第47章

What would the wicked old eyes foresee did it pay them to speak: --Pretty lady crying tears into a pillow.Pretty lady growing ugly, spite and anger spoiling pretty features.Dark young man no longer loving.Dark young man hurling bitter words at pretty lady--hurling, maybe, things more heavy.Dark young man and pretty lady listening approvingly to comic singer, having both discovered: "That's what it's like when you're married."My friend H.G.Wells wrote a book, "The Island of Dr.Moreau." Iread it in MS.one winter evening in a lonely country house upon the hills, wind screaming to wind in the dark without.The story has haunted me ever since.I hear the wind's shrill laughter.The doctor had taken the beasts of the forest, apes, tigers, strange creatures from the deep, had fashioned them with hideous cruelty into the shapes of men, had given them souls, had taught to them the law.

In all things else were they human, but their original instincts their creator's skill had failed to eliminate.All their lives were one long torture.The Law said, "We are men and women; this we shall do, this we shall not do." But the ape and tiger still cried aloud within them.

Civilization lays her laws upon us; they are the laws of gods--of the men that one day, perhaps, shall come.But the primeval creature of the cave still cries within us.

[A few rules for Married Happiness.]

The wonder is that not being gods--being mere men and women--marriage works out as well as it does.We take two creatures with the instincts of the ape still stirring within them; two creatures fashioned on the law of selfishness; two self-centred creatures of opposite appetites, of desires opposed to one another, of differing moods and fancies; two creatures not yet taught the lesson of self-control, of self-renunciation, and bind them together for life in an union so close that one cannot snore o'nights without disturbing the other's rest; that one cannot, without risk to happiness, have a single taste unshared by the other; that neither, without danger of upsetting the whole applecart, so to speak, can have an opinion with which the other does not heartedly agree.

Could two angels exist together on such terms without ever quarrelling? I doubt it.To make marriage the ideal we love to picture it in romance, the elimination of human nature is the first essential.Supreme unselfishness, perfect patience, changeless amiability, we should have to start with, and continue with, until the end.

[The real Darby and Joan.]

I do not believe in the "Darby and Joan" of the song.They belong to song-land.To accept them I need a piano, a sympathetic contralto voice, a firelight effect, and that sentimental mood in myself, the foundation of which is a good dinner well digested.But there are Darbys and Joans of real flesh and blood to be met with--God bless them, and send more for our example--wholesome living men and women, brave, struggling, souls with common-sense.Ah, yes! they have quarrelled; had their dark house of bitterness, of hate, when he wished to heaven he had never met her, and told her so.How could he have guessed those sweet lips could utter such cruel words; those tender eyes, he loved to kiss, flash with scorn and anger?

And she, had she known what lay behind; those days when he knelt before her, swore that his only dream was to save her from all pain.