The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne | Page 8

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. I once read an epitaph in a German churchyard: "I will awake, O Christ, when thou callest me; but let me sleep awhile, for I am very weary." Has the human soul ever so poignantly expressed its craving for quietude? I fancy I should have been a heart's friend of that dead man, who, like myself, loved the cool and quiet shadow, and was not allowed to enjoy it in this world. I may not get the calm I desire, but at any rate my existence shall