Читать книгу Love,—and the Philosopher: A Study in Sentiment - Marie Corelli - Страница 6

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“ONE thing I will say of you,” remarked the Philosopher, condescendingly, “and that is—you are not a Nagger!”

He and she were walking together across a meadow full of buttercups and daisies, and they had just been on the point of what the middle-classes politely call “words.” He was not without temper—she was not without spirit—hence the little breeze that had for the moment ruffled the calm of their platonic friendship. Her “sentimentalism,” however, had saved the situation. When she perceived that his irritability was fast developing into downright bearishness, she had suddenly raised her eyes and shown them full of tears.

“Don’t be cross,” she had murmured, cooingly—“it’s so ugly!”

Whereat the Philosopher’s set mouth had relaxed into a rather grieved smile, and he had casually observed:

“You seem to have caught a cold. Your eyes are red!”

But to this she had made no answer,—and merely swallowing an uncomfortable lump in her throat had walked on quietly, light-footed and serene. And it was this swiftly attained composure of hers that had moved him to the implied compliment he had just uttered: “You are not a Nagger!”

She did not speak—so he went on.

“Of all detestable things in this world a Nagger is the worst! Once—years ago—I knew one.”

She turned her head towards him.

“Man or woman?” she asked.

“Woman, of course! Foolish child! Did you ever hear of a male nagger? The type is essentially feminine!”

She smiled, but was silent.

“This woman,” he continued, “was by way of being a domestic martyr. A sort of self-created aureole of glory shone over her head—and one heard the rustle of heavenly palm branches where’er she walked. ‘Pray don’t mind me!’ she would observe, with mournful sweetness, at times when she was most confoundedly in the way—‘I’m so accustomed to take a second, even a third place, that it really doesn’t matter!’ And if she and her belongings had a little difference”—here he hesitated—“such as you and I have been having—she would shed torrents of tears. ‘All my life,’ she would wail, dismally, ‘I’ve done more than my duty to you! Money could not buy such devotion as mine! And this is my reward!’ And on she would go like a flowing stream, the victim to circumstances—the ‘buffer’ of cruel mischance. Men fled from her as from the eye of Medusa, though she was not bad-looking, and had managed to secure a husband.”

“What was her husband like?”

“Oh, he was quite a decent sort of chap—a hard-working, easy-going, scientific man. She had her waves of sentiment, too,—they came rolling over her in the most unexpected places. For example, one morning, having nagged her husband till he put both hands to his head in an effort to keep his trembling scalp in its place, she suddenly altered her tone and asked him if she should bring him the ‘cure-all’ for his corns! There now!—I thought you would laugh!”

She certainly did laugh; a pretty little laugh full of subdued merriment.

“It’s much better to laugh than to cry,” said the Philosopher, sententiously. “Men don’t understand women’s tears. They’re so—so wet and uncomfortable! This Nagger I’m telling you of was always shedding them—a regular water-barrel with the tap forever turned on.”

“How unfeeling you are!” she said, reproachfully. “Poor woman!”

“Poor woman! Poor man, you mean! Think of her husband!—working hard all day and a great part of the night as well—and getting no sympathy in his aims, no touch of interest in his work—nothing but stories of domestic martyrdom nobly endured for duty’s sake, and copious weeping! Now if you were married, you wouldn’t behave like that, would you?”

“No, I shouldn’t!” she replied. “But we women are not all alike, though you men generally think so!”

“Confound it all!” and the Philosopher, suddenly stopped short in his walk, trying to rekindle his pipe. A soft wind played about the vesta he had struck and puffed it out as though in fun. “Can’t get the cursed thing to light anyhow!”

She came close up to him, and held a pair of little hands curved like a couple of shells round the bowl of his briar, while he lit a fresh vesta and made another essay,—this time successfully.

“Thanks!” he said, curtly. “You really can be very useful when you like!”

She laughed and moved away, stepping quickly over the grass as though bent on making distance between herself and him.

“Where are you going?” called the Philosopher, irritably. “Don’t skip about like that! Can’t you be quiet for five minutes?”

She came back slowly and stood still, with a quaint air of mock humility.

“You’re playing!” said the Philosopher, severely. “And I’m not always in a playing mood.”

“No?”

The question slid through a little round O of a mouth that suggested kisses. The Philosopher quickly averted his eyes.

“No!” he answered, with increased sternness. “I’m in a thinking mood to-day.”

He walked on, and she walked with him; her soft linen gown made a little “frou-frou” sound among the grasses that was pleasant and companionable. Her footsteps were too light to be heard at all, and presently the Philosopher, through two whiffs of his pipe, caught himself smiling.

“What a little goose it is!” he half murmured. “Dear little sentimental goose!”

Here he coughed loudly—quite an ugly cough.

“Are you tired?” he demanded.

“Not at all!”

“You women generally get tired after half an hour’s walking,” he said. “Would you like to sit on that stile and look at the scenery?”

“No, thanks! I would rather go on.”

The Philosopher’s face fell. The stile he had alluded to was quite a tempting thing. It was situated under an ancient tree whose broad branches spread out sheltering foliage on all sides, and it would have been very agreeable to him to sit there and rest for a few minutes, even with a “sentimental goose” for his companion. But this goose would rather go on. And she did go on;—she was over the stile, too, before he could so much as assist her, and he only caught a glimpse of a frilled flounce and the point of a buckled shoe. This was really too bad!

“You’re in such a hurry this morning,” he grumbled. “And we’ve come out for a sociable walk.”

“Oh, no, we haven’t!” she said. “Much more than that! You want to think, you know!”

“Well, a man must think sometimes,” he observed.

“Indeed he must!” she agreed, emphatically. “Not only sometimes, but always! Then he will know what he is doing!”

“Then he will know what he is doing!” echoed the Philosopher, grimly. “That’s deep,—very deep! Quite beyond me! Are there ever any occasions,—setting drink aside,—when he doesn’t know what he is doing?”

She gave him a fleeting glance.

“Oh, yes! Many!”

“Indeed! You are developing a very singular perspicuity! Could you name one of those occasions?”

She laughed.

“Well! Let us say when he’s in love!”

“In love!” The Philosopher almost snorted contempt. “In love! You women think of nothing but love! Do you know—have you ever realised—that being ‘in love’ as you call it, is the least and most unimportant part of a man’s career?”

She looked up at him.

“Is it?”

The Philosopher rather winced as she put the question. He was conscious of a little quicker beating of the heart (which, of course, might be attributed to indigestion)—and he studied the aspect of the sky critically, in order to avoid her eyes.

“Well! Perhaps I need not go so far as that,” he remarked, mildly.

“No!” And her voice was very sweet and thrilling. “I don’t think you should—if you are really a wise man—go so far as that!”

He drew his pipe slowly from his mouth—it was out again. He looked at it forlornly, and put it in his pocket. He realised that they had mutually crossed swords, and that she held him at the point of her steel. But he rose to the occasion and slipped his arm coaxingly through hers.

“Let us talk about the weather!” he said, cheerfully. “It’s a beautiful day!”

“Lovely!” she answered.

“And you are not a Nagger?”

“I hope not!”

“You will not tell me you are a martyr to the cause of—”

“Philosophy?” she suggested.

He laughed good-humouredly.

“If you like! You will not say you have toiled years and years ungrudgingly to make everybody happy, despite your own utter misery? That you are a heroine,—an angel and what not? You will not cry and say nobody cares for you—”

“No! I won’t say that!” she interrupted, with a mischievous smile.

“You won’t?”

“No! Because it wouldn’t be true!”

“It wouldn’t be true,—it wouldn’t—”

“No! Lots of people care for me—people you don’t even know! There’s Jack—but you know him!”

“Always cropping up!” murmured the Philosopher.

“Then there’s Willie, and Claude, and Fred—and—”

“No women in the list? Are they all men?”

“Well, I like men best,” she confessed.

The Philosopher emitted a curious sound between a grunt and a growl.

“Of course you do! Trust you! ‘’Twas John and Dick and Joe and Jack and Humphrey with his flail!’ And I suppose you’re ‘Kitty, the charming girl, to carry the milking pail’?”

She gave his arm a delighted little squeeze.

“Fancy you knowing that dear old song!” she exclaimed. “Oh! And you such a learned man! I should have thought it so much beneath you!”

He stroked down his moustache to hide a smile.

“Dear child!” he said, with mock-parental gravity. “I trust I am not yet out of all sympathy with the colt-like gambols of the young and foolish! I may be bordering on the sere and yellow leaf, but I still look upon the tender sprouting green of unformed minds with indulgence and compassion!”

She tried to pull her arm away, but he held it firmly.

“Now, now!” he remonstrated. “Don’t hurt yourself. Whatever my faults and failings are, my muscular strength is unquestionably superior to yours!”

She looked at him appealingly.

“Oh, how can you talk as you do!” she said. “Such nonsense!”

“I suit myself to your temperament!” he said, with a grand air. “You are full of infantile sentiment,—I try to meet it half way.”

“How good of you!” she said, and this time she succeeded in withdrawing her arm from his hold. “Is the effort exhausting?”

“Very!” And the moustache drooped over a whimsical but rather attractive smile.

She stood for a moment with her eyes downcast.

“Then why do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Try to meet me half way?”

“I thought it might make it easier for you,” he said. “Don’t you see? Easier for you to—”

“Rise to your height!” she suggested.

“Or sink to my level,” he answered, meekly—“whichever you prefer!”

“I would rather rise to your height,” she said. “A man is always superior to a woman.”

“Oh, specious flattery!” exclaimed the Philosopher. “Are you not a Suffragette?”

Her eyes flashed.

“I? A Suffragette? How dare you suggest such a thing!”

The Philosopher linked his arm in hers again without being repulsed.

“Thank Heaven for all its mercies!” he ejaculated, piously. “You are neither a Suffragette nor a Nagger—you are—what are you?”

“Whatever you choose to call me,” she answered, laughingly.

“These things take time,” he said. “I will consider. You are—you are—let me see—a woman! That is unfortunate.”

“You think so!” And her eyes were full of dancing merriment.

“Yes—I think so. Unfortunate for yourself, I mean. Not unfortunate for me.”

“Oh! Not unfortunate for you?”

“Not exactly. Sometimes I feel it might perhaps have been better had you been a man—there are occasions—”

He paused.

“My pipe is not quite smoked out,” he said, pathetically. “Would you put your hand in my pocket—the one nearest to you—I don’t want to move my arm—and give it to me?”

She obeyed.

He sighed.

“I must move my arm after all!” he said, drearily. “What a bore! You don’t mind?”

“Mind? Certainly not!”

She stood apart from him while he went through the usual business of rekindling his tobacco.

“A pipe,” he murmured, “is such a convenient thing! It fills in awkward lapses of conversation—when—when one feels one can get no further.”

She smiled demurely, and walked slowly on.

“You see,” he said, moving easily beside her, “if you were a man it would be different.”

“It would certainly!” she agreed.

“A man would not want any attention,” he said.

“Nor do I!” she said. “You give it without being asked for it.”

“Do I?” He appeared mildly surprised. “Now that’s curious,—v-e-r-y curious!”

He seemed quite entranced in the contemplation of this novel phase of his own conduct. He glanced at her sideways when she was not looking at him.

“Delicious!” he murmured.

She turned her head quickly.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I? Nothing!” He puffed at his pipe enjoyingly, then he went on after a pause—“What I was going to say is, that if you were a man you wouldn’t mind my looking at the scenery instead of at you!”

She laughed outright.

“Oh, my good sir! Do I mind?”

“You must mind!” he said, argumentatively. “Being a woman you are compelled to mind! No woman can forgive a man for looking at trees and skies instead of looking at her. She feels she should be the centre of his thoughts. She is very often.”

“Is she?”

“There!” And the Philosopher sighed. “I knew you would ask that question! Yes,—if you will have it, she is. But a centre implies a surrounding—and if a woman does happen to be the centre of a man’s thoughts she should realise that she is only the pin’s point round which the mightier forces of life revolve. Round which the mightier forces of life revolve!” The Philosopher took the pipe out of his mouth in order to let this sentence roll over his tongue like a luscious jujube or chocolate cream. “Do you understand?”

“Quite!” she replied.

He gave her an oblique glance in which there was something of fun mingled with fire.

“Well, you are a very good girl!” he said, suddenly. “You may do what you like now!” And he slipped his arm through hers again—“I have had a slight attack of gout. I need a little support.”

She turned her face towards his, dimpling with smiles.

“Are you sure it’s gout?” she asked.

“Quite sure!” he answered, gravely. “It was the death of my father, and my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. It will be the death of me.”

Her brows clouded. Then catching the humorous gleam in his eyes, she laughed.

“I believe you’re joking!” she said. “You want to make me anxious.”

“Would you be anxious?” he asked. “Not really?”

She was silent.

“If I had the gout,” he resumed; “if I were laid up with a burning toe, would you be sorry?”

“Of course I should!” she answered, promptly. “I’m always sorry for a man who is ill: he gets so easily frightened and bears it so badly.”

“That all?” he exclaimed. “You would only feel sorry if I was frightened! Not because I suffered? Well! You women beat everything!”

“Your fright would be worse than your suffering in any case!” she said, firmly. “I know it would! If you were laid up with a burning big toe, as you say, you would at once imagine that the trouble in the toe was bound to fly to the head—then you would turn up some dreadful medical book which would coldly inform you that gout in the head is always fatal—then you would begin to tremble inwardly,—you would pass sleepless nights thinking it out till you pictured your last end in the blackest colours—you would almost see the undertaker arriving—you would, as it were, witness your own procession to the grave—and—and—and perhaps you might feel the grief of all your friends—”

Here she turned her head, and the Philosopher heard a curious little tremolo sound—he would have almost sworn it was a suppressed sob if he had not made up his mind that it was nothing but laughter. Stimulated by sudden interest he put his hand under her chin and moved her head gently round till the blue eyes looked straight into his own. A very slight smile lifted the corners of his lips.

“You have really caught a bad cold!” he said, softly. “Your eyes are quite wet!”

She lowered them promptly till he could only see glistening lashes on flushed cheeks.

“Why,” he asked, almost coaxingly, “should you think me such an absurd idiot as to be capable of imagining all those things about myself?”

She gave him a fleeting glance in which a smile danced like a sunbeam.

“Why? Because—because you are a Philosopher!” she answered. “Philosophy is all very well in theory—but in practice—oh, the mockery of it!”

He still kept his hand under her chin.

“‘Adversity’s sweet milk, Philosophy!’” he quoted, musingly. “That’s Shakespeare! Can you give me the lines which follow?”

She made no answer. He smiled again.

“Perhaps you haven’t a very good memory,” he said, patiently. “Now listen: