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Ideala

by Sarah Grand · English · Gutenberg #6855 · 393,064 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Ideala

Author: Sarah Grand


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6855]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IDEALA ***




Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tom Allen, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




IDEALA

BY SARAH GRAND

  "L'esprit ne nous garantit pas
  des sottises de notre humeur."--VAUVENARGUES




PREFACE


You will ask me, perhaps, even you who are all charity, why parts of
this book are what they are. I can only answer with another question:
Why are we what we are? But I warn you that it would not be fair to
take any of Ideala's opinions, here given, as final. Much of what she
thought was the mere effervescence of a strong mind in a state of
fermentation, a mind passing successively through the three stages of
the process; the _vinous_, alcoholic, or excitable stage; the
_acetous_, jaundiced, or embittered stage; and the _putrefactive_,
or unwholesome stage; and also embodying, at different times, the
characteristics of all three. But, even during its worst phase, it was
an earnest mind, seeking the truth diligently, and not to be blamed
for stumbling upon good and bad together by the way. It is, in fact,
not a perfect, but a transitional state which I offer for your
consideration, a state which has its repulsive features, but which, it
may be hoped, would result in a beautiful deposit, when at last the
inevitable effervescence had subsided.

But why exhibit the details of the process, you may ask. To encourage
others, of course. What help is there in the contemplation of
perfection ready made? It only disheartens us. We should lay down our
arms, we should struggle no longer, we should be hopeless, despairing,
reckless, if we never had a glimpse of growth, of those "stepping-
stones of their dead selves" upon which men mount to higher things. The
imperfections must be studied, because it is only from the details of
the process that anything can be learned. Putting aside the people who
criticise, not with a view to mending matters, but because a

    ... low desire
  Not to seem lowest makes them level all;

the people who judge, who condemn, who have no mercy on any faults and
failings but their own, and who,

  ... if they find
  Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
  Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
  Inflate themselves with some insane delight,

and would ostracise a neighbour for the first offence by ruling that
one mistake must mar a life--anybody's life but their own, of course;
who have no peace in themselves, no habit of sweet thought; whose lives
are one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest;
the decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternal
carping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to drag
others after them. Putting them aside, as any one may who has the
courage to face them--for they are terrible cowards--and taking the
best of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt
to make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in the
manners, some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text of
an objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is a
miserable state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth by
robbing us of half our power to love, in which lies all our strength,
and which, with the delight of being loved, is the one thing worth
living for. When we know in ourselves that love is heaven, and hate is
hell, and all the intervals of like and dislike are antechambers to
either, we possess the key to joy and sorrow, by which alone we can
attain to the mystery that may not be mentioned here, but beyond which
ecstasy awaits us.

This is why such details are necessary.

Doctors-spiritual must face the horrors of the dissecting-room, and
learn before they can cure or teach; and even we, poor feeble
creatures, who have no strength, however great our desire, to do
either, can help at least a little by not hindering, if we attend to
our own mental health, which we shall do all the better for knowing
something of our moral anatomy, and the diseases to which it is liable.
We hate and despise in our ignorance, and grow weak; but love and pity
thrive on knowledge, and to love and pity we owe all the beauty of
life, and all our highest power.

_"It is that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass
much of our time in this world; that life in which we do what we have
not purposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do
not understand; that life which is overlaid by the weight of things
external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them;
that which, instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew,
is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the
true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of
thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which
can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits if it
stands in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten
in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle
matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking
this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips
upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength."_
--RUSKIN.




IDEALA




CHAPTER I.

She came among us without flourish of trumpets. She just slipped into
her place, almost unnoticed, but once she was settled there it seemed
as if we had got something we had wanted all our lives, and we should
have missed her as you would miss the thrushes in the spring, or any
other sweet familiar thing. But what the secret of her charm was I
cannot say. She was full of inconsistencies. She disliked ostentation,
and never wore those ornamental fidgets ladies delight in, but she
would take a piece of priceless lace to cover her head when she went
to water her flowers. And she said rings were a mistake; if your hands
were ugly they drew attention to them, if pretty they hid their
beauty; yet she wore half-a-dozen worthless ones habitually for the
love of those who gave them, to her. It was said that she was striking
in appearance, but cold and indifferent in manner. Some, on whom she
had never turned her eyes, called her repellent. But it was noticed
that men who took her down to dinner, or had any other opportunity of
talking to her, were never very positive in, what they said of her
afterwards. She made every one, men and women alike, feel, and she did
it unconsciously. Without effort, without eccentricity, without
anything you could name or define, she impressed you, and she held you
--or at least she held _me_, always--expectant. Nothing about her ever
seemed to be of the present. When she talked she made you wonder what
her past had been, and when she was silent you began to speculate
about her future. But she did not talk much as a rule, and when she
did speak it was always some subject of interest, some fact that she
wanted to ascertain accurately, or some beautiful idea, that occupied
her; she had absolutely no small talk for any but her most intimate
friends, whom she was wont at times to amuse with an endless stock of
anecdotes and quaint observations; and this made people of limited
capacity hard on her. Some of these called her a cold, ambitious,
unsympathetic woman; and perhaps, from their point of view, she was
so. She certainly aspired to something far above them, and had nothing
but scorn for the dead level of dull mediocrity from which they would
not try to rise.

"To be distinguished among these people," she once said, "it is only
necessary to have one's heart

  Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
    The love of love.

There is no need to _do_ anything; if you have the right _feeling_ you
may be as passive as a cow, and still excel them all, for they never
thrill to a noble thought."

"Then, pity them," I said.

"No, despise them," she answered. "Pity is for affliction, for such
shortcomings as are hereditary and can hardly be remedied--for the
taint in nature which is all but hopeless. But these people are not
afflicted. They could do better if they would. They know the higher
walk, and deliberately pursue the lower. Their whole feeling is for
themselves, and such things as have power to move them through the
flesh only. I would almost rather sin on the impulse of a generous but
misguided nature, and have the power to appreciate and the will to be
better, than live a perfect, loveless woman, caring only for myself,
like these. I should do more good."

They called Ideala unsympathetic, yet I have known her silent from
excess of sympathy. She could walk with you, reading your heart and
soul, sorrowing and rejoicing with you, and make you feel without a
word that she did so. It was this power to sympathise, and the longing
she had to find good in everything, that made her forgive the faults
that were patent in a nature with which she was finally brought into
contact, for the sake of the virtues which she discovered hidden away
deep down under a slowly hardening crust of that kind of self-
indulgence which mars a man.

But her own life was set to a tune that admitted of endless variations.
Sometimes it was difficult even for those who knew her best to detect
the original melody among the clashing cords that concealed it; but,
let it be hidden as it might, one felt that it would resolve itself
eventually, through many a jarring modulation and startling cadence,
perhaps, back to the perfect key.

I saw her first at a garden party. She scarcely noticed me when we were
introduced. There were great masses of white cloud drifting up over the
blue above the garden, and she was wholly occupied with them when she
could watch them without rudeness to those about her; and even when she
was obliged to look away, I could see that she was still thinking of
the sky. "Do you live much in cloudland?" I asked, and felt for a
moment I had said a silly thing; but she turned to me quickly, and
looked at me for the first time as if she saw me--and when I say she
looked at me, I mean something more than an ordinary look, for Ideala's
eyes were a wonder, affecting you as a poem does which has power to
exalt.

"Ah, you feel it too," she said. "Are they not beautiful? Will you sit
beside me here? You can see the river as well--down there, beneath the
trees."

I thought she would have talked after that, but she did not. When I
spoke to her once or twice she answered absently; and presently she
forgot me altogether, and began to sing to herself softly:

  Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
    Thy tribute wave deliver;
  No more by thee my steps shall be
    For ever and for ever.

Then suddenly recollecting herself, she stopped, and exclaimed, in much
confusion, "O please forgive me! That stupid thing has been running in
my head all day--and it is a way I have. I always forget people and
begin to sing."

She did not see in the least that her apology might have been
considered an adding of insult to injury, and, of course, I was careful
not to let her know that I thought it so, although I must confess that
for a moment I felt just a trifle aggrieved. I thought my presence had
bored her, and was surprised to see, when I got up to go, that she
would rather have had me stay.

She cared little for people in general, and had few likings. It was
love with her if anything; but those whom she loved once she loved
always, never changing in her affection for them, however badly they
might treat her. And she had the power of liking people for themselves,
regardless of their feeling for her; indeed, her indifference on this
score was curious. I once heard a lady say to her: "You are one of the
few young married ladies whom I dare chaperon in these degenerate days.
No degree of admiration or worship ever seems to touch you. Is it real
or pretended, your unconsciousness?"

"Unconsciousness of what?"

"Of the feeling you excite."

"The feeling _I_ excite?" Ideala seemed to think a moment; then she
answered gravely: "I do not think I am conscious of anything that
relates to myself, personally, in my intercourse with people. They are
ideas to me for the most part--men especially so."

That way she had of forgetting people's presence was one of her
peculiarities. If she liked you she was content just to have you there,
but she never showed it except by a regretful glance when you went
away. She was very absent, too. One day I found her with a big, awkward
volume on her knee, heated, excited, and evidently put out.

"Is anything the matter?" I wanted to know.

"O yes," she answered desperately; "I've lost my pen, and I'm writing
for the mail."

"Why, where are you looking for it?" I asked.

She glanced at me, and then at the book.

"I--I believe," she faltered, "I was looking for it among the p's in
the French dictionary."

On another occasion I watched her revising a manuscript. As she wrote
her emendations she gummed them on over the old copy, and she was so
absorbed that at last she put the gum-brush into the ink-bottle.
Discovering her mistake, she gave a little disconcerted sort of laugh,
and took the brush away to wash it. She returned presently, examining
it critically to see if it were perfectly cleansed, and having
satisfied herself, she carefully put it back in the ink-bottle.

But perhaps the funniest instance of this peculiarity of hers was one
that happened in the Grosvenor Gallery on a certain occasion. She had
been busy with her catalogue, doing the pictures conscientiously, and
not talking at all, when suddenly she burst out laughing.

"Do you know what I have been doing?" she said. "I wanted to know who
that man is"--indicating a gentleman of peculiar appearance in the
crowd--"and I have been looking all over him for his number, that I
might hunt up his name in the catalogue!"

Her way of seeing analogies as plausible as the obvious relation of p
to pen, and of acting on wholly wrong conclusions deduced from most
unexceptionable premises, was another characteristic. She always blamed
her early education, or rather want of education, for it. "If I had
been taught to think," she said, "when my memory was being burdened
with historical anecdotes torn from the text, and other useless scraps
of knowledge, I should be able to see both sides of a subject, and
judge rationally, now. As it is, I never see more than one side at a
time, and when I have mastered that, I feel like the old judge in some
Greek play, who, when he had heard one party to a suit, begged that the
other would not speak as it would only poggle what was then clear to
him."

But in this Ideala was not quite fair to herself.

It was not always--although, unfortunately, it was oftenest at critical
moments--that she was beset with this inability to see more than one
side of a subject at a time. The odd thing about it was that one never
knew which side, the pathetic or the humorous, would strike her.
Generally, however, it was the one that related least to herself
personally. This self-forgetfulness, with a keen sense of the
ludicrous, led her sometimes, when she had anything amusing to relate,
to overlook considerations which would have kept other people silent.

"I saw a pair of horses running away with a heavy wagon the other day,"
she told us once. "It was in Cross Street, and there was a child in the
way--there always is a child in the way!--and, as there was no one else
to do it, I ran into the road to remove that child. I had to pull it
aside quickly, and there was no time to say 'Allow me'--in fact, there
was no time for anything--and in my hurry I lost my balance and fell in
the mud, and the wagon came tearing over me. It was an unpleasant
sensation, but I wasn't hurt, you know; neither the wheels nor the
horses touched me. I got very dirty, though, and I have no doubt I
looked as ridiculous as I felt, and for that I expected to be tenderly
dealt with; but when I went to ask after the child, a few days later, a
neighbour told me that its mother was out, and it was a good thing too,
as she had been heard to declare she would 'go for that lady the next
time she saw her, for flingin' of her bairn about!'"

When she had told the story, Ideala was horrified to find that the
fact, which she had overlooked, of her having risked her life to save
the child struck us all much more forcibly than the ingratitude that
amused her.

Although her sense of humour was keen, it was not always, as I said
before, the humorous side of a subject that struck her. I found her one
day looking utterly miserable.

"What has happened?" I asked. "You look sad."

"And I feel sad," she answered. "I was just thinking what a pity it is
those gay, pleasure-loving, flower-clad people of Hawaii are dying
out!"

She was quite in earnest, and could not be made to see that there was
anything droll in her mourning poignantly for a people so remote.

Another instance of her absent-mindedness recurs to me. The incident
was related at our house one evening, in Ideala's presence, by Mr.
Lloyd, a mutual friend. A clever drawing by another friend, of Ideala
trying to force a cabman to take ten shillings for a half-crown fare--
one of the great fears of her life being the chance of not giving
people of that kind as much as they expected--had caused Ideala to
protest that she _did_ understand money matters.

"O yes, we all know that your capacity for business is quite
extraordinary," Mr. Lloyd said, with a smile that meant something. And
then, addressing us all, he asked: "Did I ever tell you about her
coming to borrow five shillings from me one day? Shall I tell, Ideala?"

"You may, if you like," Ideala answered, getting very red. "But the
story is not interesting."

We all began to be anxious to hear it.

"Judge for yourselves," Mr. Lloyd said. "One day the head clerk came
into my private room at the Bank, looking perplexed and discomfited.
'Please, sir' he said, 'a lady wishes to see you.' 'A lady,' I
answered. 'Ladies have no business here. What does she want?' 'She
would not say, sir, and she would not send in her name. She said it did
not matter.' I began to wonder what I had been doing. 'What is she
like?' I asked. He looked all round as if in search of a simile, and
then he answered: 'Well, sir, she's more like a picture than anything.'
'Show her in,' I said."

Here the story was interrupted by a shout of laughter. He laughed a
little himself.

"I should have been polite in any case," he declared, apologetically.
"The clerk ushered in a lady whose extreme embarrassment made me sorry
for her. She changed colour half-a-dozen times in as many seconds, and
then she hurled her errand at my head in these words, without any
previous preparation to break the blow: 'Mr. Lloyd, can you lend me
five shillings?' and before I had recovered she continued--'I came in
by train this morning, and I've lost my purse, and can't get back if
you won't help me--at least I think I've lost my purse. I took it out
to give sixpence to a beggar--and--and here is the sixpence!' and she
held it out to me. She had given her purse to the beggar and carried
the sixpence off in triumph. You may well say 'Oh, Ideala!'"

"And Mr. Lloyd was so very good as to take me to the station, and see
me into the train," Ideala murmured; "and he gave me his bank-book to
amuse me on the journey, and carried Huxley's _Elementary Physiology_,
which I had come in to buy, off in triumph!"

But with all her self-forgetfulness there were moments in which she
showed that she must have thought deeply about herself, weighing her
own individuality against others, to see what place she occupied in her
own age, and how she stood with regard to the ages that had gone
before; yet even this she seemed to have done in a selfless way, having
apparently examined herself coolly, critically, fairly, as she might
have examined any other specimen of humanity in which she felt an
interest, unbiassed by any special regard.

"People always want to know if I write, or paint, or play, or what I
do," she once said to me. "They all expect me to do something. My
function is not to do, but to be. I make no poetry. I am a poem--if you
read me aright."

And again, in a moment of despondency, she said, "I am one of the weary
women of the nineteenth century. No other age could have produced me."

When she said she did nothing she must have meant she was not great in
anything, for her time was all occupied, and those things in which she
was interested were never so well done without her help. If any crying
abuse were brought to light in the old Cathedral city; if any large
measure of reform were set on foot; if the local papers suddenly became
eloquent in favour of some good movement, and adroit in their powers of
persuasion; if burdens had to be lifted from the oppressed, and the
weak defended against great odds, you might be sure that Ideala was
busy, and her work could be detected in it all. And she was especially
active when efforts were being made to find amusement for the people.
"That is what they want, poor things," she would say. "Their lives are
such a dreary round of dull monotonous toil, and they have so little
sun to cheer them. They ought to be taught to laugh, and have the
brightness put into themselves, and then it would seem as if they had
been relieved of half the atmospheric pressure beneath which they
groan. Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought
you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to
look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening
the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and
weariness of everlasting routine."

She thought laughter an unfailing specific for most of the ills of
life. "We can none of us be thankful enough for the sensation," she
said. "Nothing relieves the mental oppression, which does such moral
and physical harm, like mirth; of course, I mean legitimate laughter,
not levity, nor the ill-natured rejoicing of small minds in such
subjects for sorrow as their neighbours' faults, follies, and mistakes.
What I am thinking of is the pleasure without excitement which there is
in sympathetic intercourse with those large, loving natures that
elevate, and the laughter without bitterness which is always a part of
it."

Like most people whose goodness is neither affected nor acquired, but
natural to them, Ideala saw no merit in her own works, and would not
take the credit she deserved for them; nor would she have had her good
deeds known at all if she could have helped it. But knowledge of these
things leaks out somehow, although probably not a third of what she did
will ever be even suspected.




CHAPTER II.


Speaking to me of women one day, she said: "Certainly they are
_vainqueurs des vainqueurs de la terre_ in any sense they choose; but
the pity of it is that they do not choose to exercise their power for
good to any great extent. I agree with Madame Bernier--if it were
Madame Bernier--who said: _'L'ignorance où les femmes sont de leurs
devoirs, l'abus qu'elles font de leur puissance, leur font perdre le
plus beau et le plus précieux de leurs avantages, celui d'être
utiles.'_ But hundreds of other quotations will occur to you, written
by thoughtful men and women in all ages, and all to the same effect;
it is impossible to over-estimate their restraining and refining
influence as the companions and mothers of men--and almost equally
impossible to make them realise their responsibility or care to use
their strength. I would have every woman feel herself a power for good
in the land--and if only half of them did, what a world of difference
it would make to everybody's health and happiness! But women should,
as a rule, be silent powers. There are, of course, occasions when they
_must_ speak--and all honour to those who do so when the need
arises--but our influence is most felt when it is quietly persistent
and unobtrusive. There is no social reform that we might not
accomplish if we agreed among ourselves to do it, and then worked,
each of us using her influence to that end in her own family, and
among her own friends, only. I once induced some ladies to try a
little experiment to prove this. At that time the gentlemen of our
respective families were all wearing a certain kind of necktie. We
agreed to banish the necktie, and in a month it had disappeared, and
not one of those gentlemen was ever able to tell us why he had given
it up. We don't deserve much credit for our ingenuity, though," she
added, lightly. "Men are so easily managed. All you have to do is to
feed them and flatter them."

"I think that hardly fair," I commented.

"What? The feeding and flattering?"

"No, the conspiracy."

"Well, that occurred to me too--afterwards, when it was too late to do
anything but repent. At the time, I own, I thought of nothing but the
success of the experiment as an example and proof of our will-power."

"You considered one side of the subject only, as per usual, when you
are eager and interested," I softly insinuated.

She frowned at me thoughtfully; then, after a pause, she resumed: "Ah,
yes! You may be sure there is a great deal of good motive power in
women, but most of it is lost for want of knowledge and means to apply
it. It works like the sails of a windmill not attached to the
machinery, which whirl round and round with incredible velocity and
every evidence of strength, but serve no better purpose than to show
which way the wind blows."

This question of the position of women in our own day occupied her a
good deal.

"The women of my time," she said to me once, "are in an unsettled
state, it may be a state of transition. Much that made life worth
having has lost its charm for them. The old interests pall upon them.
Occupations that used to be the great business of their lives are now
thought trivial, and are left to children and to servants. Principles
accepted since the beginning of time have been called in question.
Weariness and distrust have taken the place of peace and content, and
doubt and dissatisfaction are the order of the day. Women want
something; they are determined to have it, too; and doubtless they
would get it if only they knew what it is that they want. They are
struggling to arrive at something, but opinions differ widely as to
what that something ought to be; and the result is that they have
divided themselves into three classes, not exactly distinct: they
dovetail into each other so nicely that it is hard to say where the
influence of the one set ends and the other begins. There are, first of
all, the women who in their struggles for political power have done so
much to unsex us. They have tried to force themselves into unnatural
positions, and the consequence has been about as pleasing and edifying
as an attempt to make a goose sing. They clamour for change, mistaking
change for progress. But don't let the puzzling dovetail confuse you.
The people I speak of are not those who have so nobly devoted
themselves to the removal of the wrongs of women, though they work
together. But the object of all this class is good. They wish to raise
us, and what they want, for the most part, is a little more common
sense--as is shown in their system of education, for instance, which
cultivates the intellectual at the expense of the physical powers,
girls being crammed as boys (to their great let and hindrance also) are
crammed, just when nature wants all their strength to assist their
growth; the result of which becomes periodically apparent when a number
of amiable young ladies are let loose on society without hair or teeth.
But the thing they clamour for most is equality. There is a great deal
to be said in favour of placing the sexes on an equal footing, and if
social conventions are stronger and more admirable than natural
instincts--and doubtless they are--the thing should be done; but the
innate perversity of women make it difficult--for, I know this, that
whatever the position of a true woman, and however much she may clamour
for equality with men in general, the man she herself loves in
particular will always be her master.

"But such ridicule as this party has brought upon itself would not have
mattered so much had nothing worse come of it. Unfortunately, there
seems to be no neutral ground for us women: we either do good or harm;
and I hold that first class responsible for the existence of those
people who clamour for change of any kind, regardless of the
consequences. Their ideas, shorn of all good intention, have resulted
in the production of a new creature; and have made it possible for
women who have the faults of both sexes and the virtues of neither to
mix in society. The bad work done by the influence of this second class
is only too apparent. It is to them we owe the fact that there is less
refinement, less courtesy, less of the really good breeding which shows
itself in kindness and consideration for others, and, Heaven help us!
even less modesty among us now than there was some years ago."

"These are the women, too, who spend their time and talents on the
production of cleverly written books of the most corrupt tendency.
Their works are a special feature of the age, and are doubly dangerous
because they have the art of making the worst ideas attractive, by
presenting them in forms too refined and beautiful to shock even the
most delicate."

"Besides these two classes there is the third, which is more difficult
to define. It is the one on which our hope rests. The women who belong
to it are dissatisfied like the others, but they are less decided, and
therefore their dissatisfaction takes no positive shape. They also want
something, and go this way and that as if in search of it, but they are
not really trying for anything in particular. They do good and evil
indiscriminately, and for the same motive: they find distraction in
doing something--anything. But the desire to do good is latent in all
of them; show them the way, and it will make itself apparent."

"But what is the reason of all this dissatisfaction?" I asked. "Why
don't you go to your husbands and brothers to be set right, as of old?"

"Ah! when you ask me that, you get to the first cause of the trouble,"
she answered. "The truth is that we have lost faith in our men. They
claim some superiority for themselves, but we find none. The age
requires people to practise what they preach, and yet expects us to be
guided by the counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered
them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to
go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually--
either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death
of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon
ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature.
Do you wonder that some of us ask: Why should we keep ourselves pure if
impurity is to be our bedfellow? You make us breathe corruption, and
wonder that we lose our health."

"But why do you talk of the death of manliness? Men have as much
courage now as they ever had."

"Oh, of course--mere animal courage; there is plenty of that, but that
is nothing. A cat will fight for her kittens. It is moral courage that
makes a man, and where do you find it now? Are men self-denying? Are
they scrupulous to a shadow of the truth? Are they disinterested? How
many _gentlemen_ have you met in the course of your life? I know about
half a dozen."

"What do you call a gentleman, then?" I asked in surprise. "What makes
a man one?"

"Why, truth and affection, of course," she answered; "the one is the
most ennobling, and the other the most refining quality. As a child I
used to think ladies and gentlemen never told stories; it was only the
common people who were dis-honourable, and that was what made them
common. _Hélas_! one lives and learns!"

"I don't think the world is worse than it ever was," I said, drily.

"Not worse, when we know so much better!" she answered with scorn.
"Not worse when we have learnt to see so clearly, and most of us
acknowledge that

  It is our will
  Which thus enchains us to permitted ill!

It is nearly two thousand years since Christianity began its work, and
it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all
this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical
joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for
States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by
making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a
rod, when necessary--a rod that is held over them always _in terrorem_!
We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you
will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour
only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old
as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you
suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly
companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that
even their reverence for the purity of women is a sham. For why do
they keep us pure? Is it not to make each morsel more delicious for
themselves, that sense and sentiment may be satisfied together, and
their own pleasure made more complete? Individuals may be in earnest,
but the great bulk of mankind is a hypocrite. When the history of this
age is written, moral cowardice and self-indulgence will be found to
have been the most striking characteristics of the people. There is no
truth to be found in the inward parts."

But Ideala did not often adopt this tone, and she would herself check
other people who were preparing to assume it. She had a favourite
quotation, adroitly mangled, to suit such occasions. "When we begin to
inculcate morality as a science, we must discard moralising as a
method," she declared; and she would also beg us to stop the hysteria.
"It is the mortal malady of all well-beloved measures," she said; "and
it spreads to an epidemic if the infected ones are not suppressed at
once to prevent contagion."

But, although she spoke so positively when taken out of herself by the
interest and importance of a subject, she had no very high opinion of
her own judgment and power to decide. A little more self-esteem would
have been good for her; she was too diffident, "I have not come across
people on whose knowledge I could rely," she told me. "I have been
obliged to study alone, and to form my opinions for myself out of such
scraps of information as I have had the capacity to acquire from
reading and observation. I am, therefore, always prepared to find
myself mistaken, even when I am surest about a thing--for

    What am I?
  An infant crying in the night:
  An infant crying for the light:
  And with no language but a cry!

In practice, too, she frequently, albeit unconsciously, diverged from
her theories to some considerable extent; as on one occasion, when,
after talking long and earnestly of the sin of selfishness, she
absently picked up a paper I had just cut with intent to enjoy myself,
took it away with her to the drawing-room, and sat on it for the rest
of the morning--as I afterwards heard.




CHAPTER III.


Ideala held that dignity and calm are essential in a woman, but, like
the rest of the world, she found it hard to attain to her own standard
of excellence. Her bursts of enthusiasm were followed by fits of
depression, and these again by periods of indifference, when it was
hard to rouse her to interest in anything. She always said, and was
probably right, that want of proper discipline in childhood was the
reason of this variableness, which she deplored, but could neither
combat nor conceal. Temperament must also have had something to do with
it. Her nervous system was too highly strung, she was too sensitive,
too emotional, too intense. She reflected phases of feeling with which
she was brought into contact as a lake reflects the sky above it, and
the bird that skims across it, and the boats that rest upon its breast;
yet, like the lake's, her own nature remained unchanged; it might be
darkened by shadows, and lashed by tempests till it raged, but the pure
element showed divinely even in its wrath, and the passion of it was
expended always to some good end.

But even her love of the beautiful was carried to excess. It was a
passion with her which would, in a sturdier age, have been considered a
vice. She delighted in the scent of flowers, the song of the thrushes
in the spring; colour, and beautiful forms. Doubtless the emotion they
caused her was pure enough, and it was natural that, highly bred,
cultivated, and refined as she was, she should feel these delicate,
sensuous pleasures in a greater degree than lower natures do. There was
danger, however, in the over-education of the senses, which made their
ready response inevitable, but neither limited the subjects, nor
regulated the degree, to which they should respond. But it would be
hard in any case to say where cultivation of love for the beautiful
should end, and to determine the exact point at which the result ceases
to be intellectual and begins to be sensual.

I have sat and watched Ideala lolling at an open window in the summer.
The house stood on a hill, a river wound through the valley below, and
beyond the river--the land sloped up again, green and dotted with
trees, to a range of low hills, crested with a fringe of wood.

"Do you know what there is beyond those hills?" Ideala asked me once,
abruptly. "_I_ don't know; but I love to believe that the sea is
there, and that the sun is sinking into it now. Sometimes I fancy I
can hear it murmur."

And then followed a long silence. And the scent of mignonette and roses
blew in upon her, and the twilight deepened, and I saw her grow pale
with pleasure when the nightingale began to sing--and then I stole away
and never was missed. She would lie in a long chair for hours like
that, scarcely moving, and never speaking. At first I used to wonder
what she thought about; but afterwards I knew that at such times she
did not think, she only felt.

I have some pictures of her as she was then, dressed in a gown of some
quaint blue and white Japanese material, with her white throat bare--I
was just going to catalogue her charms, but it seems indelicate to
describe a woman, point by point, like a horse that is for sale. I have
some other pictures of her, too, as she appeared to me one hot summer
when I was painting a picture by the river, and she used to come down
the towing-path to watch me work, and sit beside me on the grass for
hours together, talking, reading aloud, reciting, or silent, according
to her mood, but always interesting. It was then I learnt to know her
best. And I am always glad to think of her as I used to see her then,
coming towards me in one particular grey frock she wore, tight-fitting
and perfect, yet with no detail evident. It was like an expression of
herself, that dress, so quiet to all seeming, and yet so rich in
material, and so complex in design. The wonder and the beauty of it
grew upon you, and never failed of its effect.




CHAPTER IV.


When I first knew Ideala her religious opinions were all unsettled. "I
neither believe nor disbelieve," she told me; "I am in a state of don't
know; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that I both doubt and
believe at one and the same time. I go indifferently to either church,
Protestant or Catholic, and am thankful when any note of music, or
thrill of feeling in the voice, or noble sentiment, elevates me so that
I can pray. But I am told that both Catholics and Protestants consider
me a weak waverer, and call me incorrigible. Sometimes I cannot pray
for months together, and when I do it is generally to ask for something
I want, not to praise or give thanks. But what a blank it is when one
cannot pray; when one has lost the power to conceive that there is a
something greater than man, to whom man is nevertheless all in all, and
to whom we may look for comfort in all times of our tribulation, and
for sympathy in all times of our wealth! To be able to give thanks to
God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call
upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I
know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless
tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the
sooner? Perhaps not, but it will come."

"I must confess," she said on another occasion, "that I do have moments
of pure scepticism; but when I cannot believe in the existence of a
God, and a Beyond, I feel as if the sky were nearer, and weighed upon
me, so that I could not lift my head."

She thought religion consisted much more in doing right than in
believing right, and set morality above faith; but I think she had a
leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion nevertheless.

"It is a grand old faith," she said, "only it has certain ramifications
with which I should always quarrel, notably that of the Sacred Heart
with which Catholics deface their lovely Lady in the churches. I always
feel that such bad art cannot be good religion. When the Roman Catholic
religion commanded respect it expressed itself better--as in the days
when it carved itself in harmonies of solid stone, and wrote itself in
tint and tone on glowing canvases, and learnt to speak in thundering
mass and mighty hymns of praise! There are people who think these new
shoots good as a sign of life in the tree, and this consideration might
perhaps make their appearance welcome; but a great deal of strength is
expended on their production, and it would be just as well to lop them
off again. The old tree wants pruning and cutting back occasionally,
and it is a false sentiment that is letting it fall to decay for the
sake of these struggling branches.

"There is another thing, too, for which we should all quarrel with the
Catholic religion. I think the fact his already been noticed by some
writer; at all events, it is evident enough to have occurred to any
one. I mean the fact that the Church, by its narrow views about
education, and its most unspiritual ambition for itself, has retarded
the world's progress for centuries by interfering with the law of
natural selection. As a matter of course for ages all the best men went
into the Church; it was the only career open to them; and so they left
no descendants."

At our house, on another occasion, when the Roman Catholic religion
happened to be under discussion, she launched forth some observations
in her usual emphatic way. There were only two strangers present, a
lady and her husband. Ideala asked the lady, who was sitting next to
her, if she were a Catholic, to which the lady answered "No;" and
Ideala, satisfied, proceeded to remark: "It may be the true religion,
but it certainly is not the religion of truth. The doctrine of
expediency, or the latitude they allow themselves on the score of
expediency--I don't quite know how they put it--but it has much to
answer for. I never find that my Roman Catholic friends are true, as
my Protestant friends are. There is always a something kept back, a
reservation; a want of straightforwardness, even when there is no
positive deception--I can't describe the thing I mean, but it is quite
perceptible, and causes an uneasy feeling of distrust, which is all
the more tormenting from its vagueness and want of definition. The
low-class Roman Catholics, I find, never hesitate if a lie will serve
their purpose; and Roman Catholic servants are notoriously
untrustworthy. That, of course, proves nothing, for one knows that
low-class people of any religion are not to be depended on--still,
there is no doubt that one finds deception more rife among Catholics
than among Protestants, and one wonders why, if the religion is not to
blame."

My sister, Claudia, had tried to catch Ideala's eye, and stop her, but
in vain; and the lady next her broke out the moment she paused:
"Indeed, you are quite wrong. You cannot have known many Catholics.
They are not untrue."

"O yes, I have known numbers," Ideala answered; "I speak from
experience. Yet it always seems to me that the Roman Catholic religion
is good for individuals. There is pleasure in it, and help and comfort
for them. But then it is death to the progress of nations, and the
question is: Would an individual be justified in adding a unit more for
his own benefit to a system which would ruin his country? I think not."

Here, however, she stopped, seeing at last that something was wrong.

"What dreadful mistake did I make this evening?" she asked me
afterwards. "Mrs. Jervois declared she wasn't a Catholic."

"But her husband is," I answered; "and he heard every word."

Ideala groaned.

Not long afterwards Mrs. Jervois wrote and told us she had entered the
Catholic Church. "I had, in fact, been received before I went to you,"
she confessed.

"There!" Ideala exclaimed. "It is just what I said. A want of common
honesty is a part of the religion; and you see she had begun to
practise it while she was here."

"What an eternal lie it is they preach when they tell us life is not
worth having," she said to me once, speaking of preachers generally. "I
have heard an oleosaccharine priest preach for an hour on this subject,
detailing the worthlessness of all earthly pleasures, with which he
seemed to be intimately acquainted--his appearance making one suspect
that he had not even yet exhausted them all himself--and giving a
florid account of the glories of the life to come, about which he
appeared to know as much but to care less; just as if heaven might not
begin on earth if only men would let it."

One day I had to warn her about acting so often on impulse. She heard
what I had to say very good-naturedly, and, after thinking about it for
a while, she said: "What a pity it is one never sees an impulse coming.
It is impossible to know whether they arise from below, or descend from
above. I always find if I act on one that it has arisen; and as surely
if I leave it alone it proves to have been a good opportunity lost. And
how curiously our thoughts go on, often so irrespective of ourselves. I
was in a Roman Catholic church the other day, and the priest--a friend
of mine, who looks like the last of the Mohicans minus the feathers in
his hair; but a good man, with nice, soft, velvety brown eyes--preached
most impressively. He told us that the Lord was there--there on that
very altar, ready to answer our prayers; and, oh dear! when I came to
think of it, there were so many of my prayers waiting to be answered! I
'felt like' presenting them all over again, it seemed such a good
opportunity. And then they sang the _O salutaris Hostia_ divinely--
so divinely that I thought if the Lord really had been there He would
certainly have made them sing it again--and I could not pray any more
after that. You call this rank irreverence, do you not? _I_ do.
And I wish I had not thought it. Yet it was one of those involuntary
tricks of the mind for which I cannot believe that we are to be held
responsible. Theologians would say it was a temptation of the devil,
but they are wrong. The first cause of these mental lapses is to be
found in some habit of levity, acquired young, and not easily got rid
of, but still not hopeless. But prevention is better than cure, and
children should be taught right-mindedness early. I wish I had been.
Happy is the child who is started in life with a set of fixed
principles, and the power to respect."

I used to wish that there might be a universal religion, but Ideala did
not share my feeling on this subject. "I suppose it is a fine idea,"
she said; "but while minds run in so many different grooves, it seems
to me far finer for one system of morality to have found expressions
enough to satisfy nearly everybody."

She had very decided views about what heaven ought to be.

"The mere material notion of abundance of gold and precious stones,
which appealed to the early churchmen, has no charm for us," she
declared. "We must have new powers of perception, and new pleasures
provided for us, such, for instance, as Mr. Andrew Lang suggests in an
exquisite little poem about the Homeric Phæacia--the land whose
inhabitants were friends of the gods, a sort of heaven upon earth." And
then she quoted:

  The languid sunset, mother of roses,
    Lingers, a light on the magic seas;
  The wide fire flames as a flower uncloses;
    Heavy with odour and loose to the breeze.

       *       *       *       *       *

  The strange flowers' perfume turns to singing,
    Heard afar over moonlit seas;
  The siren's song, grown faint with winging,
    Falls in scent on the cedar trees.

"Those lines were the first to make me grasp the possibility of having
new faculties added to our old ones in another state of existence,"
she said, "faculties which should give us a deeper insight into the
nature of things, and enable us to discover new pleasures in the unity
which may be expected to underlie beauty and excellence in all their
manifestations, as Mr. Norman Pearson puts it. Did you ever read that
paper of his, 'After Death,' in the _Nineteenth Century_? It embodies
what I had long felt, but could never grasp before I found his
admirable expression of it. 'I can see no reason,' he says, in one
passage in particular which I remember word for word, I think, it
gives me such pleasure to recall it--'I can see no reason for
supposing that _some such_ insight would be impossible to the
quickened faculties of a higher development. With a nature material so
far as the existence of those faculties might require, but spiritual
to the highest degree in their exercise and enjoyment: under physical
conditions which might render us _practically_ independent of space,
and _actually_ free from the host of physical evils to which we are
now exposed, we might well attain a consummation of happiness,
_generally_ akin to that for which we now strive, but idealised into
something like perfection. The faculties which would enable us to
obtain a deeper and truer view of all the manifestations of cosmic
energy would at the same time reveal to us new forms of beauty, new
possibilities of pleasure on every side: and--to take a single
instance--the emotions to which the sight of Niagara now appeals might
then be gratified by a contemplation of the fierce grandeur of some
sun's chromosphere or the calmer glories of its corona.' That
satisfies, does it not?" she added, with a sigh. "It suggests such
infinite possibilities."

       *       *       *       *       *

One day, when she was making herself miserable for want of a religion,
I tried to comfort her by talking of the different people whose lives
had been good and pure and noble, although they had had no faith.

"I suppose my principles are right," she said; "but if they are, they
have come right by accident. The children of the people are sent to
Sunday-schools, and taught the difference between right and wrong;
_we_ seem to be expected to know it instinctively. I think if I had
learnt I might have profited, because I cling so fondly to the one
principle I ever heard clearly enunciated. It was on the sin of
shooting foxes; and I cannot tell you the horror I have of the crime,
even down to the present day. But, now I think of it, I did receive
two other scraps of religious training. My governess taught me the Ten
Commandments by making me say them after her when I was eating bread
and sugar for breakfast before going to church on Sunday. The thought
of them always brings back the flavour of bread and sugar. And the
other scrap I got from a clergyman to whom I was sent on a single
occasion when I was thought old enough to be confirmed. He asked me
which was the commandment with promise, and I didn't know, so he told
me; and then I made him laugh about a horse of mine that used to have
great fun trying to break my neck, and after that he said I should do.
I did not agree with him, however, and I positively refused to be
confirmed until I knew more about it. My mother said I was the most
disagreeable child she had ever known, which was probably true, but as
an argument it failed to convince. It was her last remark on the
subject, happily, and after that the thing was allowed to drop."

Ideala was fourteen when she refused to be confirmed for conscientious
scruples, and although she made light of it in this way, she had
suffered a good deal and been severely punished at the time for her
refusal, but vainly, for she never gave in.

In after-life she held, of course, that Christianity was the highest
moral revelation the world had ever known; but when she saw that legal
right was not always moral right, I think she began to look for a
higher.

By baptism she belonged to the Church of England, but she seems to have
thought of the Sacrament always with the idea of transubstantiation in
her mind. She spoke of it reverently, but had never been able to take
it, and for a curious reason: she said the idea of it nauseated her.
She felt that the elements were unnatural food, and therefore she could
not touch them--and this feeling never left her but once, when she was
dangerously ill, and yearned, as she told me, for the Sacrament more
than for life and health. Day and night the longing never left her;
but, not having been confirmed, she did not like to ask for it, and as
she recovered the old feeling gradually returned.

Religious difficulties always tormented her more or less. As she grew
older she felt with Shelley that belief is involuntary, and a man is
neither to be praised nor blamed for it; and she was always ready to
acknowledge with Sir Philip Sidney that "Reason cannot show itself more
reasonable than to leave reasoning on things above reason," but
nevertheless her mind did not rest.

I have also heard her quote, "Credulity is the man's weakness, but the
child's strength," and add that in matters of faith and religion we are
all children, and I have thought at times that she had been able to
leave it so; but something always fell from her sooner or later which
showed that the old trouble was rankling still--as when she told me
once: "I have never heard the Divine voice which has called you and all
my friends. I listen for it, but it does not speak. I call, but there
is no reply. I wait, but it does not come. The heaven of heavens is
dark to me, and the yearning of my soul meets no response. Will it be
so for ever?"

No, not for ever--but she was led by tortuous ways, and left to work
out her own salvation in very fear and trembling, till the dear human
love was given to her in pity to help her to know something of that
which is Divine. And then, I hope, above the trouble of her senses, and
the turmoil of the world, the Divine voice did call her, and she was
able at last to hear.




CHAPTER V.


Ideala often recurred to the subject of work for women.

"There are so many thousands of us," she said, "who have no object in
life, and nothing to make us take it seriously. My own is a case in
point. I am not necessary, even to my husband. There is nothing I am
bound to do for him, or that he requires of me, nothing but to be
agreeable when he is with me, which would not interfere with a serious
occupation if I had one, and is scarcely interest enough in life for an
energetic woman. My household duties take, on an average, half an hour
a day; and everything in our house is done regularly, and well done. My
social duties may be got through at odd moments, and the more of a
pastime I make them the better I fulfil them; and, with the exception
of these, there is nothing in my life that I cannot have done for me by
some one better able to do it than I am. And even if I had children I
should not be much more occupied, for the things they ought to learn
from their mothers are best taught by example. For all practical
purposes, parents, as a rule, are bad masters for any but very young
children. They err on the side of over severity or the reverse. So you
see I have no obligations of consequence, and there is, therefore,
nothing in my life to inspire a sense of responsibility. And all this
seems to me a grievous waste of Me. I remember Lord Wensum telling me,
when we discussed this subject, that he was travelling once with a
well-known editor, and, noticing the number of villas that had sprung
up of late years along the whole line of rail they were on, he said: 'I
wonder what the ladies in those villas do with their time? I suppose
their social duties are limited, and they are too well off to be
obliged to trouble themselves about anything.' 'It is the existence of
those villas,' the editor answered, 'that makes the present profession
of the novelist possible.' But I think," said Ideala, "that those women
might find something better to do than to make a profession for
novelists."

"But you do a good deal yourself, Ideala," I ventured.

"Yes, in a purposeless way. All my acts are isolated; it would make
little difference if they had never been done."

"Then you are not content, after all, to be merely a poem?" I said,
maliciously. "You would like to do as well as to be?"

She laughed. Then, after a little, she said earnestly: "Do you know, I
always feel as if I _could_ do something--teach something--or help
others in a small way with some work of importance. I never believe I
was born just to live and die. But I have a queer feeling about it. I
am sure I shall be made to go down into some great depth of sin and
misery myself, in order to learn what it is I have to teach."

She loved music, and painting, and poetry, and science, and none of her
loves were barren. She embraced them each in turn with an ardour that
resulted in the production of an offspring--a song, a picture, a poem,
or book on some most serious subject, and all worthy of note. But she
was inconstant, and these children of her thought or fancy were
generally isolated efforts that marked the culminating point of her
devotion, and lessened her interest if they did not exhaust her
strength.

Perhaps, though, I wrong her when I call her inconstant. It seems to me
now that each new interest was a step by which she mounted upwards,
learning to sympathise practically and perfectly with all men in their
work as she passed them on her way to find her own.




CHAPTER VI.


She knew the poor of the place well, and took a lively interest in all
that concerned them; and occasionally she would confide some of her own
odd observations and reflections to me.

"On Sunday morning all the women wash their doorsteps," she told me; "I
think it is part of their religion."

And on another occasion she said: "They have such lovely children here,
and such swarms of them. I am always hard on the women with lovely
children. People say it is envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness, that makes me so; but it really is because I think
women who have nice children should be better than other women. It
would be worse for one of them to do a wrong thing than for poor
childless me."

This conclusion may be quarrelled with as illogical, but the feeling
that led to it was beautiful beyond question; and, indeed, all her
ideas on that subject were beautiful.

She went once, soon after she came among us, to comfort a lady in the
neighbourhood who had lost a baby at its birth.

"It is sad that you should lose your child," Ideala said to her; "but
you are better off than I am, for I never knew what it was to be a
mother."

She would have thought it a privilege to have experienced even the
sorrows of maternity.

Talking about the people, she told me: "They draw such nice
distinctions. They speak of 'a lady' and 'a real lady.' A 'real lady'
is a person who gives no trouble. If Mrs. Vanbrugh wants anything from
the butcher, and he has already sent to her house once that day, she
does not expect him to send again; she sends to him--and she is 'a real
lady.' Mrs. Stanton is also thoughtful, but she is something more; she
is sociable and kind, and talks to them all in a friendly way, just as
if they were human beings; and she is something more than 'a real
lady'--she's 'a real nice lady.'

"Do you know Mrs. Polter at the fish-shop? What a fine-looking woman
she is! Middle-aged, intelligent, and a very good specimen of her
class, I should think. She has eight children already, and would
consider the ninth a further blessing. Her husband is a good-looking
man, too, and most devoted. In fact, they are quite an ideal pair with
their eight children and their fish-shop. He had to go to Yarmouth the
other day to buy bloaters, and while he was away she went by the five
o'clock train every morning to choose the day's supply of fish for the
shop, and he was quite unhappy about it. He was afraid she would
'overdo' herself, and rather than that should happen he desired her to
let the business go to the--ahem! He made her write every day to say
how she was, and was wretched till he returned to relieve her of her
arduous duties. She made friends with me during the scarlet fever
epidemic. Number eight was a baby then, and she was afraid he might
catch the disease and be taken to the hospital and die for want of her;
and I sympathised strongly with her denunciations of the cruelty of the
act. Fancy taking little babies from their mothers! Barbarous, don't
you think it? One day a lady came into the shop while I was there. She
was dressed in a bright pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in
pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs.
Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently
acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her
own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a lady' and
'a real lady.'"

One of Ideala's exploits got into the paper somehow, and she was
annoyed about it, and anxious to make us believe the account of the
risk she ran had been greatly exaggerated. I was present when she gave
her own version of the story, which was characteristic in every way.

"I heard frantic cries from the river," she said. "Some one was
shrieking, 'The child will be drowned!' and I ran to see what was the
matter. A man was tearing up and down on the bank, a child was
struggling in the water, and as there was nobody else to be seen he
looked to _me_ for assistance! I advised him to go in and bring
the child out, but the idea did not appear to commend itself to him, so
he took to running up and down again, bawling, 'The child will be
drowned!' And indeed it seemed very likely; so I was obliged to go in
and bring it out myself. The man was overjoyed when I restored it to
him. He clasped it in his arms with every demonstration of affection;
and then he looked at me and became embarrassed. He evidently felt that
he ought to say something, but the difficulty was what to say. At last
a bright idea seemed to strike him. His countenance cleared, and he
spoke with much feeling. 'I am afraid you are rather wet,' he observed;
and then he left me, and a sympathetic landlady, who keeps a little
public-house by the river, and had witnessed the occurrence, took me in
and dried me. She gave me whisky and hot water, and entertained me for
the rest of the afternoon. She is a remarkable woman, and I should
visit her often were it not for her love of, and faith in, whisky and
hot water. I tell her there are five things which make the nose red--
viz., cold, tight-lacing, disease of the right side of the heart,
dyspepsia, and alcohol, and the greatest of these is alcohol; but she
says a little colour anywhere would be an improvement to me, and I feel
that I can have nothing in common with a woman who has such bad taste
in the distribution of colour."




CHAPTER VII.


Ideala's notions of propriety were altogether unconventional. She never
could be made to understand that it was not the proper thing to talk
familiarly to any one she met, and discuss any subject they were equal
to with them.

"It is good for people to talk, and natural, and therefore proper," she
said. "If I can give pleasure to a stranger by doing so, or he can give
pleasure to me, it would not be right to keep silent."

She carried this idea of her duty to her neighbour rather far
sometimes.

I remember her telling me once about two old gentlemen she had
travelled with the day before.

"The sun came in and bothered me, and one of them offered to draw the
blind," she said, "and he remarked it was rather a treat to see the
sun, we have so little of it now; and I said that was true, and told
him how I pitied the farmers. I had to stay in my room the other day
with a bad cold, and I amused myself watching one of them at work in
some fields opposite. The state of his mind was expressed by his
boots. On Monday the sun was shining, the air was mild, and it seemed
as if we were going to have a continuance of fine weather, and the
farmer appeared of a cheerful countenance, and his boots were polished
and laced. On Tuesday there was an east wind, veering south, with
showers, and his boots were laced, but not polished. On Wednesday
there was frost, fog, and gloom, and they were neither laced nor
polished. On Thursday there was a snowstorm, and he had no boots at
all on; and after that I did not see him, and I wondered if he had
committed suicide--in which case I thought the jury might almost have
brought in a verdict of 'justifiable _felo-de-se_.' And when I told
that story the other old gentleman shut his book, and began to talk
too. And I said I thought the weather was much colder than it used to
be, for I could remember wearing muslin dresses in May, and I could
not wear them at all now; but I did not know if the change were in the
climate or in myself--perhaps a little of both--though, indeed, I knew
that, to a certain extent, it was in the climate, which had been very
much altered in different districts by drainage, and cutting, or
planting--altered for the better, however, as a rule. And one old
gentleman had heard that before, but did not understand it exactly, so
I explained it to him; and then I talked about changes of climate in
general, and the formation of beds of coal, and the ice period, and
sun-spots, and the theory of comets, and about my husband getting up
to see the last one, and going out in a felt hat and dressing-gown
with a bed-candle to look for it--and about that dream of mine, did I
tell you? I dreamt the comet came into our drawing-room, and the leg
of a Chinese table turned into a snake and snorted at it, and the
comet looked so taken aback that I woke myself with a shout of
laughter. And then we talked of popular superstitions about comets,
and dreams, and ghosts-- particularly ghosts, and I told a number of
creepy stories, and one old gentleman pretended he didn't believe in
them, but he did, and so did the other without any pretence; and we
talked about Darwinism, and the nature of the soul, and Nihilism, and
the state of society--and--and a few other things. And they were such
dear delightful old gentlemen, and they knew such a lot, and were so
clever; and one of them was a Railway Director, and the other couldn't
let his farms, and was bothered about his pheasants, and wanted to
have the trains altered to suit him. I should so like to meet them
both again."

"And how long did all this take, Ideala?"

"Oh, some hours. I fancy their dreams would be rather confused last
night," she added, naively.

"Poor old gentlemen!" said I.

This sociability and inclination to talk the matter out, and, I may
say, a certain amount of innocence and lack of worldly wisdom into the
bargain, betrayed her occasionally into small improprieties of conduct
that were not to be excused, and would possibly not have been forgiven
in any one but Ideala. But such things were allowed in her as certain
things are allowed in certain people--not because the things are right
in themselves, but because the people who do them see no harm in them.
There are people, too, who seem to enjoy the privilege of making wrong
right by doing it. Society, however, only accords this privilege to a
limited and distinguished few.

When Ideala saw for herself that she had done an unjustifiable thing
she was very ready to confess it. I always fancied she had some latent
idea of making atonement in that way. It never mattered how much a
story told against herself, nor how much malicious people might make of
it to her discredit; she told all, inimitably, and with scrupulous
fidelity to fact.

One day she was standing waiting for a train at the station at York,
and in her absent way she fixed her eyes on a gentleman who was walking
about the platform.

Presently he went up to her, and, without any apology or show of
respect, remarked: "I am sure I have seen you before."

"Probably," Ideala rejoined, as if the occurrence were the most natural
thing in the world, "but I do not remember you. Perhaps if I heard your
name----?"

"Oh, I don't suppose you ever heard my name," he said.

"In that case I can never have known you," she answered, calmly. "I
never know any one except by name. I suppose you are an Englishman?"

"Yes," he said, eagerly; "I am in the 5th----"

"Ah, I thought so," she interrupted, placidly. "Englishmen in the 5th,
and some other regiments, are apt to have but the one idea----"

"And that is?"

"And that is a bad one."

He looked at her for a moment, and then, hat in hand, he made her a low
bow, and left her without another word.

"I think he felt ill, and went to have some refreshment," she added,
when she told me.

From what happened afterwards I am sure that at the time she had no
idea of the real significance of the position in which she found
herself placed on this occasion. But, as a rule, if she did or said the
wrong thing, she became painfully conscious of the fact immediately
afterwards--indeed, it was generally _afterwards_ that she grasped
the full meaning of most things. She was ready with repartee without
being in the least quick of understanding; she had to think things
over, and even then she was not sure to do the right thing next time.

"Mr. Graves is ten years younger than his wife," she told me once, "and
only fancy what I said one day. It was in his studio, and she was
there. I declared a woman could have no sense of propriety at all who
married a man younger than herself--that no good could possibly come of
such marriages--and a lot more. Then I suddenly remembered, and you can
imagine my feelings! But what do you think I did? I went there the next
year, and said the same thing again exactly!"




CHAPTER VIII.


When we were a small party of intimate friends, and Ideala was quite at
her ease with us, it was pleasant to see her lolling, a little
languidly as was her wont (for physically her energy was fitful), in
the corner of a couch, looking happy and interested, her face, which
was sad in repose, lit up for the time with amusement, as she quietly
listened to our talk, and observed all that was going on around her.
Even when she did not speak a word she somehow managed to make her
presence felt, and, as a rule, she spoke little on these occasions. But
sometimes we managed to draw her out, and sometimes she would burst
forth suddenly of her own accord, with a torrent of eloquence that
silenced us all; and even when she was utterly wrong she charmed us.
Her chance observations were generally noteworthy either for their
sense or their humour. It was only her sense of humour, I think, that
saved her from being sentimental; but she gave expression to it in
season and out of season, and would let it carry her too far sometimes,
for she made enemies for herself more than once by the way she exposed
the absurdity of certain things to the very people who believed in
them. Every lapse of this kind caused her infinite regret, but the
fault seemed incurable: she was always either repenting of it or
committing it, although, having so many quirks of her own, she felt
that she, of all people in the world, should have dealt most tenderly
with the weaknesses of others.

She knew how narrowly she escaped being sentimental, and would often
joke about her danger in that respect. "This lovely summer weather
makes me _sickly_ sentimental," she told me once. "I feel like the
heroine of a three-volume novel written by a young lady of eighteen,
and I think continually of _him_. I don't know in the least who
_he_ is, but that makes no difference. The thought of him delights
me, and I want to write long letters to him, and make verses about him
the whole day long. And he wants me to be good."

She had two or three pet abominations of her own, any allusion to which
was sure to make her outrageous--false sentiment and affectation of any
kind were amongst them. She had little habits, too, that we were all
pleased to fall in with. Sitting in the corner of a couch, and of one
couch in particular in every house, was one of these; and people got
into the way of giving up that seat to her whenever she appeared. I
think it would have puzzled us all to say why or wherefore, for she
never said or looked anything that could make us think she wished to
appropriate it; she simply took it as a matter of course when it was
offered to her, and probably did not know that she invariably sat
there. Ideala was a splendid horsewoman, and swam like a fish; but she
was not good at tennis or games of any kind, and she did not dance, for
a curious reason: she objected to be touched by people for whom she had
no special affection. She even disliked to shake hands, and often
wished some one would put the custom out of fashion. With regard to
dancing I have heard her say, too, that she sympathised entirely with
the Oriental feeling on the subject. She thought it delightful to be
danced to, to lie still with a pleasant companion near her who would
not talk too much, and listen to the music, and enjoy the poetry of
motion coolly and at ease. "I love to see the 'dancers dancing in
tune,'" she said; "but to have to dance myself would be as great a
bother as to have to cook my dinner as well as eat it. I suppose it is
a healthy amusement--indeed, I know it is when you take it as I do; for
when all you people come down the morning after a dance with haggard
eyes and no power to do anything, I am as fresh as a lark, and have
decidedly the best of it."

She was not good at games because she was not ambitious. She did not
care to have her skill commended, and was content to lose or win with
equal indifference--so long as only the honour of the thing was
involved; but when the stakes were more material she showed a vice of
which she was quite conscious.

"I daren't play for money," she said to me. "I never have, and I have
always said that I never will. All the women of my family are born
gamblers. My mother has often told me that regularly, when she was a
girl, the day after she received her allowance she had either doubled
it or lost it all; and before she was twenty she hadn't a jewel worth
anything in her possession--and my aunts were as bad. One of them
staked herself one night to a gentleman she was playing with, and he
won, and married her. Gambling was more the custom then than it is now,
but for me it is as much in the air as if it were still the fashion.
When there is any talk of play I feel fascinated, and when I see a pack
of cards the temptation is so irresistible that I have often to go away
to save my resolution."

Which made me think of a favourite quotation of Lessing's from
_Minna_:--"_Tout les gens d'esprit aiment le jeu à la folie_."




CHAPTER IX.


Ideala's low esteem for "mere animal courage" was probably due to the
fact that she possessed it herself in a high degree. Yet soon after I
met her I began to suspect, and was afterwards convinced, that
something in her manner which had puzzled me at first arose from fear.
There was that in her life which made her afraid of the world, which
would, had it guessed the truth, have pryed with curious eyes into her
sorrow, and found an interest in seeing her suffer. The trouble was her
husband. She rarely spoke of him herself, and I think I ought to follow
her example, and say as little about him as possible. He was jealous of
her, jealous of her popularity, and jealous of every one who approached
her. He carried it so far that she scarcely dared to show a preference,
and was even obliged to be cold and reserved with some of her best
friends. I was a privileged person, allowed to be intimate with her
from the first, partly because I insisted on it when I saw how matters
stood, and partly because my position and reputation gave me a right to
insist. I never had occasion to brave insults for her sake, but, like
many others, I would have done so had it been necessary. Her friends
were constantly being driven from her on one pretext or another. People
would have taken her part readily enough had she complained, but
complaint was contrary to her nature and her principles. Some, who
suspected the truth, blamed her reticence; but I always thought it
right, and on one occasion when we approached the subject indirectly I
told her "Silence is best." I ought to have qualified the advice, for
she carried it too far, and was silent afterwards when she should have
spoken--that is to say, when it had become evident that endurance was
useless and degrading.

She fought hard to preserve her dignity, and was determined that "as
the husband is, the wife is," should not be true in her case. But he
did lower her insensibly, nevertheless. As her life became more and
more unendurable she became a little reckless in speech; it was a sort
of safety-valve by means of which she regained her composure, and I
soon began to recognise the sign, and to judge of the amount she had
suffered by the length to which she afterwards went in search of
relief, and the extent to which suffering made her untrue to herself.

As a rule, when with him, she was yielding, but she had fits of
determination, too, when she knew she was right. One night, as they
were driving home from a ball together, her husband suddenly declared
that he would not allow her to be one of the patronesses of a fancy
fair which was to be held for a charitable purpose, although she had
already consented and he had made no objection at the time.

"But why may I not?" Ideala asked.

"Because I object. Do you hear? I will not have it, and you must
withdraw."

"I must decline to obey any such arbitrary injunction," she answered,
quietly.

He detained her on the doorstep until the carriage had driven round to
the stables.

"Now, are you going to obey me?" he asked.

"Yes, if you give me a reason for what you require," she answered,
wearily.

"Oh, you are obstinate, are you?" he rejoined, in a jeering tone.
"Well, stay in the garden and think it over. Perhaps reflection will
make you more dutiful. I shall tell your maid you will not want her
to-night. When you have made up your mind you can ring." And so saying
he walked into the house and shut the door upon her.

It was a summer night, but Ideala felt chilly with only a thin shawl
over her ball dress. She walked about as long as she could, but fatigue
overcame her at last, and she was obliged to lie down on one of the
garden seats. She wrapped the train of her dress round her shoulders,
and lay looking up at the stars. The air was heavy with the scent of
flowers. The night was very still. Once or twice the rush of a passing
train in the distance became audible; and the ceaseless, solemn,
inarticulate murmur of the night was broken by a nightingale that sang
out at intervals, divinely.

Ideala never thought of submitting; she simply lay there, waiting
without expecting. The night air overcame her more and more with a
sense of fatigue, but she could not sleep. She saw the darkness fade
and the dawn appear, and when at last the servants began to move in the
house she watched her opportunity and slipped in unobserved. She went
to one of the spare rooms, undressed, rang, and got into bed. When the
bell was answered she ordered a hot bath and hot coffee immediately.
The maid supposed she had slept there, and seemed surprised; but as her
mistress offered no explanation she could make no remark; and so the
matter ended.

But I do not think Ideala suffered much on that occasion. Her strong
young womanhood saved her somewhat--and there was a charm for her in
the beauty of the night and the novelty of her position, which a less
healthy organism would not have appreciated, had it been able to
discover it--at such a time.




CHAPTER X.


Ideala had been married eight years, and two months after that night
the long-delayed hope of her life, which she had begun to believe was
beyond hope, was at last realised. Her child was a boy, and her joy in
him is something that one is glad to have seen. But it was short-lived.
I do not know if her husband were jealous of her happiness, or if he
thought the child was more to her than he was, or if he were merely
making a proposition, by way of experiment, which he never meant to
carry into effect--probably the latter. At all events, he went to her
one day when the child was about six weeks old, and told her he thought
she must give up nursing him.

The mother's nature was up in arms in a moment. I suppose she had not
quite regained her strength, for she had been very ill, and, being
weak, she was excitable.

"I will not give my baby up! How can you think it?" she exclaimed.

"Oh, well," he answered, coolly, "just as you like, you know. But I
should think you'd better--for the child's sake, at least."

"It isn't true. I don't believe it," she said, piteously.

"Ask the doctor, then;" and he sauntered out, smiling, and perhaps not
dreaming that she would.

But "for the child's sake" had alarmed Ideala, and she sent for the
doctor. It was hours before he could come to her, and, in the meantime,
not knowing that her state of mind would affect the child, she had
fidgeted and fretted herself into a fever, and when the doctor saw her,
he could only confirm her husband's verdict.

"I am afraid you must give up nursing," he said. "You are in such a
nervous state it will do the child harm. But he's such a fine fellow!
He'll thrive all right--you needn't be frightened."

Ideala said nothing, but she sat in her own room night after night for
a week, and heard the child crying for her, and could not go to him--
and even when he did not cry she fancied she heard him still. I think
as the milk slowly and painfully left her, her last spark of affection
for her husband dried up too.

The child died of diphtheria some time afterwards, and in a little
while, Ideala, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, returned to her
old pursuits, and no one ever knew what she felt about it:

  For, it is with feelings as with waters--
  The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb!




CHAPTER XI.


My widowed sister, Claudia, was one of Ideala's most intimate friends.
She was a good deal older than Ideala, whom she loved as a mother loves
a naughty child, for ever finding fault with her, but ready to be up in
arms in a moment if any one else ventured to do likewise. She was
inclined to quarrel with me because, although I never doubted Ideala's
truth and earnestness (no one could), knowing her weak point, I feared
for her. I thought if all the passion in her were ever focussed on one
object she would do something extravagant--a prediction which Claudia,
with good intent, rashly repeated to her once.

Claudia was mistress of my house, and she and I had agreed from the
first that, whatever happened, we would watch over Ideala and befriend
her.

My sister was one of the people who thought it would have been better
for Ideala to have talked of her troubles. When I praised Ideala's
loyalty, and her uncomplaining devotion to an uncongenial duty, Claudia
said: "Loyalty is all very well; but I don't see much merit in a life-
long devotion to a bad cause. If there were any good to be done by it,
it would be different, of course; but, as it is, Ideala is simply
sacrificing herself for nothing--and worse, she is setting a bad
example by showing men they need not mend their manners since wives
will endure anything. It is immoral for a woman to live with such a
husband. I don't understand Ideala's meekness; it amounts to weakness
sometimes, I think. I believe if he struck her she would say, 'Thank
you,' and fetch him his slippers. I feel sure she thinks some unknown
defect in herself is at the bottom of all his misdeeds."

"I don't think she knows half as much about his misdeeds as we do," I
observed.

"Then I think it would be a charity to enlighten her," Claudia
answered, decidedly. "One can't touch pitch without being defiled, and
when it is too late we shall find she has suffered 'some taint in
nature,' in spite of herself. Will you kindly take us to the Palace
this evening? The Bishop wants us to go in after dinner, and Ideala has
promised to come too."

Ideala was fastidious about her dress, and being in one of her moods
that evening she teased Claudia unmercifully, on the way to the Palace,
about a blue woollen shawl she was wearing. "A delicate and refined
nature expresses itself by nothing more certainly than elegant wraps,"
she said, parodying another famous dictum; "and I should not like to be
able to understand the state of mind a lady was in when she bought
herself a blue woollen shawl; but I could believe she was suffering at
the time from a temporary aberration of intellect--only, if she wore it
afterwards the thing would be quite inexplicable." Claudia drew the
wrap round her with dignity, and made no reply; then Ideala laughed and
turned to me. "Certainly your friend," she said, alluding to a young
sculptor who was staying with me, "can 'invest his portraits with
artistic merit.' Claudia's likeness in the Exhibition is capital, and
the fame of it is being noised abroad with a vengeance. But I think
something should be done to stop the little newspaper-boy nuisance: the
reports they spread are quite alarming."

"Ideala, what nonsense are you talking about sculptors and newspaper-
boys?" Claudia exclaimed.

"I'll tell you," said Ideala. "There was a small boy with a big voice
standing at the corner of the market-place this afternoon. He had a
sheaf of evening papers under his arm, and was yelling with much
enthusiasm to an edified crowd:--'Noose of the War! Hawful mutilation
of the dead! Fearful collision in the Channel! Eighty-eight lives lost!
Narrative of survivors! Thrilling details! Shindy in Parl'ment! Hirish
members to the front again! 'Orrible haccident in our own town! The
Lady Claudia's bust!'"

"Ideala, how _dare_ you?"--but just then the carriage stopped, and we
had to get out.

The good Bishop met us in the hall. Ideala positively declined to go
upstairs when he asked her.

"It is too much trouble," she said, not seeing in her absence what was
meant. "I would rather leave my things here."

"But I am afraid I _must_ trouble you," the Bishop answered, in
despair. "The fact is, my wife is not so well this evening, and she
was afraid of the cold, and is staying in her own sitting-room."

The "sitting-room" was a snug apartment, warm, cosy, luxurious, and we
found a genial little party of intimate acquaintances there when we
arrived. Ideala's husband was not one of them. He did not take her out
much at that time. Probably he was engaged in some private pursuit of
his own, and insisted on her going everywhere alone to keep her out of
the way. A little while before he would scarcely allow her to pay a
call without him. But, as a rule, whatever his mood was, she did as he
wished--and provoked him sometimes, I think, by her patient compliance;
a little resistance would have made the exercise of his authority more
exciting.

When we entered the sitting-room "an ominous silence feel on the
group," which was broken at last by one of the ladies remarking that a
kind heart was an admirable thing. Another agreed, and made some
observations on the merits of self-sacrifice generally.

"But some people are not satisfied with merely _doing_ a good deed," a
gentleman declared, with profound gravity. "They think there is no
merit in it if they do not suffer for it in some way themselves."

There was a good deal more of this kind of thing, and we were beginning
to feel rather out of it, when presently the preternatural gravity of
the party was broken by a laugh, and then it was explained.

Ideala had gone to a neighbouring town one day by train, and before she
started a poor woman got into the carriage. The woman had a third-class
ticket, but she was evidently ill, and when the guard came and wanted
to turn her out, Ideala took pity on her, insisted on changing tickets,
and travelled third class herself. The woman had been to the Palace,
and described the incident to the Bishop's wife that morning, and she
had just told her guests, wondering who the lady could have been, and
they in turn had put their heads together and decided that there was no
one in the community but Ideala who would have done the thing in that
way.

"But what else could I have done?" she asked, when she saw we were
laughing at her.

"Well, my dear," said the Bishop, who always treated her with the kind
indulgence that is accorded to a favourite child, "you might have paid
the difference for the woman, and travelled comfortably yourself, don't
you know?"

Ideala never thought of that!

Presently the dear old Bishop nestled back in his chair, and with a
benign glance round, which, his scapegrace son said, meant: "Bless you,
my children! Be happy and good in your own way, but don't make a
noise!" he sank into a gentle doze, and the rest of the party relapsed
into trivial gossip, some of which I give for what it is worth by way
of illustration. It shows Ideala at about her worst, but marks a period
in her career, a turning-point for the better. She was seldom bitter,
and still more rarely frivolous, after that night.

"Clare Turner will take none of the blame of that affair on his own
shoulders," some one remarked.

"Mr. Clare Turner is the little boy who always said 'It wasn't me!'
grown up," Ideala decided, from the corner of her couch. "He is a sort
of two-reason man."

"How do you mean 'a two-reason man,' Ideala?"

"Well, he has only two reasons for everything; one is his reason for
doing anything he likes himself, which is always a good one; and the
other is his reason why the rest of the world should not do likewise,
which is equally clear--to himself. He thinks there should be one law
for him and another for everybody else. I don't believe in him."

"Nor I," said one of the gentlemen. "Underhand bowling was all he was
celebrated for at school; he bowled most frightful sneaks all the time
he was there."

"Talking about Clare Turner," Charlie Lloyd put in, "I've brought a new
book of poems--author unknown. I picked it up at the station to-day.
There's one thing in it, called 'The Passion of Delysle,' that seems to
be intense; but I've only just glanced at it, and don't really know
what it's like. Shall I read it?"

"Oh, do!" was the general exclamation, and we all settled ourselves to
enjoy the following treat.

Charlie began softly:

    O day and night! Oh day and night! and is this madness?
    O day and night! O day and night! and is this joy?
    Whence comes this bursting sense of life, and love, and gladness,
    This pain of pleasure, perfected, without alloy?
    Lo, flowing past me are the restless rivers,
    Or swelling round me is the boundless sea;
    Or else the widening waste of sand that quivers
    In shining stretches, shuts the world from me--
  Or seems to shut it, while I would that what it seems might be.

    O day and night! O day and night! this mountain island,
    This saintly shrine, this fort--I scarce know what 'tis yet--
    This sand, or sea-girt, rocky, town-clad, church-crown'd highland,
    This dull and rugged gem in golden deserts set,
    Has some delicious, unknown charm to hold me,
    To draw me to itself and keep me here;
    The old grey walls, it seems, with joy enfold me--
    Or is it I that make the dead stones dear,
  And send the throbbing summer in my blood thro' all things near?

    O day and night! O day and night! where else do flowers
    Open their velvet lids like these to greet the light?
    Or raise such sun-kissed lips aglow to meet cool showers?
    Or cast more subtle scents abroad upon the night?
    These trees and trailing weeds that climb the cliff-side steep,
    The dusky pine trees, draped with wreaths of vine,
    Make bowers where love might lie and list the sea-voice deep,
    And drink the perfumed air, the light, like wine,
  Which threads intoxication through these hot, glad veins of mine.

    O day and night! O day and night! I sought this haven,
    From place and power, and wealth I flew in search of rest;
    They forced and bound me to a hard, detested craven,
    Who mocked my loathing with his head upon my breast.
    With deathless love I moaned for my young lover;
    To make me great they drove him from my side,
    And foully wrought with shame his name to cover--
    My boy, my lord, my prince! In vain they lied!
  But should I always suffer for their false, inhuman pride?

    O day and night! O day and night! I left them flying,
    I fled by day and night as flies the nomad breeze,
    Across the silent land when light to dark was dying,
    And onward like a spirit lost across the seas;
    And on from sea and shore thro' apple-orchards blooming,
    Till all things melted in a moving haze;
    And on with rush and ring by tower and townlet glooming,
    By wood, and field, and hill, by verdant ways,
  While dawn to mid-day drew, and noon was lost in sunset blaze.

    O day and night! O day and night! light once more waxing,
    Still on with courage high, tho' strength was well-nigh spent;
    Grim spectres of pursuit the wearied brain perplexing,
    Fear-fraught, but ever met with spirit dedolent.
    The landscape reeled, there came a sense of slumber,
    And myriad shadows rose and wanned and waned,
    And flitting figures, visions without number,
    Took shape above the land till sight was pained,
  And floated round me till at last the longed-for goal I gained.

    O day and night! O day and night! with rest abounding,
    The soothing sinking down on hard-earned holy rest,
    With grateful ease that grew from all the calm surrounding,
    A languid, dreamful ease, my soul became possessed.
    The hoarse sea-wind comes soughing, sighing, singing,
    Its constant message from the patient waves.
    While high above cathedral bells were ringing,
    Or falling voices chanted hymns of praise,
  And all the land seemed filled with peace and promised length of days.

       *       *       *       *       *

    O day and night! O day and night! once, all unheeding,
    By sun and summer wind with tender touch caressed,
    I wandered where the strains, the sacred strains, were pleading,
    And, kneeling in the fane, my thoughts to prayer addressed.
    And softly rose the murmur'd organ mystery,
    And swell'd around the colonnaded aisle,
    Where smiled the pictured saints of holy history
    On prostrate penitents who prayed the while:
  I could not pray there, but I felt that God Himself might smile.

    O day and night! O day and night! while I was kneeling
    There came the strangest sense of some loved presence near;
    A re-awakening rush of well-remembered feeling
    Thrill'd thro' me, held me still, with vague expectant fear.
    Half turn'd from me, there stood beside the altar,
    Where incense-clouds nigh veiled him from my sight,
    A fair-haired priest--my quicken'd heart-beats falter!
    Or is he priest, or is he acolyte,
  Or layman devotee who prays in novice robes bedight?

    O day and night! O day and night! whence comes this feeling?
    For all unreal seem day and night and life and death,
    And all unreal the hope that sets my senses reeling,
    And stills my pulse an instant, checks my lab'ring breath.
    Yet louder rolls the mighty organ thund'ring.
    And downward slopes a beam of light divine,
    The perfumed clouds are cleft: he looks up wond'ring--
    Looks up--what does he there before the shrine?
  He could not give himself to God, for he is mine, is mine!

    O day and night! O day and night! I go forth trembling,
    He did not meet my eyes, he never saw my face.
    My bosom swells with joy and jealousy resembling
    A war of good and evil waged in a holy place.
    No longer soft the day, the sun in splendour
    Pours all his might upon this green incline;
    I lie and watch the cirrus clouds surrender,
    Their glowing forms to one hot kiss resign--
  How could he give himself to God when he is mine, is mine?

    O day and night! O day and night! beneath your glory
    The crimson flood of life itself has turned to fire!
    The rugged brows of those old rocks, storm-rent and hoary,
    Are quivering in their grim surprise at my desire.
    The mother earth, throbbing with pain and pleasure,
    Would sink her voices for the languid noon,
    But light airs wake a reckless madd'ning measure,
    And wavelets dance and sparkle to the tune.
  And mock the mocking malice of yon day-dimm'd gibbous moon.

       *       *       *       *       *

    O day and night! O day and night! a fisher maiden
    Is wand'ring up the path to where unseen I lie;
    She comes with some light spoil from off the shore beladen.
    And softly singing of the sea goes slowly by.
    And slowly rise great sun-tipped white cloud masses,
    Sublimely still their shadows flit and flee:
    How silently the work of nature passes--
    The roll of worlds, the growth of flower and tree!
  Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!

    O day and night! O day and night! the hours rolling
    Bring ev'ry one its change, its song, or chant, or chime:
    Now solemnly their sounds a distant death-knell tolling.
    And now the bells above beat forth the flight of time.
    I lie, unconsciously each trifle noting,
    The far-off sailors toiling on the quay,
    Or o'er the sand a broad-wing'd sea-bird floating,
    Or passing hum of honey-laden'd bee--
  Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!

    O day and night! O day and night! the scene surrounding
    Grows dim and all unreal beneath the sunset glow;
    And all the heat and rage pass into peace abounding,
    I moan, I fear no more, but wait, while still tears flow.
    The warm sweet airs scarce move the flowerets slender,
    A pause and hush have settled on the sea,
    A bird trills forth its love-song low and tender:
    O bird rejoice! thy love and thou art free-
  Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!

       *       *       *       *       *

    O day and night! O day and night! ye knew it ever!
    Ye saw it written in the world's first golden prime!
    And smiled your giant smile at all my rash endeavour
    To snatch the cup unfill'd from out the hand of Time.
    He comes, O day and night! Spirits attending,
    Swift formless messengers my ev'ry sense apprise!
    He comes! the bright fair head o'er some old book low bending
    Dear Lord, at last! his eyes have met my eyes--
  Gleam of light goes quivering across the happy skies!

       *       *       *       *       *

    O day and night! O day and night! Love sits between us.
    Far out the rising tide comas sweeping o'er the sand.
    The murmurous pine trees lend their purple shade to screen us,
    And breathe their fragrant sighs above the quiet land.
    And, like a sigh, the sunset blaze is over,
    The folding grey has veiled its colours bright;
    While swift from view fade out the gulls that hover,
    As round us sinks at last, on pinions light,
  The dark and radiant clarity of the beautiful still night.

    O day and night! O day and night! no words are spoken.
    Such pleasant joy profound no words could well express:
    His wand'ring fingers smooth my hair in silent token,
    And all my being answers to the tender mute caress.
    My head is resting on his breast for pillow,
    And as by music moved my soul is thrill'd;
    Flow on and clasp the land, O bursting billow!
    O breezes, tell the mountains many-rill'd!
  Our hearts now know each other, and our hope is all-fulfill'd.

    O day and night! O day and night! no shadow crosses
    This long'd-for solemn hour of all-forgetful bliss;
    No chilling thought, or stalking dread arising, tosses
    A poison'd drop of bitterness to spoil the ling'ring kiss:
    No mem'ries past or future fears assailing--
    As soon might doubt bedim the stars that shine!
    Or souls released reach Paradise bewailing
    The end of pain, and clemency divine:
  The glorious present holds us: I am his and he is mine!"

       *       *       *       *       *

    O day and night! O day and night! and was it madness?
    Lo! all is changing, even sky, and sea, and shore;
    The heaving water ebbs itself away in sadness,
    The waves receding sigh, "Delight returns no more!"
    Far down the East the dawn is dimly burning,
    Its first chill breath has shivered thro' my frame,
    And with the light comes cruel Thought returning,
    The air seems full of voices speaking blame;
  Another day commences, but the world is not the same!

    O day and night! O day and night! its rashes pass'd us,
    We stand upon the brink and watch, the strong deep tide,
    And shrink already from the howls that soon must blast us,
    The world that sins unchidden, and the laws that would divide.
    "O Love, they rest in peace whom ocean covers!"
    One plunge, one clasp supernal, one long kiss!
    Then downward, like those old Italian lovers.
    Descend for ever through the long abyss,
  And float together, happy, all eternity like this!

The charm of the reader's voice had held us spellbound, and the poem
was well received; but after the usual compliments there was a pause,
and then Ideala burst out impetuously: "I am sick of those old Italian
lovers," she said; "they float into everything. Their story is the
essence with which two-thirds of our love literature is flavoured. We
should never have received them in society; why do we tolerate them in
books? I like my company to be respectable even there; and when an
author asks me to admire and sympathise with such people he insults
me."

"They must be brought in, though, for the sake of contrast," somebody
observed.

"They should be kept in their proper place, then," she answered. "You
may choose what you please to point a moral, but for pity's sake be
careful about what you use to adorn a tale."

"Moral or no moral," said the young sculptor, "I think a new poem of
any kind a thing to be thankful for."

"And do you call that kind of thing new?" said Ideala. "I should say it
was a fine compound of all the poems of the kind, and several other
kinds, that have ever been written, with a dash of the peculiarly
refined immorality of our own times, from which nothing is sacred;
thrown in to make weight. Such writing,

    Like a new disease, unknown to men,
  Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd,
  . . . . . . . . . . . and saps
    The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse
  With devil's leaps, and poisons half the young.

It is the feeling of the day accurately defined. Nobody sighs for love
and peace now. The cry is for the indulgence of some fiery passion for
an hour, and then, perdition!--if you like--since that is the
recognised price of it."

"Our loves are more intense than they used to be," said the sculptor,
sighing.

"Love!" Ideala answered. "Oh, do not desecrate 'the eternal God-word,
love!' There is little enough of that in the business that goes by its
name now-a-days. I am a lady--I cannot use the right word. But it is
none the less the thing I mean because it calls blasphemously on God
Almighty to help it to fulfil itself."

"Well," said Charlie Lloyd, deprecatingly, "I didn't offer this, you
know, as an admirable specimen of what our day can produce. I told you
I hadn't read it, and now that I have I don't suppose any one has
offered it to the public as a serious expression of sentiment."

"You do not think people write books about what they really feel?" said
Ideala. "I believe they do when the feeling is shameful. If you want to
keep a secret, publish the exact truth in a book, and nobody will
believe a word of it. I think people who publish such productions
should be burned on a pile of their own works."

"The writer is young, doubtless," I said, apologetically. It gives one
a shock to hear a woman say harsh things.

"He was evidently not too young to have bad thoughts," said Claudia,
supporting her friend; "and he was certainly old enough to know
better."

"He!" ejaculated Ideala. "It is far more likely to be _she_. Do
you read the reviews? You will find that all the most objectionable
books are written by women--and condemned by men who lift up their
voices now, as they have done from time immemorial, and insist that we
should do as they say, and not as they do."

"I am afraid you are right," said Charlie Lloyd. "So many of our best
women--I mean the women who are likely to make most impression on the
age--are going that way now."

"But what horrid things you say, Ideala," one of the ladies chimed in,
"and you make everybody else say horrid things. That 'Passion of
Delysle' is not a bit worse than Tennyson's 'Fatima'--and there's a lot
more in it--that part about 'the roll of worlds,' you know, is quite
grand."

"I always liked that idea," Ideala observed.

"And--and--" the lady continued, "where she looks at everything, you
know. She was very properly seeking distraction, and found it for a
moment in the contemplation of nature, and that softened her mood, so
that when the inevitable rush of recollection comes and forces the
thought of him back upon her, her feeling finds expression in a prayer
--instead of--instead of--"

"A blasphemous remonstrance," Ideala put in. "Oh, I don't deny that
there is just enough to be said in favour of all these things to make
them sell--and this one has two unusual points of interest. It opens
with a riddle, and the lady's lover is a priest, which gives an
additional zest to the charm of wrong-doing, a _sauce piquante_ for
jaded appetites."

"Why do you call the opening verses a riddle?" said Charlie Lloyd.

"Because I fancy no one will ever guess what kind of a place it was--

    This mountain island,
  This saintly shrine, this fort--

I forget how it goes on."

"Oh, the description of the place is not bad," Charlie answered, after
reading it over again to himself. "It would do for the Mont St. Michael
in Normandy."

"Well, let that pass, then," said Ideala; "also the dear familiar
'subtle scents abroad upon the night.' But what does she mean by 'On
with rush and ring'?"

"She means the train, obviously."

"What an outlandish periphrasis! And how about

  The rugged brows of those old rocks, storm-rent and hoary,
  Are quivering in their grim surprise?"

"That is a 'pathetic fallacy.' She is not speaking of the things as
they were, but as they appeared to her excited fancy. She chronicles
her own death, though----"

"So did Moses," said Ideala. "If you really want to justify 'The
Passion of Delysle' I can help you. You see she was dreadfully badly
treated by her friends, poor thing! and her marriage after all was no
marriage, because she loved another man all the time; and your husband
isn't properly your husband if you don't love him, love being the only
possible sanctification--in fact, the only true marriage. And then her
lover, thinking he had lost her, became a priest, and vows made under a
misapprehension like that cannot be binding--it would be too much to
expect us to suffer always for such mistakes. And then the world--but
we all know how cruel the world is! And appearances were sadly against
them, poor things! No one would ever have believed that they had stayed
out all night to discuss their religious experiences. Suicide is
shocking, of course; but still, when people are driven to it like that,
we can only be sorry for them, and hope they will never do it again!"
She nestled back more comfortably on her couch, and then continued in
an altered tone: "But it is appalling to think of the quantity of
machine-made verses like those that are imposed on the public year by
year, verses the mere result of much reading and writing, without a
scrap of inspiration in them, and as far removed from even schoolboy
efforts of genius, as an oleograph is from an oil painting. Poets are
as rare now as prophets, and inspiration has left us for our sins. I
think any fairly educated one of us, with a tolerable memory and the
habit of composition, could write that 'Passion of Delysle' again in
half-an-hour."

"Oh, could they, though!" said Ralph, the son of the house. "I dare bet
anything you couldn't do it yourself in twice the time."

"Dare you?" she answered, with a little smile. "Well, to adopt your
elegant phraseology, Master Ralph, I bet I will produce the same story,
with the same conclusion, but a different moral, in an hour--since you
allow me twice the time I named--if I may be permitted to write it in
blank verse, that is, and of course, with the understanding that what I
write is not intended to be anything but mere versified prose."

"Done with you!" cried Ralph.

"Hush--h--h!" his mother exclaimed, deprecatingly. "Betting, and
before the Bishop, too!"

"What the Bishop don't know will do him no harm, Ma," said the youth in
a stage whisper. "Sit down, Ideala, and begin. It's ten minutes to ten
now."

The Bishop slept serenely; conversation flagged; and Ideala wrote
steadily for about three-quarters of an hour; then she gathered up the
manuscript, rose from the table, and returned to her old seat.

"'The Passion of Delysle' has become 'The Choice,'" she said. "Will you
read it for me, Mr. Lloyd? I think it should have that advantage, at
least."

Charlie took the manuscript, and read:

  Once on a time, not very long gone by,
  A noble lady had a noble choice.
  The daughter of an ancient house was she,
  Beauty, and wealth, and highest rank were hers,
  But love was not, for of a proud, cold race
  Her people were, caring for nought but lands,
  Riches, and power; holding all tender thoughts
  As weakly folly, only fit for babes.
  The lady learnt their creed; her heart seem'd hard--
  She thought it so; and when the moment came
  To choose 'twixt love, young love, and pride of place,
  She still'd an unwonted feeling that would rise,
  And saying calmly: "I have got no heart,
  And love is vain!" she chose to be the wife
  Of sinful age, corruption, and untruth,
  Scorning the steadfast love of one who yearn'd
  To win her from the crooked paths she trod,
  And break the sordid chains that bound her soul,
  And sweep the defiling dust of common thoughts
  From out her mind, until it shone at last
  With large imaginings of God and good.

  She chose: no more they met: her life was pass'd
  In constant round of pomp and proud display.
  But when he went, and never more there came
  The love-sad eyes to question and entreat,
  The voice of music praising noble deeds,
  The graceful presence and the golden hair,
  She miss'd the boy; but scoff'd at first and said:
  "One misses all things, common pets one spurn'd,
  Good slaves and bad alike when both are gone,--
  A small thing makes the habit of a life!"
  But days wore on, and adulation palled.
  She knew not what she lack'd, nor that she loath'd
  The hollow semblance, the dull mockery,
  Which she had gain'd for joy by choosing rank,
  And money's worth, instead of peace and love.

  Yet ever as the long days grew to months
  More heavy hung the time, moved slower by.
  And all things troubled her and gave her pain,
  And morning, noon, and night the thought would rise,
  And grew insistent when she would not hear:
  "One loved me! out of all this crowd but one!
  And he is gone, and I have driven him forth!"

  Then in the silent solitude of night
  An old weird story that she once had heard
  Tormented her; a story speaking much
  Of a rock-island on the Norman coast,
  A mountain peak rising from barren sand,
  Or standing sea-girt when the tide returns,
  And beaten by the winds on ev'ry side,
  With wall'd-in town, and castle on the height,
  And high above the castle, strangely placed,
  A grey cathedral with its summit tipp'd
  By a gold figure of St. Michael crown'd,
  With burnished wings and flashing sword that shone
  A beacon in the sunset, seen for miles,
  As tho' the Archangel floated in the air.
  The castle and the church a sanctuary
  And refuge were, to which men often fled
  For rest or safety, finding what they sought.
  And as the lady thought about the place,
  A notion came that she would like to kneel
  And pray for peace at that far lonely shrine.
  The longing grew: she rested not nor slept.
  And should she fly and leave her wretched wealth?
  And if she fled she never could return;
  Yet if she stay'd she felt that she should die.
  So go or stay meant misery for her--
  But misery is lessened when we move.
  Yes, she would go! and then she laugh'd to think
  Of the wild fury of her harsh old Lord
  When he should wake one day and find her gone--
  Laugh'd! the first time for long and weary months.

  By Mont St. Michael, on the Norman coast,
  A restless river, changing oft its course,
  Flows sullenly; and racehorse-like the tide,
  Which, going, leaves a wilderness of sand.
  Comes rushing back, a foam-topp'd, wat'ry wall;
  And those who, wand'ring, 'scape the quicksand's grip,
  Are often caught and drown'd ere help can come.
  But fair the prospect from the Mount when bright
  The sunshine falls on Avranches far away,
  A white town straggling o'er a verdant hill;
  And on the tree-clad country toward the west,
  On apple orchards, and the fairy bloom
  Of feath'ry tam'risk bushes on the shore;
  Whilst high above in silent majesty
  Of hue and form the floating clouds support
  The far-extending vault of azure sky

  Such was the shrine the lady sought, and there
  In mute appeal for what she lack'd she knelt,
  Not knowing what she lack'd; but finding peace
  Steal o'er her soul there as she faintly heard
  The slow and solemn chanting of the priests,
  The mild monotony of murmured prayers,
  And hush of pauses when she seemed to feel
  The heart she deem'd so hard was melting fast,
  And listen'd to a voice within her say--
  "Love is not vain! Love all things and rejoice!"
  And found warm tears were stealing down her cheeks.

  The mystery of love, of love, of love,
  Of hope, of joy, of life itself, she felt;
  The crown of life, which she had sacrificed
  In scornful pride for lust of power and place.
  The lady bow'd her head, and o'er her swept
  A wave of anguish, and she knew despair.
  "Could I but see him once again!" she moan'd,
  "See him, and beg forgiveness, and then die!"
  Did the Archangel Michael, standing there
  Upon her left, in shining silver, hear?
  Who knows? Her prayer was answer'd like a flash;
  For at that moment, clear and sweet o'er all
  The mingled music of the chanting choir,
  There rose a voice that thrill'd her inmost soul:
  It breathed a blessing; utter'd soft a prayer.
  No need to look: and yet she look'd, and saw
  A hooded monk before the altar kneel,
  A graceful presence, tho' in sordid dress.
  And as she gazed the cowl slipp'd back and show'd
  (But dimly thro' the incense-perfumed cloud)
  A pure pale face, a golden tonsured head,
  And blue eyes raised to heaven. Then the truth
  Was there reveal'd to her that he had left
  The world to watch and pray for such as she.

  Out of the castled-gate she hurried forth:
  What matter'd where she went, to east or west?
  What matter'd peasant's warning that the sand
  Was shifting ever, and the rushing tide
  Gave them no quarter whom it overtook?
  'Twas death she courted, and with heedless step
  Onward to meet it swift the lady fled.
  Death is so beautiful at such a time,
  When all the land in summer sunshine lies,
  And lapse of distant waves breaks pleasantly
  The silence with a soothing dreamy sound,
  And danger seems no nearer than the sky,
  He tempts us from afar with hope of rest.
  She hurried on in search of death, nor heard
  That eager footsteps followed where she went.
  The voice that call'd her was not real, she thought,
  But a sweet portion of a strange sweet dream--
  For now the terrible anguish quickly pass'd,
  And sense of peace at hand was all she felt.
  "O stop!"

    Ah! that was real. She turn'd and saw,
  Nor saw a moment till she felt his grasp
  Strong and determined on her rounded arm.
  "Thou shalt not die!" he cried. "What madness this?"
  "Madness!" she echoed: "nay, my love, 'tis bliss--
  The first my life has known--to stand here still
  With thee beside me, and to wait for death.
  I know my heart at last, but all too late!
  I may not love thee, I another's wife;
  Thou mayst not love me, thou hast wedded heaven.
  We cannot be together in this world;
  I cannot live alone and know thee here.
  And thou art troubled! I for beneath that garb
  Thy heart beats ever hot with love for me;
  For love will not be quell'd by monkish vows.
  But all things change in death! so let us die
  Thus, hand in hand, and so together pass,
  And be together thro' eternity!"

  There was a struggle in the young monk's breast;
  He would not meet her pleading eyes and yield,
  But gazing up to heaven prayed for strength,
  Strength to resist, and guidance how to act,
  For death like that with her was luring--sweet--
  A strong temptation, but he must resist,
  And strive to save and show her how to live.
  "We cannot make hereafter for ourselves,"
  He answered softly; "all that we can do
  Is so to live that we shall win reward
  Of praise, and peace, and happy life to come.
  Thy duty lies before thee; so does mine.
  Let each return, and toil and watch and pray,
  Knowing each other's heart is fix'd on heaven.
  And do the good we can; not seeking death
  Nor shunning it, but living pure and true,
  With conscience clear to meet our God at last,
  And win each other for our great reward."

  The moving music of his words sank deep
  Her alter'd heart thrill'd high to holy thoughts.
  "Be thou my guide," she said. "My duty now
  Shall bring me peace; so shall I toil like thee
  To win the love I yearn for in the end."

  It might not be. The treach'rous, working sand
  Already clutched their feet, and check'd their speed;
  And dancing, sparkling, like a joyful thing,
  A glitt'ring, glassy wall of foam-fleck'd wave
  Towards them glided with that fatal speed
  You cannot mark because it is so swift.
  No use to struggle now: no time to fly!
  He clasp'd her to him: "God hath will'd it thus.
  Courage, my sister!" "Is this death?" she cried.
  "Yes, this is death." "It is not death, but joy!"
  And as she spoke the spot where they were seen
  Became a wat'ry waste of battling waves:
  While high above the summer sun shone on--
  A passing seabird hoarsely shriek'd along!
  All things were changed, with that vast change which makes
  It seem as tho' nought else had ever been.

"Well done, Ideala!" said Ralph, patronisingly; "you certainly have a
memory, and are quite as good at patchwork as the author of 'Delysle.'
I could criticise on another count, but taking into consideration
time, place, circumstances, and the female intellect, I refrain. That
is the generous sort of creature _I_ am. So, without expressing my own
opinion further--except to remark that, though I don't think much of
either of them, personally I prefer 'Delysle.' The other is
wholesomer, doubtless, for those who like a mild diet. Milk and water
doesn't agree with me. But I put it to the vote. Ladies and gentlemen,
do you or do you not consider that this lady has won her bet?"

"Oh, won it, most decidedly!" we all agreed.

"By-the-by, what was the bet?" I asked.

"My Pa's gaiters against Ideala's blue stockings. I regret to say that
circumstances over which I have no control"--and he glanced at the
unconscious Bishop--"prevent the immediate payment of my debt--unless,
indeed, he has a second pair;" and he left the room hurriedly as if to
see.

He did not come back to us that evening, but I believe he was to be
heard of later at the sign of the "Billiard and Cue."

"Well," said the young sculptor, returning to the old point of
departure, "for my own part, I find much that is elevating in modern
works."

"So do I," said Ideala; "I find much that raises me on stilts."

"But even that eminence would enable you to look over other people's
heads and beyond."

"It would," she answered, "if human nature didn't desire a sense of
security; but, as it is, when I am artificially set up, I find that all
I can do is to look at my own feet, and tremble lest I fall. Modern
literature stimulates; it doesn't nourish. It makes you feel like a
giant for a moment, but leaves you crushed like a worm, and without
faith, without love, without hope. It excites you pleasurably, and when
you see life through its medium you never suspect that the vision is
distorted. It makes you think the Iconoclast the greatest hero, and
causes you to feel that you share his glory when you help him with your
approval to overthrow all the images you ever cherished; but when the
work of destruction is over, and you look about you once more with
sober eyes, you find you have sacrificed your all for nothing. Your
false guide fails you when you want him most. He robs you, and leaves
you hungry, thirsty, and alone in the wilderness to which he has
beguiled you. There is no need for new theories of Life and Religion;
all we require is strength and courage to perfect the old ones.
[Footnote: She quite changed her mind upon this subject eventually, and
held that there was not only need of new theories, but good hope that
we should have them.] What the mind wants is food it can grow upon, not
stimulants which inflate it for a time with a fancied sense of power
that has no real existence. But I have small hope for our nation when I
think of the sparkling trash that the mind of the multitude daily
imbibes and craves for. I mean our novels. What a fine affectation of
goodness there is in most of them! And what a perfect moral is tacked
on to them!--like the _balayeuse_ at the bottom of a lady's dress;
but, like the _balayeuse_, it is only meant to be a protection and
a finish, and, however precious it may be, it suffers from contact with
the dirt, and sooner or later has to be cut out and cast aside, soiled
and useless. Some doggerel a friend of mine scribbled on one book in
particular describes dozens of popular novels exactly:

  O what a beautiful history!
    Think what temptations they passed!
  Each one more cruelly trying,
    More tempting, indeed, than the last.
  And what a lesson it teaches;
    No passion from evil's exempted--
  Whilst admiring the moral it preaches,
    It makes you quite long to be tempted.

I agree with those who tell us that society is breaking up, or will
break up unless something is done at once to stop the dissolution. We
have no high ideals of anything. Marriage itself is a mere commercial
treaty, and only professional preachers speak of it in other terms--and
those young people, with a passion for each other, who are about to be
united--a passion that dies the death inevitably for want of knowledge,
and wholesome principle, and self-control to support it. Some of us
like our bargains better than others, but you can judge of the
estimation in which marriage is held when you see how much happiness
people generally find in it. If men and women were kept apart, and made
to live purely from their cradles, they would still scarcely be fit for
marriage; yet any man thinks he may marry, and never cares to be the
nobler or the better for it. And when you see that this, the only
perfect state, the most sacred bond of union between man and woman, is
everywhere lightly considered, don't you think there is reason in the
fear that we are falling on bad times? Oh, don't quote the Romans to
me, and the Inevitable. We know better than the Romans, and could do
better if we chose. But we have to mourn for the death of our manhood!
Where is our manhood? Where are our men? Is there any wonder that we
are losing what is best in life when only women are left to defend it?
Believe me, the degradation of marriage is the tune to which the whole
fabric of society is going to pieces----"

"Eh, what!" exclaimed the Bishop, waking up with a start--"whole fabric
of society going to pieces? Nonsense! When so many people come to
church. And then look at all the societies at work for the--for the--
ah--prevention of everything. Why, I belong to a dozen at least myself;
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Rational Dress Reform,
for doing away with petticoats--no, by-the-by, it is my wife who
belongs to that. But, at any rate, everything is being done that should
be done, and you talk nonsense, my dear"--looking at Ideala severely--
"because you don't know anything about it."

"The faults we are hardest on in others are those we are most conscious
of in ourselves--perhaps because we know how easy it would be to
conquer them," Ideala observed vaguely.

"Oh, come, now, my dear," said the Bishop, beaming round on all of us,
"you must not believe what you hear about society being in such a bad
state. I know idle people say so, and it is very wrong of them. Why,
_I_ never see anything wrong."

"Of course not," said Ideala. "We are all on our best behaviour before
you."

The Bishop patted his apron good-humouredly. "Well, now, take yourself
for example," he said. "I am sure _you_ never do wrong--tell stories,
you know, and that kind of thing."

"Haven't I, though!" she answered, mischievously. "Not that it was much
use, for I always repented and confessed; and now I have abandoned the
practice to the best of my ability. It is horrid to feel you don't
deserve the confidence that is placed in you, Bishop, isn't it?"

"Ideala!" Claudia protested.

The Bishop looked puzzled.

"I can assure you I have suffered agonies of remorse because, in an
idle moment, I deceived my cat--a big, comfortable creature, who used
to come to me every day to be fed, and preferred to eat out of my hand.
He was greedy, though, and snapped, and one day I offered him a piece
of preserved ginger, and he dashed at it as usual, and swallowed it
before he knew what it was. Then he just looked at me and walked away.
He trusted me, and I had deceived him. It was an unpardonable breach of
confidence, and I have always felt that I never could look that cat in
the face again."

The Bishop smiled and sighed at the little reminiscence. "I think you
are right, though, in one way, Ideala," he presently observed. "The
powers of Light and Darkness are certainly having a hard fight for it
in our day; but we have every reason to hope.

  Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
  Will be the final goal of ill."

"And, granted that the popular literature of the day is corrupt," the
young sculptor put in, "and that the standard of society is being
yearly lowered by it, still there is Art----"

"But there is so little of it," said Ideala; "I mean so little that
elevates. Most of the subjects chosen are not worth painting; and what
profit is there in contemplating a thing that is neither grand nor
beautiful in itself, nor suggestive, by association, of anything that
is grand or beautiful? The pictures one generally sees are not
calculated to suggest anything to the minds that need suggestion most.
The technical part may be good and gratifying to those who understand
it, but that is the mere trade of the thing. We prefer to see it well
done, of course, but if the canvas has nothing but the paint to
recommend it, the artist might have saved himself the trouble of
putting it on, for all the good it does or the pleasure it gives."

"Oh, Ideala, do you know nothing of the charm of colour?" asked a lady
who painted.

"_I_ do," said Ideala, "but I may be supposed to have enjoyed
exceptional advantages. And it is hardly charm we want to elevate us.
There will always be enough in all conscience to appeal to the senses.
But there is an absence even of charm."

"Many a noble thought has been expressed in a coat of colour," said the
lady.

"I know it has," Ideala answered; "and all best thoughts give pleasure.
I have been so thrilled by a noble idea, well expressed, that I could
do nothing but sit with closed eyes and revel in the joy of it. But if
such an idea were placed before you, and you did not know the language
in which it was written, what good would it do you? An uneducated
person seeing a picture of a donkey in a field sees only a donkey in a
field, however well it may be painted; and I fancy very exceptional
ability would be required to make any of us think a grey donkey
sublime, or believe an ordinary green field to be one of the Elysian."

"Talking about charm," the sculptor broke in, enthusiastically, "I
suppose you haven't seen the new picture, 'Venus getting into the
Bath?' That is a feast of colour, and realism, if you like! She is
standing beside the bath with a dreamy look on her face. Her lovely
eyes are fixed on the water. One arched and blue-veined foot is
slightly raised as if the touch of the marble chilled her. Her limbs
are in an easy attitude, and beautifully modelled. She is represented
as a slight young girl, and the figure stands out in exquisite nudity
from a background of Pompeian red, and the dark green of myrtles. With
one hand she is holding aloft the masses of her rich brown hair--the
attitude suggests the stretching of the muscles after repose; with the
other"--but here his memory failed him. "What _is_ she doing with her
other hand?"

"Scratching herself!" slipped from Ideala, involuntarily, to her own
horror and the delight of some. But she recovered herself quickly, and
turning to the good Bishop, who was looking mildly astonished and much
amused, she said: "There, my Lord, is an instance of the corrupt state
of society in our own day. You see, even your restraining presence
doesn't always keep us in order. I hope," she whispered to me, "I'm not
going to be made the horrid example to prove the truth of all my
theories."

Soon after this the party broke up. Claudia returned in her wraps to
say good-night to the Bishop's wife.

"Claudia!" Ideala exclaimed, "you have forgotten that detestable old
blue shawl."

Claudia tried to stop her with a significant gesture, but in vain.
Ideala was obtuse.

"Claudia came out this evening in the most extraordinary covering I
ever saw a lady wear," she said to the Bishop's wife. "I really think
she must have borrowed it from one of the maids."

"I am afraid you must mean the blue shawl I lent to Lady Claudia the
other evening," the Bishop's wife replied, with a hurt smile.

"Oh!" said Ideala, disconcerted for a moment. "But, really, Bishopess,
you deserve to be upbraided. You should set a better example, and not
provoke us to scorn on the subject of your shawls."

Later, when I was alone with my sister, I said: "Ideala did nothing but
put her foot in it this evening. What was the matter with her? I never
heard her speak so strongly before, except when she was alone with us.
And I don't think she ought to discuss such subjects with such people;
it is hardly delicate."

Claudia sighed wearily. "Who knows what pain is at the bottom of it
all?" she said. "But one thing always puzzles me. Ideala rails at evils
that never hurt her, and yet she speaks of marriage, which has been her
bane, as if it were a holy and perfect state, upon which it is a
privilege to enter."

"Plenty of people have condemned marriage simply because their own
experience of it has been unfortunate," I answered; "but Ideala is
above that. She will let no petty personal mishap prejudice her
judgment on the subject. She sees and feels the possibility of infinite
happiness in marriage when there is such love and such devotion on both
sides as she herself could have brought to it; and she understands that
her own unhappy experience need only be exceptional."

"I wish it were!" sighed Claudia.

Some years later, Ideala confessed to me that she had written "The
Passion of Delysle" herself, but had had no idea of its significance
until she heard it read aloud that night, and then, as she elegantly
expressed it, she could have cut her throat with shame and
mortification, which I consider a warning to young ladies not to trust
to their poetical inspirations, for--if the shade of Shelley will
pardon the conclusion--alas! _apparently_, they know not what they do
when they write verses!

"I can't think how you could have criticised it like that, Ideala," I
said, "now that I know you wrote it."

"Neither can I," she answered.

"You ought to have confessed you had written it, or have said nothing
about it," I told her, frankly.

"Yes," she assented. "Not doing so was a kind of falsehood. But
neither course occurred to me." And then she explained: "I never see
the meaning of what I write till the light of public opinion is turned
upon it, or some cold critic comes and damps my enthusiasm. When a
subject possesses me, and shapes itself into verse, it boils in my
brain, and my pen is the only way of escape for it, the one
safety-valve I have to ease the pressure. And I can't judge of its
merits myself for long enough after it _is_ written, because the
boiling begins again, you see, whenever I read it, and then there is
such a steam of feeling I cannot see to think. For the verses, however
poor they appear to you, contain for me the whole poem as I have it in
my inner consciousness. It is beautiful as it exists there, but the
power of expression is lacking. If only I could make you feel it as I
do, I should be the greatest poet alive."

It was a trick of Ideala's to miss the true import of a thing--often an
act of her own--until the occasion had passed, or to see it strangely
distorted, as she frequently did at this time--though that gradually
ceased altogether as she grew older; but it was this peculiarity, so
strongly marked in her, which first helped me to comprehend a curious
trait there is in the moral nature of men and women while it is still
in process of development. Many men, Frenchmen especially, have thought
the trait peculiar to women. La Bruyére declares that "Women have no
principles as men understand the word. They are guided by their
feelings, and have full faith in their guide. Their notions of
propriety and impropriety, right and wrong, they get from the little
world embraced by their affections." And Alphonse Karr says: "Never
attempt to prove anything to a woman: she believes only according to
her feelings. Endeavour to please and persuade: she may yield to the
person who reasons with her, not to his arguments"--opinions, however,
which apply to men as often as not, and only to the young, impressible,
passionate, and imperfectly educated of either sex. But there is
scarcely a generalisation for one sex which does not apply equally to
the other, so perfectly alike in nature are men and women. The
difference is only in circumstance. Reverse the position of the sexes,
require men to be modest and obedient, and they will develop every
woman's weakness in a generation. If a man would comprehend a woman,
let him consider himself; the woman has the same joys, sorrows, hopes,
fears, pleasures, and passions--expressed in another way, that is all.
But, certainly, for a long time Ideala's guide was her feeling about a
thing. I have often said to her, when at last she decided to take some
step which had obviously been the only course open to her from the
first: "But, Ideala, _why_ have you hesitated so long? You knew it
was right to begin with."

"Yes," she would answer, "I _knew_ it was right; but I have only just
now _felt_ that it was."

She had never thought of acting on the mere cold knowledge. For feeling
to knowledge, in young minds, is like the match to a fire laid in a
grate; knowledge without feeling being as cheerless and impotent as the
fire unlit.




CHAPTER XII.


A little while after that evening at the Palace we learnt to our dismay
that Ideala's husband had taken a house in one of the rough
manufacturing districts, to which he meant to remove immediately.
Business was the pretext, as he had money in some great ironworks
there; but I think the nearness of a large city, where a man of his
stamp would be able to indulge all his tastes without let or hindrance,
had something to do with the change.

Ideala had kept up very well while she was among us, but soon after she
went away we gathered from the tone of her letters that there was a
change in her which alarmed us. Her health, which had hitherto been
splendid, seemed to be giving way, and it was evident that her new
position did not please her, and that, even after she had been there
for months, she continued to feel herself "a stranger in a strange
land." The people were uncongenial, and I think it likely they regarded
Ideala's oddities with some suspicion, and did not take to her as we
had done. She had not that extreme youth which had been her excuse when
she came to us, and which, somehow, we had not missed when she lost it;
and her habitual reserve on all matters that immediately concerned
herself must also have tended to make her unpopular with people whose
predominant quality was "an eminent curiosity."

"They are far above books," Ideala wrote to Claudia; "what they study
is each other, and in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge they are
indefatigable. When they can get nothing out of me about myself, they
question me about my husband and friends, and it is in vain that I
answer them with those words of wisdom (I feel sure I misquote them)--
'All that is mine own is yours till the end of my life; but the secret
of my friend is not mine own'--they persevere.

"Our house is near the town, Eighteen big chimneys darken our daylight
and deluge us with smuts when the wind brings the smoke, our way; and
besides the smoke we are subject to unsavoury vapours from chemical
works in the other direction, so that when the wind shifts we only
exchange evils. They say these chemical fumes are not unwholesome, and
quote the death-rate, which is lower than any other place of the size
in England. In fact, scarcely anybody dies here. They go away as soon
as they begin to feel ill--perhaps that accounts for it. But those
horrid chemical fumes have a great deal to answer for. They have killed
the trees for miles around. It is the oaks that suffer principally. The
tops are nipped first, and then they gradually die downwards till the
whole tree is decayed all through. The absence of trees makes the
country bleak and desolate, and I cannot help thinking the unlovely
surroundings affect us all. The people themselves are unlovely in
thought, and word, and deed; but I have found a good deal of rough
kindliness amongst them nevertheless. They did mob me on one occasion,
and made most unkind remarks about my nether garments, when I was
obliged to walk through the town in my riding habit; but, as a rule,
the mill girls merely observe 'That's a lady,' and let me go by
unmolested--unless I happen to be carrying flowers. They do so love
flowers, poor things and I cannot resist their pathetic entreaties when
they beg for 'One, missus, on'y one!' Some of my lady friends are not
let off so easily as I am. The girls chaff them unmercifully about
their dress and personal peculiarities, and if they show signs of
annoyance they call them names that are not to be repeated. The mill
girls wear bright-coloured gowns, white aprons, and nothing on their
heads. If a policeman catches them at any mischief they either clatter
off in their clogs with shrieks of laughter, or knock him down and kick
him most unmercifully. They are as strong as men, and as beautiful,
some of them, as saints; but they are very unsaintlike creatures
really--irresponsible, and with little or no idea of right and wrong.
One scarcely believes that they have souls--and I am always surprised
to find that anything not cruel and coarse can survive in the hearts of
people, begrimed, body and mind, like these, by their hard
surroundings; but it is there, nevertheless--the human nature, and the
poetry, and the something ready to thrill to better things. A gentleman
has a lovely place not far from us, where the trees have been spared by
a miracle. Nightingales seldom wander so far north, but a few years ago
a stray one was heard there, and the wonder and the beauty of its voice
brought hundreds from the mills and crowded streets to hear it sing.
Special trains were run from the neighbouring city to accommodate the
crowds that came nightly to wait in the moonlight and listen; and an
enterprising trader set up a stall, and sold gingerbeer. The story ends
there, but I like it, don't you? especially the gingerbeer part of it.
It was told me by one who remembers the circumstance.

"My greatest pleasure in life is in my flowers, they are dearer to me
than any I ever had before, because they are all so delicate, and
require such infinite care and tenderness to keep them alive in this
uncongenial climate. I have my thrushes also--two, which I stole from
a nest in a wood one moonlight night, and brought up by hand on bread
and milk and scraped beef. I had to get up at daylight, and feed them
every hour until dark; but the clergy will not allow that this
obligation was a proper excuse for staying away from church, and just
now I am unhappy in the feeling that their religion must be inhuman.
But my thrushes have well repaid the trouble. They call me when I go
into the room, and come to me when I open the door of their cage, and
perch on my shoulder. One of them, Israfil, sings divinely. People who
come to hear him see only a little brown bird with speckled breast,
and call him a thrush; but _I_ know he is Israfil, 'the angel of song,
and most melodious of God's creatures;' and _he_ thinks that I have
wings. He told me so!

"I wish you would send me a basket of snails packed up in lettuce
leaves. I don't know why, but I can find none here, and I cannot hear
of one ever having been seen in the county. But please do not send them
unless you are quite sure you can spare them."

"Ideala is trying to hide herself behind these pretty trivialities,"
Claudia said. "I always suspect that there is something more wrong than
usual when she adopts this playful tone and childlike simplicity of
taste."

"It must be trying to have a friend who believes so little in one as
you do in Ideala," I answered.

"Oh, how exasperating you are!" Claudia exclaimed. "You know what I
mean quite well enough."

Later, Ideala wrote: "You are anxious about my health. The fact is, I
have developed a most extraordinary talent for taking cold. I went by
train to see the museum in the city the other day. I took off my cloak
while I was there, and stayed an hour, and when I came away, the
antiquary, who knew I was a precious specimen, wrapped me up carefully
himself. Nevertheless I caught cold. Then I went to stay with some
people near here who clamoured much for the pleasure of my company.
They live in a palace and are entertaining. The lady's papa took me in
to dinner he first evening. He asked me about Major Gorst, and wanted
to know, in an impressive tone of voice, if I had heard that he was the
next heir but one to the Hearldom of Cathcourt.

"The next day my hostess said to her husband: 'Dearest, do let me ride
Oscar,' and he replied: 'No, my darling, I can't till I know he's safe.
I must get some one to try him first'--and he looked at me--'Perhaps
you wouldn't mind?'

"They had never seen me on horseback, and I was longing to distinguish
myself. I did distinguish myself. Oscar was a merry horse, but one
never knew how he would take things. The first bridge we came to--I
was 'sitting easy to a canter' with my foot out of the stirrup and my
leg _over_ the third crutch--a bad habit I learnt from a foreign
friend--and an express train rushed by. Oscar went on abruptly, but I
remained. The next difficulty was at a brook. We ought to have crossed
it together; but Oscar changed his mind at the last moment, so he
remained and I went on. And after that we came to cross-roads, and had
a difference of opinion about which was the right one. That ended in
our coming over together, which made me feel solemn--disheartened, in
fact--and then I thought we should never understand each other and be
friends, so I gave him up. I did not talk much about riding to those
people after that.

"But I wore my summer habit that day, and of course I caught cold. And
when that was nearly well I went downstairs to be civil to some people
who had driven a long way to see me. The drawing-room was damp from
disuse, and the fire had only just been lighted--and of course I caught
cold. When that was better I went for a drive. The wind was east, and
the carriage was open--and of course I caught cold. I don't know how it
may strike you, but argument seems to me useless when a person has such
a constitution."

"Can you read between the lines of that letter?" Claudia asked me.

"She seems to be dreadfully _don't care_," I said.

"Exactly. She is more reckless, and therefore more miserable, than she
used to be. I wouldn't live with him."

"Ideala won't shirk her duty because it is hard and unpalatable," I
answered.

"I believe she likes it!" Claudia exclaimed; and then, smiling at her
own inconsistency, she explained, "I mean if she really is miserable
she ought to speak and let us do something."

"It is contrary to her principles. She would think it wrong to disturb
_your_ mind for a moment because her own life is a burden to her.
That is why she always tries to seem happy, and is cheerful on the
surface. If she made lament, we should suffer in sympathy, and all the
more because there is so very little we could do to help her. Silence
is best. If she ever gives way, she will not be able to bear it again."

"But why _should_ she bear it?" Claudia demanded.

"It is her duty."

"I know she thinks so, and is sacrificing her life to that principle.
But will you kindly tell me where a woman's duty to her husband ends
and her duty to herself begins? I suppose you will allow that she has a
duty to herself? And the line should be drawn somewhere."

Claudia's mind was a sort of boomerang just then, returning inevitably
to this point of departure; but I could make no suggestion that
satisfied her. And I was uneasy myself. Ideala refused to come to us,
and had made some excuse to prevent it when Claudia offered to go to
her. This puzzled me; but we induced her at last to promise to meet us
in London in May. It was April then, and we thought if she could be
persuaded to stay two months of the season in town with us, and go with
us afterwards to a place of mine in the North which she loved, she
would probably recover her health and spirits.




CHAPTER XIII.


In the meantime, however, something decisive happened, as we afterwards
learnt.

It seems that after they left our neighbourhood Ideala had, by
accident, made a number of small discoveries about her husband which
had the effect of destroying any remnant of respect she may still have
felt for him. She found that he was in the habit of examining her
private papers in her absence, and that he had opened her letters and
resealed them. His manner to her was unctuous as a rule; but she knew
he lied to her without hesitation if it suited his purpose--and that
alone would have been enough to destroy her liking for him, for it is
not in the nature of such a woman to love a man who has looked her in
the face and lied to her.

These things, and the loneliness he brought upon her by driving from
her the few people with whom she had any intellectual fellowship, she
would have borne in the old uncomplaining way, but he did not stop
there.

One day she drove into town with a friend who got out to do some
shopping. Ideala waited in the carriage, which had stopped opposite a
public-house, and from where she sat she could see the little sitting-
room behind the bar, and its occupants. They were her husband and the
barmaid, who was sitting on his knee.

Ideala arranged her parasol so that they might not see her if they
chanced to look that way, and calmly resumed the conversation when her
friend returned.

She dined alone with her husband that evening, and talked as usual,
telling him all she had done and what news there was in the paper, as
she always did, to save him the trouble of reading it. In return he
told her he had been at the ironworks all day, only leaving them in
time to dress for dinner, a piece of news she received with a still
countenance, and her soft eyes fixed on the fire.

She was standing on the hearth at the time, and as he spoke he laid his
hand upon her shoulder caressingly, but she could not bear it. Her
powers of endurance were at an end, and for the first time she shrank
from him openly.

"How you do loathe me, Ideala," he exclaimed.

"Yes, I loathe you," she answered.

And then, in a sudden burst of rage, he raised his hand and struck her.

Ideala's determination to be faithful to what she conceived to be her
duty had kept her quiet hitherto, but now a sense of personal
degradation made her desperate, and she forgot all that. Her first
impulse was to consult somebody, to speak and find means to put an end
to her misery; but I was not there, and to whom should she go for
advice. Her impatience brooked no delay. She must see some one
instantly. She thought of the Rector of the parish, but felt he would
not do. He was a fine-looking, well-mannered old gentleman, much
engaged in scientific pursuits, who always spoke of the Deity as if he
were on intimate terms with Him, and had probably never been asked to
administer any but the most formal kind of spiritual consolation in his
life.

The training and experience of a Roman Catholic priest, accustoming
them as it does to deal with every phase of human suffering and
passion, would have been more useful to her in such an emergency, but
she knew none of the priests in that district, and did not think of
going to them. But while she was considering the matter, as if by
inspiration, she remembered something an acquaintance had lately
written to her. This lady was a person for whom she felt much respect,
and that doubtless influenced her decision considerably. The lady
wrote: "It must be convenient to be only twenty minutes by train from
such a big place. I suppose you go over for shopping, &c.? When you are
there again I wish you would go and see my cousin Lorrimer. He is
Adviser in General at the Great Hospital--a responsible position; and I
am sure, if you go, he will be glad to do the honours of the place,
which is most interesting."

Ideala had felt from the first that she would rather consult a stranger
who would be disinterested and unprejudiced. This gentleman's name
promised well for him, for he belonged to people whose integrity was
well known; and his position vouched for his ability--and also for his
age to Ideala, whose imagination had pictured a learned old gentleman,
bald, spectacled, benevolent, full of knowledge of the world, "wise
saws and modern instances." No one, she thought, could be better suited
for her purpose; and accordingly, next day, after attending to her
household duties, she went by an early train to consult him.




CHAPTER XIV.


The Great Hospital had been founded by an eccentric old gentleman of
enormous wealth for an entirely original purpose. He observed that
great buildings were erected everywhere to receive patients suffering
from all imaginable bodily ills, chronic mania, of course, when the
brain was diseased, being one of them; but no one had thought of making
provision for such troubles, mental, moral, and religious, as affect
the mind; and he held that such suffering was as real, and, without
proper treatment, as incurable and disastrous, as any form of physical
ailment. He therefore determined to found an hospital for these unhappy
ones, which should contain every requisite that Divine Revelation had
suggested, or human ingenuity could devise, for the promotion of peace
of mind. The idea had grown out of some great mental trouble with which
he himself had been afflicted in early life, and for which the world,
as it was, could offer him no relief.

The first thing he did towards the carrying out of his plan was to buy
a site for his hospital near a growing town on the banks of a big
river. The building was to be surrounded by green fields, for the
colour is refreshing; and within sight of a great volume of calmly
flowing water, the silent power of which is solemn and tranquillising
to the spirit; and human society was to be within easy reach, for many
people find it beneficial. As soon as he had found the site, which was
entirely satisfactory, he set about maturing his plan for the building.
Such a scheme could not be carried out in a moment, and he spent thirty
years in travelling to study human nature, and architecture, and all
else that should help to bring his work to perfection. At the end of
thirty years he had finished a plan for the building to his own entire
satisfaction; but Mr. Ruskin had been growing up in the meantime, and
had begun to write, and the founder, happening to come across his works
by accident one day, discovered his own ideas to be wrong from
beginning to end. However, as it was the Truth he was aiming at, and
not a justification of himself, he calmly burnt his plans, put his
fingers in his ears (figuratively speaking) that he might not hear the
rest of the world bray, and for ten years more devoted himself to the
study of Mr. Ruskin. At the end of that time he knew something about
proportion, about masses and intervals of light and shade; about the
grandeur and sublimity of size, and the grace and beauty of ornament;
about depth and harmony of colour, and all the other wonders that make
one sick with longing to behold them; and when he had mastered all this
he determined to begin at the very beginning, that is to say, with the
walls that were to enclose his vast experiment. Everything was to be
real, everything was to be solid, everything had to be endowed with a
power of expression that could not fail of its effect. And as soon as
he felt he might safely begin, he hastened away to inspect the long
neglected site for his wonderful building. But here an unexpected check
awaited him. While he himself had been so hard at work, his future
neighbours had not been idle. The town had grown to a city; the river's
banks were crowded with wharves and human habitations; the river itself
cradled a fleet on its bosom, its waters, once so sublimely clear and
still, were turbid and yellow, befouled by the city sewers, and useful
only; and all that remained to remind him of what had once been were a
few acres of weeds enclosed by an iron railing--an eyesore to the
inhabitants of that region, as the Corporation told him, with a polite
hope that he would either build on it soon or leave it alone, which was
their diplomatic way of requesting him to hand the lot over to
themselves. And this he might have done had they said "Please;" but
when he found the young city so ignorant, he thought it his duty to
teach it manners, so he took a year or two more to consider the matter.
Then he perceived that if he built his house on the site as it was now
he should do even more good than he had intended, for the constant
contemplation of such a stately pile would help to elevate the citizens
outside the building, while those within might find comfort in seeing
themselves surrounded by even greater misery than their own.

And so the building rose and grew to perfection, and they found after
all that no better site could have been chosen for it; for from every
side as you approached it, it was seen to advantage, and the majesty
and power of it were made manifest. Outside, the design was so evident
in its grandeur that the mind was not wearied and perplexed by an
effort to understand; it was simply elevated to a state of enjoyment
bordering on exaltation--exaltation without excitement, and near akin
to peace. And the interior of the building as you entered it maintained
this first impression. Such ornament as there was touched you, as the
clouds do, with a sense of suitability that left nothing to be desired.
Art was so perfectly hidden that there seemed to have been no striving
for effect in decoration or construction, it looked like a work of
Nature, accomplished without effort, and beautiful without design; and
the mind brought under its influence, and left free of conjecture, was
gently compelled to revel in the peace which harmonious surroundings
insensibly produce. Disturbing thoughts vanished as being too common
and mean, too human, for such a place, and the spirit was soothed with
a sense of repose--of sensuous restfulness, really, for the pleasure,
as intended, affected the senses more than the intellect, which could
here make holiday. Work-wearied brains were thus eased from pressure,
and minds a prey to doubts and other disturbing thoughts which impaired
their strength, if they did not render them useless, were at once
relieved. And this was the beginning of the treatment which was
afterwards continued in other parts of the building, and by other
means, until the cure was complete--arrangements being made for the
removal of cases that proved to be hopeless to those older
establishments which have long existed at the expense of the country,
or as the outcomes of private enterprise.

Of course the staff of such a place had to be formed of men of a high
order. Some of these had been patients themselves, and had been chosen
on that account, it being thought that those who had suffered from
certain ills would be apt to detect the symptoms in others, and able to
devise remedies for them, which proved to be the case. The
establishment was munificently endowed and liberally supported, and the
Master, as he was reverently called, lived just long enough to see that
it was a success.

He had not thought of extending the charity to women, being under the
impression that no such provision was necessary for them. He
acknowledged that they had a large share of physical suffering to
endure, but asserted that Nature, to preserve her balance, must have
arranged their minds so as to render them incapable of suffering in any
other way. Sentimentality, hysteria, and silliness, he said, were at
the bottom of all their mental troubles, which did not, therefore,
merit serious attention.




CHAPTER XV.


But of all this Ideala knew little or nothing when she went there,
except that the Great Hospital existed for some learned purpose. She
felt the power of the place, however, preoccupied as she was, and
stopped involuntarily when she saw the building, ceasing for a moment
to be conscious of anything but the awe and admiration it inspired.
Then she passed up the broad steps, beneath the massive pillars of the
portico, and entered the hall. A man-servant took her card to Mr.
Lorrimer, and, returning presently, requested her to follow him. They
left the great hall by a flight of low steps at the end of it, and,
turning to the right, passed through glass doors into quite another
part of the building. A long, dimly-lighted gallery led away into the
distance. A few doors opened on to it, and at one of these the servant
stopped and knocked. A tall gentleman opened the door himself, and,
begging Ideala to enter, bade her be seated at a writing-table which
stood in the middle of the room, and himself took the chair in front of
it, and looked at Ideala's card which lay before him. Another
gentleman, whom Lorrimer introduced as "My brother Julian," lounged on
a high-backed chair at the other side of the table. The room was a good
size, but so crowded with things that there was scarcely space to turn
round. The light fell full upon Lorrimer as he sat facing the window,
and Ideala saw a fair man of about thirty, not at all the sort of man
she had imagined, and quite impossible for her purpose.

An awkward pause followed her entrance. She was unable to tell him the
real reason of her visit, and at a loss to invent a fictitious one.

"I don't suppose you know in the least who I am," she said, seeing that
he glanced at her card again, and then she explained, telling him what
his cousin had written to her.


"And you would like to see the Hospital?" he asked.

"Please."

He rose, took down a bunch of keys, and requested her to follow him.
She felt no interest in the place, and knew it was a bore to him to
show it to her; but the thing had to be done. He led her through halls
and lecture-rooms, places of recreation and places for work; he showed
her picture galleries, statuary, the library, and a museum, and told
her the plan of it all clearly, like one reciting a lesson, and
indifferently, like one performing a task that must be got through
somehow, but making it all most interesting, nevertheless.

Ideala began to be taken out of herself.

"What a delightful place!" she said, when they came to the library.
"And there is a whole row of books I want to consult. How I should like
to come and read them."

"Oh, pray do," he answered, "whenever you like. Ladies frequently do
so. You have only to write and tell me when you wish to come, and I
will see that you are properly attended to."

"Thank you," Ideala rejoined. "It is just the very thing for me, for I
am writing a little book, and cannot get on till I have consulted some
authorities on the subject." In the museum they stopped to look at a
mummy.

"Oh, happy mummy!" burst from Ideala, involuntarily.

"Why?" asked Lorrimer, aroused from his apathy.

"It has done with it all, you know," she answered.

Then he turned and looked at her, and she saw that he was something
more than cold, pale-faced, and indifferent, which had been her first
idea of him. His eyes were large, dark grey, and penetrating. She would
have called his face fine, rather than handsome; but the upper part was
certainly beautiful, in spite of some hard lines on it. There was
something in the expression, more than in the formation, of the mouth
and chin, however, that did not satisfy. His head and throat were
splendid; the former narrowed a little at the back, but the forehead
made up for the defect, which was not striking. He made Ideala think of
Tito Melema and of Bayard.

That remark of hers having broken the ice, they began to talk like
human beings with something in common. But Ideala's mood was not
calculated to produce a good impression. The failure of her enterprise
brought on a fit of recklessness such as we understood, and she said
some things which must have made a stranger think her peculiar.
Lorrimer had begun to be amused before they returned to the great
entrance hall. Once or twice he looked at her curiously. "What sort of
a person are you, I wonder?" he was thinking,

"I was dying of dulness," she said, telling him about the place she
came from, "and so I came to see you."

He left her for a moment, but presently returned with his brother.

"You had better come and have some luncheon before you go back," he
said.

And she went.

As they left the building Lorrimer asked her: "Where on earth did my
cousin meet _you?"_--with the slightest possible emphasis. Ideala
understood him, and laughed.

"Upon my word I don't know who introduced her," she answered, standing
on her dignity nevertheless. "I can't remember."

They went to the refreshment-room at the station. It was crowded, but
they managed to get a table to themselves. There was a vacant seat at
it, and an old gentleman begged to be allowed to occupy it as there was
no other in the room. The three chatted while they waited, each hiding
him, or her, self beneath the light froth of easy conversation; and
people, not accustomed to look on the surface for signs of what is
working beneath, would have thought them merry enough. As she began to
know her companions better, Ideala was more and more drawn to Lorrimer.
His brother, who was a dark man, and very different in character, did
not attract her.

The old gentleman, meanwhile, was absorbed in his newspaper, and he
marked his enjoyment of it by inhaling his breath and exhaling it again
in that particular way which is called "blowing like a porpoise."

Lorrimer, by an intelligent glance, expressed what he thought of the
peculiarity to Ideala, who remarked: "It is the next gale developing
dangerous energy on its way to the North British and Norwegian coasts."

The laugh that followed caused the old gentleman to fold up his paper,
and look benignly at the young people over his pince-nez.

It was early in the season, and peas were a rare and forced vegetable.
A small dish of them was brought, and handed to the dangerous gale, who
absently took them all.

"You have taken all the peas, sir; allow me to give you all the
pepper," said Lorrimer, dexterously suiting the action to the word.

The dangerous gale, though disconcerted at first, was finally moved to
mirth.

"Ah, young people! young people!" he said, and sighed--and being a
merry and wise old gentleman, he found pleasure in their pleasure, and
entered into their mood, little suspecting that Black Care was one of
the party, or that a black bruise which would have aroused all the pity
and indignation of his honest old heart, had he seen it, was almost
under his eyes.

And they all loved him.

Presently he rose to go; but before he departed, he observed, looking
kindly at Ideala and Lorrimer; "You're a handsome pair, my dears! Let
me congratulate you; and may your children have the mother's sweetness
and the father's strength, and may the love you have for each other
last for ever--there's nothing like it. Thank God for it, and remember
Him always--and keep yourselves unspotted from the world." And so
saying, he went his way in peace.

"Dear embarrassing old man!" said Lorrimer, regretfully. "I wish I
hadn't spilt the pepper on his plate.

"Is there a chance for Lorrimer?" his brother asked.

But Ideala only stared at him. There was something in his tone that
made her feel ill at ease, and brought back the recollection of her
misery in a moment. Then all at once she became depressed, and both the
young men noticed it.

"I'm afraid you're rather down about something," Julian said. "You'd
better tell us what it is. Perhaps we could cheer you up. And I'm a
lawyer, you know. I might be able to help you."

Lorrimer was looking at her, and seemed to wait for her to speak; but
she only showed by a change of expression that the fact of his brother
being a lawyer possessed a special interest for her.

"If you will trust us," he said at last, "perhaps we _can_ help
you."

"I wish I could," she answered, wistfully; "I came to tell you."

"This sounds serious," Julian said, lightly. "You will have to begin at
the beginning, you know. Come, Lorrimer, we'll go down the river. And,"
to Ideala, "you might tell us all about it on the way, you know."

"Yes, come," said Lorrimer. Ideala rose to accompany them without a
thought. It all came about so easily that no question of propriety
suggested itself--and if any had occurred to her she would probably
have considered it an insult to these gentlemen to suppose they would
allow her to put herself in a questionable position; and when Julian
lit a cigarette without asking her permission, she was surprised.

On the way to the river Ideala's spirits rose again, and they all
talked lightly, making a jest of everything; but while they were
waiting for a boat, Julian took up a bunch of charms that were attached
to Ideala's watch-chain and began to examine them coolly, and the
unwonted familiarity startled her. With a sudden revulsion of feeling
she turned to Lorrimer. She was annoyed by the slight indignity, and
also a little frightened. Whatever Lorrimer may have thought of her
before, he understood her look now, and his whole manner changed.

Julian left them for a moment. "I _am_ so ashamed of myself," Ideala
said. "I have made some dreadful mistake. I have done something
wrong."

"I am very sorry for you," he answered, gravely--and then, to his
brother, who had returned--"You can go on if you like. I am going
back."

"Oh, we can't go on without you," Ideala inter-posed; "and I would
rather go back too."

They began to retrace their steps, and Lorrimer, as they walked,
managed, with a few adroit questions, to learn from Ideala that the
trouble had something to do with her husband.

"Regy Beaumont is coming to me this afternoon," he said to his brother.
"Would you mind being there to receive him?"

They exchanged glances, and Julian took his leave.

"Now, tell me," Lorrimer said to Ideala.

But an unconquerable fit of shyness came over her the moment they were
left alone together. "I cannot tell you," she answered. "It is too
dreadful to speak of."

"Your husband has done you some great wrong?" he said.

"Yes."

"Something for which you can get legal redress?"

"Yes."

"And that made you desperate?"

"Yes."

"And what did you do?" He put the question abruptly, startling Ideala,
as he had intended.

"_I_? Oh, I--did nothing," she stammered. There was a pause.

"My ideal of marriage is a high one," he said at last, "and I should be
very hard on any short-comings of that kind."

Ideala longed to confide in him, but her shyness continued, and she
walked by his side like one in a dream.

He took her to the station, and when they parted he said, "You will
write and tell me?"

Ideala looked up. There were no hard lines in his face now; he was
slightly flushed.

"Yes, I will write," she answered, almost in a whisper.

And then the train, "with rush and ring," bore her away through the
spring-country; but she neither saw the young green of the hedgerows,
nor "the young lambs bleating in the meadows," nor the broad river as
she passed it, nor the fleecy clouds that flecked the blue. She was not
really conscious of anything for the moment, but that sudden great
unspeakable uplifting of the spirit, which is joy.




CHAPTER XVI.


The following week Ideala came to London, but not to us--she had
promised to stay with some other people first. She wrote three times to
Lorrimer while she was with them--first to thank him for his kindness,
to which he replied briefly, begging her to confide in him, and let him
help her.

In her second letter Ideala told him what had occurred. His reply was
business-like. He urged her to let him consult his legal friends about
her case; pointed out that she could not be expected to remain with her
husband now; and showed her that she would not have to suffer much from
all the publicity which was necessary to free her from him. She replied
that her first impulse had been to obtain legal redress, but that now
she could not make up her mind to face the publicity. She would see
him, however, when she returned, and consult him about it; and she
would also like to consult those books in the library. Her buoyant
spirit was already recovering under the influence of a new interest in
life.

Lorrimer's answer was formal, as his other notes had been. He begged
her to make any use of the library she pleased, only to let him know
when to expect her, that she might have no trouble with the officials;
and offered her any other help in his power.

In the meantime my sister Claudia had seen Ideala, and had been pleased
to find her, not looking well, certainly, but just as cheerful as
usual. "It is evident the place does not agree with her," Claudia said;
"but a few weeks with us will set her all right again."

They drove in the park together one afternoon, and talked, as usual, of
many things, the state of society being one of them. This was a subject
upon which my sister descanted frequently, and it was from her that
Ideala learnt all she knew of it.

"Can you wonder," Claudia said on this occasion, "that men are immoral
when ladies in society rather pride themselves than otherwise on
imitating the _demi-monde_?"

"Have you ever noticed," Ideala answered, indirectly, "how frequently a
word or phrase which you know quite well by sight, but have never
thought of and do not understand, is suddenly brought home to you as it
were? You come across it everywhere, and at last take the trouble to
find out what it means in self-defence. That expression--_demi-
monde_--has begun to haunt me since I came to town, and I feel I
shall be obliged to look it up at once to stop the nuisance. We went to
a theatre the other night, and when we were settled there I saw my
husband in the stalls with a lady in flame-coloured robes. I didn't
know he was in town. The rest of our party saw him, too, and the
gentlemen had a mysterious little consultation at the back of the box.
Then one of them left us, but returned almost immediately, and told us
the carriage had not gone, and hadn't we better try some other theatre
--the piece at that one was not so good as they had supposed. But I knew
they had taken a lot of trouble, entirely on my account, to get a box
there, as I had expressed a wish to see that particular piece, and I
said I had come to enjoy it, and meant to. I did enjoy it, too. It was
so absorbing that I forgot all about my husband, and don't know when he
left the theatre. I only know that he disappeared without coming near
us. When we got back, Lilian came to my room and told me they were all
saying downstairs that I had behaved splendidly, and I said I was
delighted to hear it, particularly as I did not know how, or when, or
where, I had come to deserve such praise. And then she asked me if I
knew who it was my husband was with. I said, no; some alderman's wife,
I supposed. 'Nothing half so good,' she answered. 'That woman is
notorious: she is one of the _demimonde!_' 'Well,' I said, 'I don't
suppose she is in society.' And then Lilian said, 'Good gracious,
Ideala! how can you be so tranquil? You _must_ care. I think you are
the most extraordinary person I ever met.' And I told her that the
only extraordinary thing about me just then was a great 'exposition of
sleep' that had come upon me. And then she left me; but she told me
afterwards that she thought I was acting, and came back later to see
if I really could sleep."

"And you did sleep, Ideala?"

"Like a top--why not? But now you are following suit with your ill-
conducted people, and your _demi-monde_. I want to know what you mean
by that phrase?"

Then Claudia explained it to her.

"But I thought all that had ended with the Roman Empire," Ideala
protested.

Claudia laughed, and then went on without pity, describing the class as
they sink lower and lower, and cruelly omitting no detail that might
complete the picture.

"But the men are as bad," said Ideala.

"Oh, as bad, yes!" was the answer.

Ideala was pale with disgust. "And we have to touch them!" she said.

Her ignorance of this phase of life had been so complete, and her faith
in those about her so perfect, that the shock of this dreadful
revelation was almost too much for her. At first, as the carriage drove
on through the crowded streets, she saw in every woman's face a
hopeless degradation, and in every man's eyes a loathsome sin; and she
exclaimed, as another woman had exclaimed on a similar occasion: "Oh,
Claudia! why did you tell me? It is too dreadful. I cannot bear to know
it."

"How a woman can be at once so clever and such a fool as you are,
Ideala, puzzles me," Claudia remonstrated, not unkindly.

She had warmed as she went on, and forgot in her indignation to take
advantage of this long-looked-for opportunity to speak to Ideala about
her own troubles; and afterwards, when she showed an inclination to
open the subject, Ideala put her off with a jest.

"'_Le mariage est beau pour les amants et utile pour les saints,_'"
she quoted, lightly. "Class me with the saints, and talk of something
interesting."

A few days later Claudia came to me in dismay.

"What do you think?" she said. "Ideala is not coming to us at all! She
says she must go back at once."

"Go back!" I exclaimed, "and why?"

"She is going to write something, for which she requires to read a
great deal, and she says she must go back to work."

"But that is nonsense," I protested. "She can work as much as she likes
here--I can even help her."

"I know that," Claudia answered; "but she spoke so positively I could
not insist. I suppose the truth is her husband has ordered her back,
and she is going to be a good, obedient child, as usual."

"Does she seem at all unhappy?"

"No, and that is the strange part of it. She has coolly broken I don't
know how many other engagements to return at once, and instead of
seeming disappointed, she simply 'glows and is glad.' She says nothing,
but I can see it. I don't know what on earth she is up to now." And
Claudia left the room, frowning and perplexed.

When I heard she was not unhappy, this sudden whim of Ideala's did not
disturb me much; indeed, I was rather glad to think she had found
something to be enthusiastic about. Her fits of enthusiasm were rarer
now, and I thought this symptom of one a good sign. It was odd, though,
that I had not seen her while she was in town. I was half inclined to
believe she had avoided me.




CHAPTER XVII.


To give the story continuity it will be necessary to piece the events
together as they followed. Many of them only came to my knowledge some
time after they occurred, and even then I was left to surmise a good
deal; but I am able now, with the help of papers that have lately come
into my possession, to verify most of my conjectures and arrange the
details.

The summer weather had begun now. Laburnums and lilacs were in full
flower, the air was sweet with scent and song, and to one who had borne
the heavy winter with a heavy heart, but was able at last to lay down a
load of care, the transition must have been like a sudden change from
painful sickness to perfect health. Ideala went to the Great Hospital
at once. She had written to fix a day, and Lorrimer was waiting for
her. She was not taken to his room, however, as on the previous
occasion, but to another part of the building, a long gallery hung with
pictures, where she found him superintending the arrangement of some
precious things in cabinets. Ideala looked better and younger that day
in her summer dress than she had done in her heavy winter wraps on the
occasion of their first meeting; but when she found herself face to
face with Lorrimer she began to tremble, and was overcome with
nervousness in a way that was new to her. He saw the change in her
appearance and manner at a glance, and, smiling slightly, begged her to
follow him, and led the way through long passages and many doors,
passing numbers of people, to his own room. He spoke to her once or
twice on the way, but she was only able to answer confusedly, in a
voice that was rendered strident by the great effort she had to make to
control it. He busied himself with some papers for a few minutes when
they reached his room, to give her time to recover herself, and then he
said, standing with his back to the fireplace, looking down at her, and
speaking in a tone that was even more musical and caressing than she
remembered it: "Well, and how are you? And how has it been with you
since your return?"

"I am utterly shaken and unnerved, as you see," she answered; then
added passionately: "I cannot bear my life; it is too hateful."

"There is no need to bear it," he said. "Nothing is easier than to get
a separation after what has occurred. Was there any witness?"

"No; and I don't think any one in the house suspects that there is
anything wrong. And none of my friends know. I have never told them. I
wonder why I told you?"

"You wanted me to help you," he suggested.

"I don't think I did," she said. "How could I want you to help me when
I don't mean to do anything? I fancy I told you because I was afraid
you would think me a little mad that day, and I would rather you knew
the truth than think me mad. I don't mean to try for a separation. I
can't leave him entirely to his own devices. If I did, he would
certainly go from bad to worse."

"And if you don't what will become of you? I think much more of such a
life would make you reckless."

She was silent for a little, then she exclaimed: "Help me not to grow
reckless. I am so alone."

He took her hands and looked down into her eyes. A sudden deep flush
spread over his face, smoothing out all the lines, as she had seen it
do once before, and transforming him.

"It is like walking on the edge of a precipice in the dark," he said in
a low voice, and his grasp tightened as he spoke.

There was something mesmeric in his touch that overpowered Ideala. She
felt a change in herself at the moment, and she was never the same
woman again.

"I will help you, if I can," he said, after another pause, and then he
let her go.

After that they talked for some time. He tried to persuade her to
reconsider her decision and leave her husband. He honestly believed it
was the best thing she could do, and told her why he thought so. She
acknowledged the wisdom of his advice, but declined to follow it, and
he was somewhat puzzled, for the reasons she gave were hardly enough to
account for her determination. They wandered away from that subject at
last, however, and talked of many other things. He told Ideala of his
first coming to the Great Hospital as a patient, and gave her some of
the details of his own case, and told her enough of his private history
to arouse her sympathy and interest; but of the nature of these
confidences I know nothing. Ideala felt in honour bound not to repeat
them, as they were made to her in the course of a private conversation,
and she was always scrupulously faithful to all such trusts. I know,
however, that he was a man who had suffered acutely, both from unhappy
circumstances and from those troubles of the mind which beset clever
men at the outset of their career, and sometimes never leave them
entirely at peace. But this man was something more than a clever man;
he was a man in a thousand. He had in a strong degree all that is worst
and best in a man. The highest and most spiritual aspirations warred in
him with the most carnal impulses, and he spent his days in fighting to
attain to the one and subdue the other.

Ideala had never known a man like this man. His talents, his rapid
changes of mood, as sense or conscience got the upper hand, and his
versatility charmed her imagination and excited her interest; and he
had, besides, that magnetic power over her by which it is given to some
men to compel people of certain temperaments to their will. While she
was with him he could have made her believe that black was white, and
not only believe it, but be glad to think that it was so; and he always
compelled her to say exactly what she had in her mind at the moment,
even when it was something that she would very much rather not have
said.

"But I am forgetting my other object in coming," Ideala broke off at
last. "May I look at the books?"

Lorrimer took out his watch. "You ought to have some lunch first," he
said. "If you will come now and have some, we can return and look at
the books afterwards."

Ideala acquiesced, fearing it was his own lunch time, and knowing it
would detain him if she did not accompany him.

Ladies not being allowed to lunch at the Great Hospital, they went, as
before, to the station close by, and sat down side by side, perfectly
happy together, chatting, laughing, talking about their childhood, and
making those trifling confidences which go so far to promote intimacy,
and are often the first evidence of affection. Now and then they
touched on graver matters. He upheld all that was old, and believed we
can have no better institutions in the future than those which have
already existed in the past. Ideala had begun to think differently.

"I am sure it is a mistake to be for ever looking back to the past for
precedents," she said. "The past has its charm, of course, but it is
the charm of the charnel house--it is the dead past, and what was good
for one age is bad for another."

"As one man's meat is another man's poison?" he said.

"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 analogy 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 class 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 circumstance 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 passed 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 passed 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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.

From the room Ideala looked to her companion. He was writing rapidly,
and seemed absorbed in his subject. He was frowning slightly, his face
was pale and set, and he looked older by ten years than when he had
spoken last, and seemed cold and unimpassioned as a judge; but Ideala
thought again that the face was a fine one.

Presently he became conscious of her earnest gaze. He did not look up,
but every feature softened, and a warm glow spread from forehead to
chin; it was as if a deep shadow had been lifted, and a younger, but
less noble, man revealed.

"How you change!" Ideala exclaimed--"not from day to day, but from
moment to moment. You are like two men. I wish I could get behind that
horrid veil of flesh that hides you from me. I want to see your soul."

He smiled. "You are getting tired," he said. "Do let me persuade you to
come and have some lunch. When you begin to speculate, I know you have
done enough."

But Ideala could not go through the ordeal of who should pay for lunch
again. She preferred to starve. The _camaraderie_ between them was
mental enough to be manlike already, but only as long as there was no
question of material outlay.

"Mayn't I stay here and read?" she said. "I can have something by-and-
by, when I want it. Do go and leave me."

And he was obliged to go at last, wondering somewhat at her want of
appetite.

When he returned she was still working diligently, and they spent the
rest of the afternoon together, reading, writing, and chatting, until
it was time for Ideala to go. Lorrimer saw her into her train, and
fixed another day for her to return and go on with her work.

And so the thing became a settled arrangement. Whenever she could spare
the time she went and worked beside him, and he was always the same,
kindly, considerate, helping her now and then, but not, as a rule,
interfering with her. She just came and went as she pleased, and as she
would have done had he been her brother. Sometimes they were alone
together for hours, sometimes his secretary worked in the room with
them, and always there were people coming and going. There was nothing
to suggest a thought of impropriety, and they were soon on quarrelling
terms, falling out about a great many things--which is always the sign
of a good understanding; but after the first they touched on no
dangerous subject for a long time. At last, however, there came a
change. Ideala noticed one day that Lorrimer was restless and
irritable.

"Am I interfering with your work to-day?" she said. "D

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