University of Virginia Library

41. CHAPTER XLI.
A LEAF FROM MRS. CHAPPELLEFORD'S DIARY.

“April 15th.—This is my twenty fifth birthday,
speaking after Babbage—my thousandth,
judging by my own consciousness, for it seems
to me that the days when I was what I remember
to have been float backward faster
than the other current carries me forward, so
that youth retreats while age does not advance;
for I am not old yet, I suppose. And
yet, if life is a condition of progress, what is
left for me to learn? I mean, of course, personally;
for of intellectual growth and attainment,
there is no end. But without wishing
to be weak or sentimental, I cannot but wonder
if science and metaphysics, mathematics
and philosophy, are the highest aims of our
being. Suppose we heap our individual
mound of sand a few grains higher than that
of our brother-ant next door, what then? Is
it large enough to hold us, after all? Or, on
the other hand, is it worth while to heap so
toilfully a mound beneath which to bury ourselves?
Cheops always seemed to me a victim
of Almighty irony. He erected the Pyramid,
and his atom of mummy was lost in the immensity
of his memorial.

“The pyramid of acquirement these men
about me are piling for themselves will not
last as long as the stones, and it is so much
harder to build it.

“Well, then, what do we live for? To learn,
is the best answer, and that is but poor. Five
years ago, I should have said, to love; but
what puerile trash that all becomes as one
gets on a little! To be happy? It is only
another form of the same childish dream.
How can a rational, thinking being, with a
mind and reasoning powers properly developed,
talk of being happy, when the very fundamental
principle of existence is disappointment?

The child enters life with hopes
amounting to certainties, with ardent friendships,
loves, theories. He travels on and sees
them drop away, or, remaining, change like
fairy gold to worthless rubbish in his hands,
until, at the last, he stands beggared of all
but the experience he has bought, the knowledge
he has won. But is this experience the
end of life? Is the means also the result?
Must we give the price of the candle and
play the game through, however little worth
we find it?

“And then? What comes next? Mr. Chappelleford
tells me, resolution into the elements,
and reproduction in other forms; but what a
trivial idea that seems as the grand motive of
creation! Like the games of everlasting I
used to play with grandmamma, when we
always put the cards we gained at the back of
those in our hands, and so never came to the
end. Is eternity one grand game of everlasting,
with the same stupid kings, and simpering
queens, and contemptible knaves, always
recurring without variation or amendment?
But my grandfather and the rest of his genus
tell me that after life and death come heaven
and hell, and so describe a sort of vaporous,
gaseous existence for the good, and a Mumbo-jumbo
punishment for the wicked; the one too
tedious, the other too absurd for belief. Pious
people of more modern education promulgate
various theories—some tolerably interesting,
others tedious, none of them vital—at least to
me. It may be that it is this “me” that is
wrong, and yet how? To return to the pleasant
places where these people dwell would
be like returning to bread and milk, the
Arabian Nights, and my belief that heaven
was to be scaled from the top of Moloch
Mountain. I cannot go back, and to go on
looks inexpressibly dreary and tedious.

“I will study Sanscrit, and help Mr. Chappelleford
in his new work upon the mother of
languages. But that is only a way of passing
time; and how idle to invent ways of passing
time when we are waiting for nothing!

“I never talked of these matters with Marston
Brent. I wonder what convictions he
has arrived at, for he will not fail to have
wrought some answer to the eternal problem?
I should like to see that man again, and study
him as a specimen of human nature. I hope
he, like me, has forgotten all that foolish past,
and either has married the girl of whom they
told me or contented himself with marrying
no one. I am glad I married. Mr. Chappelleford
has fulfilled his promises to the letter.
He has taught me much that is worth knowing,
and untaught me more that was best
abandoned. He says now that I am more
personal than womanly, and he congratulates
himself and me upon the improvement.
Well, I suppose it is one; but I sometimes
envy Juanita with her milliners, and upholsterers,
and cosmetics, and Laforéts. There
is no danger of her exhausting her world, or
asking herself `Cui bono?' Well, I will study
Sanscrit—”

The opening door made Beatrice glance
round, and the sentence was not finished, for
Mr. Chappelleford entered with an open letter
in his hand.

“My good child, prepare for sad news,”
said he kindly. “I have here a letter from
Dr. Bliss, who tells me that your grandfather
—you know, Beatrice, that he has been failing
for months—”

“And he is dead?” asked Beatrice calmly.

“Yes, my dear. He died yesterday about
noon, quietly, and without suffering, Bliss
says. You will wish to go to Milvor, I suppose.”

“Certainly, at once.”

“I have already ordered a carriage and
some lunch, for you must eat before we set
out.”

“We?”

“Of course, I shall go with you; I am your
husband.”

“True, I had forgotten.”

And Beatrice locked her desk, and left the
room quietly, and without a tear. Mr. Chappelleford
looked after her thoughtfully.

“I am glad of this,” said he at last. “She
has lived upon the heights long enough for
once. A little human emotion will be a relief,
and she will return by and by with fresh
ardor to the region of abstractions. The atmosphere
is too thin for a woman to breathe
without occasional relief. After this, we will
go to the West to make those mound explorations.”