Ideala Part 13

"Proverbs prove nothing," she answered lightly. "Have you noticed that they go in pairs? There is always one for each side of an argument.

'One man's meat is another man's poison' is met by 'What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander'--and so on. But don't you think it absurd to cling to old customs that are dying a natural death? Learn of the past, if you like, but live in the present, and make your laws to meet its needs. It is this eternal waiting on the past to copy it rather than to be warned by its failures, to do as it did, under the impression, apparently, that we must succeed better than it did, following in its footsteps though we know they led to ruin once, and, because the way was pleasant, being surprised to find that it must end again in disaster--it is this abandonment of all hope of finding new and efficacious remedies for the old diseases of society that has checked our progress for hundreds of years, and will keep the world in some respects just as it was at the time of the Crucifixion. For my own part, I cannot see that history does repeat itself, except in trifling details, and in the lives of unimportant individuals.

"I think," he rejoined, "if you have studied the decline of the Roman Empire, you must have seen a striking a.n.a.logy between that and our own history at the present time. With the exception of changes of manners, which only affect the surface of society, we are in much the same state now as the Romans were then."

"I know many people say so, and believe it," Ideala answered; "and there is evidence enough to prove it to people who are trying to arrive at a foregone conclusion; but it is not the resemblances we should look to, but the differences. It is in them that our hope lies, and they seem to me to be essential. Take the one grand difference that has been made by the teaching for hundreds of years of the perfect morality of the Christian religion! Do you think it possible for men, while they cling to it, to 'reel back into the beast and be no more'?"

"But are men clinging to it?"

"Yes, in a way, for it has insensibly become a part of all of us, and has made it possible for us to show whole communities of moral philosophers now in a generation; the ancients had only an occasional one in a century."

"But such a one!"

"The old moral philosophers were grand, certainly, but not grander than our own men are, of whom we only hear less because there are so many more of them."

"But do you mean to say society is less sinful than it was?"

"There is one section of society at the present day, they tell me, which is most desperately wicked. It is worse than any cla.s.s was when the world was young, because it knows so much better. But I believe the bulk of the people like right so well that they only want a strong impulse to make them follow it. I feel sure sometimes that we are all living on the brink of a great change for the better, and that there is only one thing wanting now--a great calamity, or a great teacher--to startle us out of our apathy and set us to work. We are not bold enough. We should try more experiments; they can but fail, and if they do, we should still have learnt something from them. But I do not think we shall fail for ever. What we want is somewhere, and must be found eventually."

"They tried some experiments with the marriage laws in France once,"

Lorrimer observed, tentatively.

"Yes, and failed contemptibly because their motive was contemptible.

They did not want to improve society, but to make self-indulgence possible without shame. I think our own marriage laws might be improved."

"People are trying to improve them," he said, with a slight laugh. "A friend of mine has just married a girl who objected to take the oath of obedience. How absurd it is for a girl of nineteen to imagine she knows better than all the ages." "I think," said Ideala, "that it is more absurd for 'all the ages' to subscribe to an oath which something stronger than themselves makes it impossible for half of them to keep.

Strength of character must decide the question of place in a household as it does elsewhere; and it is surely folly to require, and useless to insist on, the submission of the strong to the weak. The marriage oath is farcical. A woman is made to swear to love a man who will probably prove unlovable, to honour a man who is as likely as not to be undeserving of honour, and to obey a man who may be incapable of judging what is best either for himself or her. I have no respect for the ages that uphold such nonsense. There was never any need to bind us with an oath. If men were all they ought to be, wouldn't we obey them gladly? To be able to do so is all we ask."

"Well, it is a difficult question," he answered, "and I don't think we need trouble ourselves about it any way. Do you like flowers?"

"Yes," she burst out in another tone; "and easy chairs, and pictures, and china, and everything that is beautiful, and all sensual pleasures."

She said it, but she knew in a moment that she had used the wrong word, and was covered with confusion.

Lorrimer looked at her and laughed.

"And so do I," he said.

"Oh! if only I could unsay that!" thought Ideala; but the word had gone forth, and was already garnered against her.

Then came an awful moment for her--the moment of going and paying. It was hateful to let him pay for her lunch, but she could not help it.

She was seized with one of those fits of shyness which made it just a degree less painful to allow it than to make the effort to prevent it.

They returned to Lorrimer's room and pored together over a catalogue, looking up the books she wanted. When they had found their names and numbers Lorrimer sent for them from the library, but it was too late to do anything that day, and so she rose to go.

Lorrimer walked with her to the station, and saw her into the train. On the way they talked of little children. He loved them as she did.

"A friend of mine," he said, "has the most beautiful child I ever saw.

Just to look at it makes me feel a better man."

CHAPTER XVIII.

In the days that followed a singular change came over Ideala. No external circ.u.mstance affected her. She moved like one in a dream; thought had ceased for her; all life was one delicious sensation, and at times she could not bear the delight of it in silence. She would tell it in low songs in the twilight; she would make her piano speak it in a hundred chords: and it would burst from her in some sudden glow of enthusiasm that made people wonder--the apparent cause being too slight to account for it. While this lasted nothing hurt her. She saw the sufferings of others unmoved. She met her husband's brutalities with a smiling countenance, and bore the physical discomfort of a bad sprain without much consciousness of pain. And she knew nothing of time, and never asked herself to what she owed this joy.

The utter forgetfulness of everything that came upon her when she was alone was almost incredible. One evening she spent two hours in walking a distance she might easily have done in forty minutes. She had been to see a sick person, and when she found herself in the fresh air, after having spent some time in a small, close room, the dream-like feeling came over her, and her spirit was uplifted with inexpressible gladness.

The summer air was sweet and warm, a light rain was falling, and she took off her hat and wandered on, looking up, but noting nothing, and singing Schubert's "Hark! hark! the lark," to herself softly as she came. A man standing at a cottage door begged her to go in and shelter.

She looked at him, and her face was radiant--the rain-drops sparkled on her hair. He was only a working man, "clay--and common clay," but the light in her eyes pa.s.sed through him, and the memory of her stayed with him, a thing apart from his daily life, held sacred, and not to be described. A man might live a hundred years and never see a woman look like that.

"I did not know it was raining," she said. "It is only light rain, and the air is so sweet, and the glow down there in the west is like heaven. How beautiful life is!"

"Ay, lady!" he answered, and stood there spellbound, watching her as she pa.s.sed on slowly, and listening to her singing as she went.

A few days later she saw Lorrimer again. She found him in his room this time. He knew she was coming, and flushed with pleasure when he met her at the door. Ideala was not nervous; it all seemed a matter of course to her now. The books he had got for her from the library were where she had left them. He placed a chair for her beside his writing-table, and then went on with his own work. She had understood that she was to read in the library, but she did not think of that now; she simply acquiesced in this arrangement as she would have done in any other he might have made for her. A secretary was busy in another part of the room when she entered, but after awhile he left them. Then Lorrimer looked up and smiled.

"You are looking better to-day," he said. "Tell me what you have been doing since I saw you."

"Lotus-eating," she answered. "How lovely the summer is! Since I saw you I have wanted to do nothing but rest and dream."

"You have been happy, then?"

"Yes."

"Is he kind to you?"

"Oh--he! He is just the same. There is no change in my life. The change is in me."

"Then you mean to be happy in spite of him? I call that the beginning of wisdom. I know two other ladies who hate their husbands, and they manage to enjoy life pretty well. And I don't see why _you_ should be miserable always because you happen to have married the wrong man.

How was it you married him? Were you very much in love with him?"

"No, not in the least."

"Spooney, then?"

"Not even 'spooney,' as you call it. I was very young at the time. Very young girls know nothing of love and marriage."

"Very young," he repeated thoughtfully. He was drawing figures with his pen on the blotting-paper before him. "But why did you marry him, then?"

"I can give you no reason--except that I was not happy at home."

"You all say that," slipped from him, with a gesture of impatience.

"I wish I had been more original," said Ideala.

She took up her book again, and he resumed his writing, and for some time there was silence. But Ideala's attention wandered. She began to examine the room, which was, as usual, in a state of disorder. One side of it was lined with cabinets of various sizes and periods. Labels indicated the contents of some of them. Only one picture hung on that side of the room--it was the portrait of a gentleman--but several others stood on the ground against the cabinets. The walls were painted some dark colour. A j.a.panese screen was drawn across the door, and beside it was a hard narrow settee covered with dark green velvet.

Books were piled upon it, and heavily embroidered foreign stuffs, and near it a number of j.a.panese drawings stood on a stand. The mantelpiece was crowded with an odd mixture of china and other curios, all looking as if they had just been unpacked. Above it another picture was hung, a steel engraving. The writing-table by which they sat was nearly in the middle of the room. In the window was another table, covered also with a miscellaneous collection of curios; and on every other available article of furniture books were piled. The high backs of the chairs were elaborately carved, the seats being of the same green velvet as the settee. A high wire-guard surrounded the fire place, and this unusual precaution made one think, that the contents of the room must be precious. The occupant of this apartment might have been an artist, a man of letters, or a virtuoso--probably the latter; but whatever he was, it was evident that his study was a workshop, and not a showroom.