Quest of the Golden Girl Part 18

"I know all about it," I said; "may I tell you how it all was,--diagnose the situation?"

"Do," he replied; "it is a relief to hear you talk."

"Well," I said, "may I ask one rather intimate question? Did you ever before you were married sow what are known as wild oats?"

"Never," he answered indignantly, flas.h.i.+ng for a moment.

"Well, you should have done," I said; "that's just the whole trouble.

Wild oats will get sown some time, and one of the arts of life is to sow them at the right time,--the younger the better. Think candidly before you answer me."

"I believe you are right," he replied, after a long pause.

"You are a believer in theories," I continued, "and so am I; but you can take my word that on these matters not all, but some, of the old theories are best. One of them is that the man who does not sow his wild oats before marriage will sow them afterwards, with a whirlwind for the reaping."

Orlando looked up at me, haggard with confession.

"You know the old story of the ring given to Venus? Well, it is the ruin of no few men to meet Venus for the first time on their marriage night. Their very chast.i.ty, paradoxical as it may seem, is their destruction. No one can appreciate the peace, the holy satisfaction of monogamy till he has pa.s.sed through the wasting distractions, the unrest of polygamy. Plunged right away into monogamy, man, unexperienced in his good fortune, hankers after polygamy, as the monotheistic Jew hankered after polytheism; and thus the monogamic young man too often meets Aphrodite for the first time, and makes future appointments with her, in the arms of his pure young wife. If you have read Swedenborg, you will remember his denunciation of the l.u.s.t of variety. Now, that is a l.u.s.t every young man feels, but it is one to be satisfied before marriage. Sylvia Joy has been such a variant for you; and I'm afraid you're going to have some little trouble to get her off your nerves. Tell me frankly," I said, "have you had your fill of Aphrodite? It is no use your going back to your wife till you have had that."

"I'm not quite a beast," he retorted. "After all, it was an experiment we both agreed to try."

"Certainly," I answered, "and I hope it may have the result of persuading you of the unwisdom of experimenting with happiness. You have the realities of happiness; why should you trouble about its theories? They are for unhappy people, like me, who must learn to distil by learned patience the aurum potabile from the husks of life, the peace which happier mortals find lying like manna each morn upon the meadows."

"Well," I continued, "enough of the abstract; let us have another drink, and tell me what you propose to do."

"Poor Sylvia!" sighed Orlando.

"Shall I tell you about Sylvia?" I said. "On second thoughts, I won't.

It would hardly be fair play; but this, I may say, relying on your honour, that if you were to come to my hotel, I could show you indisputable proof that I know at least as much about Sylvia Joy as even such a privileged intimate as yourself."

"It is strange, then, that she never recognised you just now," he retorted, with forlorn alertness.

"Of course she didn't. How young you are! It is rather too bad of a woman of Sylvia's experience."

"And I've bought our pa.s.sages for to-morrow. I cannot let her go without some sort of good-bye."

"Give the tickets to me. I can make use of them. How much are they?

Let's see."

The calculation made and the money pa.s.sed across, I said abruptly,--

"Now supposing we go and see your wife."

"You have saved my life," he said hoa.r.s.ely, pressing my hand as we rose.

"I don't know about that," I said inwardly; "but I do hope I have saved your wife."

As I thought of that, a fear occurred to me.

"Look here," I said, as we strolled towards the Twelve Golden-Haired, "I hope you have no silly notions about confession, about telling the literal truth and so on. Because I want you to promise me that you will lie stoutly to your wife about Sylvia Joy. You must swear the whole thing has been platonic. It's the only chance for your happiness.

Your wife, no doubt, will lure you on to confession by saying that she doesn't mind this, that, and the other, so long as you don't keep it from her; and no doubt she will mean it till you have confessed. But, however good their theories, women by nature cannot help confusing body and soul, and what to a man is a mere fancy of the senses, to them is a spiritual tragedy. Promise me to lie stoutly on this point. It is, I repeat, the only chance for your future happiness. As has been wisely said, a lie in time saves nine; and such a lie as I advise is but one of the higher forms of truth. Such lying, indeed, is the art of telling the truth. The truth is that you love her body, soul, and spirit; any accidental matter which should tend to make her doubt that would be the only real lie. Promise me, won't you?"

"Yes, I will lie," said Orlando.

"Well, there she is," I said; "and G.o.d bless you both."

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH ONCE MORE I BECOME OCCUPIED IN MY OWN AFFAIRS

During a pause in my matrimonial lecture, Orlando had written a little farewell note to Sylvia,--a note which, of course, I didn't read, but which it is easy to imagine "wild with all regret." This I undertook to have delivered to her the same night, and promised to call upon her on the morrow, further to illuminate the situation, and to offer her every consolation in my power. To conclude the history of Orlando and his Rosalind, I may say that I saw them off from Yellowsands by the early morning coach. There was a soft brightness in their faces, as though rain had fallen in the night; but it was the warm sweet rain of joy that brings the flowers, and is but sister to the sun. They are, at the time of my writing, quite old friends of mine, and both have an excessive opinion of my wisdom and good-nature.

"That lie," Orlando once said to me long after, "was the truest thing I ever said in my life,"--a remark which may not give the reader a very exalted idea of his general veracity.

As the coach left long before pretty young actresses even dreamed of getting up, I had to control my impatient desire to call on Mademoiselle Sylvia Joy till it was fully noon. And even then she was not to be seen. I tried again in the afternoon with better success.

Rain had been falling in the night with her too, I surmised, but it had failed to dim her gay eyes, and had left her complexion unimpaired. Of course her little affair with Orlando had never been very serious on her side. She genuinely liked him. "He was a nice kind boy," was the height of her pa.s.sionate expression, and she was, naturally, a little disappointed at having an affectionate companion thus unexpectedly whisked off into s.p.a.ce. Her only approach to anger was on the subject of his deceiving her about his wife. Little Sylvia Joy had no very long string of principles; but one generous principle she did hold by,--never, if she knew it, to rob another woman of her husband. And that did make her cross with Orlando. He had not played the game fair.

There is no need to follow, step by step, the progression by which Sylvia Joy and I, though such new acquaintances, became in the course of a day or two even more intimate than many old friends. We took to each other instinctively, even on our first rather difficult interview, and very gently and imperceptibly I bid for the vacant place in her heart.

That night we dined together.

The next day we lunched and dined together.

The next day we breakfasted, lunched, and dined together.

And on the next I determined to venture on the confession which, as you may imagine, it had needed no little artistic control not to make on our first meeting.

She looked particularly charming this evening, in a black silk gown, exceedingly simple and distinguished in style, throwing up the lovely firm whiteness of her throat and bosom, and making a fine contrast with her lurid hair.

It was sheer delight to sit opposite her at dinner, and quietly watch her without a word. Shall I confess that I had an exceedingly boyish vanity in thus being granted her friends.h.i.+p? It is almost too boyish to confess at my time of life. It was simply in the fact that she was an actress,--a real, live, famous actress, whose photographs made shop windows beautiful,--come right out of my boy's fairyland of the theatre, actually to sit eating and drinking, quite in a real way, at my side. This, no doubt, will seem pathetically naive to most modern young men, who in this respect begin where I leave off. An actress!

Great heavens! an actress is the first step to a knowledge of life.

Besides, actresses off the stage are either brainless or soulful, and the choice of evils is a delicate one. Well, I have never set up for a man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's "Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I, and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old poetry to look it up.

"You are very beautiful to-night," I said, in one of the meditative pauses between the courses.

"Thank you, kind sir," she said, making a mock courtesy; "but the compliment is made a little anxious for me by your evident implication that I didn't look so beautiful this morning. You laid such a marked emphasis on to-night."

"Nay," I returned, "'for day and night are both alike to thee.' I think you would even be beautiful--well, I cannot imagine any moment or station of life you would not beautify."

"I must get you to write that down, and then I'll have it framed. It would cheer me of a morning when I curl my hair," laughed Sylvia.

"But you are beautiful," I continued, becoming quite impa.s.sioned.

"Yes, and as good as I'm beautiful."

And she was too, though perhaps the beauty occasionally predominated.