Sacred and Profane Love Part 1

Sacred And Profane Love.

by E. Arnold Bennett.

PART I

IN THE NIGHT

I

For years I had been preoccupied with thoughts of love--and by love I mean a n.o.ble and sensuous pa.s.sion, absorbing the energies of the soul, fulfilling destiny, and reducing all that has gone before it to the level of a mere prelude. And that afternoon in autumn, the eve of my twenty-first birthday, I was more deeply than ever immersed in amorous dreams.

I, in my modern costume, sat down between two pairs of candles to the piano in the decaying drawing-room, which like a spinster strove to conceal its age. A generous fire flamed in the wide grate behind me: warmth has always been to me the first necessary of life. I turned round on the revolving stool and faced the fire, and felt it on my cheeks, and I asked myself: 'Why am I affected like this? Why am I what I am?' For even before beginning to play the Fantasia of Chopin, I was moved, and the tears had come into my eyes, and the shudder to my spine. I gazed at the room inquiringly, and of course I found no answer. It was one of those rooms whose s.p.a.cious and consistent ugliness grows old into a sort of beauty, formidable and repellent, but impressive; an early Victorian room, large and stately and symmetrical, full--but not too full--of twisted and tortured mahogany, green rep, l.u.s.tres, valances, fringes, gilt ta.s.sels. The green and gold drapery of the two high windows, and here and there a fine curve in a piece of furniture, recalled the Empire period and the deserted Napoleonic palaces of France. The expanse of yellow and green carpet had been married to the floor by two generations of decorous feet, and the meaning of its tints was long since explained away. Never have I seen a carpet with less individuality of its own than that carpet; it was so sweetly faded, amiable, and flat, that its sole mission in the world seemed to be to make things smooth for the chairs.

The wall-paper looked like pale green silk, and the candles were reflected in it as they were reflected in the crystals of the chandelier.

The grand piano, a Collard and Collard, made a vast ma.s.s of walnut in the chamber, incongruous, perhaps, but still there was something in its mild and indecisive tone that responded to the furniture. It, too, spoke of Evangelicalism, the Christian Year, and a dignified reserved confidence in Christ's blood. It, too, defied the a.s.sault of time and the invasion of ideas. It, too, protested against Chopin and romance, and demanded Thalberg's variations on 'Home, Sweet Home.'

My great-grandfather, the famous potter--second in renown only to Wedgwood--had built that Georgian house, and my grandfather had furnished it; and my parents, long since dead, had placidly accepted it and the ideal that it stood for; and it had devolved upon my Aunt Constance, and ultimately it would devolve on me, the scarlet woman in a dress of virginal white, the inexplicable offspring of two changeless and blameless families, the secret revolutionary, the living lie! How had I come there?

I went to the window, and, pulling the curtain aside, looked vaguely out into the damp, black garden, from which the last light was fading. The red, rectangular house stood in the midst of the garden, and the garden was surrounded by four brick walls, which preserved it from four streets where dwelt artisans of the upper cla.s.s. The occasional rattling of a cart was all we caught of the peaceable rumour of the town; but on clear nights the furnaces of Cauldon Bar Ironworks lit the valley for us, and we were reminded that our refined and inviolate calm was hemmed in by rude activities. On the east border of the garden was a row of poplars, and from the window I could see the naked branches of the endmost. A gas-lamp suddenly blazed behind it in Acre Lane, and I descried a bird in the tree. And as the tree waved its plume in the night-wind, and the bird swayed on the moving twig, and the gas-lamp burned meekly and patiently beyond, I seemed to catch in these simple things a glimpse of the secret meaning of human existence, such as one gets sometimes, startlingly, in a mood of idle receptiveness. And it was so sad and so beautiful, so full of an ecstatic melancholy, that I dropped the curtain. And my thought ranged lovingly over our household--prim, regular, and perfect: my old aunt embroidering in the breakfast-room, and Rebecca and Lucy ironing in the impeachable kitchen, and not one of them with the least suspicion that Adam had not really waked up one morning minus a rib. I wandered in fancy all over the house--the attics, my aunt's bedroom so miraculously neat, and mine so unkempt, and the dark places in the corridors where clocks ticked.

I had the sense of the curious compact organism of which my aunt was the head, and into which my soul had strayed by some caprice of fate. What I felt was that the organism was suspended in a sort of enchantment, lifelessly alive, unconsciously expectant of the magic touch which would break the spell, and I wondered how long I must wait before I began to live. I know now that I was happy in those serene preliminary years, but nevertheless I had the illusion of spiritual woe. I sighed grievously as I went back to the piano, and opened the volume of Mikuli's Chopin.

Just as I was beginning to play, Rebecca came into the room. She was a maid of forty years, and stout; absolutely certain of a few things, and quite satisfied in her ignorance of all else; an important person in our house, and therefore an important person in the created universe, of which our house was for her the centre. She wore the white cap with distinction, and when an ap.r.o.n was suspended round her immense waist it ceased to be an ap.r.o.n, and became a symbol, like the ap.r.o.n of a Freemason.

'Well, Rebecca?' I said, without turning my head.

I guessed urgency, otherwise Rebecca would have delegated Lucy.

'If you please, Miss Carlotta, your aunt is not feeling well, and she will not be able to go to the concert to-night.'

'Not be able to go to the concert!' I repeated mechanically.

'No, miss.'

'I will come downstairs.'

'If I were you, I shouldn't, miss. She's dozing a bit just now.'

'Very well.'

I went on playing. But Chopin, who was the chief factor in my emotional life; who had taught me nearly all I knew of grace, wit, and tenderness; who had discovered for me the beauty that lay in everything, in sensuous exaltation as well as in asceticism, in grief as well as in joy; who had shown me that each moment of life, no matter what its import, should be lived intensely and fully; who had carried me with him to the dizziest heights of which pa.s.sion is capable; whose music I spiritually comprehended to a degree which I felt to be extraordinary--Chopin had almost no significance for me as I played then the most glorious of his compositions. His message was only a blurred sound in my ears. And gradually I perceived, as the soldier gradually perceives who has been hit by a bullet, that I was wounded.

The shock was of such severity that at first I had scarcely noticed it.

What? My aunt not going to the concert? That meant that I could not go.

But it was impossible that I should not go. I could not conceive my absence from the concert--the concert which I had been antic.i.p.ating and preparing for during many weeks. We went out but little, Aunt Constance and I. An oratorio, an amateur operatic performance, a ballad concert in the Bursley Town Hall--no more than that; never the Hanbridge Theatre.

And now Diaz was coming down to give a pianoforte recital in the Jubilee Hall at Hanbridge; Diaz, the darling of European capitals; Diaz, whose name in seven years had grown legendary; Diaz, the Liszt and the Rubenstein of my generation, and the greatest interpreter of Chopin since Chopin died--Diaz! Diaz! No such concert had ever been announced in the Five Towns, and I was to miss it! Our tickets had been taken, and they were not to be used! Unthinkable! A photograph of Diaz stood in a silver frame on the piano; I gazed at it fervently. I said: 'I will hear you play the Fantasia this night, if I am cut in pieces for it to-morrow!'

Diaz represented for me, then, all that I desired of men. All my dreams of love and freedom crystallized suddenly into Diaz.

I ran downstairs to the breakfast-room.

'You aren't going to the concert, auntie?' I almost sobbed.

She sat in her rocking-chair, and the gray woollen shawl thrown round her shoulders mingled with her gray hair. Her long, handsome face was a little pale, and her dark eyes darker than usual.

'I don't feel well enough,' she replied calmly.

She had not observed the tremor in my voice.

'But what's the matter?' I insisted.

'Nothing in particular, my dear. I do not feel equal to the exertion.'

'But, auntie--then I can't go, either.'

'I'm very sorry, dear,' she said. 'We will go to the next concert.'

'Diaz will never come again!' I exclaimed pa.s.sionately. 'And the tickets will be wasted.'

'My dear,' my Aunt Constance repeated, 'I am not equal to it. And you cannot go alone.'

I was utterly selfish in that moment. I cared nothing whatever for my aunt's indisposition. Indeed, I secretly accused her of maliciously choosing that night of all nights for her mysterious fatigue.

'But, auntie,' I said, controlling myself, 'I must go, really. I shall send Lucy over with a note to Ethel Ryley to ask her to go with me.'

'Do,' said my aunt, after a considerable pause, 'if you are bent on going.'

I have often thought since that during that pause, while we faced each other, my aunt had for the first time fully realized how little she knew of me; she must surely have detected in my glance a strangeness, a contemptuous indifference, an implacable obstinacy, which she had never seen in it before. And, indeed, these things were in my glance. Yet I loved my aunt with a deep affection. I had only one grievance against her. Although excessively proud, she would always, in conversation with men, admit her mental and imaginative inferiority, and that of her s.e.x.

She would admit, without being asked, that being a woman she could not see far, that her feminine brain could not carry an argument to the end, and that her feminine purpose was too infirm for any great enterprise.

She seemed to find a morbid pleasure in such confessions. As regards herself, they were accurate enough; the dear creature was a singularly good judge of her own character. What I objected to was her a.s.sumption, so calm and gratuitous, that her individuality, with all its confessed limitations, was, of course, superior--stronger, wiser, subtler than mine. She never allowed me to argue with her; or if she did, she treated my remarks with a high, amused tolerance. 'Wait till you grow older,' she would observe, magnificently ignorant of the fact that my soul was already far older than hers. This att.i.tude naturally made me secretive in all affairs of the mind, and most affairs of the heart.

We took in the county paper, the _Staffordshire Recorder,_ and the _Rock_ and the _Quiver_. With the help of these organs of thought, which I detested and despised, I was supposed to be able to keep discreetly and sufficiently abreast of the times. But I had other aids. I went to the Girls' High School at Oldcastle till I was nearly eighteen. One of the mistresses there used to read continually a red book covered with brown paper. I knew it to be a red book because the paper was gone at the corners. I admired the woman immensely, and her extraordinary interest in the book--she would pick it up at every spare moment--excited in me an ardent curiosity. One day I got a chance to open it, and I read on the t.i.tle-page, _Introduction to the Study of Sociology_, by Herbert Spencer.

Turning the pages, I encountered some remarks on Napoleon that astonished and charmed me. I said: 'Why are not our school histories like this?' The owner of the book caught me. I asked her to lend it to me, but she would not, nor would she give me any reason for declining. Soon afterwards I left school. I persuaded my aunt to let me join the Free Library at the Wedgwood Inst.i.tution. But the book was not in the catalogue. (How often, in exchanging volumes, did I not gaze into the reading-room, where men read the daily papers and the magazines, without daring to enter!) At length I audaciously decided to buy the book. I ordered it, not at our regular stationer's in Oldcastle Street, but at a little shop of the same kind in Trafalgar Road. In three days it arrived. I called for it, and took it home secretly in a cardboard envelope-box. I went to bed early, and I began to read. I read all night, thirteen hours. O book with the misleading t.i.tle--for you have nothing to do with sociology, and you ought to have been called _How to Think Honestly_--my face flushed again and again as I perused your ugly yellowish pages! Again and again I exclaimed: 'But this is marvellous!' I had not guessed that anything so honest, and so courageous, and so simple, and so convincing had ever been written. I am capable now of suspecting that Spencer was not a supreme genius; but he taught me intellectual courage; he taught me that nothing is sacred that will not bear inspection; and I adore his memory. The next morning after breakfast I fell asleep in a chair. 'My dear!' protested Aunt Constance. 'Ah,' I thought, 'if you knew, Aunt Constance, if you had the least suspicion, of the ideas that are surging and shining in my head, you would go mad--go simply mad!' I did not care much for deception, but I positively hated clumsy concealment, and the red book was in the house; at any moment it might be seized. On a shelf of books in my bedroom was a novel called _The Old Helmet_, probably the silliest novel in the world. I tore the pages from the binding and burnt them; I tore the binding from Spencer and burnt it; and I put my treasure in the covers of _The Old Helmet_. Once Rebecca, a person privileged, took the thing away to read; but she soon brought it back. She told me she had always understood that _The Old Helmet_ was more, interesting than that.

Later, I discovered _The Origin of Species_ in the Free Library. It finished the work of corruption. Spencer had shown me how to think; Darwin told me what to think. The whole of my upbringing went for naught thenceforward. I lived a double life. I said nothing to my aunt of the miracle wrought within me, and she suspected nothing. Strange and uncanny, is it not, that such miracles can escape the observation of a loving heart? I loved her as much as ever, perhaps more than ever. Thank Heaven that love can laugh at reason!

So much for my intellectual inner life. My emotional inner life is less easy to indicate. I became a woman at fifteen--years, interminable years, before I left school. I guessed even then, vaguely, that my nature was extremely emotional and pa.s.sionate. And I had nothing literary on which to feed my dreams, save a few novels which I despised, and the Bible and the plays and poems of Shakespeare. It is wonderful, though, what good I managed to find in those two use-worn volumes. I knew most of the Song of Solomon by heart, and many of the sonnets; and I will not mince the fact that my favourite play was _Measure for Measure_. I was an innocent virgin, in the restricted sense in which most girls of my cla.s.s and age are innocent, but I obtained from these works many a lofty pang of thrilling pleasure. They ill.u.s.trated Chopin for me, giving precision and particularity to his messages. And I was ashamed of myself. Yes; at the bottom of my heart I was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being responded to the call of these masterpieces. In my ignorance I thought I was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal. And then--the second miracle in my career, which has been full of miracles--I came across a casual reference, in the _Staffordshire Recorder_, of all places, to the _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ of Theophile Gautier. Something in the reference, I no longer remember what, caused me to guess that the book was a revelation of matters hidden from me. I bought it. With the a.s.sistance of a dictionary, I read it, nightly, in about a week. Except _Picciola_, it was the first French novel I had ever read. It held me throughout; it revealed something on nearly every page. But the climax dazzled and blinded me. It was exquisite, so high and pure, so startling, so bold, that it made me ill. When I recovered I had fast in my heart's keeping the new truth that in the body, and the instincts of the body, there should be no shame, but rather a frank, joyous pride.

From that moment I ceased to be ashamed of anything that I honestly liked. But I dared not keep the book. The knowledge of its contents would have killed my aunt. I read it again; I read the last pages several times, and then I burnt it and breathed freely.

Such was I, as I forced my will on my aunt in the affair of the concert.

And I say that she who had never suspected the existence of the real me, suspected it then, when we glanced at each other across the breakfast-room. Upon these apparent trifles life swings, as upon a pivot, into new directions.

I sat with my aunt while Lucy went with the note. She returned soon with the reply, and the reply was:

'So sorry I can't accept your kind invitation. I should have liked to go awfully. But Fred has got the toothache, and I must not leave him.'

The toothache! And my very life, so it seemed to me, hung in the balance.

I did not hesitate one second.