Part 5 (1/2)
The child died of diphtheria some time afterwards, and in a little while, Ideala, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, returned to her old pursuits, and no one ever knew what she felt about it:
For, it is with feelings as with waters-- The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb!
CHAPTER XI.
My widowed sister, Claudia, was one of Ideala's most intimate friends.
She was a good deal older than Ideala, whom she loved as a mother loves a naughty child, for ever finding fault with her, but ready to be up in arms in a moment if any one else ventured to do likewise. She was inclined to quarrel with me because, although I never doubted Ideala's truth and earnestness (no one could), knowing her weak point, I feared for her. I thought if all the pa.s.sion in her were ever focussed on one object she would do something extravagant--a prediction which Claudia, with good intent, rashly repeated to her once.
Claudia was mistress of my house, and she and I had agreed from the first that, whatever happened, we would watch over Ideala and befriend her.
My sister was one of the people who thought it would have been better for Ideala to have talked of her troubles. When I praised Ideala's loyalty, and her uncomplaining devotion to an uncongenial duty, Claudia said: ”Loyalty is all very well; but I don't see much merit in a life- long devotion to a bad cause. If there were any good to be done by it, it would be different, of course; but, as it is, Ideala is simply sacrificing herself for nothing--and worse, she is setting a bad example by showing men they need not mend their manners since wives will endure anything. It is immoral for a woman to live with such a husband. I don't understand Ideala's meekness; it amounts to weakness sometimes, I think. I believe if he struck her she would say, 'Thank you,' and fetch him his slippers. I feel sure she thinks some unknown defect in herself is at the bottom of all his misdeeds.”
”I don't think she knows half as much about his misdeeds as we do,” I observed.
”Then I think it would be a charity to enlighten her,” Claudia answered, decidedly. ”One can't touch pitch without being defiled, and when it is too late we shall find she has suffered 'some taint in nature,' in spite of herself. Will you kindly take us to the Palace this evening? The Bishop wants us to go in after dinner, and Ideala has promised to come too.”
Ideala was fastidious about her dress, and being in one of her moods that evening she teased Claudia unmercifully, on the way to the Palace, about a blue woollen shawl she was wearing. ”A delicate and refined nature expresses itself by nothing more certainly than elegant wraps,”
she said, parodying another famous dictum; ”and I should not like to be able to understand the state of mind a lady was in when she bought herself a blue woollen shawl; but I could believe she was suffering at the time from a temporary aberration of intellect--only, if she wore it afterwards the thing would be quite inexplicable.” Claudia drew the wrap round her with dignity, and made no reply; then Ideala laughed and turned to me. ”Certainly your friend,” she said, alluding to a young sculptor who was staying with me, ”can 'invest his portraits with artistic merit.' Claudia's likeness in the Exhibition is capital, and the fame of it is being noised abroad with a vengeance. But I think something should be done to stop the little newspaper-boy nuisance: the reports they spread are quite alarming.”
”Ideala, what nonsense are you talking about sculptors and newspaper- boys?” Claudia exclaimed.
”I'll tell you,” said Ideala. ”There was a small boy with a big voice standing at the corner of the market-place this afternoon. He had a sheaf of evening papers under his arm, and was yelling with much enthusiasm to an edified crowd:--'Noose of the War! Hawful mutilation of the dead! Fearful collision in the Channel! Eighty-eight lives lost!
Narrative of survivors! Thrilling details! s.h.i.+ndy in Parl'ment! Hirish members to the front again! 'Orrible haccident in our own town! The Lady Claudia's bust!'”
”Ideala, how _dare_ you?”--but just then the carriage stopped, and we had to get out.
The good Bishop met us in the hall. Ideala positively declined to go upstairs when he asked her.
”It is too much trouble,” she said, not seeing in her absence what was meant. ”I would rather leave my things here.”
”But I am afraid I _must_ trouble you,” the Bishop answered, in despair. ”The fact is, my wife is not so well this evening, and she was afraid of the cold, and is staying in her own sitting-room.”
The ”sitting-room” was a snug apartment, warm, cosy, luxurious, and we found a genial little party of intimate acquaintances there when we arrived. Ideala's husband was not one of them. He did not take her out much at that time. Probably he was engaged in some private pursuit of his own, and insisted on her going everywhere alone to keep her out of the way. A little while before he would scarcely allow her to pay a call without him. But, as a rule, whatever his mood was, she did as he wished--and provoked him sometimes, I think, by her patient compliance; a little resistance would have made the exercise of his authority more exciting.
When we entered the sitting-room ”an ominous silence feel on the group,” which was broken at last by one of the ladies remarking that a kind heart was an admirable thing. Another agreed, and made some observations on the merits of self-sacrifice generally.
”But some people are not satisfied with merely _doing_ a good deed,” a gentleman declared, with profound gravity. ”They think there is no merit in it if they do not suffer for it in some way themselves.”
There was a good deal more of this kind of thing, and we were beginning to feel rather out of it, when presently the preternatural gravity of the party was broken by a laugh, and then it was explained.
Ideala had gone to a neighbouring town one day by train, and before she started a poor woman got into the carriage. The woman had a third-cla.s.s ticket, but she was evidently ill, and when the guard came and wanted to turn her out, Ideala took pity on her, insisted on changing tickets, and travelled third cla.s.s herself. The woman had been to the Palace, and described the incident to the Bishop's wife that morning, and she had just told her guests, wondering who the lady could have been, and they in turn had put their heads together and decided that there was no one in the community but Ideala who would have done the thing in that way.
”But what else could I have done?” she asked, when she saw we were laughing at her.
”Well, my dear,” said the Bishop, who always treated her with the kind indulgence that is accorded to a favourite child, ”you might have paid the difference for the woman, and travelled comfortably yourself, don't you know?”
Ideala never thought of that!
Presently the dear old Bishop nestled back in his chair, and with a benign glance round, which, his scapegrace son said, meant: ”Bless you, my children! Be happy and good in your own way, but don't make a noise!” he sank into a gentle doze, and the rest of the party relapsed into trivial gossip, some of which I give for what it is worth by way of ill.u.s.tration. It shows Ideala at about her worst, but marks a period in her career, a turning-point for the better. She was seldom bitter, and still more rarely frivolous, after that night.
”Clare Turner will take none of the blame of that affair on his own shoulders,” some one remarked.