The Revolt of Man

But the Countess shook her head impatiently, and sprang to her feet.

‘Enough, Professor! I am tired of debates and the battles of phrase. The House may get on without me. And I will inquire no more, even of you, Professor, into the foundations of faith, constitution, and the rest of it. I am brave, when I rise in my place, about the unalterable principles of religious and political economy: brave words do not mean brave heart. Like so many who are outspoken, which I cannot be – at least yet – my faith is sapped, I doubt.’

‘She who doubts,’ said the Professor, ‘is perhaps near the truth.’

‘Nay; for I shall cease to investigate; I shall go down to the country and talk with my tenants.’

‘Do you learn much,’ asked the Professor, ‘of your country tenants?’

The Countess laughed.

‘I teach a great deal, at least,’ she replied. ‘Three times a-week I lecture the women on constitutional law, and twice on the best management of husbands, sons, and farm-labourers, and so forth.’

‘And you are so much occupied in teaching that you never learn? That is a great pity, Constance. Do you observe?’

‘I suppose I do. Why, Professor?’

‘Old habits linger longest in country places. What do you find to remark upon, most of all?’

‘The strange and unnatural deference,’ replied the girl, with a blush of shame, ‘paid by country women to the men. Yes, Professor, after all our teaching, and in spite of all our laws, in the country districts the old illogical supremacy of brute force still obtains, thinly disguised.’

‘My dear, who manages the farm?’

‘Why,’ said the Countess, ‘the wives are supposed to manage, but their husbands really have the whole management in their own hands.’

‘Who drives the cattle, sows the seed, reaps, ploughs?’

‘The husband, of course. It is his duty.’

‘It is,’ said the Professor. ‘Child, a few generations ago he did all this as the acknowledged head of the house. He does not forget.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, my dear Countess, that things are never so near their end as when they appear the firmest. Now, if you please, tell me something more of this great speech of yours, which so roused the wrath of assembled and hereditary wisdom. What did you intend to say?’

Constance began, in a quick, agitated way, nervously pacing the room, to run through the main points of the speech which she had prepared but had not been allowed to deliver. It was a plea for the intellectual elevation of the other sex. She pointed out that, although there was legislation in plenty for their subjection, – although the greatest care was taken to prevent men from working together, conspiring, and meeting, so that most work was done in solitude or at home – and when that was not the case, a woman was always present to enforce silence – although laws had been passed to stamp out violence, and to direct the use of brute strength into useful channels, – little or nothing had been done, even by private enterprise, for the education of men. She showed that the prisons were crammed with cases of young men who had ‘broken out’; that very soon they would have no more room to hold their prisoners; that the impatience of men under the severe restrictions of the law was growing greater every day, and more dangerous to order; and that, unless some remedy were found, she trembled for the consequences.

Here the Professor raised her eyes, and laughed gently.

The Countess went on with her speech. ‘I am not advocating, before this august assembly, the adoption of unconstitutional and revolutionary measures, – I claim only for men such an education of their reasoning faculties as will make them reasoning creatures. I would teach them something of what we ourselves learn, so that they may reason as we reason, and obey the law because they cannot but own that the law is just. I know that we must first encourage the young men to follow a healthy instinct which bids them be strong; yet there is more in life for a man to do than to work, to dig, to carry out orders, to be a good athlete, an obedient husband, and a conscientious father.’

Here the Professor laughed again.

‘Why do you laugh, Professor?’

‘Because, my dear, you are already in the way that leads to understanding.’

‘You speak in parables.’

‘You are yet in twilight, dear Constance.’ The Professor rose and laid her hand on the young Countess’s arm. ‘Child, your generous heart has divined what your logic would have made it impossible for you to perceive – a great truth, perhaps the greatest of truths. Go on.’

‘Have I? The House would not allow me to say it, then; my own friends deserted me; a vote of want of confidence was hurriedly passed by a majority of 235 to 22; and’ – the young Minister laughed bitterly – ‘there is an end of my great schemes.’

‘For a time – yes,’ said the Professor. ‘But, Constance, there is a greater work before you than you suspect or dream. Greatest of the women of all time, my child, shall you be – if what I hope may be brought to pass. Let not this little disappointment of an hour vex you any longer. Go – gain strength in the country – meditate – and read.’

‘Oh, read!’ cried the girl, impatiently; ‘I am sick of reading.’

‘Read,’ continued the Professor; ‘read – with closed doors – the forbidden books. They stand in your own castle, locked up in cases; they have not been destroyed because they are not known to exist. Read Shakespeare.’

Events which followed prevented the Countess from undertaking this course of study; for she remained in town. From time to time the Professor was wont to startle her by reading or quoting some passage which appealed to her imagination as nothing in modern poetry seemed able to do. She knew that the passage came from one of the old books which had been put away, locked up, or destroyed. It was generally a passage of audacity, clothing a revolutionary sentiment in words which burned themselves into her brain, and seemed alive. She never forgot these words, but she dared not repeat them. And she knew herself that the very possession of the sentiments, the knowledge that they existed, made her ‘dangerous,’ as her enemies called her; for most of them were on the attributes of man.

The conversation was interrupted by a servant, who brought the Countess a note.

‘How very imprudent!’ cried Constance, reddening with vexation. ‘Why will the boy do these wild things? Help me, Professor. My cousin, Lord Chester, wants to see me, and is coming, by himself, to my house – here – immediately.’

‘Surely I am sufficient guardian of the proprieties, Constance. We will say, if you like, that the boy came to see his old tutor. Let him come, and, unless he has anything for your ear alone, I can be present.’

‘Heaven knows what he has to say,’ his cousin sighed. ‘Always some fresh escapade, some kicking over the limits of convention.’ She was standing at the window, and looked out. ‘And here he comes, riding along Park Lane as if it were an open common.’

CHAPTER II

THE EARL OF CHESTER

‘EDWARD!’ cried Constance, giving her cousin her hand, ‘is this prudent? You ride down Park Lane as if you were riding after hounds, your unhappy attendant – poor girl! – trying in vain to keep up with you; and then you descend openly, and in the eyes of all, alone, at my door – the door of your unmarried cousin. Consider me, my dear Edward, if you are careless about your own reputation. Do you think I have no enemies? Do you think young Lord Chester can go anywhere without being seen and reported? Do you think all women have kind hearts and pleasant tongues?’

The young man laughed, but a little bitterly.

‘My reputation, Constance, may just as well be lost as kept. What do I care for my reputation?’

At these terrible words Constance looked at him in alarm.

He was worth looking at, if only as a model, being six feet high, two-and-twenty years of age, strongly built, with crisp, curly brown hair, the shoulders of a Hercules, and the face of an Apollo. But to-day his face was clouded, and as he spoke he clenched his fist.

‘What has happened now, Edward?’ asked his cousin. ‘Anything important? The new groom?’

‘The new groom has a seat like a sack, is afraid to gallop, and can’t jump. As for her nerve, she’s got none. My stable-boy Jack would be worth ten of her. But if a man cannot be allowed – for the sake of his precious reputation – to ride without a girl trailing at his heels, why, I suppose there is no more to be said. No, Constance; it is worse than the new groom.’

‘Edward, you are too masterful,’ said his cousin, gravely. ‘One cannot, even if he be Earl of Chester, fly in the face of all the convenances. Rules are made to protect the weak for their own sake; the strong obey them for the sake of the weak. You are strong; be therefore considerate. Suppose all young men were allowed to run about alone?’

The Professor shook her head gravely.

‘It would be a return,’ she said, ‘to the practice of the ancients.’

‘The barbarous practice of the ancients,’ added Constance.

‘The grooms might at least be taught how to ride,’ grumbled the young man.

‘But about this disaster, Edward; is it the postponement of a cricket match, the failure of a tennis game – ’

‘Constance,’ he interrupted, ‘I should have thought you capable of believing that I should not worry you at such a moment with trifles. I have got the most serious news for you – things for which I want your help and your sympathy.’

Constance turned pale. What could he have to tell her except one thing – the one thing which she had been dreading for two or three years?

Edward, Earl of Chester in his own right, held his title by a tenure unique in the peerage. For four generations the Countesses of Chester had borne their husbands one child only, and that a son; for four generations the Earls of Chester had married ladies of good family, certainly, but of lower rank, so that the title remained. He represented, by lineal descent through the male line, the ancient Royal House; and though there were not wanting ladies descended through the female line from old Kings of England, by this extraordinary accident he possessed the old royal descent, which was more coveted than any other in the long lists of the Red Book. It was objected that its honours were half shorn by being transmitted through so many males; but there were plenty to whisper that, according to ancient custom, the young Earl would be none other than the King of England. So long a line of only children could not but result in careful nursing of the estate, which was held in trust and ward by one Countess after another, until now it was one of the greatest in the country; and though there were a few peeresses whose acres exceeded those of the Earl of Chester, there was no young man in the matrimonial market to be compared with him. His hand was at the disposal – subject, of course, to his own agreement, which was taken for granted – of the Chancellor, who, up to the present time, had made no sign.

Young, handsome, the holder of a splendid title, the owner of a splendid rent-roll, said to be of amiable disposition, known to be proud of his descent – could there be a husband more desirable? Was it to be wondered at if every unmarried woman in a certain rank of life, whether maid or widow, dreamed of marrying the Earl of Chester, and made pictures in her own mind of herself as the Countess, sitting in the House, taking precedence as Première, after the Duchesses, holding office, ruling departments, making eloquent speeches, followed and reported by the society papers, giving great entertainments, actually being and doing what other women can only envy and sigh for?

It was whispered that Lady Carlyon would ask her cousin’s hand; it was also whispered that the Chancellor (now a permanent officer of the State) would never grant her request on account of her politics; it was also whispered that a certain widow, advanced in years, of the highest rank, had been observed to pay particular attention to the young Earl in society and in the field. This report, however, was received with caution, and was not generally believed.

‘Serious news!’ Constance for a moment looked very pale. The Professor glanced at her with concern and even pity. ‘Serious news!’ She was going to add, ‘Who is it?’ but stopped in time. ‘What is it?’ she said instead.

‘You have not yet heard, then,’ the Earl replied, ‘of the great honour done to me and to my house?’

Constance shook her head. She knew now that her worst fears were going to be realised.

‘Tell me quickly, Edward.’

‘No less a person than her Grace the Duchess of Dunstanburgh has offered me, through the Chancellor, the support and honour of her hand.’

Constance started. This was the worst, indeed. The Duchess of Dunstanburgh! Sixty-five years of age; already thrice a widow; the Duchess of Dunstanburgh! She could not speak.

‘Have you nothing to say, Constance?’ asked the young man. ‘Do you not envy me my happy lot? My bride is not young to be sure, but she is a Duchess; the old Earldom will be lost in the new Duchy. She has buried three husbands already; one may look forward with joy to lying beside them in her gorgeous mausoleum. Her country house is finer than mine, but it is not so old. She is of rank so exalted that one need not inquire into her temper, which is said to be evil; nor into the little faults, such as jealousy, suspicion, meanness, greed, and avarice, with which the wicked world credits her.’

‘Edward! Edward!’ cried his cousin.

‘Then, again, one’s religion will be so beautifully brought into play. We are required to obey – that is the first thing taught in the Church catechism; all women are set in authority over us. I must therefore obey the Chancellor.’

His hearers were silent.

‘Again, what says the text? – “It is man’s chiefest honour to be chosen: his highest duty to give, wherever bidden, his love, his devotion, and his loyalty.” ’

The Professor nodded her head gravely.

‘What martyrs of religion would ask for a more noble opportunity,’ he asked, ‘than to marry this old woman?’

‘Edward!’ Constance could only warn. She sees no way to advise. ‘Do not scoff.’

‘Let us face the position,’ said the Professor. ‘The Chancellor has gone through the form of asking your consent to this marriage. When?’

‘Last night.’

‘And when do you see her?’

‘I am to see her ladyship this very morning.’

‘To inform her of your acquiescence. Yes; it is the usual form. The time is very short.’

‘My acquiescence?’ asked the Earl. ‘We shall see about that presently.’

‘Patience, my lord!’ The Professor was thinking what to advise for the best. ‘Patience! Let us have no sudden and violent resolves. We may get time. Ay – time will be our best friend. Remember that the Chancellor must be obeyed. She may, for the sake of courtesy, go through the form of proposing a suitable alliance for your consideration, but her proposition is her order, which you must obey. Otherwise it is contempt of court, and the penalty – ’

‘I know it,’ said the Earl, ‘already. It is imprisonment.’

‘Such contempt would be punished by imprisonment for life. Imprisonment, hopeless.’

‘Nay,’ he replied. ‘Not hopeless, because one could always hope in the power of friends. Have I not Constance? And then, you see, Professor, I am two-and-twenty, while the Chancellor and the Duchess are both sixty-five. Perhaps they may join the majority.’

The Professor shook her head. Even to speak of the age of so great a lady, even to hint at her death as an event likely to happen soon, was an outrage against propriety – which is religion.

‘My determination is this,’ he went on, ‘whatever the consequence, I will never marry the Duchess. Law or no law, I will never marry a woman unless I love her.’ His eye rested for a moment on his cousin, and he reddened. ‘I may be imprisoned, but I shall carry with me the sympathy of every woman – that is, of every young woman – in the country.’

‘That will not help you, poor boy,’ said the Professor. ‘Hundreds of men are lying in our prisons who would have the sympathies of young women, were their histories known. But they lie there still, and will lie there till they die.’

‘Then I,’ said the Earl proudly, ‘will lie with them.’

There were moments when this young man seemed to forget the lessons of his early training, and the examples of his fellows. The meekness, modesty, submission, and docility which should mark the perfect man sometimes disappeared, and gave place to an assumption of the authority which should only belong to woman. At such times, in his own castle, his servants trembled before him; the stoutest woman’s heart failed for fear: even his guardian, the Dowager Lady Boltons, selected carefully by the Chancellor on account of her inflexible character, and because she had already reduced to complete submission a young heir of the most obstinate disposition, and the rudest and most uncompromising material, quailed before him. He rode over her, so to speak. His will conquered hers. She was ashamed to own it; she did not acquaint the Chancellor with her ward’s masterful character, but she knew, in her own mind, that her guardianship had been a failure. Nay, so strange was the personal influence of the young man, so infectious among the men were such assertions of will, that any husband who happened to witness one of them, would go home and carry on in fashion so masterful, so independent, and so self-willed, even those who had previously been the most submissive, that they were only brought to reason and proper submission by threats, remonstrances, and visits of admonition from the vicar – who, poor woman, was always occupied in the pulpit, owing to the Earl’s bad example, with the disobedience of man and its awful consequences here and hereafter. Sometimes these failed. Then they became acquainted with the inside of a prison and with bread and water.

‘Let us get time,’ said the Professor. ‘My lord, I hope,’ – here she sunk her voice to a whisper – ‘that you will neither lie in a prison nor marry any but the woman you love.’

Again the young man’s eyes boldly fell upon Constance, who blushed without knowing why.

Then the Professor, without any excuse, left them alone.

‘You have,’ said Lord Chester, ‘something to say to me, Constance.’

She hesitated. What use to say now what should have been said at another time and at a more fitting opportunity?

‘I am no milky, modest, obedient youth, Constance. You know me well. Have you nothing to say to me?’

In the novels, the young man who hears the first word of love generally sinks on his knees, and with downcast eyes and blushing face reverentially kisses the hand so graciously offered to him. In ordinary life they had to wait until they were asked. Yet this young man was actually asking – boldly asking – for the word of love – what else could he mean? – and instead of blushing, was fixedly regarding Constance with fearless eyes.

‘It seems idle now to say it,’ she replied, stammering and hesitating – though in novels the woman always spoke up in a clear, calm, and resolute accents; ‘but, Edward, had the Chancellor not been notoriously the personal friend and creature of the Duchess, I should have gone to her long ago. They were schoolfellows; she owes her promotion to the Duchess; she would most certainly have rewarded her Grace by refusing my request.’

‘Yet you are a Carlyon and I am a Chester. On what plea?’

‘Cousinship, incompatibility of temper, some legal quibble – who knows? However, that is past; forget, my poor Edward, that I have told what should have been a secret. You will marry the Duchess – you – ’

He interrupted her by laughing – a cheerfully sarcastic laugh, as of one who holds the winning cards and means to play them.

‘Fair cousin,’ he said, ‘I have something to say to you of far more importance than that. You have retired before an imaginary difficulty. I am going to face a real difficulty, a real danger. Constance,’ he went on, ‘you and I are such old friends and playfellows, that you know me as well as a woman can ever know a man who is not her husband. We played together when you were three and I was five. When you were ten and I was twelve, we read out of the same book until the stupidity and absurdity of modern custom tried to stop me from reading any more. Since then we have read separately, and you have done your best to addle your pretty head with political economy, in the name and by the aid of which you and your House of Lawmakers have ruined this once great country.’

‘Edward! this is the wildest treason. Where, oh, where, did you learn to talk – to think – to dare such dreadful things?’

‘Never mind where, Constance. In those days – in those years of daily companionship – a hope grew up in my heart, – a flame of fire which kept me alive, I think, amidst the depression and gloom of my fellow men. Can you doubt what was that hope?’

Constance trembled – the Countess of Carlyon, the Home Secretary, trembled. Had she ever before, in all her life, trembled? She was afraid. In the novels, it was true, many a young man, greatly daring, by a bold word swept away a cloud of misunderstanding and reserve. But this was in novels written by women of the middle class, who can never hope to marry young, for the solace of people of their own rank. It was not to be expected that in such works there should be any basis of reality – they were in no sense pictures of life; for, in reality, as was deplored almost openly, when these elderly ladies were rich enough to take a husband and face the possibilities of marriage, though they always chose the young men, it was rare indeed that they met with more than a respectful acquiescence. Nothing, ladies complained, among each other, was more difficult to win and retain a young man’s love. But here was this headstrong youth, with love in his eyes – bold, passionate, masterful love – overpowering love – love in his attitude as he bent over the girl, and love upon his lips. Oh, dignity of a Home Secretary! Oh, rules and conventions of life! Oh, restraints of religion! Where were they all at this most fatal moment?

‘Constance,’ he said taking her hand, ‘all the rubbish about manly modesty is outside the door: and that is closed. I am descended from a race who in the good old days wooed their brides for themselves, and fought for them too, if necessary. Not toothless, hoary old women, but young, sunny, blooming girls, like yourself. And they wooed them thus, my sweet.’ He seized her in his strong arms and kissed her on the lips, on the cheeks, on the forehead. Constance, frightened and moved, made no resistance, and answered nothing. Once she looked up and met his eyes, but they were so strong, so burning, so determined, that she was fain to look no longer. ‘I love you, my dear,’ the shameless young man went on, – ‘I love you. I have always loved you, and shall never love any other woman; and if I may not marry you, I will never marry at all. Kiss me yourself, my sweet; tell me that you love me.’

Had he a spell? was he a wizard, this lover of hers? Could Constance, she thought afterwards, trying to recall the scene, have dreamed the thing, or did she throw her arms about his neck and murmur in his ears that she too loved him, and that if she could not marry him, there was no other man in all the world for her?

To recall those five precious minutes, indeed, was afterwards to experience a sense of humiliation which, while it crimsoned her cheek, made her heart and pulse to beat, and sent the blood coursing through her veins. She felt so feeble and so small, but then her lover was so strong. Could she have believed it possible that the will of a man should thus be able to overpower her? Why, she made no resistance at all while her cousin in this unheard-of manner betrayed a passion which … which … yes, by all the principles of holy religion, by all the rules of society, by all the teaching which inculcated submission, patience, and waiting to be chosen, caused this young man to deserve punishment – condign, sharp, exemplary. And yet – what did this mean? Constance felt her heart go forth to him. She loved him the more for his masterfulness; she was prouder of herself because of his great passion.

That was what she thought afterwards. What she did, when she began to recover, was to free herself and hide her burning face in her hands.

‘Edward,’ she whispered, ‘we are mad. And I, who should have known better, am the more culpable. Let us forget this moment. Let us respect each other. Let us be silent.’