FLORIAN ON MATRIMONY
In spite of the lateness of the season, and Will’s preoccupation, that
visit to the Dolomites turned out a complete success. Rue was in
excellent spirits; Florian was in fine form; Nature smiled compliance,
as he consummately phrased it—in other words, the weather was lovely,
the mountains clear of cloud, the horses fresh, and the roads (for
Austria) in very good order. Their capacious carriage held its party of
five comfortably,—for Rue, with her wonted wisdom, had consulted Mrs
Grundy’s feelings by inviting an old Indian colonel and his wife, whose
acquaintance she had picked up at the Erzherzog Johann, to accompany
them on their trip, and chaperon the expedition. Rue herself enjoyed
those four days immensely. She had lots of long talks with Will on the
hillsides, and she noticed Will spoke much—though always in an abstract
and highly impersonal way—of the human heart, its doubts and its
difficulties. He was thinking of Linnet, who engaged his thoughts much
during that enforced absence; but Rue imagined he was thinking of
himself and her, and was glad accordingly. She was growing very fond of
her English poet. She hoped and half-believed he in turn was growing
fond of her.
As for Will, now he was away from Linnet for awhile, he began to think
much more seriously than he had ever thought before of the nature of his
relations with her, and the end to which they were inevitably leading
him. As long as Linnet was near, as long as he could hold her hand in
his, and look deep into her eyes, and hear that wonderful voice of hers
carolling out some sweet song for his ear alone among the clambering
vineyards,—why, he could think of nothing else but the passing joy and
delight of her immediate presence. Imperceptibly, and half-unconsciously
to himself, she had grown very dear to him. But now that he was away
from her, and alone with Rue, he began to realise how much he longed to
be once more by her side—how little he was prepared to do without her,
how deeply she had entwined herself into his inmost being. Again and
again the question presented itself to his mind, “When I go back to
Meran, on what footing shall I stand with her? If I find it so hard to
run away for four days, how shall I ever run away from her for ever and
ever?”
Besides, during those few happy weeks at Meran, Linnet had begun to
reveal herself to him as another person. He was catching faint glimpses
now of the profounder depths of that deeply artistic, though as yet
almost wholly undeveloped, character. The books he had read to her she
understood so fast; the things he had told her she caught at so readily;
the change to new scenes seemed so soon to quicken and stimulate all her
latent faculties. Had not Nature said of her, as of Wordsworth’s country
lass, “She shall be mine and I will make A lady of my own”? For that she
was a lady indeed had been forcing itself every day more and more
plainly upon Will’s mind, as he walked and talked with her. At
Innsbruck, he had thought more than once to himself, “How could one
dream in a world where there are women like Rue, of tying oneself for
life to this sweet-voiced alp-girl?” Among the Dolomites, three weeks
later, he asked himself rather, “How could one ever be content with mere
brightness and sunniness like that charming Rue’s, in a world which
holds women so tender, so true, and so passionate as Linnet?”
Slowly, bit by bit, he began to wonder how he could muster up courage to
tear himself away again—and, if he did, for how long he could manage to
keep away from her? And then, as he debated, there arose in his mind the
profounder question of justice or injustice to Linnet. Was it right of
him so deeply to engage her affections, unless he meant by it something
real, something sure, something definite? She loved him so well that to
leave her now would surely break her heart for her. What end could there
be to this serious complication save the end he had so strenuously
denied to Florian?
On the very last evening of their drive through those great bare
unearthly peaks that look down upon Botzen, Florian came into Will’s
room for an evening gossip. They sat up long over the smouldering embers
of a fragrant pinewood fire. There’s nothing more confidential than
young men’s confabulations over a smouldering hearth in the small hours
of the morning. The two friends talked—and talked, and talked, and
talked—till at last Will was moved to make a clean breast of his
feelings in the matter to Florian. He put his dilemma neatly. He
acknowledged he was going just where Florian had said he would go. “I
pointed out the noose to you,” the epicurean philosopher observed, with
bland self-satisfaction, “and you’ve run your neck right into it.
Instead of playing with her like a doll as a sensible man would have
done, you’ve simply gone ahead and lost your heart outright to her.
Foolish, foolish, exceedingly foolish; _but_, just what I expected from
you. I said from the very first, ‘Now mark my words, Deverill, as sure
as eggs is eggs, you’ll end by marrying her.’”
“I don’t say I’ll marry her now,” Will replied, somewhat sheepishly.
“How can I, indeed? I’ve got nothing to marry on. I find it hard enough
work to keep body and soul together for myself in London, without
thinking of an engagement to keep somebody else’s into the bargain.”
“Then what _do_ you mean to do?” Florian inquired, with sound
common-sense. “If you don’t mean to marry her, and you don’t mean to
harm her, and you can’t go away from her, and you can’t afford to stop
with her,—why, what possible new term are you going to introduce into
human relations and the English language to cover your ways with her?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know,” Will answered, in a somewhat hopeless
and helpless voice, piling the embers together in the centre as he
spoke, just to keep them alight for some minutes longer. “There’s the
rub. I admit it. Nobody feels it more than I do. But I don’t see any
possible kind of way out of it. I’ve been thinking to myself—or perhaps
half-thinking—I might manage it like this, if Linnet would assent to
it. We might get married first——”
Florian raised one warning hand, and nodded his shapely head up and down
two or three times solemnly. “I told you so,” he interposed, in a tone
of most mitigated and mournful triumph. “There we get at it at last. You
have said the word. I was sure ’twould come to that. Marry, marry,
marry!”
“And then,” Will went on, with a very shamefaced air, never heeding his
comment, “what’s enough for one’s enough for two, they say—or very
nearly. I thought we might live in lodgings quite quietly for awhile,
somewhere cheap, in London——”
“Not _live_,” Florian corrected gravely, with another sage nod of that
sapient head; “lurk, linger, vegetate. A very sad end! A most dismal
downfall! I see it all: Surrey side, thirty shillings a week; cold
mutton for dinner; bread and cheese for lunch; an ill-furnished parlour,
a sloppy-faced slavey! I know the sort of thing. Pah! My gorge rises at
it!”
“And then, I could get Linnet’s voice trained and prepared for the
stage,” Will continued, perusing his boots, “and work very hard myself
to keep us both alive till she could come out in public. In a year or
two, I feel sure, if I watched her close and saw her capabilities, I
could write and compose some good piece of my own to suit her exactly.
With me to make the songs, and Linnet to interpret them, I believe,
sooner or later, we ought easily to earn a very good livelihood. But
it’d be a hard pull first; I don’t conceal that from myself. We’d have a
struggle for life, though in the end, I feel sure, we’d live it down and
conquer.”
Florian lighted a cigarette and watched the thin blue smoke curl upward,
languidly. “Love’s young dream!” he mused to himself with a placid smile
of superior wisdom. “I know the style of old. Bread and cheese and
kisses! Very charming, very charming! Chorus hymeneal of the most
approved pattern. So odd, so interesting! I’ve often asked myself what
it is in the world that leads otherwise sensible and intelligent fellows
to make wrecks of their lives in this incredible way—and all for the
sake of somebody else’s daughter! Why this insane desire to relieve some
other man of his natural responsibilities? I account for it in my own
mind on evolutionary principles. Marriage, it seems to me, is an
irrational and incomprehensible civilised instinct, by which the
individual sacrifices himself on the shrine of duty for the benefit of
the species. Have you ever heard of the lemmings?”
“The lemmings!” Will repeated, unable to conceive the connection in
Florian’s mind between two such totally dissimilar and unrelated
subjects. “Not those little brown animals like rats or marmots they have
in Norway?”
“Precisely,” Florian answered, waving his cigarette airily. “Those
little brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway. You put
it like a dictionary. Well, every year or two, you know, an irresistible
desire seizes on many myriads of those misguided rodents at once, to
march straight to the sea in a body together, plunge boldly into the
water, and swim out in a straight line, without rhyme or reason, till
they can swim no farther but drown themselves by cartloads. What’s the
origin of this swarmery? It’s only an instinct which keeps down the
number of the lemmings, and so acts as a check against over-population.
A beautiful and ingenious provision of Nature they call it!” and Florian
smiled sweetly. “I’ve always thought,” he went on, puffing a
contemptuous ring of smoke from his pursed-up lips, “that marriage among
mankind was a very similar instinct. It’s death to the
individual—mental and moral death; but it ensures at least a due
continuance of the species. The wise man doesn’t marry; he knows too
well for that; he stands by and looks on; but he leaves no descendants,
and his wisdom dies with him. Whereas the foolish burden themselves with
a wife and family, and become thereby the perpetuators of their race in
future. It’s a wonderful dispensation; I admire it—at a distance!”
“But you said you’d marry yourself,” Will objected, “if you met the
right person; and, to tell you the truth, Florian, I fancied you’d been
rather markedly attentive to Rue for the last few weeks or so.”
Florian stroked a smooth small chin with five meditative fingers.
“That’s _quite_ another matter,” he answered, in a self-satisfied tone.
“Circumstances, it has been well remarked by an anonymous thinker, alter
cases. If an Oriental potentate in all his glory were to order me to
flop down on my marrow-bones before him and kiss his imperial foot as an
act of pure homage, I should take my proud stand as a British subject,
and promptly decline so degrading a ceremony. But if he offered me a
thousand pounds down to comply with his wishes, I would give the polite
request my most earnest consideration. If he made it ten thousand, I
would almost certainly accede; and if he went to half-a-million, which
is a fortune for life, well, no gentleman on earth could dream of
disputing the question any further with him. Just so, I say, with
marriage. If a lady desires me, without due cause assigned, to become
her abject slave, and serve her alone for a lifetime, I will politely
but firmly answer, ‘No, thank you.’ If she confers upon me,
incidentally, a modest competence, I shall perpend for a moment, and
murmur, ‘Well, possibly.’ But if she renders me independent and
comfortable for life, with a chance of surrounding myself with books,
pictures, music, without a moment’s hesitation I shall answer, ‘Like a
bird,’ to her. Slavery, in short, though in itself disagreeable, may be
mitigated or altogether outweighed by concomitant advantages.”
“Florian,” Will said, earnestly, “I don’t know what you mean. You speak
a foreign language to me. If I felt like that, I could never bring
myself to marry any woman. If I married at all, I must do it for the
sake of the girl I loved—and to make her happy.”
Florian gazed at him compassionately. “Quixotic,” he answered low,
shaking his sculpturesque head once or twice with a face of solemn
warning. “Quixotic, exceedingly! The pure lemming instinct; they _will_
rush into it! It’s the moth and the candle again: dazzle, buzz, and
flutter,—and _pom! pom! pom!_—in a second, you’re caught, and sizzled
hot in the flame, and reduced to ashes. That’s how it’ll be with you, my
dear fellow: you’ll go back to Meran and, by Jingo, to-morrow, you’ll go
straight up the hill, and ask the cow-girl to marry you.”
“I think I will,” the poet answered, taking up his candlestick with a
sigh to leave the room. “I think I will, Florian. I’ll fight it out to
the bitter end, sloppy slavey and all, on your threatened south side, in
those dingy lodgings.” And he took himself off with a hurried nod to his
bland companion.
Florian rose, and closed the door behind the poet softly. He had played
his cards well, remarkably well, that evening. If he wanted to drive
Will into proposing to Linnet, he had gone the right way to effect his
object. “And I,” he thought to himself with a contented smile, “will
stand a fair chance with Rue, without fear of a rival, when once he’s
gone off and got well married to his cow-girl. It’ll be interesting to
ask them to a nice little dinner, from their Surrey side garret, at our
snug small den in Park Lane or South Kensington. Park Lane’s the most
fashionable, but South Kensington’s the pleasantest:
In Cromwell Road did Florian Wood,
A stately pleasure dome decree.
Such a palace of art as it will be, too! I can see it now, in my mind’s
eye, Horatio!—Botticellis, Della Robbias, Elzevirs, Stradivariuses!
William Morris on the floor! Lewis Day on the ceiling! It rises like an
exhalation, all beautiful to behold! Such things might I do—with Rue’s
seven hundred thousand!”