White Lies Part 37

Heaven had been very kind to them: why should they be unkind to themselves? They had had a great escape: why not accept the happiness, as, being persons of honor, they had accepted the misery? with many other arguments, differing in other things, but agreeing in this, that they were all sober, grave, and full of common-sense.

Finding him not defenceless on the score of reason, she s.h.i.+fted her ground and appealed to his delicacy. On this he appealed to her love, and then calm reason was jostled off the field, and pa.s.sion and sentiment battled in her place.

In these contests day by day renewed, Camille had many advantages.

Rose, though she did not like him, had now declared on his side. She refused to show him the least attention. This threw him on Josephine: and when Josephine begged her to help reduce Camille to reason, her answer would be,--

"Hypocrite!" with a kiss: or else she would say, with a half comic petulance, "No! no! I am on his side. Give him his own way, or he will make us all four miserable."

Thus Josephine's ally went over to the enemy.

And then this coy young lady's very power of resistance began to give way. She had now battled for months against her own heart: first for her mother; then, in a far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and purity; and of late she had been battling, still against her own heart, for delicacy, for etiquette, things very dear to her, but not so great, holy, and sustaining as honor and charity that were her very household G.o.ds: and so, just when the motives of resistance were lowered, the length of the resistance began to wear her out.

For nothing is so hard to her s.e.x as a long steady struggle. In matters physical, this is the thing the muscles of the fair cannot stand; in matters intellectual and moral, the long strain it is that beats them dead.

Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a Handella, a Victoria Huga.

Some American ladies tell us education has stopped the growth of these.

No! mesdames. These are not in nature.

They can bubble letters in ten minutes that you could no more deliver to order in ten days than a river can play like a fountain. They can sparkle gems of stories: they can flash little diamonds of poems. The entire s.e.x has never produced one opera nor one epic that mankind could tolerate: and why? these come by long, high-strung labor. But, weak as they are in the long run of everything but the affections (and there giants), they are all overpowering while their gallop lasts. Fragilla shall dance any two of you flat on the floor before four o'clock, and then dance on till the peep of day.

Only you trundle off to your business as usual, and could dance again the next night, and so on through countless ages.

She who danced you into nothing is in bed, a human jelly tipped with headache.

What did Josephine say to Rose one day? "I am tired of saying 'No! no!

no! no! no!' forever and ever to him I love."

But this was not all. She was not free from self-reproach. Camille's faith in her had stood firm. Hers in him had not. She had wronged him, first by believing him false, then by marrying another. One day she asked his pardon for this. He replied that he had forgiven that; but would she be good enough to make him forget it?

"I wish I could."

"You can. Marry me: then your relation to that man will seem but a hideous dream. I shall be able to say, looking at you, my wife, 'I was faithful: I suffered something for her; I came home: she loved me still; the proof is, she was my wife within three months of my return.'"

When he said that to her in the Pleasaunce, if there had been a priest at hand--. In a word, Josephine longed to show him her love, yet wished not to shock her mother, nor offend her own sense of delicacy; but Camille cared for nothing but his love. To sacrifice love and happiness, even for a time, to etiquette, seemed to him to be trifling with the substance of great things for the shadow of petty things; and he said so: sometimes sadly, sometimes almost bitterly.

So Josephine was a beleagured fortress, attacked with one will, and defended by troops, one-third of which were hot on the side of the besiegers.

When singleness attacks division, you know the result beforehand. Why then should I spin words? I will not trace so ill-matched a contest step by step, sentence by sentence: let me rather hasten to relate the one peculiarity that arose out of this trite contest, where, under the names of Camille and Josephine, the two great s.e.xes may be seen acting the whole world-wide distich,--

"It's a man's part to try, And a woman's to deny [for a while?]."

Finding her own resolutions oozing away, Josephine caught at another person.

She said to Camille before Rose,--

"Even if I could bring myself to s.n.a.t.c.h at happiness in this indelicate way--scarce a month after, oh!" And there ended the lady's sentence.

In the absence of a legitimate full stop, she put one hand before her lovely face to hide it, and so no more. But some two minutes after she delivered the rest in the form and with the tone of a distinct remark, "No: my mother would never consent."

"Yes, she would if you could be brought to implore her as earnestly as I implore you."

"Now would she?" asked Josephine, turning quickly to her sister.

"No, never. Our mother would look with horror on such a proposal. A daughter of hers to marry within a twelvemonth of her widowhood!"

"There, you see, Camille."

"And, besides, she loved Raynal so; she has not forgotten him as we have, almost."

"Ungrateful creature that I am!" sighed Josephine!

"She mourns for him every day. Often I see her eyes suddenly fill; that is for him. Josephine's influence with mamma is very great: it is double mine: but if we all went on our knees to her, the doctor and all, she would never consent."

"There you see, Camille: and I could not defy my mother, even for you."

Camille sighed.

"I see everything is against me, even my love: for that love is too much akin to veneration to propose to you a clandestine marriage."

"Oh, thank you! bless you for respecting as well as loving me, dear Camille," said Josephine.

These words, uttered with gentle warmth, were some consolation to Camille, and confirmed him, as they were intended to do, in the above good resolution. He smiled.

"Maladroit!" muttered Rose.

"Why maladroit?" asked Camille, opening his eyes.

"Let us talk of something else," replied Rose, coolly.

Camille turned red. He understood that he had done something very stupid, but he could not conceive what. He looked from one sister to the other alternately. Rose was smiling ironically, Josephine had her eyes bent demurely on a handkerchief she was embroidering.

That evening Camille drew Rose aside, and asked for an explanation of her "maladroit."

"So it was," replied Rose, sharply.

But as this did not make the matter quite clear, Camille begged a little further explanation.

"Was it your part to make difficulties?"

"No, indeed."

"Was it for you to tell her a secret marriage would not be delicate?

Do you think she will be behind you in delicacy? or that a love without respect will satisfy her? yet you must go and tell her you respected her too much to ask her to marry you secretly. In other words, situated as she is, you asked her not to marry you at all: she consented to that directly; what else could you expect?"

"Maladroit! indeed," said Camille, "but I would not have said it, only I thought"--

"You thought nothing would induce her to marry secretly, so you said to yourself, 'I will a.s.sume a virtue: I will do a bit of cheap self-denial: decline to the sound of trumpets what another will be sure to deny me if I don't--ha! ha!'--well, for your comfort, I am by no means so sure she might not have been brought to do ANYTHING for you, except openly defy mamma: but now of course"--