Bones and I

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

Perhaps the strongest case in point is that of parent and child.

In the animal world I know few arrangements of Nature more beautiful than the absolute devotion of maternity to its offspring, so long, though only so long, as its assistance is required. A bird feeding her young, a tigress licking her cubs, a mare wheeling round her foal—each of these affords an example of loving care and tenderness, essentially feminine in its utter forgetfulness of self. Each of these squanders such gold as it possesses, the treasure of its deep instinctive affection, on ingratitude and neglect. The nestlings gape with hungry little beaks, when they hear the flap of wings, not to greet the coming provider, but that they may eat and be filled. The cubs huddle themselves up to their mother’s side for warmth and comfort, not for her cruel beauty nor her fierce protecting love. The foal, when it gets on its long legs, will follow your horse or mine as readily as its dam. They take all, to give back nothing in exchange. And no sooner can the bird use its wings, the beast its limbs, than it abandons at once and for ever the parent whose sustaining care is no longer necessary to its existence.

With the human race, although I am far from affirming that, even in this age of bronze, filial piety has fled with other virtues from the earth, something of the same unequal barter holds good in the relationship of parent and child. The former gives gold, the latter does not always return silver. Do not deceive yourself. You love your children more than your children love you. I can prove it in three words. They are dearer to you than your own parents. And this inequality of affection is but one more of the beautiful arrangements made by that Providence which bestows good so liberally in proportion to evil. Under the common law of Nature, you are likely to die first, and the aggregate amount of suffering is, therefore, much less than it would be did the course of domestic affection flow the other way. So you toil, and slave, and scheme for the child’s benefit, forgiving its errors, repairing its follies, re-establishing its fortunes, just as, long ago, you used to rebuild with loving patience those houses of cards the urchin blew down with such delight. But, as of all human affections, this, if not the strongest, is certainly the deepest and most abiding, so when wounded does it inflict on our moral being the sharpest and most enduring pain. “Is there any cause in Nature that makes these hard hearts?” says poor King Lear, forced, against his own instincts, to acknowledge the venomed bite of that “serpent’s tooth” with which elsewhere he compares a “thankless child.” I have known men, and women too, accept with courage every sample of misfortune and disgrace—in the language of the prize-ring, “come up smiling” after every kind of knock-down blow—but I cannot remember an instance in which the ingratitude of children has not produced wrinkles and grey hairs, in the proportion of ten to one, for every other sorrow of any description whatever.

There is no prospect of alleviation to amuse his fancy—no leavening of pique to arouse his pride. Hurt to the death, the sufferer has scarce manhood enough left to conceal his wounds.

In that conflict between man and woman which is perpetually going on, and without which the world, if more comfortable, would undoubtedly be less populous, gold is invariably given for silver with a lavish extravagance, akin to the absurdity of the whole thing.

Why is love like the handle of a teapot?—Because it is all on one side. The game has yet to be invented in which both players can win; and perhaps were it not for the discomfort, anxiety, worry, sorrow, and suffering entailed by the unequal pastime, it would cease to be so popular. As it exists at present, there is nothing to complain of on the score of flagging interest. At first, indeed, before the cards are cut, the adversaries sit down calmly and pleasantly enough. An hour hangs heavy on their hands, and they think thus to drive it agreeably away—beginning simply for “distraction,” as the French call it, though ending in the English acceptation of that uncomfortable word. Ere the first tricks are turned, however, the game grows exciting. “I propose.” “How many?” “Hearts are trumps.” “I mark the king.” The stakes increase rapidly in value, and presently gold comes pouring lavishly out of one player’s pocket, against silver dribbling unwillingly from the other’s. The winner, too, like all gamblers, seldom cares to keep the fruit of his good fortune, but loses it again at another table to some stronger adversary, who is beggared in turn elsewhere.

Yet still in all places, and under all circumstances, wherever this game is played there is the same inequality in the stakes. “Gold for silver.” Such are the terms; and the old players, to do them justice, those who have lost and won many a heavy wager, are generally careful to begin at least by venturing the commoner metal. But even of these the discretion is not to be trusted as the game goes on. Touched by the magic rod, maddened by the spell against which Wisdom is often less proof than Folly, the sternest and the sagest will throw their gold about as recklessly as if every piece were not stamped with the impress of their honour and their happiness, precious as the very drops of life-blood at their heart.

Perhaps it is wiser to stick to any other pursuit in the world than the one in question; but if you must needs sit down to this “beggar-my-neighbour” kind of amusement, is it better to lose or to win? to give or accept the gold for silver passing so freely from hand to hand? Will you have the satisfaction hereafter of standing on the higher ground? of feeling you have nothing to reproach yourself with, nothing to be ashamed of? or will you take comfort in reflecting that while the storm raged above your head you had been careful to shelter cunningly from the blast? Will you exult in your forethought, your philosophy, the accurate knowledge of human nature, that has preserved you scatheless through the combat? or will you take pride in your generosity, your magnanimity, and the self-devoted courage that bids you accept the stab of ingratitude in addition to the pain of neglect? It depends entirely on character and temperament.

Men and women vary so much in this, as in every other phase of feeling. The latter, when they do take the more generous view of their position—when they can bring themselves to choose “the better part,” accept it, I think, with a more complete abandonment of pique than the former. Perhaps their pride is of a nobler order: no doubt their vanity is less egotistical than our own. With us, except in the highest natures—and these, as has been well remarked, have ever a leavening of the feminine element in their organisation—there is always something of irritation left after a wound of the affections has healed up—something that stints and rankles, and looks to reprisals of one kind or another for relief. I have read an old tale of chivalry so thoroughly exemplifying this state of feeling, and affording so natural an example of the changes and counterchanges with which gold and silver are staked against each other in the dangerous game, that I cannot forbear quoting it here.

“A certain knight had long loved a damsel at the court of the King of France; but she, albeit accepting the service of none other, treated him with such coldness and duresse, that he at length obtained the title of the ‘Patient Knight,’ and she of the ‘Scornful Ladye.’ In vain he sat at her feet in hall; in vain wore her colours in the lists; in vain added to his cognisance the motto ‘Sans espérance,’ above the representation of a dungeon-grate, to signify the hopelessness of his captivity. She looked upon him coldly as the winter moon looks on a frozen lake; she turned from him pitilessly as the bending poplar turns from the south wind, whispering its longing and its sorrows, wooing her even with its tears.