"But, my darling, Colin and Chloe cannot spend their whole lives singing madrigals and stringing daisies. It is not in human nature to support, for any length of time, such superhuman bliss. The time will come when Colin will find no more rhymes to 'dove,' and when Chloe will tire of hearing the same one. It is possible that Herbert will some time tire of reading Shelley to you,--nay, it is even possible that the time may come when you will tire of hearing him; it is of that time I would talk. The present is as perfectly satisfactory to me as to you and Herbert, though not exactly in the same degree."
"Well, Uncle, what is your advice to Chloe disillusioned,--if you insist that such a thing must be?"
"Simply this, my own dear little child," answered Uncle John, and his voice took almost a solemn tone in its deep tenderness,--"when that time comes, as come it must, do not worry your husband with idle regrets for the past; remember that the husband is not the lover; remember that your sex love through your imagination, and look always for that clothing and refining of passion with sentiment, which, with us, belong only to the poetry and chivalry of youthful ardor. We may love you as well afterward,--nay, we may love you a great deal better,--but we cannot take the trouble of telling you so every day; we expect you to believe it once for all; and you,--you like to hear it over and over again, and, not hearing it, you begin to fancy it no longer true, and fall to trying experiments on your happiness. A fatal error this, Alice. There is nothing that men so often enjoy as the simply being let alone; but not one woman in a hundred can be made to believe in such a strange enjoyment. Then the wife becomes exigeante and impatient, and the husband, after fruitless attempts to find out what he has done, never suspecting that the real trouble is what he has left undone, finds her unreasonable, and begins to harden himself to griefs which he classes, like Miss Edgeworth, under the head of 'Sorrows of my Lord Plumcake.'"
"Miserable fate of the nobler sex, Uncle,--disturbed, even in the sublime heights of philosophical self-possession, by the follies and unreasonablenesses of the weaker vessel! I suppose you allow men to live out their natures unrebuked, while women must live down theirs?"
"Not I, Alice,--but I am by nature a special pleader, and, just now, I am engaged on Herbert's side of the case. Fee me well, my darling, by a kiss or a merry look, and bring Herbert up to judgment, and I will tell him home truths too."
"Let me hear your argument for the other side, most subtile of reasoners, and I may, perhaps, be able to repeat them at second-hand, when occasion calls for them."
"Don't think of it, my dear! Second-hand arguments are like second-hand coffee,--the aroma and the strength have disappeared, never to be brought back again. But if the husband were really here, and the wife had paid well for properly-administered advice, I should say to him, 'Do not fancy that you have done everything for your wife when you have given her house, servants, and clothes; she really wants a little attention now and then. Try to turn your thoughts away from your more important affairs long enough to notice the pretty morning-wrapper or the well-fitting evening-dress which has cost her some thought for your sake; do not let a change in the furniture or a new ornament in the parlor go unnoticed till the bill comes in. And while, of course, you claim from her the most ready sympathy in all your interests and enthusiasms, give her, once in a great while, say every year or so, a little genuine interest in the housekeeping trials or dressmaker grievances that meet her at every turn.
"Moreover, I would recommend to you, should your wife happen to have some literary or artistic tastes, not to ignore them entirely because they do not pay so well as your counting-room accounts do, and are not so entertaining to you as billiards. I would even indulge her by sacrificing a whole evening to her, once in a while, even to the detriment of your own business or pleasure. Depend upon it, it will pay in the end."
"Now, Uncle, like Rosalind, you have simply misused your whole sex in your special pleadings, both for and against. If Herbert were here, I would appeal to him to know if the time can ever come when what I do can be uninteresting to him. But I know, for myself, that such a thing cannot be. You are not talking from your own experience, Uncle?" added she, suddenly looking up in his face.
"My dear Alice, were it possible, should it ever seem likely, that my experience might benefit you, how readily I would lay it open before you! But those who have lived their lives are like the prophets of old,--their words are believed only when they are fulfilled. The meaning of life is never understood till it is past. Like Moses on the rock, our faces are covered when the Lord passes by, and we see only his back. But look behind you, my darling!"