"Yes, I am much tied to the past, _my_ past, you understand. These very pieces of furniture belong to a time before my early days; it was my father who got them made; if they had been done within the last fifty years they would have been much cleverer in execution; but Idon't think I should have liked them the better. We were almost beginning again in those days: and they were brisk, hot-headed times.
But you hear how garrulous I am: ask me questions ask me questions about anything dear guest; since I _must_ talk, make my talk profitable to you."I was silent for a minute, and then I said, somewhat nervously:
"Excuse me if I am rude; but I am so much interested in Richard since he has been so kind to me, a perfect stranger, that I should like to ask a question about him.""Well," said old Hammond, "if he were not `kind,' as you call it, to a perfect stranger he would be thought a strange person, and people would be apt to shun him. But ask on, ask on! don't be shy of asking."Said I: "That beautiful girl, is he going to be married to her?""Well," said he, "Yes, he is. He has been married to her once already, and now I should say it is pretty clear that he will be married to her again.""Indeed," quoth I, wondering what that meant.
"Here is the whole tale," said old Hammond; "a short one enough; and now I hope a happy one: they lived together two years the first time;were both very young; and then she got it into her head that she was in love with somebody else. So she left poor ****; I say _poor_****, because he had not found any one else. But it did not last long, only about a year. Then she came to me, as she was in the habit of bringing her troubles to the old carle, and asked me how **** was, and whether he was happy, and all the rest of it. So I saw how the land lay, and said that he was very unhappy, and not at all well; which last at any rate was a lie. There, you can guess the rest. Clara came to have a long talk with me to-day, but **** will serve her turn much better.
Indeed, if he hadn't chanced in upon me to-day I should have had to have sent for him tomorrow.""Dear me," said I. "Have they any children?""Yes," said he,"two; they are staying with one of my daughters at present, where, indeed, Clara has mostly been. I wouldn't lose sight of her, as I felt sure they would come together again; and ****, who is the best of good fellows, really took the matter to heart. You see he had no other love to run to, as she had. So I managed it all; as Ihave done with such-like matters before.""Ah," said I, "no doubt you wanted to keep them our of the Divorce Court: but I suppose it often has to settle such matters.""Then you suppose nonsense," said he. "I know that there used to be such lunatic affairs as divorce courts. But just consider; all the cases that came into them were matters of property quarrels: and Ithink, dear guest," said he, smiling, "that though you do come from another planet, you can see from the mere outside look of our world that quarrels about private property could not go on amongst us in our days."Indeed, my drive from Hammersmith to Bloomsbury, and all the quiet happy life I had seen so many hints of, even apart from my shopping, would have been enough to tell me that `the sacred rights of property,' as we used to think of them, were now no more. So I sat silent while the old man took up the thread of the discourse again, and said:
"Well, then, property quarrels being no longer possible, what remains in these matters that a court of law could deal with? Fancy a court for enforcing a contract of passion or sentiment! If such a thing were needed as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the enforcement of contract, such a folly would do that for us."He was silent again a little, and then said: "You must understand once for all that we have changed these matters; or rather, that our way of looking at them has changed, as we have changed within the last two hundred years. We do not deceive oureselves, indeed, or believe that we can get rid of all the trouble that besets the dealings between the ***es. We know that we must face the unhappiness that comes of man an woman confusing the relations between natural passion, and sentiment, and the friendship ehich, when things go well, softens the awakening from passing illusions: but we are not so mad as to pile up degradation on that unhappiness by engaging in sordid squabbles about livelihood and position, and the power of tyrranizing over the children who have been the result of love or lust."Again he paused awhile, and again went on: "Calf love, mistaken for a heroism that shall be life-long, yet early waning into disappointment;the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper years to be the all-in-all to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he has idealised into superhuman perfection, and made the one object of his desire; or lastly the reasonable longing of a strong and thoughtful man to become the most intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the very type of the beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,--as we exult in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit which goes with these things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom goes with them also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote roughly from memory one of the many translations of the nineteenth century):
`For this the gods have fashioned man's grief and evil day That still for man hereafter might be the tale and the lay.'