Perior

“ Not that Mary thought Mr. Perior nobody. To her he was everybody; but that knowledge was her painful joy, a perception lifting her above Camelia. Camelia judged by the world’s gross standards, and, by those standards, she must stoop in loving Perior.
That Camelia should stoop in the world’s eyes, that Camelia should do anything but soar, were unimaginable things. So her ignorance made her knowledge more bitter. The man she loved, adored,—her bleached, starved nature spreading every flower, stretching every tendril, her ideal and her rapture towards him,—that man did not see her, even. ”

“ No blame could attach itself to Arthur’s reticence; if reticence there were it was on the highest grounds. It was the world’s base, materialistic chatter that jarred, its weighing of her charm and loveliness against his wealth and prominence merely. Perior weighed Camelia’s merits against Arthur’s. In his heart of hearts he did not consider Camelia fitted to make a high-minded man happy—and some dim foreboding of this fact no doubt chilled her lover’s resolution. Perior, however, was not logical. He might not approve of Camelia, but that Lady Henge should disapprove nettled him. ”

“ Lady Paton sobbed out the sad facts. Her own blindness; poor Mary’s long concealment—too successful; the doctor’s fatal verdict.
“I was blind, too,” said Perior, “though I always feared it.”
“Ah! that is the cruellest part of it! And her indifference—she does not seem to care; she does not speak to any of us.”
“Not to Camelia? Is Camelia with her?”
Perior’s heart must spare some of its aching to his unhappy Camelia.
“She has not once left her. She is so brave; I can only cry; but it has made Camelia already different; a strength, a gentleness, yet a despair. ”

“ Perior, too, had learned to smile, and Camelia was baffled. He would not scold her. After all, he counted for very little, so Camelia assured herself as she entered upon her London life, and he should see that she could be indifferent with far more effectiveness. Perior saw little of her during those years. The little he saw on his rare visits to London confirmed his grim conviction. She was a pretty, clever, foolish, worthless creature; her frankness threw no dust into his eyes. She might own herself a self-seeking worldling, and she did not overshoot the mark. ”

“ Camelia sobbed, and stumbled in the heavy road, so that Perior gave her his arm and held her, looking pityingly, more than pityingly, at the bent head and shaking shoulders. Mary felt her own lack of emotion to be unbecoming, but, indeed, she had none, was conscious instead of a dislike for poor, dead Jane.
For Mary was a most unhappy creature. Outside the inner circle, where Perior and Camelia wondered about, and evaded, one another, the very closeness of constant intercourse making blindness easy, Mary saw the truth, that Camelia did not see, very clearly. ”

“ He recognized in her his own scorn for the world without his ideal, which would not permit him to stoop and use it; but, so Perior thought, Camelia knew no ideals; reality did not hurt her—she met it with its own weapons. One did not conquer an immoral world by moral methods; and if one lived in it, not to conquer it would be intolerable. The scorn no doubt excused her to herself, but it hedged her round with a sort of stupidity from which Perior’s quick recognition of moral beauty preserved him. Ethical worth had come to be everything to him. Camelia simply did not see it. ”

“ He returned her look, smiling with a little constraint.
“We must be more together,” Camelia went on, “we must take up our studying. No, Mr. Rodrigg, I can’t walk with you this morning, I am reading the Agamemnon with Mr. Perior.” Camelia’s eyes, mouth, the delicately long lines of her cheek, quivered with the half malicious, half tender smile that tilted every curve and every shadow from calm to roguery.
“How Mr. Rodrigg will hate me, to be sure,” said Perior, who at that moment felt that he would like to kiss his bunch of primroses—an illusion of dewiness possessed him. ”

“ I don’t own to it, mind; but is not the soul in our modern sense a disease of the body?”
“Oh, Camelia!” said Lady Paton, looking up with eyes rounded. Camelia’s smile reassured her somewhat, and she glanced for its confirmation at Perior.
Mary Fairleigh, in her distant seat, carefully drew her silk about the contour of an alarming flower.
“Never mind, Lady Paton, she doesn’t shock me at all,” said Perior.
“I am glad of that, Michael; she will make herself misunderstood. Camelia dear, it is one o’clock. The others must be in the drawing-room. Shall we go there?” ”

“ She was not resentful on the score of Mary’s revelations; on the other hand, Mary’s charitable reticence did not move her to gratitude. After all, it was a very explicable reticence; her own confession to Perior had lent it the kindest glamour. For Mary to have told Perior all would have been a humiliating plea for his negative; and the negative he could not have given with sincerity. Mary had felt that. No; Camelia’s analysis disowned any obligation; but neither was she conscious of the least anger. A mean revengefulness was not in her nature, she was as easy towards Mary as towards herself ”

“ Perior observed her laughingly—Mrs. Fox-Darriel had as yet seen no hatchets.
“No danger of your being taken for a blue-stocking, Camelia.”
“No, indeed! I see to that!”
“You little hypocrite,” said Perior.
Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s eyebrows arched into her fringe. She got out of her chair trailingly.
“I will go into the garden. Lady Paton is there, Camelia? I think so. I know that you have reminiscences. I am in the way.”
“You are, rather,” said Perior, when she had gone out. “A very disagreeable face that, Camelia; how do the women manage to look so hard nowadays?” ”

“ Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s eye—a none too friendly eye—travelled meanwhile up and down the “vial of wrath.” Clever, eccentric, he had evidently made an impression upon the not easily impressed Camelia, and his clean-shaved face, and the rough gray hair that gave his head a look of shaggy heaviness, seemed to express both qualities significantly.
“Did you ride over?” Camelia asked. “No? Hot for walking, isn’t it? Frances, my friend Mr. Perior.”
“You live near here, Mr. Perior?” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, glancing at his boots, which were peculiarly solid and very dusty. ”

“ Her eyes, in all their helpless guilt and terror, met his look of non-absolving pity.
“It means that if one is good one is often trodden upon. We must accept the responsibility for Mary’s unhappiness. My poor Camelia,” Perior added, in tones of saddest comprehension, and he stretched out his hand to her. But Camelia stood still. ”

“ Perior felt the blood rush to his head. The first impulse of his thought was to see in Arthur the righteously angered friend come to heap upon him the shame of his discovered betrayal. He would of course bear the responsibility as the chiefly false and traitorous. The woman would shield herself; it was the right of her weakness, and his deep, unreasonable loyalty to Camelia, a loyalty paternal in its force and helplessness, accepted the vicarious position, rushed over and confused every self-asserting instinct. ”

“ Camelia as she undressed that night decided that Perior was responsible for her still smarting irritation. It was too tiresome. Of course, apparently she had not behaved nicely; but, in neatly analyzing the whole affair, she could find herself guilty of nothing worse than a little humorous gaiety—that took an old friend’s sympathy for granted— (could one not think things one did not say? she had only thought aloud—to him) , and a little kindly hypocrisy practised every day by models of uprightness. Perior’s rudeness set a standard by which social conventions were guilty of black falseness. ”

“ She loved Perior, and he did not love her; but those facts in no way touched the other unalterable facts—a cruelty, a selfishness, a blindness, hideous beyond words.
Yet now she did not think of this guilt, irrevocable as it was.
Mary—Mary—Mary. The horse’s hoofs seemed to beat out the cry! Mary and her fate. Camelia stood with Mary against that fate; but her attitude of rebellion was even fiercer, more determined than poor Mary’s flickering light could have sustained. Mary good—with nothing. Virtue not its own reward. Suffering, crushing, unmerited suffering, eating away the poor empty life. ”

“ To a man who had expected less of life the circumstances might have been more amenable and far more endurable, but Perior had the ill-luck to be born with an unmanageable instinct for the best, with an untamable scorn for the second-best. ”

“ Perior did not see the tears, for he still looked away, saying in a voice that showed how clearly cut, how definitely perceived was the conviction, “The success of marrying a man you love little enough to lie to. Henge could not forgive you if he knew that you had lied to him and to his mother, yet he adores you—you have that on false pretences too. There is the truth for you, Camelia; and, upon my soul, I am sorry for Arthur. I pity him from the bottom of my heart.” ”

“ But if you do love me—choose me, as you say; if I do love you—which I have not said—and will not say, will not say even to exculpate my folly of last night—even then, Camelia! I would not marry a woman whom I despise.”
“Despise?” she repeated. Her voice was a toneless echo of his. She weighed the word, and found it heavy, as he saw. Her eyes dwelt on his mutely, and there dawned slowly in them the terror of the eternal negative that rose between her and him.
“You are not good enough for me, Camelia,” said Perior. ”

“ That is mean, despicable,” said Perior, planting his slashes very effectively.
“To laugh with you was like laughing to myself,” said Camelia, steadying her lips, and wondering vaguely if victory might not yet be wrested from this humiliation; his inflexible cruelty forced from her that half appeal. “It was merely thinking aloud, and to tell a few kindly little fibs—as every woman does, a hundred times a day—is not flattery.”
“To gain a person’s liking on false pretences is base; and I don’t care how many women do it—nor how often they do it. I shan’t argue with you, Camelia. ”

“ She looked up, lifting her face to his.
“To be fond of you, Camelia,” said Perior. “I can’t say more than that!”
“Because you won’t believe in me! Can’t believe in me! And I can’t live without you to help me! Haven’t you seen, all along, that you were the only one I cared about? Half my little naughtinesses were only to provoke you, to make you angry, to see that you cared enough to be angry. All the rest—the worldliness—the using of people—yes, yes, I own to it!—but no one was better than I! Why should I have been good when no one else is? ”

“ The Friday Review sliding suddenly from her knees gave her a nervous pang that tingled to her finger-tips, and when she stooped to pick it up Perior’s personality seemed to confront her. She cowered before it. The hot blood beat in her head. Only by degrees, as her mind faltered over extenuations, did she quiet herself. Her hidden unhappiness—her love, it had been like a blundering hand thrust among her heart-strings; how could she have helped the sharp anger in which her naked anguish clothed itself? Lastly, but with a kind of shame, Mary’s displeasing personality made a subtle condonation ”

“ You are cruel, yes, and mean; for only my sincerity gives you the power to wound me. You are a somebody; though the whole world were blind, I can see; that is why I love you. Do you believe me when I tell you that I love you?” Camelia did not come closer as she asked it, but her poised expectancy of look seemed to claim him. Perior folded his arms and stared at her. ”

“ Perior watched her, half-dreaming, half-dazzled. The long moments of acute, delicious contemplation drifted by as peacefully, as stilly as falling rose-petals, muffling all outer jars and murmurs, blurring the past, the future, making the present enchanted.
When she was far off his heart beat for her return, and when the swaying, hovering whiteness came near he shrank from the nearness. The unexpected sweeping turn that caught her away suddenly into the half-visionary distance stabbed him through with a pang of relief and disappointment. ”

“ Mary’s virtues were all peculiarly unremunerative, they sought, and obtained, no reward.
Towards the beginning of December Camelia’s despair threw itself into action. The rankling sense of Perior’s scorn at first stupefied, and at last roused her. Before him she had felt her powerlessness. His rocky negative had broken her. He would not change—not a thought of his changing stirred her deep hopelessness; but she herself might change—merit at least a friendship unflawed—cast off crueller accusations.
She must be good, she must struggle from the shell; she must realize, however feebly, his ideal. ”

“ Perior, grimly conscious of its illusory foothold over chasms, could afford a certain chivalry, could at least restrain the brutality of a push into the void. He didn’t like the idea of Camelia, his smiling Camelia, really scared, tumbling from her pinnacles into the abyss where rocky facts awaited her.
“I am sensible to the compliment”—the mild irony of his tone was a warning of insecurity—“though you will own that it is, in some senses, a dubious one; but it’s very kind in you, who could have anybody, to stoop to a nobody. ”