"Nor he. Well, it's not our affair," and the manager returned to his duties.
The two wandered off, the man's unsteady steps supported tenderly by the woman. When the sun rose, his head rested on her bosom and her lips hovered lovingly above his own, and the hum of the waking city, borne to his ears, may, to him, have been the distant harmony of a pæan of victory hymned in hell.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A DELECTABLE DISCUSSION, IN WHICH A SHAKSPERIAN MATRON IS ROUTED.
Natalie Claghorn had always nourished a sentiment, which with many is a conviction, with most a hope, that man is something more than the futile hero of a sorry comedy—not made to live merely that he may die. Hence, religion had been a need of her being, and, though unconsciously, she had developed a creed of her own, vague, no doubt, from the positive standpoint, but one which excluded those essential elements of the faith of her husband, Hell and the Devil; grim inventions these which, while imbibing wisdom at the paternal knee, she had learned were mere memories of ancient Oriental mythologies. This view, in so far as she had given the matter any thought, she had supposed the view commonly held, and universally held among the cultured. Recently, indeed, there had been a moment in which even with her bodily eyes she had, as she had then believed, beheld the terrors and the torments of the damned; but as many men and women, who believe not in ghosts, have nevertheless seen these dwellers of the shades, and yet in less receptive phases of the mind have been able to dismiss their visitants to the shadows from which they were evoked, so Natalie had been able to discard belief in the reality of her vision. Nevertheless, though incredulous, he who has seen a ghost remains impressed, and the memory of her experience naturally recurred with her theological studies, serving to emphasize the horrible, rather than the absurd, aspect of her acquirements.
Her desire to know had been honest, and she imputed honesty to others; hence, when Leonard, with pen and voice, asseverated his belief in a creed which must render paternity impossible to any being with a conscience, she had been confounded by the attitude he presented. She was not aware that between her husband and herself the sources of sympathy had always been shallow, and she was quite as ignorant of theological frenzy as she was of the knowledge of masculine passion. She had loved him; and she had loved Mrs. Joe, Paula, the Marquise, her maid Berthe; in fact, she had loved, and still loved, humanity, as far as she knew it, and it was thus that she had loved her husband, though, doubtless, in his case, this gentle flame had burned with more intensity than in others.
Though grieved that Leonard had left her without saying good-bye, yet she felt that he had acted wisely, in that he had given her time to think without the disturbing sense of his presence in his repellant mood. And during this period an incident occurred which aided her in finding the only solution of the problems which vexed her.
It was not to be expected of the Hampton matrons that they continue their tolerant attitude, with regard to Mrs. Leonard Claghorn. Her continued languid health after the birth of her child, the subsequent bereavement and absence, these had afforded an excuse for neglect; but now there was solicitude, and in a certain circle of dames, which met every fortnight to discuss Shakspere, but whereat other subjects, as possessing more of novelty, were occasionally considered, some rather severe strictures were made, in reference to Professor Claghorn's apparent inability to convert his wife—he who had so audaciously, if not successfully, coped with Brigston.
"Brilliancy is less effective than earnestness," opined Mrs. Waring, wife of Professor Waring, whose forte was Hebrew, and who was noted for great erudition, a large family and a feeble intellect.