Sacred and Profane Love | Page 4

and took it home secretly in a cardboard envelope-box. I went to bed early, and I began to read. I read all night, thirteen hours. O book with the misleading title--for you have nothing to do with sociology, and you ought to have been called _How to Think Honestly_--my face flushed again and again as I perused your ugly yellowish pages! Again and again I exclaimed: 'But this is marvellous!' I had not guessed that anything so honest, and so courageous, and so simple, and so convincing had ever been written. I am capable now of suspecting that Spencer was not a supreme genius; but he taught me intellectual courage; he taught me that nothing is sacred that will not bear inspection; and I adore his memory. The next morning after breakfast I fell asleep in a chair. 'My dear!' protested Aunt Constance. 'Ah,' I thought, 'if you knew, Aunt Constance, if you had the least suspicion, of the ideas that are surging and shining in my head, you would go mad--go simply mad!' I did not care much for deception, but I positively hated clumsy concealment, and the red book was in the house; at any moment it might be seized. On a shelf of books in my bedroom was a novel called The Old Helmet, probably the silliest novel in the world. I tore the pages from the binding and burnt them; I tore the binding from Spencer and burnt it; and I put my treasure in the covers of The Old Helmet. Once Rebecca, a person privileged, took the thing away to read; but she soon brought it back. She told me she had always understood that The Old Helmet was more, interesting than that.
Later, I discovered The Origin of Species in the Free Library. It finished the work of corruption. Spencer had shown me how to think; Darwin told me what to think. The whole of my upbringing went for naught thenceforward. I lived a double life. I said nothing to my aunt of the miracle wrought within me, and she suspected nothing. Strange and uncanny, is it not, that such miracles can escape the observation of a loving heart? I loved her as much as ever, perhaps more than ever. Thank Heaven that love can laugh at reason!
So much for my intellectual inner life. My emotional inner life is less easy to indicate. I became a woman at fifteen--years, interminable years, before I left school. I guessed even then, vaguely, that my nature was extremely emotional and passionate. And I had nothing literary on which to feed my dreams, save a few novels which I despised, and the Bible and the plays and poems of Shakespeare. It is wonderful, though, what good I managed to find in those two use-worn volumes. I knew most of the Song of Solomon by heart, and many of the sonnets; and I will not mince the fact that my favourite play was Measure for Measure. I was an innocent virgin, in the restricted sense in which most girls of my class and age are innocent, but I obtained from these works many a lofty pang of thrilling pleasure. They illustrated Chopin for me, giving precision and particularity to his messages. And I was ashamed of myself. Yes; at the bottom of my heart I was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being responded to the call of these masterpieces. In my ignorance I thought I was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal. And then--the second miracle in my career, which has been full of miracles--I came across a casual reference, in the Staffordshire Recorder, of all places, to the Mademoiselle de Maupin of Th��ophile Gautier. Something in the reference, I no longer remember what, caused me to guess that the book was a revelation of matters hidden from me. I bought it. With the assistance of a dictionary, I read it, nightly, in about a week. Except Picciola, it was the first French novel I had ever read. It held me throughout; it revealed something on nearly every page. But the climax dazzled and blinded me. It was exquisite, so high and pure, so startling, so bold, that it made me ill. When I recovered I had fast in my heart's keeping the new truth that in the body, and the instincts of the body, there should be no shame, but rather a frank, joyous pride. From that moment I ceased to be ashamed of anything that I honestly liked. But I dared not keep the book. The knowledge of its contents would have killed my aunt. I read it again; I read the last pages several times, and then I burnt it and breathed freely.
Such was I, as I forced my will on my aunt in the