"And do you mean to say you decided to endure a life that had become hateful to you in every way, simply for the sake of seeing this gentleman occasionally?"
"Yes. Ah! you do not know how good he is, nor how he raises me! I never knew the sort of creature I was until he told me. He said once, when we quarrelled, that I was fanciful, sentimental, lackadaisical, hysterical, and in an unhealthy state of mind, and yet--"
I made a gesture of impatience, and she stopped.
"But, Ideala," I asked her, after a little pause, "have you never felt that what you are doing is wrong?"
"I cannot say that exactly," she answered. "I knew that certain social conventions forbade the thing--at least I began to acknowledge this to myself after a time. At first, you know, I thought of nothing. I was wholly absorbed in my desire to see him; that excluded every other consideration. Do you know what it is to be sure that a thing is wrong, and yet not to be able to feel it so--to have your reason acknowledge what your conscience does not confirm?"
I made no answer, and we were silent for a little; then she spoke again:
"One day when I was in j.a.pan," she said, "I was living up in the hills at Hakone, a village on a lake three thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Mayor of the village was entertaining me, and whenever I went out he sent his son and several of his retainers as an escort, that I might not be subject to annoyance or insult from strangers. One day I was crossing the hills by a mountain-path there is between Hakone and Mianos.h.i.ta, and after I pa.s.sed Ashynoyou, where the sulphur springs are, I found myself in a dense fog. I could not see anything distinctly three yards in front of me. Kashywaya and the other men never walked with me; they used to hover about me, leaving me to all intents and purposes alone if I preferred it. The j.a.panese are very delicate in some things; it was weeks before I knew that I had a guard of honour at all. On that particular day I lost sight of them altogether, but I could hear them calling to each other through the fog; and I sat down feeling very wretched and lonely. I thought how all the beauty of life had been spoiled for me; how, past, present, and to come, it was all a blank; and I wished in my heart that I might die, and know no more.
And, do you know, just at that moment the fog beneath me parted, and I saw the sea, sapphire blue and dotted with boats, and the sand a streak of silver, and the green earth, and a low horizon of shining clouds, and over all the sun! Dear Lord in heaven! how glad a sight it was!"
She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "And I was wandering," she continued, "in some such mental mist, lost and despairing, when Lorrimer came into my life, and changed everything for me in a moment, like the sun. Would you have me believe that he was sent to me then only for an evil purpose? That the good G.o.d, in whom I scarcely believed until in His mercy He allowed me to feel love for one of His creatures, and to realise through it the Divine love of which it is surely the foreshadowing--would you have me believe myself degraded by love so sent? Would you have me turn from it and call it sin, when I feel that G.o.d Himself is the giver?"
I was silent, not knowing how to answer her.
Presently I asked: "But why not have a legal separation, a divorce, from your husband now?"
"I cannot," she answered, sadly. "At one time I had written proof of his turpitude, but I could not make up my mind to use it then, and I destroyed it eventually; so that now my word would be the only evidence against him, and that would not do, I suppose, although you all know, better than I do, I fancy, what his life has been."
Other people had by this time come into the conservatory, and we were therefore obliged to change the subject.
In the days that followed every one seemed to become conscious of some impending trouble. We were all depressed, and one by one our party left us, until at last only Ideala remained, for we had not the heart to ask other guests, even if it had been expedient, and, under the circ.u.mstances, Claudia did not consider it so.
Ideala spent much of her time in writing to Lorrimer. Some of these letters were never sent. I fancy she wrote exactly as she felt, and often feared when she had done so that she had been too frank. How these two ever came to such an understanding I am at a loss to imagine, and I have searched in vain for any clue to the mystery. Only one thing is plain to me, that when at last Ideala understood her feeling for Lorrimer, she cherished it. After she found that her husband had broken every tie, disregarded every obligation, legal and moral, that bound her to him, she seems to have considered herself free. But I feel quite sure she had not acknowledged this, even to herself, when she returned to Lorrimer, and that simply because she had not contemplated the possibility of being asked to take any decided step. When the time came, however, she apparently never questioned her right to act on this fancied freedom. The circ.u.mstances under which they had met were probably responsible for a great deal. The whole of their acquaintance had had something unusual about it, which would naturally predispose their minds to further unaccustomed issues when any question of right or expediency arose. The restrictions which men and women have seen fit to place upon their intercourse with each other are the outcome of ages of experience, and they who disregard them bring upon themselves the troubles against which those same restrictions, irksome at times as they must be, are the only adequate defence.
One letter I have here shows something of the strength and tenderness of Ideala"s devotion; and I venture to think that, even under the circ.u.mstances, it must be good for a man to have been loved once in his life like that. The letter begins abruptly--"Oh, the delight of being able to write to you," she says, "without fear and without constraint. If it were possible to step from the dreary oppression of the northern midnight into the full blaze of the southern noon, the transition would not be greater than is the sense of rest and relief that has come to me after the weary days which are over. Do you know, I never believed that any one person could be so much to another as you are to me; that any one could be so happy as I am! I think I am _too_ happy. But, dear, I want you! I want you always; but most of all when anything good or beautiful moves me; I feel nearer to you then, and I know you would understand. Every good thought, every worthy aspiration, everything that is best in me, and every possibility of better things, seems due to your influence, and makes me crave for your presence. You have been the one thing wanting to me my whole life long. I believe that no soul is perfect alone, and that each of us must have a partner-soul _somewhere,_ kept apart from us--by false marriages, perhaps, or distance, or death, but still to be ours, if not in this state, then in some other, when both are perfect enough to make the union possible. We are not all fit for that love which is the beginning of heaven, and can have no end. [Transcriber"s Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] Does this seem fanciful to you? It would comfort me if we were ever separated. _If_--I cannot tell you how it makes my heart sink just to look at that word, although I know it does not suggest anything that is possible in our case. What power would take you from me now, when there is no one else in the whole wide world for me _but_ you? and always you! and only you! You, with your ready sympathy and perfect refinement; your wit, your rapid changes, your ideality, your kindness, your cruelty, and the terrible discontent which makes you untrue to yourself. You are my world. But unless I can be to you what you are to me, you will always be one of the lonely ones. Tell me, again, that my absence makes a blank in your life. You did not write the word, you only left a s.p.a.ce, and do you know how I filled it at first? "It was such a _relief_ when you left off coming," I read, and I raged at you.
"I have heard it said lately that you are fickle, but these people do not understand you. You are true to your ideal, but the women you have hitherto known were only so many imperfect realisations of it, and so you went from one to the other, always searching, but never satisfied.
And you have it in you to be so much happier or so much more miserable than other men--I should have trembled for you if your hopes had never been realised.
"But what _would_ satisfy you? I often long to be that mummy you have in the Great Hospital, the one with the short nose and thick lips.
When you looked at me spirit and flesh would grow one with delight, and I should come to life, and grow round and soft and warm again, and talk to you of Thebes, and you would be enchanted with me--you could not help it then. I should be so old, so very old, and genuine!
"Dear, how I laugh at my fears now, or rather, how I bless them. If I had never known the horror of doubt, how could I have known what certainty is? And I did doubt you; I dare acknowledge it now. I wonder if you can understand what the shame of that doubt was? When I thought your absence and your silence were intentional slights, I knew how they felt when "they called on the rocks to cover them, and I wished--oh, _how_ I wished!--that a thousand years had pa.s.sed, and my spirit could be at the place where we met, and see the pillars broken, and.
the ivy climbing over the ruins, and the lizards at home amongst them, and the shameless sunlight making bare the spot where we stood.
"It was as if I had been punished for some awful unknown sin, and when I seemed to be dying, and I dared not write to you, and all hope of ever knowing the truth had departed, I used to exclaim in my misery: "Verily, Lord, if Thy servant sinned she hath suffered! for the anguish of death has been doubled, and the punishment of the lost has begun while yet the tortured mind can make its lament and moan with the tortured body!"
"But all that bitter past only enhances the present.
"I wonder where you will be to-day. I believe you are always in that room of yours. You only leave it to walk to the station with me, after which you go back to it, and work there till it is dark; and then you rest, waiting for the daylight, and when it comes you go to work again.
I cannot fancy you anywhere else. I should not like to realise that you have an existence of which I can know nothing, a life through which I cannot follow you, even in imagination.
"But sometimes you come to me, and then how glad I am! You come to me and kiss me, and it is night and I am dreaming, and not ashamed.
"Yes, the days do drag on slowly, for after all I am never quite happy, never at peace even, never for a moment, except when I am with you. I am sorry I feel so, for it seems ungrateful in the face of all the kindness and care that is being lavished on me by my friends. One lady here has seven children--another instance of the unequal distribution of the good things of this world. She has lent me one of them to comfort me because I am jealous. He sleeps in my room, and is a fair- haired boy, with eyes that remind me of you. Will he also, when he grows up, have "the conscience of a saint among his warring senses"? I hope not, I should think when sense and conscience are equally delicate, and apt to thrill simultaneously, life must be a burden.
Would such a state of things account for moods that vary perpetually, I wonder?"
Here she breaks off, and I think these last reflections account for the fact that the letter was never sent.
[Relocated Footnote: This pa.s.sage might have been taken from Plato verbatim, but Ideala had not read Plato at the time it was written.
The inborn pa.s.sionate longing of the human soul for perfect companionship doubtless accounts for the coincidence, which also shows how deep-rooted and widely spread the hope of eventually obtaining the desired companionship is. Some will maintain that the desire for such a possibility has created the belief in it, but others claim to have met their partner-souls, and to have become united by a bond so perfect that even distance cannot sever it, there being some inexplicable means of communication between the two, which enables each to know what befalls the other wherever they may be. The idea might probably be traced back to that account of Adam which describes him as androgynous, or a higher union of man and woman--a union of all the attributes of either, which, to punish Adam for a grievous fault, was subsequently sundered into the contrast between man and woman, leaving each lonely, imperfect, and vainly longing for the other.]
CHAPTER XXVI.
Ideala lingered unwillingly, but the reason of her reluctance to go was not far to seek. Now that Lorrimer knew she loved him she was ashamed to go back. It would have been bad enough had he been able to come to her; but going to him was like reversing the natural order of things and uns.e.xing herself. I suppose, however, that she forgot her shyness in her desire to be with him as the time went on, and the effort it cost her to conquer her fear and go to him was not so dreadful as the blank she would have been obliged to face had she stayed away. At all events, she fixed a day at last, and one morning she announced to us, sadly enough, that on the morrow she must say farewell. She made the announcement just after breakfast, and Claudia rose and left the room without a word. My sister had never been able to speak to Ideala on the subject, but she did not cease to urge me to expostulate, and she had suggested many arguments which had affected Ideala, and made her unhappy, but without altering her determination.
I could not find a word to say to her that morning, and during the slow hours of the long day that dragged itself on so wearily for all of us, nothing new occurred to me.
"It will be a relief when it is over," I said to my sister.
"Yes," she answered; "it is worse than death."
In the evening she came to my study and said: "Ideala is alone in the south drawing-room. I wish you would go to her, and make a last effort to dissuade her."
I consented, hopelessly, and went.
Ideala was standing in a window, looking out listlessly. She was very pale, and I could see that she had been weeping. I sat down near the fire; and presently she came and sat on the floor beside me, and laid her head against my knee. In all the years of my love for her she had never been so close to me before, and I was glad to let her rest a long, long time like that.
"Were you happy while you were with Lorrimer, Ideala?" I asked at last.
She did not answer at once, and when she did, it was almost in a whisper.
"No, never quite happy till this last time," she said; "never entirely at ease, even. It was when I left him, when I was alone and could think of him, that the joy came."
"There was nothing real in your pleasure, then," I went on; "it was purely imaginary--due to your trick of idealising everything and everybody, you care for?"
"I do not know," she said.
"Do you think it was the same with him?" I asked again--"I mean all along. Did it always make him happy to have you there?"
"I cannot tell," she said. "Yes, I think at times he was glad. But a word would alter his mood, and then he would grow sad and silent."
"Even on the last occasion?"
"No, not on the last occasion. He was happy then"--and she smiled at the recollection--"ah, so happy! It was like new life to him, he was so young, so fresh, so glad--like a boy."
"But before, when his moods varied so often, did it ever seem to you that he was troubled and dissatisfied with himself? that the intimacy had begun on his part under a misapprehension, and that when he began to know you better, he had tried to end it, and save you, by not seeing you on that occasion?"
"Ah, _that occasion_ again!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I forgot to tell you, but I asked for an explanation just to satisfy you. Here it is!" And she took a note from her pocket-book and handed it to me. It was one which she had written to him.
"I do not understand," I said.