I slid the volume from its place and abandoned the duster. The book was published not long ago in London; on its dedication page, a John Stuart Mill credited his wife as part author and offered their work as humbly and earnestly as a spiritual seeker. And though I opened to pages at random, messages of penetrating importance beamed out from every page.
I came to perceive his chief message: that we are oppressed and caged by notions of what’s proper, imprisoned by what it’s thought suitable to want and do. Certainly we need rules to protect us from human beastliness, but society’s conventions do more than that; they strangle thought and innovation in too wide an arena. Why can’t we choose more for ourselves? When public opinion controls us “in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression…penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”
What astonishing words. I stood with book in hand, amid the ladies’ laughter from the parlor. Through the guidance of my own modest measure of Inner Light, I’ve chosen to remain Charlotte’s mother and to carry the burden of disgrace that this requires. But why should it require disgrace? In the world that Mill envisions, perhaps it wouldn’t.
“Who can compute what the world loses,” he asks, “in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral?”
Which is precisely where I’ve landed.
If I could only meet this writer and speak with him about my case. Could he help me find a place where prejudice wouldn’t block me from teaching, even marrying?
I felt such a longing for this imagined place that my legs grew weak. Despite my duties of the moment, I dropped to the floor with book in hand, settled my skirts about me, and turned the pages to see what else this Mill believes. Already he had given me a precious awareness—for while reading his words, the crushing weight of my entrapment fell away ever so briefly—and in that glimmer of relief from it, I perceived its heaviness.
The front door slammed, and quick footsteps came through the hall. Into his study walked Albert Burnham.
“Miss de Jong?” He stood drenched in his mackintosh and hat, face dripping with rain. I stood hastily and grabbed the duster from the shelf, book still in hand. He gave a small cough. “Have you found good reading, then?” he inquired, bending to see it. “J. S. Mill! An excellent choice.” He wiped the wetness from his face and began to remove his coat. “The man rather inspires one to live a braver life, doesn’t he? The end justifies the means! Damn the consequences!”
I hadn’t seen those words, nor sensed that Mill meant them. But if Albert believed in unpopular behavior, perhaps this was why he wasn’t affronted by my existence.
“Come,” he said, gesturing to the upholstered chairs. “I’m here to get some papers, but there’s no hurry to it. I may as well dry off before starting back.” He draped his mackintosh and hat over pegs on the door.
I took a step toward a chair, then stopped.
“Sit,” he said, though he remained standing. “Let’s compare our thoughts on liberty.”
“I’m dusting for Frau Varschen,” I said. “I shouldn’t have opened this.” I lifted the slender book.
“Are you a follower of Utilitarianism?” he asked, undeterred. “Or perhaps its sister, Consequentialism? Or its progenitor, Machiavelli, in all his unbound glory?”
“No,” I said. “Or, yes. I don’t know.” In haste I searched my mind for anything I might have learned on these subjects; I found only anxiousness.
“Perhaps you haven’t read widely in philosophy,” he said—certainly true, but not the reason I wasn’t yet seated across from him, expounding on the published minds of the Continent. I had work to do, and our conversation would raise suspicion. It occurred to me that his freedom to expound on whatever he likes relies partly on his ample means, which enable him to eat regardless of others’ opinions of him.
He drew his fingers across his forehead and through his damp hair, looking at me with keen hazel eyes. Then he reached to a box on his desk, withdrew a cigar, and began to whittle its end.
“I don’t know what philosophers they have women reading these days,” he muttered.
“It’s not that,” I said. Yet no neat summary came to mind. “Please sit and get dry,” I said. “I’ll return to finish the dusting later.” I stepped to a shelf to file away his book.
“Don’t.” He gestured with his head. “I have no use for it. Not much philosophy in imports!” He emitted a bark-like chortle. “Take it to your garret. Old Mill should make stimulating company.” He smiled as he sat down and reached for a match to light his cigar.
“But,” I said, moving the book toward the shelf, “I shouldn’t have—”
“Ridiculous.” He struck the match and inhaled, then emitted a line of smoke. “I haven’t opened that since university. Keep it! It’s yours. We can talk more once you’ve read it.”
I was going to take my leave, clutching the book and the duster, when the raucous sound of a piano burst through the wall separating us from the parlor. I shrank instinctively against the shelves, not wanting to be found with Albert. Shouts of laughter joined the music, and Clementina’s voice erupted in the hall.
“We need a fourth!” she yelled back to her friends in the parlor. “I won’t have either of you playing wallflower!” Her staccato footsteps came toward us, aimed at the kitchen beyond. “Margaret! We’ve got the player piano going! Come dance!” Hearing no reply, she called, “Where is that girl?”
Albert stepped quickly into the hall. “Will I do?”
She gave a start. “What are you doing here?” Then she muted her tone. “Supper isn’t for hours, darling.”
“Came back to get some documents,” he said. “But I’m always ready for a dance with my beautiful wife.”
She did look beautiful, from what I could see around the doorway’s edge—her face flushed with happiness brought on by music and company, her eyes gleaming, tendrils of hair straying charmingly from the curls pinned beneath her cap. A lace collar accentuated her slender neck, and lace-trimmed cuffs lent gracefulness to her supple wrists and fingers. She didn’t see me, pressed as I was against the shelves, and I was glad. Her demeanor would have soured forthwith and set my stomach cramping.
“Will I do?” her husband asked again. He looked lovely, too, his eyes opened wide and his large features softening as he gazed at her. The smell of his cigar wafted backward, a not-unpleasant, barnlike scent.