Celibates

G >> George Moore >> Celibates

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

CELIBATES

BY

GEORGE MOORE
Author of
"Spring Days," "A Mummer's Wife" Etc.

With Introduction By
TEMPLE SCOTT

NEW YORK
1915

COPYRIGHT, 1895,
BY MACMILLAN AND CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY BRENTANO'S.

INTRODUCTION.

Looking back over the twenty years since "Celibates" was first
published I find that the George Moore of the earlier year is the
George Moore of to-day. The novelist of 1895 and the novelist of 1915
are one and the same person. Each is really interested in himself;
each is more concerned with how the world and its humanity appear to
him than how they appear to the casual observer or how they may be in
themselves. The writer is always expressing himself through the facts
and personalities which have stirred his imagination to creative
effort. George Moore has never been a reporter or a philosopher; he
has always been an artist.

Now to say that the author of "Celibates" is always expressing himself
does not at all mean that he is recording merely his private
sensations, emotions, and moods. Egoist as he is, George Moore could
not write his autobiography. He tried to do this lately in "Ave,"
"Vale," and "Salve," and failed--failed captivatingly. He is always
most himself when he is dealing with what is not himself--with skies
and hills and ocean and gardens and men and women. Moore is a
naturalist in the finest sense of that word. He deals with nature as
the artist must deal with it if nature is to be understood and
enjoyed. For Moore's relationship with nature, and especially with
human nature, is of that rare kind which is the experience of the very
few--of those fine spirits endowed with the highest sympathy--a
sympathy which is not a feeling with or for others but an actual union
with others, a union which brings suffering as well as enjoyment. This
is the artist's burden of sorrow and it is also his privilege. It is
because of it that every true work of art has in it also something of
a religious influence--a binding power which unites the separated
onlookers in an experience of a common emotion. If the artist have not
this peculiar sympathy he can have no vision and will never be a
creator; he will never show us or tell us the new and strange
mysteries of life which nature is continually unfolding. The artist's
mission is to reveal to us the visions he alone has been vouchsafed to
see, and to reveal them so that the revelation is a creation. The men
and women he is introducing to us must be as real and as living to us
as they are to him. That is what George Moore has done in "Celibates"
and that is why I say he is an artist.

"Celibates" consists of three stories--two of women and one of a man.
Mildred Lawson and John Norton are celibates by nature. Agnes Lahens
is a celibate from environment and circumstance. Each of the three is
utterly different from the other, and yet all are alike in that they
are the products of a modern civilization. Mildred and John are
without that compulsive force which is known as the sexual passion. If
they have it at all, it has been diluted by tradition and so-called
culture into a mere sensation. Agnes's passion is an arrested one, so
that what there is of it is easily diverted into an expression of
religious aspiration.

Mildred Lawson would be called a born flirt. She is pretty, charming,
and talented; but she is cold, unresponsive, selfish, and futile. She
is also eminently respectable after the English middle-class manner.
She has ambition, but she lacks the will-power to school herself and
the determination to accomplish. She is rich in goods but very poor in
goodness. She is often moved profoundly by beautiful thoughts and
uplifting emotions of which she herself is the pleasing, pulsating
centre; but her soul is negative, so that her spiritual states
evaporate when the opportunity is given her for transforming them into
acts. She never gets anywhere. She is self-conscious to a degree and
unstable as water. After breaking one man's heart and deadening the
hearts of three other men, she finally accepts an old and rejected
sweetheart, only to be torn by suspicions that he no longer cares for
her and is marrying her only for her money. We leave her a prey to
thoughts of a life which, unconsciously, she has brought on herself.

John Norton might be called the born monk. He is, however, but the
male embodiment of that cultured selfishness of which Mildred Lawson
is the female expression. He is not a flirt. He takes life too
seriously to be that; but he takes it so seriously that there is only
room in the world for himself alone. He comes of a fine old English
stock, is rich, and is his own master. He treats his mother as a cold-
blooded English gentleman, with Norton's peculiar nature, would treat
a mother--with polite but firm disregard of her claims. He has enough
and to spare of will-power, but it is become degenerated into
obstinacy. He fails because he wants too much, because he is unsocial
at heart, and does not understand that life means giving as well as
taking. His sexual passion finds expression in a religious fanaticism
which is but the expression of utter selfishness, as all sexual
passion is. In the company of Kitty he has moments of exaltation, when
his degenerate passion scents the pure air of love; but he can never
let himself go. When, on one occasion, he so far forgets himself as to
allow his heart to be responsive to Kitty's natural purity and he
kisses her, he is so shocked at what he has done that he runs away and
leaves the girl to a terrible fate. We leave him also a prey to
thoughts of what he might have prevented. He, too, like Mildred
Lawson, must henceforth face a life of his own unconscious making.

Agnes Lahens is the victim of a heartless, selfish society in which
the abuse of love has made its world a desert and its products Dead
Sea fruit. Out of a sheer impulse for self-protection she flies to the
nunnery, which is ready to give her life at the price of her womanhood
and her self-sacrifice.

As portraits, these of Mildred Lawson and John Norton are exquisitely
finished. They are half-lengths, with a quality of coloring
fascinating in its repelling truth. Every tint and shade have been
cunningly and caressingly laid in, so that the features, living and
animated, are yet filled with suggestions of the spiritual barrenness
in the originals. Very human they are, and yet they are without those
gracious qualities which link humanity with what we feel to be divine.
There is the touch of nature here, but it is not the touch which makes
the whole world kin. That touch we ourselves supply; and it speaks
eloquently for Moore's art that in picturing these unlovely beings he
throws us back on our better selves. Beyond the vision of these
celibates here revealed we see a passionate humanity, working, hating,
sorrowing, and dying, yet always loving, and in loving finding its
fullest life in an earthly salvation. True love is a mighty democrat.
Knowing these "Celibates," we welcome the more gladly those who, even
if less gifted, are ready to walk with us, hand in hand, along the
common human highway of the "pilgrim's progress."

TEMPLE SCOTT.

CONTENTS.

MILDRED LAWSON

JOHN NORTON

AGNES LAHENS

MILDRED LAWSON.

I.

The tall double stocks were breathing heavily in the dark garden; the
delicate sweetness of the syringa moved as if on tip-toe towards the
windows; but it was the aching smell of lilies that kept Mildred
awake.

As she tossed to and fro the recollections of the day turned and
turned in her brain, ticking loudly, and she could see each event as
distinctly as the figures on the dial of a great clock.

'What a strange woman that Mrs. Fargus--her spectacles, her short
hair, and that dreadful cap which she wore at the tennis party! It was
impossible not to feel sorry for her, she did look so ridiculous. I
wonder her husband allows her to make such a guy of herself. What a
curious little man, his great cough and that foolish shouting manner;
a good-natured, empty-headed little fellow. They are a funny couple!
Harold knew her husband at Oxford; they were at the same college. She
took honours at Oxford; that's why she seemed out of place in a little
town like Sutton. She is quite different from her husband; he couldn't
pass his examinations; he had been obliged to leave. ... What made
them marry?

'I don't know anything about Comte--I wish I did; it is so dreadful to
be ignorant. I never felt my ignorance before, but that little woman
does make me feel it, not that she intrudes her learning on any one; I
wish she did, for I want to learn. I wish I could remember what she
told me: that all knowledge passes through three states: the
theological, the--the--metaphysical, and the scientific. We are
religious when we are children, metaphysical when we are one-and-
twenty, and as we get old we grow scientific. And I must not forget
this, that what is true for the individual is true for the race. In
the earliest ages man was religious (I wonder what our vicar would say
if he heard this). In the Middle Ages man was metaphysical, and in
these latter days he is growing scientific.

'The other day when I came into the drawing-room she didn't say a
word. I waited and waited to see if she would speak--no, not a word.
She sat reading. Occasionally she would look up, stare at the ceiling,
and then take a note. I wonder what she put down on that slip of
paper? But when I spoke she seemed glad to talk, and she told me about
Oxford. It evidently was the pleasantest time of her life. It must
have been very curious. There were a hundred girls, and they used to
run in and out of each other's rooms, and they had dances; they danced
with each other, and never thought about men. She told me she never
enjoyed any dances so much as those; and they had a gymnasium, and
special clothes to wear there--a sort of bloomer costume. It must have
been very jolly. I wish I had gone to Oxford. Girls dancing together,
and never thinking about men. How nice!

'At Oxford they say that marriage is not the only mission for women--
that is to say, for some women. They don't despise marriage, but they
think that for some women there is another mission. When I spoke to
Mrs. Fargus about her marriage, she had to admit that she had written
to her college friends to apologise--no, not to apologise, she said,
but to explain. She was not ashamed, but she thought she owed them an
explanation. Just fancy any of the girls in Sutton being ashamed of
being married!'

The darkness was thick with wandering scents, and Mildred's thoughts
withered in the heat. She closed her eyes; she lay quite still, but
the fever of the night devoured her; the sheet burned like a flame;
she opened her eyes, and was soon thinking as eagerly as before.

She thought of the various possibilities that marriage would shut out
to her for ever. She reproached herself for having engaged herself to
Alfred Stanby, and remembered that Harold had been opposed to the
match, and had refused to give his consent until Alfred was in a
position to settle five hundred a year upon her. ... Alfred would
expect her to keep house for him exactly as she was now keeping house
for her brother. Year after year the same thing, seeing Alfred go away
in the morning, seeing him come home in the evening. That was how her
life would pass. She did not wish to be cruel; she knew that Alfred
would suffer terribly if she broke off her engagement, but it would be
still more cruel to marry him if she did not think she would make him
happy, and the conviction that she would not make him happy pressed
heavily upon her. What was she to do? She could not, she dared not,
face the life he offered her. It would be selfish of her to do so.

The word 'selfish' suggested a new train of thought to Mildred. She
argued that it was not for selfish motives that she desired freedom.
If she thought that, she would marry him to-morrow. It was because she
did not wish to lead a selfish life that she intended to break off her
engagement. She wished to live for something; she wished to accomplish
something; what could she do? There was art. She would like to be an
artist! She paused, astonished at the possibility. But why not she as
well as the other women whom she had met at Mrs. Fargus'? She had met
many artists--ladies who had studios--at Mrs. Fargus'.

She had been to their studios and had admired their independence. They
had spoken of study in Paris, and of a village near Paris where they
went to paint landscape. Each had a room at the inn; they met at meal
times, and spent the day in the woods and fields. Mildred had once
been fond of drawing, and in the heat of the summer night she wondered
if she could do anything worth doing. She knew that she would like to
try. She would do anything sooner than settle down with Alfred.
Marriage and children were not the only possibilities in woman's life.
The girls she knew thought so, but the girls Mrs. Fargus knew didn't
think so.

And rolling over in her hot bed she lamented that there was no escape
for a girl from marriage. If so, why not Alfred Stanby--he as well as
another? But no, she could not settle down to keep house for Alfred
for the rest of her life. She asked herself again why she should marry
at all--what it was that compelled all girls, rich or poor, it was all
the same, to marry and keep house for their husbands. She remembered
that she had five hundred a year, and that she would have four
thousand a year if her brother died--the distillery was worth that.
But money made no difference. There was something in life which forced
all girls into marriage, with their will or against their will.
Marriage, marriage, always marriage--always the eternal question of
sex, as if there was nothing else in the world. But there was much
else in life. There was a nobler purpose in life than keeping house
for a man. Of that she felt quite sure, and she hoped that she would
find a vocation. She must first educate herself, so far she knew, and
that was all that was at present necessary for her to know.

'But how hot it is; I shan't be able to go out in the cart to-morrow.
... I wish everything would change, especially the weather. I want to
go away. I hate living in a house without another woman. I wish Harold
would let me have a companion--a nice elderly lady, but not too
elderly--a woman about forty, who could talk; some one like Mrs.
Fargus. When mother was alive it was different. She has been dead now
three years. How long it seems! ... Poor mother! I wish she were here.
I scarcely knew much of father; he went to the city every morning,
just as Harold does, by that dreadful ten minutes past nine. It seems
to me that I have never heard of anything all my life but that
horrible ten minutes past nine and the half-past six from London
Bridge. I don't hear so much about the half-past six, but the ten
minutes past nine is never out of my head. Father is dead seven years,
mother is dead three, and since her death I have kept house for
Harold.'

Then as sleep pressed upon her eyelids Mildred's thoughts grew
disjointed. ... 'Alfred, I have thought it all over. I cannot marry
you. ... Do not reproach me,' she said between dreaming and waking;
and as the purple space of sky between the trees grew paler, she heard
the first birds. Then dream and reality grew undistinguishable, and
listening to the carolling of a thrush she saw a melancholy face, and
then a dejected figure pass into the twilight.

II.

'What a fright I am looking! I did not get to sleep till after two
o'clock; the heat was something dreadful, and to-day will be hotter
still. One doesn't know what to wear.'

She settled the ribbons in her white dress, and looked once again in
the glass to see if the soft, almost fluffy, hair, which the least
breath disturbed was disarranged. She smoothed it with her short white
hand. There was a wistful expression in her brown eyes, a little
pathetic won't-you-care-for-me expression which she cultivated,
knowing its charm in her somewhat short, rather broad face, which
ended in a pointed chin: the nose was slightly tip-tilted, her teeth
were white, but too large. Her figure was delicate, and with quick
steps she hurried along the passages and down the high staircase.
Harold was standing before the fireplace, reading the _Times,_ when
she entered.

'You are rather late, Mildred. I am afraid I shall lose the ten
minutes past nine.'

'My dear Harold, you have gone up to town for the last ten years by
that train, and every day we go through a little scene of fears and
doubts; you have never yet missed it, I may safely assume you will not
miss it this morning.'

'I'm afraid I shall have to order the cart, and I like to get a walk
if possible in the morning.'

'I can walk it in twelve minutes.'

'I shouldn't like to walk it in this broiling sun in fifteen. ... By
the way, have you looked at the glass this morning?'

'No; I am tired of looking at it. It never moves from "set fair."'

'It is intolerably hot--can you sleep at night?'

'No; I didn't get to sleep till after two. I lay awake thinking of
Mrs. Fargus.'

'I never saw you talk to a woman like that before. I wonder what you
see in her. She's very plain. I daresay she's very clever, but she
never says anything--at least not to me.'

'She talks fast enough on her own subjects. You didn't try to draw her
out. She requires drawing out. ... But it wasn't so much Mrs. Fargus
as having a woman in the house. It makes one's life so different; one
feels more at ease. I think I ought to have a companion.'

'Have a middle-aged lady here, who would bore me with her conversation
all through dinner when I come home from the City tired and worn out!'

'But you don't think that your conversation when you "come home from
the City tired and worn out" has no interest whatever for me; that
this has turned out a good investment; that the shares have gone up,
and will go up again? I should like to know how I am to interest
myself in all that. What has it to do with me?'

'What has it to do with you! How do you think that this house and
grounds, carriages and horses and servants, glasshouses without end,
are paid for? Do I ever grumble about the dressmakers' bills?--and
heaven knows they are high enough. I believe all your hats and hosiery
are put down to house expenses, but I never grumble. I let you have
everything you want--horses, carriages, dresses, servants. You ought
to be the happiest girl in the world in this beautiful place.'

'Beautiful place! I hate the place; I hate it--a nasty, gaudy, vulgar
place, in a vulgar suburb, where nothing but money-grubbing is thought
of from morning, noon, till night; how much percentage can be got out
of everything; cut down the salaries of the employees; work everything
on the most economic basis; it does not matter what the employees
suffer so long as seven per cent. dividend is declared at the end of
the year. I hate the place.'

'My dear, dear Mildred, what are you saying? I never heard you talk
like this before. Mrs. Fargus has been filling your head with
nonsense. I wish I had never asked her to the house; absurd little
creature, with her eternal talk about culture, her cropped hair, and
her spectacles glimmering. What nonsense she has filled your head
with!'

'Mrs. Fargus is a very clever woman. ... I think I should like go to
Girton.'

'Go to Girton!'

'Yes, go to Girton. I've never had any proper education. I should like
to learn Greek. Living here, cooped up with a man all one's life isn't
my idea. I should like to see more of my own sex. Mrs. Fargus told me
about the emulation of the class-rooms, about the gymnasium, about the
dances the girls had in each other's rooms. She never enjoyed any
dances like those. She said that I must feel lonely living in a house
without another woman.'

'I know what it'll be. I shall never hear the end of Mrs. Fargus. I
wish I'd never asked them.'

'Men are so selfish! If by any chance they do anything that pleases
any one but themselves, how they regret it.'

Harold was about the middle height, but he gave the impression of a
small man. He was good-looking; but his features were without charm,
for his mind was uninteresting--a dry, barren mind, a somewhat stubbly
mind--but there was an honest kindliness in his little eyes which was
absent from his sister's. The conversation had paused, and he glanced
quickly every now and then at her pretty, wistful face, expressive at
this moment of much irritated and nervous dissatisfaction; also an
irritated obstinacy lurked in her eyes, and, knowing how obstinate she
was in her ideas, Harold sincerely dreaded that she might go off to
Girton to learn Greek--any slightest word might precipitate the
catastrophe.

'I think at least that I might have a companion,' she said at last.

'Of course you can have a companion if you like, Mildred; but I
thought you were going to marry Alfred Stanby?'

'You objected to him; you said he had nothing--that he couldn't afford
to marry.'

'Yes, until he got his appointment; but I hear now that he's nearly
certain of it.'

'I don't think I could marry Alfred.'

'You threw Lumly over, who was an excellent match, for Alfred. So long
as Alfred wasn't in a position to marry you, you would hear of no one
else, and now--but you don't mean to say you are going to throw him
over.'

'I don't know what I shall do.'

'Well, I have no time to discuss the matter with you now. It is seven
minutes to nine. I shall only have just time to catch the train by
walking very fast. Good-bye.'

'Please, mam, any orders to-day for the butcher?'

'Always the same question--how tired I am of hearing the same words. I
suppose it is very wicked of me to be so discontented,' thought
Mildred, as she sat on the sofa with her key-basket in her hand; 'but
I have got so tired of Sutton. I know I shouldn't bother Harold; he is
very good and he does his best to please me. It is very odd. I was all
right till Mrs. Fargus came, she upset me. It was all in my mind
before, no doubt; but she brought it out. Now I can't interest myself
in anything. I really don't care to go to this tennis party, and the
people who go there are not in the least interesting. I am certain I
should not meet a soul whom I should care to speak to. No, I won't go
there. There's a lot to be done in the greenhouses, and in the
afternoon I will write a long letter to Mrs. Fargus. She promised to
send me a list of books to read.'

There was nothing definite in her mind, but something was germinating
within her, and when the work of the day was done, she wondered at the
great tranquillity of the garden. A servant was there in a print
dress, and the violet of the skies and the green of the trees seemed
to be closing about her like a tomb. 'How beautiful!' Mildred mused
softly; 'I wish I could paint that.'

A little surprised and startled, she went upstairs to look for her box
of water-colours; she had not used it since she left school. She found
also an old block, with a few sheets remaining; and she worked on and
on, conscious only of the green stillness of the trees and the romance
of rose and grey that the sky unfolded. She had begun her second
water-colour, and was so intent upon it as not to be aware that a new
presence had come into the garden. Alfred Stanby was walking towards
her. He was a tall, elegantly dressed, good-looking young man.

'What! painting? I thought you had given it up. Let me see.'

'Oh, Alfred, how you startled me!'

He took the sketch from the girl's lap, and handing it back, he said:

'I suppose you had nothing else to do this afternoon; it was too hot
to go out in the cart. Do you like painting?'

'Yes, I think I do.'

They were looking at each other--and there was a questioning look in
the girl's eyes--for she perceived in that moment more distinctly than
she had before the difference in their natures.

'Have you finished the smoking cap you are making for me?'

'No; I did not feel inclined to go on with it.'

Something in Mildred's tone of voice and manner struck Alfred, and,
dropping his self-consciousness, he said:

'You thought that I'd like a water-colour sketch better.'

Mildred did not answer.

'I should like to have some drawings to hang in the smoking-room when
we're married. But I like figures better than landscapes. You never
tried horses and dogs, did you?'

'No, I never did,' Mildred answered languidly, and she continued to
work on her sky. But her thoughts were far from it, and she noticed
that she was spoiling it. 'No, I never tried horses and dogs.'

'But you could, dearest, if you were to try. You could do anything you
tried. You are so clever.'

'I don't know that I am; I should like to be.'

They looked at each other, and anxiously each strove to read the
other's thoughts.

'Landscapes are more suited to a drawing-room than a smoking-room. It
will look very well in your drawing-room when we're married. We shall
want some pictures to cover the walls.'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21