Ideala. Grand Sarah

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CHAPTER III.

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      Ideala held that dignity and calm are essential in a woman, but, like the rest of the world, she found it hard to attain to her own standard of excellence. Her bursts of enthusiasm were followed by fits of depression, and these again by periods of indifference, when it was hard to rouse her to interest in anything. She always said, and was probably right, that want of proper discipline in childhood was the reason of this variableness, which she deplored, but could neither combat nor conceal. Temperament must also have had something to do with it. Her nervous system was too highly strung, she was too sensitive, too emotional, too intense. She reflected phases of feeling with which she was brought into contact as a lake reflects the sky above it, and the bird that skims across it, and the boats that rest upon its breast; yet, like the lake's, her own nature remained unchanged; it might be darkened by shadows, and lashed by tempests till it raged, but the pure element showed divinely even in its wrath, and the passion of it was expended always to some good end.

      But even her love of the beautiful was carried to excess. It was a passion with her which would, in a sturdier age, have been considered a vice. She delighted in the scent of flowers, the song of the thrushes in the spring; colour, and beautiful forms. Doubtless the emotion they caused her was pure enough, and it was natural that, highly bred, cultivated, and refined as she was, she should feel these delicate, sensuous pleasures in a greater degree than lower natures do. There was danger, however, in the over-education of the senses, which made their ready response inevitable, but neither limited the subjects, nor regulated the degree, to which they should respond. But it would be hard in any case to say where cultivation of love for the beautiful should end, and to determine the exact point at which the result ceases to be intellectual and begins to be sensual.

      I have sat and watched Ideala lolling at an open window in the summer. The house stood on a hill, a river wound through the valley below, and beyond the river—the land sloped up again, green and dotted with trees, to a range of low hills, crested with a fringe of wood.

      "Do you know what there is beyond those hills?" Ideala asked me once, abruptly. "I don't know; but I love to believe that the sea is there, and that the sun is sinking into it now. Sometimes I fancy I can hear it murmur."

      And then followed a long silence. And the scent of mignonette and roses blew in upon her, and the twilight deepened, and I saw her grow pale with pleasure when the nightingale began to sing—and then I stole away and never was missed. She would lie in a long chair for hours like that, scarcely moving, and never speaking. At first I used to wonder what she thought about; but afterwards I knew that at such times she did not think, she only felt.

      I have some pictures of her as she was then, dressed in a gown of some quaint blue and white Japanese material, with her white throat bare—I was just going to catalogue her charms, but it seems indelicate to describe a woman, point by point, like a horse that is for sale. I have some other pictures of her, too, as she appeared to me one hot summer when I was painting a picture by the river, and she used to come down the towing-path to watch me work, and sit beside me on the grass for hours together, talking, reading aloud, reciting, or silent, according to her mood, but always interesting. It was then I learnt to know her best. And I am always glad to think of her as I used to see her then, coming towards me in one particular grey frock she wore, tight-fitting and perfect, yet with no detail evident. It was like an expression of herself, that dress, so quiet to all seeming, and yet so rich in material, and so complex in design. The wonder and the beauty of it grew upon you, and never failed of its effect.

CHAPTER IV.

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      When I first knew Ideala her religious opinions were all unsettled. "I neither believe nor disbelieve," she told me; "I am in a state of don't know; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that I both doubt and believe at one and the same time. I go indifferently to either church, Protestant or Catholic, and am thankful when any note of music, or thrill of feeling in the voice, or noble sentiment, elevates me so that I can pray. But I am told that both Catholics and Protestants consider me a weak waverer, and call me incorrigible. Sometimes I cannot pray for months together, and when I do it is generally to ask for something I want, not to praise or give thanks. But what a blank it is when one cannot pray; when one has lost the power to conceive that there is a something greater than man, to whom man is nevertheless all in all, and to whom we may look for comfort in all times of our tribulation, and for sympathy in all times of our wealth! To be able to give thanks to God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the sooner? Perhaps not, but it will come."

      "I must confess," she said on another occasion, "that I do have moments of pure scepticism; but when I cannot believe in the existence of a God, and a Beyond, I feel as if the sky were nearer, and weighed upon me, so that I could not lift my head."

      She thought religion consisted much more in doing right than in believing right, and set morality above faith; but I think she had a leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion nevertheless.

      "It is a grand old faith," she said, "only it has certain ramifications with which I should always quarrel, notably that of the Sacred Heart with which Catholics deface their lovely Lady in the churches. I always feel that such bad art cannot be good religion. When the Roman Catholic religion commanded respect it expressed itself better—as in the days when it carved itself in harmonies of solid stone, and wrote itself in tint and tone on glowing canvases, and learnt to speak in thundering mass and mighty hymns of praise! There are people who think these new shoots good as a sign of life in the tree, and this consideration might perhaps make their appearance welcome; but a great deal of strength is expended on their production, and it would be just as well to lop them off again. The old tree wants pruning and cutting back occasionally, and it is a false sentiment that is letting it fall to decay for the sake of these struggling branches.

      "There is another thing, too, for which we should all quarrel with the Catholic religion. I think the fact his already been noticed by some writer; at all events, it is evident enough to have occurred to any one. I mean the fact that the Church, by its narrow views about education, and its most unspiritual ambition for itself, has retarded the world's progress for centuries by interfering with the law of natural selection. As a matter of course for ages all the best men went into the Church; it was the only career open to them; and so they left no descendants."

      At our house, on another occasion, when the Roman Catholic religion happened to be under discussion, she launched forth some observations in her usual emphatic way. There were only two strangers present, a lady and her husband. Ideala asked the lady, who was sitting next to her, if she were a Catholic, to which the lady answered "No;" and Ideala, satisfied, proceeded to remark: "It may be the true religion, but it certainly is not the religion of truth. The doctrine of expediency, or the latitude they allow themselves on the score of expediency—I don't quite know how they put it—but it has much to answer for. I never find that my Roman Catholic friends are true, as my Protestant friends are. There is always a something kept back, a reservation; a want of straightforwardness, even when there is no positive deception—I can't describe the thing I mean, but it is quite perceptible, and causes an uneasy feeling of distrust, which is all the more tormenting from its vagueness and want of definition. The low-class Roman Catholics, I find, never hesitate if a lie will serve their purpose; and Roman Catholic servants are notoriously untrustworthy. That, of course, proves nothing, for one knows СКАЧАТЬ