第42章

Our ideal career is one of perpetual service at her feet.It seems impossible that Fate could bestow upon us any greater happiness than the privilege of cleaning her boots, and kissing the hem of her garment--if the hem be a little muddy that will please us the more.

We tell her our ambition, and at that moment every word we utter is sincere.But the summer holiday passes, and with it the holiday mood, and winter finds us wondering how we are going to get out of the difficulty into which we have landed ourselves.Or worse still, perhaps, the mood lasts longer than is usual.We become formally engaged.We marry--I wonder how many marriages are the result of a passion that is burnt out before the altar-rails are reached?--and three months afterwards the little lass is broken-hearted to find that we consider the lacing of her boots a bore.Her feet seem to have grown bigger.There is no excuse for us, save that we are silly children, never sure of what we are crying for, hurting one another in our play, crying very loudly when hurt ourselves.

I knew an American lady once who used to bore me with long accounts of the brutalities exercised upon her by her husband.She had instituted divorce proceedings against him.The trial came on, and she was highly successful.We all congratulated her, and then for some months she dropped out of my life.But there came a day when we again found ourselves together.One of the problems of social life is to know what to say to one another when we meet; every man and woman's desire is to appear sympathetic and clever, and this makes conversation difficult, because, taking us all round, we are neither sympathetic nor clever--but this by the way.

Of course, I began to talk to her about her former husband.I asked her how he was getting on.She replied that she thought he was very comfortable.

"Married again?" I suggested.

"Yes," she answered.

"Serve him right," I exclaimed, "and his wife too." She was a pretty, bright-eyed little woman, my American friend, and I wished to ingratiate myself."A woman who would marry such a man, knowing what she must have known of him, is sure to make him wretched, and we may trust him to be a curse to her."My friend seemed inclined to defend him.

"I think he is greatly improved," she argued.

"Nonsense!" I returned, "a man never improves.Once a villain, always a villain.""Oh, hush!" she pleaded, "you mustn't call him that.""Why not?" I answered."I have heard you call him a villain yourself.""It was wrong of me," she said, flushing."I'm afraid he was not the only one to be blamed; we were both foolish in those days, but Ithink we have both learned a lesson."

I remained silent, waiting for the necessary explanation.

"You had better come and see him for yourself," she added, with a little laugh; "to tell the truth, I am the woman who has married him.Tuesday is my day, Number 2, K---- Mansions," and she ran off, leaving me staring after her.

I believe an enterprising clergyman who would set up a little church in the Strand, just outside the Law Courts, might do quite a trade, re-marrying couples who had just been divorced.A friend of mine, a respondent, told me he had never loved his wife more than on two occasions--the first when she refused him, the second when she came into the witness-box to give evidence against him.

"You are curious creatures, you men," remarked a lady once to another man in my presence."You never seem to know your own mind."She was feeling annoyed with men generally.I do not blame her, Ifeel annoyed with them myself sometimes.There is one man in particular I am always feeling intensely irritated against.He says one thing, and acts another.He will talk like a saint and behave like a fool, knows what is right and does what is wrong.But we will not speak further of him.He will be all he should be one day, and then we will pack him into a nice, comfortably-lined box, and screw the lid down tight upon him, and put him away in a quiet little spot near a church I know of, lest he should get up and misbehave himself again.

The other man, who is a wise man as men go, looked at his fair critic with a smile.

"My dear madam," he replied, "you are blaming the wrong person.Iconfess I do not know my mind, and what little I do know of it I do not like.I did not make it, I did not select it.I am more dissatisfied with it than you can possibly be.It is a greater mystery to me than it is to you, and I have to live with it.You should pity not blame me."There are moods in which I fall to envying those old hermits who frankly, and with courageous cowardice, shirked the problem of life.