Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - "Die Juden"

Everard Jack Appleton - "With the Colors"

G. E. Farrow - "The Jungle Baby"

John Spargo - "The Marx He Knew"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Eleanor

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Eleanor




And his own voice--tremulous:

'I would obey if I could. But unhappy as I am, to betray truths that are as
evident to me as the sun in heaven would make me still unhappier. The fate
that threatens me is frightful. _Aber ich kann nicht anders_. The truth
holds me in a vice.'--

'Let me give you a piece of counsel. You sit too close to your books.
You read and read,--you spin yourself into your own views like a cocoon.
Travel--hear what others say--above all, go into retreat! No one need know.
It would do you much good.'

'Eminence, I don't only study; I pray and meditate; I take pains to hear
all that my opponents say. But my heart stands firm.'

'My son, the tribunal of the Pope is the tribunal of Christ. You are
judged; submit! If not, I am sorry--regret deeply--but the consequence is
certain.'

And then his own voice, in its last wrestle--

'The penalty that approaches me appears to me more terrible the nearer it
comes. Like the Preacher--"I have judged him happiest who is not yet born,
nor doth he see the ills that are done under the sun." Eminence, give me
yet a little time.'

'A fortnight--gladly. But that is the utmost limit. My son, make the
"sacrificium intellectus!"--and make it willingly.'

Ah!--and then the yielding, and the treachery, and the last blind stroke
for truth!--

What was it which had undone him--which was now strangling the mental and
moral life of half Christendom!

Was it the _certainty_ of the Roman Church; that conception of life which
stakes the all of life upon the carnal and outward; upon a date, an
authorship, a miracle, an event?

Perhaps his own certainty, at bottom, had not been so very different.

But here, beneath his eyes, in this dying woman, was another certainty;
erect amid all confusion; a certainty of the spirit.

And looking along the future, he saw the battle of the certainties,
traditional, scientific, moral, ever more defined; and believed, like all
the rest of us, in that particular victory, for which he hoped!

* * * * *

Late that night, when all their visitors were gone, Eleanor showed
unusual animation. She left her sofa; she walked up and down their little
sitting-room, giving directions to Marie about the journey home; and at
last she informed them with a gaiety that made mock of their opposition
that she had made all arrangements to start very early the following
morning to visit the doctor in Orvieto who had attended her in June. Lucy
protested and implored, but soon found that everything was settled, and
Eleanor was determined. She was to go alone with Marie, in the Contessa's
carriage, starting almost with the dawn so as to avoid the heat: to spend
the hot noon under shelter at Orvieto; and to return in the evening. Lucy
pressed at least to go with her. So it appeared had the Contessa. But
Eleanor would have neither. 'I drive most days, and it does me no harm,'
she said, almost with temper. 'Do let me alone!'

When she returned, Manisty was lounging under the trees of the courtyard
waiting for her. He had spent a dull and purposeless day, which for a man
of his character and in his predicament had been hard to bear. His patience
was ebbing; his disappointment and despair were fast getting beyond
control. All this Eleanor saw in his face as she dismounted.

Lucy, who had been watching for her all the afternoon, was at the moment
for some reason or other with Reggie in the village.

Eleanor, with her hand on Marie's arm, tottered across the courtyard. At
the convent door her strength failed her. She turned to Manisty.

'I can't walk up these stairs. Do you think you could carry me? I am very
light.'

Struck with sudden emotion he threw his arms round her. She yielded like
a tired child. He, who had instinctively prepared himself for a certain
weight, was aghast at the ease with which he lifted her. Her head, in its
pretty black hat, fell against his breast. Her eyes closed. He wondered if
she had fainted.

He carried her to her room, and laid her on the sofa there. Then he saw
that she had not fainted, and that her eyes followed him. As he was about
to leave her to Marie, who was moving about in Lucy's room next door, she
touched him on the arm.

'You may speak again--to-morrow,' she said, nodding at him with a friendly
smile.

His face in its sudden flash of animation reflected the permission. He
pressed her hand tenderly.

'Was your doctor useful to you?'

'Oh yes; it is hard to think as much of a prescription in Italian as in
English--but that's one's insular way.'

'He thought you no worse?'

'Why should one believe him if he did?' she said evasively. 'No one knows
as much as oneself. Ah! there is Lucy. I think you must bid us good-night.
I am too tired for talking.'

As he left the room Eleanor settled down happily on her pillow.

'The first and only time!' she thought. 'My heart on his--my arms round his
neck. There must be impressions that outlast all others. I shall manage to
put them all away at the end--but that.'

When Lucy came in, she declared she was not very much exhausted. As to the
doctor she was silent.

But that night, when Lucy had been for some time in bed, and was still
sleepless with anxiety and sorrow, the door opened and Eleanor appeared.
She was in her usual white wrapper, and her fair hair, now much touched
with grey, was loose on her shoulders.

'Oh! can I do anything?' cried Lucy, starting up.

Eleanor came up to her, laid a hand on her shoulder, bade her 'be still,'
and brought a chair for herself. She had put down her candle on a table
which stood near, and Lucy could see the sombre agitation of her face.

'How long?' she said, bending over the girl--'how long are you going to
break my heart and his?'

The words were spoken with a violence which convulsed her whole frail form.
Lucy sprang up, and tried to throw her arms round her. But Eleanor shook
her off.

'No--no! Let us have it out. Do you see?' She let the wrapper slip from her
shoulders. She showed the dark hollows under the wasted collar-bones, the
knife-like shoulders, the absolute disappearance of all that had once made
the difference between grace and emaciation. She held up her hands before
the girl's terrified eyes. The skin was still white and delicate, otherwise
they were the hands of a skeleton.

'You can look at _that_,' she said fiercely, under her breath--'and then
insult me by refusing to marry the man you love, because you choose to
remember that I was once in love with him! It is an outrage to associate
such thoughts with me--as though one should make a rival of someone in her
shroud. It hurts and tortures me every hour to know that you have such
notions in your mind. It holds me back from peace--it chains me down to the
flesh, and to earth.'

'Eleanor!' cried the girl in entreaty, catching at her hands. But Eleanor
stood firm.

'Tell me,' she said peremptorily--'answer me truly, as one must answer
people in my state--you do love him? If I had not been here--if I had not
stood in your way--you would have allowed him his chance--you would have
married him?

Lucy bent her head upon her knees, forcing herself to composure.

'How can I answer that? I can never think of him, except as having brought
pain to you.'

'Yes, dear, you can,' cried Eleanor, throwing herself on her knees and
folding the girl in her arms. 'You can! It is no fault of his that I am
like this--none--none! The doctor told me this afternoon that the respite
last year was only apparent. The mischief has always been there--the
end quite certain. All my dreams and disappointments and foolish woman's
notions have vanished from me like smoke. There isn't one of them left.
What should a woman in my condition do with such things? But what
_is_ left is love--for you and him. Oh! not the old love,' she said
impatiently--persuading, haranguing herself no less than Lucy--'not an
ounce of it! But a love that suffers so--in his suffering and yours! A
love that won't let me rest; that is killing me before the time!'

She began to walk wildly up and down. Lucy sprang up, threw on some
clothes, and gradually persuaded her to go back to her own room. When
she was in bed again, utterly exhausted, Lucy's face--bathed in
tears--approached hers:

'Tell me what to do. Have I ever refused you anything?'

* * * * *

The morning broke pure and radiant over the village and the forest. The
great slopes of wood were in a deep and misty shadow; the river, shrunk to
a thread again, scarcely chattered with its stones. A fresh wind wandered
through the trees and over the new-reaped fields.

The Angelus had been rung long ago. There was the bell beginning for Mass.
Lucy slipped out into a cool world, already alive with all the primal
labours. The children and the mothers and the dogs were up; the peasants
among the vines; the men with their peaked hats, the women shrouded from
the sun under the heavy folds of their cotton head-gear; turned and smiled
as she passed by. They liked the Signorina, and they were accustomed to her
early walks.

On the hill she met Father Benecke coming up to Mass. Her cheek reddened,
and she stopped to speak to him.

'You are out early, Mademoiselle?'

'It is the only time to walk.'

'Ah! yes--you are right.'

At which a sudden thought made the priest start. He looked down. But this
time, he at least was innocent!

'You are coming in to tea with us this afternoon, Father?'

'If Mademoiselle does me the honour to invite me.'

The girl laughed.

'We shall expect you.'

Then she gave him her hand--a shy yet kind look from her beautiful eyes,
and went her way. She had forgiven him, and the priest walked on with a
cheered mind.

Meanwhile Lucy pushed her way into the fastnesses of the Sassetto. In its
very heart she found a green-overgrown spot where the rocks made a sort of
natural chair; one great block leaning forward overhead; a flat seat, and
mossy arms on either side.

Here she seated herself. The winding path ran above her head. She could be
perceived from it, but at this hour what fear of passers by?

She gave herself up to the rush of memory and fear.

She had travelled far in these four months!

'Is this what it always means?--coming to Europe?' she asked herself with a
laugh that was not gay, while her fingers pulled at a tuft of hart's-tongue
that grew in a crevice beside her.

And then in a flash she looked on into her destiny. She thought of Manisty
with a yearning, passionate heart, and yet with a kind of terror; of the
rich, incalculable, undisciplined nature, with all its capricious and
self-willed power, its fastidious demands, its practical weakness; the
man's brilliance and his folly. She envisaged herself laden with the
responsibility of being his wife; and it seemed to her beyond her strength.
One moment he appeared to her so much above and beyond her that it was
ridiculous he should stoop to her. The next she felt, as it were, the
weight of his life upon her hands, and told herself that she could not bear
it.

And then--and then--it was all very well, but if she had not come--if
Eleanor had never seen her--

Her head fell back into a mossy corner of the rock. Her eyes were blind
with tears. From the hill came the rumble of an ox-waggon with the shouts
of the drivers.

But another sound was nearer; the sound of a man's step upon the path. An
exclamation--a leap--and before she could replace the hat she had taken
off, or hide the traces of her tears, Manisty was beside her.

She sat up, staring at him in a bewildered silence. He too was
silent,--only she saw the labouring of his breath.

But at last--

'I will not force myself upon you,' he said, in a voice haughty and
self-restrained, that barely reached her ears. 'I will go at once if you
bid me go.'

Then, as she still said nothing, he came nearer.

'You don't send me away?'

She made a little despairing gesture that said, 'I can't!'--but so sadly,
that it did not encourage him.

'Lucy!'--he said, trembling--'are you going to take the seal off my
lips--to give me my chance at last?'

To that, only the answer of her eyes,--so sweet, so full of sorrow.

He stooped above her, his whole nature torn between love and doubt.

'You hear me,' he said, in low, broken tones--'but you think yourself a
traitor to listen?'

'And how could I not?' she cried, with a sudden sob. And then she found her
speech; her heart unveiled itself.

'If I had never, never come!--It is my fault that she is dying--only, only
my fault!'

And she turned away from him to hide her face and eyes against the rock, in
such an agony of feeling that he almost despaired.

He controlled himself sharply, putting aside passion, collecting his
thoughts for dear life.

'You are the most innocent, the most true of tender friends. It is in her
name that I say to you--Lucy, be kind! Lucy, dare to love me!'

She raised her arm suddenly and pointed to the ground between them.

'There'--she said under her breath, 'I see her there!--lying dead between
us!'

He was struck with horror, realising in what a grip this sane and simple
nature must feel itself before it could break into such expression. What
could he do or say?

He seated himself beside her, he took her hands by force.

'Lucy, I know what you mean. I won't pretend that I don't know. You think
that I ought to have married my cousin--that if you had not been there,
I should have married her. I might,--not yet, but after some time,--it
is quite true that it might have happened. Would it have made Eleanor
happy? You saw me at the villa--as I am. You know well, that even as a
friend, I constantly disappointed her. There seemed to be a fate upon us
which made me torment and wound her when I least intended it. I don't
defend myself,--and Heaven knows I don't blame Eleanor! I have always
believed that these things are mysterious, predestined--matters of
temperament deeper than our will. I was deeply, sincerely attached to
Eleanor--yet!--when you came--after those first few weeks--the falsity of
the whole position flashed upon me. And there was the book. It seemed to me
sometimes that the only way of extricating us all was to destroy the book,
and--and--all that it implied--or might have been thought to imply,--'
he added hurriedly. 'Oh! you needn't tell me that I was a blundering and
selfish fool! We have all got into a horrible coil--and I can't pose before
you if I would. But it isn't Eleanor that would hold you back from me,
Lucy--it isn't Eleanor!--answer me!--you know that?'

He held her almost roughly, scanning her face in an agony that served him
well.

Her lips moved piteously, in words that he could not hear. But her hands
lay passive in his grasp; and he hastened on.

'Ever since that Nemi evening, Lucy, I have been a new creature. I will
tell you no lies. I won't say that I never loved any woman before you. I
will have no secrets from you--you shall know all, if you want to know. But
I do say that every passion I ever knew in my first youth seems to me now a
mere apprenticeship to loving you! You have become my life--my very heart.
If anything is to be made of a fellow like me--it's you that'll give me a
chance, Lucy. Oh! my dear--don't turn from me! It's Eleanor's voice speaks
in mine--listen to us both!'

Her colour came and went. She swayed towards him, fascinated by his voice,
conquered by the mere exhaustion of her long struggle, held in the grasp of
that compulsion which Eleanor had laid upon her.

Manisty perceived her weakness; his eyes flamed; his arm closed round her.

'I had an instinct--a vision,' he said, almost in her ear, 'when I set
out. The day dawned on me like a day of consecration. The sun was another
sun--the earth reborn. I took up my pilgrimage again--looking for Lucy--as
I have looked for her the last six weeks. And everything led me right--the
breeze and the woods and the birds. They were all in league with me. They
pitied me--they told me where Lucy was--'

The low, rushing words ceased a moment. Manisty looked at her, took both
her hands again.

'But they couldn't tell me'--he murmured--'how to please her--how to make
her kind to me--make her listen to me. Lucy, whom shall I go to for that?'

She turned away her face; her hands released themselves. Manisty hardly
breathed till she said, with a trembling mouth, and a little sob now and
then between the words--

'It is all so strange to me--so strange and so--so doubtful! If there were
only someone here from my own people,--someone who could advise me! Is it
wise for you--for us both? You know I'm so different from you--and you'll
find it out perhaps, more and more. And if you did--and were discontented
with me--I can't be sure that I could always fit myself to you. I was
brought up so that--that--I can't always be as easy and pleasant as other
girls. My mother--she stood by herself often--and I with her. She was a
grand nature--but I'm sure you would have thought her extravagant--and
perhaps hard. And often I feel as though I didn't know myself,--what there
might be in me. I know I'm often very stubborn. Suppose--in a few years--'

Her eyes came back to him; searching and interrogating that bent look of
his, in which her whole being seemed held.

What was it Manisty saw in her troubled face that she could no longer
conceal? He made no attempt to answer her words; there was another language
between them. He gave a cry. He put forth a tender violence; and Lucy
yielded. She found herself in his arms; and all was said.

Yet when she withdrew herself, she was in tears. She took his hand and
kissed it wildly, hardly knowing what she was doing. But her heart turned
to Eleanor; and it was Eleanor's voice in her ears that alone commanded and
absolved her.

* * * * *

As they strolled home, Manisty's mood was of the wildest and gayest. He
would hear of no despair about his cousin.

'We will take her home--you and I. We will get the very best advice. It
isn't--it shan't be as bad as you think!'

And out of mere reaction from her weeks of anguish, she believed him, she
hoped again. Then he turned to speculate on the voyage to America he must
now make, on his first interviews with Greyridge and Uncle Ben.

'Shall I make a good impression? How shall I be received? I am certain you
gave your uncle the worst accounts of me.'

'I guess Uncle Ben will judge for himself,' she said, reddening; thankful
all the same to remember that among her uncle's reticent, old-fashioned
ways none was more marked than his habit of destroying all but an
infinitesimal fraction of his letters. 'He read all those speeches of
yours, last year. You'll have to think--how you're going to get over it.'

'Well, you have brought me on my knees to Italy,' he said, laughing. 'Must
I now go barefoot to the tomb of Washington?'

She looked at him with a little smile, that showed him once more the Lucy
of the villa.

'You do seem to make mistakes, don't you?' she said gently. But then
her hand nestled shyly into his; and without words, her heart vowed the
true woman's vow to love him and stand by him always, for better for
worse, through error and success, through fame or failure. In truth her
inexperience had analysed the man to whom she had pledged herself far
better than he imagined. Did her love for him indeed rest partly on a
secret sense of vocation?--a profound, inarticulate divining of his vast,
his illimitable need for such a one as she to love him?

* * * * *

Meanwhile Eleanor and Reggie and Father Benecke waited breakfast on the
_loggia_. They were all under the spell of a common excitement, a common
restlessness.

Eleanor had discarded her sofa. She moved about the _loggia_, now looking
down the road, now gathering a bunch of rose-pink oleanders for her white
dress. The _frou-frou_ of her soft skirts; her happy agitation; the flush
on her cheek;--neither of the men who were her companions ever forgot them
afterwards.

Manisty, it appeared, had taken coffee with Father Benecke at six, and had
then strolled up the Sassetto path with his cigarette. Lucy had been out
since the first church bells. Father Benecke reported his meeting with her
on the road.

Eleanor listened to him with a sort of gay self-restraint.

'Yes--I know'--she said, nodding--'I know.--Reggie, there is a glorious
tuft of carnations in that pot in the cloisters. Ask Mamma Doni if we may
have them. _Ecco_--take her a _lira_ for the baby. I must have them for the
table.'

And soon the little white-spread breakfast-table, with it rolls and fruit,
was aglow with flowers, and a little bunch lay on each plate. The _loggia_,
was in _festa_; and the morning sun flickered through the vine-leaves on
the bright table, and the patterns of the brick floor.

'There--there they are!--Reggie!--Father!--leave me a minute! Quick--into
the garden! We will call you directly.'

And Reggie, looking back with a gulp from the garden-stairs, saw her
leaning over the _loggia_, waving her handkerchief; the figure in its light
dress, tossed a little by the morning breeze, the soft muslin and lace
eddying round it.

They mounted. Lucy entered first.

She stood on the threshold a moment, looking at Eleanor with a sweet and
piteous appeal. Then her young foot ran, her arms opened; and with the
tender dignity of a mother rejoicing over her child Eleanor received her on
her breast.

* * * * *

By easy stages Manisty and Lucy took Mrs. Burgoyne to England. At the end
of August Lucy returned to the States with her friends; and in October she
and Manisty were married.

Mrs. Burgoyne lived through the autumn; and in November she hungered so
pitifully for the South that by a great effort she was moved to Rome.
There she took up her quarters in the house of the Contessa Guerrini, who
lavished on her last days all that care and affection could bestow.

Eleanor drove out once more towards the Alban hills; she looked once more
on the slopes of Marinata and the white crown of Monte Cavo; the Roman
sunshine shed round her once more its rich incomparable light. In December
Manisty and Lucy were expected; but a week before they came she died.

A German Old Catholic priest journeyed from a little town in Switzerland to
her burial; and a few days later the two beings she had loved stood beside
her grave. They had many and strong reasons to remember her; but for one
reason above all others, for her wild flight to Torre Amiata, the
only selfish action of her whole life, was she--at least, in Lucy's
heart--through all the years that followed the more passionately, the more
tragically enthroned.

FINIS

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