"I"m hungry," she said, laughing, "and I really don"t see why I shouldn"t eat."
"You have no feeling for me," he complained.
"I have a sort of feeling that you are posing," she answered bluntly; "and I wish you wouldn"t. You"d better have some sandwiches."
"How terribly complex life is!" he muttered.
"Life is pretty much what we make of it by the way we live it," she rejoined, taking another sandwich. "We are what we allow ourselves to be. The complexities come of wrong thinking and wrong doing. Right and wrong are quite distinct; there is no mistaking one for the other. In any dilemma we have only to think what is right to be done, and to do it, and there is an end of all perplexities and complexities.
Principle simplifies everything."
"I see you have never loved," he declared, "or you would not think the application of principle such a simple thing."
"It is principle that makes love last," Beth answered, "and introduces something permanent into this weary world of change. There is nothing in life so well worth living for as principle; the most exquisite form of pleasure is to be found in the pain of sacrificing one"s inclinations in order to live up to one"s principles--so much so that in time, when principle and inclination become identical, and we cease to feel tempted, something of joy is lost, some gladness that was wont to mingle with the trouble."
"But principles themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and exceptional circ.u.mstances to which common principles are inapplicable, or for which they are inadequate."
"That is the hypocrisy of the vicious," Beth said, with her eyes fixed meditatively on the fire, "the people who lay down excellent principles, and publicly profess them for the sake of standing well with society, but privately make exceptions for themselves in any arrangement that may suit their own convenience. Your people of "exceptional temperament" settle moral difficulties by not allowing any moral consideration to clash with their inclinations, and misery comes of it. The plea of exceptional character, exceptional circ.u.mstances, exceptional temperament, and what not, is merely another way of expressing exceptional selfishness and excusing exceptional self-indulgence."
"Surely _you_ are not content to be a mere slave to social convention!" he exclaimed.
"I am talking of fundamental principles, not of social conventions,"
she replied; "please to discriminate. Self-control is not slavery, but emanc.i.p.ation; to control our pa.s.sions makes us lords of ourselves and free of our most galling bonds--the bonds of the flesh."
"What a drawback the want of--er--a proper philosophic training is,"
he observed. "Culture does a great deal. It makes us more modest, for one thing. I don"t suppose you know, for instance, that you are setting up an opinion of your own in opposition to such men as Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer maintained that as the man of genius gave his whole life for the profit of humanity, he had a license of conduct which was not accorded to the rest of mankind."
"If culture leaves us liable to be taken in by a false postulate of any man"s, however well turned the postulate or able the man, then I have no respect for culture. The fact that Schopenhauer said such a thing does not prove it true. An a.s.sertion like that is a mere matter of opinion. Half the worry in the world is caused by differences of opinion. Let us have the facts and form our own opinions. Have the men of genius who allowed themselves license of conduct been any the better for it? the happier? the greater? Schopenhauer himself, for instance!" She smiled at him with honest eyes when she had spoken, and took another sandwich. "But don"t let us talk sophistry and silliness," she proceeded, "nor the kind of abstract that serves as a cover for unrighteousness. Those tricks don"t carry conviction to my uncultivated mind. I know how they"re done."
"You are lowering yourself in my estimation," he said severely.
"And what comes after that?" she asked.
He shook his head and gazed at her reproachfully. "How can you be so trivial," he said, "in a moment like this?--you who are situated even as I am. If we were to die now, in six months it would be as though we had never been. No one would remember us."
"But what have we done for any one," Beth asked, in her equable way, "that we should be specially remembered?"
He made no reply, and Beth went on with the sandwiches.
"I thought," he began at last, "I did think that you at least would understand and feel for me."
Beth stopped eating and considered a moment.
"Are you in any real trouble?" she asked at last.
He rose and began to pace up and down. "I will tell you," he said, "and leave you to judge for yourself."
Beth looked somewhat ruefully at the tray, and wished that the conversation had been more suited to the satisfaction of an honest appet.i.te.
"I have made it plain to you what my marriage is without blaming anybody," he proceeded. "It is the rock upon which all my hopes were wrecked. I found my ideal. I won her like a man. I haven"t a word to say against her. She is a woman who might have made any ordinary man happy; but she has been no help to me. It is not her fault. She has done her best. And it is not my fault."
"Then whose fault is it?" said Beth; "it must be somebody"s. I think of marriage as I think of life; it is pretty much what people choose to make it. It does not fail when husband and wife have good principles, and live up to them; and good manners in private as well as in public--not to mention high ideals. When we are not happy in the intimate relations of life, it is generally for some trivial reason--as often as not because we don"t take the trouble to make ourselves agreeable, as because we fail in other duties. I consider it a duty to be agreeable. In married life happiness depends on loyalty, to begin with, the loyalty that will not even let its thoughts stray.
All that we want in everyday intercourse is truth and affection, kindness, consideration, and unvarying politeness. If people practised these as a duty from the first, sympathy would eventually come of the effort. Marriage is the state that develops the n.o.blest qualities, and that is why happily married people are the best worth knowing, the most delightful to live amongst. You have no fault to find with your wife, therefore the fault must be in yourself if you are not happy. Do your duty like a man, and cure yourself of it."
"It surprises me to hear you talk in that way," he exclaimed, "you who have suffered so much yourself!"
"I make no pretence of having suffered," she answered. "I have no patience with people who do. We have our destiny in our own hands to make or mar, most of us. If we fail in one thing we shall succeed in another. Life is a fertile garden, full of plants that bud and blossom and bear fruit not once but every season while it lasts. If the crop of happiness fails one year, we should set to work bravely, and cultivate it all the more diligently for the next."
"All this is beside the mark," he responded peevishly. "You are offering me the generalisations that only apply to ordinary people.
Allowance _must_ be made for exceptional natures. Look at me! I tell you if I had met the right woman, I should have been at the top of the tree by this time. I have the greatest respect for woman. I believe that her part in life is to fertilise the mind of man; and if the able man does not find the right woman for this purpose, he must remain sterile, and the world will be the loser. I never knew such a woman till I met you; but in you I have discovered one rich in all womanly attributes, mental, moral, and physical; and, beyond these, dowered also with genius, the divine gift--the very woman to help a man to do his best."
"And what is the man going to do for me?" Beth inquired with a twinkle in her eyes.
"He would surround you with every comfort, every luxury--jewels----"
"Like a ballet-girl!" she interjected. "I am really afraid you are old-fashioned. You begin by offering me gewgaws--the paltry price women set on themselves in the days of their intellectual infancy. We know our value better now."
"You should have all that an ideal woman ought to have," he put in.
"What more can a woman require?"
"She would like to know what all she ought to have consists of," Beth replied. "As a rule, a man"s ideal woman is some one who will make him comfortable; and he thinks he has done all that is necessary for her when he allows her to contribute to his happiness."
"Ah, be serious!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "You should be above playing in that cruel way with a man who is in earnest. Hear what I have to say.
Remember _we_ are the people who make history. You talk about knowing your own value! You do not know it. Without me you never will know it.
You do not know what is being said already about your unpublished work. Those who have read it tell me you promise to be to England what Georges Sand was to France when she appeared, a new light on the literary horizon. But where would Georges Sand have been without De Musset? They owe half their prestige to each other. While they were alive every one talked of them, and now that they are dead reams are written about them. Let us also go down to posterity together. All I want is you; what you want is me. Will you--will you let me be to you--De Musset?"
"What you really do want," said Beth, "is a sense of humour."
"For G.o.d"s sake, do not be trivial!" he exclaimed. "You cannot think what this means to me--how I have set my heart on it--how I already seem to hear the men at the clubs mention my name and yours when I pa.s.s. Night after night I have paced up and down outside this house, looking up at your window, thinking it all out."
Beth flushed angrily. "I consider that a most improper proceeding,"
she said, "and I do not know how you can excuse it to yourself."
"I--much may be excused when a man feels as strongly as I do," he protested.
"And how about your wife?" said Beth, "where do you place her in your plans? Has she no feelings to be considered?"
"I shall not hurt her feelings, I a.s.sure you, I never do," he answered. "I keep her in a quiet country place so that she may hear no gossip, and I excuse my long absences from home on the plea of work.
She understands that my interests would suffer if I were not on the spot."
"In other words, you lie to your wife," said Beth, aghast at the shabby deceit.
"That is scarcely polite language," he rejoined in an offended tone.
"It is correct language," she retorted. "We shall understand what we are talking about much better if we call things by their right names.
But are you never afraid of what your wife may be driven to in the dulness of the country, while you are here in town, dancing attendance on other men"s wives?"
"Never in the least," he answered complacently. "She is entirely devoted to me and to her duty. Her faith in me is absolute."
"And so you deceive her."