“I abominate pretty fresh girls. I would just as soon talk to a baby in a perambulator.”
“The women men are crazy to marry are not always those they particularly delight to converse with, my friend,” said Judith.
I lit another cigarette. “I think the sex feminine has marriage on the brain,” I exclaimed, somewhat heatedly. “My Aunt Jessica was worrying me about it the day before yesterday. As if it were any concern of hers!”
Judith laughed below her breath and called me a simpleton.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you haven’t got a temperament.”
This was a foolish answer, having no bearing on the question. I told her so. She replied that she was years older than I, and had learned the eternal relevance of all things. I pointed out that she was years younger.
“How many heart-beats have you had in your life—real, wild, pulsating heart-beats—eternity in an hour?”
“That’s Blake,” I murmured.
“I’m aware of it. Answer my question.”
“It’s a silly question.”
“It isn’t. The next time you see a female baby in a perambulator, take off your hat respectfully.”
I am afraid I am clumsy at repartee.
“And the next time you engage a cook, my dear Judith,” said I, “send for a mere man.”
She coloured up. I dissolved myself in apologies. Her wounded susceptibilities required careful healing. The situation was somewhat odd. She had not scrupled to attack the innermost weaknesses of my character, and yet when I retaliated by a hit at externals, she was deeply hurt, and made me feel a ruffianly blackguard. I really think if Lisette had pinned up that curtain I should have learned something more about female human nature. But Judith is the only woman I have known intimately all my life long, and sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever know her. I told her so once. She answered: “If you loved me you would know me.” Very likely she was right. Honestly speaking, I don’t love Judith. I am accustomed to her. She is a lady, born and bred. She is an educated woman and takes quite an intelligent interest in the Renaissance. Indeed she has a subtler appreciation of the Venetian School of Painting than I have. She first opened my eyes, in Italy, to the beauties, as a gorgeous colourist, of Palma Vecchio in his second or Giorgionesque manner. She is in every way a sympathetic and entertaining companion. Going deeper, to the roots of human instinct, I find she represents to me—so chance has willed it—the ewige weibliche which must complement masculinity in order to produce normal existence. But as for the “zieht uns hinan”—no. It would not attract me hence—out of my sphere. I could commit an immortal folly for no woman who ever made this planet more lustrous to its Bruderspharen.
I don’t understand Judith. It doesn’t very greatly matter. Many things I don’t understand, the spiritual attitude towards himself, for example, of the intelligent juggler who expends his life’s energies in balancing a cue and three billiard-balls on the tip of his nose. But I know that Judith understands me, and therein lies the advantage I gain from our intimacy. She gauges, to an absurdly subtle degree, the depth of my affection. She is really an incomparable woman. So many insist upon predilection masquerading as consuming passion. There is nothing theatrical about Judith.
Yet to-day she appeared a little touchy, moody, unsettled. She broke another pleasant spell of fireside silence, that followed expiation of my offence, by suddenly calling my name.
“Yes?” said I, inquiringly.
“I want to tell you something. Please promise me you won’t be vexed.”
“My dear Judith,” said I, “my great and imperial namesake, in whose meditations I have always found ineffable comfort, tells me this: ‘If anything external vexes you, take notice that it is not the thing which disturbs you, but your notion about it, which notion you may dismiss at once, if you please!’ So I promise to dismiss all my notions of your disturbing communication and not to be vexed.”
“If there is one platitudinist I dislike more than another, it is Marcus Aurelius,” said Judith.
I laughed. It was very comfortable to sit before the fire, which protested, in a fire’s cheery, human way, against the depression of the murky world outside, and to banter Judith.
“I can quite understand it,” I said. “A man sucks in the consolations of philosophy; a woman solaces herself with religion.”
“I can do neither,” she replied, changing her attitude with an exaggerated shaking down of skirts. “If I could, I shouldn’t want to go away.”
“Go away?” I echud.
“Yes. You mustn’t be vexed with me. I haven’t got a cook—”
“No one would have thought it, from the luncheon you gave me, my dear.”
The alcoholized domestic, by the way, was sent out, bag and baggage, last evening, when she was sober enough to walk.
“And so it is a convenient opportunity,” Judith continued, ignoring my compliment—and rightly so; for as soon as it had been uttered, I was struck by an uneasy conviction that she had herself disturbed the French caterers in the Tottenham Court Road from their Sabbath repose in order to provide me with food.
“I can shut up the flat without any fuss. I am never happy at the beginning of a London season. I know I’m silly,” she went on, hurriedly. “If I could stand your dreadful Marcus Aurelius I might be wiser—I don’t mind the rest of the year; but in the season everybody is in town—people I used to know and mix with—I meet them in the streets and they cut me and it—hurts—and so I want to get away somewhere by myself. When I get sick of solitude I’ll come back.”
One of her quick, graceful movements brought her to her knees by my side. She caught my hand.
“For pity’s sake, Marcus, say that you understand why it is.”
I said, “I have been a blatant egoist all the afternoon, Judith. I didn’t guess. Of course I understand.”
“If you didn’t, it would be impossible for us.”
“Have no doubt,” said I, softly, and I kissed her hand.
I came into her life when she counted it as over and done with—at eight and twenty—and was patiently undergoing premature interment in a small pension in Rome. How long her patience would have lasted I cannot say. If circumstances had been different, what would have happened? is the most futile of speculations. What did happen was the drifting together of us two bits of flotsam and our keeping together for the simple reason that there were no forces urging us apart. She was past all care for social sanctions, her sacred cap of good repute having been flung over the windmills long before; and I, friendless unit in a world of shadows, why should I have rejected the one warm hand that was held out to me? As I said to her this afternoon, Why should the bon Dieu disapprove? I pay him the compliment of presuming that he is a broad-minded deity.
When my fortune came, she remarked, “I am glad I am not free. If I were, you would want to marry me, and that would be fatal.”
The divine, sound sense of the dear woman! Honour would compel the offer. Its acceptance would bring disaster.
Marriage has two aspects. The one, a social contract, a quid of protection, maintenance, position and what not, for a quo of the various services that may be conveniently epitomized in the phrase de mensa et thoro. The other, the only possible existence for two beings whose passionate, mutual attraction demands the perfect fusion of their two existences into a common life. Now to this passionate attraction I have never become, and, having no temperament (thank Heaven!), shall never become, a party. Before the turbulence therein involved I stand affrighted as I do before London or the deep sea.