Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  This kind of argument is irreproachable. It is like the old lady who said she was so glad that she did not like spinach, because if she did she would eat it, and, as she detested it, that would be very unpleasant. There is no answer possible to a properly grounded philosophical argument of this kind. On the whole, Miss Carnethy did the right thing when she tried to realise the physical being of nothing.

  This Leonora was no ordinary girl. She belonged to a small class of young women who take a certain delight in being different from “the rest” — higher, of course. She had the misfortune to be of a mixed race, so far as blood was concerned, for her father was English and her mother was a Russian. It would probably be hard to find people more utterly unlike than these two, for the beef-eating conqueror is one, and the fire-eating Tartar is quite another, while this unlucky child of an international parentage had something of each. Her history — she was twenty-two years of age, then — might be summed up in a very few words. An English child, an Italian girl, a Russian woman. Her father had many prejudices, and did not believe in much; her mother had no prejudices at all, and believed in everything under the sun, and in a few things besides, so that certain evilly disposed persons had even said of her that she was superstitious.

  There is something infinitely pathetic about such a growing to maturity as had made Leonora Carnethy what she was. Imagine such an anomaly as a poor little seed, of which no one can say whether it is a rose or a nightshade, alternately treated as a fair blossom and as a poisonous weed. Imagine a young girl, full of a certain fierce courage and impatience of restraint, chafing under the moral flat iron of a hopelessly proper father, whose mind is of the great levelling type and his prejudices as mountains of stone in the midst, reared to heaven like pyramids to impose a personal moral geography on the human landscape; and imagine the same girl further possessed of certain truly British instincts of continuity and unreasonable perseverance, eternally offending by her persistence a mother whose strong point is a kind of gymnastic superstition, a strange perversity of exuberant belief, forcing itself into the place of principle where there is none, — imagine a young girl in such a situation, in such a childhood, and it will not seem strange that she should grow up to be a very odd woman.

  The father and mother understood each other after a fashion, but neither of them ever understood Leonora, and so Leonora tried to understand herself. To this laudable end she devoured books and ideas of all sorts and kinds, not always perceiving whether she took the poison first and the antidote afterwards, or the contrary, or even whether she fed entirely on poisons or entirely on antidotes. Poor child! she found truth very hard to define, and the criticism exercised by pure reason a very insufficient weapon. Moreover, like Job of old, she had friends and comforters to help in making life hideous. She wondered to-day, as she lay in her darkened room, whether any of them would come, and the thought was unpleasant.

  She had just made up her mind to ring the bell and tell her maid that no one should be admitted, when the door opened after the least possible apology for a knock, and she realised that she had thought of the contingency too late.

  “Dear Leonora!”

  “Dearest Leonora!”

  The room was so dark that the young ladies stood still at the door, as they fired off the first shots of their brimming affection. Leonora moved so as to see their dark figures against the light.

  “Oh,” she said, “is it you?”

  She was not glad to see her dear friends, for her fits of philosophical despair were real while they lasted, and she hated to be disturbed in them. But as these two young women were her companions in the study of universal hollowness, she felt that she must bear with them. So, after a little hesitation she allowed them to let some light into the room, and they sat down and held her hands.

  “We want to talk to you about Infinite Time!”

  “And Infinite Space!”

  “I am persuaded,” said the first young lady, “that our ideas of Time are quite mistaken. This system of hours and minutes is not adapted to the larger view.”

  “No,” said Leonora, “for Time is evidently a portion of universal pure Being, and is therefore Nothing. I am sure of it.”

  “No. Time is not Nothing, — it is Colour.”

  “How do you mean, dear?” asked Leonora in some surprise.

  “I do not quite know, dearest, but I am sure it must be. It is quite certain that Colour is a fundamental conception.”

  “Of course.” There was a pause. Apparently the identity of Infinite Time with Colour did not interest Miss Carnethy, who stared at the light through the blinds between her two friends.

  “It seems to me that we girls have no field nowadays,” said she, rather irrelevantly.

  “An infinite field, dear.”

  “And infinite time, dearest.”

  “I would give anything I possess to be able to do anything for anybody,” began Leonora. “We know so much about life in theory, and we know nothing about it in practice. I wish mamma would even let me order the dinner sometimes; it would be something. But of course it is all an illusion, and nothing, and very infinite.”

  Poor Miss Carnethy turned on her pillow with a dreary look in her eyes.

  “It will be different when you are married, dear,” suggested one.

  “Of course,” acquiesced the other.

  “But can you not see,” objected Miss Carnethy, “that we shall never marry men whose ideas are so high and beautiful as ours? And then, to be tied forever to some miserable creature! Fancy not being understood! What do these wretched society men care about the really great questions of life?”

  “About Time—”

  “And Infinite Space—”

  “Nothing, nothing, nothing!” cried Miss Carnethy in real distress.

  “And yet it would be dreadful to be an old maid” —

  “Perfectly dreadful, of course!” exclaimed all three, in a breath. Then there was a short silence, during which Leonora moved uneasily, and finally sat up, her heavy red hair falling all about her.

  “By the bye,” she said at last, “have you been out to-day, dears? What have you been doing? Tell me all about it.”

  “We have been to Lady Smyth-Tompkins’s tea. It was very empty.”

  “You mean very hollow, for there were many people there.”

  “Yes,” said the other, “it was very hollow — empty — everything of that sort. Then we went to drive on the Pincio.”

  “So very void.”

  “Yes. We saw Carantoni leaning against a post. I am sure he was thinking of nothing. He looks just like a stuffed glove, — such an inane dandy!”

  Miss Carnethy’s blue eyes suddenly looked as though they were conscious of something more than mere emptiness in the world. Her strong, well-shaped red lips set themselves like a bent bow, and the shaft was not long in flying.

  “He is very pleasant to talk to,” said she, “and besides — he really dances beautifully.” It was probably a standing grievance with her two friends that Marcantonio did not dance with them, or Leonora could scarcely have produced such an impression in so few words.

  “What does he talk about?” asked one, with an affectation of indifference.

  “Oh, all sorts of things,” answered Leonora. “He does not believe at all in the greatest good of the greatest number. He says he has discovered the Spencerian fallacy, as he calls it.”

  “Alas, then that also is nothing!”

  “Absolutely nothing, dear,” continued Leonora. “He says that, if there is no morality beyond happiness” —

  “Of course!”

  — “then every individual has as much right to be happy as the whole human race put together, since he is under no moral obligation to anybody or anything, there being no abstract morality. Do you see? It is very pretty. And then he says it follows that there is no absolute good unless from a divine standard, which of course is pure nonsense, or ought to be, if Hegel is right.”

  “Dear me! Of c
ourse it is!”

  “And so, dears,” concluded Leonora triumphantly, “we are all going to the Devil do you see?” The association of ideas seemed exhilarating to Miss Carnethy, and in truth the conclusion was probably suggested more by her feelings than by her logic, if she really possessed any. She felt better, and would put off the further consideration of Nothing and Being to some more convenient season. She therefore gave her friends some tea in her bedroom, and the conversation became more and more earthly, and the subjects more and more minute, until they seemed to be thoroughly within the grasp of the three young ladies.

  At last they went, these two charming damsels, very much impressed with Leonora’s cleverness, and very much interested in her future, — which she would only refer to in the vaguest terms possible. They were both extremely fashionable young persons, possessed of dowries, good looks, and various other charms, such as good birth, good manners, and the like; and it would be futile to deny that they took a lively interest in the doings of their world, however hollow and vain the cake appeared to them between two bites.

  “Are you going to-night, Leonora dear?” they inquired as they left her.

  “Of course,” answered Miss Carnethy. “I must hear the rest of the ‘Spencerian fallacy’ you know!”

  When Leonora was alone she had a great many things to think of.

  The atmosphere had cleared during the last hour, so far as philosophy was concerned, and as she looked at herself in the glass, she was wondering how she should look in the evening. Not vainly, — at least, not so vainly as most girls with her advantages might have thought, — but reflectively, the English side of her twofold nature having gained the upper hand. For as she gazed into her own blue eyes, trying to search and fathom her own soul, she was conscious of something that gave her pleasure and hope, — something which she had treated scornfully enough in her thoughts that very afternoon.

  She knew, for her mother had told her, that Marcantonio Carantoni had written to her parents, had called, had an interview, and had been told that he should be an acceptable son-in-law, provided that he could obtain Leonora’s consent. She knew also that in the natural course of things he would this very evening ask her to be his wife; and, lastly, she knew very well that she would accept him.

  She wondered vaguely how all those strange unsettled ideas of hers would harmonise in a married life. How far should she and her husband ever agree? She had a photograph of him in her desk, which he had given to her mother, and which she had naturally stolen and hidden away. Now she took it out and brought it to the window, and looked at it minutely, wonderingly, as she had looked at herself in the mirror a moment earlier.

  Yes, he was a proper husband enough, with his bright honest eyes and his brave aristocratic nose and black moustache. Not very intelligent, perhaps, by the higher standard, — that everlasting “higher standard” again, — but withal goodly and noble as a lover should be. A lover? What weal and woe of heart-stirring romance that word used to suggest! And so this was her lover, the one man of all others dreamed of as a future divinity throughout her passionate girlhood. A creature of sighs and stolen glances — ay, perhaps of stolen kisses — a lover should be; breathing soft things and glancing hot glances. Was Marcantonio really her lover?

  He was so honest — and so rich! He could hardly want her for her dower’s sake, — no, she knew that was impossible. For her beauty’s sake, then? No, she was not so beautiful as that, and never could be, though the fashion had changed and red hair was in vogue. A pretty conceit, that mankind should make one half of creation fashionable at the expense of the other! But it is so all the same, and always will be. However, even with red hair, and an immense quantity of it, she was not a great beauty.

  Perhaps Marcantonio would have married a great beauty if he could have met one who would accept him. It would not be nice, she thought, to marry a man who could not have the best if he chose. To think that he might ever look back and wish she were as beautiful as some one else! But after much earnest consideration of the matter no image of “some one else” rose to her mind, and she confessed with some triumph that she was not jealous of any one; that he had chosen her for herself, and that she was without rival so far as he was concerned. Not even her friends, the one dark and classic, the other fair and dreamy, could boast of having roused his interest. That was a great advantage.

  But did she care for him — did she love him? Of course; how else should it be possible for her, with her high ideas of man’s goodness, to think of ever consenting to marry him? Of course she loved him.

  It was not exactly the kind of thing she expected, when she used to think of love a year ago; when love was a detached ideal with wings and arrows, and all manner of romantic and mythical attributes. But considering how very hollow and barren she had demonstrated the world to be, this thing had a certain life about it. It was a real sensation, beyond a doubt, and not an unhappy one either.

  The room grew dark and she sat a few moments, the photograph lying idly in her hand. Out of the dusk, coming from the fairyland of her girl’s fancy, rose a figure, the figure of the ideal lover she used to evoke before she knew Marcantonio Carantoni. He was a different sort of person altogether, much taller and broader and fiercer; a very impossibility of a man, coming towards her, and upsetting everything in his course; trampling rough-shod over the mangled fragments of her former idols, over society, over Marcantonio, over everything till he was close and near her, touching her hand, touching her lips, clasping her to him in fierce triumph, and bearing her away in a whirlwind of strength. A quick sigh, and she let the photograph fall to the ground, sinking back in her chair with a light in her eyes that overcame the darkness.

  Dreamland, dreamland, what fools you make of us all! What strange characters there are among the slides of your theatre, only awaiting the nod of Sleep, the manager, to issue forth, and rant and rave, make love and mischief, do battle and murder, play the scoundrel and the hero, till our poor brains reel and the daylight is turned on again, and all the players vanish into the thinnest of thin air!

  Miss Carnethy rang for her maid, who brought lights and closed the shutters and let down the curtains preparatory to dressing her mistress for dinner. Leonora looked down and saw Marcantonio’s photograph lying where it had fallen. She picked it up and looked at it once more by the candle light.

  “Perhaps I shall refuse him after all,” she thought, coldly enough, and she put it back into the drawer of her desk.

  Perhaps you are right, Miss Carnethy, and the world is stuffed with sawdust.

  CHAPTER III.

  THE SOFT THICK air of the ball-room swayed rhythmically to the swell and fall of the violins; the perfume of roses and lilies was whirled into waves of sweetness, and the beating of many young hearts seemed to tremble musically through the nameless harmony of instrument and voice, and rustling silk, and gliding feet. In the passionately moving symphony of sound and sight and touch, the whole weal and woe and longing of life throbbed in a threefold pace.

  The dwellers in an older world did well to call the dance divine, and to make it the gift of a nimble goddess; truly, without a waltz the world would have lacked a very divine element. Few people can really doubt what the step was that David danced before the ark.

  The ball was at a house where members of various parties met by common consent as on neutral ground. There are few such houses in Rome, or, indeed, anywhere else, as there are very few people clever enough, or stupid enough, to manage such an establishment. Men of entirely inimical convictions and associations will occasionally go to the house of a great genius or a great fool, out of sheer curiosity, and are content to enjoy themselves and even to talk to each other a little, when no one is looking. It is neutral ground, and the white flag of the ball-dress keeps the peace as it sweeps past the black cloth legs of clericals and the grey cloth legs of the military contingent, past the legs of all sorts and conditions of men elbowing each other for a front place with the ladies.

 
Conspicuous by her height and rare magnificence of queenly beauty was Madame de Charleroi, moving stately along as she rested her fingers on the arm of a minister less than half her size. But there was a look of weariness and preoccupation on her features that did not escape her dear friends.

  “Diana is certainly going to be thin and scraggy,” remarked a black-browed dame of Rome, fat and solid, a perfect triumph of the flesh. She said it behind her fan to her neighbour.

  “It is sad,” said the other, “she is growing old.”

  “Ah yes,” remarked her husband, who chanced to be standing by and was in a bad humour, “she was born in 1844, the year you left school, my dear.” The black-browed lady smiled sweetly at her discomfited friend, who looked unutterable scorn at her consort.

  Donna Diana glanced uneasily about the room, expecting every moment to see her brother appear with Miss Carnethy. She was very unhappy about the whole affair, though she could not exactly explain to herself the reason of what she felt. Miss Carnethy was rich, had a certain kind of distinguished beauty about her, was young, well-born, — but all that did not compensate in Madame de Charleroi’s mind for the fact that she was a heretic, a freethinker, a dabbler in progressist ideas, and — and — what? She could not tell. It must be prejudice of the most absurd kind! She would not submit to it a moment longer, and if the opportunity offered she would go to Miss Carnethy and say something pleasant to her. Donna Diana had a very kind and gentle Italian heart hidden away in her proud bosom, and she had also a determination to be just and honest in all situations, — most of all when she feared that her personal sympathies were leading her away.

  The diplomat at her side chatted pleasantly, perceiving that she was wholly preoccupied; he talked quite as much to himself as to her, after he had discovered that she was not listening. And Donna Diana determined to do a kind action, and the swinging rhythm of the straining, surging waltz was in her ears. She was just wondering idly enough what the little diplomat had been saying to her during the last ten minutes, when she saw her brother enter the room with Miss Carnethy on his arm. They had met in one of the outer drawing-rooms and had come in to dance. Donna Diana watched them as they caught the measure and whirled away.