For twenty years of my life I have embraced the phantom of the fairest woman that ever drew breath. I have submitted to her whims, I have worshipped her feet, I have, I believe, strengthened her principle. I have done all in my devotion but adopt her religious faith. And I have, as I trusted some time since, awakened to perceive that those twenty years were a period of mere sentimental pastime, perfectly useless, fruitless, unless, as is possible, it has saved me from other follies. But it was a folly in itself. Can one's nature be too stedfast? The question whether a spice of frivolousness may not be a safeguard has often risen before me. The truth, I must learn to think, is, that my mental power is not the match for my ideal or sentimental apprehension and native tenacity of attachment. I have fallen into one of the pits of a well-meaning but idle man. The world discredits the existence of pure platonism in love. I myself can barely look back on those twenty years of amatory servility with a full comprehension of the part I have been playing in them. And yet I would not willingly forfeit the exalted admiration of Louise for my constancy: as little willingly as I would have imperilled her purity. I cling to the past as to something in which I have deserved well, though I am scarcely satisfied with it. According to our English notions I know my name. English notions, however, are not to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat declaration of a fact will develop it in alt its bearings. When our English society shall have advanced to a high civilization, it will be less expansive in denouncing the higher stupidities. Among us, much of the social judgement of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the stereotyped opinion of the land. There is the dictum here for a man who adores a woman who is possessed by a husband. If he has long adored her, and known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has solved the problem of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering. Politically we are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest animals. The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable, for without it such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses. I judge rather by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair matrons give to astounded foreigners when abroad.
Louise writes that her husband is paralysed. The Marquis de Mazardouin is at last tasting of his mortality. I bear in mind the day when he married her. She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like a woman, she praises him for that. It is the one thing which I have not done to please her. She anticipates his decease. Should she be free—what then? My heart does not beat the faster for the thought. There are twenty years upon it, and they make a great load. But I have a desire that she should come over to us. The old folly might rescue me from the new one. Not that I am any further persecuted by the dread that I am in imminent danger here. I have established a proper mastery over my young lady. 'Nous avons change de role'. Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly, is becoming conscious—a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the creature's growth. There is vast capacity in the girl. She has plainly not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man's conscience might be at ease if—if he chose to disregard what is due to decency. But, why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion concerning disparity of years between husband and wife? I know innumerable cases of an old husband making a young wife happy. My friend, Dr. Galliot, married his ward, and he had the best wife of any man of my acquaintance. She has been publishing his learned manuscripts ever since his death. That is an extreme case, for he was forty-five years her senior, and stood bald at the altar. Old General Althorpe married Julia Dahoop, and, but for his preposterous jealousy of her, might be cited in proof that the ordinary reckonings are not to be a yoke on the neck of one who earnestly seeks to spouse a fitting mate, though late in life. But, what are fifty years? They mark the prime of a healthy man's existence. He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is virtually more eligible—to use the cant phrase of gossips—than a young man, even for a young girl. And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?
I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot and jealous as General Althorpe. For, with my thorough knowledge of myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world. Nor, as I am and know myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble. When my filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas of her own. Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed imaginations are desperate things to encounter. There is nothing beyond their reach. Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are always seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little help from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they have once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them: their supernatural vitality has vanished. I fancy my pretty Alice to be in this state now. She leaves us to-morrow. In the autumn we shall have her with us again, and Louise will scan her compassionately. I desire that they should meet. It will be hardly fair to the English girl, but, if I stand in the gap between them, I shall summon up no small quantity of dormant compatriotic feeling. The contemplation of the contrast, too, may save me from both: like the logic ass with the two trusses of hay on either side of him.
I am at home. There was never anybody who felt so strange in her home. It is not a month since I left my sisters, and I hardly remember that I know them. They all, and even papa, appear to be thinking about such petty things. They complain that I tell them nothing. What have I to tell? My Prince! my own Leboo, if I might lie in the stall with you, then I should feel thoroughly happy! That is, if I could fall asleep. Evelina declares we are not eight miles from Dayton. It seems to me I am eight millions of miles distant, and shall be all my life travelling along a weary road to get there again just for one long sunny day. And it might rain when I got there after all! My trouble nobody knows. Nobody knows a thing!
The night before my departure, Miss Pollingray did me the honour to accompany me up to my bedroom. She spoke to me searchingly about Charles; but she did not demand compromising answers. She is not in favour of early marriages, so she merely wishes to know the footing upon which we stand: that of friends. I assured her we were simply friends. 'It is the firmest basis of an attachment,' she said; and I did not look hurried.
But I gained my end. I led her to talk of the beautiful Marquise. This is the tale. Mr. Pollingray, when a very young man, and comparatively poor, went over to France with good introductions, and there saw and fell in love with Louise de Riverolles. She reciprocated his passion. If he would have consented to abjure his religion and worship with her, Madame de Riverolles, her mother, would have listened to her entreaties. But Gilbert was firm. Mr. Pollingray, I mean, refused to abandon his faith. Her mother, consequently, did not interfere, and Monsieur de Riverolles, her father, gave her to the Marquis de Marzardouin, a roue young nobleman, immensely rich, and shockingly dissipated. And she married him. No, I cannot understand French girls. Do as I will, it is quite incomprehensible to me how Louise, loving another, could suffer herself to be decked out in bridal finery and go to the altar and take the marriage oaths. Not if perdition had threatened would I have submitted. I have a feeling that Mr. Pollingray should have shown at least one year's resentment at such conduct; and yet I admire him for his immediate generous forgiveness of her. It was fatherly. She was married at sixteen. His forgiveness was the fruit of his few years' seniority, said Miss Pollingray, whose opinion of the Marquise I cannot arrive at. At any rate, they have been true and warm friends ever since, constantly together interchangeing visits. That is why Mr. Pollingray has been more French than English for those long years.
Miss Pollingray concluded by asking me what I thought of the story. I said: 'It is very strange French habits are so different from ours. I dare say . . . I hope . . . , perhaps . . . indeed, Mr. Pollingray seems happy now.' Her idea of my wits must be that they are of the schoolgirl order—a perfect receptacle for indefinite impressions.
'Ah!' said she. 'Gilbert has burnt his heart to ashes by this time.'
I slept with that sentence in my brain. In the morning, I rose and dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I still see him, like a martyr.
'Some people,' Miss Pollingray said, I permitted themselves to think evil of my brother's assiduous devotion to a married woman. There is not a spot on his character, or on that of the person whom Gilbert loved.'
I would believe it in the teeth of calumny. I would cling to my, belief in him if I were drowning.
I consider that those twenty years are just nothing, if he chooses to have them so. He has lived embalmed in a saintly affection. No wonder he considers himself still youthful. He is entitled to feel that his future is before him.
No amount of sponging would get the stains away from my horrid red eyelids. I slunk into my seat at the breakfast-table, not knowing that one of the maids had dropped a letter from Charles into my hand, and that I had opened it and was holding it open. The letter, as I found afterwards, told me that Charles has received an order from his uncle to go over to Mr. Pollingray's estate in Dauphiny on business. I am not sorry that they should have supposed I was silly enough to cry at the thought of Charles's crossing the Channel. They did imagine it, I know; for by and by Miss Pollingray whispered: 'Les absents n'auront pas tort, cette fois, n'est-ce-pas? 'And Mr. Pollingray was cruelly gentle: an air of 'I would not intrude on such emotions'; and I heightened their delusions as much as I could: there was no other way of accounting for my pantomime face. Why should he fancy I suffered so terribly? He talked with an excited cheerfulness meant to relieve me, of course, but there was no justification for his deeming me a love-sick kind of woe-begone ballad girl. It caused him likewise to adopt a manner—what to call it, I cannot think: tender respect, frigid regard, anything that accompanies and belongs to the pressure of your hand with the finger-tips. He said goodbye so tenderly that I would have kissed his sleeve. The effort to restrain myself made me like an icicle. Oh! adieu, mon parrain!
A wise man will not squander his laughter if he can help itA woman is hurt if you do not confide to her your plansGentleman in a good state of preservationImparting the usual chorus of yesses to his own mindIn every difficulty, patience is a life-beltKnew my friend to be one of the most absent-minded of menRapture of obliviousnessTelling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipationWhen you have done laughing with her, you can laugh at her
By George Meredith
ARDEN,…………. In love with Astraea.
SWITHIN,……….. Sympathetics. OSIER,
DAME DRESDEN,…… Sister to Homeware.
ASTRAEA,……….. Niece to Dame Dresden and Homeware.
LYRA,………….. A Wife.LADY OLDLACE.VIRGINIA.WINIFRED.
The scene is a Surrey garden in early summer. The paths are shaded by tall box-wood hedges. The—time is some sixty years ago.
PROFESSOR SPIRAL, DAME DRESDEN, LADY OLDLACE,VIRGINIA, WINIFRED, SWITHIN, and OSIER
(As they slowly promenade the garden, the professor is delivering one of his exquisite orations on Woman.)
SPIRAL: One husband! The woman consenting to marriage takes but one. For her there is no widowhood. That punctuation of the sentence called death is not the end of the chapter for her. It is the brilliant proof of her having a soul. So she exalts her sex. Above the wrangle and clamour of the passions she is a fixed star. After once recording her obedience to the laws of our common nature—that is to say, by descending once to wedlock—she passes on in sovereign disengagement—a dedicated widow.
(By this time they have disappeared from view. HOMEWARE appears; he craftily avoids joining their party, like one who is unworthy of such noble oratory. He desires privacy and a book, but is disturbed by the arrival of ARDEN, who is painfully anxious to be polite to 'her uncle Homeware.')
ARDEN: A glorious morning, sir.
HOMEWARE: The sun is out, sir.
ARDEN: I am happy in meeting you, Mr. Homeware.
HOMEWARE: I can direct you to the ladies, Mr. Arden. You will find them up yonder avenue.
ARDEN: They are listening, I believe, to an oration from the mouth ofProfessor Spiral.
HOMEWARE: On an Alpine flower which has descended to flourish on English soil. Professor Spiral calls it Nature's 'dedicated widow.'
ARDEN: 'Dedicated widow'?
HOMEWARE: The reference you will observe is to my niece Astraea.
ARDEN: She is dedicated to whom?
HOMEWARE: To her dead husband! You see the reverse of Astraea, says the professor, in those world-infamous widows who marry again.
ARDEN: Bah!
HOMEWARE: Astraea, it is decided, must remain solitary, virgin cold, like the little Alpine flower. Professor Spiral has his theme.
ARDEN: He will make much of it. May I venture to say that I prefer my present company?
HOMEWARE: It is a singular choice. I can supply you with no weapons for the sort of stride in which young men are usually engaged. You belong to the camp you are avoiding.
ARDEN: Achilles was not the worse warrior, sir, for his probation in petticoats.
HOMEWARE: His deeds proclaim it. But Alexander was the better chieftain until he drank with Lais.
ARDEN: No, I do not plead guilty to Bacchus.
HOMEWARE: You are confessing to the madder form of drunkenness.
ARDEN: How, sir, I beg?
HOMEWARE: How, when a young man sees the index to himself in everything spoken!
ARDEN: That might have the look. I did rightly in coming to you, sir.
HOMEWARE: 'Her uncle Homeware'?
ARDEN: You read through us all, sir.
HOMEWARE: It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady's uncle Homeware.
ARDEN: The third.
HOMEWARE: Yes, she is pursued. It could hardly be otherwise. Her attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent. Yet, Mr. Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to be profane by the laws of this region. Can you again forget that Astraea is a widow?
ARDEN: She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.
HOMEWARE: The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not to measure her widowhood by years. His, from the altar to the tomb. As it might be read, a one day's walk!
ARDEN: Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a whimsical feminine delicacy?
HOMEWARE: You have argued it with her?
ARDEN: I have presumed.
HOMEWARE: And still she refused her hand!
ARDEN: She commended me to you, sir. She has a sound judgement of persons.
HOMEWARE: I should put it that she passes the Commissioners of Lunacy, on the ground of her being a humorous damsel. Your predecessors had also argued it with her; and they, too, discovered their enemy in a whimsical feminine delicacy. Where is the difference between you? Evidently she cannot perceive it, and I have to seek: You will have had many conversations with Astraea?
ARDEN: I can say, that I am thrice the man I was before I had them.
HOMEWARE: You have gained in manhood from conversations with a widow in her twenty-second year; and you want more of her.
ARDEN: As much as I want more wisdom.
HOMEWARE: You would call her your Muse?
ARDEN: So prosaic a creature as I would not dare to call her that.
HOMEWARE: You have the timely mantle of modesty, Mr. Arden. She has prepared you for some of the tests with her uncle Homeware.
ARDEN: She warned me to be myself, without a spice of affectation.
HOMEWARE: No harder task could be set a young man in modern days. Oh, the humorous damsel. You sketch me the dimple at her mouth.
ARDEN: Frankly, sir, I wish you to know me better; and I think I can bear inspection. Astraea sent me to hear the reasons why she refuses me a hearing.
HOMEWARE: Her reason, I repeat, is this; to her idea, a second wedlock is unholy. Further, it passes me to explain. The young lady lands us where we were at the beginning; such must have been her humorous intention.
ARDEN: What can I do?
HOMEWARE: Love and war have been compared. Both require strategy and tactics, according to my recollection of the campaign.
ARDEN: I will take to heart what you say, sir.
HOMEWARE: Take it to head. There must be occasional descent of lovers' heads from the clouds. And Professor Spiral,—But here we have a belated breeze of skirts.
(The reference is to the arrival of LYRA, breathless.)
LYRA: My own dear uncle Homeware!
HOMEWARE: But where is Pluriel?
LYRA: Where is a woman's husband when she is away from him?
HOMEWARE: In Purgatory, by the proper reckoning. But hurry up the avenue, or you will be late for Professor Spiral's address.
LYRA: I know it all without hearing. Their Spiral! Ah, Mr. Arden! You have not chosen badly. The greater my experience, the more do I value my uncle Homeware's company.
(She is affectionate to excess but has a roguish eye withal, as of one who knows that uncle Homeware suspects all young men and most young women.)
HOMEWARE: Agree with the lady promptly, my friend.
ARDEN: I would gladly boast of so lengthened an experience, Lady Pluriel.
LYRA: I must have a talk with Astraea, my dear uncle. Her letters breed suspicions. She writes feverishly. The last one hints at service on the West Coast of Africa.
HOMEWARE: For the draining of a pestiferous land, or an enlightenment of the benighted black, we could not despatch a missionary more effective than the handsomest widow in Great Britain.
LYRA: Have you not seen signs of disturbance?
HOMEWARE: A great oration may be a sedative.
LYRA: I have my suspicions.
HOMEWARE: Mr. Arden, I could counsel you to throw yourself at LadyPluriel's feet, and institute her as your confessional priest.
ARDEN: Madam, I am at your feet. I am devoted to the lady.
LYRA: Devoted. There cannot be an objection. It signifies that a man asks for nothing in return!
HOMEWARE: Have a thought upon your words with this lady, Mr. Arden!
ARDEN: Devoted, I said. I am. I would give my life for her.
LYRA: Expecting it to be taken to-morrow or next day? Accept my encomiums. A male devotee is within an inch of a miracle. Women had been looking for this model for ages, uncle.
HOMEWARE: You are the model, Mr Arden!
LYRA: Can you have intended to say that it is in view of marriage you are devoted to the widow of Professor Towers?
ARDEN: My one view.
LYRA: It is a star you are beseeching to descend.
ARDEN: It is.
LYRA: You disappoint me hugely. You are of the ordinary tribe after all; and your devotion craves an enormous exchange, infinitely surpassing the amount you bestow.
ARDEN: It does. She is rich in gifts; I am poor. But I give all I have.
LYRA: These lovers, uncle Homeware!
HOMEWARE: A honey-bag is hung up and we have them about us. They would persuade us that the chief business of the world is a march to the altar.
ARDEN: With the right partner, if the business of the world is to be better done.
LYRA: Which right partner has been chosen on her part, by a veiled woman, who marches back from the altar to discover that she has chained herself to the skeleton of an idea, or is in charge of that devouring tyrant, an uxorious husband. Is Mr. Arden in favour with the Dame, uncle?
HOMEWARE: My sister is an unsuspicious potentate, as you know. Pretenders to the hand of an inviolate widow bite like waves at a rock.
LYRA: Professor Spiral advances rapidly.
HOMEWARE: Not, it would appear, when he has his audience of ladies and their satellites.
LYRA: I am sure I hear a spring-tide of enthusiasm coming.
ARDEN: I will see.
(He goes up the path.)
LYRA: Now! my own dear uncle, save me from Pluriel. I have given him the slip in sheer desperation; but the man is at his shrewdest when he is left to guess at my heels. Tell him I am anywhere but here. Tell him I ran away to get a sense of freshness in seeing him again. Let me have one day of liberty, or, upon my word, I shall do deeds; I shall console young Arden: I shall fly to Paris and set my cap at presidents and foreign princes. Anything rather than be eaten up every minute, as I am. May no woman of my acquaintance marry a man of twenty years her senior! She marries a gigantic limpet. At that period of his life a man becomes too voraciously constant.
HOMEWARE: Cupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasite.
LYRA: I am in dead earnest, uncle, and I will have a respite, or else let decorum beware!
(Arden returns.)
ARDEN: The ladies are on their way.
LYRA: I must get Astraea to myself.
HOMEWARE: My library is a virgin fortress, Mr. Arden. Its gates are open to you on other topics than the coupling of inebriates.
(He enters the house—LYRA disappears in the garden—Spiral'saudience reappear without him.)
LADY OLDLACE: Such perfect rhythm!
WINIFRED: Such oratory!
LADY OLDLACE: A master hand. I was in a trance from the first sentence to the impressive close.
OSIER: Such oratory is a whole orchestral symphony.
VIRGINIA: Such command of intonation and subject!
SWITHIN: That resonant voice!
LADY OLDLACE: Swithin, his flow of eloquence! He launched forth!
SWITHIN: Like an eagle from a cliff.
OSIER: The measure of the words was like a beat of wings.
SWITHIN: He makes poets of us.
DAME DRESDEN: Spiral achieved his pinnacle to-day!
VIRGINIA: How treacherous is our memory when we have most the longing to recall great sayings!
OSIER: True, I conceive that my notes will be precious.
WINIFRED: You could take notes!
LADY OLDLACE: It seems a device for missing the quintessential.
SWITHIN: Scraps of the body to the loss of the soul of it. We can allow that our friend performed good menial service.
WINIFRED: I could not have done the thing.
SWITHIN: In truth; it does remind one of the mess of pottage.
LADY OLDLACE: One hardly felt one breathed.
VIRGINIA: I confess it moved me to tears.
SWITHIN: There is a pathos for us in the display of perfection. Such subtle contrast with our individual poverty affects us.
WINIFRED: Surely there were passages of a distinct and most exquisite pathos.
LADY OLDLACE: As in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathos.
VIRGINIA: In great oratory, great poetry, great fiction; you try it by the pathos. All our critics agree in stipulating for the pathos. My tears were no feminine weakness, I could not be a discordant instrument.
SWITHIN: I must make confession. He played on me too.
OSIER: We shall be sensible for long of that vibration from the touch of a master hand.
ARDEN: An accomplished player can make a toy-shop fiddle sound you aStradivarius.
DAME DRESDEN: Have you a right to a remark, Mr. Arden? What could have detained you?
ARDEN: Ah, Dame. It may have been a warning that I am a discordant instrument. I do not readily vibrate.
DAME DRESDEN: A discordant instrument is out of place in any civil society. You have lost what cannot be recovered.
ARDEN: There are the notes.
OSIER: Yes, the notes.
SWITHIN: You can be satisfied with the dog's feast at the table, Mr.Arden!
OSIER: Ha!
VIRGINIA: Never have I seen Astraea look sublimer in her beauty than with her eyes uplifted to the impassioned speaker, reflecting every variation of his tones.
ARDEN: Astraea!
LADY OLDLACE: She was entranced when he spoke of woman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of man.
OSIER: Yes, yes. I have the words [reads]: 'Woman is to the front of man, holding the vestal flower of a purer civilization. I see,' he says, 'the little taper in her hands transparent round the light, against rough winds.'
DAME DRESDEN: And of Astraea herself, what were the words? 'Nature's dedicated widow.'
SWITHIN: Vestal widow, was it not?
VIRGINIA: Maiden widow, I think.
DAME DRESDEN: We decide for 'dedicated.'
WINIFRED: Spiral paid his most happy tribute to the memory of her late husband, the renowned Professor Towers.
VIRGINIA: But his look was at dear Astraea.
ARDEN: At Astraea? Why?
VIRGINIA: For her sanction doubtless.
ARDEN: Ha!
WINIFRED: He said his pride would ever be in his being received as the successor of Professor Towers.
ARDEN: Successor!
SWITHIN: Guardian was it not?
OSIER: Tutor. I think he said.
(The three gentlemen consult Osier's notes uneasily.)
DAME DRESDEN: Our professor must by this time have received in full Astraea's congratulations, and Lyra is hearing from her what it is to be too late. You will join us at the luncheon table, if you do not feel yourself a discordant instrument there, Mr. Arden?
ARDEN (going to her): The allusion to knife and fork tunes my strings instantly, Dame.
DAME DRESDEN: You must help me to-day, for the professor will be tired, though we dare not hint at it in his presence. No reference, ladies, to the great speech we have been privileged to hear; we have expressed our appreciation and he could hardly bear it.
ARDEN: Nothing is more distasteful to the orator!
VIRGINIA: As with every true genius, he is driven to feel humbly human by the exultation of him.
SWITHIN: He breathes in a rarified air.
OSIER: I was thrilled, I caught at passing beauties. I see that here and there I have jotted down incoherencies, lines have seduced me, so that I missed the sequence—the precious part. Ladies, permit me to rank him with Plato as to the equality of women and men.
WINIFRED: It is nobly said.
OSIER: And with the Stoics, in regard to celibacy.
(By this time all the ladies have gone into the house.)
ARDEN: Successor! Was the word successor?
(ARDEN, SWITHIN, and OSIER are excitedly searching the notes when SPIRAL passes and strolls into the house. His air of self-satisfaction increases their uneasiness they follow him. ASTRAEA and LYRA come down the path.)
LYRA: Oh! Pluriel, ask me of him! I wish I were less sure he would not be at the next corner I turn.
ASTRAEA: You speak of your husband strangely, Lyra.
LYRA: My head is out of a sack. I managed my escape from him this morning by renouncing bath and breakfast; and what a relief, to be in the railway carriage alone! that is, when the engine snorted. And if I set eyes on him within a week, he will hear some truths. His idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custody. My hat is on, and on goes Pluriel's. My foot on the stairs; I hear his boot behind me. In my boudoir I am alone one minute, and then the door opens to the inevitable. I pay a visit, he is passing the house as I leave it. He will not even affect surprise. I belong to him, I am cat's mouse. And he will look doating on me in public. And when I speak to anybody, he is that fearful picture of all smirks. Fling off a kid glove after a round of calls; feel your hand—there you have me now that I am out of him for my half a day, if for as long.
ASTRAEA: This is one of the world's happy marriages!
LYRA: This is one of the world's choice dishes! And I have it planted under my nostrils eternally. Spare me the mention of Pluriel until he appears; that's too certain this very day. Oh! good husband! good kind of man! whatever you please; only some peace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wife. I like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breathe. Why, an English boy perpetually bowled by a Christmas pudding would come to loathe the mess.
ASTRAEA: His is surely the excess of a merit.
LYRA: Excess is a poison. Excess of a merit is a capital offence in morality. It disgusts, us with virtue. And you are the cunningest of fencers, tongue, or foils. You lead me to talk of myself, and I hate the subject. By the way, you have practised with Mr. Arden.
ASTRAEA: A tiresome instructor, who lets you pass his guard to compliment you on a hit.
LYRA: He rather wins me.
ASTRAEA: He does at first.
LYRA: Begins Plurielizing, without the law to back him, does he?
ASTRAEA: The fencing lessons are at an end.
LYRA: The duetts with Mr. Swithin's violoncello continue?
ASTRAEA: He broke through the melody.
LYRA: There were readings in poetry with Mr. Osier, I recollect.
ASTRAEA: His own compositions became obtrusive.
LYRA: No fencing, no music, no poetry! no West Coast of Africa either, I suppose.
ASTRAEA: Very well! I am on my defence. You at least shall not misunderstand me, Lyra. One intense regret I have; that I did not live in the time of the Amazons. They were free from this question of marriage; this babble of love. Why am I so persecuted? He will not take a refusal. There are sacred reasons. I am supported by every woman having the sense of her dignity. I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury of wrath I feel at their incessant pursuit. And I despise Mr. Osier and Mr. Swithin because they have an air of pious agreement with the Dame, and are conspirators behind their mask.
LYRA: False, false men!
ASTRAEA: They come to me. I am complimented on being the vulnerable spot.
LYRA: The object desired is usually addressed by suitors, my poorAstraea!
ASTRAEA: With the assumption, that as I am feminine I must necessarily be in the folds of the horrible constrictor they call Love, and that I leap to the thoughts of their debasing marriage.
LYRA: One of them goes to Mr. Homeware.
ASTRAEA: All are sent to him in turn. He can dispose of them.
LYRA: Now that is really masterly fun, my dear; most creditable to you! Love, marriage, a troop of suitors, and uncle Homeware. No, it would not have occurred to me, and—I am considered to have some humour. Of course, he disposes of them. He seemed to have a fairly favourable opinion of Mr. Arden.
ASTRAEA: I do not share it. He is the least respectful of the sentiments entertained by me. Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you say of your husband. He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them thinking that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the mere existence of their passion. He is past argument. Impossible for him to conceive a woman's having a mind above the conditions of her sex. A woman, according to him, can have no ideal of life, except as a ball to toss in the air and catch in a cup. Put him aside. . . . We creatures are doomed to marriage, and if we shun it, we are a kind of cripple. He is grossly earthy in his view of us. We are unable to move a step in thought or act unless we submit to have a husband. That is his reasoning. Nature! Nature! I have to hear of Nature! We must be above Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much below. He is ranked among our clever young men; and he can be amusing. So far he passes muster; and he has a pleasant voice. I dare say he is an uncle Homeware's good sort of boy. Girls like him. Why does he not fix his attention upon one of them; Why upon me? We waste our time in talking of him . . . . The secret of it is, that he has no reverence. The marriage he vaunts is a mere convenient arrangement for two to live together under command of nature. Reverence for the state of marriage is unknown to him. How explain my feeling? I am driven into silence. Cease to speak of him . . . . He is the dupe of his eloquence—his passion, he calls it. I have only to trust myself to him, and—I shall be one of the world's married women! Words are useless. How am I to make him see that it is I who respect the state of marriage by refusing; not he by perpetually soliciting. Once married, married for ever. Widow is but a term. When women hold their own against him, as I have done, they will be more esteemed. I have resisted and conquered. I am sorry I do not share in the opinion of your favourite.
LYRA: Mine?
ASTRAEA: You spoke warmly of him.
LYRA: Warmly, was it?
ASTRAEA: You are not blamed, my dear: he has a winning manner.
LYRA: I take him to be a manly young fellow, smart enough; handsome too.
ASTRAEA: Oh, he has good looks.
LYRA: And a head, by repute.
ASTRAEA: For the world's work, yes.
LYRA: Not romantic.
ASTRAEA: Romantic ideas are for dreamy simperers.
LYRA: Amazons repudiate them.
ASTRAEA: Laugh at me. Half my time I am laughing at myself. I should regain my pride if I could be resolved on a step. I am strong to resist; I have not strength to move.
LYRA: I see the sphinx of Egypt!
ASTRAEA: And all the while I am a manufactory of gunpowder in this quiet old-world Sabbath circle of dear good souls, with their stereotyped interjections, and orchestra of enthusiasms; their tapering delicacies: the rejoicing they have in their common agreement on all created things. To them it is restful. It spurs me to fly from rooms and chairs and beds and houses. I sleep hardly a couple of hours. Then into the early morning air, out with the birds; I know no other pleasure.
LYRA: Hospital work for a variation: civil or military. The former involves the house-surgeon: the latter the grateful lieutenant.
ASTRAEA: Not if a woman can resist . . . I go to it proof-armoured.
LYRA: What does the Dame say?
ASTRAEA: Sighs over me! Just a little maddening to hear.
LYRA: When we feel we have the strength of giants, and are bidden to sit and smile! You should rap out some of our old sweet-innocent garden oaths with her—'Carnation! Dame!' That used to make her dance on her seat.—'But, dearest Dame, it is as natural an impulse for women to have that relief as for men; and natural will out, begonia! it will!' We ran through the book of Botany for devilish objurgations. I do believe our misconduct caused us to be handed to the good man at the altar as the right corrective. And you were the worst offender.
ASTRAEA: Was I? I could be now, though I am so changed a creature.
LYRA: You enjoy the studies with your Spiral, come!
ASTRAEA: Professor Spiral is the one honest gentleman here. He does homage to my principles. I have never been troubled by him: no silly hints or side-looks—you know, the dog at the forbidden bone.
LYRA: A grand orator.
ASTRAEA: He is. You fix on the smallest of his gifts. He is intellectually and morally superior.
LYRA: Praise of that kind makes me rather incline to prefer his inferiors. He fed gobble-gobble on your puffs of incense. I coughed and scraped the gravel; quite in vain; he tapped for more and more.
ASTRAEA: Professor Spiral is a thinker; he is a sage. He gives women their due.
LYRA: And he is a bachelor too—or consequently.
ASTRAEA: If you like you may be as playful with me as the Lyra of our maiden days used to be. My dear, my dear, how glad I am to have you here! You remind me that I once had a heart. It will beat again with you beside me, and I shall look to you for protection. A novel request from me. From annoyance, I mean. It has entirely altered my character. Sometimes I am afraid to think of what I was, lest I should suddenly romp, and perform pirouettes and cry 'Carnation!' There is the bell. We must not be late when the professor condescends to sit for meals.
LYRA: That rings healthily in the professor.
ASTRAEA: Arm in arm, my Lyra.
LYRA: No Pluriel yet!
(They enter the house, and the time changes to evening of the same day. The scene is still the garden.)
ASTRAEA: Pardon me if I do not hear you well.
ARDEN: I will not even think you barbarous.
ASTRAEA: I am. I am the object of the chase.
ARDEN: The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.
ASTRAEA:At any instant I am forced to run,Or turn in my defence: how can I beOther than barbarous? You are the cause.
ARDEN: No: heaven that made you beautiful's the cause.
ASTRAEA:Say, earth, that gave you instincts. Bring me downTo instincts! When by chance I speak awhileWith our professor, you appear in haste,Full cry to sight again the missing hare.Away ideas! All that's divinest flies!I have to bear in mind how young you are.
ARDEN:You have only to look up to me four years,Instead of forty!
ASTRAEA: Sir?
ARDENThere's my misfortune!And worse that, young, I love as a young man.Could I but quench the fire, I might concealThe youthfulness offending you so much.
ASTRAEA: I wish you would. I wish it earnestly.
ARDEN: Impossible. I burn.
ASTRAEA: You should not burn.
ARDEN'Tis more than I. 'Tis fire. It masters will.You would not say I should not' if you knew fire.It seizes. It devours.
ASTRAEA: Dry wood.
ARDEN:Cold wit!How cold you can be! But be cold, for sweetYou must be. And your eyes are mine: with themI see myself: unworthy to usurpThe place I hold a moment. While I lookI have my happiness.
ASTRAEA: You should look higher.
ARDEN:Through you to the highest. Only through you!Through youThe mark I may attain is visible,And I have strength to dream of winning it.You are the bow that speeds the arrow: youThe glass that brings the distance nigh. My worldIs luminous through you, pure heavenly,But hangs upon the rose's outer leaf,Not next her heart. Astraea! my own beloved!
ASTRAEA: We may be excellent friends. And I have faults.
ARDEN: Name them: I am hungering for more to love.
ASTRAEA:I waver very constantly: I haveNo fixity of feeling or of sight.I have no courage: I can often dreamOf daring: when I wake I am in dread.I am inconstant as a butterfly,And shallow as a brook with little fish!Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net,But at a touch straight dive! I am any one's,And no one's! I am vain.Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears.The lark reels up with it; the nightingaleSobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believeA poet, though he praised me to my face.
ARDEN:Never had poet so divine a fountTo drink of!
ASTRAEA:Have I given you more to love
ARDEN:More! You have given me your inner mind,Where conscience in the robes of Justice shootsLight so serenely keen that in such lightFair infants, I newly criminal of earth,'As your friend Osier says, might show some blot.Seraphs might! More to love? Oh! these dear faultsLead you to me like troops of laughing girlsWith garlands. All the fear is, that you trifle,Feigning them.
ASTRAEA:For what purpose?
ARDEN:Can I guess?ASTRAEA:
I think 'tis you who have the trifler's note.My hearing is acute, and when you speak,Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly.Your Osier quotation jars. Beware!Why were you absent from our meeting-placeThis morning?
ARDEN:I was on the way, and metYour uncle Homeware
ASTRAEA: Ah!
ARDEN: He loves you.
ASTRAEA:He loves me: he has never understood.He loves me as a creature of the flock;A little whiter than some others.Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.For him I am a woman and a widowOne of the flock, unmarked save by a brand.He said it!—You confess it! You have learntTo share his error, erring fatally.
ARDEN: By whose advice went I to him?
ASTRAEA:By whose?Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change;It is too true I change. I could esteemYou better did you change. And had you heardThe noble words this morning from the mouthOf our professor, changed were you, or raisedAbove love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,High as eternal snows. What said he else,My uncle Homeware?
ARDEN:That you were not free:And that he counselled us to use our wits.
ASTRAEA:But I am free I free to be ever free!My freedom keeps me free! He counselled us?I am not one in a conspiracy.I scheme no discord with my present life.Who does, I cannot look on as my friend.Not free? You know me little. Were I chained,For liberty I would sell libertyTo him who helped me to an hour's release.But having perfect freedom . . .
ARDEN: No.
ASTRAEA:Good sir,You check me?
ARDEN: Perfect freedom?
ASTRAEA: Perfect!
ARDEN: No!
ASTRAEA: Am I awake? What blinds me?
ARDEN:FilamentsThe slenderest ever woven about a brainFrom the brain's mists, by the little sprite calledFancy.A breath would scatter them; but that one breathMust come of animation. When the heartIs as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.
ASTRAEA:'Tis very singular!I understand.You translate cleverly. I hear in verseMy uncle Homeware's prose. He has these notions.Old men presume to read us.
ARDEN:Young men may.You gaze on an ideal reflecting youNeed I say beautiful? Yet it reflectsLess beauty than the lady whom I loveBreathes, radiates. Look on yourself in me.What harm in gazing? You are this flowerYou are that spirit. But the spirit fedWith substance of the flower takes all its bloom!And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?
ASTRAEA:'Tis very singular. You have a toneQuite changed.
ARDEN:You wished a change. To show you, howI read you . . .
ASTRAEA:Oh! no, no. It means dissection.I never heard of reading characterThat did not mean dissection. Spare me that.I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,A star-gazer, a riband in the wind . . .
ARDEN:A banner in the wind! and me you lead,And shall! At least, I follow till I win.
ASTRAEA:Forbear, I do beseech you.
ARDEN:I have hadYour hand in mine.
ASTRAEA:Once.
ARDEN:Once!Once! 'twas; once, was the heart alive,Leaping to break the ice. Oh! once, was ayeThat laughed at frosty May like spring's return.Say you are terrorized: you dare not melt.You like me; you might love me; but to dare,Tasks more than courage. Veneration, friends,Self-worship, which is often self-distrust,Bar the good way to you, and make a dreamA fortress and a prison.
ASTRAEA:Changed! you have changedIndeed. When you so boldly seized my handIt seemed a boyish freak, done boyishly.I wondered at Professor Spiral's choiceOf you for an example, and our hope.Now you grow dangerous. You must have thought,And some things true you speak-save 'terrorized.'It may be flattering to sweet self-loveTo deem me terrorized.—'Tis my own soul,My heart, my mind, all that I hold most sacred,Not fear of others, bids me walk aloof.Who terrorizes me? Who could? Friends? Never!The world? as little. Terrorized!
ARDEN:Forgive me.
ASTRAEA:I might reply, Respect me. If I loved,If I could be so faithless as to love,Think you I would not rather noise abroadMy shame for penitence than let friends dwellDeluded by an image of one vowedTo superhuman, who the common mockOf things too human has at heart become.
ARDEN:You would declare your love?
ASTRAEA:I said, my shame.The woman that's the widow is ensnared,Caught in the toils! away with widows!—Oh!I hear men shouting it.
ARDEN:But shame there's noneFor me in loving: therefore I may takeYour friends to witness? tell them that my prideIs in the love of you?
ASTRAEA:'Twill soon bringThe silence that should be between us two,And sooner give me peace.
ARDEN:And you consent?
ASTRAEA:For the sake of peace and silence I consent,You should be warned that you will cruellyDisturb them. But 'tis best. You should be warnedYour pleading will be hopeless. But 'tis best.You have my full consent. Weigh well your acts,You cannot rest where you have cast this boltLay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized,Among them: they are estimable ladies,Warmest of friends; though you may think they soarToo loftily for your measure of strict sense(And as my uncle Homeware's pupil, sir,In worldliness, you do), just minds they have:Once know them, and your banishment will fret.I would not run such risks. You will offend,Go near to outrage them; and perturbateAs they have not deserved of you. But I,Considering I am nothing in the scalesYou balance, quite and of necessityConsent. When you have weighed it, let me hear.My uncle Homeware steps this way in haste.We have been talking long, and in full view!
HOMEWARE:Astraea, child! You, Arden, stand aside.Ay, if she were a maid you might speak first,But being a widow she must find her tongue.Astraea, they await you. State the factAs soon as you are questioned, fearlessly.Open the battle with artillery.
ASTRAEA:What is the matter, uncle Homeware?
HOMEWARE (playing fox):What?Why, we have watched your nice preliminariesFrom the windows half the evening. Now run in.Their patience has run out, and, as I said,Unlimber and deliver fire at once.Your aunts Virginia and Winifred,With Lady Oldlace, are the senators,The Dame for Dogs. They wear terrific brows,But be not you affrighted, my sweet chick,And tell them uncle Homeware backs your choice,By lawyer and by priests! by altar, fount,And testament!
ASTRAEA:My choice! what have I chosen?
HOMEWARE:She asks? You hear her, Arden?—what and whom!
ARDEN:Surely, sir! . . . heavens! have you . . .
HOMEWARE:Surely the old fox,In all I have read, is wiser than the young:And if there is a game for fox to play,Old fox plays cunningest.
ASTRAEA:Why fox? Oh! uncle,You make my heart beat with your mystery;I never did love riddles. Why sit theyAwaiting me, and looking terrible?
HOMEWARE:It is reported of an ancient folkWhich worshipped idols, that upon a dayTheir idol pitched before them on the floor
ASTRAEA:Was ever so ridiculous a tale!
HOMEWARETo call the attendant fires to accountTheir elders forthwith sat . . .
ASTRAEA:Is there no prayerWill move you, uncle Homeware?
HOMEWARE:God-daughter,This gentleman for you I have proposedAs husband.
ASTRAEA:Arden! we are lost.
ARDEN:Astraea!Support him! Though I knew not his design,It plants me in mid-heaven. Would it wereNot you, but I to bear the shock. My love!We lost, you cry; you join me with you lost!The truth leaps from your heart: and let it shineTo light us on our brilliant battle dayAnd victory
ASTRAEA:Who betrayed me!
HOMEWARE:Who betrayed?Your voice, your eyes, your veil, your knife and fork;Your tenfold worship of your widowhood;As he who sees he must yield up the flag,Hugs it oath-swearingly! straw-drowningly.To be reasonable: you sent this gentlemanReferring him to me . . . .
ASTRAEA:And that is false.All's false. You have conspired. I am disgraced.But you will learn you have judged erroneously.I am not the frail creature you conceive.Between your vision of life's aim, and theirsWho presently will question me, I clingTo theirs as light: and yours I deem a denWhere souls can have no growth.
HOMEWARE:But when we touchedThe point of hand-pressings, 'twas rightly timeTo think of wedding ties?
ASTRAEA:Arden, adieu!
(She rushes into house.)
ARDEN:Adieu! she said. With her that word is final.
HOMEWARE:Strange! how young people blowing words like cloudsOn winds, now fair, now foul, and as they pleaseShould still attach the Fates to them.
ARDEN:She's woundedWounded to the quick!
HOMEWARE:The quicker our success: for shortOf that, these dames, who feel for everything,Feel nothing.
ARDEN:Your intention has been kind,Dear sir, but you have ruined me.
HOMEWARE:Good-night. (Going.)
ARDEN:Yet she said, we are lost, in her surprise.
HOMEWARE:Good morning. (Returning.)
ARDEN:I suppose that I am bound(If I could see for what I should be glad!)To thank you, sir.
HOMEWARE:Look hard but give no thanks.I found my girl descending on the roadOf breakneck coquetry, and barred her way.Either she leaps the bar, or she must back.That means she marries you, or says good-bye.(Going again.)
ARDEN:Now she's among them. (Looking at window.)
HOMEWARE:Now she sees her mind.
ARDEN:It is my destiny she now decides!
HOMEWARE:There's now suspense on earth and round the spheres.
ARDEN:She's mine now: mine! or I am doomed to go.
HOMEWARE:The marriage ring, or the portmanteau now!
ARDEN:Laugh as you like, air! I am not ashamedTo love and own it.
HOMEWARE:So the symptoms show.Rightly, young man, and proving a good breed.To further it's a duty to mankindAnd I have lent my push, But recollect:Old Ilion was not conquered in a day.(He enters house.)
ARDEN:Ten years! If I may win her at the end!
A great oration may be a sedativeA male devotee is within an inch of a miracleAbove Nature, I tell him, or, we shall be very much belowAs in all great oratory! The key of it is the pathosBack from the altar to discover that she has chained herselfCupid clipped of wing is a destructive parasiteExcess of a merit is a capital offence in moralityHis idea of marriage is, the taking of the woman into custodyI am a discordant instrument I do not readily vibrateI like him, I like him, of course, but I want to breatheI who respect the state of marriage by refusingLove and war have been compared—Both require strategyPeace, I do pray, for the husband-haunted wifePeriod of his life a man becomes too voraciously constantPitiful conceit in menRejoicing they have in their common agreementSelf-worship, which is often self-distrustSuspects all young men and most young womenTheir idol pitched before them on the floorWere I chained, For liberty I would sell libertyWoman descending from her ideal to the gross reality of manYour devotion craves an enormous exchange