Part 46 (2/2)
And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his twaddle, mark you. And Helene seemed to be really not much more sensible about Gaston....
It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years'
consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely viewed,--who could yet smile and say: ”No, my companion is not quite the perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would have nothing changed.”
Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless a.s.sociates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral somewhere: but he could not find it.
CURTAIN
THE EPILOGUE
SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET
A thankless task! to come to you and mar Your dwindling appet.i.te for caviar, And so I told him!
[_He calls within._ Sir, the critics sneer, And swear the thing is ”crude and insincere”!
”Too trivial”! or for an instant pause And doubly d.a.m.n with negligent applause!
Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar Less to repentance than to too much liquor!
Find Louis naught! de Gatinais inane!
Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine!
Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save-- You're d.a.m.ned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave.
[_He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out again. He resolves to make the best of it._
The author's obdurate, and bids me say That--since the doings of our far-off day Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea-- His tiny pictures of that tiny time Aim little at the lofty and sublime, And paint no peccadillo as a crime-- Since when illegally light midges mate, Or flies purloin, or gnats a.s.sa.s.sinate, No sane man hales them to the magistrate.
Or so he says. He merely strove to find And fix a faithful likeness of mankind About its daily business,--to secure No full-length portrait, but a miniature,-- And for it all no moral can procure.
Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew, And beg indulgence--nay, applause--of you.
Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet, And that our idols all had earthen feet; Grant that we made of life a masquerade; And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed; Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,-- Our deeds, the parodies of our intent, In neither good nor ill pre-eminent; Grant none of us a Nero,--none a martyr,-- All merely so-so.
And _de te narratur_.
EXPLICIT
<script>