They and I Part 22

Dimly outlined against the night, he has the appearance of a friendly hobgoblin. But I wish he didn't fancy himself as a vocalist. It is against his own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it. That American college yell of his must have the effect of sending every living thing within half a mile back into its hole. Maybe it is a provision of nature for clearing off the very old mice who have become stone deaf and would otherwise be a burden on their relatives. The others, unless out for suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably safe. Ethelbertha is persuaded he is a sign of death; but seeing there isn't a square quarter of a mile in this county without its screech-owl, there can hardly by this time be a resident that an a.s.surance Society would look at. Veronica likes him.

She even likes his screech. I found her under the tree the other night, wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it. As if one of them were not enough! It made me quite cross with her. Besides, it wasn't a bit like it, as I told her. She said it was better than I could do, anyhow; and I was idiot enough to take up the challenge. It makes me angry now, when I think of it: a respectable, middle-aged literary man, standing under a yew-tree trying to screech like an owl. And the bird was silly enough to encourage us.

"She was a charming girl," I said, "seven-and-twenty years ago, when St.

Leonard fell in love with her. She had those dark, dreamy eyes so suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked bewitching when they pouted. I expect they often did. They do so still; but the pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates. To a pretty girl of nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical unreasonableness, are added attractions: the scratch of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease her the more. Young Hubert St. Leonard-he had curly brown hair, with a pretty trick of blus.h.i.+ng, and was going to conquer the world-found her fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable: and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing into her bewildering eyes-only he called it her waywardness, her imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more capricious. Told her how beautiful she looked when displeased. So, no doubt, she did-at nineteen."

"He didn't tell you all that, did he?" demanded Robina.

"Not a word," I rea.s.sured her, "except that she was acknowledged by all authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tunbridge Wells, and that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor. No, I was merely, to use the phrase of the French police courts, 'reconstructing the crime.'"

"It may be all wrong," grumbled Robina.

"It may be," I agreed. "But why? Does it strike you as improbable?"

We were sitting in the porch, waiting for d.i.c.k to come by the white path across the field.

"No," answered Robina. "It all sounds very probable. I wish it didn't."

"You must remember," I continued, "that I am an old playgoer. I have sat out so many of this world's dramas. It is as easy to reconstruct them backwards as forwards. We are witnessing the last act of the St. Leonard drama: that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills out time after the play is ended! The intermediate acts were probably more exciting, containing 'pa.s.sionate scenes' played with much earnestness; chiefly for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the servants. But the first act, with the Kentish lanes and woods for a back-cloth, must have been charming. Here was the devout lover she had heard of, dreamed of. It is delightful to be regarded as perfection-not absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us to live up to, but as so near perfection that to be more perfect would just spoil it. The spots upon us, that unappreciative friends and relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light: artistic shading relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove too glaring. Dear Hubert found her excellent just as she was in every detail. It would have been a crime against Love for her to seek to change herself."

"Well, then, it was his fault," argued Robina. "If he was silly enough to like her faults, and encourage her in them-"

"What could he have done," I asked, "even if he had seen them? A lover does not point out his mistress's shortcomings to her."

"Much the more sensible plan if he did," insisted Robina. "Then if she cared for him she could set to work to cure herself."

"You would like it?" I said; "you would appreciate it in your own case?

Can you imagine young Bute-?"

"Why young Bute?" demanded Robina; "what's he got to do with it?"

"Nothing," I answered; "except that he happens to be the first male creature you have ever come across since you were six that you haven't flirted with."

"I don't flirt with them," said Robina; "I merely try to be nice to them."

"With the exception of young Bute," I persisted.

"He irritates me," Robina explained.

"I was reading," I said, "the other day, an account of the marriage customs prevailing among the Lower Caucasians. The lover takes his stand beneath his lady's window, and, having attracted her attention, proceeds to sing. And if she seems to like it-if she listens to it without getting mad, that means she doesn't want him. But if she gets upset about it-slams down the window and walks away, then it's all right. I think it's the Lower Caucasians."

"Must be a very silly people," said Robina; "I suppose a pail of water would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for."

"A complex being, man," I agreed. "We will call him X. Can you imagine young X coming to you and saying: 'My dear Robina, you have many excellent qualities. You can be amiable-so long as you are having your own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just horrid. You are very kind-to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way, which is not always their way. You can be quite unselfish-when you happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent. You are capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people, impatient and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling lazy; ready to forgive the moment your temper is exhausted. You are generous and frank, but if your object could only be gained through meanness or deceit you would not hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the circ.u.mstances justified the means. You are sympathetic, tender-hearted, and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see that tongue of yours, if not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish. You have any amount of grit. A man might go tiger-hunting with you-with no one better; but you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting. In short, to sum you up, you have all the makings in you of an ideal wife combined with faults sufficient to make a Socrates regret he'd ever married you.'"

"Yes, I would!" said Robina, springing to her feet. I could not see her face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate want to paint her as Joan of Arc; only it would never stop long enough. "I'd love him for talking like that. And I'd respect him. If he was that sort of man I'd pray G.o.d to help me to be the sort of woman he wanted me to be. I'd try. I'd try all day long. I would!"

"I wonder," I said. Robina had surprised me. I admit it. I thought I knew the s.e.x better.

"Any girl would," said Robina. "He'd be worth it."

"It would be a new idea," I mused. "_Gott im Himmel_! what a new world might it not create!" The fancy began to take hold of me. "Love no longer blind. Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool-sport of G.o.ds and men. Love no longer pa.s.sion's slave. His bonds broken, the senseless bandage flung aside. Love helping life instead of muddling it.

Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no longer reared upon the sands of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock of truth-reality. Have you ever read 'Tom Jones?'" I said.

"No," answered Robina; "I've always heard it wasn't a nice book."

"It isn't," I said. "Man isn't a nice animal, not all of him. Nor woman either. There's a deal of the beast in man. What can you expect? Till a few paltry thousands of years ago he _was_ a beast, fighting with other beasts, his fellow denizens of the woods and caves; watching for his prey, crouched in the long gra.s.s of the river's bank, tearing it with claws and teeth, growling as he ate. So he lived and died through the dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast's blood, his b.e.s.t.i.a.l instincts, to his offspring, growing ever stronger, fiercer, from generation to generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped their beds. Moses! Why, Lord Rothschild's great-grandfather, a few score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with him. Babylon!

It is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to alteration of traffic routes. History! it is a tale of to-day. Man was crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him.

It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a man. Our modern morality! Why, compared with the teachings of nature, it is but a few days old. What do you expect? That he shall forget the lessons of the aeons at the bidding of the hours?"

"Then you advise me to read 'Tom Jones'?" said Robina.

"Yes," I said, "I do. I should not if I thought you were still a child, knowing only blind trust, or blind terror. The sun is not extinguished because occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the rose is not dead because of the worm in the leaf. A healthy rose can afford a few worms-has got to, anyhow. All men are not Tom Joneses. The standard of masculine behaviour continues to go up: many of us make fine efforts to conform to it, and some of us succeed. But the Tom Jones is there in all of us who are not anaemic or consumptive. And there's no sense at all in getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help it. We are doing our best. In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes well, we shall be the perfect man. And seeing our early training, I flatter myself that, up to the present, we have done remarkably well."

"Nothing like being satisfied with oneself," said Robina.

"I'm not satisfied," I said; "I'm only hopeful. But it irritates me when I hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled angel and was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner. That seems to me the way to discourage him. What he wants is bucking up; somebody to say to him, 'Bravo! why, this is splendid! Just think, my boy, what you were, and that not so very long ago-an unwashed, hairy savage; your law that of the jungle, your morals those of the rabbit-warren. Now look at yourself-dressed in your little s.h.i.+ny hat, your trousers neatly creased, walking with your wife to church on Sunday! Keep on-that's all you've got to do. In a few more centuries your own mother Nature won't know you.'

"You women," I continued; "why, a handful of years ago we bought and sold you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not spry in doing what you were told. Did you ever read the history of Patient Griselda?"

"Yes," said Robina, "I have." I gathered from her tone that the Joan of Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that particular moment I should have suggested Katherine-during the earlier stages-listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio. "Are you suggesting that all women should take her for a model?"

"No," I said, "I'm not. Though were we living in Chaucer's time I might; and you would not think it even silly. What I'm impressing upon you is that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the average man can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King Arthur-the King Arthur of the poetical legend, I mean. Don't be too impatient with him."

"Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient himself with himself," considered Robina. "He ought to be feeling so ashamed of himself as to be willing to do anything."

The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or amus.e.m.e.nt I cannot tell.

"And woman," I said, "had the power been hers, would she have used it to sweeter purpose? Where is your evidence? Your Cleopatras, Pompadours, Jezebels; your Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of China; your Faustines of all ages and all climes; your Mother Brownriggs; your Lucretia Borgias, Salomes-I could weary you with names. Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of fas.h.i.+on, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been other women also-n.o.ble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the dark waste of history. So there have been n.o.ble men-saints, martyrs, heroes. The s.e.x-line divides us physically, not morally. Woman has been man's accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge. 'Male and female created He them'-like and like, for good and evil."

By good fortune I found a loose match. I lighted a fresh cigar.

"d.i.c.k, I suppose, is the average man," said Robina.

"Most of us are," I said, "when we are at home. Carlyle was the average man in the little front parlour in Cheyne Row, though, to hear fools talk, you might think no married couple outside literary circles had ever been known to exchange a cross look. So was Oliver Cromwell in his own palace with the door shut. Mrs. Cromwell must have thought him monstrous silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his guests to sit on-told him so, most likely. A cheery, kindly man, notwithstanding, though given to moods. He and Mrs. Cromwell seem to have rubbed along, on the whole, pretty well together. Old Sam Johnson-great, G.o.d-fearing, lovable, cantankerous old brute! Life with him, in a small house on a limited income, must have had its ups and downs. Milton and Frederick the Great were, one hopes, a little below the average. Did their best, no doubt; lacked understanding. Not so easy as it looks, living up to the standard of the average man. Very clever people, in particular, find it tiring."

"I shall never marry," said Robina. "At least, I hope I sha'n't."

"Why 'hope'?" I asked.

"Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough," she answered. "I see it all so clearly. I wish I didn't. Love! it's only an ugly thing with a pretty name. It will not be me that he will fall in love with. He will not know me until it is too late. How can he? It will be merely with the outside of me-my pink-and-white skin, my rounded arms. I feel it sometimes when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad. And at other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me. And that makes me madder still."

The moon had slipped behind the wood. She had risen, and, leaning against the porch, was standing with her hands clasped. I fancy she had forgotten me. She seemed to be talking to the night.

"It's only a trick of Nature to make fools of us," she said. "He will tell me I am all the world to him; that his love will outlive the stars-will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow! He will call me a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands. And if I'm fool enough to listen to him, it may last"-she laughed; it was rather an ugly laugh-"six months; with luck perhaps a year, if I'm careful not to go out in the east wind and come home with a red nose, and never let him catch me in curl papers. It will not be me that he will want: only my youth, and the novelty of me, and the mystery. And when that is gone-"

She turned to me. It was a strange face I saw then in the pale light, quite a fierce little face. She laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I felt them cold. "What comes when it is dead?" she said. "What follows?

You must know. Tell me. I want the truth."

Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly. The little girl I had set out to talk with was no longer there. To my bewilderment, it was a woman that was questioning me.