The Review of Reviews. 



Aufiut 1, 1906. 



" But, dearie- 



" Good-night, mother," and I went up and slam- 

 aned my door upon her, blew out my candle and lay 

 ■down at onoe upon my bed, and lay there a long 

 time before I got up to undress. 



There were times when that dumb beseeching of 

 my mother's face irritated me unspeakably. It did 

 so that night. I felt I had to struggle against it, 

 that I could not exist if I gave way to its pleading, 

 and it hurt me and divided me to resist it almost be- 

 yond endurance. It was clear to me that I had to 

 think out for myself religious problems, social 

 problems, questions of conduct, questions of expedi- 

 ency ; that her poor dear simple beliefs could not 

 help me at all — and she did net understand ! Hers 

 was the accepted religion, her only social ideas were 

 i)lind submissions to the accepted order, to laws, to 

 doctors, clergvmen, lawyers, masters and all respect- 

 able persons in authority over us; and with her, to 

 believe was to fear. She knew from a thousand little 

 signs — though still at times I vent to church with 

 her — that I was passing out of touch of all these 

 things that ruled her life, into some terrible im- 

 known. From things I said she could infer such 

 •clumsy concealments as I made. She felt my social- 

 ism, felt my spirit in revolt against the accepted or- 

 -der, felt the impotent resentments that filled me with 

 bitterness against all she held sacred. Yet, vou 

 Tinow, it \\ as not her dear gods she sought to defend 

 so much as me I She seemed always to be wanting 

 to say to me : " Dear. I know it's hard — but revolt 

 is harder. Don't make \\\\i on it, dear — don't ! Don't 

 do anything to offend it. I'm sure it will hurt vou 

 if you do — it will hurt you if you do." 



She had been cowed into submission, as so many 

 women of that time had been, by the sheer brutality 

 of the accei)ted thing. The existing order dominated 

 her into a worship of abject observances. It had 

 bent her, aged her, robbed her of eyesight, so that 

 at fifty-five she peered through cheap sfiectacles at 

 my face and saw it only dimly, filled her with a 



"habit of ajixiety, made her hands . Her poor 



• dear hands ! Not in the whole world now could you 

 find a woman with hands so grimy, .so needle worn, 

 ■so misshajTen by toil, so chapped and coarsened, so 

 -evilly treated. . . . .\t any rate, there is this I c;in 

 say for myself, that my bitterness against the world 

 and fortune was for her sake as well as for inv own. 

 Yet that night I pushed by her harshly. I .mswer- 

 ed her curtly, and left her concerned and perplexed 

 :n the passage, and slammed my door upon her. 



.■\nd for a long time I l.xy raging at the hardship 

 .uid evil of life, at the contempt of Rawdon and the 

 loveless coolness of Nettie's letter, at my weakness 

 and insignificance, at the things I found intolerable 

 and the things I could not mend. Over and over 

 went my poor little brain, tired out and unable to 

 stop on my treadmill of troubles. Nettie. Rawdon. 

 :My mother. Gabbitas. Nettie. . . . 



Suddenly I came upon emotional exhaustion. Some 

 clock was striking midnight. After all, I was young ; 

 I had these quick transitions. I remember quite 

 distinctly that I stood up abruptly, undressed very 

 quickly in the dark, and had hardl'v touched my pil- 

 low again tefore I was asleep. 



But how my mother slept that night I do not 

 know. 



Oddly enough, I do not blame myself for behav- 

 ing like this to my mother, though my conscience 

 blames me acutely for my arrogance to Parload. I 

 regret my beha\-iour to my mother before the days 

 of Change. It is a scar. among my memories that 

 will always be a little painful to the end of my 

 days ; but I do not see how something of the sort 

 was to be escaped under those former conditions. In 

 that time of muddle and obscurity, people were over- 

 taken by needs and toil and hot passions before they 

 had the chance of even a year or so of clear think- 

 ing; they settled down to an intense and strenuous 

 api)lic:ition to some partial but immediate duty, arid 

 the growth of thought ceased in them. They set and 

 hardened into narrow ways. Few women remained 

 capable of a new idea, after five-and-twenty, few 

 rhen after thirty-one or two. Discontent with the 

 thing that existed was regarded as immoral, it was 

 certainly an amnoyanoe ; and the only protest against 

 It, the only effort against that imiversal tendency in 

 all human institutions to thicken and clog, to wort 

 loosely and badly, to rust and weaken toward catas- 

 trophes, came from the young, the crude, unmerciful 

 young. That seemed in those days to thoughtful 

 men the harsh law of our being, either that we must 

 submit to our elders and be stifled, or we must dis- 

 regard them, disobey them, thrust them aside and 

 make our little step of progress before we, too, ossi- 

 fied and became obstructive in our turn. 



My pushing past my mother, my irresponsive de- 

 parture to my own silent meditarions, was, I now 

 perceive, a figure of the whole hard relationship be- 

 tween parents and sons in those days. There ap- 

 peared no other way; that perpetiiallv recurring 

 tragedy was, it seemed, part of the verv nature of 

 the progress of the world. We did not' think then 

 that minds might grow ripe without growing rigid, 

 or children honour their parents and still think for 

 themselves. We were angry and hasty because we 

 stifled in darkness, in a poisoned and' vitiated air. 

 Ihat deliberate animation of the intelligence which 

 IS now the universal quality, that vigour with con- 

 sideration, that judgment with confident enterprise, 

 which shine through all our world, were things dis- 

 integrated and unknown in the corrupting atmosphere 

 of our former state. 



(So the first fascicle ended. I put it aside and 

 looked for the second. 

 " Well ?" s.aid the man who wrote. 

 " This is fiction ?" 

 " It's my story." 

 " But you ? Amidst this beauty You are not 



