"I wonder when we shall receive the Elton-Chesney wedding cards!"
I did not reply, for I was pained and grieved at her lack of all gentle
feeling in the matter, and I was also, to a certain extent,
superstitiously affected by the fact of the death occurring on our
marriage-day. However this was now a thing of the past; a month had
elapsed,--a month in which the tearing-down of illusions had gone on
daily and hourly,--till I was left to contemplate the uncurtained bare
prose of life and the knowledge that I had wedded a beautiful feminine
animal with the soul of a shameless libertine. Here I pause and ask
myself,--Was not I also a libertine? Yes,--I freely admit it,--but the
libertinage of a man, while it may run to excess in hot youth, generally
resolves itself, under the influence of a great love, into a strong
desire for undefiled sweetness and modesty in the woman beloved. If a
man has indulged in both folly and sin, the time comes at last, when, if
he has any good left in him at all, he turns back upon himself and
lashes his own vices with the scorpion-whip of self-contempt till he
smarts with the rage and pain of it,--and then, aching in every pulse
with his deserved chastisement, he kneels in spirit at the feet of some
pure, true-hearted woman whose white soul, like an angel, hovers
compassionately above him, and there lays down his life, saying "Do what
you will with it,--it is yours!" And woe to her who plays lightly with
such a gift, or works fresh injury upon it! No man, even if he has in
his day, indulged in 'rapid' living, should choose a 'rapid' woman for
his wife,--he had far better put a loaded pistol to his head and make an
end of it!
The sunset-glory began to fade from the landscape as the little boat
glided on over the tranquil water, and a great shadow was on my mind,
like the shadow of that outer darkness which would soon be night. Again
I asked myself--Was there no happiness possible in all the world? Just
then the Angelus chimed from a little chapel on the shore, and as it
rang, a memory stirred in my brain moving me well-nigh to tears. Mavis
Clare was happy!--Mavis, with her frank fearless eyes, sweet face and
bright nature,--Mavis, wearing her crown of Fame as simply as a child
might wear a wreath of may-blossom,--she, with a merely moderate share
of fortune which even in its slight proportion was only due to her own
hard incessant work,--she was happy. And I,--with my millions,--was
wretched! How was it? Why was it? What had I done? I had lived as my
compeers lived,--I had followed the lead of all society,--I had feasted
my friends and effectually 'snubbed' my foes,--I had comported myself
exactly as others of my wealth comport themselves,--and I had married a
woman whom most men, looking upon once, would have been proud to win.
Nevertheless there seemed to be a curse upon me. What had I missed out
of life? I knew,--but was ashamed to own it, because I had previously
scorned what I called the dream-nothings of mere sentiment. And now I
had to acknowledge the paramount importance of those 'dream-nothings'
out of which all true living must come. I had to realize that my
marriage was nothing but the mere mating of the male and female
animal,--a coarse bodily union, and no more;--that all the finer and
deeper emotions which make a holy thing of human wedlock, were
lacking,--the mutual respect, the trusting sympathy,--the lovely
confidence of mind with mind,--the subtle inner spiritual bond which no
science can analyse, and which is so much closer and stronger than the
material, and knits immortal souls together when bodies decay--these
things had no existence, and never would exist between my wife and me.
Thus, as far as I was concerned, there was a strange blankness in the
world,--I was thrust back upon myself for comfort and found none. What
should I do with my life, I wondered drearily! Win fame,--true
fame,--after all? With Sibyl's witch-eyes mocking my efforts?--never!
If I had ever had any gifts of creative thought within me, _she_ would
have killed it!
The hour was over,--the boatman rowed me in to land, and I paid and
dismissed him. The sun had completely sunk,--there were dense purple
shadows darkening over the mountains, and one or two small stars faintly
discernible in the east. I walked slowly back to the villa where we were
staying,--a 'dépendance' belonging to the large hotel of the district,
which we had rented for the sake of privacy and independence, some of
the hotel-servants being portioned off to attend upon us, in addition to
my own man Morris, and my wife's maid. I found Sibyl in the garden,
reclining in a basket-chair, her eyes fixed on the after-glow of the
sunset, and in her hands a book,--one of the loathliest of the prurient
novels that have been lately written by women to degrade and shame their
sex. With a sudden impulse of rage upon me which I could not resist, I
snatched the volume from her and flung it into the lake below. She made
no movement of either surprise or offence,--she merely turned her eyes
away from the glowing heavens, and looked at me with a little smile.
"How violent you are to-day, Geoffrey!" she said.
I gazed at her in sombre silence. From the light hat with its pale mauve
orchids that rested on her nut-brown hair, to the point of her daintily
embroidered shoe, her dress was perfect,--and _she_ was perfect. _I_
knew that,--a matchless piece of womanhood ... outwardly! My heart
beat,--there was a sense of suffocation in my throat,--I could have
killed her for the mingled loathing and longing which her beauty roused
in me.
"I am sorry!" I said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze--"But I hate to see you
with such a book as that!"
"You know its contents?" she queried, with the same slight smile.
"I can guess."
"Such things have to be written, they say nowadays,"--she went on--"And,
certainly, to judge from the commendation bestowed on these sort of
books by the press, it is very evident that the wave of opinion is
setting in the direction of letting girls know all about marriage before
they enter upon it, in order that they may do so with their eyes wide
open,--_very_ wide open!" She laughed, and her laughter hurt me like a
physical wound. "What an old-fashioned idea the bride of the poets and
sixty-years-ago romancists seems now!" she continued--"Imagine her!--a
shrinking tender creature, shy of beholders, timid of speech, ...
wearing the emblematic veil, which in former days, you know, used to
cover the face entirely, as a symbol that the secrets of marriage were
as yet hidden from the maiden's innocent and ignorant eyes. Now the veil
is worn flung back from the bride's brows, and she stares unabashed at
everybody,--oh yes, indeed we know quite well what we are doing now when
we marry, thanks to the 'new' fiction!"
"The new fiction is detestable,"--I said hotly--"Both in style and
morality. Even as a question of literature I wonder at your
condescending to read any of it. The woman whose dirty book I have just
thrown away--and I feel no compunction for having done it,--is destitute
of grammar as well as decency."
"Oh, but the critics don't notice that,"--she interrupted, with a
delicate mockery vibrating in her voice--"It is apparently not their
business to assist in preserving the purity of the English language.
What they fall into raptures over is the originality of the 'sexual'
theme, though I should have thought all such matters were as old as the
hills. I never read reviews as a rule, but I did happen to come across
one on the book you have just drowned,--and in it, the reviewer stated
he had cried over it!"
She laughed again.
"Beast!" I said emphatically--"He probably found in it some glozing-over
of his own vices. But you, Sibyl--why do you read such stuff?--how can
you read it?"
"Curiosity moved me in the first place,"--she answered listlessly--"I
wanted to see what makes a reviewer cry! Then when I began to read, I
found that the story was all about the manner in which men amuse
themselves with the soiled doves of the highways and bye-ways,--and as I
was not very well instructed in that sort of thing, I thought I might as
well learn! You know these unpleasant morsels of information on
unsavoury subjects are like the reputed suggestions of the devil,--if
you listen to one, you are bound to hear more. Besides, literature is
supposed to reflect the time we live in,--and that kind of literature
being more prevalent than anything else, we are compelled to accept and
study it as the mirror of the age."
With an expression on her face that was half mirth and half scorn, she
rose from her seat, and looked down into the lovely lake below her.
"The fishes will eat that book,--" she observed--"I hope it will not
poison them! If they could read and understand it, what singular ideas
they would have of us human beings!"
"Why don't you read Mavis Clare's books?" I asked suddenly--"You told me
you admired her."
"So I do,--immensely!" she answered,--"I admire her and wonder at her,
both together. How that woman can keep her child's heart and child's
faith in a world like this, is more than I can understand. It is always
a perfect marvel to me,--a sort of supernatural surprise. You ask me why
don't I read her books,--I do read them,--I've read them all over and
over again,--but she does not write many, and one has to wait for her
productions longer than for those of most authors. When I want to feel
like an angel, I read Mavis Clare,--but I more often am inclined to feel
the other way, and then her books are merely so many worries to me."
"Worries?" I echoed.
"Yes. It is worrying to find somebody believing in a God when _you_
can't believe in Him,--to have beautiful faiths offered to you which
_you_ can't grasp,--and to know that there is a creature alive, a woman
like yourself in everything except mind, who is holding fast a happiness
which you can never attain,--no, not though you held out praying hands
day and night and shouted wild appeals to the dull heavens!"
At that moment she looked like a queen of tragedy,--her violet eyes
ablaze,--her lips apart,--her breast heaving;----I approached her with a
strange nervous hesitation and touched her hand. She gave it to me
passively,--I drew it through my arm, and for a minute or two we paced
silently up and down the gravel walk. The lights from the monster hotel
which catered for us and our wants, were beginning to twinkle from
basement to roof,--and just above the châlet we rented, a triad of stars
sparkled in the shape of a trefoil.
"Poor Geoffrey!" she said presently, with a quick upward glance at
me,--"I am sorry for you! With all my vagaries of disposition I am not a
fool, and at anyrate I have learned how to analyse myself as well as
others. I read you as easily as I read a book,--I see what a strange
tumult your mind is in! You love me--and you loathe me!--and the
contrast of emotion makes a wreck of you and your ideals. Hush,--don't
speak; I know,--I know! But what would you have me be? An angel? I
cannot realize such a being for more than a fleeting moment of
imagination. A saint? They were all martyred. A good woman? I never met
one. Innocent?--ignorant? I told you before we married that I was
neither; there is nothing left for me to discover as far as the
relations between men and women are concerned,--I have taken the measure
of the inherent love of vice in both sexes. There is not a pin to choose
between them,--men are no worse than women,--women no worse than men. I
have discovered everything--except God!--and I conclude no God could
ever have designed such a crazy and mean business as human life."
While she thus spoke, I could have fallen at her feet and implored her
to be silent. For she was, unknowingly, giving utterance to some of the
many thoughts in which I myself had frequently indulged,--and yet, from
her lips they sounded cruel, unnatural, and callous to a degree that
made me shrink from her in fear and agony. We had reached a little grove
of pines,--and here in the silence and shadow I took her in my arms and
stared disconsolately upon the beauty of her face.
"Sibyl!" I whispered--"Sibyl, what is wrong with us both? How is it that
we do not seem to find the loveliest side of love?--why is it that even
in our kisses and embraces, some impalpable darkness comes between us,
so that we anger or weary each other when we should be glad and
satisfied? What is it? Can you tell? For you know the darkness is
there!"
A curious look came into her eyes,--a far-away strained look of hungry
yearning, mingled, as I thought, with compassion for me.
"Yes, it is there!" she answered slowly--"And it is of our own mutual
creation. I believe you have something nobler in your nature, Geoffrey,
than I have in mine,--an indefinable something that recoils from me and
my theories despite your wish and will. Perhaps if you had given way to
that feeling in time, you would never have married me. You speak of the
loveliest side of love,--to me there is no lovely side,--it is all
coarse and horrible! You and I for instance,--cultured man and
woman,--we cannot, in marriage, get a flight beyond the common emotions
of Hodge and his girl!" She laughed violently, and shuddered in my arms.
"What liars the poets are, Geoffrey! They ought to be sentenced to
life-long imprisonment for their perjuries! They help to mould the
credulous beliefs of a woman's heart;--in her early youth she reads
their delicious assurances, and imagines that love will be all they
teach,--a thing divine and lasting beyond earthly countings;--then comes
the coarse finger of prose on the butterfly-wing of poesy, and the
bitterness and hideousness of complete disillusion!"
I held her still in my arms with the fierce grasp of a man clinging to a
spar ere he drowns in mid-ocean.
"But I love you Sibyl!----my wife, I love you!" I said, with a passion
that choked my utterance.
"You love me,--yes, I know, but how? In a way that is abhorrent to
yourself!" she replied--"It is not poetic love,--it is man's love, and
man's love is brute love. So it is,--so it will be,--so it must be.
Moreover the brute-love soon tires,--and when it dies out from satiety
there is nothing left. Nothing, Geoffrey,--absolutely nothing but a
blank and civil form of intercourse, which I do not doubt we shall be
able to keep up for the admiration and comment of society!"
She disengaged herself from my embrace, and moved towards the house.
"Come!" she added, turning her exquisite head back over her shoulder
with a feline caressing grace that she alone possessed, "You know there
is a famous lady in London who advertises her saleable charms to the
outside public by means of her monogram worked into the lace of all her
window-blinds, thinking it no doubt good for trade! I am not quite so
bad as that! You have paid dearly for me I know;--but remember I as yet
wear no jewels but yours, and crave no gifts beyond those you are
generous enough to bestow,--and my dutiful desire is to give you as much
full value as I can for your money."
"Sibyl, you kill me!" I cried, tortured beyond endurance, "Do you think
me so base----"