Water-lilies.
I will crown you as my queen
By my soul's subjection,
For you all your life have been
What I think perfection.
Paul felt leaving Oxford more than he would have cared to confess;
and the weeks he spent at home would have been a dreary time had they
not been brightened by the smiles and the sympathy of Alice Martin.
To Paul's vigorous and energetic nature, Alice was very soothing and
restful. It was true that she did not understand more than half of
what he said to her, but she listened to it all, which was nearly as
good; and "a girl could not be expected to enter into a man's
thoughts and feelings," Paul said to himself, not having yet
graduated in Cupid's University. And Paul came very near to loving
Alice in those days, with the sort of comfortable, common-place,
every-day love which satisfies ninety-nine men and one woman out of
every hundred. But Paul, unfortunately, happened to be the one, and
Alice one of the ninety-nine; so there was not much chance of their
making one another happy.
One day in the summer in which Paul left Oxford, he and Joanna, with
Edgar Ford and Alice Martin, went for a picnic to Chayford Wood.
Edgar had ceased to make himself disagreeable to Alice, no man being
able to perform the impossible for too long a time at a stretch; and
Alice sunned herself in his reawakened smiles, not even her love for
Paul having the power to stamp out her desire for universal
popularity.
As they were sitting by the lake Alice remarked: "Isn't it funny how
a lovely scene like this makes one feel good and happy, and yet sad
with longing for something that one has never heard of?"
"I am never sad with longing for what I never heard of," replied
Joanna. "Whenever I feel sad, I always know it means that I want to
see Mrs. Crozier again."
"Are you still very devoted to Mrs. Crozier?" inquired Alice.
"Of course I am. I'd do anything in the world for her."
"Anything wrong or foolish do you mean?" asked Edgar.
"Certainly not. She'd never want me to do anything wrong or foolish."
"That is not the question," said Edgar, who greatly loved to tease
Joanna. "Would you if she did?"
"But she wouldn't. Would you do anything wrong or foolish for any
one you cared much for?" inquired Joanna, turning the tables on her
adversary.
Edgar thought for a moment. "Anything wrong, no; anything foolish,
yes," he answered.
"I was reading a poem the other day," said Alice, "about a lady who
threw her glove into the lions' den to test her lover's affection; he
jumped into the den and rescued the glove, only to fling it into the
lady's face. I cannot make up my mind whether he was right or not."
"Most certainly he was," replied Paul, in his highly superior manner.
"To make an exhibition of so sacred a thing as a man's love proved
the woman to be vain and frivolous, and incapable of seeing the
deeper thing. Therefore the man was better without her than with
her, and he did well to throw her over. There is nothing so
revolting to a man as frivolity in a woman. When deep calleth unto
deep, love reaches perfection; when shallow calleth unto shallow,
there is not much harm done; but when deep calleth unto shallow, the
tragedies of life begin."
"I am not sure that the lady was so frivolous," said Edgar
thoughtfully. "Probably she was sick to death of the adulation of
empty-headed and empty-hearted courtiers, and wanted to prove to
herself and to the assembled court that this particular knight really
cared for her. In which case the deep called unto shallow indeed;
but the lady was the deep and the knight the shallow."
"I do not agree with you at all," answered Paul rather hotly, "she
was vain and frivolous, and wanted to make the other women jealous by
showing off the devotion of her young man. And I'd see a woman at
Jericho before I'd make an exhibition of my love for her to excite
the envy of her rivals."
"Gently, my young friend," said Edgar with his pleasant smile. "If
you really loved a woman you'd give her your heart out and out; and
whether she cherished it or played with it would be her concern, not
yours."
"But no nice woman would want to play with it," remarked Joanna.
"I don't see that," replied Edgar. "Even nice women have their
little vanities, and like to prove the extent of their power over
men. Besides, if one really loved a woman, one would go on loving
her just the same, even if she did the things that one did not
consider nice; of course one would hate the things, but that would
make no difference in loving the woman."
"Oh! yes, it would," cried Paul. "I should leave off loving a woman
at; once if she did things that I did not approve of. I don't say
that it would not hurt at the time; but the wrench of thrusting her
out of my life then and there would not hurt half so much in the long
run as letting her go on withering up my affections and knocking down
my ideals. In the former case I should lose her and keep myself; in
the latter I should lose both myself and her."
"But, my dear fellow, you wouldn't bother about yourself; you'd only
know that you could not afford to lose the woman; so you would rescue
her glove from the lions and then button it for her."
"Not I! I should teach her a lesson and then have done with her."
Edgar laughed. "My good Paul, who wants to teach women lessons? You
talk as if they were schoolboys, and you really are old enough to
know better."
"But do you mean to say, Edgar," asked Joanna, "that you would let
any woman make a plaything or a door-mat of you?"
"By all means, if I loved her and she was so minded. If I really
cared for her, you see, I should think it the greatest honour to be
elevated to the uses of her playthings and her door-mats, and I
should count myself unworthy to be adapted to such purposes."
"I call that unmanly," remarked Paul. "Even if a man does love a
woman, he owes a duty to himself as well as to her."
Edgar merely chuckled.
"I see nothing to laugh at," quoth Paul severely. "I did not say
anything humorous."
"Not intentionally," murmured Edgar.
"It seems to me," continued Paul, "that a man is unfair to himself
and to the woman when he grovels at her feet. A sensible and equal
affection is better for both of them."
"O noble judge! O excellent young man!" exclaimed Edgar.
"What I am saying is common sense," added Paul, "though you appear to
think me harsh and unloving."
"Not harsh and unloving, my dear Paul; merely foolish and ignorant,"
replied Edgar.
"I cannot see the sense of throwing a glove among lions just for the
sake of picking it up again," said the sensible Joanna. "It seems to
me a most unnecessary and absurd action."
"It would be nice to feel that a man liked you well enough to perform
unnecessary and absurd actions for your sake," added Alice wistfully.
Edgar looked at her, but he said nothing; he only understood.
"It would not please me if men did absurd things for my sake,"
persisted Joanna. "It would only please me if they did good and
noble things to win my regard."
"Joanna is quite right," agreed Joanna's brother approvingly. "Vain
women do men a lot of harm."
"Even if they like them?" suggested Alice.
"Of course; the more the men like them, the more harm they do. But
the worst of women is," continued Paul, "that they are always wanting
to see what will happen if they do certain things. They make a man
angry just to see what he looks like when he is angry; and they make
a man miserable just to see what he looks like when he is miserable;
and they never realize how much gratuitous suffering all this entails
upon the man."
"But they haven't the slightest idea how much it hurts," said Edgar.
"They know that it is all a sort of histrionic performance or
scientific experiment, and they expect the man to treat the matter
from the same intellectual standpoint. While as for him, poor
beggar! he only knows that he is being broken on the wheel, and he
cannot for the life of him see the object of it, as you say."
Now Alice was a good girl as well as a pretty girl, and amiable and
unselfish into the bargain; but she was not the reigning beauty of
Chayford for nothing, and she now and again wanted--like other
queens--to try on her regalia. So she said, in her sweet plaintive
voice, "I should so like some of those water-lilies from the far side
of the pool."
The said lilies grew under a steep and slippery bank which was the
only approach to them, there being no boat on Chayford Pool at this
particular time. Both men looked across the pool, and Paul shook his
head.
"I'm afraid you can't have them," he said, "till there is a boat on
the water. The bank is not really safe after the heavy rains we have
had lately."
Alice pouted. "But I want them now; they will be all over by the
time the boats are in use."
Edgar looked at her. "Do you really care very much about them?" he
asked.
"Of course I do," replied Alice. "They are my favourite flowers, and
I want some dreadfully."
"Then you shall have some," said Edgar quietly, walking off in the
direction of the lilies, round the end of the pool.
Paul's brow grew very black. "Don't be a fool, Edgar!" he cried
roughly. "That bank really is not safe; and a girl's whim is not
worth the price of a wetting, especially to a delicate fellow like
you. Alice, what are you thinking of? Tell him at once he is not to
go."
But Alice's usually equable temper was so ruffled by Paul's
brusqueness, and she would not do as he bade her.
"Alice, don't you hear what I am saying? Tell him that he is not to
go," repeated Paul.
But Alice's gentle spirit was so sore from the effect of Paul's
indifference to her, that she shut her pretty mouth obstinately and
would not interfere.
"If Paul is so horrid to me he shall see that other men admire me,"
she said to herself; "and that will add to my importance in his eyes."
Finding that Alice was obdurate, Paul ran after Edgar to endeavour to
dissuade him from so foolhardy an attempt; but before he reached him,
Edgar was half-way down the slippery bank.
By keeping "one foot on sea and one on shore," and by grasping the
overhanging bough of a birch tree, Edgar managed to gather a handful
of the desired lilies; but when he tried to return, his shore foot
slipped, and he fell into the water. By that time Paul had overtaken
his friend, and was able to help Edgar out of the pool and up the
bank; but not before the latter had suffered a thorough soaking,
which brought on a severe chill.
Edgar was laid up for several days in consequence of his immersion in
Chayford Pool, during which time Paul visited him constantly, and
Alice as constantly sent him flowers and books and little scented
notes; for her tender heart was wrung with remorse for the
consequences of her vanity. Edgar quite understood this remorse and
accepted it, for he knew Alice better than Paul did; but remorse was
not the particular thing he was wanting from her just then.
"I say, old fellow," said Paul to him one day, "I shall never like
Alice again, after the scurvy trick she played you."
"Oh! don't say that," besought Edgar, bravely fighting Alice's battle
with Paul, though it was no easy task to him to do so. "It was only
a little bit of feminine vanity on her part, which ninety-nine pretty
girls out of every hundred would have indulged in."
"Then deliver me from ninety-nine pretty girls out of every hundred!"
prayed Paul.
"It really isn't fair to blame her, old boy! She had no idea there
was any risk in the thing, and she has been far more sorry for me and
more kind to me than I deserve ever since."
"Oh! I don't mean to say that she deliberately planned to make you
ill, nor do I deny that her penitence is sincere; all I say is that
the shallow vanity which induces a woman to expose a man to danger,
or even to discomfort, to gratify a mere whim of hers, is a thing
which is simply revolting to me. It is not that I cannot forgive
her: I could forgive far worse things than this, if they had their
origin in something deeper--even if more dangerous--than mere vanity.
I am not at war with her; but I know and feel that I shall never like
her again."
Edgar puffed at his pipe in silence for some moments. "I used to
think you cared for Alice," he said at last.
"I used to think so too, at one time," answered Paul slowly, "but I
know now I was mistaken. I liked her beauty and her pretty
sympathetic manner, and I found her very soothing when I was
irritable and out of temper. But there was always something which
disappointed me in her. She is charming and pleasant, like a walled
flower garden; but there is no 'beyond' in Alice. The woman I love
must not only have a garden in the front of her character to gladden
my eyes every day, but there must also be glimpses of a view beyond,
of sunny lands of Beulah and of mountains reaching up to heaven."
Edgar smoked in silence.
"There are three things which combine to produce love," continued
Paul, in his youthfully didactic way; "moral excellence, intellectual
companionship and physical charm. Of course if one can get the three
in a line, one is right for all time; but generally one has to put up
with only two. I respected Alice's character and I felt her charm;
but intellectually she and I were never comrades; nevertheless I
fancied that two conditions out of the three might prove enough.
After her conduct the other day, however, I saw that, though sweet
and amiable, there was something small and paltry in her nature.
Therefore she has now ceased to appeal to the second side of me; and
personal beauty alone is not sufficient to satisfy me in a wife. So
out of my future life Alice goes."
"Then do you mean to say that, as far as you are concerned, another
man has the right to try and win Alice?"
Paul looked up in surprise. "Of course! Why not? You don't mean to
say that you care for her?"
"But I do," answered Edgar with his quiet smile; "I have cared for
her all her life, and I shall continue to do so all mine. But I
stood on one side because I thought you loved her." He was too
chivalrous to say, "because I thought she loved you".
"Well, go in and win, old man!" cried Paul, grasping his friend's
hand. "But don't you think that her action the other day was rather
small and petty?"
"I think I would rather not discuss Alice even with you, my dear
fellow. You see, I should knock down any man who dared to say a word
against her, and I should be sorry if that man happened to be
yourself."
"All right; I beg your pardon. All that I can say is that I think
Alice is the luckiest girl I know."
"I'm afraid she won't think so."
"Why? don't you think she cares for you?" inquired the unperceiving
Paul.
"I am sure she doesn't, worse luck for me!"
"Well then, she will soon learn to do so, there is no doubt of that,
now that she has seen how much you care for her."
Edgar smiled rather sadly. "I have succeeded in teaching her that
there is no one in the world but her; but I have not yet taught her
that there is no one in the world but me."
"She will soon learn it, never fear! with such a schoolmaster."
But poor Edgar did not feel quite so sure.
And Alice all the time was telling herself that since Edgar loved her
so much, Paul was certain to love her too; an illogical argument,
perhaps, but one most convincing to the normal female mind. She did
not know, poor child! that with her own hands she had shut the door
of the Eden which she coveted; and that the hands which have power to
shut have not necessarily the power to open again.
Alas for us all that the gate of Eden is so hard to seek, and that so
few succeed in finding it! And those of us who are fortunate enough
to discover it, must take heed to our ways lest it close with a
spring, and open to us never again, knock we never so loudly.