“That is interesting,” I said. “I didn’t suppose that at bottom Oliver took anything seriously.”
“He doesn’t,” said Cornelia, “except that—trouble to himself, I mean, and to a few others whom he regards as part of himself. As for anyone else, he is always saying, ‘It is easy to bear the misfortunes of others.’ Generally speaking, he isn’t serious about anything. When he isn’t in a fit of being pessimistic and panic-stricken about himself, he is just cynical and flippant. He doesn’t believe that goodness is worth trying for. He laughs at all the principles which I was taught to regard as elementary. He calls them ‘virtues of the bourgeoisie’ and ‘old maids’ morality.’ When I protest, Oliver says my humor is ‘thin.’ Sometimes he says I am ‘devoid’ of humor. I am not! Am I devoid of humor?”
“No, Cornelia,” I said. “But humor isn’t your strong point. In your lighter vein, you incline rather toward a gleeful gayety. Humor, in Oliver, results from a skepticism regarding first principles; and you are not skeptical about first principles.”
“I am not, thank goodness. I do like to see people gay and light-hearted and happy, and I like to be that way myself. But I am light-hearted and gay only because I am clear about what you call ‘first principles.’ Life hasn’t any dignity, any decorum, or justification, even, if one is constantly questioning or mocking at everything there is in it that is axiomatic. Oliver has no axioms except derisive ones that he makes for himself. To me, it isn’t endurable to be with people who refuse to take serious things seriously. When one jests at serious things, one not merely destroys their seriousness, but one takes all the joy out of the joyous and light-hearted things—all the bloom from life.”
“I suspect,” I said, “there is a good deal of truth in that.”
“And so,” she continued, “when this dreadful accident happened on New Year’s Eve, I didn’t expect much of Oliver; but I hoped, hoped, hoped it might make him a little bit serious about the children. It did nothing for him, nothing. All he wanted was to put it out of his mind as quickly as possible. Whenever I tried to talk with him about anything serious—or anything sacred to me—he simply wasn’t there.”
“Many men,” I said, “are shy about those things, and feel more deeply than they can bear to confess. Perhaps you don’t quite understand Oliver.” I put in this plea, partly because I thought it was true, and partly because I was curious to know the depth of Cornelia’s disillusionment and estrangement.
“Often and often I remembered, this spring,” she replied evasively, “how my sweet old grandmother used to talk to me, when I was a girl. ‘Marry a man, my dear,’ she would say, ‘who will help you not to be afraid of death or anything that can happen to you in this world.’ And then again she would say, ‘Marry a man, my dear, who has a sacred place in his own heart; and then everything that is precious to you will be safe; and you will not be alone in the great joys and the great sorrows that life has in store for us all.’ And I would ask, ‘Was grandfather like that?’ And the dear old soul would draw in her breath and say: ‘Oh, he was high! He was high!’ with an accent of adoration which made one feel that he must have been a beautiful spirit. ‘I would have gone anywhere with him,’ she always concluded when we talked about him, ‘and I would have suffered anything with him gladly, because we were together in a place where nothing in this world could really touch our companionship.’”
“That is very lovely,” I murmured. “That was such a union as one reads about in old romances, and dreams about, when one is young.”
“And so,” she continued, “when I was first married, I hoped that it might be like that with us. Oliver seemed to me then so strong and self-sufficient, and his personality seemed so various and flexible and so full of color and high spirits and charm. I thought that, when I knew him better, and had been taken into the innermost intimacy, I should find there a still serene place, such as my grandmother had described, with a kind of mysterious joy and rapture at the heart of it, because we should be united in loving together everything that had been almost too lovely and too sacred to speak of to anyone else. That is what I thought marriage was, the inner meaning of it—and not a barren desolate place, full of darkness and cynicism and the terror of death. Do you understand, a little, why I felt so alone, so helplessly alone early in the year? and why I wanted to talk with you this summer, and why I have just had to tell you these things to-night?”