"I was thinking of you," I answered, "you are such a queer girl."
"You will be still further convinced of that opinion when you know a little more about me," she said in a jocosely earnest tone. "You know I intend to go to Europe in a fortnight, ostensibly to see the time-honored sights, to gloat over venerable art, and improve my mind generally with such a broad view of experience, but Oh! what a blind that is!" she exclaimed in mock indignation. "Of course everybody knows that I am being sent out to seek my fortune, matrimonially speaking. I am too rich, and too beautiful, and too accomplished to be thrown away upon a self-made Canadian. I must go in search of patrician smiles across the sea, and win them for a plausible cause."
She curled her lips into an expression of supreme disgust, as she finished, and began to toy with the end of one golden braid.
"You don"t mean half of what you say, Alice," I interposed quietly.
"Since you are not satisfied with all the good things the G.o.ds have provided so far, I know only one other that can infuse a soul into your vapid and savor less comforts. It is possible for your present gloom to be dispelled by the warmth and brightness of a sunshine that cheers the loneliest lives, and I think you can never be happy without it."
"What is it?" she asked curtly.
"Love," I answered, "honest, stable, earnest love."
"Faugh!" she exclaimed, flinging her delicate braid away from her caressing fingers, "is that all?"
"That is all, a mere trifle if you will, but it is the axis around which men"s temporal happiness revolves."
"Men"s perhaps, but not women"s," she added proudly. "I tell you what, Amey, the world waits for no one, each age has its manners, and customs, its social peculiarities and special features since the beginning of time men have had to be led by the age in which they lived, and ours is no exception. Once upon a time marriage was a contract conducted on the great principle of buying and selling.
Civilization with deft and tender fingers has smoothened away the rough and repulsive aspect of such a custom, and our ministers now ask, with a bland affectation of pastoral solicitude, "Who _giveth_ this woman away?" Giveth her! forsooth; and in nine cases out of ten how dearly is she bought! Why, we women are selling our bodies and our souls too, for that matter, every day that comes and goes. But we cannot help it," she added after a short pause, "and fortunately circ.u.mstances are trained to suit our dilemma. I shall go across the Atlantic for inspection, and if all goes well I shall return bespoken for life. I shall certainly not marry for love, and as compensation must be found somewhere, I will marry for position. I have the wealth myself."
Her words chilled me. Their tone was cold and hard. I looked at her and said half sadly,
"Alice, why do you talk like this? You have drifted into this peevish sort of pessimism without forethought. How can you deliberately sit in a shadow when the sun is shining all around you. With beauty and riches and intelligence you have the keys to a world of happiness. I cannot think why you should choose to hold this dreary outlook before your eyes. It seems a strange contrast to the popular belief that prevails about your happy condition."
She curled her thin, pretty lips into a smile of incisive sarcasm and drew a weary breath before she answered me. Then she said in a half melancholy tone:
"Yes, I know that it is the fate of rich people to be envied. I know that my different circ.u.mstances are coveted by girls that are a thousandfold happier than I, and it is a miserable thing to realize, but how can I help it? Amey, to tell you the wretched truth, I am sick of life, and if there can be respite for me in death, I wish I might die tonight. You may think this is the fruit of a gloomy mood, but it is the result of long reflection. Last night I was gay, I sang and played and chatted merrily. Men admired and flattered me, but what is left of it all to-day? Nothing but ashes. I know that what they said was not sincere, and still I remember it all with a girlish gratification. If we were always singing and dancing, and fooling one another, life might be more endurable, but these intervals of dreary re-action are a dear price for our social pleasures." She paused for a moment and then added slowly.
"Sometimes I am tempted to renounce my wordly life and go quietly into some holy retreat where all such troubles are kept at bay, and then the thought becomes repulsive when I think of how worthless I have been, and how worthless I would still be among useful women."
She laughed drearily as she uttered these words and came towards the fire saying
"What a fuss I make about a little human life, eh Amey?"
"It is right that you should," I answered gravely, "it is dearer to you I suppose than anything in the world."
She stroked my hair affectionately and we both looked into the fire.
One of her dainty slippers rested on the fender, one of her jewelled hands lay tremulously on my shoulder.
I knew that something should be said to her while this mood was on her, but what right had I to speak? I, who advocated every dreary conviction she had just uttered! I, who was so wretched and tired of my own life, what could I say to cheer or encourage her? My heart was full, but my lips were dumb. Something was telling me that there was no perfect happiness for women on earth, but I could not permit myself to express so gloomy a belief at this critical moment, when a fair, young, beautiful creature stood waiting beside me for a stimulus to hope and perseverance.
While I sat reflecting, she herself interpreted my mental soliloquy.
"This is the way with all of us, Amey," she said in a quieter and gentler tone. "I never knew a woman who, if she told the truth, could pride herself on being happy. It is beyond the narrow limits of our present sphere. The maids that wait upon us envy us and think that in our places they would have nothing left to wish for. The discontented seamstress that st.i.tches away at my expensive dresses fancies they must shelter a happy heart, whose lot she covets; and all the while I am wishing for anything else in the world besides what I have. Whether we marry or remain single, life is a burden to us. We go on from day to day wondering how we may best dispose of ourselves. And nothing ever comes of it but this miserable discontent which leaves no possible margin for hope for the morrow. If one could only make a virtue of the resignation which is thrust upon one by an undaunted destiny," she concluded with a long-drawn sigh, "one might be the better for it."
"Yes," I answered earnestly, "if one only could! I do believe that the only sweetness in life is in being good, and those only who have never practised virtue, doubt it. For myself, when I have devoted some time sincerely to my religious duties I know that I feel a better, and most certainly a happier, woman. My life has a higher aim, my ambition a safer guide, and my efforts a more stable support, but I am not always faithful to my good resolutions and I am easily won away from devotional pursuits."
"Well then, Amey, you must blame yourself if you are not thoroughly happy," Alice interrupted almost fiercely. "You have this great advantage over me. I have no religion. I never had any. I am supposed to belong to the Church which we occasionally frequent. I am supposed to take a lively interest in foreign missions and the Jews. I am supposed to sanction a doctrine which has never been explained to me; but do I? Not I. Only for the instinctive belief which I cannot help holding in G.o.d and a life to come, I would be no more than a very animal; and only for a something within me--a sort of moral regulator, which the Church calls conscience, I would never stop to question what is right or what is not. This is all the religion I have ever known. I have been brought up with the conviction that most creeds are tolerable, but that my own is the most fashionable, and it is certainly an easy one to live by, so I have never questioned it much.
I should not care to fast or abstain or kneel as much as you Catholics do. I should abhor accusing myself, in sincere humility, of my wrong-doing, or making amends for every trifling misdemeanor, and as my religion does not ask me to do anything I dislike, I cannot quarrel with it."
"Certainly not, if you are happy in it" I put in quietly.
"I am not happy in it" she answered snappishly "but I could be I dare say, if it only a.s.sumed an authority over me; if it commanded where it counsels; if it exacted where it approves only, if it bound me under pain of grievous sin as yours does."--
"Ah! if it did! if it did, it would be no longer the same religion. It would lose nine-tenths of its present advocates. However, it is not my intention to enter upon a religious dissertation. I would not disturb your present convictions deliberately for the world, but if you wanted my a.s.sistance or asked it, I should be glad to give it to you. One thing I will tell you, however, before I go" I added, rising and confronting her, "it is a deep wrong you do your soul in allowing it to be a.s.sailed by so many doubts which you do not take the trouble to satisfy. There are many like you, Alice, I know a dozen whose souls are riding the unstable surface of a religious speculation. This is tempting G.o.d, and you owe yourself the duty of satisfying every want of your inner being. There is a why and a wherefore for everything, therefore clear away the dark clouds that lie between you and Truth.
Study and read and reflect, until you can lay your hand in good faith upon your heart, and say: Now I have found the consoling truth, now my doubts have disappeared and my belief is made sure, and staunch, and consoling. That religion which shall best purify you, whose motives are entirely supernatural, which shall oblige you to exalt all humanity over yourself, which shall infuse a holy motive into your every thought, word and deed, which shall fill your life with a purpose unlike any it has. .h.i.therto known, shall make you happy here and hereafter--and if you like, you can find it with a little search."
We said no more on any subject. The afternoon was well-advanced already, and bidding her a fond good-bye, I left her with a promise to see her again before her departure for her much talked-of trip.
Leaving the Merivales" house, I wended my way in a moody silence toward my own home. The wind was rising and small snowflakes were drifting cheerlessly about in the raw wintry air. I bowed my head against the storm and plodded silently on. I was thinking of many things the while, and allowing myself to become absorbed in an earnest rehearsal of my own prosy life. Other people pa.s.sed by me with better reasons to sigh I am sure, and yet mine was a deep-drawn breath, full of meaning and misery, which I would have controlled had I not been so distracted and absent-minded at the time.
I doubt if anything could have awakened me from my reverie so suddenly and so effectually as the measured slow accent which broke upon my ear at this juncture.
"How do you do Amey?"
Simple enough: a mere conventional greeting if you will, but I felt it vibrate through my whole system. I looked up and saw Mr. Dalton standing before me. The way was narrow, and he had moved aside into the deep snow to let me pa.s.s. Involuntarily, I stood and looked up at him. I felt more kindly toward him than I had ever done before, I knew not why. In some vague uncertain way he had been a.s.sociated with my recent thoughts, not a.s.serting himself as any distinct feature in connection with my cogitation, but underlying it with a merely insinuated influence that made his presence felt in a secret, undetermined sort of way. I had been wondering about him and questioning his motives within myself as I plodded through the sprinkled streets and now, he was standing before me, a real personage, the substance of a dreamy memory of him which I had been dwelling upon since my departure from the Merivales".
When we had stopped and saluted one another an awkward silence ensued.
I felt as if he had read my secret in my tell-tale countenance, but his face wore that pa.s.sive look it always wore and his voice was calm and commonplace as usual as he asked.
"Are you going home now?"
"Yes" I answered, "I have been visiting Alice Merivale. I had luncheon with her and a little talk."
"I will go back with you if you like," said he turning around to follow me.
I a.s.sented of course, and we hurried on to where the path was wider that we might be companionable and walk side by side.
"You had a little talk you say? I fling discretion to the winter wind, and ask, what about?"
"It is a wonder you don"t say whom about" I returned with some emphasis.
"It is" he answered. "I must have been distracted indeed not to have put it in that way, however, it will do now, will it not?"
"Quite as well" said I, "for early or late the question can elicit no definite answer, as we talked of no one."
"What?"
"Surprising, isn"t it?" I asked satirically, "nevertheless it is the startling truth."
"Maybe so," said he softly. "I thought on the day after an event such as last night"s young girls had a great deal to say in confidence about people and things. I see I have been mistaken, although--"
"Although what?"
"Well--although last night lay itself particularly open to an interesting criticism, I think."
"Musical evenings generally do I think."
"I mean everything else but the music."