Part 17 (2/2)

”Paul,” she cooed after a while, during which her hand had lain in his and there had been a soft silence, ”is not this a life of joy, so smooth and gliding, this way of Venice? It seems far from ruffles and storms. I shall love it always, shall not you? and you must come back in other years and study its buildings and its history, Paul--with your new, fine eyes.”

”We shall come together, my darling,” he answered. ”I should never want anything alone.”

”Sweetheart!” she cooed again in his ears; and then presently, ”Paul,” she said, ”some day you must read 'Salammbo,' that masterpiece of Flaubert's.

There is a spirit of love in that which now you would understand--the love which looked out of Matho's eyes when his body was beaten to jelly. It is the love I have for you, my own--a love 'beyond all words or sense'--as one of your English poets says. Do you know, with the strange irony of things, when a woman's love for a man rises to the highest point there is in it always an element of _the wife_? However wayward and tigerish and undomestic she may be, she then desires to be the acknowledged possession and belonging of the man, even to her own dishonour. She desires to reproduce his likeness, she wants to compa.s.s his material good. She will think of his food, and his raiment, and his well-being, and never of her own--only, if she is wise she will hide all these things in her heart, for the average man cannot stand this great light of her sweetness, and when her love becomes selfless, his love will wane.”

”The average man's--yes, perhaps so,” agreed Paul. ”But then, what does the average person of either s.e.x know of love at all?”

”They think they know,” she said. ”Really think it, but love like ours happens perhaps once in a century, and generally makes history of some sort--bad or good.”

”Let it!” said Paul. ”I am like Antony in that poem you read me last night. I must have you for my own, 'Though death, dishonour, anything you will, stand in the way.' He knew what he was talking about, Antony! so did the man who wrote the poem!”

”He was a great sculptor as well as a poet,” the lady said. ”And yes, he knew all about those wonderful lovers better far than your Shakespeare did, who leaves me quite cold when I read his view of them. Cleopatra was to me so subtle, so splendid a queen.”

”Of course she was just you, my heart,” said Paul. ”You are her soul living over again, and that poem you must give me to keep some day, because it says just what I shall want to say if ever I must be away from you for a time. See, have I remembered it right?

”'Tell her, till I see Those eyes, I do not live--that Rome to me Is hateful,--tell her--oh!--I know not what--That every thought and feeling, s.p.a.ce and spot, Is like an ugly dream where she is not; All persons plagues; all living wearisome; All talking empty...'.

”Yes, that is what I should say--I say it to myself now even in the short while I am absent from you dressing!”

The lady's eyes brimmed with tenderness. ”Paul!--you do love me, my own!”

she said.

”Oh, why can't we go on and travel together, darling?” Paul continued. ”I want you to show me the world--at least the best of Europe. In every country you would make me feel the spirit of the place. Let us go to Greece, and see the temples and wors.h.i.+p those old G.o.ds. They knew about love, did they not?”

The lady leant back and smiled, as if she liked to hear him talk.

”I often ask myself did they really know,” she said. ”They knew the whole material part of it at any rate. They were perhaps too practical to have indulged in the mental emotions we weave into it now--but they were wise, they did not educate the wives and daughters, they realised that to perform well domestic duties a woman's mind should not be over-trained in learning.

Learning and charm and grace of mind were for the others, the _hetaerae_ of whom they asked no tiresome ties. And in all ages it is unfortunately not the simple good women who have ruled the hearts of men. Think of Pericles and Aspasia--Antony and Cleopatra--Justinian and Theodora--Belisarius and Antonina--and later, all the mistresses of the French kings--even, too, your English Nelson and Lady Hamilton! Not one of these was a man's ideal of what a wife and mother ought to be. So no doubt the Greeks were right in that principle, as they were right in all basic principles of art and balance. And now we mix the whole thing up, my Paul--domesticity and learning--nerves and art, and feverish cravings for the impossible new--so we get a conglomeration of false proportions, and a ceaseless unrest.”

”Yes,” said Paul, and thought of his mother. She was a perfectly domestic and beautiful woman, but somehow he felt sure she had never made his father's heart beat. Then his mind went back to the argument in what the lady had said--he wanted to hear more.

”If this is so, that would prove that all the very clever women of history were immoral--do you mean that?” he asked.

The lady laughed.

”Immoral! It is so quaint a word, my Paul! Each one sees it how they will. For me it is immoral to be false, to be mean, to steal, to cheat, to stoop to low actions and small ends. Yet one can be and do all those things, and if one remains as well the faithful beast of burden to one man, one is counted in the world a moral woman! But that s.h.i.+ning light of hypocrisy and virtue--to judge by her sentiments in her writings--your George Eliot, must be cla.s.sed as immoral because, having chosen her mate without the law's blessing, she yet wrote the highest sentiments of British respectability! To me she was being immoral _only_ because she was deliberately doing what--, again I say, judging by her writings--she felt must be a grievous wrong. That is immoral--deliberately to still one's conscience and indulge in a pleasure against it. But to live a life with one's love, if it engenders the most lofty aspirations, to me is highly moral and good. I feel myself enn.o.bled, exalted, because you are my lover, and our child, when it comes to us, will have a n.o.ble mind.”

The thought of this, as ever, made Paul thrill; he forgot all other arguments, and a quiver ran through him of intense emotion; his eyes swam and he clasped more tightly her hand. The lady, too, leant back and closed her eyes.

”Oh! the beautiful dream!” she said, ”the beautiful, beautiful--certainly!

Sweetheart, let us have done with all this philosophising and go back to our palace, where we are happy in the temple of the greatest of all G.o.ds--the G.o.d of Love!”

Then she gave the order for home.

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