The Restless Sex

Life ran evenly and pleasantly for Cleland in those deathless days – light, happy, irresponsible days when idleness becomes saturated with future energy unawares; when the seeds of inspiration fall thicker and thicker and take root; when the liberality, the vastness, and the inspiration of the world begin to dawn upon a youthful intellect, not oppressively, but with a wide and reassuring kindliness.

There was a young girl – very pretty, whose loneliness made her not too conventional. After several encounters on the stairs, she smiled in response; and they crossed the Luxembourg Gardens together, strolling in the chestnut shade and exchanging views of life.

The affair continued – charming and quite harmless – a touch of tragedy and tears one evening – and the boy deeply touched and temporarily in love – in love with love, temporarily embodied in this blue-eyed, white-skinned, slender girl who had wandered with him close to the dead line and was inclined to cross it – with him.

He had a delightfully wretched hour of renunciation – and was rewarded with much future material, though he didn't know it at the time.

There were tears – several. It is not certain that she spiritually appreciated the situation. That sort of gratitude seldom is genuine in the feminine heart.

But such things are very real to the creative mind, and Cleland was far too unhappy to sleep – deeply wallowing in martyrdom. Fate laughed and pinned this little episode on the clothes-line to dry out with the others – quite a little line-full, now, all fluttering gaily there and drying in the sun. And after a proper interval Cleland wont about the business of washing out a few more samples of experience in the life and manners and customs of his time, later to be added to the clothes-line wash.

He had to prod himself to write to Stephanie. He was finding it a little difficult to discover very much to say to her. In youth two people grow apart during absence much faster than they grow together when in each other's company.

It was so with Cleland and Stephanie – less so with her.

Not seeing her for nearly two years left him with the unconscious impression that she had not altered during that period – that she was still the same young girl he had left, no more mature, no more experienced, little wiser.

Her letters were interesting but he had lost touch, in a measure, with interests and people at home. He had adapted himself to the new angle of vision, to the new aspect of life, to new ideals, new aspirations. He was at the source of inspiration, drinking frequently at times, always unconsciously absorbing.

At the end of the two years he had no desire to return to New York.

A series of voluminous letters passed between him and Stephanie and between him and Miss Quest.

He had plenty of excuses for remaining another year; his education was not completed; he needed a certain atmosphere and a certain environment which could be enjoyed only in Europe.

Of course, if he were needed in New York, etc., etc. No, he wasn't needed. Matters could be attended to. The house in 80th Street ought to be closed as it was a useless expense to keep the servants there.

Poor old Meacham had died; Janet, too, was dead; Lizzie had gone back to Ireland. The house in town should, therefore, be closed and wired; and the house in the country, "Runner's Rest," should remain closed and in charge of the farmer who had always looked out for it.

This could be attended to; no need of his coming back.

So he wrote his directions to Stephanie and settled down again with a sigh of relief to the golden days which promised.

His work, now deeply coloured by Gallic influence and environment, had developed to that stage of embryonic promise marred by mannerisms and affectations. His style, temporarily spoiled by a sort of Franco-American jargon, became involved in the swamps of psychological subtleties, emerging jerkily at times, or relapsing into Debussy-like redundancy.

Nobody wanted his short stories, his poems, his impressions. Publishers in London and in America returned "Day Dreams" and "Out of the Depths" with polite regrets. He sounded every depth of despondency and self-distrust; he soared on wings of hope again, striving to keep his gaze on the blinding source of light, only to become confused and dazzled in the upper oceans and waver and flutter and come tumbling down, frantically beating the too rarified atmosphere with unaccustomed wings.

Nobody could tell him. He had to find out the way. He had within him what was worth saying; had not yet learned how to say it. The massed testimony of the masters lay heavily undigested within him; he was too richly fed, stuffed; the intricacies and complexities of technique worried and disheartened him; he felt too keenly, too deeply to keep a clear mind and a cool one.

Every sense he possessed was necessary to him in his creative work; emotion, intense personal sympathy with his characters, his theme, clogged, checked and halted inspiration, smothering simplicity and clarity. This was a phase. He had the usual experience. He struggled through it and onward.

Stephanie wrote that she had graduated, but that as her aunt was ill she would remain for the present at the hospital.

He felt that he ought to go back. And did not. He was in a dreadfully involved dilemma with his new novel, "Renunciation" – all about a woman – one of the sort he never had met – and no wonder he was in a mess! Besides that, and in spite of the gaily coloured line of rags fluttering on the clothes-line of experience, he knew very little about women. One day, when he came to realize that he knew nothing at all about them, he might begin to write about them, convincingly and acceptably. But he was not yet as far along as that in his education.

He had a desperate affair with an engaging woman of the real world – a countess. She took excellent care of herself, had a delightful time with Cleland, and, in gratitude, opened his eyes to the literary morass in which he had been wading.

Clear-minded, witty, charming, very lovely to look upon, she read and criticised what he wrote, discussed, consulted, advised, and, with exquisite tact, divining the boy's real talent, led him deftly to solid land again. And left him there, enchanted, miserable, inspired, heart-broken, with a laughing admonition to be faithful to her memory while she enjoyed her husband's new post at the Embassy in Sofia.

He wrote, after her departure, a poem simple enough for a child to understand. And tucked it away with a ribbon and a dried flower in his portfolio. It was the first good thing he had ever written. But he remained unconscious of the fact for a long time.

Besides, other matters were bothering him, in particular a letter from Miss Quest:

I am not well. I shall not be better. Still, there is no particular hurry about your returning.

Stephanie remains with me very loyally. She has graduated; she is equipped with a profession. She has turned into a very lovely woman to look upon.

But that sex restlessness which now overwhelmingly obsesses the world, possesses her. Freedom from all restraint, liberty to work out and accomplish her own destiny, contempt of convention, utter disregard of established formality, and hostility to custom, enroll her among the vast army of revolutionists now demanding a revision of all laws and customs made by one sex alone to govern the conduct of both.

You and I once conversed on this subject, if you remember. I told you what I feared. And it has happened: Stephanie has developed along radical lines. With everything revolutionary in the world-wide feminist movement she is in sympathy. Standards that have been standards are no longer so to her. To the world's conservatism she is fiercely and youthfully hostile; equality, tolerance, liberty are the only guide-posts she pretends to recognize.

I shall not live to see the outcome of this world-wide propaganda and revolt. I don't want to. But, in my opinion, it takes a strong character, already accustomed to liberty, to keep its balance in this dazzling flood let in by opening prison doors…

I have left Stephanie what property I have outside of that invested and endowed to maintain my Home for Defective Children. Securities have shrunk; it is not much. It may add four thousand dollars to her present income.

Mr. Cleland, you and Stephanie have gradually and very naturally grown apart since your absence. I don't know what you have developed into. But you were a nice boy.

Stephanie is a beautiful, willful, intelligent, and I fear slightly erratic woman, alive with physical and mental vigour, restless and sensitive under pressure of control, yet to be controlled through her affections first, and only afterward through her reason.

These are unconventional times; a new freedom is dawning, and to me the dawn seems threatening. I am too old, too near my end not to feel that the old régime, with all its drawbacks, was safer for women, productive of better results, less hazardous, less threatening.

But I don't know: I am old-fashioned except in theory. I have professed the creed of the new feminism; I have in my time – and very properly – denounced the tyranny and selfishness and injustice of man-made laws which fetter and cripple my sex.

But – at heart – and with not very many days left to me – at heart I am returning rather wearily along the way I came toward what, now to me, seems safer. It may be only the notions of an old woman, very tired, very sad, conscious of failure, and ready to rest and leave the responsibility where it originated and where it belongs. I don't know. But I wish Stephanie were not alone in the world.

Miss Quest died before the letter reached him. Stephanie's next letter informed him of all the details. She continued:

No use your coming back until you are quite ready, Jim. There's nothing for you to do.

I've taken a studio and apartment with Helen Davis, the animal sculptor. I don't yet know just what I shall do. I'm likely to try several things before I know what I ought to stick to.

Don't feel any absurd sense of responsibility for me. That would be too silly. Feel free to remain abroad as long as it suits you. I also feel absolutely free to go and come as I please. That's the best basis for our friendship, Jim, and, in fact, the necessary and vital basis. My affection is unaltered, but, somehow, it has been such a long time that you seem almost unreal to me.

He did not sail at once. After all, in the face of such an unmistakable declaration of independence, it did not seem worth while for him to arouse himself from the golden lethargy of enchantment and break the spell of Europe which held him content, amid the mellow ripeness of her capitals and the tinted splendour of her traditions.

He wrote frequently for a few months. Then his letters lagged.

Once his pretty Countess had warned him that, for an American, Europe was merely the school-room but his own country was the proper and only place for creative labour.

He remembered this at intervals, a little uneasy, a trifle conscious-stricken because he shrank from making an end to preparation – because he still loitered, disinclined to break the golden web and return to the clear, shadowless skies and the pitiless sun of the real world where he belonged, and where alone, he knew, was the workshop for which he had been so leisurely preparing.

Then the shock came – the bolt out of the blue.

The cablegram said:

I married Oswald Grismer this morning.

    STEPHANIE.