Next morning Arthur cashed his cheque, and started on his travels. He
had no very clear idea why he was going back to Madeira, or what he
meant to do when he got there; but then, at this painful stage of his
existence, none of his ideas could be called clear. Though he did not
realize it, what he was searching for was sympathy, female sympathy of
course; for in trouble members of either sex gravitate instinctively to
the other for comfort. Perhaps they do not quite trust their own, or
perhaps they are afraid of being laughed at.
Arthur’s was not one of those natures that can lock their griefs within
the bosom, and let them lie there till in process of time they shrivel
away. Except among members of the peerage, as pictured in current
literature, these stern, proud creatures are not common. Man, whether
he figures in the world as a peer or a hedge-carpenter, is, as a matter
of fact, mentally as well as physically, gregarious, and adverse to
loneliness either in his joys or sorrows.
Decidedly, too, the homoeopathic system must be founded on great
natural facts, and there is philosophy, born of the observation of
human nature, in the somewhat vulgar proverb that recommends a “hair of
the dog that bit you.” Otherwise, nine men out of every ten who have
been badly treated, or think that they have been badly treated, by a
woman, would not at once rush headlong for refuge to another, a
proceeding which also, in nine cases out of ten, ends in making
confusion worse confounded.
Arthur, though he was not aware of it, was exemplifying a natural law
that has not yet been properly explained. But, even if he had known it,
it is doubtful if the knowledge would have made him any happier; for it
is irritating to reflect that we are the slaves of natural laws, that
our action is not the outcome of our own volition, but of a vague force
working silently as the Gulf Stream—since such knowledge makes a man
measure his weakness, and so strikes at his tenderest point, his
vanity.
But, whilst we have been reflecting together, my reader and I, Arthur
was making his way to Madeira, so we may as well all come to a halt off
Funchal.
Very shortly after the vessel had dropped her anchor, Arthur was
greeted by his friend, the manager of “Miles’ Hotel.”
“Glad to see you, sir, though I can’t say that you look well. I
scarcely expected to find anybody for us at this time of year. Business
is very slack in the summer.”
“Yes, I suppose that Madeira is pretty empty.”
“There is nobody here at all, sir.”
“Is Mrs. Carr gone, then?” asked Arthur, in some alarm.
“No; she is still here. She has not been away this year. But she has
been very quiet; no parties or anything, which makes people think that
she has lost money.”
By this time the boat was rising on the roll of the last billow, to be
caught next moment by a dozen hands, and dragged up the shingle. It was
evening, or rather, verging that way, and from under the magnolia-
trees below the cathedral there came the sound of the band summoning
the inhabitants of Funchal to congregate, chatter, and flirt.
“I think,” said Arthur, “that I will ask you to take my things up to
the hotel. I will come by-and-by. I should like the same room I had
before, if it is empty.”
“Very good, Mr. Heigham. You will have the place nearly all to yourself
now.”
Having seen his baggage depart, Arthur turned, and resisting the
importunities of beggars, guides, and parrot-sellers, who had not yet
recognized him as an old hand, made his way towards the Quinta Carr.
How well he knew the streets and houses, even to the withered faces of
the women who sat by the doors, and yet he seemed to have grown old
since he had seen them. Ten minutes of sharp walking brought him to the
gates of the Quinta, and he paused before them, and thought how, a few
months ago, he had quitted them, miserable at the grief of another, now
to re-enter them utterly crushed by his own.
He walked on through the beautiful gardens to the house. The hall-door
stood open. He did not wait to ring, but, driven by some impulse,
entered. After the glare of the sun, which at that time of the year was
powerful even in its decline, the carefully shaded hall seemed quite
dark. But by degrees his eyes adapted themselves to the altered light,
and began to distinguish the familiar outline of the furniture. Next
they travelled to the door of the drawing-room, where another sight
awaited them. For there, herself a perfect picture, standing in the
doorway for a frame, her hands outstretched in welcome, and a loving
smile upon her lips, was Mildred.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, gently. “I thought that you would
come.”
“Mildred, my idol has been cast down, and, as you told me to do, I have
come back to you.”
“Dear,” she answered, “you are very welcome.”
And then came Miss Terry, pleased with all her honest heart to see him,
and utterly ignorant of the fierce currents that swept under the smooth
surface of their little social sea. Miss Terry was not by nature a keen
observer.
“Dear me, Mr. Heigham, who would have thought of seeing you again so
soon? You _are_ brave to cross the bay so often” (her thoughts ran a
great deal on the Bay of Biscay); “but I don’t think you look quite
well, you have such black lines under your eyes, and, I declare,
there’s a grey hair!”
“Oh, I assure you your favourite bay was enough to turn anybody’s hair
grey, Miss Terry.”
And so, talking cheerfully, they went in to the pleasant little dinner,
Mildred leaning over so slightly on his arm, and gazing into his sad
face with full and happy eyes. After all that he had gone through, it
seemed to Arthur as though he had dropped into a haven of rest.
“See here,” said Mildred, when they rose from table, “a wonder has come
to pass since you deserted us. Look, sceptic that you are!” and she led
him to the window, and, lifting a glass shade which protected a
flower-pot, showed him a green spike peeping from the soil.
“What is that?”
“What is it?—why, it is the mummy hyacinth which you declared that we
should never see blossom in this world. It has budded; whether or not
it will blossom, who can say?”
“It is an omen,” he said, with a little laugh; and for the first time
that evening their eyes met.
“Come into the garden, and you can smoke on the museum verandah; it is
pleasant there these hot nights.”
“It is dangerous, your garden.”
She laughed softly. “You have proved yourself superior to danger.”
Then they passed out together. The evening was still and very sultry.
Not a breath stirred the silence of the night. The magnolia, the moon-
flower, and a thousand other blooms poured out their fragrance upon the
surrounding air, where it lay in rich patches, like perfume thrown on
water. A thin mist veiled the sea, and the little wavelets struck with
a sorrowful sound against the rock below.
“Tell me all about it, Arthur.”
She had settled herself upon a long low chair, and as she leant back
the starlight glanced white upon her arms and bosom.
“There is not much to tell. It is a common story—at least, I believe
so. She threw me over, and the day before I should have married her,
married another man.”
“Well?”
“Well, I saw her the morning following her marriage. I do not remember
what I said, but I believe I spoke what was in my mind. She fainted,
and I left her.”
“Ah, you spoke harshly, perhaps.”
“Spoke harshly! Now that I have had time to think of it, I wish that I
could have had ten imaginations to shape my thoughts, and ten tongues
to speak them with! Do you understand what this woman has done? She has
sold herself to a brute—oh, Mildred, such a brute—she has deserted me
for a man who is not even a gentleman.”
“Perhaps she was forced into it.”
“Forced!—nonsense; we are not in the Middle Ages. A good woman should
have been forced to drown herself before she consented to commit such a
sacrilege against herself as to marry a man she hated. But she, ‘my
love, my dove, my undefiled’—she whom I thought whiter than the snow
—she could do this, and do it deliberately. I had rather have seen her
dead, and myself dead with her.”
“Don’t you take a rather exaggerated view, Arthur? Don’t you think,
perhaps, that some of the fault lies with you for overrating women?
Believe me, so far as my experience goes, and I have seen a good many,
the majority of them do not possess the exalted purity of mind you and
many very young men attribute to them. They are, on the contrary, for
the most part quite ready to exercise a wise discretion in the matter
of marriage, even when the feeble tendencies which represent their
affections point another way. A little pressure goes a long way with
them; they are always glad to make the most of it; it is the dust they
throw up to hide their retreat. Your Angela, for instance, was no
doubt, and probably still is, very fond of you. You are a charming
young man, with nice eyes and a taking way with women, and she would
very much have liked to marry you; but then she also liked her cousin’s
estates. She could not have both, and, being forced to choose, she
chose the latter. You should take a common-sense view of the matter;
you are not the first who has suffered. Women, especially young women,
who do not understand the value of affection, must be very much in love
before they submit to the self-sacrifice that is supposed to be
characteristic of them, and what men talk of as stains upon them they
do not consider as such. They know, if they know nothing else, that a
good income and an establishment will make them perfectly clean in the
opinion of their own small world—a little world of shams and forms that
cares nothing for the spirit of the moral law, provided the letter is
acted up to. It is by this that they mark their standard of personal
virtues, not by the high rule you men imagine for them. There is no
social fuller’s soap so effectual as money and position.”
“You speak like a book, and give your own sex a high character. Tell
me, then, would you do such a thing?”
“I, Arthur? How can you ask me? I had rather be torn to pieces by wild
horses. I spoke of the majority of the women, not of them all.”
“Ah, and yet she could do it, and I thought her better than you.”
“I do not think that you should speak bitterly of her, Arthur; I think
that you should be sorry for her.”
“Sorry for her? Why?”
“Because from what I have gathered about her, she is not quite an
ordinary young woman: however badly she may have treated you, she is a
person of refined feelings and susceptibilities. Is it not so?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Well, then, you should pity her, because she will bitterly expiate her
mistake. For myself, I do not pity her much, because I will not waste
my sympathy on a fool; for, to my mind, the woman who could do what she
has done, and deliberately throw away everything that can make life
really worth living to us women, is a most contemptible fool. But you
love her, and, therefore, you should be sorry for her.”
“But why?”
“Because she is a woman who at one-and-twenty has buried all the higher
part of life, who has, of her own act, for ever deprived herself of
joys that nothing else can bring her. Love, true love, is almost the
only expression, of which we women are capable, of all the nobler
instincts and vague yearnings after what is higher and better than the
things we see and feel around us. When we love most, and love happily,
then we are at our topmost bent, and soar further above the earth than
anything else can carry us. Consequently, when a woman is faithless to
her love, which is the purest and most honourable part of her, the very
best thing to which she can attain, she clips her wings, and can fly no
more, but must be tossed, like a crippled gull, hither and thither upon
the stormy surface of her little sea. Of course, I speak of women of
the higher stamp. Many, perhaps most, will feel nothing of all this. In
a little while they will grow content with their dull round and the
alien nature which they have mated with, and in their children, and
their petty cares and dissipations, will forget that they possess a
higher part, if indeed they do possess it. Like everything else in the
world, they find their level. But with women like your Angela it is
another thing. For them time only serves to increasingly unveil the
Medusa-headed truth, till at last they see it as it is, and their
hearts turn to stone. Backed with a sick longing to see a face that is
gone from them, they become lost spirits, wandering everlastingly in
the emptiness they have chosen, and finding no rest. Even her children
will not console her.”
Arthur uttered a smothered exclamation.
“Don’t start, Arthur; you _must_ accustom yourself to the fact that
that woman has passed away from you, and is as completely the personal
property of another man, as that chair is mine. But, there, the subject
is a painful one to you; shall we change it?”
“It is one that you seem to have studied pretty deeply.”
“Yes, because I have realized its importance to a woman. For some years
I have longed to be able to fall in love, and when at last I did so,
Arthur,” and here her voice grew very soft, “it was with a man who
could care nothing for me. Such has been my unlucky chance. That a
woman, herself beloving and herself worthily beloved, could throw her
blessed opportunity away is to me a thing inconceivable, and that,
Arthur, is what your Angela has done.”