Dangerous Ages Part 27

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 s.e.xual 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. s.e.xual craving means a craving for intimacy with a member of another s.e.x."

"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 pa.s.sion always been a strong element in your daughter's life?"

"Oh, pa.s.sion...." (Another word not liked by Mrs. Hilary.) "Not quite that, I should say. Nan has been reckless; she has got into sc.r.a.pes, got herself talked about. She has played about with men a good deal always.

But as to pa.s.sion...."

"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were rea.s.suringly.

"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 a.n.a.lysed? There are good a.n.a.lysts 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 subst.i.tute.... The energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another s.e.x 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 a.n.a.lysis."

"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-partic.i.p.ation 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, a.s.sented, 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.