The Emancipated. George Gissing

      A relapse was to be expected; it came at the bidding of sirocco. One morning the heavens lowered, grey, rolling; it might have been England. Vesuvius, heavily laden at first with a cloud like that on Olympus when the gods are wrathful, by degrees passed from vision, withdrew its form into recesses of dun mists. The angry blue of Capri faded upon a troubled blending of sea and sky; everywhere the horizon contracted and grew mournful; rain began to fall.

      Miriam sank as the heavens darkened. The strength of which she had lately been conscious forsook her; all her body was oppressed with languor, her mind miserably void. No book made appeal to her, and the sight of those which she had bought from home was intolerable. She lay upon a couch, her limbs torpid, burdensome. Eleanor's company was worse than useless.

      "Please leave me alone," she said at length. "The sound of your voice irritates me."

      An hour went by, and no one disturbed her mood. Her languor was on the confines of sleep, when a knock at the door caused her to stir impatiently and half raise herself. It was her maid who entered, holding a note.

      "A gentleman has called, ma'am. He wished me to give you this."

      Miriam glanced at the address, and at once stood up, only her pale face witnessing the lack of energy of a moment ago.

      "Is he waiting?"

      "Yes, ma'am."

      The note was of two or three lines:—"Will you let me see you? Of course I mean alone. It's a long time since we saw each other.—R. E."

      "I will see him in this room."

      The footstep of the maid as she came back along the tiled corridor was accompanied by one much heavier. Miriam kept her eyes turned to the door; her look was of pained expectancy and of sternness. She stood close by the window, as if purposely drawing as far away as possible. The visitor was introduced, and the door closed behind him.

      He too, stood still, as far from Miriam as might be. His age seemed to be seven- or eight-and-twenty, and the cast of his features so strongly resembled Miriam's that there was no doubt of his being her brother. Yet he had more beauty as a man than she as a woman. Her traits were in him developed so as to lose severity and attain a kind of vigour, which at first sight promised a rich and generous nature; his excellent forehead and dark imaginative eyes indicated a mind anything but likely to bear the trammels in which Miriam had grown up. In the attitude with which he waited for his sister to speak there was both pride and shame; his look fell before hers, but the constrained smile on his lips was one of self-esteem at issue with adversity. He wore the dress of a gentleman, but it was disorderly. His light overcoat hung unbuttoned, and in his hand he crushed together a hat of soft felt.

      "Why have you come to see me, Reuben?" Miriam asked at length, speaking with difficulty and in an offended tone.

      "Why shouldn't I, Miriam?" he returned quietly, stepping nearer to her. "Till a few days ago I knew nothing of the illness you have had, or I should, at all events, have written. When I heard you had come to Naples, I—well, I followed. I might as well be here as anywhere else, and I felt a wish to see you."

      "Why should you wish to see me? What does it matter to you whether I am well or ill?"

      "Yes, it matters, though of course you find it hard to believe."

      "Very, when I remember the words with which you last parted from me. If I was hateful to you then, how am I less so now?"

      "A man in anger, and especially one of my nature, often says more than he means. It was never you that were hateful to me, though your beliefs and your circumstances might madden me into saying such a thing."

      "My beliefs, as I told you then, are a part of myself—are myself."

      She said it with irritable insistence—an accent which would doubtless have been significant in the ears of Eleanor Spence.

      "I don't wish to speak of that. Have you recovered your health, Miriam?"

      "I am better."

      He came nearer again, throwing his hat aside.

      "Will you let me sit down? I've had a long journey in third-class, and I feel tired. Such weather as this doesn't help to make me cheerful. I imagined Naples with a rather different sky."

      Miriam motioned towards a chair, and looked drearily from the window at the dreary sea. Neither spoke again for two or three minutes. Reuben Elgar surveyed the room, but inattentively.

      "What is it you want of me?" Miriam asked, facing him abruptly.

      "Want? You hint that I have come to ask you for money?"

      "I shouldn't have thought it impossible. If you were in need—you spoke of a third-class journey—I am, at all events, the natural person for your thoughts to turn to."

      Reuben laughed dispiritedly.

      "No, no, Miriam; I haven't quite got to that. You are the very last person I should think of in such a case."

      "Why?"

      "Simply because I am not quite so contemptible as you think me. I don't quarrel with my sister, and come back after some years to make it up just because I want to make a demand on her purse."

      "You haven't accustomed me to credit you with high motives, Reuben."

      "No. And I have never succeeded in making you understand me. I suppose it's hopeless that you ever will. We are too different. You regard me as a vulgar reprobate, who by some odd freak of nature happens to be akin to you. I can picture so well what your imagination makes of me. All the instances of debauchery and general blackguardism that the commerce of life has forced upon your knowledge go towards completing the ideal. It's a pity. I have always felt that you and I might have been a great deal to each other if you had had a reasonable education. I remember you as a child rebelling against the idiocies of your training, before your brain and soul had utterly yielded; then you were my sister, and even then, if it had been possible, I would have dragged you away and saved you."

      "I thank Heaven," said Miriam, "that my childhood was in other hands than yours!"

      "Yes; and it is very bitter to me to hear you say so."

      Miriam kept silence, but looked at him less disdainfully.

      "I suppose," he said, "the people you are staying with have much the same horror of my name as you have."

      "You speak as loosely as you think. The Spences can scarcely respect you."

      "You purpose remaining with them all the winter?"

      "It is quite uncertain. With what intentions have you come here? Do you wish me to speak of you to the Spences or not?"

      He still kept looking about the room. Perhaps upon him too the baleful southern wind was exercising its influence, for he sat listlessly when he was not speaking, and had a weary look.

      "You may speak of me or not, as you like. I don't see that anything's to be gained by my meeting them; but I'll do just as you please."

      "You mean to stay in Naples?"

      "A short time. I've never been here before, and, as I said, I may as well be here as anywhere else."

      "When did you last see Mr. Mallard?"

      "Mallard? Why, what makes you speak of him?"

      "You made his acquaintance, I think, not long after you last saw me."

      "Ha! I understand. That was why he sought me out. You and your friends sent him to me as a companion likely to 'do me good.'"

      "I knew nothing of Mr. Mallard then—nothing personally. But he doesn't seem to be the kind of man whose interest you would resent."

      "Then you know him?" Reuben asked, in a tone of some pleasure.

      "He is in Naples at present."

      "I'm delighted to hear it. Mallard