Her chosen one must be a fighter who scorns odds; his course is always straight, forward and upward, and on the arduous road he will lose all friends and fellows and the sweet companionship of life; his beloved ones even will desert him. All his days will be days of strife, there is no respite for him, no rest and no reward save in the proud consciousness that he will always be in the forefront of the great battle, and is sure sooner or later to pay the penalty of his devotion, and die on the field unknown and unpraised, bleeding from a hundred wounds.
I admire all the greatest: Shakespeare, Goethe, and Cervantes, but I love Heine: it is under his standard we must all fight for many a year to come till peradventure science gives us a new and higher creed.
CHAPTER III
I ought to have begun this volume with my marriage, but it's painful to me to write about it and I must omit many things, for my first wife is still living, and the circumstances and motives of the alliance are not creditable to me. I had been in love with my American girl for six or seven years, as I have told in Volume II of My Life, and I had been on the point of marrying her a dozen times. But again and again she had excited my jealousy, once, at least almost to frenzy; and now at a crisis in my life, she went on the Continent with her mother without saying anything to me beforehand, and a friend told me he had seen them on the Channel steamer with a young man in close attendance. I was sick with rage and jealous imaginings. The crisis that I speak of came through my losing the editorship of the Evening News, as I shall tell in another chapter.
I had got to know my wife, Mrs. Clayton, a widow, some time before at Mackenzie of Seaforth's in Scotland: he was Lady Jeune's brother. My wife had a house in Park Lane next door to George Wyndham's and often asked me to lunch or dinner. She it was who introduced me to the Duke of Cambridge, who lunched with her at least once a week when he was in London, and to the Vyners, who were intimate friends of hers: Mrs. Vyner, in especial, being also a great friend of the Prince of Wales.
Mrs. Clayton had been married to a rich Yorkshireman of good position: she entertained charmingly and knew everyone. I was delighted to accept her invitations and grew to like her very quickly: she was an excellent companion, not well-read, but intelligent and sympathetic, and we soon became close friends.
Finding me down in the mouth one day, she pressed me for the reason and I told her of Laura. She smiled: "No one who cared for you would go off to the Continent in that way: you had better put Laura out of mind." A little while afterwards she wanted to know why I didn't marry some one and turn my back on all the worries.
"Who would marry me?" I asked. "I'm miserable."
At last I asked her to marry me: she consented, and I was content. Archbishop Plunkett came across to London and married us within a fortnight. We went to Paris, to the Hotel Meurice, and I fell asleep, quite satisfied that I had done very well for myself: my political ambitions, at any rate, would soon be realized.
Next morning I had a rude awakening.
Twenty or thirty people had written to me about my marriage, and among them a couple of girls. When I awoke in the morning I saw my wife crying at the table.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Matter!" she exclaimed; "you are a brute. These girls are in love with you and I thought you had no one."
"How dare you open my letters?" I cried, jumping up and going to the table.
But she was furious beyond all manners and I learned, then and there, how much more jealous women are than men. For a long time I could not believe it, but she gradually convinced me of it. If I looked at any woman in the street there was certain to be a row. Time and again she got up in a theatre and walked out, rather than see me stare at some pretty girl, as she said. All this annoyed me the more because I was short-sighted, and could not see anyone distinctly at half a dozen yards.
As soon as I came to realize that she really suffered, I began to school myself, and the schooling went on to the point that I remember when we went into Italy, I used to select a corner in the hotel restaurant and always looked at the bare walls: anything for a quiet life was my motto, and as I had married for selfish reasons, I felt I ought to give full play to my wife's egotism and peculiarities.
I had resolved to make a success of marriage. I was standing for Parliament, for a division of Hackney, and I believed that if I lived properly with my wife I would get into Parliament and soon reach office. I was brought to discount these hopes almost immediately. Two things convinced me. As we were passing through Bologna, on our way to Rome and Sicily, for I wanted to see Rome and Naples again and Palermo and Monreale, I pulled up the blind for some reason or other and looked out of the window, and there, passing in front of me, was Laura with her mother. I thought I should choke; pulses woke in my throat and temples: in one moment I realized that I had bartered happiness for comfort and a pleasant life, that I had blundered badly and would have to pay for the blunder, and pay heavily.
The next incident took place in Rome. Thanks to the English ambassador, I got a young Italian of real ability to read Dante with me. He used to come at ten o'clock each day and read until my wife wished to go for our morning walk, about half-past eleven. One day she came in while I was reading with Signer M. We had just got into a dispute about the meaning of a passage in Dante and I had persuaded him that my view was right. He was a little hurt, and seeing it, I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "You know, I am much older than you, my dear fellow, so you must not mind."
He smiled at me and my wife immediately swept out of the room. I knew something was wrong and as soon as possible finished off the lesson and let my young friend go. When I went into my wife's bedroom I found her almost crazy with rage.
"You caress your friends before my eyes," she cried, "you beast," and she beat my chest with her fists.
I hardly realized what she meant at first, but when it dawned on me, I was furious.
"You are crazy," I said. "No one ever before accused me of that vice: I will never give you another chance. Here ends our marriage." And there it ended.
Her jealousy was almost incredible, and it continued in reference to every one, man or woman, whom I might see and show any liking for. An English friend, a man of good position, with a title and well-off, came to us at Palermo and asked me if I would take him to Monreale and show him the wonders of the church. I said, "Of course"; the row with my wife afterwards lasted for more than a week. Her jealousy was a disease and she suffered agonies through if, but it was also almost always ill-founded, and her mistakes supplied a comic element which often diverted me hugely, in spite of the constant annoyance. For instance, an Irish lady lunched with us one day who was both pretty and intelligent; she talked well and was evidently well-read in both French and English literature. This naturally interested me in her.
After lunch I took her to her carriage, and in the brougham sat one of the prettiest girls I have ever seen. "My daughter Katie," said the lady, introducing me; "we call her 'Kitten.'" The girl laughed charmingly. They told me they were driving downtown and so I begged them to give me a lift. I went into the house for my hat, made some excuse to my wife about going to the office, and ran out to join them. For days afterwards my wife went on about this, saying I had behaved shamefully, shown my admiration for the lady too plainly: her knowledge of French books was only a pretext to show off, and so forth. A month later by chance she met me walking in the park with the pretty daughter; of course, my wife turned and went with us to the mother's house; but my wife never seemed to suspect that Kate and I understood each other very well, and at the door, when I refused to go in, she was quite penitent.