Ideala often recurred to the subject of work for women.
"There are so many thousands of us," she said, "who have no object in
life, and nothing to make us take it seriously. My own is a case in
point. I am not necessary, even to my husband. There is nothing I am
bound to do for him, or that he requires of me, nothing but to be
agreeable when he is with me, which would not interfere with a serious
occupation if I had one, and is scarcely interest enough in life for an
energetic woman. My household duties take, on an average, half an hour
a day; and everything in our house is done regularly, and well done. My
social duties may be got through at odd moments, and the more of a
pastime I make them the better I fulfil them; and, with the exception
of these, there is nothing in my life that I cannot have done for me by
some one better able to do it than I am. And even if I had children I
should not be much more occupied, for the things they ought to learn
from their mothers are best taught by example. For all practical
purposes, parents, as a rule, are bad masters for any but very young
children. They err on the side of over severity or the reverse. So you
see I have no obligations of consequence, and there is, therefore,
nothing in my life to inspire a sense of responsibility. And all this
seems to me a grievous waste of Me. I remember Lord Wensum telling me,
when we discussed this subject, that he was travelling once with a
well-known editor, and, noticing the number of villas that had sprung
up of late years along the whole line of rail they were on, he said: 'I
wonder what the ladies in those villas do with their time? I suppose
their social duties are limited, and they are too well off to be
obliged to trouble themselves about anything.' 'It is the existence of
those villas,' the editor answered, 'that makes the present profession
of the novelist possible.' But I think," said Ideala, "that those women
might find something better to do than to make a profession for
novelists."
"But you do a good deal yourself, Ideala," I ventured.
"Yes, in a purposeless way. All my acts are isolated; it would make
little difference if they had never been done."
"Then you are not content, after all, to be merely a poem?" I said,
maliciously. "You would like to do as well as to be?"
She laughed. Then, after a little, she said earnestly: "Do you know, I
always feel as if I _could_ do something--teach something--or help
others in a small way with some work of importance. I never believe I
was born just to live and die. But I have a queer feeling about it. I
am sure I shall be made to go down into some great depth of sin and
misery myself, in order to learn what it is I have to teach."
She loved music, and painting, and poetry, and science, and none of her
loves were barren. She embraced them each in turn with an ardour that
resulted in the production of an offspring--a song, a picture, a poem,
or book on some most serious subject, and all worthy of note. But she
was inconstant, and these children of her thought or fancy were
generally isolated efforts that marked the culminating point of her
devotion, and lessened her interest if they did not exhaust her
strength.
Perhaps, though, I wrong her when I call her inconstant. It seems to me
now that each new interest was a step by which she mounted upwards,
learning to sympathise practically and perfectly with all men in their
work as she passed them on her way to find her own.