Part 12

It did not take long to prove to Mr. and Mrs. Neuralys that they were temperamentally ill-suited to one another. Her illusions as to his ancient race had worn off, and she found him similar in manner and habit to any other ordinary young English gentleman of University education and a comfortable worldly position for which others had worked. But perhaps he was more full of ideals than most young men of the day, and some of these ideals she proved impracticable for him, notably that concerning the absolute union of a man and woman in love. She was disappointed in his Judaism, which had nothing mysterious or sensuous in it, and she seemed gradually to display personal indifference towards him, because he loved her uxoriously, and entertained patriarchal views with regard to conjugal life. She by no means falls in with these views, on the contrary she has asserted her individual liberty at all points, and though she was never one of those women who must love to live, she has ever held the opinion that for a woman to be interesting she must always be adored by more than her husband. She says that the adoration of a lover preserves her youth, and as she loves herself too much to fall really in love, and expresses only a kind of sympathetic scorn for those women who love “not wisely but too well,” it may be supposed that she is still on the right side of the marriage contract. Anyhow her husband has faith in her to this extent, for it is a kind of racial instinct with Jews to believe in the purity of their wives, and though Reuben Neuralys has individually ceased to observe the ancient ceremonials of his creed his racial feelings continue very strong. So he has never a fear of the Divorce Court, although he has realised his wife’s sensuous craze for novelty simply because it is novelty, and discovered that she is pretending to be always in love, first with one man who has superficially inducted her into the mysteries of Esoteric Buddhism, then with another who has engaged her fancy with Ibsen, Schopenhauer and the Fabian Essays, and anon with a third who has persuaded her that all pleasure is Pagan, and that pure Hedonism can alone make the world beautiful. As it is only in the nature of things that the cause of each of these successive loves should prepare some distrust of the next, Reuben Neuralys, knowing his wife’s temperament, regards these as extra safeguards rather than as dangers. Moreover, since he has ceased to expect from her that complete companionship and passionate sympathy he had hitherto regarded, in his idealistic way, as the natural bonds of married life, he has accustomed himself to look for these elsewhere. And she more than suspects this—and does not care. “Poor fellow,” she says, and laughs. She is a _fin-de-siècle_ wife, you know.

Thus they live, these two, practically separate, though always meeting at dinner-time. He, practising little deceptions which she always suspects or detects but never exposes, for fear he should discontinue them and bore her instead; she, simulating occasional moods of sentiment and even affection, and dexterously playing upon the most sensitive chords of his nature, when she fancies it necessary to preserve her empire over him, and cozen him into accordance with her wishes. She is so absolute in her desire for power and ascendancy that she would battle hard to retain the admiration of even a husband, how ever little she might really value it. Nevertheless they go their separate ways pleasantly, and if they never talk of happiness, perhaps, under the circumstances, their unconventional but easy and casual philosophy of matrimony is preferable to the perpetual bickerings, or heart-breaking suppression of feelings, which so often mar the more domestic households.

But I fear I may be conveying an impression that Mrs. Neuralys is not all she should be, which would be unjust—to say the least of it. What can I say to correct any such impression? Let me catalogue her virtues.

However tastes may differ, no one can deny that she is piquantly pretty. Ask all the best photographers in London, ask at least one of our most artistic young painters. Look round his studio-walls, they will testify extensively to her facial charms. Then, how she dresses—why, Venus herself might have dressed so, had she been born in the fashion. In her monetary dealings she is liberal to a fault, and, as her tradespeople and dressmakers, who all adore her, will tell you, the fault is always on the right side—she never inquires the cost of anything. And so affable too, she frequently drinks afternoon-tea with her milliner, who is of course socially her equal. Indeed I am not certain that Mrs. Neuralys does not hanker after adopting some such profession herself, by way of a new experience, and, if she did, I am sure her bonnet-shop would be the most alluring boudoir in London. But, intellectually, she is really above this kind of thing. She has not read Schopenhauer and all the latest English and foreign “realists,” and pessimistic critics for nothing. She is alive to every new “movement” in art, literature, religion or the drama, and as long as it is new and provocative of opposition from the advocates of the traditional, it will be sure of her ardent and aggressive partisanship. The very opposition will flatter her into thinking she is asserting her own individuality, for, of course, she forgets that she is only following a lead and running in a groove. Moreover she will think she is sincere in professing admiration for eccentric authors worshipped by experimental cliques, whereas if they were popular, and were accepted by the “plain man” of the _Times_ and the _Nineteenth Century_, I doubt if she would concern herself with them, however good they might be. In everything her taste must be as unconventional as her daily life. She is so impressionable, she will tell you, so sensitive to all that is beautiful or _bizarre_.

At the same time Mrs. Neuralys unflinchingly seeks to know life in all its phases, however shocking to the ordinary “suburban” mind. She will go to a music-hall, a race-meeting or a Salvation Army service with equal alacrity, so long as her husband does not take her. He may make one of a _parti carré_, but alone he would bore her. She is a ravenous reader of newspapers, and to see her devouring some notorious divorce case in a “special edition” over her coffee and cigarette is to see the _fin-de-siècle_ woman quite at home. She is a most assiduous theatre-goer, and is frequently met at the first performances of new plays, but she regards the modern drama in a very pessimistic light, and, for the moment, she may possibly affect to believe that its regeneration can only be brought about through the influence of a new Hottentot dramatist of pristine simplicity, about to be discovered by the very newest critic of the day. She is always most enthusiastic about matters of this kind, and ever alert for the latest.

But I wonder what Mrs. Neuralys will be like when she is old; whether, indeed, old age will be tolerable to her without any backbone of faith and domesticity. Can she always remain an Emancipated Woman, or, as the years pass, will the humanity that is in her cry out for something more tangible than the showy make-believe of her present life, something truer, something more sacred and beautiful? Who can tell?

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 1 Changed: Without womam man is nought to: Without woman man is nought

pg 70 Changed: Mrs. Talespinne is, as a matter of fact to: Mrs. Talespinner is, as a matter of fact

pg 170 Changed: her delightfully amusing inconseqence to: her delightfully amusing inconsequence