Ideala was unable to exert herself for many days after this. At last,
however, she began to think of work again, and of Lorrimer. She was
uneasy about him. He had not been himself on that last occasion.
Something was wrong, she could not think what, but she felt anxious;
and out of her anxiety arose an intense longing to see him again. So
she wrote, first of all fixing the twenty-third for her visit; but when
the day came she found herself unequal to the exertion, and wrote
again, begging him to expect her on the twenty-sixth instead.
He did not reply. He was generally overwhelmed with correspondence, and
she had therefore begged him not to do so if the days she named suited
him.
Up to this time she had never heard Lorrimer mentioned by any one; but
now, suddenly, his name seemed to be in everybody's mouth. She thought
of him incessantly herself, and it was as if the strength of her own
mind compelled all other minds to think of him while she was present,
and to yield to her will and tell her all they knew. For, curiously
enough, she had begun to want to know about him. I call it curious,
because she was so confiding so unsuspicious, and also so penetrating,
she never seemed to care to know more of people than she learnt from
intercourse with them. But with regard to Lorrimer, she had evidently
begun to distrust her own judgment, which is significant.
One night, at a dinner-party, she was thinking of a gratuitous piece of
information an old woman, who brought her some milk on one occasion at
the Great Hospital, had given her. Ideala had noticed that the old
woman had a bad cough, and had asked her, in her usual kindly way, if
she were subject to it, and what she did for it, remarking that the
north country air was trying to people with delicate chests, and warmer
clothing and greater care were more necessary there than in the south;
and thereupon the old woman had launched forth, as such people will
upon the slightest provocation, with minute details of her own
sufferings, and the sufferings of all the people she ever knew, from
"the bronchitis" during the winter and spring, Mr. Lorrimer being
included among the number.
"Does Mr. Lorrimer suffer in that way?" Ideala had asked with interest.
"Indeed, yes," was the answer, given with many shakings of the head
and that air of importance and pleasure which vulgar bearers of bad
news assume. "He was very bad in the spring. He coughed so as never
was, and had to give in at last and keep his room, which he should
have done at first; but it takes a deal to make him give in, for he
takes no care of hisself though not strong, and we _were_ in a way!
Eh! but it would be a bad thing for this place if anything happened to
Mr. Lorrimer!" Ideala gave the woman half-a-crown.
"People may have bronchitis without being delicate," she asserted. "Mr.
Lorrimer is very kind to all of you, I suppose?" "If I was to tell you
all his good deeds, ma'am," the woman said, impressively, "I'd not have
done before to-morrow morning. But as to his not being delicate," she
continued--in the hope, perhaps, of scoring another on that point--
"why, it just depends on what you call delicate."
Ideala absently gave her another half-crown, and another after that,
but she could not get her to say that Mr. Lorrimer's chest was strong.
Later, when Lorrimerre turned, and they were both at work, he was
interrupted in the middle of some cynical remarks on over-population,
and the good it would do to check it by allowing the spread of
epidemics and encouraging men to kill each other, by the arrival of
another old woman in great distress.
His manner changed in a moment. "I am afraid he is worse," he said to
her most kindly.
She could only shake her head.
"There is the order," he went on, giving her a paper--"get him these
things at once, and tell him I will come as soon as I am disengaged."
When they were alone again, Ideala looked at Lorrimer and laughed.
"Another instance, I shrewdly suspect, of the difference between theory
and practice," she observed.
He brushed his hand back over his forehead and hair, a trifle
disconcerted. "He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow,"
he said.
"And one can approve of capital punishment without having the nerve to
see it inflicted, I suppose," Ideala commented, "and be convinced that
it would be good for the human race to have a certain number of their
children drowned, like kittens, every year, and yet not be able to see
a single one disposed of in that way without risking one's own life to
save it. Verily, I have heard this often, and yet I think I am more
surprised to find it true than if I had never been warned! But that is
always the way. Things surprise us just as much as we expect them to.
When we went up the river to Canton and saw the Pagoda, we all
exclaimed, 'Why, it is just like the pictures--river, and junks, and
all!' If we had not seen the pictures I believe we should scarcely have
noticed it, and certainly we should not have been surprised at all."
"Haven't you done being surprised yet?" Lorrimer asked.
"No. Have you?"
"Quite. Nothing ever surprises me."
"I have read somewhere," she said, trying hard to recall the passage,
"that fast men, stupid men (_I think_), and rascals, profess to
feel no surprise at anything."
The colour flew over his face, he seemed about to speak, but took up
his pen again as if the thing were not worth the trouble of a word,
and went on with his work. The habit of treating men as ideas is not
to be got rid of in a moment, and it was only when she thought it over
at dinner this evening that she saw anything to hurt him in what she
had said. Now that she did think of it, however, it certainly seemed
natural that he should object to being classed in any category which
included fast men, stupid men, or rascals; but even while she blamed
herself, and credited him with much forbearance in that he had allowed
her rudeness to pass unpunished, she was conscious of the existence,
in that substratum of thought which goes on continually irrespective
of our will, of a doubt as to whether he might not after all be one of
these--say, a fast man. For what _did_ she know about him? Nothing,
except that his manners were agreeable. True, she had heard of his
good deeds, and there is never smoke without fire; but a man may
balance his accounts, and many men do, in that way, topping up the
scale of good deeds pretty high when the bad ones on the other side
threaten to turn it; and, seeing that she knew nothing definitely
about his private character, suppose she had been deceived in him?
But, no! The thing was impossible. And just as she thought it, a
gentleman, sitting opposite, one whom she had not met before, looked
across the table and asked her if she knew Mr. Lorrimer.
"I have seen him," she answered, with a burning blush, being taken
unawares.
"He's a charming fellow--don't you think so?"
"Yes, I think so," she agreed, with an indescribable sense of relief.
And the next day a young clergyman whom she stopped to speak to in the
street began at once about Lorrimer. "I met him at dinner the other
night," he said. "I suppose you know him? There is much truth in 'birds
of a feather.' He fascinated us all with his talk of art and
literature. He gave us such new ideas--described such varied
experiences, and all with such grace and power."
"Yes," she answered, thoughtfully. "I believe he is brilliant."
"Many people are that," was the reply, given with hearty enthusiasm;
"but Lorrimer is something more. He is good. He makes you feel it, and
know it, and believe in him, without ever saying a word about himself."
"Ah!" she sighed, "there is power in that. What lovely summer weather!
It makes me dream. Don't you love the time of nasturtiums? Their
pungent scent, and their colours? They seem to penetrate and glow
through everything, and make the time their own."
And so she left him.
But that same day, an old gentleman, who came from another county, and
looked as if he had come from another century--an old gentleman with
curious wavy hair, parted in the middle, who worshipped the Idol of
Days--the past and all that belonged to it--and, for evening dress,
wore knee-breeches, frilled shirt, black silk stockings, and diamond
buckles in his shoes; and had a bijou house, filled with a thousand
relics of his Idol of Days, where noble ladies were wont to loll and
listen to him, and drink tea out of his wonderful cups, and love him--
so it was said--this gentleman called on Ideala. He came to charm and
to be charmed; and he, of all people in the world the one from whom she
would least have expected it, although she knew they had met, began to
sing Lorrimer's praises.
"He raises the tone of everything he is engaged upon," this gentleman
said. "He has not quite kept faith with me about a matter he promised
to look into for me a year ago, but doubtless he is busy. I suppose you
know him?"
"Yes, I know him. He seems to be very much above the average."
"Oh, very much above the average," was the warm response. "He's a
charming fellow, and a thoroughly good fellow, too."
This was the chorus to everything, and there was only one dissentient
voice--that of a man who admired Ideala, and was a good soul himself,
having gone out of his way to pay her trifling attentions, and even
found occasion to do her some small acts of kindness. He began with the
rest to praise Lorrimer, but when he saw he was doing so at his own
expense, by diverting her attention from himself to his subject, he
somewhat lowered his tone.
"Every one seems to like Mr. Lorrimer," Ideala said.
"O yes, he's certainly a nice fellow; but he puts a lot of side on."
"And well he may, being so very good and well-beloved," she answered,
smiling.
"So spoilt and conceited, you might say," was the rejoinder; but she
felt that there was jealousy in the tone, and only laughed.
"What an interesting face he has," a lady remarked, who was having tea
with Ideala, _tete-a-tete_, one afternoon, and had brought the
conversation round to Lorrimer, as seemed inevitable in those days. "He
must make a charming portrait."
"Yes, it is a fine face," Ideala answered, dreamily--"a face for a bust
in white marble; a face from out of the long ago--not Greek, but Roman
--of the time when men were passing from a strong, simple, manly, into a
luxuriously effeminate, self-indulgent stage; the face of a man who is
midway between the two extremes, and a prey to the desires of both. I
wish I had been his mother."
"His mother was a noble woman."
"I know; but she was not omniscient, and she never could have
understood the boy. I daresay he was not enough of an ugly duckling to
attract special attention, and with many other chicks in the brood he
could not have more than the rest, and yet he required it. He ought to
have been an only child. If he had been mine, I should have known what
his dreaminess meant, why he loved to wander away and be alone; what
was the conflict that began in his cradle--or earlier. Surely a mother
must remember what there was in her mind to influence her child; she
must have the key to all that is wrong in him; she must know if his
soul is likely to be at war with his senses." And then Ideala forgot
her listener, and burst out with one of those curious flashes of
insight, irrespective of all knowledge, to which she was subject: "If I
were only a soul to be saved, he would save me; but I am also a body to
be loved, and whether he loves me or not, he suffers. It is the eternal
conflict of mind and matter, spirit and flesh, two prisoners chained
together--the one despising the other, yet ruled by him, and
subservient to the needs of his lower nature."
The lady stared at her.
"You know Mr. Lorrimer very well, then, I suppose?" she remarked.
"Let me see," said Ideala, awaking from her trance, "that is a question
I often ask myself. And sometimes I say I _do_ know him very well,
and sometimes I say I don't. I go to the Great Hospital frequently to
read, and to look up information, and he helps me. He is a man who
makes an instant impression, but he is many-sided, and, now you ask me,
I think on the whole that I do not know him well. I should not be
surprised to hear any number of the most contradictory things about
him."
"It is not a nice character to have," the lady said.
"No," Ideala answered, "not at all nice, but very interesting."
When at last the day arrived she felt an unusual impatience to see him.
And she was in a strange flutter of nervous excitement. Should she tell
him of those things which she had not been able to confide to him on
the last occasion of their meeting? Could she? No; impossible! But she
must see him, nevertheless. The desire was imperative.
The servant she had been accustomed to see met her at the door of the
Great Hospital. She fancied he looked at her peculiarly. He said he had
heard something about Mr. Lorrimer being absent that day, but he would
inquire. He left her, and, returning in a few minutes, told her Mr.
Lorrimer was not there.
"Did he leave no note, no message for me?" Ideala asked, faintly.
"No, madam, nothing," was the reply.