Part 49 (1/2)
”On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window--what do you see?”
”Nothing!”
”Nothing?”
”Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel.”
”I see not those where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are blaze, not I. Enough of this. You do not forget my commission with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?”
”No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling your cornet on the War Office.”
”I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so d.a.m.nable a traitor that one must have the Fates and the household G.o.ds on one's side.”
”Nevertheless,” said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the table; ”I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise with the traitor.”
”To judge of others by myself,” answered Harley, with spirit, ”it were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe--that maybe done with honour; but with the perjured friend--that were to forgive the perjury!”
”You are too vindictive,” said Egerton; ”there may be excuses for the friend, which palliate even--”
”Hus.h.!.+ Audley, hus.h.!.+ or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in the temple.”
The man of the world lifted his eyes slowly on the animated face of one still natural enough for the pa.s.sions. He then once more returned to his book, and said, after a pause, ”It is time you should marry, Harley.”
”No,” answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the conversation, ”not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in life is, that the women nowadays are too old for me, or I am too young for them. A few, indeed, are so infantine that one is ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is afraid to be their dupe.
The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good qualities,--your pretty blue eyes and your exquisite millinery. The last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles; you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of goods matrimonial,--pedigree, t.i.tle, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money, opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some morning to find that plus wife minus affection equals--the Devil!”
”Nonsense,” said Audley, with his quiet, grave laugh. ”I grant that it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather for what he has than for what he is; but you are tolerably penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the woman you court.”
”Of the woman I court?--No! But of the woman I marry, very likely indeed! Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change par excellence is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite,--it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments.
She paints charmingly, or plays like Saint Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again,--except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter,--and never opens a piano after the honeymoon.
You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates b.a.l.l.s and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at Almack's, or a lady-in-waiting.”
”Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation.”
”If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits, your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companions.h.i.+p of a person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to a.s.sail your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the To Be or Not To Be, which is the question.”
”If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of 'Sandford and Merton' did,--choose out a child and educate her yourself, after your own heart.”
”You have hit it,” answered Harley, seriously. ”That has long been my idea,--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man before I find even the child.”
”Ah!” he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his varying countenance changed again,--”ah, if indeed I could discover what I seek,--one who, with the heart of a child, has the mind of a woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the b.a.s.t.a.r.d sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is clothed,--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower, or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companions.h.i.+p were bestowed--why, then--” He paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his face with his hand, resumed, in faltering accents,--
”But once--but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made Human rise before me,--rise amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared my life in vanis.h.i.+ng. You know only--you only--how--how--”
He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his clenched fingers.
”So long ago!” said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. ”Years so long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory!”
”Away with it, then!” cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a laugh of strange merriment. ”Your carriage still waits: set me home before you go to the House.”