第47章

Would we not be happier, we men and women, were we to idealize one another less? My dear young lady, you have nothing whatever to complain to Fate about, I assure you.Unclasp those pretty hands of yours, and come away from the darkening window.Jack is as good a fellow as you deserve; don't yearn so much.Sir Galahad, my dear--Sir Galahad rides and fights in the land that lies beyond the sunset, far enough away from this noisy little earth where you and Ispend much of our time tittle-tattling, flirting, wearing fine clothes, and going to shows.And besides, you must remember, Sir Galahad was a bachelor: as an idealist he was wise.Your Jack is by no means a bad sort of knight, as knights go nowadays in this un-idyllic world.There is much solid honesty about him, and he does not pose.He is not exceptional, I grant you; but, my dear, have you ever tried the exceptional man? Yes, he is very nice in a drawing-room, and it is interesting to read about him in the Society papers: you will find most of his good qualities there: take my advice, don't look into him too closely.You be content with Jack, and thank heaven he is no worse.We are not saints, we men--none of us, and our beautiful thoughts, I fear, we write in poetry not action.The White Knight, my dear young lady, with his pure soul, his heroic heart, his life's devotion to a noble endeavour, does not live down here to any great extent.They have tried it, one or two of them, and the world--you and I: the world is made up of you and I--has generally starved, and hooted them.There are not many of them left now: do you think you would care to be the wife of one, supposing one were to be found for you? Would you care to live with him in two furnished rooms in Clerkenwell, die with him on a chair bedstead? A century hence they will put up a statue to him, and you may be honoured as the wife who shared with him his sufferings.Do you think you are woman enough for that? If not, thank your stars you have secured, for your own exclusive use, one of us UNexceptional men, who knows no better than to admire you.YOU are not exceptional.

And in us ordinary men there is some good.It wants finding, that is all.We are not so commonplace as you think us.Even your Jack, fond of his dinner, his conversation four-cornered by the Sporting Press--yes, I agree he is not interesting, as he sits snoring in the easy-chair; but, believe it or not, there are the makings of a great hero in Jack, if Fate would but be kinder to him, and shake him out of his ease.

Dr.Jekyll contained beneath his ample waist-coat not two egos, but three--not only Hyde but another, a greater than Jekyll--a man as near to the angels as Hyde was to the demons.These well-fed City men, these Gaiety Johnnies, these plough-boys, apothecaries, thieves! within each one lies hidden the hero, did Fate, the sculptor, choose to use his chisel.That little drab we have noticed now and then, our way taking us often past the end of the court, there was nothing by which to distinguish her.She was not over-clean, could use coarse language on occasion--just the spawn of the streets: take care lest the cloak of our child should brush her.

One morning the district Coroner, not, generally speaking, a poet himself, but an adept at discovering poetry buried under unlikely rubbish-heaps, tells us more about her.She earned six shillings a week, and upon it supported a bed-ridden mother and three younger children.She was housewife, nurse, mother, breadwinner, rolled into one.Yes, there are heroines OUT of fiction.

So loutish Tom has won the Victoria Cross--dashed out under a storm of bullets and rescued the riddled flag.Who would have thought it of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of his endeavours.Chance comes to Tom and we find him out.To Harry the Fates were less kind.A ne'er-do-well was Harry--drank, knocked his wife about, they say.Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was good for nothing.Are we sure?

Let us acknowledge we are sinners.We know, those of us who dare to examine ourselves, that we are capable of every meanness, of every wrong under the sun.It is by the accident of circumstance, aided by the helpful watchfulness of the policeman, that our possibilities of crime are known only to ourselves.But having acknowledged our evil, let us also acknowledge that we are capable of greatness.The martyrs who faced death and torture unflinchingly for conscience'

sake, were men and women like ourselves.They had their wrong side.

Before the small trials of daily life they no doubt fell as we fall.

By no means were they the pick of humanity.Thieves many of them had been, and murderers, evil-livers, and evil-doers.But the nobility was there also, lying dormant, and their day came.Among them must have been men who had cheated their neighbours over the counter; men who had been cruel to their wives and children;selfish, scandal-mongering women.In easier times their virtue might never have been known to any but their Maker.