The Judgment of Eve | Page 7

off. And you know, dear, there are the museums
and picture-galleries in town, and there'll be the concerts, and lectures
on all sorts of interesting subjects, two or three times a week. Then
there's our Debating Society at Hampstead--just a few of us who meet
together to discuss big questions. Every month it meets, and you'll get
to know all the intellectual people--"
Aggie nodded her head at each exciting item of the programme as he
reeled it off. His heart smote him; he felt that he hadn't prepared her
properly for Camden Town. He thought she was mourning the first
perishing of her illusions.
His voice fell, humbly. "And I really think, in time, you know, you
won't find it quite so bad."
She turned on him the face of one risen rosy from the embraces of her
dream. She put a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked at him with
shining eyes.
"Oh, Arthur, dear, it's all too beautiful. I couldn't say anything, because
I was so happy. Come, and let's look at everything all over again."
And they went, and looked at everything all over again, reviving the
delight that had gone to the furnishing of that innocent interior. She
cried out with joy over the cheap art serges, the brown-paper
backgrounds, the blue-and-gray drugget, the oak chairs with their rush
bottoms, the Borne-Jones photogravures, the "Hope" and the "Love
Leading Life," and the "Love Triumphant." Their home would be the
home of a material poverty, but to Aggie's mind it was also a shrine
whose austere beauty sheltered the priceless spiritual ideal.
Their wedded ardor flamed when he showed her for the tenth time his
wonderful contrivance for multiplying bookshelves, as their treasures
accumulated year by year. They spoke with confidence of a day when
the shelves would reach from floor to ceiling, to meet the inevitable

expansion of the intellectual life.
They went out that very evening to a lecture on "Appearance and
Reality," an inspiring lecture. They lived in it again (sitting over their
cocoa in the tiny dining-room), each kindling the other with the same
sacred flame. She gazed with adoration at his thin, flushed face, as,
illumined by the lecture, he developed with excitement his theory of
life.
[Illustration: "Over their cocoa he developed his theory of life"]
"Only think," he said, "how people wreck their lives just because they
don't know the difference between appearance and reality! Now we do
know. We're poor; but we don't care a rap, because we know, you and I,
that that doesn't matter. It's the immaterial that matters."
Spiritually he flamed.
"I wouldn't change with my boss, though he's got five thousand a year.
He's a slave--a slave to his carriage and horses, a slave to his house, a
slave to the office--"
"So are you. You work hard enough."
"I work harder than he does. But I keep myself detached."
"Some more cocoa, dearie?"
"Rather. Yes, three lumps, please. Just think what we can get out of life,
you and I, with our tiny income. We get what we put into it--and that's
something literally priceless, and we mustn't let it go. Whatever
happens we must stick to it."
"Nothing can take it away from us," said Aggie, rapt in her dream.
"No; no outside thing can. But, Aggie--we can take it from each other,
if we let ourselves get slack. Whatever we do," he said, solemnly, "we
mustn't get slack. We must keep it up."

"Yes," said Aggie, "we must keep it up."
They had pledged themselves to that.

IV
No fowler spreads his snares in sight of those innocent birds that perch
on the tree of life in paradise. As Arthur's soul (it was a vain soul)
preened its wings before her, Aggie never inquired whether the
brilliance of its plumage was its own, or merely common to all
feathered things in the pairing season. Young Arthur's soul was like a
lark, singing in heaven its delirious nuptial hymn. Aggie sat snug in her
nest and marvelled at her mate, at the mounting of his wings, the
splendid and untiring ardors of his song. Nor was she alarmed at his
remarkable disappearance into the empyrean. Lost to sight he might be,
but she could count on his swift, inevitable descent into the nest.
The nest itself was the most wonderful nest a bird ever sat in. The two
were so enthusiastic over everything that they delighted even in that
dreadful, creaking, yellow villa. Its very vices entertained them. When
it creaked they sat still and looked at each other, waiting for it to do it
again. No other house ever possessed such ungovernable and
mysterious spontaneities of sound. It was sometimes, they said, as if the
villa were alive. And when