“The news has travelled fast,” she said. “Yes; it is true.” She spoke composedly, and so kindly that he choked in trying to reply.
“Then, Lydia, you are the chief actor in a greater tragedy than I have ever witnessed on the stage.”
“It is strange, is it not?” she said, smiling at his effort to be impressive.
“Strange! It is calamitous. I trust I may be allowed to say so. And you sit there reading as calmly as though nothing had happened.”
She handed him the book without a word.
“‘Ivanhoe’!” he said. “A novel!”
“Yes. Do you remember once, before you knew me very well, telling me that Scott’s novels were the only ones that you liked to see in the hands of ladies?”
“No doubt I did. But I cannot talk of literature just—”
“I am not leading you away from what you want to talk about. I was about to tell you that I came upon ‘Ivanhoe’ by chance half an hour ago, when I was searching — I confess it — for something very romantic to read. Ivanhoe was a prizefighter — the first half of the book is a description of a prizefight. I was wondering whether some romancer of the twenty-fourth century will hunt out the exploits of my husband, and present him to the world as a sort of English nineteenth-century Cyd, with all the glory of antiquity upon his deeds.”
Lucian made a gesture of impatience. “I have never been able to understand,” he said, “how it is that a woman of your ability can habitually dwell on perverse and absurd ideas. Oh, Lydia, is this to be the end of all your great gifts and attainments? Forgive me if I touch a painful chord; but this marriage seems to me so unnatural that I must speak out. Your father made you one of the richest and best-educated women in the world. Would he approve of what you are about to do?”
“It almost seems to me that he educated me expressly to some such end. Whom would you have me marry?”
“Doubtless few men are worthy of you, Lydia. But this man least of all. Could you not marry a gentleman? If he were even an artist, a poet, or a man of genius of any kind, I could bear to think of it; for indeed I am not influenced by class prejudice in the matter. But a — I will try to say nothing that you must not in justice admit to be too obvious to be ignored — a man of the lower orders, pursuing a calling which even the lower orders despise; illiterate, rough, awaiting at this moment a disgraceful sentence at the hands of the law! Is it possible that you have considered all these things?”
“Not very deeply; they are not of a kind to concern me much. I can console you as to one of them. I have always recognized him as a gentleman, in your sense of the word. He proves to be so — one of considerable position, in fact. As to his approaching trial, I have spoken with Lord Worthington about it, and also with the lawyers who have charge of the case; and they say positively that, owing to certain proofs not being in the hands of the police, a defence can be set up that will save him from imprisonment.”
“There is no such defence possible,” said Lucian, angrily.
“Perhaps not. As far as I understand it, it is rather an aggravation of the offence than an excuse for it. But if they imprison him it will make no difference. He can console himself by the certainty that I will marry him at once when he is released.”
Lucian’s face lengthened. He abandoned the argument, and said, blankly, “I cannot suppose that you would allow yourself to be deceived. If he is a gentleman of position, that of course alters the case completely.”
“Very little indeed from my point of view. Hardly at all. And now, worldly cousin Lucian, I have satisfied you that I am not going to connect you by marriage with a butcher, bricklayer, or other member of the trades from which Cashel’s profession, as you warned me, is usually recruited. Stop a moment. I am going to do justice to you. You want to say that my unworldly friend Lucian is far more deeply concerned at seeing the phoenix of modern culture throw herself away on a man unworthy of her.”
“That IS what I mean to say, except that you put it too modestly. It is a case of the phoenix, not only of modern culture, but of natural endowment and of every happy accident of the highest civilization, throwing herself away on a man specially incapacitated by his tastes and pursuits from comprehending her or entering the circle in which she moves.”
“Listen to me patiently, Lucian, and I will try to explain the mystery to you, leaving the rest of the world to misunderstand me as it pleases. First, you will grant me that even a phoenix must marry some one in order that she may hand on her torch to her children. Her best course would be to marry another phoenix; but as she — poor girl! — cannot appreciate even her own phoenixity, much less that of another, she must perforce be content with a mere mortal. Who is the mortal to be? Not her cousin Lucian; for rising young politicians must have helpful wives, with feminine politics and powers of visiting and entertaining; a description inapplicable to the phoenix. Not, as you just now suggested, a man of letters. The phoenix has had her share of playing helpmeet to a man of letters, and does not care to repeat that experience. She is sick to death of the morbid introspection and womanish self-consciousness of poets, novelists, and their like. As to artists, all the good ones are married; and ever since the rest have been able to read in hundreds of books that they are the most gifted and godlike of men, they are become almost as intolerable as their literary flatterers. No, Lucian, the phoenix has paid her debt to literature and art by the toil of her childhood. She will use and enjoy both of them in future as best she can; but she will never again drudge in their laboratories. You say that she might at least have married a gentleman. But the gentlemen she knows are either amateurs of the arts, having the egotism of professional artists without their ability, or they are men of pleasure, which means that they are dancers, tennis-players, butchers, and gamblers. I leave the nonentities out of the question. Now, in the eyes of a phoenix, a prizefighter is a hero in comparison with a wretch who sets a leash of greyhounds upon a hare. Imagine, now, this poor phoenix meeting with a man who had never been guilty of self-analysis in his life — who complained when he was annoyed, and exulted when he was glad, like a child (and unlike a modern man) — who was honest and brave, strong and beautiful. You open your eyes, Lucian: you do not do justice to Cashel’s good looks. He is twenty-five, and yet there is not a line in his face. It is neither thoughtful, nor poetic, nor wearied, nor doubting, nor old, nor self-conscious, as so many of his contemporaries’ faces are — as mine perhaps is. The face of a pagan god, assured of eternal youth, and absolutely disqualified from comprehending ‘Faust.’ Do you understand a word of what I am saying, Lucian?”
“I must confess that I do not. Either you have lost your reason, or I have. I wish you had never taking to reading ‘Faust.’”
“It is my fault. I began an explanation, and rambled off, womanlike, into praise of my lover. However, I will not attempt to complete my argument; for if you do not understand me from what I have already said, the further you follow the wider you will wander. The truth, in short, is this: I practically believe in the doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my brain morbidly active, I think my impulse towards a man strong in body and untroubled in mind a trustworthy one. You can understand that; it is a plain proposition in eugenics. But if I tell you that I have chosen this common pugilist because, after seeing half the culture of Europe, I despaired of finding a better man, you will only tell me again that I have lost my reason.”
“I know that you will do whatever you have made up your mind to do,” said Lucian, desolately.
“And you will make the best of it, will you not?”
“The best or the worst of it does not rest with me. I can only accept it as inevitable.”
“Not at all. You can make the worst of it by behaving distantly to Cashel; or the best of it by being friendly with him.”
Lucian reddened and hesitated. She looked at him, mutely encouraging him to be generous.