Miss Leonora Carnethy was suffering from an acute attack of
philosophical despair, which accounted for her not appearing with her
mother on the Pincio.
The immediate cause of the fit was the young lady's inability to
comprehend Hegel's statement that "Nothing is the same as Being;" and as
it was not only necessary to understand it, but also, in Miss Carnethy's
view, to reconcile it with some dozens of other philosophical
propositions all diametrically opposed to it and to each other, the
consequence of the attempt was the most chaotic and hopeless failure on
record in the annals of thought. Under these circumstances, Miss
Carnethy shut herself up in a dark room, went to bed, and agreed with
Hegel that Nothing was precisely the same as Being. She thus scattered
all the other philosophies to the angry airts of heaven at one fell
sweep, and she felt sure she was going to be a Hindoo.
This sounds a little vague, but nothing could be vaguer than Miss
Carnethy's state of mind. Having agreed with Mr. Herbert Spencer that
the grand main-spring of life is the pursuit of happiness, and that no
other motive has any real influence in human affairs, it was a little
hard to find that there was nothing in anything, after all. But then,
since her own being was also nothing, why should she trouble herself?
Evidently it was impossible for nothing to trouble itself, and so the
only possible peace must lie in realising her own nothingness, which
could be best accomplished by going to bed in a dark room. It was very
dreary, of course, but she felt it was good logic, and must tell in the
long run.
It had happened before. There had been days when she had reached the
same point by a different road, and had been satisfactorily roused by a
flash of intelligence shedding enough light in her darkened course to
give her a new direction. To-day, however, it was quite different. She
had certainly now reached the absolute end of all speculation, for she
was convinced of the general nothingness of all created strength and
life.
"For," said she, "I am quite sure that if I saw a train coming down upon
me now, I would not get out of the way,--unless, the train being
nothing, and I also nothing, two nothings should make something. But
Hegel does not say that, and of course he knew, or he would not have
understood that Nothing is the same as Being."
This kind of argument is irreproachable. It is like the old lady who
said she was so glad that she did not like spinach, because if she did
she would eat it, and, as she detested it, that would be very
unpleasant. There is no answer possible to a properly grounded
philosophical argument of this kind. On the whole, Miss Carnethy did the
right thing when she tried to realise the physical being of nothing.
This Leonora was no ordinary girl. She belonged to a small class of
young women who take a certain delight in being different from "the
rest"--higher, of course. She had the misfortune to be of a mixed race,
so far as blood was concerned, for her father was English and her mother
was a Russian. It would probably be hard to find people more utterly
unlike than these two, for the beef-eating conqueror is one, and the
fire-eating Tartar is quite another, while this unlucky child of an
international parentage had something of each. Her history--she was
twenty-two years of age, then--might be summed up in a very few words.
An English child, an Italian girl, a Russian woman. Her father had many
prejudices, and did not believe in much; her mother had no prejudices at
all, and believed in everything under the sun, and in a few things
besides, so that certain evilly disposed persons had even said of her
that she was superstitious.
There is something infinitely pathetic about such a growing to maturity
as had made Leonora Carnethy what she was. Imagine such an anomaly as a
poor little seed, of which no one can say whether it is a rose or a
nightshade, alternately treated as a fair blossom and as a poisonous
weed. Imagine a young girl, full of a certain fierce courage and
impatience of restraint, chafing under the moral flat iron of a
hopelessly proper father, whose mind is of the great levelling type and
his prejudices as mountains of stone in the midst, reared to heaven like
pyramids to impose a personal moral geography on the human landscape;
and imagine the same girl further possessed of certain truly British
instincts of continuity and unreasonable perseverance, eternally
offending by her persistence a mother whose strong point is a kind of
gymnastic superstition, a strange perversity of exuberant belief,
forcing itself into the place of principle where there is none,--imagine
a young girl in such a situation, in such a childhood, and it will not
seem strange that she should grow up to be a very odd woman.
The father and mother understood each other after a fashion, but neither
of them ever understood Leonora, and so Leonora tried to understand
herself. To this laudable end she devoured books and ideas of all sorts
and kinds, not always perceiving whether she took the poison first and
the antidote afterwards, or the contrary, or even whether she fed
entirely on poisons or entirely on antidotes. Poor child! she found
truth very hard to define, and the criticism exercised by pure reason a
very insufficient weapon. Moreover, like Job of old, she had friends and
comforters to help in making life hideous. She wondered to-day, as she
lay in her darkened room, whether any of them would come, and the
thought was unpleasant.
She had just made up her mind to ring the bell and tell her maid that
no one should be admitted, when the door opened after the least possible
apology for a knock, and she realised that she had thought of the
contingency too late.
"Dear Leonora!"
"Dearest Leonora!"
The room was so dark that the young ladies stood still at the door, as
they fired off the first shots of their brimming affection. Leonora
moved so as to see their dark figures against the light.
"Oh," she said, "is it you?"
She was not glad to see her dear friends, for her fits of philosophical
despair were real while they lasted, and she hated to be disturbed in
them. But as these two young women were her companions in the study of
universal hollowness, she felt that she must bear with them. So, after a
little hesitation she allowed them to let some light into the room, and
they sat down and held her hands.
"We want to talk to you about Infinite Time!"
"And Infinite Space!"
"I am persuaded," said the first young lady, "that our ideas of Time are
quite mistaken. This system of hours and minutes is not adapted to the
larger view."
"No," said Leonora, "for Time is evidently a portion of universal pure
Being, and is therefore Nothing. I am sure of it."
"No. Time is not Nothing,--it is Colour."
"How do you mean, dear?" asked Leonora in some surprise.
"I do not quite know, dearest, but I am sure it must be. It is quite
certain that Colour is a fundamental conception."
"Of course." There was a pause. Apparently the identity of Infinite Time
with Colour did not interest Miss Carnethy, who stared at the light
through the blinds between her two friends.
"It seems to me that we girls have no field nowadays," said she, rather
irrelevantly.
"An infinite field, dear."
"And infinite time, dearest."
"I would give anything I possess to be able to do anything for anybody,"
began Leonora. "We know so much about life in theory, and we know
nothing about it in practice. I wish mamma would even let me order the
dinner sometimes; it would be something. But of course it is all an
illusion, and nothing, and very infinite."
Poor Miss Carnethy turned on her pillow with a dreary look in her eyes.
"It will be different when you are married, dear," suggested one.
"Of course," acquiesced the other.
"But can you not see," objected Miss Carnethy, "that we shall never
marry men whose ideas are so high and beautiful as ours? And then, to be
tied forever to some miserable creature! Fancy not being understood!
What do these wretched society men care about the really great questions
of life?"
"About Time--"
"And Infinite Space--"
"Nothing, nothing, nothing!" cried Miss Carnethy in real distress.
"And yet it would be dreadful to be an old maid"--
"Perfectly dreadful, of course!" exclaimed all three, in a breath. Then
there was a short silence, during which Leonora moved uneasily, and
finally sat up, her heavy red hair falling all about her.
"By the bye," she said at last, "have you been out to-day, dears? What
have you been doing? Tell me all about it."
"We have been to Lady Smyth-Tompkins's tea. It was very empty."
"You mean very hollow, for there were many people there."
"Yes," said the other, "it was very hollow--empty--everything of that
sort. Then we went to drive on the Pincio."
"So very void."
"Yes. We saw Carantoni leaning against a post. I am sure he was thinking
of nothing. He looks just like a stuffed glove,--such an inane dandy!"
Miss Carnethy's blue eyes suddenly looked as though they were conscious
of something more than mere emptiness in the world. Her strong,
well-shaped red lips set themselves like a bent bow, and the shaft was
not long in flying.
"He is very pleasant to talk to," said she, "and besides--he really
dances beautifully." It was probably a standing grievance with her two
friends that Marcantonio did not dance with them, or Leonora could
scarcely have produced such an impression in so few words.
"What does he talk about?" asked one, with an affectation of
indifference.
"Oh, all sorts of things," answered Leonora. "He does not believe at all
in the greatest good of the greatest number. He says he has discovered
the Spencerian fallacy, as he calls it."
"Alas, then that also is nothing!"
"Absolutely nothing, dear," continued Leonora. "He says that, if there
is no morality beyond happiness"--
"Of course!"
--"then every individual has as much right to be happy as the whole
human race put together, since he is under no moral obligation to
anybody or anything, there being no abstract morality. Do you see? It is
very pretty. And then he says it follows that there is no absolute good
unless from a divine standard, which of course is pure nonsense, or
ought to be, if Hegel is right."
"Dear me! Of course it is!"
"And so, dears," concluded Leonora triumphantly, "we are all going to
the Devil do you see?" The association of ideas seemed exhilarating to
Miss Carnethy, and in truth the conclusion was probably suggested more
by her feelings than by her logic, if she really possessed any. She felt
better, and would put off the further consideration of Nothing and
Being to some more convenient season. She therefore gave her friends
some tea in her bedroom, and the conversation became more and more
earthly, and the subjects more and more minute, until they seemed to be
thoroughly within the grasp of the three young ladies.
At last they went, these two charming damsels, very much impressed with
Leonora's cleverness, and very much interested in her future,--which she
would only refer to in the vaguest terms possible. They were both
extremely fashionable young persons, possessed of dowries, good looks,
and various other charms, such as good birth, good manners, and the
like; and it would be futile to deny that they took a lively interest in
the doings of their world, however hollow and vain the cake appeared to
them between two bites.
"Are you going to-night, Leonora dear?" they inquired as they left her.
"Of course," answered Miss Carnethy. "I must hear the rest of the
'Spencerian fallacy' you know!"
When Leonora was alone she had a great many things to think of.
The atmosphere had cleared during the last hour, so far as philosophy
was concerned, and as she looked at herself in the glass, she was
wondering how she should look in the evening. Not vainly,--at least, not
so vainly as most girls with her advantages might have thought,--but
reflectively, the English side of her twofold nature having gained the
upper hand. For as she gazed into her own blue eyes, trying to search
and fathom her own soul, she was conscious of something that gave her
pleasure and hope,--something which she had treated scornfully enough in
her thoughts that very afternoon.
She knew, for her mother had told her, that Marcantonio Carantoni had
written to her parents, had called, had an interview, and had been told
that he should be an acceptable son-in-law, provided that he could
obtain Leonora's consent. She knew also that in the natural course of
things he would this very evening ask her to be his wife; and, lastly,
she knew very well that she would accept him.
She wondered vaguely how all those strange unsettled ideas of hers would
harmonise in a married life. How far should she and her husband ever
agree? She had a photograph of him in her desk, which he had given to
her mother, and which she had naturally stolen and hidden away. Now she
took it out and brought it to the window, and looked at it minutely,
wonderingly, as she had looked at herself in the mirror a moment
earlier.
Yes, he was a proper husband enough, with his bright honest eyes and his
brave aristocratic nose and black moustache. Not very intelligent,
perhaps, by the higher standard,--that everlasting "higher standard"
again,--but withal goodly and noble as a lover should be. A lover? What
weal and woe of heart-stirring romance that word used to suggest! And so
this was her lover, the one man of all others dreamed of as a future
divinity throughout her passionate girlhood. A creature of sighs and
stolen glances--ay, perhaps of stolen kisses--a lover should be;
breathing soft things and glancing hot glances. Was Marcantonio really
her lover?
He was so honest--and so rich! He could hardly want her for her dower's
sake,--no, she knew that was impossible. For her beauty's sake, then?
No, she was not so beautiful as that, and never could be, though the
fashion had changed and red hair was in vogue. A pretty conceit, that
mankind should make one half of creation fashionable at the expense of
the other! But it is so all the same, and always will be. However, even
with red hair, and an immense quantity of it, she was not a great
beauty.
Perhaps Marcantonio would have married a great beauty if he could have
met one who would accept him. It would not be nice, she thought, to
marry a man who could not have the best if he chose. To think that he
might ever look back and wish she were as beautiful as some one else!
But after much earnest consideration of the matter no image of "some one
else" rose to her mind, and she confessed with some triumph that she was
not jealous of any one; that he had chosen her for herself, and that she
was without rival so far as he was concerned. Not even her friends, the
one dark and classic, the other fair and dreamy, could boast of having
roused his interest. That was a great advantage.
But did she care for him--did she love him? Of course; how else should
it be possible for her, with her high ideas of man's goodness, to think
of ever consenting to marry him? Of course she loved him.
It was not exactly the kind of thing she expected, when she used to
think of love a year ago; when love was a detached ideal with wings and
arrows, and all manner of romantic and mythical attributes. But
considering how very hollow and barren she had demonstrated the world to
be, this thing had a certain life about it. It was a real sensation,
beyond a doubt, and not an unhappy one either.
The room grew dark and she sat a few moments, the photograph lying idly
in her hand. Out of the dusk, coming from the fairyland of her girl's
fancy, rose a figure, the figure of the ideal lover she used to evoke
before she knew Marcantonio Carantoni. He was a different sort of person
altogether, much taller and broader and fiercer; a very impossibility of
a man, coming towards her, and upsetting everything in his course;
trampling rough-shod over the mangled fragments of her former idols,
over society, over Marcantonio, over everything till he was close and
near her, touching her hand, touching her lips, clasping her to him in
fierce triumph, and bearing her away in a whirlwind of strength. A quick
sigh, and she let the photograph fall to the ground, sinking back in her
chair with a light in her eyes that overcame the darkness.
Dreamland, dreamland, what fools you make of us all! What strange
characters there are among the slides of your theatre, only awaiting the
nod of Sleep, the manager, to issue forth, and rant and rave, make love
and mischief, do battle and murder, play the scoundrel and the hero,
till our poor brains reel and the daylight is turned on again, and all
the players vanish into the thinnest of thin air!
Miss Carnethy rang for her maid, who brought lights and closed the
shutters and let down the curtains preparatory to dressing her mistress
for dinner. Leonora looked down and saw Marcantonio's photograph lying
where it had fallen. She picked it up and looked at it once more by the
candle light.
"Perhaps I shall refuse him after all," she thought, coldly enough, and
she put it back into the drawer of her desk.
Perhaps you are right, Miss Carnethy, and the world is stuffed with
sawdust.