Part 8

Lady Gladys always had exceptional intellectual gifts and a singularly quick comprehension. She would, even as a girl, swoop down upon a subject and illuminate it with brilliant paradox which, if not convincing, would certainly be memorable. She would sum up a character in a few epigrammatic phrases, and, though the result might be a caricature, it was certainly a striking one. She would present an original view of any subject she discussed, and, though it might be a view which logical argument could easily prove fallacious, it would nevertheless leave a distinct personal impression. For Lady Gladys had the quality of imagination very strongly, and this coloured her talk as it mystified her life. She would never see life and things and people as they really were.

Sir Drury was struck by her mental faculties; her sparkling talk amused and interested him as her beauty delighted him. He was a widower, and did not regret the loss of his late wife, whose perpetual placidity and devoted docility had irritated him more than any contradiction. Now he decided that Lady Gladys should tempt him to a second venture in matrimony, so he proposed and was accepted; for, though there was no question of love in the matter, he was an exceedingly clever as well as wealthy and professionally distinguished man, and he interested her. She was flattered by his consideration, and she imagined a future of social triumph for them both.

But marriage soon proved to them that they were eternally separate, that under no circumstances could there be any compromise between them. She conceived a loathing towards him from their marriage-day, and he was not slow to perceive this and to resent it. Her very beauty and brilliancy became hateful to him, because he felt that they were not really his, and yet he wished to be master of them. He was jealous that others should admire her, and he have no pride of possession, though she bore his name. So, though they lived before the world according to social conventions, he exercised a species of petty tyranny over her with a view to humiliating her before the society for which she lived, and so spiting her. He would allow her to go entirely her own way for some time, never caring whither she went, never accompanying her in public, never appearing when she “received” at home. Then, of course, people would begin to wonder and whisper, and in defiance she would go out alone all the more, and send out invitations to “At Homes” and dinner-parties, when she would always receive her guests with fictitious apologies for her husband.

But on one occasion, as the guests drove up to the door, they were told by the servants that Lady Gladys could not receive them. No excuse was given, and every one went away wondering. Sir Drury had ordered it so; but this was the crisis. He had humiliated his wife, not only before her friends, but before her servants. How could she continue to live under the same roof with him, to even pretend amicable relations with him! She must go and live elsewhere, and take her child with her. No, that he would not permit. _She_ might go where she liked, but the child must remain. So, of course, she remained; for, though she hated her husband more than ever, and now he watched her with jealous suspicion, she was a mother, and the ties of motherhood proved stronger than her conjugal repulsion.

And now her woman’s nature asserted itself. Her unfortunate marriage had kept the voices of love and passion till now dumb within her; but in her unhappiness they cried out in sad yearning tones. Her soul ached for true companionship, her womanhood craved for love. Her imagination had hitherto served her, and Society had furnished her with excitement, but now she wanted more, and with the demand came the supply. In fact, there was always a supply of lovers ready to her hand, had she wanted them, for she was beautiful; but she never did want them, though she would accept the constant escort of cavaliers in the Row, to the theatre, and elsewhere.

But these Guardsmen and men-of-fashion who would ride and drive with her, meant nothing to her beyond pleasant riding and driving escorts, and when they tried to be something more—which was not infrequent, considering her personal charms—she laughed it off with amiable sarcasm. One, however, at length appeared in her social circle who drew her to him magnetically. He was not one of the usual Society and club loungers, but a man who had lived a life of adventure in many lands, had seen many strange and wonderful sights, and known many remarkable people. He had explored unknown countries, and contributed new facts to knowledge, so that his name was honoured by learned societies. Yet there was no assumption of the hero about him; on the contrary, there was nothing he so genuinely disliked as being lionised. He was cosmopolitan in ideas, simple and graceful in manner, with a persuasive charm that was almost invincible. He was a born leader of men, had he chosen to lead them; he was a born wooer of women, and he did choose to woo them, for his weakness was a pretty face. But his method of wooing was very insidious. He did not worship at their feet, nor did he play much upon sentiment, but he would mock them with adoration, persuasively find fault with them, cunningly coax them into defending themselves and their sex against charges of inconstancy, frivolity, and frailty, and then perplex them with paradox and sophistry, until they were quite convinced that he was the most fascinatingly dangerous man they had ever met, and were simply mad to meet him again. Then he would make himself scarce.

He was just the man to interest Lady Gladys in her unhappy frame of mind; he was so different from all the other men about her. His cosmopolitan cynicism was so refreshing to her, his sophistry so seductive. She also, in her turn, interested him much, for there was no doubt she had brains. Women to him were usually more or less of toys, but Lady Gladys was an intellectual being, she exercised his mental fencing powers, and was difficult wooing. He hated Society, it was too silly to amuse him, but he was obliged to endure it for the sake of Lady Gladys. He meant to be her lover, so he allowed her to procure him invitations to a series of “at homes,” where he should meet her. He would attend her daily in the Park, he would drop in every afternoon at teatime, and if she was going to the theatre, he would, of course, have a stall next to hers. And all the while this love-making was prosecuted with masterly tactics, and she was falling deeply in love with him. She had never known love in her life before, and now it filled her life, and made it tolerable. What her lover lacked in emotional delicacies and sentimental refinements, she supplied out of her own imagination, and was not aware that he lacked them; and she was comparatively happy, and cared little or nothing for her husband’s petty tyrannies. She was becoming hardened to them—and had not she now a lover as well as her child to love? After all, love makes up the sum of our lives; it is the only thing we cannot miss without being wretched. Lady Gladys had had everything else till now, and now she loved and believed herself loved. Might she not be happy in spite of Sir Drury? Though she was tied to him for life, what happiness had he ever given her?

But now people began to busy themselves with gossip about Lady Gladys, to wonder how long it would be before Sir Drury woke up to the state of affairs. It was only a whisper here and there, of course; but still it was a whisper, and even whispers are sometimes heard by those not intended to hear. So Sir Drury heard, not that he had not known before; but it was only the whisper that gave him a weapon to strike with. She loathed him; she had told him so more than once; then she should not love another.

So when her lover called as usual one day, he was told that Lady Gladys could not receive him, but that Sir Drury would be glad to see him in his study; and then the cold-blooded old judge told him of the whisper, and left it to him to discontinue his visits. Lady Gladys waited long for her lover that day, and when she heard at length that he had come and gone, she was furiously indignant. Of course, he felt bound in honour to give her the option of running away with him, but he was not sorry when she refused on account of her child. “She would only have run away with some one else later on,” was the reflection with which he cynically consoled himself.

And now I often wonder, when I see the chilling scorn with which Lady Gladys and Sir Drury treat one another, whether she ever regrets not having taken that step which might possibly have given her happiness, and certainly cost her her social status; but when I see her fondling her curly-haired little boy, I feel sure she does not regret it. But she is more cynical than ever; her faith in man and woman, love and the world, is hopelessly shaken. She is a confirmed pessimist, because conjugal happiness has been unknown to her.

_THE BUSY-IDLE WOMAN_

Mrs. Restless I shall call her. Not that she would object to my proclaiming her actual identity. In fact, I think she would prefer it, for she loves to be talked about; and, as for seeing her name in print, I fancy she would do much for the privilege, and then carefully cut out the page for the edification of her friends, and wonder how she had obtained, not merited, such publicity. Not merited, because she will confess to knowing all about that. Who but she does so much for everybody? Who is so active in every matter of public interest? Then why should not she deserve newspaper recognition, as much as Mrs. Montmorency Dazzle or Lady Capel-Courtney, who only occupy their time in the frivolous amusements of Society, and employ expensive dressmakers to win them paragraphs by making them “look well” in the fashionable material of the moment?

This is a sore point with little Mrs. Restless, for she really believes that her continuous occupiedness, in spite of the vast amount of nothing she achieves, is of infinite value to the community at large, and her own personal acquaintances in particular, whereas Mrs. Dazzle is of no use to any one, except, as an ornament for the ball-room, and a walking advertisement for her costumier. These are Mrs. Restless’s views, and she has very strong views on every subject, though perhaps they would not amount to much if subjected to the slightest analysis. But she does not know that; for she is always too busy to analyse anything. She is a woman of action, she will tell you; she must always “be up and doing.” And so she wastes a great deal of valuable time which might otherwise be devoted to idling that is worth living for, that is full of pleasurable suggestion, instead of commonplace and pretentious time-frittering; busy-idleness, in fact, which is neither the one thing nor the other, neither good idling nor good business.

Women seldom idle well; they do not understand the art. They make it too much of a business, and so miss the spirit of true idling. Now I reckon myself something of a _connoisseur_ in this matter, for if there be one art with which I am familiar in all its branches, and on terms of perfect understanding, it is this art of idling. A fine art, look you, that must be studied with the same assiduity and sympathy as painting, poetry, music, love-making, lying, or any other of those accomplishments that have been reckoned among the fine arts. Your true idler is born, not made, but in the easy and happy evasion of work and its responsibilities he proves himself the artist. The obligation to effort is a necessity to him, but his art teaches him how to make a virtue of necessity by shunting the obligation on to pleasanter lines, while the effort fails naturally upon other shoulders which perhaps ought to bear it for some penance they have no doubt deserved. At least, your idler consoles himself so, if he concern himself at all about the matter. Thus, to idle artistically is not to vulgarly waste time, but to adorn it as with May-day garlands. And every one who cultivates this most delightful of arts may build himself a Castle of Pleasaunce in the midst of this workaday world, wherein he may joyously live at ease, and listen to the hearty songs of the toilers, who have never dreamed of Arcady, and who know nought but that each hour must produce its full profit of work.

But to return to Mrs. Restless. She is the busy-idle woman _par excellence_. To idle simply is impossible to her; she must always be indefinitely busy with definite results. There is seldom any uncertainty about the results, generally they are practically valueless, or not worth the trouble they have cost, but they occupy a great deal of time in achieving for all that. She will take up some charitable object, and go from place to place and worry all her friends and acquaintances in the cause, and at the end of her efforts she will find that, had she at first given a certain reasonable sum from her own pocket, she would not only have come off cheaper than she has by frittering out small payments, but she would have saved much trouble and time, which might have been more advantageously employed. If she plans any pleasure, she will, instead of enjoying it in the right, rational manner of the true idler, make so much fuss about it, and expend so much argument upon it, that it becomes a business and loses all semblance of pleasure.

Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Restless is in a chronic state of moral perspiration; effort oozes out of every pore of her being. She does not understand repose, but rather seems to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. She cannot sit still. If in her drawing-room you be calmly and comfortably ensconced in a luxurious armchair, from which you feel convinced that wild horses would be powerless to drag you, Mrs. Restless will enter, dusting the back of a chair, or changing the position of some trivial ornament as she approaches. Then when you think she is actually settled for conversation, she will rise to rearrange an antimacassar at the further end of the room, and probably insist upon your assisting her to move the piano.

At the breakfast-table Mrs. Restless is very trying, for she will never allow a plate or dish, or any eating utensil, to remain in the position into which it naturally falls in the course of the meal. She plays therefore a perpetual game of draughts with the breakfast things. I remember on one occasion watching an amusing game. Mrs. Restless was discussing some philanthropic plan—she is nothing if not philanthropic—with an old gentleman, whose constant habit as he talked was to push everything by degrees into the middle of the table; but Mrs. Restless could not stand that, so she as persistently pushed everything back again, thus giving fresh play to the old gentleman’s idle fingers, while she was kept constantly occupied at this purposeless business. And this is typical of all that Mrs. Restless does.

If she goes into the garden, and you invite her to the tempting repose of a hammock which hangs under sun-shading boughs, or of a long wicker-chair which, surrounded by rose-trees, suggests the “idle dreaming of an empty day,” and into which, but for politeness sake, you would fain have flung yourself, will she enjoy the proffered luxuries of lounging restfulness? Not a bit of it. She cannot waste the opportunity of plucking dead leaves from the flower-bushes, sweeping fallen leaves from the gravel paths—all the gardener’s actual business. Heavens! you expect her next to take a duster and flip off all the casual dust from the trees, or dry the dew from the flowers. And meanwhile you have self-denyingly taken the less comfortable lounge, leaving the place of perfect repose vacant for this busy-idle woman, who will not enjoy it.

Mrs. Restless scorns the unintellectual and despises the frivolous. She believes herself to be the reverse of both, and entertains great opinions of her own mental powers. But, dear thing, she is naïvely superficial; she has, unfortunately, no time for reading, and—thank goodness!—she has no logic. If she had she would be unendurable, for she would wish to reason out her aggressive busying. Of course she firmly believes she is logical. What woman does not, and would not be offended if you hinted to the contrary? But, truly, a logical woman loses half the charm of her sex, for her moods must be consequent and responsible. Now, Mrs. Restless redeems much of her irritating faculty of idle occupation by her delightfully amusing inconsequence, of which, however, she is quite seriously unconscious. She will go off at a tangent without any provocation, which to the humorously inclined outsider frequently provides food for mirth, though to Mr. Restless the fact of not knowing what his wife’s irresponsible energy will prompt her to say and do next must be somewhat temper-trying. Nevertheless, he adores her, and when he is not reproving her in his practical way, while she attempts to argue his utter incapacity to understand her high-minded aims, they do a good deal of billing and cooing, though she is always too restless to enjoy even the repose of the melting, affectionate mood for many minutes together.

If her husband, to whom she is devotedly attached, comes home tired from his daily work, and inclined to rest in the society of his wife, she will fret him with the petty details of her day’s doings, of which he will not find much to approve, seeing that her “much ado about nothing” has perhaps involved the departure of a valuable servant, the estrangement of a useful acquaintance, or a quarrel with an excellent tradesman. Then she will have muddled up her engagements so that she is obliged to drag her unwilling husband from the much-needed quiet of his domestic hearth to some purposeless party, where boredom is inevitable.

In spite of her professed dislike to the idle members of the community, of the Society butterflies that flutter over the flowered fields of pleasure, Mrs. Restless is never happier than when she is going to parties, and theatres, and fêtes; but when she does so she speaks of it as a duty rather than an amusement, and grumbles that Society keeps her so busy. Not that she allows social occupations to interfere with her domestic cares. She has children, and they know it; and servants, and _they_ know it. She never allows them to forget that they are _her_ children and _her_ servants. Not a detail concerning either escapes her, but she misses the general harmony in effect. She worries about everything and everybody, until I verily believe the infant in the cradle longs to find prussic acid in its bottle, if only to obtain a little peace.

And yet there is a great deal of good nature and fine feeling in Mrs. Restless, and half of her idle industry is due to her over-heartedness and her concern for the pleasure and welfare of others, coupled with an instinctive feeling of economy. She will spend a whole day and worry all her propinquious friends and relations in her endeavours to give away a ticket that has been sent to her for some theatrical or musical entertainment, in order that it shall not be wasted. “Somebody will be glad of it,” she thinks, and so any sacrifice of time and trouble must be made to find out _who_ will. Kindness and generosity are at the bottom of most of her actions, but there is too much of the vexatious atmosphere of wasted energy and frittered time. She will take an infinite amount of trouble for an infinitely small result, and invariably in the interests of others; yet her genuine friends sincerely like her, and her relations are fond of her, though they laugh at her follies, and amiably ridicule her untimely and misplaced energies and her magnificent muddling. Her children love her, though she wearies them with over-carefulness and excessive attention; and her husband, on the whole, thinks himself a very fortunate individual, though he certainly would be content if his wife were a little less busy and a little more idle. There would then, perhaps, be more calm and comfort in his home.

On the whole, I feel that I frankly do not bear Mrs. Restless any grudge for not having fallen in with my matrimonial views years ago, when we were both in our teens, and I used to regard her enthusiasm about everything, and her ardent activity in the cause of, Heaven knows what, as something approaching the divine. And now I call it busy-idleness! Well, the illusions of youth give place to the illusions of age; but happily we have illusions always. Life would be terribly dull without them.

Mrs. Restless is, beyond a doubt, an excellent wife, as in the long ago of my boyhood I thought she would be; but I am glad she is another’s.

_THE SKITTISH OLD MAID_

I believe I may consider myself a passably amiable man, and I could certainly produce ample testimony to prove I am so considered by a large variety of impartial witnesses, ranging from my baby nieces to my septuagenarian mother, and not forgetting to include my tailor. I am of equable temper, and charitably expansive in matters of opinion. I generally contrive to find excuses for the foibles and failings of my fellow-creatures, and, had I but the gift of oratory, I believe I could melt any jury to mercy, where an ordinary professional advocate for the defence would only aggravate a conviction. I am forgiving to a fault, and hence, if Pope’s dictum on the humanity of error and the divinity of forgiveness count for truth, I must surely have in me some kinship with the gods. But though I can so charitably temper my mind as to frequently regard murder from the criminal’s point of view as justifiable homicide, forgery and embezzlement as a practical protest in favour of socialism, and arson as a mere tribute to the picturesque, there is one crime I can never bring myself to contemplate with any toleration. When one person commits boredom upon another, he puts himself beyond the pale of mercy. I am an amiable man, but I cannot bear to be bored.

Now, there is a class of persons who seem to have come into the world for no other purpose than to test the patience of others. To this class Miss Kittenish most undoubtedly belongs. I cannot determine any other plausible reason for her existence. I have thought that her constant devotion to her invalid mother might have had something to do with it, her usefulness in directing the domestic affairs of the household, her eager interest in the concerns of her five unmarried sisters, her exemplary energy in parish mission-work, or her active enthusiasm in the matter of school-treats; but, praiseworthy as all this is, I can scarcely regard all or any one of these causes as the _raison d’être_ of Miss Kittenish. She was born to be a bore, to try the temper of the amiable, to prove that we are all mortal, even the most charitable.