CHAPTER IV
That there is some subtle sweetness in a true and stable friendship, no one can dare deny. It is divinely ordained that men's and women's lives will cross each other at certain stations on the long and oftentimes tedious journey of experience, and independent of either of them, a secret and mysterious influence, the exponent of an inherent Christian sympathy, will work its changes on their human hearts as the moulder on the yielding substance between his able fingers. I hold that the friendship of which I speak is fruitful of more real happiness in the world than any other influence of which we mortals are susceptible, and I am well sustained in my belief.
But though so wide a field is granted to our friendship, and though it may reveal itself under a plurality of aspects to those who seek it, strange to say, the world knows very little about it. We speak of it as of some regretted treasure that has been long lost to humanity. We are half convinced that the lightning speed of modern civilization has been too much for it, and that it is destined for time to come, to creep on apace within the range of our backward glance, but never within reach of our grasp.
And all the while we are only building up an opaque and dreary barrier that will shut out much of the summer sunshine from our daily lives of toil and trouble. Men and women who could make each other's burdens of sorrow fewer and lighter by a mutual sympathy and devotedness, look above each other's heads in the hurrying crowd and pass by each other, shoulder to shoulder, wearing a mask of calm and cold neutrality over hearts that are glowing with an unspoken kindness and affection.
"A woman," says Bulwer, "if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor and repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing, for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you. She is," he further observes, "to man presidium et dulce decus, bulwark, sweetness, ornament of his existence."
And indeed his words and their import are most rational and self-sustaining. It is no longer a matter of private or personal opinion to decide whether the friendship of a truly good woman benefits the man upon whom she bestows it or not. There are too many striking arguments in her favor, thrown by the surging tide of circumstances upon the surface of life's agitated waters, to allow a doubt to assail her. Too often, within our own memory even, has the slender yet firm hand of a woman been seen outstretched to snatch the life of a brother, husband or friend from the sluggish and perilous stream which runs slowly but surely on towards a hopeless ruin. "The mere idea," says George Eliot, "that a woman had a kindness towards him, spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers" and "there are natures," she tells us, "in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration; they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us, and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altars of trust. If you are not good, none is good. Those little words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse." Will anyone dispute it? Moreover, it is the teaching of the only true philosophy by which men should regulate their interior selves: that we "love one another," that we mutually assist and encourage one another, that we sympathise with each other in our joy and sustain one another in sorrow. Now, where a natural sympathy paves the way for the practice of this lesson of charity, how easy it is for men to bestow a beautiful living interpretation upon the Divine ordination concerning our mutual relationships.
The idea that a staunch and unswerving friendship is capable of existing between two women has become quite obsolete and exploded in our day. It is generously admitted that the frivolous tendencies which are innate in us have too much of the upper hand to sanction any sentiment which pre-supposes a self abnegation or exalted disinterestedness on our part. This is a serious heresy which may possibly be accounted for simply enough.
It is a well-attested fact, especially since the sacred precincts of established truth have been raided by every puerile pedant and sciolist who can handle a pen, that any absurdity whatever, so long as it is clad "in the lion's skin" and no matter how loudly it brays, has some fatal claim upon the rambling credulity of the multitude. And a method of reasoning, though resting upon a general assertion which is utterly false, has won its own disciples time and again with an easy effort.
Even in this trifling stigma which denies us women the privilege of being faithful to one another it is easy to see how a fraction of truth has been led astray. It is the outgrowth of a high-sounding syllogism, which deduces the sweeping general assertion that "all women are traitors" from the more limited one, which is unfortunately true and deplorable, that some women are traitors. Nevertheless, I fail to see what relationship can possibly exist between the two parts of the syllogism. The general is as undeniably false as the particular is undeniably true.
I cannot conceive what pleasure human beings can derive from a conviction into which they have coaxed themselves by earnest labor, which has for its object the total destruction of their natural and simple faith in their fellow creatures. We are all of us innocent until by our words or deeds we are branded guilty And we have an unquestionable right to the respect of other men so long as it has not been forfeited by such actions as are reckoned misdemeanors in the social world.