“I think I had better advertise, ‘Wanted: a comfortable husband. Applicants need not be handsome, as the lady is shortsighted. It sounds very prosaic, Lady Geraldine.”
“It is prosaic. I told you once before that the world is is not a stage for you to play the heroine on. Like all young people, you want an exalted motive for every step you take.”
“I confess I do. However, you have forgotten to apply your argument to Mr. Hoskyn’s case. If people with artistic tastes are all uncomfortable, I must be uncomfortable; and that is not fair to him.”
“No matter. He is in love with you. Besides, you are not artistic enough to be uncomfortable. You have been your father’s housekeeper too long.”
“And you really advise me to marry Mr. Hoskyn?”
Lady. Geraldine hesitated. “I think you can hardly expect me to take the responsibility of directly advising you to marry any man. It is one of the things that people must do for themselves. But I certainly advise you not to be deterred from marrying him by any supposed incompatibility in your tastes, or by his not being a man of genius.”
“I wonder would Mr. Conolly marry me.”
“Mary!”
“It was an unmaidenly remark,” said Mary, laughing.”
“It is undignified for a sensible girl to play at being silly, Mary. I hope you have no serious intention beneath your jesting. If you have, I shall be very sorry indeed for having allowed Mr. Conolly to meet you here.”
“Not the slightest, I assure you. Why, Lady Geraldine, you look quite alarmed.”
“I do not trust Mr. Conolly much. Marian Lind was infatuated by him; and another woman may share her fate — unless she happens to share my feeling towards him, in which case she may be regarded as perfectly safe. He is a dangerous subject. Let us leave him and come back to our main business. Is Mr. Hoskyn to be made happy or not?”
“I don’t want to marry at all. Let him have Miss Cairns: she would suit him exactly.”
“Well, if you don’t want to marry at all, my dear, there is an end of it. I have said all I can. You must decide for yourself.”
Mary, perceiving that Lady Geraldine felt offended, was about to make a soothing speech, when she heard a chair move, and, looking up saw that Conolly was in the room.
“Do I disturb you?”
Not at all,” Said Lady Geraldine with dignity, looking at him rather severely and wondering how long he had been there.
“We were discussing sociology.” said Mary.
“Ah!” he said, serenely. “And have you arrived at any important generalizations?”
“Most important ones.”
“What about? — if I may ask.”
“About marriage.” Lady Geraldine stamped hastily on Mary’s foot, and looked reproachfully at her.
Mary felt her color deepen, but she faced him boldly.
“And have you come the usual conclusions?” he said, sitting down near them.
“What are the usual conclusions?” said Mary.
“That marriage is a mistake. That men who surrender their liberty, and women who surrender their independence are fools. That children are a nuisance, and so forth.”
“We have come to any such conclusions. We rather started in with the assumption that marriage is a necessary evil, and were debating how to make the best of it.”
“On which point you differed, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Because Lady Geraldine is married and you are not. Can I help you to arrive at a compromise? I am peculiarly fitted for the task, because I am not married, and yet I have been married.”
Lady Geraldine, who had turned her chair so as to avert her face from him, looked round. Disregarding this mute protest, he continued, addressing Mary. “Will you tell me the point at issue?”
“It is not so very important,” said Mary, a little confused. “We were only exchanging a few casual remarks. A question arose as to whether the best men make the best husbands. I mean the cleverest men — men of genius, for instance. Lady Geraldine said no. She maintains that a goodnatured blockhead makes a far better husband than a Caesar or a Shakespeare.”
“Did you say that?” said Conolly to Lady Geraldine, with a smile.
“No,” she replied, almost uncivilly. “Blockheads are never goodnatured. At best, they are only lazy. I said that a man might be a very good husband without any special culture in the arts and sciences. Mary seemed to think that any person who understands as much of painting as an artist, is a person who sympathizes with that artist, and therefore a suitable match for her — or him. I disagree with her. I believe that community of taste for art has just as much to do with matrimonial happiness as community of taste for geography or roast mutton, and no more.”
“And no more,” repeated Conolly. “You are quite right. Heroes are ill adapted to domestic purposes. That is what you mean, is it not? Perhaps Miss Sutherland will be content with nothing less than a hero.”
“No,” said Mary. “But T will never admit that a man is not the better for being a hero. According to you, he is the worse. I heartily despise a woman who marries a fool in order that she may live comfortably despotic in her own house. I do not make absolute heroism an indispensable condition — I do not know exactly what heroism means; but I think a man may reasonably be expected to be free from vulgar prejudices against the efforts of artists to make life beautiful; and to have so disciplined himself that a wife can always depend on his selfcontrol and moral rectitude. It must be terrible to live in constant dread of childish explosions of temper from one’s husband, or to fear, at every crisis, that he will not act like a man of sense and honor.”
Conolly looked at her curiously, and then, with an intent deliberation, that gave the fullest emphasis to his words, leaned a little toward her with his hands upon his knees, and said “Did you ever live with a person whose temper was imperturbable — who never hesitated to apply his principles, and never swerved from acting as they dictated? One who, whatever he might be to himself, was to you so void of petty jealousies, irritabilities and superstitions of ordinary men, that, as far as you understood his view of life, you could calculate his correct behavior beforehand in every crisis with as much certainty as upon the striking of a clock?”
“No,” said Lady Geraldine emphatically, before Mary could reply; “and I should not like to, either.”
“You are always right,” said Conolly. “Yet such a person would fulfill Miss Sutherland’s conditions. Like Hamlet,” he continued, turning to Mary, “you want a man that is not Passion’s slave. I hope you may never get him, for I assure you, you will not like him. He would make an excellent God, but a most unpleasant man, and an unbearable husband. What could you be to a wholly self-sufficient man? Affection would be a superfluity with which you would be ashamed to trouble him. I once knew a lady whom I thought the most beautiful, the most accomplished, and the most honest of her sex. This lady met a man who had learned to stand alone in the world — a hard lesson, but one that is relentlessly forced on every sensitive but unlovable boy who has his own way to make, and who knows that, outside himself, there is no God to help him. This man had realized all that is humanly possible in your ideal of a self-disciplined man. The lady was young, and, unlike Lady Geraldine, not wise. Instead of avoiding his imperturbable self-sufficiency, she admired it, loved it, and married it. She found in her husband all that you demand. She never had reason to dread his temper, or to doubt his sense and honor. He needed no petting, no counsel, no support. He had no vulgar prejudices against art, and, indeed, was fonder of it than she was. What she felt about him I can only conjecture. But I know that she ceased to love him,