Ideala | Page 5

her one
day looking utterly miserable.
"What has happened?" I asked. "You look sad."
"And I feel sad," she answered. "I was just thinking what a pity it is
those gay, pleasure-loving, flower-clad people of Hawaii are dying
out!"
She was quite in earnest, and could not be made to see that there was
anything droll in her mourning poignantly for a people so remote.
Another instance of her absent-mindedness recurs to me. The incident
was related at our house one evening, in Ideala's presence, by Mr.
Lloyd, a mutual friend. A clever drawing by another friend, of Ideala
trying to force a cabman to take ten shillings for a half-crown fare-- one
of the great fears of her life being the chance of not giving people of
that kind as much as they expected--had caused Ideala to protest that
she did understand money matters.
"O yes, we all know that your capacity for business is quite
extraordinary," Mr. Lloyd said, with a smile that meant something. And
then, addressing us all, he asked: "Did I ever tell you about her coming
to borrow five shillings from me one day? Shall I tell, Ideala?"
"You may, if you like," Ideala answered, getting very red. "But the
story is not interesting."
We all began to be anxious to hear it.
"Judge for yourselves," Mr. Lloyd said. "One day the head clerk came
into my private room at the Bank, looking perplexed and discomfited.
'Please, sir' he said, 'a lady wishes to see you.' 'A lady,' I answered.
'Ladies have no business here. What does she want?' 'She would not say,
sir, and she would not send in her name. She said it did not matter.' I
began to wonder what I had been doing. 'What is she like?' I asked. He
looked all round as if in search of a simile, and then he answered: 'Well,
sir, she's more like a picture than anything.' 'Show her in,' I said."

Here the story was interrupted by a shout of laughter. He laughed a
little himself.
"I should have been polite in any case," he declared, apologetically.
"The clerk ushered in a lady whose extreme embarrassment made me
sorry for her. She changed colour half-a-dozen times in as many
seconds, and then she hurled her errand at my head in these words,
without any previous preparation to break the blow: 'Mr. Lloyd, can
you lend me five shillings?' and before I had recovered she
continued--'I came in by train this morning, and I've lost my purse, and
can't get back if you won't help me--at least I think I've lost my purse. I
took it out to give sixpence to a beggar--and--and here is the sixpence!'
and she held it out to me. She had given her purse to the beggar and
carried the sixpence off in triumph. You may well say 'Oh, Ideala!'"
"And Mr. Lloyd was so very good as to take me to the station, and see
me into the train," Ideala murmured; "and he gave me his bank-book to
amuse me on the journey, and carried Huxley's Elementary Physiology,
which I had come in to buy, off in triumph!"
But with all her self-forgetfulness there were moments in which she
showed that she must have thought deeply about herself, weighing her
own individuality against others, to see what place she occupied in her
own age, and how she stood with regard to the ages that had gone
before; yet even this she seemed to have done in a selfless way, having
apparently examined herself coolly, critically, fairly, as she might have
examined any other specimen of humanity in which she felt an interest,
unbiassed by any special regard.
"People always want to know if I write, or paint, or play, or what I do,"
she once said to me. "They all expect me to do something. My function
is not to do, but to be. I make no poetry. I am a poem--if you read me
aright."
And again, in a moment of despondency, she said, "I am one of the
weary women of the nineteenth century. No other age could have
produced me."

When she said she did nothing she must have meant she was not great
in anything, for her time was all occupied, and those things in which
she was interested were never so well done without her help. If any
crying abuse were brought to light in the old Cathedral city; if any large
measure of reform were set on foot; if the local papers suddenly
became eloquent in favour of some good movement, and adroit in their
powers of persuasion; if burdens had to be lifted from the oppressed,
and the weak defended against great odds, you might be sure that Ideala
was busy, and her