of respectable elderly gentlemen
of irascible disposition may be carried to any length, but once there is a
threat of scandal they coil up.
By that one act of overt rebellion, Mrs. Frayling secured some comfort in
her life for a few months at least, and taught her husband a little lesson
which she ought to have endeavoured to inculcate long before. It was too
late then, however, to do him any permanent good; the habit of the
slave-driver was formed. When a woman sacrifices her individuality and the
right of private judgment at the outset of her married life, and limits
herself to "What thou biddest, unargued I obey," taking it for granted
that "God is thy law," without making any inquiries, and accepting the
assertion that "To know no more is woman's happiest knowledge, and her
praise," as confidently as if the wisdom of it had been proved beyond a
doubt, and its truth had never been known to fail in a single instance,
she withdraws from her poor husband all the help of her keener spiritual
perceptions, which she should have used with authority to hold his grosser
nature in check, and leaves him to drift about on his own conceit,
prejudices, and inclinations, until he is past praying for.
There was a temporary lull at Fraylingay after that last battle, during
which Mrs. Frayling wrote to her daughter freely and frequently. She
described the fight she had had for her rights, and concluded: "Now the
whole difficulty has blown over, and I have no more opposition to contend
against"--to which Evadne had replied in a few words judiciously, adding:
"Before the curing of a strong disease,
Even in the instant of repair and health,
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil."