2
And now it is six months since we parted; and I am going to-day to see her for the first time in her new existence.
I look out of the window of the railway-carriage; and my mind calls up memories which glide past with the autumn fields. First comes the departure of Floris, wearied by the incomprehensible attitude of the girl. He went away shortly after our meeting, still philosophical and cheerful, in spite of his disappointment. And the part which he played in my experiment taught me something that guided my efforts into a fresh direction: if Rose's beauty was to him sufficient compensation for her commonplace character, could not I also accept the girl as something out of which to weave romance and beauty? Does not everything lie in the mere fact of consent? Passive and silent, would she not become a rare object in my life, a precious stone?
"Woman blossoms into fullest flower by doing nothing," some one has said. "Women who do not work form the beauty of the world."
I took Rose to live with me and for weeks devoted myself exclusively to her appearance and her manners. I sought if possible to perfect the exterior. It was all in vain. This beautiful creature was so totally ignorant of what beauty meant that she was constantly deforming herself; and I at last gave up the struggle.
Sadly I remember the last pulsation of my will. It happened in the silence of my heart; and life went on for a little while longer. Would it not have been hateful to send Rose away, as one dismisses a servant? And what act, what fault had she committed to deserve such treatment? When it would have been so sweet to me to give her everything, for no reason at all, how could I find a solid reason for taking everything from her?
So I said nothing to her; we had none of those horrible explanations which set bristling spikes on the barriers—inevitable barriers, alas!—which dissimilarities in taste or character raise between people. There are certain persons who cannot bear to make any change without a preliminary explanation. They seem to carry a sort of map in their heads: on the far side of the frontier that borders the friendly territory lies the enemy; and it needs but a word, a gesture, a difference of opinion for you to find yourself in exile. Alas, have we not enough with all the limits, demarcations, laws and judgments that are perhaps necessary to the world at large? And must we lay upon ourselves still others in the intimate relations of life?
I had no right to set myself up as a judge and I could not have pronounced sentence. I waited. And, my will being no longer in the way, circumstances gradually led my companion to her true destiny better than I could have done.
She was bored. She was not really made to be a purely decorative object. In spite of her trailing silk or velvet dresses, twenty times a day I would find her in the larder, with a loaf under her arm and a knife in her hand, contentedly buttering thick slices of bread, which she would eat slowly in huge mouthfuls, looking straight before her as she did so.
She was bored; and I was powerless to cure this unfamiliar ill. I looked out some work for her in my busy life. She wrote letters, kept my accounts, hemmed the maids' aprons. Soon she was running the errands. One day she answered the front-door.