The Choir Invisible [48]
the stitches as they went into a sleeve. They made him angry. And her face!--over it had come a look of settled weariness; for perhaps if there is ever a time when a woman forgets and the inward sorrow steals outward to the surface as an unwatched shadow along a wall, it is when she sews.
"What a wife she is!" he reflected enviously after she was gone; and he tried not to think of certain matters in her life. "What a wife! How unfaltering in duty!"
The next time she came, it was early. She seemed to him to have bathed in the freshness, the beauty, the delight of the morning. He had never seen her so radiant, so young. She was like a woman who holds in her hand the unopened casket of life--its jewels still ungazed on, still unworn. There was some secret excitement in her as though the moment had at last come for her to open it. She had but a few moments to spare.
"I have brought you a book," she said, smiling and laying her cheek against a rose newly placed by his Testament. For a moment she scrutinized him with intense penetration. Then she added:
"Will you read it wisely?"
"I will if I am wise," he replied laughing. "Thank you," and he held out his hand for the book eagerly. She clasped it more tightly with the gayest laugh of irresolution. Her colour deepened. A moment later, however, she recovered the simple and noble seriousness to which she had grown used as the one habit of her life with him.
"You should have read it long ago," she said. "But it is not too late for you. Perhaps now is your best time. It is a good book for a man, wounded as you have been; and by the time you are well, you will need it more than you have ever done. Hereafter you will always need it more."
She spoke with partly hidden significance, as one who knows life may speak to one who does not. He eyed the book despairingly.
"It is my old Bible of manhood," she continued with rich soberness, " part worthless, part divine. Not Greek manhood--nor Roman manhood: they were too pagan. Not Semitic manhood: that--in its ideal at least--was not pagan enough. But something better than any of these--something that is everything." The subject struck inward to the very heart's root of his private life. He listened as with breath arrested.
"We know what the Greeks were before everything else," she said resolutely: " hey were physical men: we think less of them spiritually in any sense of the idea that is valued by us and of course we do not think of them at all as gentlemen: that involves of course the highest courtesy to women. The Jews were of all things spiritual in the type of their striving. Their ancient system, and the system of the New Testament itself as it was soon taught and passed down to us, struck a deadly blow at the development of the body for its own sake--at physical beauty: and the highest development of the body is what the race can never do without. It struck another blow at the development of taste--at the luxury and grace of the intellect: which also the race can never do without. But in this old book you will find the starting-point of a new conception of ideal human life. It grew partly out of the pagan; it grew partly out of the Christian; it added from its own age something of its own. Nearly every nation of Europe has lived on it ever since--as its ideal. The whole world is being nourished by that ideal more and more. It is the only conception of itself that the race can never fall away from without harm, because it is the ideal of its own perfection. You know what I mean?" she asked a little imperiously as though she were talking to a green boy.
"What do you mean?" he asked wonderingly. She had never spoken to him in this way. Her mood, the passionate, beautiful, embarrassed stress behind all this, was a bewildering revelation.
"I mean," she said, "that first of all things in this world a man must be a man--with all the grace and vigour and, if possible, all the beauty of the body. Then he must be a gentleman--with all the grace, the vigour, the good taste of the mind. And then with both of these--no
"What a wife she is!" he reflected enviously after she was gone; and he tried not to think of certain matters in her life. "What a wife! How unfaltering in duty!"
The next time she came, it was early. She seemed to him to have bathed in the freshness, the beauty, the delight of the morning. He had never seen her so radiant, so young. She was like a woman who holds in her hand the unopened casket of life--its jewels still ungazed on, still unworn. There was some secret excitement in her as though the moment had at last come for her to open it. She had but a few moments to spare.
"I have brought you a book," she said, smiling and laying her cheek against a rose newly placed by his Testament. For a moment she scrutinized him with intense penetration. Then she added:
"Will you read it wisely?"
"I will if I am wise," he replied laughing. "Thank you," and he held out his hand for the book eagerly. She clasped it more tightly with the gayest laugh of irresolution. Her colour deepened. A moment later, however, she recovered the simple and noble seriousness to which she had grown used as the one habit of her life with him.
"You should have read it long ago," she said. "But it is not too late for you. Perhaps now is your best time. It is a good book for a man, wounded as you have been; and by the time you are well, you will need it more than you have ever done. Hereafter you will always need it more."
She spoke with partly hidden significance, as one who knows life may speak to one who does not. He eyed the book despairingly.
"It is my old Bible of manhood," she continued with rich soberness, " part worthless, part divine. Not Greek manhood--nor Roman manhood: they were too pagan. Not Semitic manhood: that--in its ideal at least--was not pagan enough. But something better than any of these--something that is everything." The subject struck inward to the very heart's root of his private life. He listened as with breath arrested.
"We know what the Greeks were before everything else," she said resolutely: " hey were physical men: we think less of them spiritually in any sense of the idea that is valued by us and of course we do not think of them at all as gentlemen: that involves of course the highest courtesy to women. The Jews were of all things spiritual in the type of their striving. Their ancient system, and the system of the New Testament itself as it was soon taught and passed down to us, struck a deadly blow at the development of the body for its own sake--at physical beauty: and the highest development of the body is what the race can never do without. It struck another blow at the development of taste--at the luxury and grace of the intellect: which also the race can never do without. But in this old book you will find the starting-point of a new conception of ideal human life. It grew partly out of the pagan; it grew partly out of the Christian; it added from its own age something of its own. Nearly every nation of Europe has lived on it ever since--as its ideal. The whole world is being nourished by that ideal more and more. It is the only conception of itself that the race can never fall away from without harm, because it is the ideal of its own perfection. You know what I mean?" she asked a little imperiously as though she were talking to a green boy.
"What do you mean?" he asked wonderingly. She had never spoken to him in this way. Her mood, the passionate, beautiful, embarrassed stress behind all this, was a bewildering revelation.
"I mean," she said, "that first of all things in this world a man must be a man--with all the grace and vigour and, if possible, all the beauty of the body. Then he must be a gentleman--with all the grace, the vigour, the good taste of the mind. And then with both of these--no