“Perhaps he ought to have his own rules. He may not be constituted as we are.”
“My dear Miss Furze, as a physician, let me give you one word of solemn counsel. Nothing is more dangerous, physically and mentally, than to imagine we are not as other people. Strive to consider yourself, not as Catharine Furze, a young woman apart, but as a piece of common humanity and bound by its laws. It is infinitely healthier for you. Never, under any pretext whatever, allow yourself to do what is exceptional. If you have any originality, it will better come out in an improved performance of what everybody ought to do, than in the indulgence in singularity. For one person who, being a person of genius, has been injured by what is called conventionality—I do not, of course, mean foolish conformity to what is absurd—thousands have been saved by it, and self-separation means mischief. It has been the beginning even of insanity in many cases which have come under my notice.” The doctor paused a little.
“I am glad Mrs. Cardew is better,” said Catharine. “I did not know she had been ill.”
“There is a woman for you—a really wonderful woman, unobtrusive, devoted to her husband, almost annihilating herself for him, and, what is very noteworthy, she denies herself in studies to which she is much attached, and for which she has a remarkable capacity, merely in order that she may the better sympathise with him. Then her care of the poor in his parish makes her almost a divinity to them. While he is luxuriating amongst the cowslips, in what he calls thinking, she is teaching the sick people patience and nursing them. She is a saint, and he does not know half her worth. It would do you a world of good now, Miss Furze, to live with her for six months if she were alone, but I am not quite sure that his influence on you would be wholesome. I was alarmed about her, but she will not die yet if I can help it. I want her to recover for her own sake, but also for her husband’s and for her friends’ sake. Perhaps I was a little too severe upon the husband, for I believe he does really love her very much; at least, if he does not, he ought.”
“Ought? Do you think, Dr. Turnbull, a man ought to love what he cannot love?”
“Yes, but I must explain myself. I have no patience with people who seem to consider that they may yield themselves to something they know not what, and allow themselves to be swayed by it. A man marries a woman whom he loves. Is it possible that she, of all women in the world, is the one he would love best if he were to know all of them? Is it likely that he would have selected this one woman if he had seen, say, fifty more before he had married her? Certainly not; and when he sees other women afterwards, better than the one he has chosen, he naturally admires them. If he does not—he is a fool, but he is bound to check himself. He puts them aside and is obliged to be satisfied with his wife. If it were permissible in him in such a case to abandon her, a pretty chaos we should be in. It is clearly his duty, and quite as clearly in his power, to be thus contented—at least, in nine cases out of ten. He may—and this is my point—he may wilfully turn away from what is admirable in his own house, or he may turn towards it. He is as responsible for turning away from it, or turning towards it, as he is for any of his actions. If he says he cannot love a wife who is virtuous and good, I call him not only stupid, but wicked—yes, wicked: people in Eastthorpe will tell you I do not know what that word means, because I do not go to church, and do not believe in what they do not believe themselves, but still I say wicked—wicked because he can love his wife, just as he can refrain from robbing his neighbour, and wicked because there is a bit of excellence stuck down before him for him to value. It is not intended for others, but for him, and he deserts the place appointed him by Nature if he neglects it.”
“You have wonderful self-control, Dr. Turnbull. I can understand that a man might refrain from open expression of his love for a woman, whatever his passion for her might be, for, if he did not so restrain himself, he might mar the peace of some other person who was better than himself, and better deserved that his happiness should not be wrecked; but as for love, it may be beyond him to suppress it.”
“Well, Miss Furze,” replied the doctor, smiling, “we are going beyond our own experience, I hope. However, what I have said is true. I suppose it is because it is my business to cure disease that I always strive to extend the realm of what is subject to us. You seem to be fond of an argument. Some day we will debate the point how far the proper appreciation even of a picture or a melody is within our own power. But I am a queer kind of doctor. I have never asked you how you are, and you are one of my patients.”
“Better.”
“That is good, but you must be careful, especially in the evening. It was not quite prudent to sit up last night at the Crowhursts’, but yet, on the whole, it was right. No, you shall not get down here; I will drive you up to the Terrace.”