"Read it," she answered, "and you will find I asked him to expect me on _Monday_, the 26th. It was a clerical error. Tuesday was the 26th, and I went on Tuesday. He waited for me the whole long Monday, and that night he had to set off suddenly for the Continent on business connected with the Great Hospital. He went, wondering what had detained me, and expecting an explanation. When he returned he inquired, but n.o.body could tell him whether I had been or not. So he waited, and waited, as I did, expecting to hear, and as much perplexed and distressed as I was, and as proud, for he never thought of writing to me--nor did he think of looking at my note again until I wrote the other day, and then he discovered the mistake. Now, are you satisfied?"
"About that--yes," I answered, reluctantly. It was no relief to end him blameless.
"But what did he mean when he talked of conscience and scruples?"
"He used to laugh at my "troublesome conscience," as he called it," she answered, evasively.
"Would he have known you had a conscience, do you think, if he had had none himself?" I asked her. "Did he ever say anything that showed he was yielding to a strong inclination which he could not justify and would not conquer?"
"Oh, no!" she said; then added, undecidedly: "at least--he did say once: "Of course, in the opinion of the world the thing cannot be justified," but then he went on as if it had slipped from him involuntarily: "Bah! I am only doing as other men do.""
"Which shows he was not exactly satisfied to be only as other men are."
"That is what I have often told you," she said; "his ideal of life, both for himself and others, is the highest possible, and he suffers when he falls below it, or even belies himself with a word."
"Pa.s.sion never lasts, and love does not lead to evil," I continued, meditatively; "if you love him, Ideala, how will you bear to feel that he has degraded himself by degrading you?"
"Oh! do not speak like that!" she exclaimed. "There is no degradation in love. It is sin that degrades, and sin is something that corrupts our minds, is it not? and makes us unfit for any good work, and unwilling to undertake any. This is very different."
"Ideala, do you remember telling me once that you had a strange feeling about yourself? that you thought you would be made to go down into some great depth of sin and suffering, in order to learn what it is you have to teach?"
"Ah, yes!" she answered, "but I have not gone down. I must obey my own conscience, not yours; and my conscience tells me the thing is right which you hold to be wrong. I am quite willing to believe it would be wrong for you, but for me it is clearly right. You said the other day he had lowered me. What a fiction that is! In what have I changed for the worse? Do I fail in any duty of life since I knew him in which I previously succeeded? Oh, no! he has not lowered me! Love like this rounds a life and brings it to perfection; it could not wreck it."
"But, Ideala, you are going to fail in a duty; you are going to fail in the most important duty of your life--your duty to society."
"I owe nothing to society," she answered, obstinately.
"I have always admired you," I pursued, "for not letting your own experience warp your judgment. Oh, what a falling-off is here! I have heard you wish to be something more than an independent unit of which no account need be taken. How can we, any of us, say we owe nothing to society, when we owe every pleasure in life to it? Do we owe nothing to those who have gone before, and whom we have to thank for the music, the painting, the poetry, and all the arts which would leave a big blank in _your_ life, Ideala, if they ceased to exist? You would have been a mere savage now, without refinement enough to appreciate that rose at your waistbelt, but for the labour and self-denial which the hundreds and thousands who lived, and loved, and suffered in order to make you what you are have bestowed on you, and on all of us. You would not say, if you thought a moment, that society had done nothing for you; and no one can honestly think that they owe it nothing in return. It seems to me that a rigid observance of the laws which hold society together, and make life possible for all of us, and pleasant for some, is the least we can do; and do you know, Ideala, when a woman ever thinks of doing what you propose to do, she has already gone down to a low depth--of ingrat.i.tude, if of nothing else."
"I do not propose to do anything that will injure any one," she answered, coldly. "I am free, am I not, to dispose of myself as I like --to give myself to whomsoever I please?"
"We are none of us free in that sense of the word," I replied.
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is, and G.o.d the soul.
You are, as I know you have desired to be, part of a system, and an important part. All the toil and trouble of the world, and all the work which began with the life of man, is directed towards one great end-- the doing away with sin and suffering, and the establishment of purity and peace. And this work seems almost hopeless, not because the mult.i.tude do not approve of it, but because individuals are cowardly, and will not do their share of it. Every act of yours has a meaning; it either helps or hinders, what is being done to further this, the object of life. Lately, Ideala, you have been talking wildly, without for a moment considering the harm you may be doing. You have expressed opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what?
Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end, do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they should press hardly on individuals occasionally; but it is clearly the duty of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community at large."
"I do not understand your morality," she said. "Do you think that, although I love another man, it would be right for me to go back and live with my husband?"
"Right, but, under the circ.u.mstances, not advisable. And, at any rate, nothing would make it moral for you to go to that other man."
"Oh! do not fill my mind with doubt," she pleaded, piteously. "I love him. Let me go."
I did not answer her, and after a while she began again, pa.s.sionately-- "We _are_ free agents in these things. Individuals _must_ know what is best for themselves. If I devote my life to him, as I propose, who would be hurt by it? Should I be less pure-minded, and would he be less upright in all his dealings? When things can be legally right though morally wrong, can they not also be morally right though legally wrong?"
"I have already tried to show you, Ideala," I answered, preparing to go over the old ground again, patiently, "that we none of us stand alone, that we are all part of this great system, and that, in cases like yours, individuals must suffer, must even be sacrificed, for the good of the rest. When the sacrifice is voluntary, we call it n.o.ble."
"If I go to him I shall have sacrificed a good deal."
"You will have sacrificed others, not yourself. He is all the world to you, Ideala; the loss would be nothing to the gain"--she hid her face in her hands--"and what is required of you is self-sacrifice. And surely it would be happier in the end for you to give him up now, than to live to feel yourself a millstone round his neck."
"I do not understand you," she said, looking up quickly.
"The world, you see, will know nothing of the fine sentiments which made you determine to take this step," I said. "You will be spoken of contemptuously, and he will be "the fellow who is living with another man"s wife, don"t you know," and that will injure him in many ways."
"Do you think so?" she asked, anxiously.
"I know it," I replied. "And look at it from that or any other point of view you like, and you must see you are making a mistake. A woman in your position sets an example whether she will or not, and even if all your best reasons for this step were made public, you would do harm by it, for there are only too many people apt enough as it is at finding specious excuses for their own shortcomings, who would be glad, if they dared, to do likewise. And you would not gain your object after all.
You would neither be happy yourself, nor make Lorrimer happy. People like you are sensitive about their honour--it is the sign of their superiority; and the indulgence of love, even at the moment, and under the most favourable circ.u.mstances of youth, beauty, and intellectual equality, does not satisfy such natures, if the indulgence be not regulated and sanctified by all that men and women have devised to make their relations moral."
This was my last argument, and when I had done she sat there for a long time silent, resting her head against my knee, and scarcely breathing.
She was fighting it out with herself, and I thought it best to leave her alone--besides, I had already said all there was to say; repet.i.tion would only have irritated her, and there was nothing now for it but to wait.
Outside, I could hear the dreary drip of raindrops; somewhere in the room a clock ticked obtrusively; but it was long past midnight, and the house was still. I thought that only the night and silence watched with me, and waited upon the suffering of this one poor soul.
At last she moved, uttering a low moan, like one in pain.
"I do see it," she said, almost in a whisper; "and I am willing to give him up."
"G.o.d in His mercy help you!" I prayed.
"And forgive me," she answered, humbly.
She was quite exhausted, and pa.s.sively submitted when I led her to her room. I closed the shutters to keep out the cheerless dawn, and made the fire burn up, and lit the lamps. She sat silently watching me, and did not seem to think it odd that I should do this for her. She clung to me then as a little child clings to its father, and, like a father, I ministered to her, reverently, then left her, as I hoped, to sleep.
My sister opened her door as I pa.s.sed. She was dressed, and had been watching, too, the whole night long.
"Well?" she asked.
I kissed her. "It is well," I answered; and she burst into tears.
"Can I go to her now?" she said.
"Yes, go." I went to Claudia"s room, and waited. After a long time she returned.
"She is quiet at last," she told me, sorrowfully.
And so the long night ended.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Ideala had returned to us quite under the impression that if she took the step she proposed we should think it right to cast her off; and that little tentative: "Must I give you up?" was the only protest she had offered. But such was not our intention. Far from it! We do not forsake our friends in their bodily ailments, and we are poor, pitiful, egotistical creatures indeed when we desert them for their mental and moral maladies, leaving them to struggle against them and fight them out or succ.u.mb to them alone, according to their strength and circ.u.mstances. The world will forsake them fast enough, and that is sufficient punishment--if they deserve punishment. Of course, Ideala could never have come back to us as an honoured guest again, after taking such a step, but she would have continued to fill the same place in our affections, if not in our esteem.
"And you will drive everybody else away, and keep the house empty all the year round, in order to be able to receive her--_and_ Mr. Lorrimer-- whenever they choose to visit us," Claudia had declared when we discussed the subject.