"I am not bound to tell her all my doings," he protested.
"You are in honour bound not to deceive her," Beth said; "and if you deceive her it is none the less low because she does not suspect you.
On the contrary. It seems to me that one of the worst things that can happen to a man is to have docile women to deal with."
"I am grieved to hear you talk like that," he said. "I am really grieved. It shows a want of refinement that surprises and shocks me. I maintain that I do her no injury. These things can always be arranged so that no one is injured; that is all that is necessary."
"These things can never be arranged so that no one is injured," Beth replied. "We injure ourselves, if no one else. We are bound to deteriorate when we live deceitfully. How can you be honest and manly and lead a double life? The false husband in whom his wife believes must be a sneak; and for the man who rewards a good faithful wife by deceiving her, I have no term of contempt sufficiently strong."
"I am disappointed in you," he said. "I should never have suspected that you were so narrow and conventional."
"Are you prepared to defy public opinion?" Beth asked.
"No, that would be gross," he said. "Outwardly we must conform. Only the _elite_ understand these things, and only the _elite_ need know of them. You are of the _elite_ yourself; you must know, you must feel the power, the privilege conferred by a great pa.s.sion."
"Pray do not cla.s.s me with the _elite_ if pa.s.sion is what they respect," Beth said. "Pa.s.sion at the best--honourable pa.s.sion--is but the efflorescence of a mere animal function. The pa.s.sion that has no honourable object is a gaudy, unwholesome weed, rapid of growth, swift and sure to decay."
"Pa.s.sion is more than that, the pa.s.sion of which I speak. It is a great mental stimulant," he declared.
"Yes," said Beth, "pa.s.sion is a great mental stimulant--pa.s.sion resisted."
"Georges Sand, whom I would have you follow, always declared that she only wrote her best under the influence of a strong pa.s.sion," he a.s.sured her.
"But how do we know that she might not have written better than that best under some holier influence?" Beth rejoined. "George Eliot"s serener spirit appeals to me more. I believe it is only those who renounce the ruinous riot of the senses, and find their strength and inspiration in contemplation, who reach the full fruition of their powers. Ages have not talked for nothing of the pains of pa.s.sion and the pleasures of love. Love is a great ethical force; but pa.s.sion, which is compact of every element of doubt and deceit, is cosmic and brutal, a tyrant if we yield to it, but if we master it, an obedient servant willing to work. I would rather die of pa.s.sion myself, as I might of any other disease, than live to be bound by it."
Pounce, who had been pacing about the room restlessly until now, sat down by the fire, and gazed into it for a little, discomfited. He had come primed with the old plat.i.tudes, the old sophistries, the old flatteries, come to treat amicably, and found himself met with armed resistance, his flatteries and plat.i.tudes ridiculed, his sophistries exposed, and his position attacked with the confidence and courage of those who are sure of themselves.
"Have you no feeling for me?" he said at last, after a long pause, speaking somewhat hoa.r.s.ely.
"I feel sorry for you," was the unexpected answer.
"Pity is akin to love," he said.
"Pity is also akin to contempt," she rejoined. "And how can a woman feel anything else for a man who is false to the most sacred obligations? who makes vows and breaks them according to his inclination? If we make a law of our own inclinations, what a.s.surance can we give to any one that we shall ever be true?"
"I have found at last what I have yearned for all my life long," he protested. "I know I shall never waver in my devotion to you."
"That may be," she answered. "But what guarantee could you give me that _I_ should not waver? What comfort would your fidelity be if I tired of you in a month?"
Again he was discomfited, and there was another pause.
"If you did change," he said at last, "I should be the only sufferer."
Beth sat silent for a little, then she said slowly, "What you have ventured to propose to me to-night, Mr. Cayley Pounce, is no more credit to your intelligence than it is to your principles. You come here and find me living openly, in an a.s.sured position, with powerful friends, whose affection and respect for me rest on their confidence in me, and with brilliant prospects besides, as you say, which, however, depend to a great extent upon my answering to the expectations I have raised. You allow that I have some ability, some sense, and yet you offer me in exchange for all these----"
"I offer you _love_!" he exclaimed fervently.
"Love!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with contempt, "you offer me yourself for a lover, and you seek to inspire confidence in me by deceiving your wife. You would have me sacrifice a position of safety for a position of danger--one that might be changed into an invidious position by the least indiscretion--and all for what?"
"For love of you," he pleaded, "that I may help you to develop the best that is in you."
"All for the prestige of having your name a.s.sociated with mine by men about town in the event of mine becoming distinguished," she interrupted.
He winced.
"I only ask you to do what George Eliot did greatly to her advantage,"
he answered reproachfully.
"You asked me to do what Georges Sand did greatly to her detriment,"
Beth said. "George Eliot is an after-thought. And you certainly have no intention of asking me to do what she did, for she acted openly, she deceived no one, and injured no one."
"And you do not blame her?" he exclaimed with a flash of hope.
Beth answered indirectly: "When I think about that, I ask myself have Church and State arranged the relations of the s.e.xes successfully enough to convince us that they cannot be better arranged? Are marriages holier now than they were in the days when there were no churches to bless them? or happier here than in other countries where they are simple private contracts? And it seems to me that we have no historical proof that the legal bond is necessarily the holiest between man and woman, or that there is never justification for a more irregular compact. I know that "holy matrimony" is often a state of absolute degradation, especially for the woman; and I believe that two honourable people can live together honourably without the conventional bond, so long as no one else is injured, no previous compact broken. But all the same I think the legal bond is best. It is a safeguard to the family and a restraint on the unprincipled. And, at any rate, all my experience, all my thought, all my hope argue for the dignity of permanence in human relations. Anything else is bad for the individual, for the family, for the state. As civilisation, as evolution advances from lower to higher, we find it makes more and more for monogamy. Our highest types of men and women are monogamous.
Those whose contracts are lightly made and lightly broken are trivial people. That useful Oneida Creek experiment proved that the instinct, if not the ideal, of modern humanity is monogamous."
"What was that?" he asked.
"A number of people formed a community at Oneida Creek to live together in a kind of ordered promiscuity, but the experiment failed because it was found eventually that the members were living together secretly in pairs. No. The more I know of life the less I like the idea of allowing any laxity in the marriage relation. In certain cases of course there is good and sufficient reason for two people to separate. But I believe that right-minded people can generally, and almost always do, make their marriages answer. Marriage is compact of every little incident in life, it is not merely made up of one strong feeling, otherwise men and women would be as the animals who pair and part casually; therefore, if two people are disappointed in each other in some things, they must have other things in common to fall back upon. My ideal of life is love in marriage and loyal friends."
"It is interesting to hear you express these views," he said bitterly, "considering what your experience has been."
"I don"t see that my petty personal experience has anything to do with the truth of the matter," said Beth, bridling somewhat. "You really have a poor opinion of me if you think I shall allow my judgment to be warped by anything that may happen to myself. Because my own experience is not a happy one, you would have me declare that family life is a mistake! Doubtless many an outcry is raised for no better reason. But do you not see yourself that the tranquil home-life is the most beautiful, the most conducive to the development of all that is best in us--that there is nothing like the delight of being a member of a large and united family. Can you come into a house like this and not see it?"
"This house was not always a model of domestic felicity," he sneered.
"That proves my point," she rejoined. "The difficulties can be lived down if people are right-minded."
"Your argument does not alter the fact that I am a miserable man," he said dejectedly.
"You were not born to be a miserable man," she answered gently, "and "we always may be what we might have been." But you have lost much ground, Alfred Cayley Pounce, since the days when you roamed about the cliffs and sandy reaches of Rainharbour with Beth Caldwell, making plans. You had your ideals then, and lived up to them. You cultivated your flowers for delight in their beauty, and went to your modelling for love of the work. You gave your flowers to your friends with an honest intention to please; you modelled with honest ambition to do good work. In those days you were above caring to cultivate the acquaintance of the best people. You had touched the higher life at that time; you had felt such rapture in it as has never come to you since--even among the best people--I am sure; yet you fell away; you deserted Beth--not basely, perhaps, but weakly; and you have been deteriorating ever since."
He had started straight in his chair when she mentioned Beth Caldwell, and was staring at her now with puzzled intentness.
"What do you know about Beth?" he said quickly. "Have you ever met her?"
She smiled. "I can honestly say I never have," she answered. But she looked away from him into the fire as she spoke, and he recognised the set of her head on her shoulders as she turned it; he had noted it often.
"G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "what a blind idiot I have been--Beth! Beth!" He threw himself down on his knees beside her chair, caught her hand, and covered it with kisses.
Beth s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away, and he returned embarra.s.sed to his seat and sat gazing at her for a little, then took out his handkerchief and suddenly burst into tears.
"What a mess I have made of my life!" he exclaimed. "Everything that would have been best for me has been within reach at some time or other, but I invariably took the wrong thing and let the right one go.
But, Beth, I was only a boy then, and I suffered when they separated us."
This reflection seemed to ease his mind on the subject. That she might also have suffered did not occur to him; as usual his whole concern was for himself.
"Yes, you are right, Beth," he proceeded. "I _have_ deteriorated; but "we always may be what we might have been"--and you have been sent to me again as a sign that it is not too late for me. You were my first love, my earliest ideal, and I have not changed, you see, I have been true to you; for, although I never suspected you were Beth, I recognised my rightful mate in you the moment we met. Yes, I was on the right road when we were boy and girl together, but the promise of that time has not been fulfilled. All the poetry in me has lain dormant since the days when you drew it forth. I gave up modelling when I went to the "Varsity because they didn"t care for that kind of thing in my set, you know. They were all men of position, who wouldn"t a.s.sociate with artists unless they were at the top of the tree; clever fellows, and good themselves at squibs and epigrams. If you"d ever been to the "Varsity you"d know that a man must adapt himself to his environment if he means to get on. My dream had been to make my visions of beauty visible, as you used to suggest; but I had to give that up, there was nothing else for it. Still, I was not content to do nothing, to be n.o.body; therefore, when I abandoned the clay, I took to the pen; I gave up the marble for the ma.n.u.script. Many men of position have written, you know, and so long as you didn"t mug, fellows didn"t mind. In fact, they thought you smart if they fancied you could dash things off without an effort. You understand now why I am a literary man instead of a sculptor."