Part 8
From that point of view it is almost perfection. The object of it would seem to be to destroy as quickly as possible all the feelings with which people start off on it. The end, it would seem, is the negation of the beginning. Rum!
Think, now. What is it that gives the quintessential charm to that state of mind we call being in love? What is the magic of it? You can’t be expected to know just now, because you are not in an analytical mood; emotion of any kind is fatal to accurate analysis.
Well then, I’ll tell you. It is romance—a sense of strangeness, of something to be discovered, of infinite, thrilling, and perilous possibilities.
Why do sisters and brothers not fall in love with each other? Not because to do so would be “unnatural,” not a bit of it, never believe that. Nature has nothing whatever to do with it. It is because they have been brought up together in close and daily intimacy; because there is no romance, no glamour of the undiscovered, no possibilities just beyond the horizon line.
Now marriage, as we know it, is the inevitable slayer of romance. Before the intimacy of marriage romance disappears like a mist wreath in the blazing sun.
Mind, I do not say that in losing romance you lose everything; there are many other things that are worth having, perhaps even more worth having, but you lose romance, and lose it in something less than six weeks.
And when you have lost romance you are no longer “in love.” You may still love and be loved. You do and are, if all things go well with you, both; but you are no longer “in love.” The very feelings which attracted you to start with, which brought you together, are gone, and gone for ever.
That is the stupendous fact of marriage; it kills the thing that made it. It is the outcome of illusion. People in love imagine that marriage is a continuance of the feelings, intensified, which they have for each other before they enter upon it. That, Alexa, is exactly what it is not. It is the very opposite of that.
Most people will tell you—one hears it said all about, especially just now—that the reason why marriage is not the success it might be is that married people “see too much of each other.” There is something in that, no doubt, but there is more not in it, so to speak. It is not, I am convinced, so much because married folk see each other every day that romance takes wings; it is rather because _they can make sure_ of seeing each other every day. It is the sense of security that kills.
I verily believe that an odalisque in an Oriental harem, for whom a visit from her lord is some sort of an event, a thing which may or may not happen on any particular day, has a better emotional time of it than the wife in a suburban villa who knows that her husband will appear at the front door, little black bag and all, ten minutes after she has heard his train puff into the station, or the still more unfortunate lady who can always get speech of him by just calling up the stairs.
Your poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti once told a friend of his, and of mine, that all those exquisite sonnets of his, dedicated to his wife and to wedded love, were written when Mrs Rossetti was away on long visits. That I can well believe, and I believe moreover that they were written not only when she was away, but when he was not at all sure when she would come back.
Once in a little walled town in the South of France I saw a play in which the husband and wife used to make assignations to meet and dine in a private room at a restaurant, although they had an excellent cook at home. It was a silly little play, but the dramatist knew something of human nature and of marriage, all the same. Poor dears, they were trying after something which they could not get, of course, but still, the very fact that they did try proves something, doesn’t it?
Intimacy, security—these are the fatal diseases of marriage. I think I see you gibe a little at the word “security,” and murmur something cynical about divorce. You are right in a way and wrong in another way. One has only to look around one to learn that marriage is by no means synonymous with security; but all of us, when we marry, believe it is, and so the result is the same.
Mention of divorce suggests to me to say this. I don’t believe that the sort of thing which leads to the divorce court, and, where quite uncivilised people are concerned, to the Old Bailey, is half so often, as most suppose, the outcome of wilful incontinence or of sheer naughtiness, no, nor even of the waning of love. It is the passion for something that marriage does not satisfy—the passion for Romance. The unfortunates yearn, yearn with an irresistible yearning, for something to happen, something unusual, something with a spice of danger in it, something which pulls at the heart’s strings, something to make one wake up in the morning with a feeling that the eggs and bacon for breakfast are not the most exciting prospect of the day. Ah, heaven! Don’t we all know it—the coldest, the oldest, the most austere of us!
I formed this opinion entirely out of my own head years ago, and it was curiously confirmed by an experience of three days I once spent in the divorce court. It was when I had that tiresome Chancery suit—you remember, about Ida’s marriage settlement—and I had to waste a lot of time in the law courts.
I could not sit and listen to the Chancery counsel prosing over technicalities, and so I passed the days in a court which touches human nature a trifle more shrewdly and less expensively.
In those three days I saw about a dozen cases tried and disposed of. And what sort of people do you think they were who came there with and against their wills? The gay, the frivolous, the debonnair? Oh, dear me, no; not in the least. I saw not one gallant gentleman, not one lovely lady. On the contrary, they were the dusty, the dowdy, the humdrum, and, this is the odd thing, the middle-aged! They were the kind of women who make their own hats, make them very badly, and talk about their servants at afternoon tea; and of men who go up to town at 8-45 of a morning, and come home by the 6-15. Some of them, of course, had occasionally lost the 6-15, and that was where the trouble began.
It is grossly unfair to the aristocracy to say that it is they who keep the divorce court going. “Aristocratic divorce cases,” as the Radical papers absurdly call them, make not one per cent. of the whole. It is the dull, stodgy middle-class among whom immorality is rampant! And it is just because they are dull, stodgy, and middle-class.
The pleasures, the emotional outlets of art, the distractions which intelligence can always find in the world, are closed against them. Meanwhile, beneath their commonplace domesticity the passion for Romance, though smothered, smoulders on. One fine day, on the most ridiculously inadequate provocation, it bursts into a flame and then—“decree _nisi_ with costs.”
Poor devils, poor, poor devils, they haven’t brains enough to outwit a Slaters’ detective or even a prying housemaid.
Brains, ah! yes. Brains are your stand-by in marriage as in most other of life’s perplexities, Alexa. It is brains that keep you out of matrimonial troubles, and even, when in a slack moment, you do get into difficulties, it is brains that will pull you out of them.
Looking at those of my personal acquaintances who have come bad croppers over their marriages, I find that in every case there has been want of wit on one side or the other, often on both. Brains! That is why I have considerable confidence in your future, my daughter.
One word more. Romance, in-loveness, cannot survive six weeks of the appalling intimacy of marriage. That is past praying for. What shall follow its departure then? Mere emptiness, a tramp across a sandy desert or a treacherous bog? That depends. The thing that should follow is friendship, friendship of a peculiar, a unique, sort; friendship touched by tenderness, mixed with memories, coloured by emotion.
But again remember this—it takes as much brains to build up and to maintain a friendship of that kind as it does to ... well ... more than it does to do anything else in the world so well worth doing. Fools may make satisfactory lovers, only the wise can be lasting friends.
You return on Friday, isn’t it? I shall be at Paddington to meet you. See to it that He is not there—just for this once!
Your
FATHER.
THE SUBTLE SOMETHING
THE SUBTLE SOMETHING
_June 5, 19—._
It is all right, child. I have not a word of blame, not a word of criticism even. You are valiant and original. I am sorry, of course, sorry for you, sorry for him, for myself, for everyone remotely concerned. But I am congratulatory too. I congratulate you, him, and myself. You are prepared for blame of course, for blame from everybody but your own consciousness and your own father. A young woman who engages herself to a man, remains engaged for nearly a month and then “breaks it off” when there is no conventionally agreed-upon cause for the rupture is, in the eyes of the world, a jilt. It can’t be helped. It’s no use grumbling. The world will have its labels—and small blame to it, they spare it the trouble of thinking, of exercising the faculty of discrimination. And we upon whom its labels are stuck, must just grin and wear them. Let us see to it that we do grin and wear them—with a grace.
That “subtle something” of which you can’t say more even to me—there is no need of greater definiteness, I, as always, understand—is the true, almost the only, irremovable hindrance to happiness in marriage, the marriage of sensible people. Anything does to make fools unhappy. It is unpardonable and unforgettable. Unpardonable, because it is not a deed or even a thought or a look; unforgettable because it is always there. And the worst of it is, it can by its very nature discover itself only in intimacy. One has to jump into the water before one finds out with certainty that one can’t swim. That subtle something, so colossal, so inexpugnable yet so elusive! What is it? Where is it? Is it in the blood, or in the brain, or is it some attribute of that unthinkable but must-be-thought-of entity, the Transcendental Ego? I hate to seem so grossly materialist, but I think it is in the blood, and will be discovered some day by chemical analysis, or by an improved microscopy; caught and put into a little bottle.
At present only something finer than chemical analysis, personal perceptiveness to wit, can discern it, and it must be the personal perceptiveness of the one most interested. All the others must needs be the veriest bunglers. That is why I am not kicking myself to any extent for having thought, in my blindness, my inevitable blindness, that he was all right, that he would do. He would have done for me, but how could I know that he would not have done for you? And yet I did just once have the vaguest, dimmest, shadowiest ghost of a suspicion that all was not quite well. It scurried past me that thought, that thought that was not quite a thought, across the darkness of my mind as a small mouse scurries across a dark room. It was one night when you had been seeing him off downstairs and we were all in the drawing-room. When you came back I caught a look upon your face ... no, something less than that ... just a flicker across your lips ... and it made me uneasy, gave me a tiny twinge in that rickety old heart of mine, it kept me awake for an hour or two, as a mouse, fidgeting, has often done.
I am glad of one thing though; that except in the matter of which I could not judge, I did not judge him wrongly. He _is_ made of the right stuff. I had a letter from him last night—a letter from a man to a man. He doesn’t whine, he doesn’t rage, he doesn’t wrangle. He doesn’t even complain. He accepts the inevitable. I think the final test of a man is his attitude in face of the inevitable. I will never show you that letter—of course you would not wish it. I feel in a curious way as though it were I and not you who had hurt him.
Once more then, my daughter, you are right. You have done well. Let no misgivings on that point ever gnaw or even nibble. There are not many things that can justify the breach of a betrothal deliberately entered upon. That subtle something is one of them. Had the case been reversed, had it been he instead of you who had made the discovery, I should have said the same.
Now let the subject be dropped for ever. We will not even refer to it, no, not by a look, when you come home next week.
Your approving
FATHER.
THE END
* * * * *
Camp Fires in the Canadian Rockies.
BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY.
_With 70 illustrations, from photographs taken by JOHN M. PHILLIPS, and two maps._
_Demy 8vo, 16s. net._
This is the narrative, racy, unconventional, and full of adventurous interest, of an expedition which Mr. Hornaday and Mr. Phillips, the latter a famous mountain climber and camera expert, made into the well-nigh inaccessible mountains of British Columbia in search of the elusive mountain goats and mountain sheep. The expedition was in every way successful, one of its results being a series of extraordinarily interesting and valuable photographs of the mountain goat, taken under great difficulties and dangers at short range. Grizzly bears and other big game were incidents of the chase. Mr. Hornaday’s story of the expedition is full of freshness, charm, and racy humour.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
Literary London.
BY ELSIE M. LANG.
With Introduction by G. K. CHESTERTON.
_42 Illustrations by W. J. Roberts._
_Crown 8vo, Cloth gilt, 6s. net._
The object of this book is to add interest to rambles in London by a careful alphabetical record of the homes and haunts of the distinguished literary men and women who are no longer living. In many cases, as is duly noted, the houses themselves are still standing; in others the sites are definitely pointed out, and short extracts are given from biographies, showing with what particular events in the lives of their occupants these residences are identified. London is full of memories, and this volume is an ideal guide book to its literary landmarks.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
The Night Side of London.
BY ROBERT MACHRAY.
_With 95 Pictures by_ TOM BROWNE, R.I., R.B.A.
_1s. net._
PREFACE. PICCADILLY CIRCUS (11 P.M. TO 1 A.M.). IN THE STREETS. IN THE STREETS—_continued_ (RATCLIFF HIGHWAY). “IN SOCIETY.” STILL “IN SOCIETY.” NOT “IN SOCIETY.” AN EAST END MUSIC HALL. EARL’S COURT. THE MASKED BALL. THE SHILLING HOP. CLUB LIFE. A SATURDAY NIGHT WITH THE “SAVAGES.” WITH THE “ECCENTRICS” (3 A.M.). “LA VIE DE BOHÈME.” SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE NEW LYRIC. A “NIGHT CLUB.” THE NATIONAL SPORTING CLUB. A SCHOOL FOR NEOPHYTES. “WONDERLAND.” NEW YEAR’S EVE AT ST. PAUL’S. THE HOPPERS’ SATURDAY NIGHT.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
_JUST PUBLISHED._
_A Long Complete Novel by_ VICTORIA CROSS.
Life’s Shop Window.
A brilliant young girl awakening into womanhood views herself, and determines that her beauty shall get her anything she wants from the World. She looks into “Life’s Shop Window” and surveys all that her beauty entitles her to. What she buys from Life is brilliantly told by Victoria Cross, in the longest and most important book that remarkable and talented author has yet written.
_Price 6s._
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
What Men Like in Women.
BY E. J. HARDY,
Author of “How to be Happy Though Married.”
_Crown 8vo. 1s. net, Paper. 2s. gross, Cloth._
“THE MURRAY OF MATRIMONY—THE BAEDEKER OF BLISS.”
An interesting and useful book for young people entering, or about to enter, the marriage state. Mr. Hardy is an expert on this question, and his book is packed with useful information and advice, and leavened with many good stories.
How to Live the Simple Life.
BY CALVIN PATER.
_Crown 8vo, Paper, 1s. net._
CONTENTS:
I. THE NEW CRUSADE. II. THE SIMPLE-SELFISH LIFE. III. THE WISDOM OF WAGNER. IV. THE STOMACH. V. THE SOUL. VI. THE MIND. VII. THE BODY. VIII. MAMMON AND MANNERS.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
Six Women.
By VICTORIA CROSS.
_Price 6s._
_THE QUEEN says of Victoria Cross’s “Six Women”_:
“What is so marked in these stories is the beauty of the writing. Her atmosphere is delightful. The Eastern stories are full of the colour and the atmosphere of the East. No one can do anything but envy the author’s touch in the description of Eastern buildings and gardens. It makes no difference to Victoria Cross whether she is writing of India or Damascus or Omdurman, she invests them all with an atmosphere which is not only enchanting but carries the stamp of truth on it.”
_LITERARY WORLD_:
“Full of powerful writing and fertile imagination.”
_SCOTSMAN_:
“Studies in the passions of love and jealousy admirably arranged.”
_MADAME_:
“‘Six Women’ is written with the artistic touch which is associated with the best French fiction, and which is too often lacking in English novels. It is only the prudish and the prurient who will object to ‘Six Women.’”
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
T. WERNER LAURIE’S
Cathedral Series.
This Series is probably the most artistic, scholarly, complete, and cheap set of books yet published. Infinite pains have been expended on every branch of reproduction employed.
“The Daily News” said of the “Cathedrals of Northern France”:—“In paper, print, binding, and reproduction, this record is a joy to the reader.”
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON “THE CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND AND WALES.”
“Of each Cathedral an admirable historical sketch is given, detailing its architectural growth, and the volumes make admirable handbooks for those who wish to study our English Cathedrals intelligently.”—_Literary World._
“Mr. Bumpus’ book is a valuable guide in the case of these buildings, not only describing them very fully, but also pointing out what parts of them are original and what new. Mr. Laurie is to be heartily congratulated on this series, which is illustrated by numerous plates from good photographs.”—_Athenæum._
“Mr. Bumpus’ style has a refreshing air of the enthusiastic ecclesiologist, and of that ‘Domine, dilexi decorum domus Tuæ,’ which is ill replaced by the cold professionalism of the mere expert.”—_Saturday Review._
“The description of St. Paul’s, surrounded by the City church steeples, is a magnificent tribute to Wren.”—_Yorkshire Post._
LIST OF SERIES.
1. The Cathedrals of Northern France. By FRANCIS MILTOUN. With 80 illustrations from original drawings, and many minor decorations, by BLANCHE MCMANUS. 1 vol., decorative cover, 7¾ × 5¼ × 1⅜. Cloth gilt, 6_s._ net.
2. The Cathedrals of Southern France. By FRANCIS MILTOUN. Cloth gilt, 6_s._ net.
*3, 4, 5. The Cathedrals of England and Wales. By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS, Author of “Summer Holidays Among the Glories of France.” With many plates and minor decorations, and specially designed heads and tailpieces to each chapter. 3 vols., 8vo, decorative cover, cloth gilt, 6_s._ net each; in leather, 10_s._ 6_d._ net per vol.
*6. The Cathedrals of Northern Germany and the Rhine. By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS. With many plates and minor decorations. 8vo, cloth gilt, 6_s._ net; leather, 10_s._ 6_d._ net.
7. The Cathedrals of Northern Spain. By CHARLES RUDY. Many illustrations. 6_s._ net.
8. The Cathedrals of Northern Italy. By T. F. BUMPUS. 6_s._ net. 40 plates. [_In preparation_
* _These volumes are issued also in leather binding (bound by the Oxford Press) at 10s. 6d. each net._
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
_RECENT NOVELS. 6s. each._
The Cubs.
By SHAN F. BULLOCK. 6_s._
Six Women.
By VICTORIA CROSS. 6_s._
The Poison Dealer.
By GEORGES OHNET. 6_s._
Thurtell’s Crime.
By DICK DONOVAN. 6_s._
Rowena.
By AGNES GIBERNE. 6_s._
The Mummy and Miss Nitocris.
By GEORGE GRIFFITH. 6_s._
_Three Books by James Huneker._
Melomaniacs. 6_s._
Visionaries. 6_s._
Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. 6_s._ _net._
Illuminating critical studies of modern revolutionary playwrights.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
_The Novel Of The Season._
The Sinews of War.
BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS AND ARNOLD BENNETT.
_With cover design by Charles E. Dawson. 6s._
A thrilling story of mystery and imagination. It is an attempt to show how, given immense histrionic genius, a man without principle might use it to the confusion of Society and be responsible for seemingly inexplicable mysteries. The romance deals with modern days in London, and a phase of life hidden largely from Londoners themselves. An astonishing murder opens the way to the story, and the coroner’s inquest introduces to the reader one of the most original characters in modern sensational fiction. From the lodging-houses, clubs, and theatres of the metropolis, the scene changes to London Docks, thence to mid-ocean, and finally to the West Indies. There the mystery of “The Sinews of War,” becomes at last unravelled and a title that will puzzle the reader until the end, is explained.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
_TWO BOOKS BY LOUIS BECKE._
Sketches in Normandy.
BY LOUIS BECKE,
Author of “By Reef and Palm.”
_Illustrated, Cloth gilt, 6s._
It is quite a new departure for Mr. Louis Becke to take as his theme stories of Normandy life, but his three years’ wanderings along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, and among the fisher-folk, has resulted in his giving us some charming and amusing pictures.
Notes from my South Sea Log.
BY LOUIS BECKE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. net._
An account of Mr. Becke’s sporting and fishing adventures whilst supercargo in the South Seas, together with many notes on the habits and superstitions of the Islanders.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
“_The Up To Date Doctor._”
Modern Medicine for the Home.
BY ERNEST WALKER, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. (Lond.)
_Crown 8vo, Paper 1/- net. Cloth 1/6 net._
This work is scientific and up to date; all technical and misleading terms are omitted, and the diseases are classified alphabetically and under their popular names.
The treatment is scientific and simple and nothing is advised that cannot be carried out at home.
The description of complicated symptoms and treatment is avoided.
The signs of severe illnesses are given, so that the disease may be recognised and the patient comforted by simple home remedies till skilled help is obtained.
The want of a little medical or surgical knowledge has led to the loss of many lives which might have been saved, and this book conveys to the unskilled reader in a few trenchant and simple sentences the best way to act in all emergencies.
An invaluable volume and one which ought to be in every home library.
_T. Werner Laurie, Clifford’s Inn, London._
* * * * *
_THE MUSIC LOVER’S LIBRARY._
VOL. I.
Chats on Violins.
BY OLGA RACSTER.
_Fully Illustrated. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. net._