"Yes," she answered, tranquilly; and Claudia coolly proceeded to read the verses aloud, a difficult task, as they were scribbled in pencil on half a sheet of note-paper, and were scarcely decipherable. Ideala, meanwhile, listened, with calm eyes fixed on vacancy, like one trying to be polite, but finding it hard for lack of interest.
"By Arno, when the tale was o"er, At sunset, as in days of yore, I wandered forth and dreamed.
The sky above, the town below.
The solemn river"s silent flow, The ancient story-haunts I know, In varied colours gleamed.
By Arno calm my steps I stayed, Just where the river"s bank displayed A tangled growth of weeds; Tall houses near, and on the right An arched bridge upreared its height, And boats drew near, and pa.s.sed from sight-- I heard the tramp of steeds.
I heard, and saw, but heeded not; My feet were rooted to the spot, A fancy checked my breath.
"Twas here that t.i.to lay, I knew.
His fair face upward to the blue, His velvet tunic soaking through, Most beautiful in death.
But Balda.s.sarre was not there, "Twas I that stooped to kiss the hair, Besprent with ooze and dew.
Ah, G.o.d! light gold the locks caressed-- I saw no Greek in velvet dressed-- But wildly to my bosom pressed-- Not t.i.to, love, but you!
The ma.s.sive, G.o.dlike head and throat Belonged not to those days remote, The fine grey eye--the limb; It was the soul I know so well, So full of earth, and heaven, and h.e.l.l, That came from out that time to dwell In you and make you him.
And I, the victim of your smiles, And I, the victim of your wiles, My vengeance shall prevail.
The river Time shall float you nigh, And earth and h.e.l.l your soul shall fly.
And only heaven remain when I The deed triumphant hail!"
It surprised me to find that Claudia could read those verses to the end, their import--to me, at least--was so obvious. But Ideala continued unmoved; and when the little buzz of friendly criticism had subsided, she remarked, with unimpa.s.sioned directness:
"I am quite sure that all my verses are rubbish; but nevertheless they delight me. I should feel dumb without the power to make verses; it is a means of expression that satisfies when nothing else will. I always carry my last about in my pocket. I know them by heart, of course, but still it is a pleasure to read them; and so it continues until I write some more; and then I immediately perceive that the old ones are bad, and I destroy them--when I remember. Those were condemned ages ago, so please oblige me, Claudia, by putting them into the fire."
Claudia was about to obey, but I interposed. I had a fancy for keeping those verses. They are rubbishy if you will; but the sentiment which struggles to find expression in them is far from despicable.
No one smoked that evening; no one played billiards; no one cared for music; we just sat round the fire in a circle, and talked.
"And where have you come from, Ideala?" was the first question.
"From China," she answered.
There was a general exclamation. "I have been with the missionaries in China," she added.
"Oh, isn"t it very strange, the life in China?" some one asked.
"It looks different," she said, "but its feels like our own. To begin with, one is struck by the strange appearance of the people, and the quaint humour of their art; but when the first effect wears off, and you learn to know them, you find after all that theirs is the same human nature, only in another garb; the familiar old tune, as it were, with a new set of variations. The like in unlikeness is common enough, but still the finding of a remarkable similarity in things apparently unlike continues to surprise us."
"But, Ideala, you cannot compare the Chinese to ourselves! Think of the state of degradation the people are in! Every crime is rife among them --infanticide is quite common!"
"Yes," said Ideala, as, if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Yes, doubtless, the lower cla.s.ses in China kill their children; here, in certain districts, they insure them," Ideala concluded gravely.
"But then," said Claudia--"Oh! Ideala, I don"t think you can establish your parallel. We all know the sort of a life a Chinese lady leads."
"When the lady is not at the head of her house it is certainly vacuous," Ideala agreed, "like the lives of our own ladies when they are not forced to do anything. Why, at Scarborough this year they had to take to changing their dresses four times a day; so you can imagine how they languish for want of occupation."
"Well, at all events, English girls are not sold into a hateful form of slavery," some one observed contentedly.
"Are they not?" Ideala rejoined with a flash. "I can a.s.sure you that both women and men, fathers, husbands, and brothers, of the same cla.s.s in England, do sell their young girls--and I can prove it."
"We have the pull over them in the matter of marriage, then. We don"t give our daughters away against their will as they do."
"That is not a fair way of putting it. A Chinese girl expects to be so disposed of, and accepts the arrangement as a matter of course. And the system has its advantages. The girl has no illusions to be shattered, she expects no new happiness in her married life, so that any that comes to her is clear gain. As to our daughters" inclinations not being forced, I suppose they are not, exactly. But have you never been conscious of the tender pressure that is brought to bear when a desirable suitor offers? Have you never seen a girl who won"t marry when she is wanted to, wincing from covert stabs, mourning over cold looks, and made to feel outside everything--suffering a small martyrdom under the general displeasure of all for whom she cares, her world, without whose love life is a burden to her; whom she believes to know best about everything? As Mrs. Bread said about Madame de Cintre: "She is a delicate creature, and they make her feel wicked"--and she ends by thinking any sacrifice light at the moment, if only it wins her back the affection and esteem of her friends."
Ideala had been carried away by her earnestness, and now she stopped abruptly, somewhat disconcerted to find every one listening to her. The ladies sat with their eyes on the floor, the gentlemen exchanged glances, but no one spoke for some time.
At last my sister made a move, and the spell was broken. We separated for the night, and many were the lady-like whispers that reached my ears, all ending in: "So like Ideala!"
But, as Ideala herself remarked on another occasion, "You can"t sweep a room that requires it without raising a dust; the thing is to let the dust settle again, and then remove it."
CHAPTER XXIX.
Claudia did not see the change in Ideala all at once. She said: "She is looking her best, and is our own Ideala again--faults and all! How she talked last night!"
"Just in the old way," I agreed, "but with a difference; for in the old days she talked at random, but now I feel sure she has a plan and a purpose, and all that she says is part of it."
This suggested new possibilities to Claudia, and when Ideala joined us presently, she asked, abruptly: "Are you going back to China?"
Ideala answered deliberately: "I did think of becoming a missionary--that was why I went out there. But I know all radical reforms take time, and when I saw what the Chinese women were doing for themselves, and compared their state with our own, it seemed to me that there was work in plenty to be done at home, and so I returned.
Certainly, the Chinese women of the day bind their feet. When a girl is seven or eight years old, her mother binds them for her, and everybody approves, If the mother did otherwise, the girl herself would be the first to reproach her when she grew up. It is wonderful how they endure the torture; but public opinion has sanctioned the custom for centuries, and made it as much a duty for a Chinese woman to have small feet as it is for us to wear clothes! And yet they do a wonderful thing. When they are taught how wrong the practice is, how it cripples them, and weakens them, and renders them unfit for their work in the world, they take off their bandages! Think of that! and remember that they are timid and sensitive in a womanly way to a degree that is painful. When I learnt that, and when I remembered that my countrywomen bind every organ in their bodies, though they know the harm of it, and public opinion is against it, I did not feel that I had time to stay and teach the heathen. It seemed to me that there was work enough left yet to do at home."
"But, Ideala," Claudia protested, "what is the use of drawing degrading comparisons between ourselves and other nations? You gave great offence last night."
"I said more than I intended," she answered; "I always do. It was Tourgenieff, was it not, who said that the age of talkers must precede the age of practical reformers? I seem to have been born in the age of talkers. But I shall not say much more. Last night I did not really _intend_ to say anything. You led me on. But I _do_ want to make their hearts burn within them, and if I succeed, then I shall not care about the offence. An English-woman is nothing if she is not patriotic. She will not bear the humiliation, if she is made to see that she is really no better, with all her opportunities, than a much- despised Chinese. She would not like the contempt the women of that nation feel for her if she were made to acknowledge the truth--that she deserved it. And so much depends on our women now. There are plenty of people, you know, who believe that no nation can get beyond a certain point of prosperity, and that when it reaches that point it cannot stay there, but must begin to go down again; and they say that the English nation has now reached its extreme point. They compare it with Rome in the days which immediately preceded her decline and fall--when men ceased to be brave and self-denying, and became idle, luxurious, and effeminate; and women traded on their weakness, and made light of their evil deeds. It is a question of the sanct.i.ty of marriage now, as it was in the days of the decline of Rome. De Quincey traces her fall to the loosening of the marriage tie. He says that few indeed, if any, were the obligations in a proper sense _moral_ which pressed upon the Roman. The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage had corrupted itself through the facility of divorce, and through the consequences of that facility (viz., levity in choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the choice), into so exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not yield so much as a phantom model of sanct.i.ty. The relation of husband and wife had, for all moral impressions, perished amongst the Romans.
And, although it is not quite so bad with ourselves at present, that is what it is coming to.
"But there are two sides to every question, and the one which we must by no means lose sight of just now is not that which shows the respects in which we resemble the Romans, so much as the one which shows the respects in which we differ from them. It is therein that our hope lies. And we differ from them in two important respects. We differ from them in the matter of experience, and in the use we are disposed to make of our experiences. We are beginning to know the rocks upon which they split, and we shall soon be making use of our knowledge to steer clear of them. But there is another respect in which we differ from all the older nations, not even excepting the Jewish. I mean morality. We have the grandest and purest ideal of morality that was ever preached upon earth, and, if we do but practise it, there is no doubt that the promise will be fulfilled, and our days as a nation will be prolonged with rejoicing.
"The future of the race has come to be a question of morality and a question of health. Perhaps I should reverse it, and say a question of health and morality, since the latter is so dependent on the former. We want grander minds, and we must have grander bodies to contain them.
And it all rests with us women. To us is confided the care of the little ones--of the young bodies and the young minds yet unformed. Ours will be the joy of success or the shame of failure, and we should fit ourselves for the task both morally and physically by the practice of every virtue, and by every art known to the science and skill of man."
"Englishwomen could not sit still and know that their lovely homes will be wrecked eventually, and left desolate: that this country of theirs will become a wilderness of ruin, such as Egypt is, but rank and overgrown, its beauty of sweet gra.s.s and stately trees, and all its rich luxuriance of flowers and fruits and foliage plants, only accentuating the ruin--bearing witness to the neglect. No, our greatness shall not depart. The decay may have begun, but it shall be arrested. I am not afraid."
"But if it is the fate of nations, Ideala----"
"I propose to conquer fate," said Ideala. "Fate itself is no match for one woman with a will, let alone for thousands! When horrid war is threatened, men flock to fight for their country; and they volunteer for every other arduous duty to be done. Do you think women are less brave? No. When they realise the truth they will fight for it. They will fly to arms. They will use the weapons with which Nature has provided them; love, constancy, self-sacrifice, their intellectual strength, and will. And so they will save the nation."
Claudia, the unimaginative, sat silent and perplexed.
"I would join," she said at last, "if I were quite sure----Oh, Ideala!
it is not a sort of Woman"s Rights business, and all that, you are going in for, is it? A woman can do good in her own sphere only."