Ideala lingered unwillingly, but the reason of her reluctance to go was
not far to seek. Now that Lorrimer knew she loved him she was ashamed
to go back. It would have been bad enough had he been able to come to
her; but going to him was like reversing the natural order of things
and unsexing herself. I suppose, however, that she forgot her shyness
in her desire to be with him as the time went on, and the effort it
cost her to conquer her fear and go to him was not so dreadful as the
blank she would have been obliged to face had she stayed away. At all
events, she fixed a day at last, and one morning she announced to us,
sadly enough, that on the morrow she must say farewell. She made the
announcement just after breakfast, and Claudia rose and left the room
without a word. My sister had never been able to speak to Ideala on the
subject, but she did not cease to urge me to expostulate, and she had
suggested many arguments which had affected Ideala, and made her
unhappy, but without altering her determination.
I could not find a word to say to her that morning, and during the slow
hours of the long day that dragged itself on so wearily for all of us,
nothing new occurred to me.
"It will be a relief when it is over," I said to my sister.
"Yes," she answered; "it is worse than death."
In the evening she came to my study and said: "Ideala is alone in the
south drawing-room. I wish you would go to her, and make a last effort
to dissuade her."
I consented, hopelessly, and went.
Ideala was standing in a window, looking out listlessly. She was very
pale, and I could see that she had been weeping. I sat down near the
fire; and presently she came and sat on the floor beside me, and laid
her head against my knee. In all the years of my love for her she had
never been so close to me before, and I was glad to let her rest a
long, long time like that.
"Were you happy while you were with Lorrimer, Ideala?" I asked at last.
She did not answer at once, and when she did, it was almost in a
whisper.
"No, never quite happy till this last time," she said; "never entirely
at ease, even. It was when I left him, when I was alone and could think
of him, that the joy came."
"There was nothing real in your pleasure, then," I went on; "it was
purely imaginary--due to your trick of idealising everything and
everybody, you care for?"
"I do not know," she said.
"Do you think it was the same with him?" I asked again--"I mean all
along. Did it always make him happy to have you there?"
"I cannot tell," she said. "Yes, I think at times he was glad. But a
word would alter his mood, and then he would grow sad and silent."
"Even on the last occasion?"
"No, not on the last occasion. He was happy then"--and she smiled at
the recollection--"ah, so happy! It was like new life to him, he was so
young, so fresh, so glad--like a boy."
"But before, when his moods varied so often, did it ever seem to you
that he was troubled and dissatisfied with himself? that the intimacy
had begun on his part under a misapprehension, and that when he began
to know you better, he had tried to end it, and save you, by not seeing
you on that occasion?"
"Ah, _that occasion_ again!" she ejaculated. "I forgot to tell you,
but I asked for an explanation just to satisfy you. Here it is!" And
she took a note from her pocket-book and handed it to me. It was one
which she had written to him.
"I do not understand," I said.
"Read it," she answered, "and you will find I asked him to expect me
on _Monday_, the 26th. It was a clerical error. Tuesday was the 26th,
and I went on Tuesday. He waited for me the whole long Monday, and
that night he had to set off suddenly for the Continent on business
connected with the Great Hospital. He went, wondering what had
detained me, and expecting an explanation. When he returned he
inquired, but nobody could tell him whether I had been or not. So he
waited, and waited, as I did, expecting to hear, and as much perplexed
and distressed as I was, and as proud, for he never thought of writing
to me--nor did he think of looking at my note again until I wrote the
other day, and then he discovered the mistake. Now, are you
satisfied?"
"About that--yes," I answered, reluctantly. It was no relief to end him
blameless.
"But what did he mean when he talked of conscience and scruples?"
"He used to laugh at my 'troublesome conscience,' as he called it," she
answered, evasively.
"Would he have known you had a conscience, do you think, if he had had
none himself?" I asked her. "Did he ever say anything that showed he
was yielding to a strong inclination which he could not justify and
would not conquer?"
"Oh, no!" she said; then added, undecidedly: "at least--he did say
once: 'Of course, in the opinion of the world the thing cannot be
justified,' but then he went on as if it had slipped from him
involuntarily: 'Bah! I am only doing as other men do.'"
"Which shows he was not exactly satisfied to be only as other men are."
"That is what I have often told you," she said; "his ideal of life,
both for himself and others, is the highest possible, and he suffers
when he falls below it, or even belies himself with a word."
"Passion never lasts, and love does not lead to evil," I continued,
meditatively; "if you love him, Ideala, how will you bear to feel that
he has degraded himself by degrading you?"
"Oh! do not speak like that!" she exclaimed. "There is no degradation
in love. It is sin that degrades, and sin is something that corrupts
our minds, is it not? and makes us unfit for any good work, and
unwilling to undertake any. This is very different."
"Ideala, do you remember telling me once that you had a strange feeling
about yourself? that you thought you would be made to go down into some
great depth of sin and suffering, in order to learn what it is you have
to teach?"
"Ah, yes!" she answered, "but I have not gone down. I must obey my own
conscience, not yours; and my conscience tells me the thing is right
which you hold to be wrong. I am quite willing to believe it would be
wrong for you, but for me it is clearly right. You said the other day
he had lowered me. What a fiction that is! In what have I changed for
the worse? Do I fail in any duty of life since I knew him in which I
previously succeeded? Oh, no! he has not lowered me! Love like this
rounds a life and brings it to perfection; it could not wreck it."
"But, Ideala, you are going to fail in a duty; you are going to fail in
the most important duty of your life--your duty to society."
"I owe nothing to society," she answered, obstinately.
"I have always admired you," I pursued, "for not letting your own
experience warp your judgment. Oh, what a falling-off is here! I have
heard you wish to be something more than an independent unit of which
no account need be taken. How can we, any of us, say we owe nothing to
society, when we owe every pleasure in life to it? Do we owe nothing to
those who have gone before, and whom we have to thank for the music,
the painting, the poetry, and all the arts which would leave a big
blank in _your_ life, Ideala, if they ceased to exist? You would
have been a mere savage now, without refinement enough to appreciate
that rose at your waistbelt, but for the labour and self-denial which
the hundreds and thousands who lived, and loved, and suffered in order
to make you what you are have bestowed on you, and on all of us. You
would not say, if you thought a moment, that society had done nothing
for you; and no one can honestly think that they owe it nothing in
return. It seems to me that a rigid observance of the laws which hold
society together, and make life possible for all of us, and pleasant
for some, is the least we can do; and do you know, Ideala, when a woman
ever thinks of doing what you propose to do, she has already gone down
to a low depth--of ingratitude, if of nothing else."
"I do not propose to do anything that will injure any one," she
answered, coldly. "I am free, am I not, to dispose of myself as I like
--to give myself to whomsoever I please?"
"We are none of us free in that sense of the word," I replied.
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
You are, as I know you have desired to be, part of a system, and an
important part. All the toil and trouble of the world, and all the work
which began with the life of man, is directed towards one great end--
the doing away with sin and suffering, and the establishment of purity
and peace. And this work seems almost hopeless, not because the
multitude do not approve of it, but because individuals are cowardly,
and will not do their share of it. Every act of yours has a meaning; it
either helps or hinders, what is being done to further this, the object
of life. Lately, Ideala, you have been talking wildly, without for a
moment considering the harm you may be doing. You have expressed
opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things
as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them
comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return
for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what?
Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example
were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end,
do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they
should press hardly on individuals occasionally; but it is clearly the
duty of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of the
community at large."
"I do not understand your morality," she said. "Do you think that,
although I love another man, it would be right for me to go back and
live with my husband?"
"Right, but, under the circumstances, not advisable. And, at any rate,
nothing would make it moral for you to go to that other man."
"Oh! do not fill my mind with doubt," she pleaded, piteously. "I love
him. Let me go."
I did not answer her, and after a while she began again, passionately--
"We _are_ free agents in these things. Individuals _must_ know what is
best for themselves. If I devote my life to him, as I propose, who
would be hurt by it? Should I be less pure-minded, and would he be
less upright in all his dealings? When things can be legally right
though morally wrong, can they not also be morally right though
legally wrong?"
"I have already tried to show you, Ideala," I answered, preparing to go
over the old ground again, patiently, "that we none of us stand alone,
that we are all part of this great system, and that, in cases like
yours, individuals must suffer, must even be sacrificed, for the good
of the rest. When the sacrifice is voluntary, we call it noble."
"If I go to him I shall have sacrificed a good deal."
"You will have sacrificed others, not yourself. He is all the world to
you, Ideala; the loss would be nothing to the gain"--she hid her face
in her hands--"and what is required of you is self-sacrifice. And
surely it would be happier in the end for you to give him up now, than
to live to feel yourself a millstone round his neck."
"I do not understand you," she said, looking up quickly.
"The world, you see, will know nothing of the fine sentiments which
made you determine to take this step," I said. "You will be spoken of
contemptuously, and he will be 'the fellow who is living with another
man's wife, don't you know,' and that will injure him in many ways."
"Do you think so?" she asked, anxiously.
"I know it," I replied. "And look at it from that or any other point of
view you like, and you must see you are making a mistake. A woman in
your position sets an example whether she will or not, and even if all
your best reasons for this step were made public, you would do harm by
it, for there are only too many people apt enough as it is at finding
specious excuses for their own shortcomings, who would be glad, if they
dared, to do likewise. And you would not gain your object after all.
You would neither be happy yourself, nor make Lorrimer happy. People
like you are sensitive about their honour--it is the sign of their
superiority; and the indulgence of love, even at the moment, and under
the most favourable circumstances of youth, beauty, and intellectual
equality, does not satisfy such natures, if the indulgence be not
regulated and sanctified by all that men and women have devised to make
their relations moral."
This was my last argument, and when I had done she sat there for a long
time silent, resting her head against my knee, and scarcely breathing.
She was fighting it out with herself, and I thought it best to leave
her alone--besides, I had already said all there was to say; repetition
would only have irritated her, and there was nothing now for it but to
wait.
Outside, I could hear the dreary drip of raindrops; somewhere in the
room a clock ticked obtrusively; but it was long past midnight, and the
house was still. I thought that only the night and silence watched with
me, and waited upon the suffering of this one poor soul.
At last she moved, uttering a low moan, like one in pain.
"I do see it," she said, almost in a whisper; "and I am willing to give
him up."
"God in His mercy help you!" I prayed.
"And forgive me," she answered, humbly.
She was quite exhausted, and passively submitted when I led her to her
room. I closed the shutters to keep out the cheerless dawn, and made
the fire burn up, and lit the lamps. She sat silently watching me, and
did not seem to think it odd that I should do this for her. She clung
to me then as a little child clings to its father, and, like a father,
I ministered to her, reverently, then left her, as I hoped, to sleep.
My sister opened her door as I passed. She was dressed, and had been
watching, too, the whole night long.
"Well?" she asked.
I kissed her. "It is well," I answered; and she burst into tears.
"Can I go to her now?" she said.
"Yes, go." I went to Claudia's room, and waited. After a long time she
returned.
"She is quiet at last," she told me, sorrowfully.
And so the long night ended.