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Judgment of Eve

<h1 class="title">THE JUDGMENT OF EVE</h1> BY MAY SINCLAIR “‘I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea’”—Nursery Rhyme. <h2>1I</h2> It was market-day in Queningford. Aggie Purcell was wondering whether Mr. Hurst would look in that afternoon at the Laurels as he had looked in on other market-days. Supposing he did, and supposing Mr. Gatty were to look in, too, why then, Aggie said, it would be rather awkward. But whether awkward for herself, or for Mr. Gatty, or Mr. Hurst, or for all three of them together, Aggie was unable to 2explain to her own satisfaction or her mother’s. In Queningford there were not many suitors for a young lady to choose from, but it was understood that, such as there were, Aggie Purcell would have her pick of them. The other young ladies were happy enough if they could get her leavings. Miss Purcell of the Laurels was by common consent the prettiest, the best-dressed, and the best-mannered of them all. To be sure, she could only be judged by Queningford standards; and, as the railway nearest to Queningford is a terminus that leaves the small gray town stranded on the borders of the unknown, Queningford standards are not progressive. Neither are they imitative; for imitation implies a certain nearness, and between the young ladies of Queningford and the daughters 3of the county there is an immeasurable void. The absence of any effective rivalry made courtship a rather tame and uninteresting affair to Miss Purcell. She had only to make up her mind whether she would take the wine-merchant’s son, or the lawyer’s nephew, or the doctor’s assistant, or, perhaps, it would be one of those mysterious enthusiasts who sometimes came into the neighborhood to study agriculture. Anyhow, it was a foregone conclusion that each of these doomed young men must pass through Miss Purcell’s door before he knocked at any other. Pretty Aggie was rather a long time in making up her mind. It could only be done by a slow process of elimination, till the embarrassing train of her adorers was finally reduced to two. At the age of five-and-twenty (five-and-twenty 4is not young in Queningford), she had only to solve the comparatively simple problem: whether it would be Mr. John Hurst or Mr. Arthur Gatty. Mr. John Hurst was a young farmer just home from Australia, who had bought High Farm, one of the biggest sheep-farming lands in the Cotswolds. Mr. Arthur Gatty was a young clerk in a solicitor’s office in London; he was down at Queningford on his Easter holiday, staying with cousins at the County Bank. Both had the merit of being young men whom Miss Purcell had never seen before. She was so tired of all the young men whom she had seen. Not that pretty Aggie was a flirt and a jilt and a heartless breaker of hearts. She wouldn’t have broken anybody’s heart for the whole world; it would have hurt her own too much. 5She had never jilted anybody, because she had never permitted herself to become engaged to any of those young men. As for flirting, pretty Aggie couldn’t have flirted if she had tried. The manners of Queningford are not cultivated to that delicate pitch when flirtation becomes a decorative art, and Aggie would have esteemed it vulgar. But Aggie was very superior and fastidious. She wanted things that no young man in Queningford would ever be able to offer her. Aggie had longings for music, better than Queningford’s best, for beautiful pictures, and for poetry. She had come across these things at school. And now, at five-and-twenty, she couldn’t procure one of them for herself. The arts were not encouraged by her family, and she only had an “allowance” on condition that she would spend it honorably 6in clothes. Of course, at five-and-twenty, she knew all the “pieces” and songs that her friends knew, and they knew all hers. She had read all the romantic fiction in the lending library, and all the works of light popular science, and still lighter and more popular theology, besides borrowing all the readable books from the vicarage. She had exhausted Queningford. It had no more to give her. Queningford would have considered that a young lady who could do all that had done enough to prove her possession of brains. Not that Queningford had ever wanted her to prove it; its young men, at any rate, very much preferred that she should leave her brains and theirs alone. And Aggie had brains enough to be aware of this; and being a very well-behaved young lady, and anxious to 7please, she had never mentioned any of her small achievements. Nature, safeguarding her own interests, had whispered to Aggie that young ladies who live in Queningford are better without intellects that show. Now, John Hurst was sadly akin to the young men of Queningford, in that he was unable to offer her any of the things which, Aggie felt, belonged to the finer part of her that she dared not show. On the other hand, he could give her (beside himself), a good income, a good house, a horse to ride, and a trap to drive in. To marry him, as her mother pointed out to her, would be almost as good as “getting in with the county.” Not that Mrs. Purcell offered this as an inducement. She merely threw it out as a vague contribution to the subject. Aggie didn’t care a rap about the county, 8as her mother might have known; but, though she wouldn’t have owned it, she had been attracted by John’s personal appearance. Glancing out of the parlor window, she could see what a gentleman he looked as he crossed the market-place in his tweed suit, cloth cap, and leather gaiters. He always had the right clothes. When high collars were the fashion, he wore them very high. His rivals said that this superstitious reverence for fashion suggested a revulsion from a past of prehistoric savagery. Mr. Gatty, on the other hand, had a soul that was higher than any collar. That, Aggie maintained, was why he always wore the wrong sort. There was no wrong thing Mr. Gatty could have worn that Aggie would not have found an excuse for; so assiduously did he minister to the finer part of 9her. He shared all her tastes. If she admired a picture or a piece of music or a book, Mr. Gatty had admired it ever since he was old enough to admire anything. She was sure that he admired her more for admiring them. She wasn’t obliged to hide those things from Mr. Gatty; besides, what would have been the use? There was nothing in the soul of Aggie that Mr. Gatty had not found out and understood, and she felt that there would be no limit to his understanding. But what she liked best about him was his gentleness. She had never seen any young man so gentle as Mr. Gatty. And his face was every bit as nice as John’s. Nicer, for it was excessively refined, and John’s wasn’t. You could see that his head was full of beautiful thoughts, whereas John’s 10head was full of nothing in particular. Then, Mr. Gatty’s eyes were large and spiritual; yes, spiritual was the word for them. John’s eyes were small, and, well, spiritual would never be the word for them. Unfortunately, John had been on the field first, before the unique appearance of Mr. Gatty, and Aggie felt that she was bound in honor to consider him. She had been considering him for some time without any compulsion. But when things began to look so serious that it really became a question which of these two she would take, she called in her mother to help her to decide. Mrs. Purcell was a comfortable, fat lady, who loved the state of peace she had been born in, had married into, and had never lost. Aggie was her eldest daughter, and she was a little vexed to think that she might have 11married five years ago if she hadn’t been so particular. Meanwhile, what with her prettiness and her superiority, she was spoiling her younger sisters’ chances. None of her rejected suitors had ever turned to Kate or Susie or Eliza. They were well enough, poor girls, but as long as Aggie was there they couldn’t help looking plain. But as for deciding between John Hurst and Mr. Gatty, Mrs. Purcell couldn’t do it. And when Aggie said, in her solemn way, “Mother, I think it’s coming; and I don’t know how to choose between them,” her mother had nothing to say but: “You must use your own judgment, my dear.” “My own judgment? I wonder if I really have any? You see, I feel as if I liked them both about the same.” 12“Then just say to yourself that if you marry John Hurst you’ll have a big house in the country, and if you marry Mr. Gatty you’ll have a little one in town, and choose between the houses. That’ll be easy enough.” Secretly, Mrs. Purcell was all for John Hurst, though he couldn’t be considered as exactly Aggie’s equal in station. (They were always saying how like a gentleman he looked, which showed that that was the last thing they had expected of him. But in Queningford one does as best one can.) For all John’s merits, she was not going to force him on Aggie in as many words. Mrs. Purcell deeply desired her daughter’s happiness, and she said to herself: “If Aggie marries either of them, and it turns out unhappily, I don’t want her to be able to say I over-persuaded her. If her poor father 13were alive, he‘d have known how to advise her.” Then, all of a sudden, without anybody’s advice, John was eliminated, too. It was not Aggie’s doing. In fact, he may be said to have eliminated himself. It happened in this way: Mr. Hurst had been taking tea with Aggie one market-day. The others were all out, and he had the field to himself. She always remembered just how he looked when he did it. He was standing on the white mohair rag in the drawing-room, and was running his fingers through his hair for the third time. He had been telling her how he had first taken up sheep-farming in Australia, how he’d been a farm-hand before that in California, how he’d always set his mind on that one thing—sheep-farming—because he had been born and bred 14in the Cotswolds. Aggie’s dark-blue eyes were fixed on him, serious and intent. That flattered him, and the gods, for his undoing, dowered him with a disastrous fluency. He had a way of thrusting out his jaw when he talked, and Aggie noted the singular determination of his chin. It was so powerful as to be almost brutal. (The same could certainly not be said of Mr. Gatty’s.) Then, in the light of his reminiscences, a dreadful thought came to her. “John,” she said, suddenly, “did you ever kill a pig?” <div class="illo" id="illo_2"> <ANTIMG src="images/illo_2.jpg" width-obs="446" height-obs="547" alt="A seated woman talks to a standing man." /> “‘John,’ she said, suddenly, ‘did you ever kill a pig?’” </div> He answered, absently, as was his way when directly addressed. “A pig? Yes, I’ve killed one or two in California.” She drew back in her chair; but, as she still gazed at him, he went on, well pleased: 15“I can’t tell you much about California. It was in Australia I learned sheep-farming.” “So, of course,” said Aggie, frigidly, “you killed sheep, too?” “For our own consumption—yes.” He said it a little haughtily. He wished her to understand the difference between a grazier and a butcher. “And lambs? Little lambs?” “Well, yes. I’m afraid the little lambs had to go, too, sometimes.” “How could you? How could you?” “How could I? Well, you see, I just had to. I couldn’t shirk when the other fellows didn’t. In time you get not to mind.” “Not to mind?” “Well, I never exactly enjoyed doing it.” “No. But you did it. And you didn’t mind.” 16She saw him steeped in butcheries, in the blood of little lambs, and her tender heart revolted against him. She tried to persuade herself that it was the lambs she minded most; but it was the pig she minded. There was something so low about killing a pig. It seemed to mark him. And it was marked, stained abominably, that he went from her presence. He said to himself: “I’ve dished myself now with my silly jabber. Damn those lambs!” Young Arthur Gatty, winged by some divine intuition, called at the Laurels the next afternoon. The gods were good to young Arthur, they breathed upon him the spirit of refinement and an indestructible gentleness that day. There was no jarring note in him. He rang all golden to Aggie’s testing touch. 17When he had gone a great calm settled upon her. It was all so simple now. Nobody was left but Arthur Gatty. She had just got to make up her mind about him—which would take a little time—and then—either she was a happy married woman or, said Aggie, coyly, a still happier old maid in Queningford forever. It was surprising how little the alternative distressed her. <h2>18II</h2> It was the last week in April, and Mr. Gatty’s Easter holiday was near its end. On the Monday, very early in the morning, the young clerk would leave Queningford for town. By Friday his manner had become, as Susie Purcell expressed it, “so marked” that the most inexperienced young lady could have suffered no doubt as to the nature of his affections. But no sooner had Aggie heard that he was going than she had begun to doubt, and had kept on doubting (horribly) up to Saturday morning. All Friday she had been bothering 19Susie. Did Susie think there was any one in town whom he was in a hurry to get back to? Did Susie think such a man as Mr. Gatty could think twice about a girl like her? Did Susie think he only thought her a forward little minx? Or did she think he really was beginning to care? And Susie said: “You goose! How do I know, if you don’t? He hasn’t said anything to me.” And on Saturday morning Aggie all but knew. For that day he asked permission to take her for a drive, having borrowed a trap for the purpose. They drove up to a northern slope of the Cotswolds, by a road that took them past High Farm; and there they found John Hurst superintending his sheep-shearing. Aggie, regardless of his feelings, insisted on getting out of the trap and looking on. John talked 20all the time to the shepherd, while Arthur talked to Aggie, and Aggie, cruel little Aggie, made remarks about the hard-heartedness of shearers. Arthur (“that bald-faced young Cockney snob,” as John called him) was depressed by the dominating presence of his rival and his visible efficiency. He looked long and thoughtfully at the sheep-shearing. “Boni pastoris est,” he observed, “tondere oves, non deglubere.” Aggie shook her pretty head, as much as to say Latin was beyond her; and he was kind enough to translate. “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear, not flay, the sheep.” “Is that from Virgil?” she asked, looking up into his face with a smile of unstained intellectual innocence. A terrific struggle arose in young Arthur’s breast. If he said it was 21from Virgil (it was a thousand to one against her knowing), he might leap into her love at one high bound. If he said he didn’t know where it came from before it got into his Latin exercise, he would be exactly where he was before, which, he reflected, dismally, was nowhere. Whereas, that fellow Hurst was forever on the spot. On the other hand, where would he be if—if—supposing that she ever found him out? A thousand to one against it. He who aims high must take high risks. He took them. “Yes,” he said, “it’s Virgil.” And he added, to clinch the matter, “From the ‘Georgics.’” The light in her believing eyes told him how inspired he had been. The more he thought of it the more likely it seemed. A flash of reminiscence 22from his school-days visited him; he remembered that Virgil did write some things called “Georgics,” and that Georgics were a kind of pastoral, and that pastorals always had sheep in them, and shepherds. It was a good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn’t he do with Aggie’s love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had asked him what good that would do either of them, he would have replied, contemptuously, 23that some things were ends in themselves. Still, he longed to prove his quality in some more honorable way. He called at the Laurels again that evening after supper. And, while Mrs. Purcell affected to doze, and Susie, as confidante, held Kate and Eliza well in play, he found another moment. With a solemnity impaired by extreme nervousness, he asked Miss Purcell if she would accept a copy of Browning’s Poems, which he had ventured to order for her from town. He hadn’t brought it with him, because he wished to multiply pretexts for calling; besides, as he said, he didn’t know whether she would really care— Aggie cared very much, indeed, and proved it by blushing as she said so. She had no need now to ask Susie anything. She knew. 24And yet, in spite of the Browning and the Virgil, it was surprising how cool and unexcited she felt in the face of her knowledge, now she had it. She felt—she wouldn’t have owned it—but she felt something remarkably like indifference. She wondered whether she had seemed indifferent to him (the thought gave her a pang that she had not experienced when John Hurst laid his heart out to be trampled on). She wondered whether she were indifferent, really. How could you tell when you really loved a man? She had looked for great joy and glory and uplifting. And they hadn’t come. It was as if she had held her heart in her hand and looked at it, and, because she felt no fluttering, had argued that love had never touched it; for she did not yet know that love’s deepest dwelling-place is in the quiet 25heart. Aggie had never loved before, and she thought that she was in the sanctuary on Saturday, when she was only standing on the threshold, waiting for her hour. It came, all of a sudden, on the Sunday. Aggie’s memory retained every detail of that blessed day—a day of spring sunshine, warm with the breath of wall-flowers and violets. Arthur, walking in the garden with her, was so mixed up with those delicious scents that Aggie could never smell them afterwards without thinking of him. A day that was not only all wall-flowers and violets, but all Arthur. For Arthur called first thing before breakfast to bring her the Browning, and first thing after breakfast to go with her to church, and first thing after dinner to take her for a walk. 26They went into the low-lying Queningford fields beside the river. They took the Browning with them; Arthur carried it under his arm. In his loose, gray overcoat and soft hat he looked like a poet himself, or a Socialist, or Something. He always looked like Something. As for Aggie, she had never looked prettier than she looked that day. He had never known before how big and blue her eyes were, nor that her fawn-colored hair had soft webs of gold all over it. She, in her clean new clothes, was like a young Spring herself, all blue and white and green, dawn-rose and radiant gold. The heart of the young man was quick with love of her. They found a sheltered place for Aggie to sit in, while Arthur lay at her feet and read aloud to her. He read “Abt Vogler,” “Prospice,” selections 27from “The Death in the Desert” (the day being Sunday); and then, with a pause and a shy turning of the leaves, and a great break in his voice, “Oh, Lyric Love, Half Angel and Half Bird,” through to the end. Their hearts beat very fast in the silence afterwards. He turned to the fly-leaf where he had inscribed her name. “I should like to have written something more. May I?” “Oh yes. Please write anything you like.” And now the awful question for young Arthur was: Whatever should he write? “With warmest regards” was too warm; “kind regards” were too cold; “good wishes” sounded like Christmas or a birthday; “remembrances” implied that things were at 28an end instead of a beginning. All these shades, the warmth, the reticence, the inspired audacity, might be indicated under the veil of verse. If he dared— “I wish,” said Aggie, “you’d write me something of your own.” (She knew he did it.) What more could he want than that she should divine him thus? For twenty minutes (he thought they were only seconds), young Arthur lay flat on his stomach and brooded over the Browning. Aggie sat quiet as a mouse, lest the rustle of her gown should break the divine enchantment. At last it came. “Dear, since you loved this book, it is your own—” That was how it began. Long afterwards Arthur would turn pale when he thought of how it went on; for it was wonderful how 29bad it was, especially the lines that had to rhyme. He did not know it when he gave her back the book. She read it over and over again, seeing how bad it was, and not caring. For her the beginning, middle, and end of that delicate lyric were in the one word “Dear.” “Do you mind?” He had risen and was standing over her as she read. “Mind?” “What I’ve called you?” She looked up suddenly. His face met hers, and before she knew it Aggie’s initiation came. “Ah,” said Arthur, rising solemn from the consecration of the primal kiss, and drawing himself up like a man for the first time aware of his full stature, “that makes that 30seem pretty poor stuff, doesn’t it?” Young Arthur had just looked upon Love himself, and for that moment his vision was purged of vanity. “Not Browning?” asked Aggie, a little anxiously. “No—Not Browning. Me. Browning could write poetry. I can’t. I know that now.” And she knew it, too; but that made no difference. It was not for his poetry she loved him. “And so,” said her mother, after Arthur had stayed for tea and supper, and said his good-bye and gone—“so that’s the man you’ve been waiting for all this time?” “Yes, that’s the man I’ve been waiting for,” said Aggie. Three days later Queningford knew 31that Aggie was going to marry Arthur Gatty, and that John Hurst was going to marry Susie. Susie was not pretty, but she had eyes like Aggie’s. <h2>32III</h2> After all, Susie was married before her eldest sister; for Aggie had to wait till Arthur’s salary rose. He thought it was going to rise at midsummer, or if not at midsummer, then at Michaelmas. But midsummer and Michaelmas passed, Christmas and Easter, too, and Arthur’s salary showed no sign of rising. He daren’t tell Aggie that he had been obliged to leave off reading Latin in the evenings, and was working feverishly at shorthand in order to increase his efficiency. His efficiency increased, but not his salary. 33Meanwhile he spent all his holidays at Queningford, and Aggie had been twice to town. They saw so little of each other that every meeting was a divine event, a spiritual adventure. If each was not exactly an undiscovered country to the other, there was always some territory left over from last time, endlessly alluring to the pilgrim lover. Whenever Arthur found in Aggie’s mind a little bare spot that needed cultivating, he planted there a picture or a poem, that instantly took root, and began to bloom as it had never (to his eyes) bloomed in any other soil. Aggie, for her part, yielded all the treasure of her little kingdom as tribute to the empire that had won her. Many things were uncertain, the rise of Arthur’s salary among them; but of one thing they were sure, that 34they would lead the intellectual life together. Whatever happened, they would keep it up. They were keeping it up as late as August, when Arthur came down for the Bank Holiday. He was still enthusiastic, but uncertainty had dimmed his hope. Marriage had become a magnificent phantasm, superimposed upon a dream, a purely supposititious rise of salary. The prospect had removed itself so far in time that it had parted with its substance, like an object retired modestly into space. They were walking together in the Queningford fields, when Arthur stopped suddenly and turned to her. “Aggie,” he said, “supposing, after all, we can never marry?” “Well,” said Aggie, calmly, “if we don’t we shall still lead our real life together. 35“But how, if we’re separated?” “It would go on just the same. But we sha’n’t be separated. I shall get something to do in town and live there. I’ll be a clerk, or go into a shop—or something.” “My darling, that would never do.” “Wouldn’t it, though!” “I couldn’t let you do it.” “Why ever not? We should see each other every evening, and every Saturday and Sunday. We should always be learning something new, and learning it together. We should have a heavenly time.” But Arthur shook his head sadly. “It wouldn’t work, my sweetheart. We aren’t made like that.” “I am,” said Aggie, stoutly, and there was silence. “Anyhow,” she said, presently, 36“whatever happens, we’re not going to let it drop.” “Rather not,” said he, with incorruptible enthusiasm. Then, just because he had left off thinking about it, he was told that in the autumn of that year he might expect a rise. And in the autumn they were married. Aggie left the sweet gardens, the white roads and green fields of Queningford, to live in a side street in Camden Town, in a creaking little villa built of sulphurous yellow brick furred with soot. They had come back from their brilliant fortnight on the south coast, and were standing together in the atrocious bow-window of their little sitting room looking out on the street. A thick gray rain was 37falling, and a dust-cart was in sight. “Aggie,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll miss the country.” She said nothing; she was lost in thought. “It looks rather a brute of a place, doesn’t it? But it won’t be so bad when the rain clears off. And you know, dear, there are the museums and picture-galleries in town, and there’ll be the concerts, and lectures on all sorts of interesting subjects, two or three times a week. Then there’s our Debating Society at Hampstead—just a few of us who meet together to discuss big questions. Every month it meets, and you’ll get to know all the intellectual people—” Aggie nodded her head at each exciting item of the programme as he reeled it off. His heart smote him; he 38felt that he hadn’t prepared her properly for Camden Town. He thought she was mourning the first perishing of her illusions. His voice fell, humbly. “And I really think, in time, you know, you won’t find it quite so bad.” She turned on him the face of one risen rosy from the embraces of her dream. She put a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked at him with shining eyes. “Oh, Arthur, dear, it’s all too beautiful. I couldn’t say anything, because I was so happy. Come, and let’s look at everything all over again.” And they went, and looked at everything all over again, reviving the delight that had gone to the furnishing of that innocent interior. She cried out with joy over the cheap art serges, the brown-paper backgrounds, the 39blue-and-gray drugget, the oak chairs with their rush bottoms, the Borne-Jones photogravures, the “Hope” and the “Love Leading Life,” and the “Love Triumphant.” Their home would be the home of a material poverty, but to Aggie’s mind it was also a shrine whose austere beauty sheltered the priceless spiritual ideal. Their wedded ardor flamed when he showed her for the tenth time his wonderful contrivance for multiplying bookshelves, as their treasures accumulated year by year. They spoke with confidence of a day when the shelves would reach from floor to ceiling, to meet the inevitable expansion of the intellectual life. They went out that very evening to a lecture on “Appearance and Reality,” an inspiring lecture. They lived in it again (sitting over their 40cocoa in the tiny dining-room), each kindling the other with the same sacred flame. She gazed with adoration at his thin, flushed face, as, illumined by the lecture, he developed with excitement his theory of life. <div class="illo" id="illo_3"> <ANTIMG src="images/illo_3.jpg" width-obs="442" height-obs="399" alt="A man and a woman sit at a table." /> “Over their cocoa he developed his theory of life” </div> “Only think,” he said, “how people wreck their lives just because they don’t know the difference between appearance and reality! Now we do know. We’re poor; but we don’t care a rap, because we know, you and I, that that doesn’t matter. It’s the immaterial that matters.” Spiritually he flamed. “I wouldn’t change with my boss, though he’s got five thousand a year. He’s a slave—a slave to his carriage and horses, a slave to his house, a slave to the office—” “So are you. You work hard enough.” 41“I work harder than he does. But I keep myself detached.” “Some more cocoa, dearie?” “Rather. Yes, three lumps, please. Just think what we can get out of life, you and I, with our tiny income. We get what we put into it—and that’s something literally priceless, and we mustn’t let it go. Whatever happens we must stick to it.” “Nothing can take it away from us,” said Aggie, rapt in her dream. “No; no outside thing can. But, Aggie—we can take it from each other, if we let ourselves get slack. Whatever we do,” he said, solemnly, “we mustn’t get slack. We must keep it up.” “Yes,” said Aggie, “we must keep it up.” They had pledged themselves to that. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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