The Fourth Generation. Walter Besant

Constance. You could never be otherwise than wholly beautiful.”

      She shook her head again, unconvinced. “I do not wish to be worshipped,” she repeated. “Other women may like it. To me it would be a humiliation. I don’t want worship; I want rivalry. Let me work among those who truly work, and win my own place. As for my own face, and those so-called feminine attractions, I confess that I am not interested in them. Not in the least.”

      “If you will only let me go on admiring – ”

      “Oh!” she shook that admirable head impatiently, “as much as you please.”

      Leonard sighed. Persuasion, he knew well, was of no use with this young lady; she knew her own mind.

      “I will ask no more,” he said. “Your heart is capable of every emotion – except one. You are deficient in the one passion which, if you had it, would make you divine.”

      She laughed scornfully. “Make me divine?” she repeated. “Oh, you talk like a man – not a scholar and a philosopher, but a mere man.” She left the personal side of the question, and began to treat it generally. “The whole of poetry is disfigured with the sham divinity, the counterfeit divinity, of the woman. I do not want that kind of ascribed divinity. Therefore I do not regret the absence of this emotion which you so much desire; I can very well do without it.” She spoke with conviction, and she looked the part she played – cold, loveless, without a touch of Venus. “I was lecturing my class the other day on this very subject. I took Herrick for my text; but, indeed, there are plenty of poets who would do as well. I spoke of this sham divinity. I said that we wanted in poetry, as in human life, a certain sanity, which can only exist in a condition of controlled emotion.”

      It was perhaps a proof that neither lover nor maiden really felt the power of the passion called Love that they could thus, at what to some persons would be a supreme moment, drop into a cold philosophic treatment of the subject.

      “Perhaps love does not recognise sanity.”

      “Then love had better be locked up. I pointed out in my lecture that these conceits and extravagancies may be very pretty set to the music of rhythm and rhyme and phrase, but that in the conduct of life they can have no place except in the brains of men who have now ceased to exist.”

      “Ceased to exist?”

      “I mean that the ages of ungoverned passion have died out. To dwell perpetually on a mere episode in life, to magnify its importance, to deify the poet’s mistress – that, I told my class, is to present a false view of life and to divert poetry from its proper function.”

      “How did your class receive this view?”

      “Well – you know – the average girl, I believe, likes to be worshipped. It is very bad for her, because she knows she isn’t worth it and that it cannot last. But she seems to like it. My class looked, on the whole, as if they could not agree with me.”

      “You would have no love in poetry?”

      “Not extravagant love. These extravagancies are not found in the nobler poets. They are not in Milton, nor in Pope, nor in Cowper, nor in Wordsworth, nor in Browning. I have not, as you say, experienced the desire for love. In any case, it is only an episode. Poetry should be concerned with the whole life.”

      “So should love.”

      “Leonard,” she said, the doubt softening her face, “there may be something deficient in my nature. I sincerely wish that I could understand what you mean by desiring any change.” No, she understood nothing of the sacred passion. “But there must be no difference in consequence. I could not bear to think that my answer even to such a trifle should make any difference between us.”

      “Such a trifle! Constance, you are wonderful.”

      “But it seems to me, if the poets are right, that men are always ready to make love: if one woman fails, there are plenty of others.”

      “Would not that make a difference between us?”

      “You mean that I should be jealous?”

      “I could not possibly use the word ‘jealous’ in connection with you, Constance.”

      She considered the point from an outside position. “I should not be jealous because you were making love to some unseen person, but I should not like another woman standing here between us. I don’t think I could stay here.”

      “You give me hope, Constance.”

      “No. It is only friendship. Because, you see, the whole pleasure of having a friend like yourself – a man friend – is unrestrained and open conversation. I like to feel free with you. And I confess that I could not do this if another woman were with us.”

      She was silent awhile. She became a little embarrassed. “Leonard,” she said, “I have been thinking about you as well as myself. If I thought that this thing was necessary for you – or best for you – I might, perhaps – though I could not give you what you expect – I mean – responsive worship and the rest of it.”

      “Necessary?” he repeated.

      There was no sign of Love’s weakness in her face, which had now assumed the professional manner that is historical, philosophical, and analytical.

      “Let us sit down and talk about yourself quite dispassionately, as if you were somebody else.”

      She resumed the chair – Leonard’s own chair – beside the table; it was a revolving chair, and she turned it half round so that her elbow rested on the blotting-pad, while she faced her suitor. Leonard for his part experienced the old feeling of standing up before the Head for a little wholesome criticism. He laughed, however, and obeyed, taking the easy-chair at his side of the fireplace. This gave Constance the slight superiority of talking down to instead of up to him. A tall man very often forgets the advantage of his stature.

      “I mean, if companionship were necessary for you. It is, I believe, to weaker and to less fortunate men – to poets, I suppose. Love means, I am sure, a craving for support and sympathy. Some men – weaker men than you – require sympathy as much as women. You do not feel that desire – or need.”

      “A terrible charge. But how do you know?”

      “I know because I have thought a great deal about you, and because I have conceived so deep a regard for you that, at first, when I received your letter I almost – almost – made a great mistake.”

      “Well – but tell me something more. To learn how one is estimated may be very good for one. Self-conceit is an ever-present danger.”

      “I think, to begin with, that of all young men that I know you are the most self-reliant and the most confident.”

      “Well, these are virtues, are they not?”

      “Of course, you have every right to be self-reliant. You are a good scholar, and you have been regarded at the University as one of the coming men. You are actually already one of the men who are looked upon as arrived. So far you have justified your self-confidence.”

      “So far my vanity is not wounded. But there is more.”

      “Yes. You are also the most fortunate of young men. You are miles ahead of your contemporaries, because where they all lack something you lack nothing. One man wants birth – it takes a very strong man to get over a humble origin: another man wants manner: another has an unfortunate face – a harsh voice – a nervous jerkiness: another is deficient in style: another is ground down by poverty. You alone have not one single defect to stand in your way.”

      “Let me be grateful, then.”

      “You have that very, very rare combination of qualities which make the successful statesman. You are good-looking: you are even handsome: you look important: you have a good voice and a good manner as well as a good presence: you are a gentleman by birth and training: you have enough to live upon now: and you are the heir to a good estate. Really, Leonard, I do not know what else you could ask of fortune.”

      “I have never asked anything of