Celibates | Page 2

called a born flirt. She is pretty, charming, and talented; but
she is cold, unresponsive, selfish, and futile. She is also eminently respectable after the
English middle-class manner. She has ambition, but she lacks the will-power to school
herself and the determination to accomplish. She is rich in goods but very poor in
goodness. She is often moved profoundly by beautiful thoughts and uplifting emotions of
which she herself is the pleasing, pulsating centre; but her soul is negative, so that her
spiritual states evaporate when the opportunity is given her for transforming them into
acts. She never gets anywhere. She is self-conscious to a degree and unstable as water.
After breaking one man's heart and deadening the hearts of three other men, she finally
accepts an old and rejected sweetheart, only to be torn by suspicions that he no longer
cares for her and is marrying her only for her money. We leave her a prey to thoughts of a
life which, unconsciously, she has brought on herself.
John Norton might be called the born monk. He is, however, but the male embodiment of
that cultured selfishness of which Mildred Lawson is the female expression. He is not a
flirt. He takes life too seriously to be that; but he takes it so seriously that there is only
room in the world for himself alone. He comes of a fine old English stock, is rich, and is
his own master. He treats his mother as a cold- blooded English gentleman, with Norton's
peculiar nature, would treat a mother--with polite but firm disregard of her claims. He has
enough and to spare of will-power, but it is become degenerated into obstinacy. He fails
because he wants too much, because he is unsocial at heart, and does not understand that
life means giving as well as taking. His sexual passion finds expression in a religious
fanaticism which is but the expression of utter selfishness, as all sexual passion is. In the
company of Kitty he has moments of exaltation, when his degenerate passion scents the
pure air of love; but he can never let himself go. When, on one occasion, he so far forgets
himself as to allow his heart to be responsive to Kitty's natural purity and he kisses her,
he is so shocked at what he has done that he runs away and leaves the girl to a terrible
fate. We leave him also a prey to thoughts of what he might have prevented. He, too, like
Mildred Lawson, must henceforth face a life of his own unconscious making.
Agnes Lahens is the victim of a heartless, selfish society in which the abuse of love has
made its world a desert and its products Dead Sea fruit. Out of a sheer impulse for
self-protection she flies to the nunnery, which is ready to give her life at the price of her
womanhood and her self-sacrifice.

As portraits, these of Mildred Lawson and John Norton are exquisitely finished. They are
half-lengths, with a quality of coloring fascinating in its repelling truth. Every tint and
shade have been cunningly and caressingly laid in, so that the features, living and
animated, are yet filled with suggestions of the spiritual barrenness in the originals. Very
human they are, and yet they are without those gracious qualities which link humanity
with what we feel to be divine. There is the touch of nature here, but it is not the touch
which makes the whole world kin. That touch we ourselves supply; and it speaks
eloquently for Moore's art that in picturing these unlovely beings he throws us back on
our better selves. Beyond the vision of these celibates here revealed we see a passionate
humanity, working, hating, sorrowing, and dying, yet always loving, and in loving
finding its fullest life in an earthly salvation. True love is a mighty democrat. Knowing
these "Celibates," we welcome the more gladly those who, even if less gifted, are ready
to walk with us, hand in hand, along the common human highway of the "pilgrim's
progress."
TEMPLE SCOTT.

CONTENTS.
MILDRED LAWSON
JOHN NORTON
AGNES LAHENS

MILDRED LAWSON.
I.

The tall double stocks were breathing heavily in the dark garden; the delicate sweetness
of the syringa moved as if on tip-toe towards the windows; but it was the aching smell of
lilies that kept Mildred awake.
As she tossed to and fro the recollections of the day turned and turned in her brain,
ticking loudly, and she could see each event as distinctly as the figures on the dial of a
great clock.
'What a strange woman that Mrs. Fargus--her spectacles, her short hair, and that dreadful
cap which she wore at the tennis party! It was impossible not to feel sorry for her, she did
look