In the days that followed a singular change came over Ideala. No
external circumstance affected her. She moved like one in a dream;
thought had ceased for her; all life was one delicious sensation, and
at times she could not bear the delight of it in silence. She would
tell it in low songs in the twilight; she would make her piano speak it
in a hundred chords: and it would burst from her in some sudden glow of
enthusiasm that made people wonder--the apparent cause being too slight
to account for it. While this lasted nothing hurt her. She saw the
sufferings of others unmoved. She met her husband's brutalities with a
smiling countenance, and bore the physical discomfort of a bad sprain
without much consciousness of pain. And she knew nothing of time, and
never asked herself to what she owed this joy.
The utter forgetfulness of everything that came upon her when she was
alone was almost incredible. One evening she spent two hours in walking
a distance she might easily have done in forty minutes. She had been to
see a sick person, and when she found herself in the fresh air, after
having spent some time in a small, close room, the dream-like feeling
came over her, and her spirit was uplifted with inexpressible gladness.
The summer air was sweet and warm, a light rain was falling, and she
took off her hat and wandered on, looking up, but noting nothing, and
singing Schubert's "Hark! hark! the lark," to herself softly as she
came. A man standing at a cottage door begged her to go in and shelter.
She looked at him, and her face was radiant--the rain-drops sparkled on
her hair. He was only a working man, "clay--and common clay," but the
light in her eyes passed through him, and the memory of her stayed with
him, a thing apart from his daily life, held sacred, and not to be
described. A man might live a hundred years and never see a woman look
like that.
"I did not know it was raining," she said. "It is only light rain, and
the air is so sweet, and the glow down there in the west is like
heaven. How beautiful life is!"
"Ay, lady!" he answered, and stood there spellbound, watching her as
she passed on slowly, and listening to her singing as she went.
A few days later she saw Lorrimer again. She found him in his room this
time. He knew she was coming, and flushed with pleasure when he met her
at the door. Ideala was not nervous; it all seemed a matter of course
to her now. The books he had got for her from the library were where
she had left them. He placed a chair for her beside his writing-table,
and then went on with his own work. She had understood that she was to
read in the library, but she did not think of that now; she simply
acquiesced in this arrangement as she would have done in any other he
might have made for her. A secretary was busy in another part of the
room when she entered, but after awhile he left them. Then Lorrimer
looked up and smiled.
"You are looking better to-day," he said. "Tell me what you have been
doing since I saw you."
"Lotus-eating," she answered. "How lovely the summer is! Since I saw
you I have wanted to do nothing but rest and dream."
"You have been happy, then?"
"Yes."
"Is he kind to you?"
"Oh--he! He is just the same. There is no change in my life. The change
is in me."
"Then you mean to be happy in spite of him? I call that the beginning
of wisdom. I know two other ladies who hate their husbands, and they
manage to enjoy life pretty well. And I don't see why _you_ should
be miserable always because you happen to have married the wrong man.
How was it you married him? Were you very much in love with him?"
"No, not in the least."
"Spooney, then?"
"Not even 'spooney,' as you call it. I was very young at the time. Very
young girls know nothing of love and marriage."
"Very young," he repeated thoughtfully. He was drawing figures with his
pen on the blotting-paper before him. "But why did you marry him,
then?"
"I can give you no reason--except that I was not happy at home."
"You all say that," slipped from him, with a gesture of impatience.
"I wish I had been more original," said Ideala.
She took up her book again, and he resumed his writing, and for some
time there was silence. But Ideala's attention wandered. She began to
examine the room, which was, as usual, in a state of disorder. One side
of it was lined with cabinets of various sizes and periods. Labels
indicated the contents of some of them. Only one picture hung on that
side of the room--it was the portrait of a gentleman--but several
others stood on the ground against the cabinets. The walls were painted
some dark colour. A Japanese screen was drawn across the door, and
beside it was a hard narrow settee covered with dark green velvet.
Books were piled upon it, and heavily embroidered foreign stuffs, and
near it a number of Japanese drawings stood on a stand. The mantelpiece
was crowded with an odd mixture of china and other curios, all looking
as if they had just been unpacked. Above it another picture was hung, a
steel engraving. The writing-table by which they sat was nearly in the
middle of the room. In the window was another table, covered also with
a miscellaneous collection of curios; and on every other available
article of furniture books were piled. The high backs of the chairs
were elaborately carved, the seats being of the same green velvet as
the settee. A high wire-guard surrounded the fire place, and this
unusual precaution made one think, that the contents of the room must
be precious. The occupant of this apartment might have been an artist,
a man of letters, or a virtuoso--probably the latter; but whatever he
was, it was evident that his study was a workshop, and not a showroom.
From the room Ideala looked to her companion. He was writing rapidly,
and seemed absorbed in his subject. He was frowning slightly, his face
was pale and set, and he looked older by ten years than when he had
spoken last, and seemed cold and unimpassioned as a judge; but Ideala
thought again that the face was a fine one.
Presently he became conscious of her earnest gaze. He did not look up,
but every feature softened, and a warm glow spread from forehead to
chin; it was as if a deep shadow had been lifted, and a younger, but
less noble, man revealed.
"How you change!" Ideala exclaimed--"not from day to day, but from
moment to moment. You are like two men. I wish I could get behind that
horrid veil of flesh that hides you from me. I want to see your soul."
He smiled. "You are getting tired," he said. "Do let me persuade you to
come and have some lunch. When you begin to speculate, I know you have
done enough."
But Ideala could not go through the ordeal of who should pay for lunch
again. She preferred to starve. The _camaraderie_ between them was
mental enough to be manlike already, but only as long as there was no
question of material outlay.
"Mayn't I stay here and read?" she said. "I can have something by-and-
by, when I want it. Do go and leave me."
And he was obliged to go at last, wondering somewhat at her want of
appetite.
When he returned she was still working diligently, and they spent the
rest of the afternoon together, reading, writing, and chatting, until
it was time for Ideala to go. Lorrimer saw her into her train, and
fixed another day for her to return and go on with her work.
And so the thing became a settled arrangement. Whenever she could spare
the time she went and worked beside him, and he was always the same,
kindly, considerate, helping her now and then, but not, as a rule,
interfering with her. She just came and went as she pleased, and as she
would have done had he been her brother. Sometimes they were alone
together for hours, sometimes his secretary worked in the room with
them, and always there were people coming and going. There was nothing
to suggest a thought of impropriety, and they were soon on quarrelling
terms, falling out about a great many things--which is always the sign
of a good understanding; but after the first they touched on no
dangerous subject for a long time. At last, however, there came a
change. Ideala noticed one day that Lorrimer was restless and
irritable.
"Am I interfering with your work to-day?" she said. "Do tell me. Any
other day will suit me just as well."
"Oh, no," he answered. "I am lazy, that is all. How are you getting on?
Let me see." And he took the paper she was engaged upon, and looked at
it.
She watched him, and saw that he was not reading, although he held it
before his eyes for some time. He was paler than usual, and there was a
look of indecision in his face, very unlike its habitual expression,
which was serene and self-contained.
Looking up all at once, he met her eyes fixed on him frankly and
affectionately, but he did not respond to her smile.
"How do you suppose all this is going to end?" he said, abruptly.
"Won't it do?" she answered, thinking of her paper. "Had I better give
it up, or re-write it?"
He threw the paper down with a gesture of impatience, and got up; and
then, as if ashamed of his irritability, he took it again, and gave it
back to her. In doing so his hand accidentally touched hers.
"How cold you are," he said. "Let me warm your hands for you."
"They are benumbed," she answered, letting him take them and rub them.
After a moment he said, without looking at her, "Do you know, it is
very good of you to come here like this."
"Why?" she asked. "It suits my own convenience."
"I know. But it is refreshing to find some one who will suit their own
convenience so." "That sounds as if it were not the right thing to do!"
she exclaimed.
"Nonsense!" he answered. "You misunderstand me."
Ideala withdrew her hands hastily, and half rose.
"What is the matter?" he said. "Come, don't be idle! You should have
mastered that book by this time."
But Ideala was disturbed. "I can't read," she said. "Tell me what you
thought of me when I came to you that first day? I fancied you were
old. And I have been afraid since, in spite of your cousin's
suggestion, that you may have considered it odd of me to introduce
myself like that."
"Oh, it is quite customary here," he answered. "But even if it had not
been, we can't all be bound by the same common laws. The ordinary stars
and planets have an ordinary course mapped out for them, and they
daren't diverge an inch. But every now and then a comet comes and goes
its own eccentric way, and all the lesser lights wonder and admire and
let it go."
"That would be very fine for us if only we were comets among the
stars," she said.
"Oh, you might condescend to claim a kindred with them," he answered
lightly.
"The only heavenly body I ever feel akin to is one of those meteors
that flash and fall," she said. "They go their own way, too, do they
not, and are lost?" "There is no question of being lost here," he
interposed. "The most scrupulous have made an exception in favour of
one person, and the world has not blamed them. After having endured so
much you are entitled to some relaxation. I should do as I liked now,
if I were you."
She looked at him inquiringly. It seemed as if he were not expressing
himself, but trying the effect of what he said upon her.
He was sitting in his usual place now, drawing figures on the blotting-
pad.
"You have read, I suppose?" he added, after a pause, and without
looking up. "I wish I had never read anything," she exclaimed
passionately. "I wish I could neither read, write, nor think."
But the trouble now was, if only she could have recognised it, that she
did not think; she only felt.
She got up and went to the mantelpiece; he remained where he was,
sitting with his back to her. Presently she began to look at the china,
absently at first, but afterwards with interest. There were some new
specimens, just unpacked, and all crowded together.
"What a lovely lotus-leaf," she said at last. "Satsuma, I suppose--no,
Kioto; but what a good specimen. And it is broken, too. What a pity! I
should so like to mend it."
"Would you?" he said, rousing himself. "Then you shall."
He went to one of the cabinets and got out the materials, and in a few
minutes they were bending busily over the broken plaque, as interested
and eager about it as if no subject of more vital importance had ever
distracted them. They were like two children together, often as
quarrelsome, always as inconsequent; happy hard at work, and equally
happy idling; apt to torment each other at times about trifles, but
always ready to forget and forgive, and with that habit in common of
forgetting everything utterly but the occupation of the moment.
They talked on now for a little longer, but not brilliantly. They were
both considered brilliant in conversation, but somehow on these
occasions neither of them shone. I suppose when two such bright and
shining lights come together they put each other out.
Then it was time for Ideala to go. A bitter wind met them in the face
on their way to the station, and before they had gone far Ideala
noticed that Lorrimer's mood had changed again. His face grew pale, his
step less elastic, his manner cold and formal. All the brightness, all
the sympathy, which made their intimacy seem the most natural, because
it was the pleasantest, thing in the world to Ideala, had gone; he was
like a man seized with a sudden fit of remorse, disgusted with himself,
and moved to repent.
"I should bear with your husband, if I were you," he said at last,
breaking the silence. "He behaves like a brute, but I dare say he can't
help it. A man can't help his temperament, and probably you provoke him
more than you think."
Ideala was surprised, it was so long since they had mentioned her
husband. "I fear I am provoking," she answered, humbly. "But how am I
to help it? I have tried so hard, and for so long, to be patient. And I
only want to do right."
They were parting then, and he looked down at her in silence for some
seconds, and when Ideala saw the expression of his face, her heart
sank. In that one moment she realised all that his friendship had been
to her, and foresaw the terrible blank there would be for her if it
should ever end. That there was any danger, that there could be
anything but friendship between men and women who must not marry, had
not even yet occurred to her. Her intimacy with myself had prepared the
way for Lorrimer, and made this new intimacy seem also perfectly right.
"What is the matter with you to-day?" she said. "What spirit of
dissatisfaction has got hold of you?"
"I _am_ dissatisfied," he said, raising his hat, and brushing his
hand back over his hair. Then he looked at her. "Why don't you help
me?" he asked.
"How can I help you?" she answered. "I don't understand you."
"You ought to. I wish to goodness you did"--and then his face cleared.
"But you will come again," he added, in the old way. "I shall expect
you soon."
And so he let her go; and Ideala was glad, because an unpleasant jar
was over. She did not trouble herself about his private worries; if he
wished her to know he would tell her. Lorrimer had a temper--but then
she had known that all along; and Lorrimer was Lorrimer--that was all
about it.