That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

To be sure, after the first greetings were over, and the serious part of our business was settled, we told to each other the story of our lives since we parted. Mine I have related. She had objected to marriage, though she had had a number of offers, for her heart had been given away and had not returned. During our conversation she quoted these lines from some author, “A woman may marry this man or that man; her affections may shift and alter, but she never forgets the man she loved with all the wonder and idealism and devotion of a girl’s early love.”

One of her suitors was a Mr. Beresford, of a family of rank and wealth. This was about all he could boast of. Disagreeable in appearance, though he was polished in all the ways and style of society, with much of the affectation of a man of the world. He was persistent in his attentions, and used all his arts of fascination, and was so obtrusive that she hated the sight of him. She knew that he was heartless, and by instinct that he was very far from being above reproach. Her parents became angry with her for throwing away such a chance of marriage into a family of name and rank. Did I not remember their anger? She defied them at first, but the incessant worry day and night continued, until from sheer exhaustion, she yielded by giving her hand but not her heart. There was a marriage of ceremony, but not of hearts or lives. He had won and there was no further need of disguise or dissimulation. He taunted her with never having cared for him; that because she was so proud and haughty he had only married her to break her in, just as he would have subdued a spirited horse. He had inherited the profligacy of his ancestors and maintained the reputation of his family by his vices. He returned at once to his dissolute life and made her, as she said, wish for her own death or his. Her parents saw, when it was too late, that they had driven their daughter to a life worse than death, for the sake of name and rank. Her only relief was when he was away with his sporting friends. One day, riding to the hounds, he was thrown from his horse and killed. He had been drinking heavily and could not sit the horse.

Said she, “I could not shed a tear. That is an awful thing for a wife to say when she loses her husband, but it was impossible for me to be so false as to express even a regret, so I refused to see any one. I had never loved him nor had the least respect for him. It was a marriage only in form. I put on mourning, but that was a black lie to keep society tongues from wagging. And now as we are united again I can say frankly to you that I have often thought of the different life I would have had but for the interference of my parents.”

Concluding her narrative, she said, with one of her most loving smiles, “So, Charles, I shall not keep you awake nights talking about the virtues of my first husband.” This remark was of infinite comfort to me, for I had often wondered how a man must feel after marrying a widow whose husband had been noted for his excellent traits. If she was careful not to mention them, yet he could but think at times that she was making comparisons between himself and the departed. Another thing gave me great satisfaction, that I was getting no second hand article of a heart, as hers had been always and only mine. Yet I could but feel a tinge of remorse that I had once given part of mine to another, though under necessity, as I supposed the object of my first and only real love in life had gone forever from me.

There was love but no love making or giddy flirtation between us, so I have no foundation for a thrilling story, even if I wished to make one. Marriage has always seemed to me such a sacred thing as to be a solemn matter rather than something to be treated in a joking manner. It is next to birth and death, the most important event in a person’s life, and I never could understand how a young woman or a man could talk about their marriage as triflingly as they would about their chances in a lottery or a game of cards.

No wonder there is so much marital disagreement and unhappiness, when the married life is entered upon with so much thoughtlessness and frivolity. I had received an impression from Mr. Percy, when he talked so sacredly of his affianced, and this never left me. How much I have to thank him for the good influence he made upon my whole life. I try to keep my heart grateful and ever mindful of the favors I receive from others. It seems to me that one of the great sins of humanity is ingratitude. It may possibly appear greater than it really is, because people take so little pains to show their gratitude. I have, at considerable sacrifice at times, granted favors, and those to whom they were given, took them as a matter of course, very indifferently, thus injuring themselves, and depriving me of considerable pleasure. But I am running wild again. This is a habit of mine, as those acquainted with me well know, and my wife, later in life, often laughed at me, for always wanting to point a moral, or adorn a tale with some of my practical remarks. But as there are many worse habits than this, I am content.

I returned to London as light-hearted and happy as if I had won a kingdom, and I was to be crowned its king. My business was finished, but I had much to see in that great kaleidoscope of the world. The top of an omnibus was my point of observation at first. What a collection of moving things, hurrying, scurrying, joggling and jostling each other, apparently without any purpose, except to keep going! I thought if I were able to write a book I would make one on, “What I saw from the top of an omnibus in London.” All sorts and conditions of men, the staid men of business, the “crows” in long black gowns, the obsequious shopmen, the swells, the cabbies, the bewildered countrymen, the beggars ready to carry your cane to get “a penny for a bite to eat for a poor man,” the sweepers, the cat’s meat men, and the fellows on the corners crying, “a penny a shine, sur,” castes, castes, no end of them. One day an Englishman remarked to me, “You have a great many castes in India?” “Yes, I replied, about as many as you have in England.” He looked at me with a stare, as if he thought I was guying him, and then said, “I think you are about right.”

There is something so peculiar in that stare, a concentration of the negation of intellect and intelligence in appearance of an Englishman’s face, when listening; a dull, cold look, as expressionless as the countenance of a heathen stone idol, that freezes one, and makes him feel that he is saying something foolish or impudent. Whether it is from lack of quick comprehension, or considered good form, I do not know. The English, I should judge, are not a smiling nation. They are as solid and substantial, even in the expression of their faces, as their heavy meat and drink can make them. They are slow-witted, and their jokes, except what they import, are so ponderous that they reminded me of our perfunctory religious exercises on a cold morning at school, and of our tasks in reciting the Litany, only that the jokes lacked the response, “Good Lord deliver us.”

I had purchased some books for light reading in my off hours, and among them was “Pelham” by Lord Lytton. I was greatly surprised to find this passage, a severer criticism on his countrymen than I am capable of making. This was probably written on the view that a man may call himself a dog, but let another beware of saying it of him. “The English of the fashionable world make business an enjoyment, and enjoyment a business; they are born without a smile; they rove about public places like so many easterly winds—cold, sharp and cutting; or like a group of fogs on a frosty day, sent out of his hell by Boreas, for the express purpose of looking black at one another. When they ask you ‘how you do,’ you would think they were measuring the length of your coffin. They are ever, it is true, laboring to be agreeable, but they are like Sisyphus, the stone they rolled up the hill with so much toil, runs down again, and hits you a thump on the legs. They are sometimes polite, but invariably uncivil; their warmth is always artificial—their cold never. They are stiff without dignity, and cringing without manners. They offer you an affront, and call it ‘plain truth,’ they wound your feelings, and tell you it is merely to ‘speak their minds,’ at the same time, while they have neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they have adopted all its falsehood and deceit. While they profess to abhor servility, they adulate the peerage; while they tell you they care not a rush for the minister, they move heaven and earth for an invitation from the minister’s wife. Then their amusements! The heat, the dust—the sameness—the slowness of that odious park in the morning, and the same exquisite scene repeated in the evening on the condensed stage of a rout room, where one has more heat with less air, and a narrower dungeon, with diminished possibility of escape! We wander about like the damned in the story of Vathek, and we pass our lives like the royal philosopher of Prussia in conjugating the verb, ‘je m’ennuie.’”

I wanted a Sunday in London to hurry about alone without any “sweet encumbrance.” That I obtained on the promise to her who had already assumed the right to have a good share of my attention and time, that it should be the only one I should have alone.