prisms, had from his earliest youth cherished a dream of ideal life—a quiet and virtuous existence, soaring on love and study, the two wings of the spirit, as he used to say in his figurative jargon. The end of his career of toil was to be the beginning of such a life, secured by a marriage that should realise his dreams, and by the growth of a family. This family that he dreamed of—the one ideal family, the happy circle of souls that he could call his own—constantly occupied his thoughts. Could there be a sweeter or a brighter lot? To see himself united to a wife he adored, loving and submissive, with a sound understanding and a heart of inexhaustible goodness to watch the growth of tiny creatures who might ask him with tears for the bread of learning—to work upon them by the best methods for the development of their moral and physical nature—to live for them, and provide the necessaries of life for that beloved and ever charming group, whose crown and centre, the ideal wife, would appear as the living image of Providence, and the dispenser of its benefits; now the mother, and now the teacher—clothing them, feeding them, guiding their first tottering steps, checking their over-boldness—Ah! for such a dream it would be worth while to live! His imagination painted the joys of a rich man, who can taste all the pleasures of toil without being its slave.... A perfect life, partly given to study, partly to the cares of a family; divided in fair proportion between the country and the town, since in that way nature and society, each in turn, appears most delightful; a life neither too secluded nor too public, in a calm retreat—not dull, but far from the bustle of life, though not inaccessible to a few select friends.
Yes, this was the goal he must aim at and grasp as soon as possible, before his span was run in a ceaseless and giddy whirl. He must find, as quickly as might be, the woman who was to lay the foundation of this happiness—a dream, no doubt, but still capable of being realised. The choice would be difficult. She must be studious, prudent, and grave; was he himself qualified to make such a woman happy? Yes, he could make her happy. Was he not learned, clever, calm-tempered, judiciously critical, accustomed to analyse human nature?—And yet—and yet....
CHAPTER XIV.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
“And yet I made a mistake.”
This he said to himself one night as he sat alone with his wife in the silent quietude of his home, at the hour when the mind wanders in the vague meditation that is the precursor of dreams, after recalling the facts of the past day which so lately were living realities and so soon may become a nightmare. Before him, already prepared to go to bed, sat the noble and beautiful Minerva-like figure. Her sea-blue eyes, by some unaccountable artistic blunder, were fixed on a book of devotions—one of the popular and commonplace manuals, full of magniloquent verbiage, and idle subtleties, devoid alike of piety, of style, of suggestiveness, of spiritual feeling and of evangelical truth—nothing but a monotonous jangle of words. But what did it matter? As she sat, nodding to sleep over this farrago, María was charming to look upon.
Leon had dropped his evening newspaper—no less a jangle in its kind, of broken strings, of tuneless bells, and the vacuous clack of rumour—and was gazing at his wife, raging inwardly at the hideous mockery of Fate. He—he who through all his early years had been absolute master of his fancy, had one day, all unconsciously, given it the reins, and then, cheated and betrayed, had allowed himself to be carried away by an illusion altogether unworthy of so sober a character. How could he have failed to see that between himself and this woman there could never be any community of ideas, nor that sweet union of minds that subsists even among fools? How could he be thus deluded by the witchery even of such perfect charms? How had he overlooked the wall of ice—high, dense, insuperable, which must stand for ever between them? Why had he failed to detect that recusant will, that deeply-rooted standard, that narrowness of purview, that absence of magnanimity, for all of which there was so little compensation in an over-wrought religious excitability? Why had he not foreseen the dulness, the emptiness of his home—lacking so much that was tender and attaching, lacking above all the tenderest and most attaching element of life: mutual confidence?
In a fit of desperate regret he raised his hand to his brow and clutched it convulsively, as if in malediction on the uselessness of learning. María did not notice the gesture, but kept her eyes fixed on her book.
“I fell in love like any idiot,” he thought, looking at her again, “but how could I help it?—she is lovely!”
All his efforts to form María’s character had been vain; at the earliest stage of her married life she had loved him with more passion than tenderness, but ere long, without ceasing to love him, she had begun to regard him as an erring soul—to be pitied but shunned. Leon had given her all liberty in the exercise of her religion, and at first she availed herself of it in moderation; but as he tried by degrees to influence her mind—not undermining her beliefs, as his detractors declared—but endeavouring to bring her intelligence as far as possible into harmony with his own, she abused the liberty he had granted and gave up almost all her time to her devotions. Not that she renounced all worldly pleasures and vanities; on the contrary, she enjoyed them keenly, though in due moderation. She went to theatres, except in Lent—she dressed well, frequented the fashionable promenades, and gave up part of the year to the excursions and country visits that became her position and fortune. She took great care of her personal appearance (for she liked to be admired by Leon), very little of her household, and none at all of her husband; the rest of her time and thoughts she devoted to the various pious meetings and benevolent dissipations to which she was carried off by her mother or her friends; in short, she served in the charmed ranks of fashionable religionism.
“And after all, is it not I who am the recalcitrant party?” Leon said to himself with crushed resignation. “Of what can I accuse her? Which of us is the believer? If I had faith we should be happy—why have I none?”
* * * * *
Then there was a third phase, during which María’s devotion to him was as great as ever, though still vehement rather than tender, and no more sympathetic than at first. At this time María would attack her husband with a mixture of human passion and mystic piety, which did not exclude each other because they reacted and complemented each other—trying to seduce him into the path of religion à la mode, faint with incense, splendid with tapers, gay with flowers, smoothed with suave sermons and graced with women of elegance and rank. Her fondest dream was to remain a bigot without forfeiting the man who had so completely realised the visions of her girlhood. To get him to church—that was the hard task she had set herself.
“Leave me—pray leave me,” Leon would say, tortured by regret. “Go and pray God for me.”
“But without you half of myself is wanting; I cannot feel as though I were good throughout, as I want to be.”
Then she would fly to him, clasp him in her arms and rest her head against the weary man’s breast, saying, with a sort of sob: “I love you so much!”
Leon’s persistent refusal to take any part in her pious practices brought them at length to that chronic state of misunderstanding, or rather of moral divorce, in which we have seen them two years after their marriage. They had ceased to share their ideas or to consult each other on any opinion or plan; they never enjoyed that community of pleasures or of trouble which is the natural marriage of souls; they neither wept together nor rejoiced together—they did not even quarrel. They were like those stars which look as if they were but one, and which in reality are millions of miles apart. All their friends could see that Leon was wretched, and suffering deeply though in silence.
“He has set his heart on making his wife a rationalist,” they said, “and that is as absurd as a sanctimonious man would be.”
“That
