“Alas for those who, having tasted onceOf that forbidden vintage of the lipsThat, press’d and pressing, from each other drawThe draught that so intoxicates them both,That, while upon the wings of Day and NightTime rustles on, and Moons do wax and wane,As from the very Well of Life they drink,And, drinking, fancy they shall never drain.But rolling Heaven from His ambush whispers,So in my licence is it not set down:Ah for the sweet societies I makeAt Morning, and before the Nightfall break;Ah for the bliss that coming Night fills up,And Morn looks in to find an empty Cup!”
“Alas for those who, having tasted onceOf that forbidden vintage of the lipsThat, press’d and pressing, from each other drawThe draught that so intoxicates them both,That, while upon the wings of Day and NightTime rustles on, and Moons do wax and wane,As from the very Well of Life they drink,And, drinking, fancy they shall never drain.But rolling Heaven from His ambush whispers,So in my licence is it not set down:Ah for the sweet societies I makeAt Morning, and before the Nightfall break;Ah for the bliss that coming Night fills up,And Morn looks in to find an empty Cup!”
“Alas for those who, having tasted once
Of that forbidden vintage of the lips
That, press’d and pressing, from each other draw
The draught that so intoxicates them both,
That, while upon the wings of Day and Night
Time rustles on, and Moons do wax and wane,
As from the very Well of Life they drink,
And, drinking, fancy they shall never drain.
But rolling Heaven from His ambush whispers,
So in my licence is it not set down:
Ah for the sweet societies I make
At Morning, and before the Nightfall break;
Ah for the bliss that coming Night fills up,
And Morn looks in to find an empty Cup!”
I do not seek to persuade you; it is a subject we often discuss, on which we never agree. I only state the facts as I know them, and I amfor the truth!—even though I wish it were not true—rather than for a well-sounding pretence, which usually covers a lie. I have believed; I have seen what, with my life, I would have maintained was perfect, changeless love; and I have seen that love bestowed, in apparently equal measure, on another; while, sometimes, the first affection has died utterly, or, at others, it has never died at all, and the wavering heart, divided in allegiance, has suffered agonies of remorse, and at last begged one object of its devotion to shun it for ever, and so help it “to be true to some one.”
There you find a result almost the same as that so candidly confessed by my friend; but the phases through which either will pass to arrive at it are utterly different. Fate and circumstances, the prolonged absence of the lover, misunderstandings, silence, and the ceaseless, wearing efforts of another to take the place of the absent—the absent, who is always wrong;—these things will loosen the tightest bond, when once the enemy at the gate has established a feeling of sympathy between himself and the beleaguered city. If at last there is a capitulation, it is only when the besieged isau bout de ressources; only made in extreme distress,only perhaps under a belief of abandonment by one on whom the city relied for assistance in its dire need.
My candid friend has no regrets, passes through no phases of feeling, sees no harm, means none, and for herself is probably safe. Only her heart is large and warm; she desires sympathy, intellectual companionship, amusement, passionate adoration. She gets these things, but not all from the same man, and she is prepared to give love in return for each, but it is love with a wise reservation. Sometimes she cannot understand why the objects of her catholic affections are not equally satisfied with the arrangement, and she thinks their discontent is unreasonable. She will learn. Possibly, as she acquires knowledge, she may change. Nothing is more certain than that there is, if not always, very very often, the widest difference in the world between the girl of twenty and the woman of thirty. It is a development, an evolution,—often a startling one,—and if men more often realised what is likely to come, waited for it, and understood it when it arrived, there would be a deal less unhappiness in the world.
That, however, is another question, about whichI should like to talk to you on another day, for it has interest.
Of love, and change in the object of love, I think you will not deny the possibility. If you have never known such change, you are the exception, and out of your strength you can afford to deal gently with those weaker vessels whose feelings have gone through several experiences. But has your faith never wavered? Have your affections been set on one man, and one only; and are they there to-day, as strong, as single-hearted, as true and as contented as ever? I wonder; pardon me if I also doubt!
I have spoken only of those cases where the love that was has ceased to be; ceased altogether and gone elsewhere, or so changed from what it was, that it no longer knits together those it once held to the exclusion of all others. But I might remind you that there are many other phases, all of which imply change, or at least such difference as must be counted faithlessness. Your quick intelligence can supply a multitude of instances from the unfortunate experiences of your friends, and I will only cite one that is not altogether unheard of. It is this; when two people are bound by the ties of mutual love, and fate divides them by time and distance, it sometimes happensthat one will prove faithless in heart, while remaining firmly constant in deed. That is usually the woman. The other may be faithless in deed; but he says to himself (and, if he has to confess his backsliding, he will swear the same to his lady) that his affections have never wavered. He often does not realise that this statement, the truth of which he takes such trouble to impress upon his outraged goddess, adds to the baseness of his deed. It is curious, but it is true, that the woman, if she believes, will pardon that offence, while she would not forgive the heart-faithlessness of which she is herself guilty. He is not likely to learn that her fealty has wandered; he takes a good deal for granted, and he does not easily believe that such things are possible where he is concerned; but, should he suspect it, should she even admit that another has aroused in her feelings akin to those she had hitherto only felt for him, he will hold that aberration from the path of faith rather lightly, though neither tears nor blood could atone for a faithless deed, such as that of which he stands convicted.
Woman realises that if man’s lower nature takes him into the gutter, or even less unclean places, he will not hanker after whatever it was that attractedhim when once his temptation is out of sight. She despises, but she estimates the disloyalty at its right value in a creature for whose want of refinement she learns to feel a certain contempt. Man, busy about many other things, treats as trivial a lapse which implies no smirch on his honour; and he, knowing himself and judging thereby, says, “Out of sight, out of mind.” It seldom occurs to him that, where the woman’s heart has been given away from him, he has already lost at least as much as his utmost dread; and even that is more likely to follow, than he to return to one who has never aroused in him any feeling of which he cares to think. Therefore, he is inclined rather to be amused than distressed; and, still mindful of his own experiences, he dismisses the matter from his thoughts with almost a sense of satisfaction. But he is wrong: is he not?
Of course I am not thinking of the jealous men. They are impossible people whom no one pities. They never see that, while they make themselves hateful to every one who is unhappily thrown into contact with them, they only secure their own misery. I believe there are men who are jealous of the door-mat. These are beyond the help of prayer.
I AGREE with you that few things are more astonishing than the want of sympathy between parents and their daughters. Many fathers and mothers seem to be absolutely insensible to the thoughts, the desires, and the aspirations of those for whom they usually profess, and probably feel, a very great affection. There are two principal causes for this very common state of matters. One is the difference in age between parents and children. The fathers and mothers are losing, or have already lost, their interest in many of those things which are just beginning to most keenly interest their children. The children are very quick to see this, and the confidence they will give to a comparative stranger they withhold from parents, to whom they are too shy to confess themselves, because they dread ridicule, coldness, displeasure. The other cause of estrangement isthe fact that parents will insist upon regarding their daughters as children until they marry, and sometimes even afterwards; and they are so accustomed to ordering and being obeyed, that they cannot understand independence of thought. Their children are always children to them; they must do exactly what they are told without question; they ought not to have any ideas of their own, and, if they are really good Christian children, well brought up and a credit to their parents, they must, before all things, be obedient and have no likes and dislikes, no opinions that are not those of their parents. As with crows, they must be feathered like the old birds and caw, always and only caw, if they wish to be heard at all.
It sounds, and it seems, unreasonable, and yet one sees it every day, and the amused or enraged spectator, with no fledglings of his own, is lost in wonderment at the crass stupidity of otherwise sensible people, who, while they do these things themselves, and glory in their own shame, will invite attention to the mote in their neighbour’s eye, which ought to be invisible to them by reason of the great beam in their own. I suppose it never occurs to them that they are allthe time committing hateful and unpardonable crimes; that their want of intelligent appreciation is driving their children to resort to all kinds of concealment, subterfuge, and deceit; while home becomes often so hateful to a girl that she seizes the first opportunity of leaving it, and makes her life a long misery or something worse.
If the spectator dared, or cared, to speak the naked truth to a parent, I can imagine that dignified individual choking with respectable rage at the bare suggestion that he was in any sense responsible for his daughter’s regrettable conduct. Yet surely the father and the mother are blameworthy, if they decline to treat their grown-up daughters as intelligent creatures, with the instincts, the yearnings, the passions for which they are less responsible than their parents. “You must do this, because I was made to do it; and you must not do that, because I was never allowed to do it. You must never question my directions, because they are for your good; because you are younger than I am, and cannot therefore know as well as I do; because I am your mother and you are my daughter; and, in my day, daughters never questioned their mothers.” All this, and a great deal more, may be admirable;but it does not seem so. It may even answer sometimes; but that is rather cause for surprise than congratulation. It does fail, often and badly; but the parents are the last to realise the fact, and probably nothing would ever persuade them that the failure is due to their methods. If ever it comes home to parents that their revolted children have grown to hate them, they call them “unnatural,” and almost expect the earth to open and swallow them up, as happened to Korah and all his company.
To onlookers the position often seems intolerable, and they avoid it, lest they should be tempted to interfere and so make matters worse. Nowadays, intelligent opinion is not surprised when tyranny is followed by rebellion. The world is getting even beyond that phase. Both men and women demand that their opinions should be heard; and where, amongst English-speaking people, they can be shown to be in accordance with common-sense, with freedom of thought, and with what are called the Rights of Man, they usually prevail. Children do not often complain of tyranny, and they seldom revolt; but they bitterly resent being treated as if they were ten years old when they are twenty, when their intelligence, their education,and even their knowledge of the world entitle them to hold and express opinions. Nay, more, they are conscious of what is due to their own self-esteem, their family, and their order; and there are better ways of keeping them true to high purposes and lofty ideals than by treating them as children, whose intentions must always be suspected, because prone to naughtiness. The finer feelings are often strongest in youth; life and its experiences blunt them. While they are there, it is well to encourage them. Sympathy from an equal can easily do that; but, unless equality in speech be granted, the being who is held in bondage will be shy to express thoughts and aspirations that may be ridiculed, and will also resent the position of inferiority to which he or she is relegated for reasonless reasons.
In the relations between parents and children, perhaps the most surprising point is the absolute disregard of the pitiless vengeance of heredity. Men and women seem to forget that some of their ancestors’ least attractive attributes may appear in their descendants, after sparing a child or skipping a generation. The guiding traits (whether for good or evil) in most characters can be traced with unerring accuracy to an ancestor, where thereis any record of family history. One child is predestined to be a musician, another a soldier, and a third a commonplace or remarkable sinner. Identical methods of education and treatment may not suit all equally well. Because a parent has lived only one life, the half-dozen children for whom he is responsible may not, even in the natural course of events, turn out to be exact replicas of their father, nor thrive on the food which reared him to perfection.
I do not pretend that there are not many exceptions; but the daughters who are the victims of parental zeal, or parental repression, are so numerous that, in England at any rate, they probably form the majority of their kind. Of those who marry, the greater number may be entirely well-mated. Every one must hope that it is so. Some there are who are not so fortunate; and some, again, begin well but end in disaster,—due to their own mistakes and defects, to those of their husbands, or to unkind circumstances. With the daughters who are favoured by Fortune we have no concern. For the others, there is only one aspect of their case with which I will bore you, and that because it seems to me to be to some extent a corollary to my last letter. If agirl has ideas and intelligence beyond those of her parents; if she has felt constraint and resented it; if she has exercised self-repression, while she longed for sympathy, for expansion, for a measure of freedom—such an experience, especially if it has lasted for any time, is not the best preparation for marriage. Married life—where man and woman are in complete sympathy, where mutual affection and admiration make self-sacrifice a joy, and trouble taken for the other a real satisfaction—is not altogether an easy path to tread, with sure and willing feet, from the altar to the grave. Many would give much to be able to turn back: but there is no return. So some faint and others die; some never cease from quarrelling; some accept the inevitable and lose all interest in life; while a few get off the road, over the barriers, break their necks or their hearts, or simply disappear out of the ken, beyond the vision, of their kind.
I think much of the unhappiness that comes to be a millstone round the necks of married people is due, primarily, to the deep ignorance of womankind so commonly displayed by mankind. It is a subject that is not taught, probably because no man would be found conceited enough to profess more than the most superficial knowledge of it.Some Eastern writers have gone into the question, but their point of view differs from ours, as do their climate, their religion, their temperament, habits, and moral code. Their teachings are difficult to obtain; they are written in languages not commonly understood, and they deal with races and societies that have little in common with Europeans. Michelet has, however, produced a book that may be read with advantage by all those who wish to acquire a few grains of knowledge on a subject that has such an enthralling interest at some period of most men’s lives. It is not exactly easy to indicate other aids to an adequate conception of the feminine gender, but they will not be found in the streets and gutters of great cities.
The school-boy shuns girls. He is parlously ignorant of all that concerns them, except that they cannot compete with him in strength and endurance. He first despises them for their comparative physical weakness; then, as he grows a little older, a certain shyness of the other sex seizes him; but this usually disappears with the coming of real manhood, when his instincts prompt him to seek women’s society. What he learns then, unless he is very fortunate, will not helphim to understand and fully appreciate the girl who somewhat later becomes his wife—indeed, it is more likely to mislead him and contribute to her unhappiness. Unite this inexperienced, or over-experienced, youth with the girl who is ready to accept almost any one who will take her from an uncongenial home, and it says a good deal for the Western world that the extraordinary difficulties of the position should, in so large a proportion of cases, be overcome as well as they are.
In the rage for higher education, why does not some philanthropic lady, some many-times-married man, open a seminary for the instruction of inexperienced men who wish to take into their homes, for life and death, companions, of whose sex generally, their refined instincts, tender feelings, reckless impulses, strange cravings, changeful moods, overpowering curiosity, attitudes of mind, methods of attack and defence, signals of determined resistance or speedy capitulation, they know, perhaps, as little as of the Grand Llama. What an opportunity such a school would afford to the latest development of woman to impress her own views upon the rising generation of men! How easily she might mould them to her fancy, or, at least, plant in them seeds of repentance, appreciation,and constancy, to grow up under the care of wives for whose society the Benedictentiary would have somewhat fitted them.
It is really an excellent idea, this combination of Reformatory of the old man and Education of the new. Can you not see all the newspapers full of advertisements like this:—
The great success which has attended all those who have gone through the course of study at the Benedictentiary of Mesdames —— has led the proprietors to add another wing to this popular institution. The buildings are situated in park-like grounds, far from any disturbing influences. The lecturers are ladies of personal attraction with wide experience, and the discipline of the establishment is of the severest kind compatible with comfort. A special feature of this institution is the means afforded for healthy recreation of all kinds, the object being to make the students attractive in every sense. Gentlemen over fifty years of age are only admitted on terms which can be learnt by application to the Principal. These terms will vary according to the character of the applicant. During the last season twenty-five of Mesdames —— pupils made brilliant marriages, and the most flattering testimonials are constantly being received from the wivesof former students. There are only a few vacancies, and application should be made at once to the Principal.
The great success which has attended all those who have gone through the course of study at the Benedictentiary of Mesdames —— has led the proprietors to add another wing to this popular institution. The buildings are situated in park-like grounds, far from any disturbing influences. The lecturers are ladies of personal attraction with wide experience, and the discipline of the establishment is of the severest kind compatible with comfort. A special feature of this institution is the means afforded for healthy recreation of all kinds, the object being to make the students attractive in every sense. Gentlemen over fifty years of age are only admitted on terms which can be learnt by application to the Principal. These terms will vary according to the character of the applicant. During the last season twenty-five of Mesdames —— pupils made brilliant marriages, and the most flattering testimonials are constantly being received from the wivesof former students. There are only a few vacancies, and application should be made at once to the Principal.
That is the sort of thing. Do you know any experienced lady in want of a vocation that might combine profit with highly interesting employment? You can give her this suggestion, but advise her to be careful in her choice of lecturers, and let the ladies combine the wisdom of the serpent with the gentle cooing of the dove; otherwise, some possible husbands might be spoilt in the making.
YOU say that my opinions are very unorthodox, that my views on human constancy are cynical, and that it is wicked to sympathise with children who oppose their inclinations to the behests of their parents.
Do you forget that I said we should not agree, and will you be angry if I venture to suggest that you have not read my letters very carefully, or that your sense of justice is temporarily obscured? If I dared, I would ask you to look again at the letters, and then tell me exactly wherein I have sinned. I maintained that all are not gifted with that perfect constancy which distinguished Helen and Guinevere, and a few other noble ladies whose names occur to me. I notice that, as regards yourself, you disdain to answer my question, and we might safely discuss the subject without reference to personal considerations.
My regrets over the strained relations which sometimes exist between parents and children could hardly be construed into an incitement to rebellion. They did not amount to more than a statement of lamentable facts, and a diagnosis of the causes of the trouble. When you add that truth is often disagreeable and better left unspoken, I will subscribe to the general principle, but fail to see its application here. Nor can I agree with you that problems of this sort are lacking in interest. To be able to construct a geometrical figure, and prove that the method is correct, does not sound very interesting; but architects, who have knowledge of this kind, have achieved results that appeal to those who look at the finished work, without thought of the means by which the end was gained.
With your permission, I will move the inquiry to new ground; and do not think I am wavering in my allegiance, or that my loyalty is open to doubt, if I say one word on behalf of man, whose unstable affections are so widely recognised that no sensible person would seek to dispute the verdict of all the ages. He is represented as loving a sex rather than an individual; is likened to the bee which sucks where sweetness can befound and only whilst it lasts; he shares with the butterfly the habit of never resting long on any flower, and, like it, he is drawn by brilliant colouring and less clean attractions. Virtuous affection and plain solid worth do not appeal to him.
These are articles of popular belief, and must not be questioned; but I may say to you, that they do the poor man somewhat less than justice. As a bachelor, he has few opportunities of examining virtuous affection, on his own account; the experiences of his friends are not always encouraging; and, if he has to work, other things absorb most of his attention at this stage of his existence. If he marries, especially if he marries young, he is often enthusiastic, and usually hopelessly ignorant of feminine methods, inclinations, and fastidious hesitation. He feels an honest, blundering, but real and passionate affection. He shows it, and that is not seldom an offence. He looks for a reciprocation of his passion, and when, as often happens, he fully realises that his transports awaken no responsive feeling, but rather a scarcely veiled disgust, his enthusiasm wanes, he cultivates self-repression, and assumes a chilly indifference that, in time, becomes the true expressionof his changed feelings. From this keen disappointment, this sense of his own failure in his own home, the transition to a state of callousness, and thence, to one of deep interest in another object where his advances are met in a different spirit, is not very difficult.
You see, I am taking for granted that the popular conception of his shortcomings in regard to the affections is correct, and I only want to suggest some of the reasons which have earned for him such a bad reputation. First, it is the fault of his nature, for which he is not altogether responsible; it is different to yours. In this respect he starts somewhat unfairly handicapped, if his running is tried by the same standard as that fixed for the gentler sex. Then his education, not so much in the acquirement of book-knowledge as in the ways of the world, is also different. His physical robustness is thought to qualify him, when still a boy, to go anywhere, to see everything at close quarters, and without a chaperone. He is thrown into the maelstrom of life, and there he is practically left to sink or swim; and whether he drown or survive, he must pass through the deep water where only his own efforts will save him. A few disappear altogether,and, while all get wet, some come out covered with mud, and others are maimed, or their constitutions permanently injured by the immersion.
That is the beginning, and I think you will admit that, except in a few very peculiar cases, the boy’s early life is more calculated to smirch than to preserve his original innocence.
Then he settles down to work for a living or for ambition, and, in either case, he is left but little time to study the very complex complement of his life, woman. If he does not incontinently fall in love with what appeals to his eye, he deliberately looks about for some one who may make him a good, a useful, and, if possible, an ornamental wife. In the first case he is really to be pitied; but his condition only excites amusement. The man is treated as temporarily insane, and every one looks to the consummation of the marriage as the only means to restore him to his right mind. That, indeed, is generally the result, but not for the reason to which the cure is popularly ascribed. The swain is very much in love, whereas the lady of his choice is entering into the contract for a multitude of reasons, where passionate affection, very probably, plays quite an inferior part. The man’s ardour destroys any discretionhe may have. He digs a pit for himself and falls into it, and, unless he has great experience, unusual sympathy, or consummate tact, he misunderstands the signs, draws false conclusions, and nurses the seeds of discontent which will sooner or later come up and bear bitter fruit.
If, on the other hand, he deliberately enters the matrimonial market and makes his choice with calm calculation, as he would enter the mart to supply any other need, he may run less risk of disappointment. But the other party to the bargain will, in due time, come to regret the part she has undertaken to play, and feel that what the man wanted was less a wife than a housekeeper, a hostess, a useful ally, or an assistant in the preservation of a family name. Very few women would fail to discover the truth in such a case, and probably none would neglect to mention it. Neither the fact, the discovery, nor the mention of it will help to make a happy home.
With husbands and wives, if neither have any need to work, it ought to be easy to avoid boredom (the most gruesome of all maladies), and to accommodate themselves to each other’s wishes. They, however, constitute a very small proportion of society. A man usually has to work all day,and, if he is strong and healthy, it is hardly reasonable to suppose that his only thought, when his work is over, should be how he can best amuse his wife. If he sets that single object before him as his duty or his pleasure, and his wife accepts the sacrifice, the man’s health is almost certain to suffer, unless there is some form of exercise which they can enjoy together.
Husbands and wives take a good deal for granted, and it is more curious that lovers, who are bound by no such tie, often meet with shipwreck on exactly the same sort of dangers. To be too exacting is probably, of all causes, the most fertile in parting devoted lovers.
But enough of speculation. Pardon my homily, and let me answer your question. You ask me what has become of the man we used to see so constantly, sitting in the Park with a married lady who evidently enjoyed his society. I will tell you, and you will then understand why it is that you have not seen him since that summer when we too found great satisfaction in each other’s company. He was generally “about the town,” and when not there seemed rather to haunt the river. Small blame to him for that; there is none with perceptions so dead that the river, on a hot Julyday, will not appeal to them. I cannot tell how long afterwards it was, but the man became engaged to a girl who was schooling or travelling in France. She was the sister of the woman we used to see in the Park.Un bel giornothe man and his future sister-in-law started for the Continent, to see hisfiancée. Arrived at Dover, the weather looked threatening, or the lady wanted rest, or it was part of the arrangement—details of this kind are immaterial—anyhow, they decided to stay the night in an hotel and cross the following morning. In the grey light which steals through darkness and recoils from day, some wanderer or stolid constable saw a white bundle lying on the pavement by the wall of the hotel. A closer examination showed this to be the huddled and shattered body of a man in his night-dress; a very ghastly sight, for he was dead. It was the man we used to see in the Park, and several storeys above the spot where he was found were the windows, not of his room, but of another. I do not know whether the lady continued her journey; but, if she did, her interview with her sister must have been a bad experience.
YOU asked me to paint you a picture—a picture of a wonderful strand half-circling a space of sunlit sea; an island-studded bay, girt, landwards, by a chain of low blue hills, whose vesture of rich foliage is, through all the years, mirrored in the dazzling waters that bathe those rocky feet. The bay is enclosed between two headlands, both lofty, both rising sheer out of the sea, but that on the north juts out only a little, while the southern promontory is much bolder, and terminates a long strip of land running at right angles to the shore out into very deep water.
The beach between these headlands forms an arc of a circle, and the cord joining its extremities would be about seven miles in length, while following the shore the distance is nearly ten miles.
One might search east or west, the Old Worldor the New, and find in them few places so attractive as this little-known and sparsely inhabited dent in a far Eastern coast.
Here the sky is nearly always bright; a day which, in its thirteen hours of light, does not give at least half of brilliant, perhaps too brilliant sunshine, is almost unknown. Then it is the sunshine of endless summer, not for a month or a season, but for ever.
Except on rare occasions, the winds from the sea are softest zephyrs, the land breezes are cool and fragrant, sufficient only to stir the leaves of trees and gently ruffle the placid surface of the bay.
The waters of the bay are green—green like a yellow emerald—but in some few places, near the shore, this changes into a warm brown. The beach is a wide stretch of sand broken by rocks of dark umber or Indian red. The sand is, in some places, so startlingly white that the eye can hardly bear the glare of it, while in others it is mixed with fine-broken grains of the ironstone called laterite, and this gives a burnt-sienna colour to the beach. When the tide is high, the great stretches of hard, clean sand are covered with water to a depth of between five and ten feet,and, owing to the absence of mud, mangroves, and mankind, the waters of the bay are of an extraordinary limpidity. The beach in many places dips steeply, so that, at high tide, there are six feet of water within two or three yards of the trees, shrubs, ferns, and creepers that clothe the shore in an abandonment of wild and graceful luxuriance. The sand shines beneath the waters of the sea like powdered diamonds, and all the myriads of pebbles and shells glisten and scintillate, with a fire and life and colour which they lose when the tide falls and leaves the sands dry, but for the little pools that fill the depressions of a generally even surface.
Then, however, is the time to see strange shells moving slowly about, and crabs, of marvellous colour and unexpected instincts, scampering in hundreds over the purple rocks, that here and there make such a striking contrast to the brilliant orange and red, or the startling whiteness of the sand in which they lie half-embedded.
And how positively delightful it is to paddle with bare feet between and over these rounded stones, while the tireless waters make continents and oceans in miniature, and the strange denizens of this life-charged summer sea destroy each other,in the ceaseless struggle to preserve an existence for which they are no more responsible than we are. Here is an army of scarlet-backed crabs, hunting in battalions for something smaller and weaker than its own tiny, fragile units. The spider-like legion, alarmed by the approach of your naked feet, scuttles hurriedly towards a new Red Sea, and, dashing recklessly into the two inches of water, which are running between banks of sandy desert, disappears as completely as Pharaoh and his host. Unlike the Egyptian king, however, the crabs, which have only burrowed into the sand, will presently reappear on the other shore and scour the desert for a morning meal.
And then you are standing amongst the rocks, on a point of a bay within the bay; and, as the rippling wavelets wash over your feet, you peer down into the deeper eddies and pools in search of a sea-anemone. Again, you exclaim in childish admiration of the marvellous colouring of a jelly-fish and his puzzling fashion of locomotion, or your grown-up experience allows you an almost pleasurable little shudder when you think of the poisonous possibilities of this tenderly-tinted, gauzily-gowned digestive system.
The land is not less rich in life than the sea. Nature has fringed the waters with a garden of graceful trees, flowering shrubs, brilliantly blossomed creepers, and slender ferns, far more beautiful in their untrained luxuriance than any effort of human ingenuity could have made them. There are magnolias, sweeping the waters with their magnificent creamy blossoms, made more conspicuous by their background of great, dark green leaves. There are gorgeous yellow alamanders, each blossom as large as a hand; soft pale pink myrtles, star-flowered jasmines, and the delicate wax-plant with its clusters of red or white blossoms. These and a multitude of others, only known by barbarous botanical names, nestle into each other’s arms, interlace their branches, and form arbours of perfumed shade. Close behind stand almond and cashew trees, tree-ferns, coconuts, and sago palms, and then the low hills, clothed with the giants of a virgin forest, that shut out any distant view.
Groups of sandpipers paddle in the little wavelets that lovingly caress the shore; birds of the most gorgeous plumage flit through the jungle with strange cries; and, night and morning, flocks of pigeons, plumed in green and yellow, in orangeand brown, flash meteor-like trails of colour, in their rapid flight from mainland to island and back again. The bay is studded with islets, some near, some far, tiny clusters of trees growing out of the water, or a mass of stone, clothed from base to summit with heavy jungle, except for a narrow band of red rocks above the water’s edge.
Sailing in and out the islands, rounding the headlands, or standing across the bay, are boats with white or brown or crimson sails; boats of strange build, with mat or canvas sails of curious design, floating, like tired birds, upon the restful waters of this “changeless summer sea.”
But you remember it all: how we sat under the great blossoms and shining leaves of the magnolias, and, within arm’s length, found treasures of opal-tinted pebbles, and infinite variety of tiny shells, coral-pink and green and heliotrope,—and everything seemed very good indeed.
A mass of dark-red boulders, overlying a bed of umber rock, ran out into the water, closing, as with a protecting arm, one end of the little inlet, while the forest-clad hill, rising sheer from the point, shut out everything beyond. And then the road! brightterra cotta, winding round thebluff through masses of foliage in every shade of green,—giant trees, a maze of undergrowth, and the dew-laden ferns and mosses, blazing with emerald fires under the vagrant shafts of sunlight;—dies cretâ notanda.
Do you remember how, when the sun had gone, and the soft, fragrant, Eastern night brought an almost tangible darkness, lighted only by the stars, we returned across the bay in a little boat, with two quaintly coloured paper lanterns making a bright spot of colour high above the bow? The only sound to break the measured cadence of the oars was the gentle whisper of the land-wind through the distant palm leaves, and the sighing of the tide as it wooed the passive beach.
And then, as we glided slowly through the starlit darkness, you, by that strange gift of sympathetic intuition, answered my unspoken thought, and sang theAllerseelen, sang it under your breath, “soft and low,” as though it might not reach any ears but ours—yes, that was All Souls’ Day.
There was only the sea and the sky and the stars, only the perfection of aloneness, “Le rêve de rester ensemble sans dessein.”
And then, all too soon, we came to a spaceof lesser darkness, visible through the belt of trees which lined the shore; far down that water-lane twinkled a light, the beacon of our landing-place. Do you remember?——
AFTER an absence which cannot be measured by days—not at least days of twenty-four hours, but rather by spaces of longing and regret,—I am back again in a house where everything suggests your presence so vividly that I hardly yet realise that I cannot find you, and already, several times, hearing, or fancying I heard, some sound, I have looked up expecting to see you. It is rather pitiful that, waking or sleeping, our senses should let us be so cruelly fooled.
It seems years ago, but, sitting in this room to-night, memory carries me back to another evening when you were also here. It had rained heavily, and the sun had almost set when we started to ride down the hill, across the river, and out into the fast-darkening road that strikes through the grass-covered plain, and leads to the distant hills. The strangely fascinating transformation of dayinto night, as commonly seen from that road, cannot fail to arrest the attention and awaken the admiration of the most casual observer; but for us, I think, it possessed the special charm which comes from the contemplation of nature in harmony with the mood of the spectator,—or seen, as with one sight, by two persons in absolute sympathy of body and soul. Then nothing is lost—no incident, no change of colour, no momentary effect of light or shade; the scene is absorbed through the eyes, and when the sensation caused finds expression through the voice of one, the heart of the other responds without the need of words.
I see the picture now; a string of waggons, the patient oxen standing waiting for their drivers, picturesquely grouped before a wayside booth; a quaintly fashioned temple, with its faint altar-light shining like a star from out the deep gloom within the portal; tall, feathery palms, whose stems cast long, sharp shadows across the dark-red road; on either side a grass-covered, undulating plain, disappearing into narrow valleys between the deep blue hills; behind all, the grey, mist-enshrouded mountains, half hidden in the deepening twilight.
The last gleams of colour were dying out of thesky as we left the main road, and, turning sharp to the left, urged our horses through the gathering darkness. At last we were obliged to pull up, uncertain of our bearings, and even doubtful, in the now absolute blackness of tropical night, whether we were in the right way. Carefully avoiding the deep ditches, more by the instinct of the horses than any guidance of ours, we struck into another road and set our faces homewards. It was still intensely dark, but growing clearer as the stars shone out, and we gradually became more accustomed to the gloom; dark yet delightful, and we agreed that this was the time of all others to really enjoy the East, with a good horse under you and a sympathetic companion to share the fascination of the hour.
Riding through the groves of trees that lined both sides of the road, we caught occasional glimpses of illuminated buildings, crowning the steep hill which forms one side of the valley. Traversing the outskirts of the town, we crossed a river and came out on a narrow plain, above which rose the hill. I shall never forget the vision which then rose before us. How we exclaimed with delight! and yet there was such an air of glamour about the scene, such unrealness,such a savour of magic and enchantment as tied our tongues for a while.
The heights rose in a succession of terraces till they seemed to almost pierce the clouds, each terrace a maze of brilliantly illuminated buildings to which the commanding position, the environment, the style of architecture, and the soft, hazy atmosphere lent an imposing grandeur.
The buildings which crowned the summit of the spur, lined the terraces, and seemed to be connected by a long flight of picturesque stone steps, were all of a dazzling whiteness. Low-reaching eaves, supported on white pillars, formed wide verandahs, whose outer edges were bordered by heavy balustrades. Every principal feature of every building, each door and window, each verandah, balustrade, and step, was outlined by innumerable yellow lights that shone like great stars against the soft dark background of sky and hill. It is impossible to imagine the beauty of the general effect: this succession of snow-white walls, rising from foot to summit of a mist-enveloped hill, suggested the palace-crowned heights of Futtepur Síkri, illuminated for some brilliant festival. The effect of splendour and enchantment was intensified by the graceful butindistinct outlines of a vast building, standing in unrelieved darkness by the bank of the river we had just crossed. In the gloom it was only possible to note the immense size of this nearer palace, and to realise its towers and domes, its pillars and arches, and the consistently Moorish style of its architecture.
As we approached the lowest of the series of illuminated buildings that, step by step, rose to the summit of the heights, we beheld a sheet of water beneath us on our right, and in this water were reflected the innumerable lights of a long, low temple, standing fifty feet above the opposite bank of the lake. Fronds of the feathery bamboo rose from the bank, and, bending forwards in graceful curves, cast deep shadows over the waters of this little lake, from the depths of which blazed the fires of countless lights.
We stood there and drank in the scene, graving it on the tablets of our memories as something never to be forgotten. Then slowly our horses passed into the darkness of the road, which, winding round the hillside, led up into the open country, a place of grass-land and wood, lying grey and silent under a starlit sky.
And, when we had gained the house, it washere you sat, in this old-world seat, with its covering of faded brocade. I can see you now, in the semi-darkness of a room where the only lamp centres its softened light on you—an incomparable picture in a charming setting. You do not speak; you are holding in your hand a small white card, and you slowly tear it in two, and then again and again. There is something in your face, some strange glory that is not of any outward light, nor yet inspired by that enchanted vision so lately seen. It is a transfiguration, a light from within, like the blush that dyes the clouds above a waveless sea, at the dawn of an Eastern morning. Still you speak no word, but the tiny fragments of that card are now so small that you can no longer divide them, and some drop from your hands upon the floor.
I picked them up—afterwards—did I not?
IT is delightful to have some one to talk to with whom it is not necessary to think always before one speaks, to choose every word, to explain every thought—some one, in fact, who has sympathy enough not to be bored with the discussion of a subject that deals neither with gossip nor garments, and intelligence enough to understand what is implied as well as what is said. I have done a good deal of desultory reading lately, mostly modern English and French fiction, and I cannot help being struck by the awkward manner in which authors bring their stories to a conclusion. It so very often happens that a book begins well, possibly improves as the plot develops, becomes even powerful as it nears the climax, and then—then the poor puppets, having played their several parts and done all that was required of them, must be got rid of, in order to round offthe tale, to give finality, and satisfy the ordinary reader’s craving for “full particulars.” This varnishing and framing and hanging of the picture is usually arrived at by marrying or slaying some principal character; the first is a life, and the last a death, sentence. Thus the reader is satisfied, and often the story is ruined; that is, if skilful drafting and true perspective are as necessary to a good picture as artistic colouring and the correct disposition of light and shade. But is the reader satisfied? Usually, yes; occasionally, no. In the latter case the book is closed with a strong sense of disappointment, and a conviction that the writer has realised the necessity of bringing down the curtain on a scene that finishes the play, and leaves nothing to the imagination; so, to secure that end, he has abandoned truth, and even probability, and has clumsily introduced the priest or the hangman, the “cup of cold poison,” or the ever-ready revolver. The effect of the charming scenery, the pretty frocks, the artistic furniture, and “the crisp and sparkling dialogue,” is thus spoilt by the unreal and unconvincingdénouement.
It seems to me—“to my stupid comprehension,” as the polite Eastern constantly insists—that this failure is due to two causes. First, most fiction isfounded on fact, and the writer has, in history, in the newspapers, in his own experience or that of his friends, met with some record or paragraph, some adventure or incident, that has served for the foundation of his story; but, unless purely historical, he has been obliged to supply the last scene himself, because in reality there was none, or, if there was, he could not use it. In our own experience, in that of every one who has seen a little of the world, have we not become acquainted with quite a number of dramatic, or even tragic incidents, that have scarred our own or others’ lives, and would make stories of deep interest in the hands of a skilful writer? But the action does not cease. The altar is oftener the fateful beginning than the happy ending of the drama; and, when the complications fall thick upon each other, there is no such easy way out of theimpasseas that provided by a little prussic acid or a bullet. They are ready to hand, I grant you, but they are not so often used in life as in fiction. I have known a man walk about, with a revolver in his pocket, for three days, looking for a suitable opportunity to use it upon himself, and then he has put it away against the coming of a burglar. When it is not yourself, but some one else, you desire toget rid of, the prospect is, strange to say, even less inviting. Thus it happens that, in real life, we suffer and we endure, the drama is played and the tragedy is in our hearts, but it does not take outward and visible form. So the fiction—whilst it is true to life—holds our interest, and the skill of the artist excites our admiration; but the impossible climax appeals to us, no more than a five-legged cow. It is alusus naturæ, that is all. They happen, these monstrosities, but they never live long, and it were best to stifle them at birth.
Pardon! you say there is genius. Yes, but it is rare, and I have not the courage to even discuss genius; it is like Delhi and the planets, a long way off. We can only see it with the help of a powerful glass, if indeed then it is visible. There is only one writer who openly lays claim to it, and the claim seems to be based chiefly on her lofty disdain for adverse criticism. That is, perhaps, a sign, but not a complete proof, of the existence of the divine fire.
But to return to the humbler minds. It does happen that real lives are suddenly and violently ended by accident, murder, or suicide, and there seems no special reason why fictitious lives should be superior to such chances. Indeed, to someauthors, there would be no more pleasure in writing novels, without the tragic element as the main feature, than there is for some great billiard exponents to play the game with the spot-stroke barred. I would only plead, in this case, that the accident or the suicide, to be life-like, need not be very far-fetched. In murder, as one knows, the utmost licence is not only permissible but laudable, for the wildest freaks of imagination will hardly exceed the refinements, the devilish invention, and the cold-blooded execution of actual crimes. I remember you once spoke scornfully of using a common form of accident as a means of getting rid of a character in fiction; but surely that is not altogether inartistic, for the accidents that occur most commonly are those to which the people of romance will naturally be as liable as you or I. It is difficult to imagine that you should be destroyed by an explosion in a coal-mine, or that I should disappear in a balloon; but we might either of us be drowned, or killed in a railway accident, under any one of a variety of probable circumstances. Again, in suicide, the simplest method is, for purposes of fiction, in all likelihood the best. Men usually shoot themselves, and women, especially when they cannotswim, seek the water. Those who prefer poison are probably the swimmers. It is a common practice in fiction to make the noble-minded man who loves the lady, but finds himself in the way of what he believes to be her happiness (that is, of course, some other man), determine to destroy himself; and he does it with admirable resolution, considering how cordially he dislikes the rôle for which he has been cast, and how greatly he yearns for the affection which no effort of his can possibly secure. I cannot, however, remember any hero of fiction who has completed the sacrifice of his life in a thoroughly satisfactory manner, for he invariably leaves his body lying about, where it is sure to attract attention, and cause great distress to the lady he designs to oblige. That is thoughtless; and those who really mean to prove their self-denial should arrange, not only to extinguish their lives, but to get rid of their bodies, so that there may be as little scandal and trouble to their friends as possible. I have always felt the sincerest admiration for the man who, having made up his mind to destroy himself, and purchased a revolver with which to do the deed, settled his affairs, moved into lodgings quite close to a cemetery, wrote letters to the coroner, thedoctor, and the undertaker, giving them in each case the exact hour at which they should call on their several errands, paid all his debts, left something to indemnify his landlady, and more than enough for funeral expenses, and then shot himself. That, however, was not a character in fiction, but a common mortal, and there was no lady in the case.
I am sure there are many people who would be greatly obliged to me for inviting attention to these matters, if only they could get it in print, to lie about on the table with the page turned down at the proper place. Nothing is more common than the determined suicides who live to a green old age for want of a book of instructions. These people weary their friends and acquaintances by eternally reiterated threats that they will destroy themselves, and yet, however desirable that course may be, they never take it. This novel and brilliant idea first comes to them in some fit of pique, and they declare that they will make an end of themselves, “and then perhaps you will be sorry.” They are so pleased with the effect caused by this statement, that, on the next favourable opportunity, they repeat it; and then they go on and on, dragging in theirwretched threat on every possible and impossible occasion, especially in the presence of strangers and the aged relatives of themselves or the person they want to get at, until mere acquaintances wish they would fulfil their self-imposed task and cease from troubling. It is almost amusing to hear how thesesuicides déterminésvary, from day to day or week to week, the methods which they have selected for their own destruction—poison, pistols, drowning, throwing themselves out of window or under a train—nothing comes amiss; but, when they wish to be really effective, and carry terror into the hearts of their hearers, they usually declare either, that they will blow their brains out, or cut their throats. The vision of either of these processes of self-extinction, even though remote and unsubstantial, is well calculated to curdle the blood. That, as a rule, is all that is meant; and, when you understand it, the amusement is harmless if it is not exactly kind. “Vain repetitions” are distinctly wearying, even when they come from husbands and wives, parents or children; the impassioned lover, too, is not altogether free from the threat of suicide and the repetition of it. In all these cases it would be a kindness to those who appear weary of life,and who weary others by threatening to put an end to it, if they could be persuaded, either to follow the example of the man who, without disclosing his intentions, took a room by the gate of the cemetery, or, if they don’t really mean it, to say nothing more about it. Therefore, if ever you are over-tried in this way, leave this letter where it will be read. The weak point about the prescription is that it is more likely to cure than to kill. However, I must leave that to you, for a good deal depends on how the remedy is applied. The size of the dose, the form of application, whether external or internal, will make all the difference in the world. I do not prescribe for a patient, but for a disease; the rest may safely be left to your admirable discretion; but you will not forget that a dose which can safely and advisedly be administered to an adult may kill a child.
I WROTE to you of death in fiction, and, if I now write of death in fact, it is partly to see how far you agree with an opinion that was lately expressed to me by a man who is himself literary, and whose business it is to know the public taste in works of fiction. We were discussing a book of short stories, and he spoke of the author’s success, and said he hoped we might have a further instalment of similar tales. I ventured to suggest that the public must be rather nauseated with horrors, with stories of blood and crime, even though they carried their readers into new surroundings, and introduced them to interesting and little-described societies. My companion said, “No, there need be no such fear; we like gore. A craving for horrors pervades all classes, and is not easily satisfied. Those who cannot gloat over the contemplation of carcasses and blood, revel in the sanguinary details which makethem almost spectators in the real or imaginary tragedies of life. The newspapers give one, and some writers of fiction the other; there is a large demand for both, especially now that the circle of readers is so rapidly widening amongst a class that cannot appreciate refinements of style, and neither understands nor desires the discussion of abstract questions. Therefore give us,—not Light, but—Blood.”
I wonder what you think. If I felt you had a craving for horrors I could paint the pages scarlet; for I have been in places where human life was held so cheap that death by violence attracted little notice, where tragedies were of daily occurrence, and hundreds of crimes, conceived with fiendish ingenuity and carried out with every detail calculated to thrill the nerves and tickle the jaded palate of the most determined consumer of “atrocities,” lie hidden in the records of Courts of Justice and Police Offices. Any one who compares the feelings with which he throws aside the daily paper, as he leaves the Underground Railway, or even those with which he closes the shilling shocker in more favourable surroundings, with the sense of exaltation, of keen, pulse-quickening joy that comes to him after reading one page in the book of Nature—aftera long look at one of its myriad pictures—would, I think, hesitate to confess to a great hankering for a perpetual diet of blood. It is not the dread of appearing to be dissipated, but the certainty that there is better health, and a far more intense pleasure, in the clear atmosphere of woods and hills, of river and sea, than in the shambles.
Sewers are a product of civilisation in cities, but they are not pretty to look at, and I cannot appreciate a desire to explore their darksome nastiness while we may, if we choose, remain in the light and air of heaven. London slums are daily and nightly the scenes of nameless horrors, but it may be doubted whether a faithful and minute description of them, in the form of cheap literature, does more good than harm.
That is by way of preface. What I am going to tell you struck me, because I question whether a tragedy in real life was ever acted with details that sound so fictional, so imaginary, and yet there was no straining after effect. It was the way the thing had to be worked out; and like the puzzles you buy, and waste hours attempting to solve, I suppose the pieces would only fit when arranged in the places for which they were designed by their Maker.
A long time ago there lived, in one of the principal cities of Italy, a certain marchese, married to a woman of great beauty and distinguished family. She had a lover, a captain of cavalry, who had made himself an Italian reputation for his success in love-affairs, and also in the duels which had been forced upon him by those who believed themselves to have been wronged. The soldier was a very accomplished swordsman and equally skilful with a pistol, and that is possibly the reason why the husband of the marchesa was blind to a state of affairs which at last became the scandal of local society. The marchesa had a brother, a leading member of the legal profession; and when he had unsuccessfully indicated to his brother-in-law the line of his manifest duty, he determined to himself defend his sister’s name, for the honour of an ancient and noble family. The brother was neither a swordsman nor a pistol-shot, and when he undertook to vindicate his sister’s reputation he realised exactly what it might cost him. The position was unbearable; thecaféswere ringing with the tale; and, if her husband shirked the encounter, some man of her own family must bring the offender to book and satisfy the demands of public opinion.
Having made up his mind as to themodus operandi, the brother sought his foe in a crowdedcafé, and in the most public manner insulted him by striking him across the face with his glove. A challenge naturally followed, and the choice of weapons was left with the assailant. He demanded pistols, and, knowing his own absolute inferiority, stipulated for special conditions, which were, that the combatants should stand at a distance of one pace only, that they should toss, or play a game ofécartéfor the first shot, and that if the loser survived it, he should go as close to his adversary as he pleased before discharging his own weapon. Under the circumstances, the soldier thought he could hardly decline any conditions which gave neither party an advantage, but no one could be found to undertake the duties of second in a duel on such terms. Two friends of the principals agreed, however, to stand by with rifles, to see that the compact was not violated; and it was understood that they would at once fire on the man who should attempt foul play.
It was, of course, imperative that the proceedings should be conducted with secrecy, and the meeting was arranged to take place on the outskirts of a distant town, to which it was necessary to make a long night journey by rail. In theearly dawn of a cold morning in March, the four men met in the cemetery of a famous monastery, that stands perched on a crag, overlooking the neighbouring city, and a wide vale stretching away for miles towards the distant hills. A pack of cards was produced, and, with a tombstone as a table, the adversaries played one hand atécarté. The game went evenly enough, and rather slowly, till the brother marked four against his opponent’s three. It was then the latter’s deal; he turned up the king and made the point, winning the game. A line was drawn, the distance measured, the pistols placed in the duellists’ hands, and the two friends retired a few yards, holding their loaded rifles ready for use. The word was given, and the brother stood calmly awaiting his fate. The soldier slowly raised his pistol to a point in line with the other’s head, and, from a distance of a few inches, put a bullet through his brain, the unfortunate man falling dead without uttering a sound or making a movement.
The officer obtained a month’s leave and fled across the border into Switzerland, but, before the month was up, public excitement over the affair had waned, and the gossips were busy with a new scandal. Their outraged sense of propriety hadbeen appeased by the sacrifice of the dead, and the novel and piquant circumstances which accompanied it. As for the intrigue which had led to the duel, that, of course, went on the same as ever, only rather more so.