Theology, in theory, at any rate, teaches us that human beings are
living things with souls; experience, on the other hand, which deals
with facts capable of proof, insists that, whatever theological truth
this statement may embody, for practical purposes, human beings are born
without souls. The soul awakes, or, as experience says, is born at
varying times. Some men and women reach maturity of body and mind
without it, some, we cannot help thinking, reach death without it; some,
on the other hand, are but children when that perplexing gift is handed
over to their bewildered keeping. But the soulless human animal often
has at its disposal and use a quantity of instincts which partake of the
soul-like nature; the soul, at any rate, when it is born, takes them
over entire. There is no need to adapt them, or to purify them, for they
are already clean and pure; it hardly ever vitalises them, for they are
already very living; it merely shows them their kinship to itself, and
they are forthwith embodied in it.
This birth of the soul, like all births, is the consummation of bitter
pangs; it is brought forth in sorrow, through some rending asunder of
the inmost fibre, not by any elegant musing on devotional books, nor in
a flash of blinding ecstasy, but in silence, save, perhaps, for the
bitter cry, in darkness, in solitary desolation, for the sufferer does
not know what is happening until the end of his pain has come; the blind
pangs get fiercer and fiercer, and are still unexplained till the light
breaks.
It would, perhaps, be an insult to the reader to state baldly the
bearing of these remarks, for it will be already, we hope, obvious to
him that, in this sense, Reggie, in spite of his frank charm, his
susceptibility, his pretty face, his capacity for receiving and
inspiring affection, was, at heart, soulless. His strong, hearty liking
for his betrothed was of that genial, animal kind, which, however
wholesome and satisfactory, has no more to do with the soul than his
power of aiming straight at woodcock. Happily, or unhappily, for him,
the abstruse side of life was scarcely less remote from Gertrude than it
was from himself. She had at present no wish and no power to give
anything but the same genial, hearty liking that she received, a
thorough, wholesome affection in which the nature of both, as far as
they were aware of their nature, shared to the full. Neither Reggie nor
Gertrude had ever fallen in love with an idea, which is, perhaps, the
most exacting lover that man or woman ever has, but which, being wholly
abstract, is of an entirely different nature from the love of two young
people who admire and like each other enormously, mind and body. This
abstruser side of life was a complete puzzle to Reggie. To take a very
small but wholly appropriate illustration; he could sympathise with his
mother, who might, perhaps, be wandering on the High Croft in a
snow-storm, with a good deal of feeling, but the instinct that made his
father put on his damp shooting clothes, and prepare to go out, not for
any assistance he could give, but for the eminently unpractical reason
that his wife was in the snow and he was having tea, seemed inexplicable
to his son. If he could have done a jot or a tittle of good by standing
in the water butt for five minutes, there is not the shadow of doubt
that he would have done so, shiveringly but contentedly and without
question; but it would have seemed absurd to him to put his nose outside
the hall door, if nothing was to come of it.
With a less sweet disposition, he would have been a profound egoist; but
in his manliness was salt enough, as the phrase is, to keep him sweet.
The egoist rates himself higher than he rates the rest of the world; he
thinks more of himself, consciously or unconsciously, as he thinks less
of others, whereas Reggie, though he was incapable of those intricacies
of feeling, which, for all practical purposes, are different, not merely
in complexity but in kind, from the simpler forms, and which make the
spectacle of the human race so vastly interesting, and produce, it may
be, love of the complex order, never contemplated himself at all, and,
however little he knew of others, at any rate he knew nothing of
himself. His mind resembled, it is true, a being of two dimensions,
which is unable to contemplate the existence of a third, but in its two
dimensions it moved very smoothly, and had a very charming smile for its
own plane horizon.
Gertrude stopped with the Davenports nearly a fortnight--a fortnight of
pleasant, quiet days, which are paradise to a mind content, and she was
supremely content. Reggie was all that a lover, whom she would choose,
should be; he was uniformly cheerful, affectionate, charming, full of
the thought of her; and, ah! how much that means! Reggie was one of
those who show their best side when they are in love; whereas many men,
who are otherwise reasonable beings, behave like spoiled children when
they are in that predicament; they become observant, jealous, exacting,
when they should be serene, indulgent, large-hearted.
But once, just at the end of that fortnight, there arose out of the sea
a little cloud like a man's hand, which broke the blue horizon, though
Reggie was unconscious of it. A little hint of it had occurred once
before, on that evening when Mrs. Davenport lost her way over the High
Croft, but on that occasion it had soon passed away.
Percy, it must be owned, was not so jovially contented with the
spectacle, as the days went on, as the actors themselves. He was a
deductive young gentleman, and, to his mind, this affair resembled too
strongly Reggie's previous flutterings in the feminine dovecotes to
strike him as something altogether different from a flirtation on a
large scale. A flirtation, after all, is only a superficial exhibition
of love, an attraction on one side, a liability to be attracted on the
other; and the question occurred to him, whether it is possible to keep
a flirtation up permanently, and what was left if it broke down? A
strong, deep love, like the Nile in flood, leaves, like a sediment
behind, which in so many cases renders marriages, from which the
tumultuous stream has passed, happy and stable, an alluvial deposit,
which makes the earth rich and fruitful in the sober green of
friendship; but when the slender, light-hearted streamlet is dried up,
the effect of its passage is only too often seen in the uncovering of
ugly roots and stones, and a removal, not a deposit of sediment. Of
course he knew more about those previous affairs, which, to do Reggie
justice, were superficial and innocent enough, than did that gentleman's
mother. A young man, whatever his relations with his mother may be, will
choose some other confidant in such cases. They argued, in fact, nothing
more than a very great susceptibility on Reggie's part to the influence
of charming young women, and the sage Percy asked himself whether the
constant propinquity of one specimen of this attractive product would
necessarily secure him from the influence of the others. That unlucky
resemblance between his previous skirmishes and this engagement seemed
to him too close to be altogether satisfactory. A flirtation on a large
scale, he argued, is not very different from a flirtation on a small
scale.
Mrs. Davenport had immense confidence in Percy. He was three years older
than Reggie, and was possessed of a certain soundness, of which that
young gentleman stood in need. He had been of great use to him in the
thousand and one unconscious ways in which one young man can help
another slightly younger than himself. He had a practical mastery of
details that led him to reliable conclusions on their sum, which is a
gift as useful as intuitive judgment, though less striking in its
process, as it partakes of the nature of industry rather than
brilliance. But Reggie's mother did him justice, and found herself
consulting him as she would have consulted an older man, with
considerable respect for his opinion.
"We are all so delighted about Reggie's engagement," she said to him one
evening after dinner. "His father thought, and so did I, that a long
engagement was better. You see they are both very young, and they ought
to know each other well. No one should marry on an enthusiastic first
impression, least of all Reggie, because he has so many of them."
"Certainly there are no signs of wavering yet," said he. "They are as
fond of each other as--as two children."
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"They are so healthfully fond of each other," he said. "They were trying
to read two of Browning's lyrics this morning, about one way of love and
another way of love, and they gave it up in about three minutes and read
Pickwick instead."
"Poor Reggie, I'm afraid he'll find that his way of love is neither one
nor the other, but I think it's a good way for all that."
"There's no nonsense about it, anyhow," said Percy, without meaning to
make reflections on the lyrics in question.
"It isn't tumultuous exactly," said Reggie's mother, "but it's very
thorough. Still waters do run deep, you know, in spite of the proverb."
"But the stillness is not a proof of their depth."
"No; but when a stream is in the rapids, so to speak, it is. The rapids,
I mean, which come just after the waterfall, the plunge into love."
"Oh, but Reggie's always falling in love."
"So I gathered; though, of course, the boy wouldn't tell me about that.
But I don't think that's against his present engagement."
Percy was silent, and Mrs. Davenport adjusted her bracelet before she
added,--
"I believe it's a healthy thing for a young man to be in a chronic state
of devotion. The vague adoration is all sucked into the particular
adoration when that comes."
"But is falling in love with a series of particular girls to be called a
vague adoration?"
"Yes, certainly, just as a circle is an infinite number of straight
lines. He falls in love with womanliness in many forms."
"I see. No doubt you are right. Certainly he is standing his long
engagement very well."
"Poor boy! he wants to shorten it very much, which is just the very
reason why I want it to be long."
"Miss Carston is satisfied, I gather?"
"It looks like it," said Mrs. Davenport, smiling, and indicating with
her eye a shady corner of the room where the two lovers were sitting.
"Old Lady Hayes was staying with us for a week in London last summer,"
she continued, after a pause. "She was defeated in a great battle,
apparently, with your sister, and came here to bind up her wounds by
bullying us all. I have an immense admiration for anyone who can rout
her."
Percy laughed.
"I heard something about it. Eva behaved abominably, I expect."
"I met her several times in London," said Mrs. Davenport. "She has a
wonderful way of appearing to notice no one, and obliging every one to
notice her."
"I never saw anyone so changed in a short time as Eva," said Percy. "She
has suddenly found men and women extraordinarily interesting. A year
ago, she was exactly the reverse. She disliked most women, and never
remembered any man."
"That was the impression she gave me in the summer."
"Ah! but that manner is only a survival. She is often silent; at other
times she talks a great deal. In the old days she seldom talked at all."
"Poor Hayes is terribly afraid of her."
"I think most people are afraid of her. She can be very cruel."
"A woman with such beauty as that has an unfair advantage. Her shots
must always tell."
"She is one of those people who always make an impression," said Percy;
"because she doesn't care at all what impression she makes."
"That is the sort of impression that produces the deadliest results,"
said Mrs. Davenport. "If a man sees that he is being made a fool of, he
can be on his guard, but the effect of the other is that he is dazzled,
piqued, maddened. The women who don't care are always those for whom men
care most passionately."
"I wonder if Eva will ever fall in love," said Percy half to himself.
"It will be a fine sight if she does; she will teach all these bloodless
people how to do it. I think she has more force than anyone I know. Does
she ever talk to you about her marriage?"
"Oh! there's nothing in the world she doesn't talk about. She has begun
to take an immense interest in herself, as well as in other people, and
she watches her own development with much entertainment. She never
forces anything; she quietly waits till the change is made, and then
finds out exactly what has happened."
"Her scene with old Lady Hayes must have been wicked," said Mrs.
Davenport. "I can imagine her so well, lolling back in her chair with
infinite languor, smoking cigarettes probably, and uttering slow,
polished blasphemies about all her mother-in-law's most cherished
beliefs."
"They are out in Algiers now," said Percy. "Eva suddenly expressed a
wish to go there again. She likes the languid heat of the place. Jim
Armine is with them."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Davenport, softly. "She is very cruel."
"She had the greatest distaste for her ordinary home life. Last year my
father lost a lot of money, and we had to live very quietly at home in
the country and retrench. Eva couldn't endure it. She had quite made up
her mind that she would never fall in love at all. She will do something
sublime if she does. She is quite capable of sacrificing herself or
anybody else."
"A clear stage and a crowd to see," thought Mrs. Davenport, "and may I
be in the stalls."
Meanwhile, the two lovers were talking at the very farthest corner of
the drawing-room, but before the evening was over, the little cloud,
which had just appeared over the horizon on the occasion when Reggie's
mother had lost her way in the snow, gathered again, and this time it
seemed to Gertrude to leave a little film of mist behind. Like the other
two, they had been talking about Percy's sister, and Reggie had said
suddenly,--
"She is perfectly lovely, I believe; they call her the most beautiful
woman in London. Percy showed me her photograph. I want to see her very
much."
This speech, made in absolute thoughtlessness, jarred somehow on
Gertrude's sensibilities.
"I daresay there are many actresses as beautiful," she said, rather
unnecessarily. "I don't think I should like her a bit. There was a man
staying with us the other day who said she was perfectly reckless about
what she did."
"Oh! a woman as beautiful as that can afford to be reckless," said
Reggie. "She sets the fashion."
"I don't think recklessness is a good fashion to set, then," said
Gertrude, with some asperity.
"Oh! nor do I," said Reggie. "I only meant that one excuses it more,
somehow."
"I don't see why you should excuse it because a woman is beautiful,"
said she, seeing the cloud rising out of the sea.
"I don't know," said Reggie. "You must take a person all round; beauty
is an advantage, and you set it off against a corresponding
disadvantage."
"Do you mean that an incomparably beautiful woman is excusable if she
does unpardonably nasty things?"
"I suppose it comes to that in extremities," said he, doubtfully. "You
see, it is impossible to believe that such a woman could do anything
quite unpardonable."
"Reggie, you're absurd," she cried; "don't talk such utter nonsense, and
be thankful I don't believe you mean what you say."
Reggie turned round in surprise.
"Why, Gerty, what's the matter?" he asked.
"You hurt me when you talk like that," she said.
"Oh! what have I been saying?" said he, with an air of perplexity. "You
know the worst of me is, I never know what I'm talking about. When I
begin talking I get dreadfully puzzled."
"Most people explain what they mean by talking, not obscure it."
"Well, it's just the opposite way with me," said he, serenely. "I know
what I think all right before I begin to say it, but as soon as I begin
to say it, I begin not to know what I think."
This confident assertion failed to satisfy Gertrude.
"You said you didn't mind a woman being immoral, if she was only
beautiful," she said.
"Oh! I never said a word about immorality," exclaimed Reggie. "I don't
think it's right to talk about such things. Gerty, what _do_ you mean.
As if I should say such things to you, especially since I never think
them at all."
The open candour of her lover's face had its due effect.
"Well, you're quite sure you meant nothing of the sort, are you?" she
asked, ready to be mollified.
"Of course I am," said he with sincerity. "I don't understand what you
mean."
"What did you say, then?"
The cloud had begun to drift, but the horizon was not clear yet.
"Oh! don't ask me," he said tragically. "I tell you I never know what I
say, and I get so dreadfully confused. I said--Oh, Lord! what did I say.
I said that an ugly woman--oh, dear!--that an ugly woman can't do the
things which, if a beautiful woman did, she wouldn't be thought a
beast," he explained, with a fine disregard of coherency.
"Oh! but, Reggie, that's exactly what you said you didn't say."
"No, it isn't," said Reggie, who, though not exactly bored, wanted to
talk about something else. "I said something about a beautiful woman
being the fashion, which an ugly woman can't be."
"What do you mean by the fashion?"
"Why, I mean the fashion," said Reggie; "the rage, the _comme il_
something, the thing everybody else does--balloon sleeves and
dachshunds, you know."
"Are you sure you only meant that sort of fashion?" asked she.
"Oh! yes, of course I am. Oh! do let's talk about something else."
But Gertrude was vaguely dissatisfied. The cloud had left a little drift
of mist behind.
And Reggie? Well Reggie's cleanly, honest instincts gave him no
directions on this subject; they drew in their feelers like sea anemones
when a foreign substance touches them. A soul would have had a word or
two to say to him about it, but Reggie unfortunately knew nothing about
that.
They sat silent for a minute or two, Reggie trying to think of something
to say which should be sufficiently remote from this puzzling topic,
Gertrude still rather troubled in her mind. In after years, she
remembered that night as the first occasion on which a certain, vague
pain had begun, the first of a series of blind pangs that stirred a new
sort of feeling in her, that tore asunder some fibre in her inmost
being. An elegant musing over devotional books is, as I have mentioned
before, the accredited source of such an awakening.
The unerring instinct of a lover in Reggie, divined, though very dimly,
that some little change had taken place. He felt that Gertrude had felt
something that he had not felt. In spite of his recent sense of
irresponsibility, of utter contentedness on his own part, he could see
that the edge had been taken, ever so slightly, off hers. You may
observe something like this in the case of the more human animals. A dog
sometimes will know that it does not understand, if the bond between
itself and its human friend is very strong. Its inability to understand
is something quite different; it is the knowledge of this inability that
is rare, and Reggie felt this now.
As is natural, he recovered himself first. After a twinge of pain, one
is prone to sit quiet a minute or two, and regain one's normal level.
But the pain had been all on one side, and Gertrude required a little
space to steady herself in.
"Gerty, let's play a game of some sort. Come and see what the others are
going to do."
He got up and stood in front of her.
"Pull me up," she said.
Her white hands lay in his great brown paws, like little patches of snow
in some sheltered nook of the hills. But they were warm with life and
love, and she was very fair. He bent down and kissed them gently, first
one and then the other.
"You sha'n't kiss my hands," she said. "Come, let's go to the others."
The troubled look had gone from her face, but Mrs. Davenport, with a
woman's swift, infallible intuition, saw that something, ever so small,
had happened. There was still in her eyes the shadow of a vague wonder.
Ladies, I believe, have a bad habit of going to each other's bedrooms
when they are thought to have gone to bed, and sitting by the fire,
talking things over. It is a bad plan to talk things over at night,
because, while you are talking, there forms in the air, without your
seeing it, a little grey ghost, to which your words give birth. There
are no such things as barren words; all words uttered by you go to make
up a little series of figures, who come and talk to you when nobody else
is there. And the sort of conversation that Gertrude and Mrs. Davenport
had that night gave rise to a little, pale, anxious, grey ghost, that
sat by Gertrude's bedside, and, as soon as her body had had enough
sleep--the ghost always allows his victims the necessary minimum--it
tapped fretfully on her shoulder, and said, "Come, wake up, let us go on
talking!" And Gertrude stirred in her dreamless sleep, and knew that the
little ghost had come to talk to her.
It is a time-honoured custom for an author to describe the personal
appearance of any character when he decides to lay his reflections
before a discriminating public, and the neglect of this custom is a red
rag to the stupid, furious bull called criticism. So, since this little
ghost's personal appearance is only to be described by retailing the
conversation which took place between Gertrude and Mrs. Davenport the
night before, this obedient and peace-loving author complies with the
eminently English demand.
Gertrude was sitting before her fire in her dressing-gown, when Mrs.
Davenport came in. Her eyes still wore a troubled look, and the pictures
in the fire were not so pleasant as she had known them.
Mrs. Davenport noticed it at once. It was the same look as she had seen
before that evening, a little intensified.
"Are you tired, dear?" she asked. "Would you rather I left you to go to
bed instead of talking?"
Gertrude looked up.
"No, I want to talk very much."
"Gerty, dear, is anything the matter?"
"I don't know."
There was a short silence. Mrs. Davenport was far too wise to press her.
Then Gertrude said,--
"Do you know Lady Hayes?"
Mrs. Davenport was puzzled. The carrier-pigeon always takes a few wide
circles before he sets out on his unerring flight home.
"Oh! yes, quite well," she replied. "Percy and I were talking about her
this evening. It's funny that neither you nor Reggie have even seen
her."
She was feeling her way with tactful discretion. But it was a very
narrow path down which Gertrude meant to go, and Mrs. Davenport not
unnaturally had missed it.
"What is she like?" asked Gertrude.
"Ah! what isn't she like? She is the most beautiful woman in England, I
think, also one of the most reckless, and, I believe, very generous. I
should call her dangerous as well. But she is so interesting, so unlike
others, that you forget everything else, which is harder than forgiving
it."
Gertrude turned round and faced her.
"Ah, you too," she said.
"I don't quite understand, dear," said Mrs. Davenport, gently; "have you
and Reggie been talking about her? Tell me, Gerty. I saw something was a
wee bit wrong. I'm sure you haven't been quarrelling, though. What has
been the matter?"
"I couldn't love Reggie more than I do," said Gertrude, irrelevantly,
"and I don't think he could love me more than he does. It's odd that I
should be troubled."
"Yes, dear, I am sure of your love for each other," said Mrs. Davenport.
"But tell me what is wrong. It does one good to tell things; they become
so much smaller in the telling. Those vague thoughts are like those
great spongy puff balls that we noticed to-day; as soon as you really
examine them, you find there is nothing in them. What is it?"
"I don't know," said Gertrude again.
Ah, that infinite patience of womankind! Mrs. Davenport waited a
moment, and then, by an unerring instinct, laid her hand softly on
Gertrude's, and pressed it gently. The touch had power in it, and the
dumb soul spake.
"I've got no right to be troubled," said Gertrude, "and I feel it's
horribly ungrateful of me, when I think of what Reggie is to me, and how
good you are all to me. But--"
Her voice got tremulous, and she stopped abruptly.
"Yes?" said Mrs. Davenport, softly, wanting to hear more for Gertrude's
sake.
"It's just this," she said at last, speaking rapidly, and with a
splendid self-control. "Reggie said something this evening which hurt
me. He said that recklessness mattered less in a beautiful woman than in
another."
"Is that all?" said Mrs. Davenport, with considerable relief.
"No, that's not all," said Gertrude. "That was all nonsense; of course I
know he doesn't mean that. But he didn't see it hurt me. Oh! it's so
hard not to give you a wrong impression. I don't mean that he was
inconsiderate at all--he never is anything but considerate--but he
simply didn't know. It wasn't tangible to his mind. If I cut my finger
he'd be miserable about it, but somehow he was unable to understand how
this hurt me, and so he could not see that it did hurt me. It hurt me
somewhere deep down, ever so little, but the feeling was new and
strange. This sounds horribly selfish, I'm afraid, but I can't help it."
"Ah, I think I see," said Mrs. Davenport.
"It's like this," said Gertrude. "Hitherto I've always felt so entirely
at one with Reggie. If I feel a thing, he's always seemed to feel it
too, like an echo, and the same with me. But just this once I listened
for the echo and it didn't come."
Mrs. Davenport paused a moment.
"Did you ever hear of the man who was out riding with his wife when her
horse threw her, and in dismounting to help her he dropped his whip, and
while he was picking it up, the horse kicked her and killed her?" she
asked. "It seems to me that you are just a little like that man, Gerty.
Love is a very big thing; one's own small sensibilities are very little
things. Take care of the big thing, never mind the others."
"But they're so mixed up," said the girl. "You see the little thing is a
part of the big thing."
"You are right--that is quite true. But there are many very lovely
things which it is right to look at as a whole. Love is one of those.
All philosophers, from the beginning of the world, have addled their
brains over that impossible analysis. You and Reggie are not
philosophers, Gerty; you are young lovers, and it is not your business
to analyse or dissect, but to enjoy."
Mrs. Davenport was at the sore disadvantage of having to temporise. She
could not but suspect what was at the bottom of this. But all she said
was quite sincere. She fully believed that the strength of Gerty's love
would fill the interval, if there was to be an interval between her and
Reggie. It is best that the woman be better, finer, bigger than the man,
for the beautiful indulgence of a woman's love has more passive
endurance in these early stages than a man's. In the perfect marriage,
the two eventually are mixed "in spite of the mortal screen," but such
mixings are rare at first. They rushed together, they will inevitably
recoil a little, and a woman has more power of waiting than most men.
Gertrude seemed somewhat relieved, but it was not quite over yet. The
grey ghost was waiting for his frillings.
"I was just a little disappointed, you understand?" she said. "I waited
for the echo, but it never came. Ah! well, I am very happy. Yon are very
good to me."
"God forbid that I or mine should ever give you pain," said Mrs.
Davenport, warmly.
"And what am I to do?" said Gertrude, to whom the practical side of
things always presented itself.
"Be natural, dear," said the other, "as you always are. You are both
very young; well, that is a gift almost more worth having than anything
else. It lies in your power a great deal to keep it. And, if you guard
it well, it will build up in you the only other gift which is worth
having, which will last you to your grave. They will melt into each
other."
Gertrude looked at her inquiringly.
"It is called by many names," she said. "It is trustfulness, it is
serenity, it is sympathy; it is all these, and many more. Some people
call it the grace of God, and I think they are right." She kissed the
girl on her forehead very tenderly. "It will tide you over the difficult
places, over which youth carries you now, for youth has the gift of a
splendid stainlessness--of going through deep waters and not being
drowned, of avoiding evil instinctively, without thought; but the time
comes to us all when we avoid it with our reason as well, and with our
soul."
"It was ridiculous of me," said the girl suddenly. "Reggie didn't know
what I felt, and I didn't tell him; and yet I was disappointed. I've
probably done just the same to him lots of times, and he never told me.
It was abominably selfish of me. I hope he'll forgive me."
"I should think it extremely unlikely," said Mrs. Davenport, with
enormous gravity. "I should advise you to cry yourself to sleep. I am
going to bed, and so are you. Good-night! Ah! my dear, I pray you may be
very happy."
Gertrude clung to her in a long kiss, feeling a new bond had sprung up
between them.
But the odious, little, grey ghost, who had been grinning sardonically
at her easy enthusiasm, was sitting by her bed, waiting till the renewal
of strength, brought by sleep, had quickened her capabilities for
listening to his cold accuracies--until that generous, sudden glow had
begun to burn somewhat less warmly in her breast.