"Oh, dear, yes. Since he was three months old, he's been brought up as Pip was. But perhaps 'Great Expectations' was not among your books read."
"No; but I suppose you mean your baby's brought up by hand? But I can't think how you could bear to put him away from you if it wasn't actually needful. Why, my heart's broken only to think that in a month or so more my baby will not depend upon me, humanly, for all her little life."
"Ah, plainly you have a vocation to be a mother. I haven't; and if I had to care for Mill in all things, it would be simple slavery to me. But it must be a great step from art to the nursery too."
"That means a step down. I suppose I should have thought so once, but never since I held my baby in my arms, and she's a far more wonderful creation to me than any old master's cherub I ever copied. And not my baby alone, but all babies. I never pass one in the street now, ever so ugly or dirty, without a warm feeling for it, and no charity opens my purse so quickly as a crêche, or a foundling, or orphan asylum. I could have been very happy as an artist always. Art is full of the noblest strength and compensations, and I own that the ordinary life of the English Philistine is irksome to me to the last degree; but what should I do now without a husband and child? And what would I not give up or bear for them? You see I'm only a very humdrum woman, Mrs. Malise."
"Whatever I see, I don't despair of winning you over to our side. I think it only needs that this great movement for woman's freedom and enlightenment, all that underlies it, all it implies, be fairly brought before you, to receive your assent and coöperation. And, to be unwisely frank, perhaps, it is such women as you we ought to gain, must gain—women of sentiment, tenderness, tact, suave manner—sympathetic women, to bring a gracious element into the contest. The workers already in the field have fought so long, against such odds and obloquy, that it is no wonder all the softness, conciliation are gone out of them, and that their aspect and address suggest only warfare, aggressive and unsparing."
And so on during the call. I wish I could photograph for you Mrs. Malise's drawing-room. You will not suppose it cumbered with the ordinary pretty feminine litter; but I can tell you Aunt Janet's sewing-room couldn't begin to rival it in grim dead-in-earnestness: straight up and down chairs that mean work; a writing-table big enough for a board-room, and fitted with suitably mighty writing implements; a slippery green leather couch upon which no laziness could be so desperate as to court repose; books lining one wall, and papers, stacks of papers everywhere—manuscripts and newspapers; no ornaments, unless a clock, a Cleopatra's needle in black marble, a skull, a wild-eyed, shock-headed oil portrait of a man I guessed to be the father of my hostess, and photographs of Mill, Mazzini, and Swinbourne be considered decorative.
Once at home again, I flew up stairs to Ronayne's dressing-room to run over his engagement tablet. One of the days named by Mrs. Malise was clear, so I said quietly at dinner, "Oh, Ronayne, don't make any engagement for Friday, for we are to dine at the Coming Events New Era Peep o'Day Associate Club."
"Plaît-il, madame?"
So I told him all about it. He groaned, made two or three pathetic observations about grocer's wine, raw meat, greasy, peppered entrées, and the cantankerous woman who would fall to his share at dinner, but resigned himself like a lamb—or a well-trained husband, which is much the same thing.
And once I had fairly sent off our acceptance to Mrs. Malise, I didn't spare him one bit. I told him that for once in his life he was to part company with his fossil world, and find himself in the vanguard of civilization, breathing another atmosphere in the high fellowship of the evangels of religious and social liberty. I besought him not to mortify me by any expression of his limited ideas and convictions upon the topics we should probably hear discussed, and above all not to betray horror at any enunciation that seemed to his feeble apprehension to strike at the root of all possible or endurable tarrying on this planet. "Don't let it be known," I entreated, "what a clog you are upon my soarings after the illimitable. I am a victim, but the anguish and humiliation of my lot are too recent and painful for publicity—as yet!