Later on, as I noticed in the programme, the schoolmistress, an unmarried lady, was down to sing “Darby and Joan.” She has a sympathetic voice. Her “Darby and Joan” is always popular. The comic man would also again appear in the second part, and would oblige with (by request) “His Mother-in-Law.”
So the quaint comedy continues: To-night we will enjoy Romeo and Juliet, for to-morrow we have seats booked for The Pink Domino.
What the Gipsy did not mention.
“Won’t the pretty lady let the poor old gipsy tell her fortune?” Blushes, giggles, protestations. Gallant gentleman friend insists. A dark man is in love with pretty lady. Gipsy sees a marriage not so very far ahead. Pretty lady says “What nonsense!” but looks serious. Pretty lady’s pretty friends must, of course, be teasing. Gallant gentleman friend, by curious coincidence, happens to be dark. Gipsy grins and passes on.
Is that all the gipsy knows of pretty lady’s future? The rheumy, cunning eyes! They were bonny and black many years ago, when the parchment skin was smooth and fair. They have seen so many a passing show—do they see in pretty lady’s hand nothing further?
What would the wicked old eyes foresee did it pay them to speak:—Pretty lady crying tears into a pillow. Pretty lady growing ugly, spite and anger spoiling pretty features. Dark young man no longer loving. Dark young man hurling bitter words at pretty lady—hurling, maybe, things more heavy. Dark young man and pretty lady listening approvingly to comic singer, having both discovered: “That’s what it’s like when you’re married.”
My friend H. G. Wells wrote a book, “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” I read it in MS. one winter evening in a lonely country house upon the hills, wind screaming to wind in the dark without. The story has haunted me ever since. I hear the wind’s shrill laughter. The doctor had taken the beasts of the forest, apes, tigers, strange creatures from the deep, had fashioned them with hideous cruelty into the shapes of men, had given them souls, had taught to them the law. In all things else were they human, but their original instincts their creator’s skill had failed to eliminate. All their lives were one long torture. The Law said, “We are men and women; this we shall do, this we shall not do.” But the ape and tiger still cried aloud within them.
Civilization lays her laws upon us; they are the laws of gods—of the men that one day, perhaps, shall come. But the primeval creature of the cave still cries within us.
A few rules for Married Happiness.
The wonder is that not being gods—being mere men and women—marriage works out as well as it does. We take two creatures with the instincts of the ape still stirring within them; two creatures fashioned on the law of selfishness; two self-centred creatures of opposite appetites, of desires opposed to one another, of differing moods and fancies; two creatures not yet taught the lesson of self-control, of self-renunciation, and bind them together for life in an union so close that one cannot snore o’nights without disturbing the other’s rest; that one cannot, without risk to happiness, have a single taste unshared by the other; that neither, without danger of upsetting the whole applecart, so to speak, can have an opinion with which the other does not heartedly agree.