Читать книгу The Secret Life - Elizabeth Bisland - Страница 16

What is that ineffable quality in the air that says Spring?

Long ago, as far back as towards the end of January, there came suddenly one day a sense that the winter was conquered. There has been much cold weather since – we shall have much cold still, but there is always a promise in the air.

There is a sad day later in the year when one is aware all at once that summer is ending, and the warm, mild weeks that follow never console for that hour's realization that the apex is crossed and the rest of the path slopes downward. Just such a day comes in one's life, – while one is still young and strong – a sudden sense that youth is done; the climacteric of passion passed. Life has a long Indian summer still, but it's never again the real thing, – that ripening toward fruition; that ecstasy of expansion and growth. There is no visible change for a while, yet every day there is an imperceptible fall in the temperature. Always the nights are growing longer. The flowers drop away one by one – the sap sinks a little, leaving the extreme delicate twigs moribund. No one has seen the leaves fall, yet there are fewer upon the bough – winter is coming.

Age is peaceful, perhaps – but middle age – ! The wave clings to the shore, but the inexorable ebb draws it down relentlessly into the deep. This is the time that men go musth, like old elephants. This is the period when both men and women do their mad deeds, which belie all their previous records. It is their one last frantic clutch after vanishing romance and passion. Men buy a semblance of it from young women sometimes, and resolutely endeavour to persuade themselves that it is the real thing – that gold can renew youth, can purchase a second summer – but they know well that it is only a mechanical imitation. Those cruel old satirists, the comedy writers, loved to paint the trembling dotard resolutely shutting his eyes to the lusty young rival hiding behind the jade's petticoats.

As for the women! – who shall tell the real story of the middle age of women? – of the confident coquette, who one day turns away to punish her slave, and finds, when she relents, that his eyes are fixed upon her daughter? – of the bewildered inspection of the mirror, that still tells a fluttering tale of curves and colours, though startled experience shows the eyes of men turning in preference to crude, red-elbowed girls, obviously her inferior in grace and charm? – of the shock of finding that the world is no longer much interested in her – the amazement of the discovery that the handsome lads see little difference between a woman of thirty-five and one of fifty? – of the shame-faced misery of learning that the passion, which she has virtuously resolved to repulse, is given in reality to her niece? Her charm, her sweetness, her well-preserved beauty is as nothing beside mere raw youth. Undeveloped figures, flat chests, blotchy complexions, are of more value than her rounded mellow loveliness. She is pushed from her throne by giggling girls, who stare at her in hard contempt and wonder openly what the old creature does lingering belated in this galley.

Though she be called "a fine woman" still, men of all ages will turn from her to dote upon an empty-headed debutante. Her comprehension and sympathy, her wit and her learning are less enthralling than the vapid babblings of red-cheeked misses just out of pinafores. Her heart is as young as ever; she knows herself capable of a finer, nobler passion and tenderness than the girl can dream of, yet the selfish, egotistic emotions of the self-confident chit awake a rapture that would be dulled by the richest warmth she could give.

That she in her turn elbowed the preceding generation from its place comforts her not at all. Oh, for again one hour only of the splendid domination of youth – one rich instant of the power to intoxicate!..

There is nothing for it but to keep such things to one's self, and jog on quietly and respectably to the end. One has had one's turn.