Oh, the blessedness of absolute unconsciousness! It is enough to make
one wish that death were indeed annihilation! Utter oblivion,--complete
destruction,--surely this would be a greater mercy to the erring soul of
man than the terrible God's-gift of Immortality,--the dazzling impress
of that divine 'Image' of the Creator in which we are all made, and
which we can never obliterate from our beings. I, who have realized to
the full the unalterable truth of eternal life,--eternal regeneration
for each individual spirit in each individual human creature,--look upon
the endless futures through which I am compelled to take my part with
something more like horror than gratitude. For I have wasted my time and
thrown away priceless opportunities,--and though repentance may retrieve
these, the work of retrieval is long and bitter. It is easier to lose a
glory than to win it; and if I could have died the death that
positivists hope for at the very moment when I learned the full measure
of my heart's desolation, surely it would have been well! But my
temporary swoon was only too brief,--and when I recovered I found myself
in Lucio's own apartment, one of the largest and most sumptuously
furnished of all the guest-chambers at Willowsmere,--the windows were
wide open, and the floor was flooded with moonlight. As I shuddered
coldly back to life and consciousness, I heard a tinkling sound of tune,
and opening my eyes wearily I saw Lucio himself seated in the full
radiance of the moon with a mandoline on his knee from which he was
softly striking delicate impromptu melodies. I was amazed at
this,--astounded that while I personally was overwhelmed with a weight
of woe, _he_ should still be capable of amusing himself. It is a common
idea with us all that when we ourselves are put out, no one else should
dare to be merry,--in fact we expect Nature itself to wear a miserable
face if our own beloved Ego is disturbed by any trouble,--such is the
extent of our ridiculous self-consciousness. I moved in my chair and
half rose from it,--when Lucio, still thrumming the strings of his
instrument _piano pianissimo_, said--
"Keep still, Geoffrey! You'll be all right in a few minutes. Don't worry
yourself."
"Worry myself!" I echoed bitterly--"Why not say don't kill yourself!"
"Because I see no necessity to offer you that advice at present--" he
responded coolly--"and if there were necessity, I doubt if I should give
it,--because I consider it better to kill one's self than worry one's
self. However opinions differ. I want you to take this matter lightly."
"Lightly!--take my own dishonour and disgrace lightly!" I exclaimed,
almost leaping from my chair--"You ask too much!"
"My good fellow, I ask no more than is asked and expected of a hundred
'society' husbands to-day. Consider!--your wife has been led away from
her soberer judgment and reasoning by an exalted and hysterical passion
for me on account of my looks,--not for myself at all--because she
really does not know _Me_,--she only sees me as I appear to be. The love
of handsome exterior personalities is a common delusion of the fair
sex--and passes in time like other women's diseases. No actual dishonour
or disgrace attaches to her or to you,--nothing has been seen, heard, or
done, _in public_. This being so, I can't understand what you are making
a fuss about. The great object of social life, you know, is to hide all
savage passions and domestic differences from the gaze of the vulgar
crowd. You can be as bad as you like in private--only God sees--and
that does not matter!"
His eyes had a mocking lustre in them,--twanging his mandoline, he sang
under his breath,
"If she be not fair for me
What care I how fair she be!"
"That is the true spirit, Geoffrey,"--he went on--"It sounds flippant to
you no doubt in your present tragic frame of mind,--but it is the only
way to treat women, in marriage or out of it. Before the world and
society, your wife is like Cæsar's, above suspicion. Only you and I
(we will leave God out) have been the witnesses of her attack of
hysteria ..."
"Hysteria, you call it! She loves you!" I said hotly--"And she has
always loved you. She confessed it,--and you admitted that you always
knew it!"
"I always knew she was hysterical--yes--if that is what you mean;"--he
answered--"The majority of women have no real feelings, no serious
emotions--except one--vanity. They do not know what a great love
means,--their chief desire is for conquest,--and failing in this, they
run up the gamut of baffled passion to the pitch of frenetic hysteria,
which with some becomes chronic. Lady Sibyl suffers in this way. Now
listen to me. I will go off to Paris or Moscow or Berlin at once,--after
what has happened, of course I cannot stay here,--and I give you my word
I will not intrude myself into your domestic circle again. In a few days
you will tide over this rupture, and learn the wisdom of supporting the
differences that occur in matrimony, with composure----"
"Impossible! I will not part with you!" I said vehemently--"Nor will I
live with her! Better the companionship of a true friend than that of a
false wife!"
He raised his eyebrows with a puzzled half humorous expression--then
shrugged his shoulders, as one who gives up a difficult argument.
Rising, he put aside his mandoline and came over to me, his tall
imposing figure casting a gigantic shadow in the brilliant moonbeams.
"Upon my word, you put me in a very awkward position Geoffrey,--what is
to be done? You can get a judicial separation if you like, but I think
it would be an unwise course of procedure after barely four months of
marriage. The world would be set talking at once. Really it is better to
do anything than give the gossips a chance for floating scandal. Look
here--don't decide anything hastily,--come up to town with me for a day,
and leave your wife alone to meditate upon her foolishness and its
possible consequences,--then you will be better able to judge as to your
future movements. Go to your room, and sleep till morning."
"Sleep!" I repeated with a shudder--"In that room where she----" I broke
off with a cry and looked at him imploringly--"Am I going mad, I wonder!
My brain seems on fire! If I could forget! ... if I could forget!
Lucio--if you, my loyal friend, had been false to me I should have
died,--your truth, your honour have saved me!"
He smiled--an odd, cynical little smile.
"Tut----I make no boast of virtue"--he rejoined--"If the lady's beauty
had been any temptation to me I might have yielded to her charms,--in so
doing I should have been no more than man, as she herself suggested. But
perhaps I _am_ more than man!--at anyrate bodily beauty in woman makes
no sort of effect on me, unless it is accompanied by beauty of
soul,--then it does make an effect, and a very extraordinary one. It
provokes me to try how deep the beauty goes--whether it is impervious or
vulnerable. As I find it, so I leave it!"