FOOTNOTES:
[41] Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)
[42] Madame: Avec Olivia vous m'avez donné bonheur et peine. Bonheur par votre art qui est noble et sincère—peine car je sens tristesse au coeur de voir une belle et généreuse nature de femme, donner son âme à l'art—comme vous le faites—quand c'est la vie même, votre coeur même, qui parle tendrement, douleureusement, noblement sous votre jeu. Je ne puis pas me débarrasser d'une certaine tristesse quand je vois des artistes si nobles et hauts tels que vous et Monsieur Irving. Si vous deux vous êtes si fortes de soumettre (avec un travail continuel) la vie à l'art, moí de mon coin, je vous regarde comme des forces de la nature même qui auraient droit de vivre pour eux-mêmes et pas pour la foule. Je n'ose pas vous déranger, Madame, et d'ailleurs j'ai tant à faire aussi, qu'il m'est impossible de vous dire de vive voix tout le grand plaisir que vous m'avez donnée, mais parce que j'ai senti votre coeur. Veuillez, chère madame, croire au mien qui ne demande pas mieux dans cet instant que vous admirer et vous le dire tant bien que mal d'une manière quelconque.
Bien à vous,
E. Duse.
THE LIE DIRECT
BY
CAROLINE DUER
Two men went up into the sanctum sanctorum of the Quill Drivers' Club to lunch. The younger was a writer of fiction and the elder a clergyman, his friend and guest, by chance encountered on a rare visit to town.
They were evidently absorbed in discussion when they sat down, for the host hardly interrupted himself long enough to give the briefest of orders to the attendant waiter before he leaned forward across the table and resumed eagerly: "Let the critics rage furiously together if they will"—referring to a controversy excited by one of his late stories. "The thing is going to stand! I believe, and I'll go bail there's no reasonable person who doesn't believe, that falsehood is justifiable, and more than justifiable, on many occasions."
"Only everybody will differ as to the occasions," put in the clergyman, the humor in the corners of his eyes counterbalanced by the graveness of the lines about his mouth.
"I'll go further than that," continued the writer, striking his hand on the table impressively. "In the circumstances as I described them I won't call it falsehood! I agree with whoever it was who said that one lied only when one intentionally deceived a person who had a right to know the truth."
"And suppose," said the clergyman, with sudden earnestness, "the knowledge of the truth would be cruel, painful, harmful even, to the person who had the right to it. What then? Would you still owe it to him, or not?"
"Why, then, of course, I wouldn't tell it," answered the other. "You might call it what you liked. I suppose it would be a passive lie, if you're particular about its front name; but there have been lots of fine ones, actively and passively told, since the world began."
"Fine?" echoed the clergyman thoughtfully. "I wonder!"
"Fitting, proper, expedient," amended the writer impatiently.
"Fitting, proper, expedient," repeated the clergyman—"even when the result appeared to justify it. I—wonder!"
He sank into a reverie so profound that the younger man had to call his attention to the fact that food was being offered to him; and then he helped himself mechanically, as if his mind had drifted too far to be immediately recalled to material things.
"I wonder!" he said again vaguely, his eyes, sad and thoughtful, fixed upon distance.
"I was once, you see," he went on, making a sudden effort and looking his companion in the face with a directness that was almost disconcerting. "I was once involved in a case where such a lie had been told, and I—well, I am inclined, if you have no objections, to tell you the whole story and let you judge.
"Some years ago I broke down from over-work and worry, and was ordered away for my health. I chose to travel about my own country, and at a hotel in a certain place where many people go to recover from imaginary ailments I met a man who was being slowly crippled forever by a real and incurable one. His place at the table was next to mine, and every day he was brought in, in his wheeled chair, from the sunniest corner of the piazza, fed neatly and expeditiously by his manservant (his own hands were almost useless), and fetched away again. During the meal when I first sat beside him we entered into conversation, and I found him so cultivated, charming, and humorous a companion that for the rest of my stay I neglected no opportunity of indulging myself in his society."
"Of course it was no indulgence at all to him," said the writer, whose affectionate regard for his friend was one of long standing.
"I hope so," answered the other, "and, indeed, I had every reason to suppose that the liking which sprang up between us was no less on his side than on my own. We were mutually attracted in spite of, or perhaps because of, our fundamental differences in disposition, opinions, beliefs; though no Christian could have borne affliction with a braver patience than he—the braver in that he did not look to a hereafter for comfort."
"A continuous powder and no jam to come," threw in the writer, with the glare of battle in his eye, for he also had opinions and beliefs at variance with those of his companion. "There are a good many of us who have to face that."
"Not many in worse case than he," returned the clergyman gently, declining to be drawn into discussion. "But although the use of his limbs was denied him, he took a keener delight than any man I have ever known in the compensations that his mind, through books, and his senses, through contact with the outer world, brought him. Beauty of color and form, beauty in nature, beauty in people, was an exquisite pleasure to him, and music an intense—I had almost said a sacred passion. He drank in lovely sights and sweet sounds with an almost painful appreciation, and I remember well his telling me in his whimsical way—it was during one of the last conversations I had with him before my departure—that, travel about as I would with my mere automatic arms and legs, I could never overtake such happiness as he did on the wings of harmony.
"We corresponded, from time to time, for a year or two, I in the usual manner and he by means of dictation to his servant, who was an earnest if somewhat poor performer on the type-writer. But gradually the thread of our intercourse was broken in some way and our letters ceased."
"I've always said that nothing but community of interests preserved friendship," declared the writer sententiously, "with the exception, of course, of our own."
"I was surprised, therefore," went on the clergyman, "to receive about eighteen months ago a brief note telling me that a great sorrow and a great joy had come into his life almost simultaneously, and begging me to go to him, if he might so far trespass upon our acquaintance, as he had 'matters about which it behooved a man'—I am repeating his words—'to consult another wiser than himself.' I started at once. It took me all day to accomplish the journey, and it was early evening when I arrived at the little station he had mentioned as the place where he would send somebody to meet me. I found the carriage without difficulty, and was driven for some five miles through the beautiful autumn woods.
"It was a low, square, comfortable-looking paper-weight of a house," he went on after a moment, "beaming welcome from an open front door, where my friend's confidential servant stood waiting for me. He conducted me at once to my room, saying that dinner would be served as soon as I could make myself ready and join his master in the library. This I made haste to do. I found my friend in his wheeled chair, near a cheerfully crackling fire in a delightful room lined with books from its scarlet-carpeted floor to its oak-beamed ceiling. He welcomed me warmly and yet with a certain constraint, and I felt—it might have been some subtle thought-transference—that the thing he had it in his mind to discuss with me was one which only an extremity of trouble would have induced him to discuss with any man.
"Dinner was announced almost before our first greetings were over, and an excellent dinner it was—cooked by an old woman who, he declared, had virtually ruled him and the house ever since he could remember, and waited upon by the man, who also attended to his master's peculiar needs with the utmost swiftness and dexterity. The household, I subsequently learned, consisted of only these two, an elderly housemaid, and the white-haired coachman who had driven me from the station.
"'Why they stay with me in this out-of-the-way place, without a grumble, all the year round, I can't see,' said my host, after our meal was over and we were once more alone in the library. 'And, by the way,' he added, turning his face toward me suddenly,—I don't know whether I have mentioned that he had a particularly handsome face,—'apropos of seeing, what I have not seen before I shall have no further chance of informing myself about now, for I have become, in these last six months, completely blind.'
"The unexpected horror of the announcement, the shock of it, left me for the moment speechless. But I looked at him and saw, what I suppose I might in a more direct light have noticed before, that his eyes had the dull, dumb stare of blindness. Before the inarticulate sound of pity I made could have reached him, he continued:
"'I used to tell myself, quite sincerely, I think, that as long as I had an eye or an ear left I'd not waste my time envying any other man. Nature seems to have been afraid I'd see too much, so she has cut off my powers of vision. That is the great sorrow that has come to me. The great joy, if I may accept it (and it is about that that I have been driven by my conscience to consult you), is that I have found—or perhaps, as that suggests a certain amount of activity on my part, I'd better say Fate has found for me—here, living at my very gates, a woman who loves me!'
"He appeared to dread interruption, for he went on hurriedly: 'Extraordinary, isn't it? But let me tell you how it happened. I've a garden out there to the south, and last summer, soon after this thing first came upon me, I used to have myself wheeled there and left in the shade for hours to think things out where I could feel light and color and fresh air about me. On the other side of my wall is her cottage, and one day she began to play, play like an angel. You know how that would move me. I sent a note to her telling her that a blind beggar had been lifted into heaven for a little while by her music, and would be glad if, of her clemency, he might sometimes be so lifted again. After that she played to me every day, and so, she being alone—for her mother, it seems, had died early in the spring, soon after they came—and I being lonely, we gradually drifted into—Oh, I know it's monstrous!' he exclaimed, breaking off in his recital, and evidently afraid of the mental recoil he suspected in me, 'monstrous to consider that a beautiful young woman should bear the name, even, of wife to me; but she is very poor, and now entirely desolate. I am, comparatively speaking, well off, and I cannot live long! I shall at least leave her better able to fight the world. You'll think I could do that, I suppose, in any event, for a man such as I am—a sightless head in command of a body that cannot move hand or foot—might will what he pleased to any woman without exciting adverse comment; but I ask you, haven't I the right to allow myself the happiness of her near companionship for whatever time it may be before I die? It seems to me that I have, since, instead of shrinking from me, she loves me, and is willing, indeed,—bless her wonderful heart for it,—wilful to marry me. What time is it?' he cried abruptly, turning his blank eyes toward the clock on the mantelpiece.
"'Five minutes before nine,' I answered.
"'She will be here directly,' he said. 'I had a piano of my mother's put in order and moved in here as soon as the garden grew too cold for me. She comes every evening to play to me. You will see her with me, and alone if you like, and to-morrow you must tell me, man to man, what you think I ought or ought not to do. She knows that I was to write and put the case before you, but she will be surprised to find you here.'
"'I will do my best,' said I, infinitely moved, 'to make friends with her.'
"'I wish I could tell what you are thinking now!' he cried out with sudden passion, and then, before I could reply, he said, 'Hush! I hear her in the hall.'
"All the excitement died out of his face, leaving it white and drawn, but peaceful. I had heard nothing.
"'She's coming,' he whispered, 'and she'll be so embarrassed, poor, pretty soul. She thinks it's of no account, her being pretty, but I tell her that, blind as I am, I think I feel the atmosphere of her beauty, and if she were plain she would not please me so.'
"As he spoke the curtains in front of the doorway parted. My eyes, lifted to the height of fair tallness they expected to encounter, looked for an instant upon vacancy. Then they dropped to meet those of a grotesque and piteous little hunchback, whose agonized gaze cried to me, as did the hitching of her poor shoulders and the sudden trembling flutter of her hands to her mouth: 'For God's sake, don't betray me!'
"He leaned his head a little on one side, listening to the silence. Then he said to me, laughing: 'Is she as charming as all that? Or do you refrain from speech for fear of alarming her?'
"She stood quite still, her sharp-featured, tragic face, with its halo of reddish hair, raised toward mine, and her expression imploring, pleading, mutely compelling me.
"I had to answer his question.
"'Both,' I said.
"As I finished he called to her: 'I always knew you were lovely, Rica, but this is a real tribute—the dumbness of admiration!'
"She told me later that he had fantastically described her to herself after hearing her play, at the same time dwelling upon the happiness it was to him to think of her so. She had longed to make her affliction known to him, but for his own sake had not dared.
"'No one here will undeceive him unless you bid them,' she said, 'and you will not be so cruel! What has he left in life but this illusion? What have I but my love for him?'
"And she did love him! I had seen tenderness and pity leap from her eyes whenever they turned in his direction, and he—What should a man have done?" ended the clergyman.
The writer shook his head. "What did you do?" he asked rather hoarsely.
"I married them," answered the other simply.