CHAPTER V.

Water-lilies.

I will crown you as my queen By my soul's subjection, For you all your life have been What I think perfection.

Paul felt leaving Oxford more than he would have cared to confess; and the weeks he spent at home would have been a dreary time had they not been brightened by the smiles and the sympathy of Alice Martin.

To Paul's vigorous and energetic nature, Alice was very soothing and restful. It was true that she did not understand more than half of what he said to her, but she listened to it all, which was nearly as good; and "a girl could not be expected to enter into a man's thoughts and feelings," Paul said to himself, not having yet graduated in Cupid's University. And Paul came very near to loving Alice in those days, with the sort of comfortable, common-place, every-day love which satisfies ninety-nine men and one woman out of every hundred. But Paul, unfortunately, happened to be the one, and Alice one of the ninety-nine; so there was not much chance of their making one another happy.

One day in the summer in which Paul left Oxford, he and Joanna, with Edgar Ford and Alice Martin, went for a picnic to Chayford Wood. Edgar had ceased to make himself disagreeable to Alice, no man being able to perform the impossible for too long a time at a stretch; and Alice sunned herself in his reawakened smiles, not even her love for Paul having the power to stamp out her desire for universal popularity.

As they were sitting by the lake Alice remarked: "Isn't it funny how a lovely scene like this makes one feel good and happy, and yet sad with longing for something that one has never heard of?"

"I am never sad with longing for what I never heard of," replied Joanna. "Whenever I feel sad, I always know it means that I want to see Mrs. Crozier again."

"Are you still very devoted to Mrs. Crozier?" inquired Alice.

"Of course I am. I'd do anything in the world for her."

"Anything wrong or foolish do you mean?" asked Edgar.

"Certainly not. She'd never want me to do anything wrong or foolish."

"That is not the question," said Edgar, who greatly loved to tease Joanna. "Would you if she did?"

"But she wouldn't. Would you do anything wrong or foolish for any one you cared much for?" inquired Joanna, turning the tables on her adversary.

Edgar thought for a moment. "Anything wrong, no; anything foolish, yes," he answered.

"I was reading a poem the other day," said Alice, "about a lady who threw her glove into the lions' den to test her lover's affection; he jumped into the den and rescued the glove, only to fling it into the lady's face. I cannot make up my mind whether he was right or not."

"Most certainly he was," replied Paul, in his highly superior manner. "To make an exhibition of so sacred a thing as a man's love proved the woman to be vain and frivolous, and incapable of seeing the deeper thing. Therefore the man was better without her than with her, and he did well to throw her over. There is nothing so revolting to a man as frivolity in a woman. When deep calleth unto deep, love reaches perfection; when shallow calleth unto shallow, there is not much harm done; but when deep calleth unto shallow, the tragedies of life begin."

"I am not sure that the lady was so frivolous," said Edgar thoughtfully. "Probably she was sick to death of the adulation of empty-headed and empty-hearted courtiers, and wanted to prove to herself and to the assembled court that this particular knight really cared for her. In which case the deep called unto shallow indeed; but the lady was the deep and the knight the shallow."

"I do not agree with you at all," answered Paul rather hotly, "she was vain and frivolous, and wanted to make the other women jealous by showing off the devotion of her young man. And I'd see a woman at Jericho before I'd make an exhibition of my love for her to excite the envy of her rivals."

"Gently, my young friend," said Edgar with his pleasant smile. "If you really loved a woman you'd give her your heart out and out; and whether she cherished it or played with it would be her concern, not yours."

"But no nice woman would want to play with it," remarked Joanna.

"I don't see that," replied Edgar. "Even nice women have their little vanities, and like to prove the extent of their power over men. Besides, if one really loved a woman, one would go on loving her just the same, even if she did the things that one did not consider nice; of course one would hate the things, but that would make no difference in loving the woman."

"Oh! yes, it would," cried Paul. "I should leave off loving a woman at; once if she did things that I did not approve of. I don't say that it would not hurt at the time; but the wrench of thrusting her out of my life then and there would not hurt half so much in the long run as letting her go on withering up my affections and knocking down my ideals. In the former case I should lose her and keep myself; in the latter I should lose both myself and her."

"But, my dear fellow, you wouldn't bother about yourself; you'd only know that you could not afford to lose the woman; so you would rescue her glove from the lions and then button it for her."

"Not I! I should teach her a lesson and then have done with her."

Edgar laughed. "My good Paul, who wants to teach women lessons? You talk as if they were schoolboys, and you really are old enough to know better."

"But do you mean to say, Edgar," asked Joanna, "that you would let any woman make a plaything or a door-mat of you?"

"By all means, if I loved her and she was so minded. If I really cared for her, you see, I should think it the greatest honour to be elevated to the uses of her playthings and her door-mats, and I should count myself unworthy to be adapted to such purposes."

"I call that unmanly," remarked Paul. "Even if a man does love a woman, he owes a duty to himself as well as to her."

Edgar merely chuckled.

"I see nothing to laugh at," quoth Paul severely. "I did not say anything humorous."

"Not intentionally," murmured Edgar.

"It seems to me," continued Paul, "that a man is unfair to himself and to the woman when he grovels at her feet. A sensible and equal affection is better for both of them."

"O noble judge! O excellent young man!" exclaimed Edgar.

"What I am saying is common sense," added Paul, "though you appear to think me harsh and unloving."

"Not harsh and unloving, my dear Paul; merely foolish and ignorant," replied Edgar.

"I cannot see the sense of throwing a glove among lions just for the sake of picking it up again," said the sensible Joanna. "It seems to me a most unnecessary and absurd action."

"It would be nice to feel that a man liked you well enough to perform unnecessary and absurd actions for your sake," added Alice wistfully.

Edgar looked at her, but he said nothing; he only understood.

"It would not please me if men did absurd things for my sake," persisted Joanna. "It would only please me if they did good and noble things to win my regard."

"Joanna is quite right," agreed Joanna's brother approvingly. "Vain women do men a lot of harm."

"Even if they like them?" suggested Alice.

"Of course; the more the men like them, the more harm they do. But the worst of women is," continued Paul, "that they are always wanting to see what will happen if they do certain things. They make a man angry just to see what he looks like when he is angry; and they make a man miserable just to see what he looks like when he is miserable; and they never realize how much gratuitous suffering all this entails upon the man."

"But they haven't the slightest idea how much it hurts," said Edgar. "They know that it is all a sort of histrionic performance or scientific experiment, and they expect the man to treat the matter from the same intellectual standpoint. While as for him, poor beggar! he only knows that he is being broken on the wheel, and he cannot for the life of him see the object of it, as you say."

Now Alice was a good girl as well as a pretty girl, and amiable and unselfish into the bargain; but she was not the reigning beauty of Chayford for nothing, and she now and again wanted--like other queens--to try on her regalia. So she said, in her sweet plaintive voice, "I should so like some of those water-lilies from the far side of the pool."

The said lilies grew under a steep and slippery bank which was the only approach to them, there being no boat on Chayford Pool at this particular time. Both men looked across the pool, and Paul shook his head.

"I'm afraid you can't have them," he said, "till there is a boat on the water. The bank is not really safe after the heavy rains we have had lately."

Alice pouted. "But I want them now; they will be all over by the time the boats are in use."

Edgar looked at her. "Do you really care very much about them?" he asked.

"Of course I do," replied Alice. "They are my favourite flowers, and I want some dreadfully."

"Then you shall have some," said Edgar quietly, walking off in the direction of the lilies, round the end of the pool.

Paul's brow grew very black. "Don't be a fool, Edgar!" he cried roughly. "That bank really is not safe; and a girl's whim is not worth the price of a wetting, especially to a delicate fellow like you. Alice, what are you thinking of? Tell him at once he is not to go."

But Alice's usually equable temper was so ruffled by Paul's brusqueness, and she would not do as he bade her.

"Alice, don't you hear what I am saying? Tell him that he is not to go," repeated Paul.

But Alice's gentle spirit was so sore from the effect of Paul's indifference to her, that she shut her pretty mouth obstinately and would not interfere.

"If Paul is so horrid to me he shall see that other men admire me," she said to herself; "and that will add to my importance in his eyes."

Finding that Alice was obdurate, Paul ran after Edgar to endeavour to dissuade him from so foolhardy an attempt; but before he reached him, Edgar was half-way down the slippery bank.

By keeping "one foot on sea and one on shore," and by grasping the overhanging bough of a birch tree, Edgar managed to gather a handful of the desired lilies; but when he tried to return, his shore foot slipped, and he fell into the water. By that time Paul had overtaken his friend, and was able to help Edgar out of the pool and up the bank; but not before the latter had suffered a thorough soaking, which brought on a severe chill.

Edgar was laid up for several days in consequence of his immersion in Chayford Pool, during which time Paul visited him constantly, and Alice as constantly sent him flowers and books and little scented notes; for her tender heart was wrung with remorse for the consequences of her vanity. Edgar quite understood this remorse and accepted it, for he knew Alice better than Paul did; but remorse was not the particular thing he was wanting from her just then.

"I say, old fellow," said Paul to him one day, "I shall never like Alice again, after the scurvy trick she played you."

"Oh! don't say that," besought Edgar, bravely fighting Alice's battle with Paul, though it was no easy task to him to do so. "It was only a little bit of feminine vanity on her part, which ninety-nine pretty girls out of every hundred would have indulged in."

"Then deliver me from ninety-nine pretty girls out of every hundred!" prayed Paul.

"It really isn't fair to blame her, old boy! She had no idea there was any risk in the thing, and she has been far more sorry for me and more kind to me than I deserve ever since."

"Oh! I don't mean to say that she deliberately planned to make you ill, nor do I deny that her penitence is sincere; all I say is that the shallow vanity which induces a woman to expose a man to danger, or even to discomfort, to gratify a mere whim of hers, is a thing which is simply revolting to me. It is not that I cannot forgive her: I could forgive far worse things than this, if they had their origin in something deeper--even if more dangerous--than mere vanity. I am not at war with her; but I know and feel that I shall never like her again."

Edgar puffed at his pipe in silence for some moments. "I used to think you cared for Alice," he said at last.

"I used to think so too, at one time," answered Paul slowly, "but I know now I was mistaken. I liked her beauty and her pretty sympathetic manner, and I found her very soothing when I was irritable and out of temper. But there was always something which disappointed me in her. She is charming and pleasant, like a walled flower garden; but there is no 'beyond' in Alice. The woman I love must not only have a garden in the front of her character to gladden my eyes every day, but there must also be glimpses of a view beyond, of sunny lands of Beulah and of mountains reaching up to heaven."

Edgar smoked in silence.

"There are three things which combine to produce love," continued Paul, in his youthfully didactic way; "moral excellence, intellectual companionship and physical charm. Of course if one can get the three in a line, one is right for all time; but generally one has to put up with only two. I respected Alice's character and I felt her charm; but intellectually she and I were never comrades; nevertheless I fancied that two conditions out of the three might prove enough. After her conduct the other day, however, I saw that, though sweet and amiable, there was something small and paltry in her nature. Therefore she has now ceased to appeal to the second side of me; and personal beauty alone is not sufficient to satisfy me in a wife. So out of my future life Alice goes."

"Then do you mean to say that, as far as you are concerned, another man has the right to try and win Alice?"

Paul looked up in surprise. "Of course! Why not? You don't mean to say that you care for her?"

"But I do," answered Edgar with his quiet smile; "I have cared for her all her life, and I shall continue to do so all mine. But I stood on one side because I thought you loved her." He was too chivalrous to say, "because I thought she loved you".

"Well, go in and win, old man!" cried Paul, grasping his friend's hand. "But don't you think that her action the other day was rather small and petty?"

"I think I would rather not discuss Alice even with you, my dear fellow. You see, I should knock down any man who dared to say a word against her, and I should be sorry if that man happened to be yourself."

"All right; I beg your pardon. All that I can say is that I think Alice is the luckiest girl I know."

"I'm afraid she won't think so."

"Why? don't you think she cares for you?" inquired the unperceiving Paul.

"I am sure she doesn't, worse luck for me!"

"Well then, she will soon learn to do so, there is no doubt of that, now that she has seen how much you care for her."

Edgar smiled rather sadly. "I have succeeded in teaching her that there is no one in the world but her; but I have not yet taught her that there is no one in the world but me."

"She will soon learn it, never fear! with such a schoolmaster."

But poor Edgar did not feel quite so sure.

And Alice all the time was telling herself that since Edgar loved her so much, Paul was certain to love her too; an illogical argument, perhaps, but one most convincing to the normal female mind. She did not know, poor child! that with her own hands she had shut the door of the Eden which she coveted; and that the hands which have power to shut have not necessarily the power to open again.

Alas for us all that the gate of Eden is so hard to seek, and that so few succeed in finding it! And those of us who are fortunate enough to discover it, must take heed to our ways lest it close with a spring, and open to us never again, knock we never so loudly.