Chapter 6

"Lord Reggie is certainly very unlike his anthem," said Lady Locke, listening a little sadly.

"Reggie is unlike everything except himself. He is completely wonderful, and, wonderfully complete. He lives for sensations, while other people live for faiths, or for convictions, or for prejudices. He would make any woman unhappy. How beautiful!"

"Is it always a sign of intelligence to be what others are not?"

But she received no direct answer to her question, for at this moment Madame Valtesi and Mrs. Windsor came to them across the lawn. They had finished trying the divorce case.

"What is that about intelligence?" Madame Valtesi asked croakily.

"Dear Lady!" said Esmé, getting up out of his chair slowly, "intelligence is the demon of our age. Mine bores me horribly. I am always trying to find a remedy for it. I have experimented with absinthe, but gained no result. I have read the collected works of Walter Besant. They are said to sap the mental powers. They did not sap mine. Opium has proved useless, and green tea cigarettes leave me positively brilliant. What am I to do? I so long for the lethargy, the sweet peace of stupidity. If only I were Lewis Morris!"

"Unfortunate man! You should treat your complaint with the knife. Become a popular author."

She laughed without smiling, an uncanny habit of hers, and turned to the window.

"I hear Mr. Smith saying that he must go," she said.

Mrs. Windsor rustled forward to speed the parting guest.

That night Esmé said to Reggie in the smoking room--

"Reggie, Lady Locke will marry you if you ask her."

"I suppose so," the boy said.

"Shall you ask her?"

"I suppose so. Mr. Smith is going to do my anthem on Sunday."

They lit their cigarettes.

IX.

"Mother," said Tommy with exceeding great frankness, "I love Lord Reggie."

"My dear boy," Lady Locke said, "what a sudden affection! Why, to-day is only Friday, and you never met him until Wednesday. That is quick work."

"It's very easy," answered Tommy. "It doesn't take any time. Why should it?"

"Well, we generally get to like people very much gradually. We find out what they are by degrees, and consider whether they are worth caring for."

"I don't," said Tommy. "Directly he came to play at ball with me I loved him. Why shouldn't I?"

"Tommy, you are very direct," his mother cried, laughing. "Now you have finished breakfast, run out into the garden. I heard Mr. Smith's boys just now. I expect they are in the paddock."

"Athanasius doesn't play cricket badly," Tommy remarked meditatively, "only he caught a ball once on his spectacles. Lord Reggie would never have done that."

"Lord Reggie doesn't wear spectacles," said his mother.

Tommy looked at her seriously for a minute, as if he were taking in the relevance of this contention. Then he said--

"No, he's not such a bunger," and dashed off towards the paddock.

"Where does he get those words?" thought Lady Locke to herself, preparing to go to her own breakfast.

She found Lord Reggie alone in the room reading his letters. He was dressed in loose white flannel, and in the buttonhole of his thin jacket a big green carnation was stuck. It looked perfectly fresh.

"How do you manage to keep that flower alive so long?" asked Lady Locke, as they sat down opposite to one another. For there was no formality at this meal, and people began just when they felt inclined.

"I don't understand," Reggie answered, looking at her across his mushrooms.

"Why, you have worn it for two days already."

"This? No. Esmé and I have some sent down every morning from a florist's in Covent Garden."

"Really! Is it worth while?"

"I think that sort of thing is the only sort of thing that is worth while. Most people are utterly wrong, they worship what they call great things. I worship little details. This flower is a detail. I worship it."

"Do you regard it as an emblem, then?"

"No. I hate emblems. The very word makes one think of mourning rings, and everlasting flowers, and urns, and mementoes of all sorts. Why are people so afraid of forgetting? There is nothing more beautiful than to forget, except, perhaps, to be forgotten. I wear this flower because its colour is exquisite. I have no other reason."

"But its colour is not natural."

"Not yet. Nature has not followed art so far. She always requires time. Esmé invented this flower two months ago. Only a few people wear it, those who are followers of the higher philosophy."

"The higher philosophy! What is that?"

"The philosophy to be afraid of nothing, to dare to live as one wishes to live, not as the middle-classes wish one to live; to have the courage of one's desires, instead of only the cowardice of other people's."

"Mr. Amarinth is the high priest of this philosophy, I suppose?"

"Esmé is the bravest man I know," said Reggie, taking some marmalade. "I think sometimes that he sins even more perfectly than I do. He is so varied. And he escapes those absurd things, consequences. His sin always finds him out. He is never at home to it by any chance. Why do you look at me so strangely?"

"Do I look at you strangely?" she asked, with a sudden curious nervousness. "Perhaps it is because you are so strange, so unlike the men whom I have been accustomed to. Your aims are different from theirs."

"That is impossible, Lady Locke."

"Impossible! Why?"

"Because I have no aims; I have only emotions. If we live for aims we blunt our emotions. If we live for aims, we live for one minute, for one day, for one year, instead of for every minute, every day, every year. The moods of one's life are life's beauties. To yield to all one's moods is to really live."

Mrs. Windsor's voice was heard outside at this moment, and Lady Locke put her napkin down upon the cloth and got up. In performing this action she left her hand on the table for an instant. Lord Reggie touched it with his. She immediately drew her hand away, and her face reddened slightly. But she said nothing, and went quietly out of the room.

Mrs. Windsor was outside speaking to one of the tall footmen. When she saw her cousin she jingled her keys languidly and smiled.

"Good morning, darling," she said. "I am arranging about the choir practice to-night. We are going to entertain all the dear little choir boys to supper afterwards, and they will sing catches, and so on, so delicious by moonlight. Mr. Amarinth has invented a new catch for them. And on Monday the schoolchildren are coming to tea on the lawn, and games. Mr. Amarinth says that charity always begins abroad, but one couldn't have a school treat in Belgrave Square, could one? It would be quite sacrilege, or bad form, which is worse. We must try and invent some new games. You and Lord Reggie must put your heads together."

"Thank you, Betty," Lady Locke said, moving rather hastily on toward the garden. Mrs. Windsor looked after her with the sudden sly suspicion of a stupid woman who fancies she is being discerning and clever.

"Something has happened," she thought. "Can Reggie have said anything already?"

She walked into the breakfast-room, where she found Lord Reggie alone.

He was holding up a table-spoon filled with marmalade to catch the light from a stray sunbeam that filtered in through the drawn blinds, and wore a rapt look, a "caught up" look, as Mrs. Windsor would have expressed it.

"Good morning," he said softly. "Is not this marmalade Godlike? This marvellous, clear, amber glow, amber with a touch of red in it, almost makes me believe in an after life. Surely, surely marmalade can never die!"

"I must have been mistaken," Mrs. Windsor thought, as she expressed her sense of the eternity of jams in general in suitable language.

Meanwhile Lady Locke had gone into the garden. The weather was quite perfect. England seemed to have made a special effort, and to have determined to show what she could do in the way of a summer. The sky had been well swept of clouds, and shimmered in the heat almost as if it had been varnished. The garden was revelling in the growing luxury of warmth. It never looked parched; Mrs. Windsor's gardeners were too agile with the hose for that. The hundreds of roses were letting out their perfume shyly, as pretty children let out their secrets. The carnations nodded to one another against the stone wall that was clothed with Espalier pear trees. The great cedar tree spread its arms out to catch the soft warm breeze in its embrace. Over the tree-tops the swallows were circling with their little characteristic air of discreet and graceful frivolity. Tennyson would doubtless have addressed them. Lady Locke did not even notice them. She was thinking, and too deeply to sit down.

She was in that strange condition of mind that is called being angry with one's self. A miniature civil war was raging within her, in which two mental voices abused one another, and asked one another the most strangely impertinent and inappropriate questions.

One said, "What on earth are you about?"

The other, "You have no right to ask. Mind your own business."

"You are letting yourself go in a way that is humiliating."

"Indeed, I am doing nothing of the kind."

"Why did you blush, then, when he merely touched your hand? He is simply a thoughtless, foolish boy."

"I shan't talk to you any more."

But still the urgent conversation went on within. Lady Locke was, in fact, very angry with herself, and considerably surprised at her own girlishness. For that was what she called it, for want of a better name. She was half disgusted at finding herself so young. Had life done nothing more for her than this? Was she still liable to become an easy prey to emotions that were undignified and inappropriate? It seemed as if her heart were clouded while her mind remained clear, for she saw Lord Reggie quite as he was, and yet she began to like him quite absurdly. Why she was attracted by him she could not conceive. Was it the swing of a Nature's pendulum? She had loved a hard, brusque man, and had found a certain satisfaction in his blunt and not too considerate affection; now she found something interesting in a nature that seemed boyish to softness, that was no doubt full of absurdity, that was, so people said, and he himself boasted, given over to vice, to the tasting of emotions that is unfortunately so dangerous, often so inhuman in its humanity. Perhaps it was really Lord Reggie's personal beauty or prettiness that attracted her, for, say what one will, a pretty boy steps easily into the good graces of even a strong-natured woman. Perhaps it was his fleeting air of weakness combined with daring that drew her to him. She could not tell. She only knew, as she walked among the shy roses, that the casual touch of his hand--a hand, too, that was very like a girl's--had communicated to her quite a startlingly strong emotion. Alas! the motherly feeling seemed to have had its little day, and to have been swept off the stage on which her mental drama was being acted. It had played a principal part, but now an understudy appeared, more full-blooded, stronger, wilder. Lady Locke was very angry with herself among the roses that morning.

She knew she was a fool, but she knew also that she had no intention of making a fool of herself. She had too much character, too much observation, both of others and of herself, to do that.

Madame Valtesi joined her presently, leaning on her cane and fanning herself rather languidly.

"Nature has gone into quite a vulgar extreme to-day," she said. "It is distinctly too hot for propriety. One wants to sit about in one's skeleton. I wonder what Mr. Amarinth's skeleton would be like--not quite nice, I fancy. I have had bad news by the post."

"Indeed! I am sorry."

"My dearest enemy has written to say that she is going to marry again. I did not wish her so much ill as that. It is really curious. If some people have been chastised with whips, they pine after scorpions. Women have such an unwholesome craving to experience the keenest edge of pain, that I believe many of them would cut themselves with knives, like the priests of Baal, if they could not get a husband to perform the operation for them."

"You speak rather bitterly of your sex."

"Do I? A nineteenth-century cynic minus vitriol would be like a goose minus sage and onions. I prefer to be a goose with those alleviations of the goose nature. My enemy married for money the first time, now she is going in for celebrity. The chief drawback to celebrity is that it is generally dressed in mourning; a kind of half mourning when it is notoriety only, and absolute weeds when it is fame. Why should cleverness and crape go together? People are so frightfully solemn when they have made a name, that it is like doing a term of hard labour to be with them for five minutes. Stupidity gives you a ticket-of-leave, and sheer foolish ignorance is complete emancipation, without even police supervision."

"I suppose it is always difficult not to take oneself seriously."

"I do not find it so. My mental proceedings generally strike me as the best joke I know, a sort of Moore and Burgess' performance, with corner men always asking riddles that nobody can ever answer. Mr. Amarinth is taking himself seriously this morning. He is composing a catch for the choir-boys to sing to-night after supper. It is to be parody, or, as he calls it, an elevation of 'Three blind mice,' and is to be about youth and life. It ought to be amusing."

"Mr. Amarinth is generally amusing."

"Yes, he has got hold of a good recipe for making the world laugh and think him clever. The only mistake he makes is, that he sometimes serves up only the recipe, and omits the dish that ought to be the result of it altogether. One cannot dine off a recipe, however good and ingenious it may be. It is like reading a guide-book at home instead of travelling. Dear me, it is too hot! I shall go and lie down and read Oscar Wilde's 'Decay of Lying.' That always sends me to sleep. It is like himself, all artfulness and no art."

She strolled languidly away, still fanning herself.

Esmé Amarinth and Lord Reggie were busy at the piano, inventing and composing the elevation of "Three blind mice."

Lady Locke could hear an odd little primitive sort of tune, and then their voices singing, one after the other, some words. She could only catch a few.

"Rose--white--youth, Rose--white--youth, Rose--white--youth,"

sang Lord Reggie's clear, but rather thin voice. Then Amarinth broke in with a deeper note, and words were lost.

Lady Locke listened for a moment. Then she suddenly turned and went out of the garden. She made her way to the paddock, and spent the rest of the morning in playing cricket with her boy and the curate's children. She caught three people out, made twenty-five runs, and began to feel quite healthy-minded and cheerful again.

X.

Choir-boys at a distance in their surplices are generally charming. Choir-boys close by in mundane suits, bought at a cheap tailor's, or sewed together at home, are not always so attractive. The cherubs' wings with which imagination has endowed them drop off, and they subside into cheeky, and sometimes scrubby, little boys, with a tendency towards peppermints, and a strong bias in favour of slang and tricks. The choir-boys of Chenecote, however, had been well-trained under Mr. Smith's ascetic eye; and though he had not drained the humanity entirely out of them, he had persuaded them to perfect cleanliness, if not to perfect godliness. They appeared at Mrs. Windsor's cottage that evening in an amazing condition of shiny rosiness, with round cheeks that seemed to focus the dying rays of the setting sun, and hair brushed perfectly flat to their little bullet-shaped heads, in which the brains worked with much excitement and anticipation. Their eyes were mostly blue and innocent, and they were all afflicted with a sort of springy shyness which led them at one moment to jumps of joy, and at another to blushes and smiling speechlessness. They were altogether naïve and invigorating, and even Madame Valtesi, peering at them through her tortoise shell eyeglass, was moved to a dry approbation. She nodded her head at them two or three times, and remarked--

"Boys are much nicer than girls. They giggle less, and smile more. In surplices these would be quite fetching--quite."

Mrs. Windsor, too, was quite desolated by the fact that they had not come in what she persisted in calling their little nightgowns. She expressed her sorrow to the head boy, who occasionally sang "Oh! for the wings of a dove!" as a solo at even-song, and was consequently looked up to with deep respect by all the village.

"I thought you always wore them when you sang!" she said plaintively. "It makes it so much more impressive. Couldn't you send for them?"

The head boy, who was just twelve, blushed violently, and said he was afraid Mr. Smith would be angry. They were kept for the church. Mr. Smith was very particular, he added.

"How absurd the clergy are!" murmured Mrs. Windsor aside to Esmé Amarinth. "Making such a fuss about a few nightgowns. But perhaps they are blessed, or consecrated, or something, and that makes them different. Well, it can't be helped, but I did think they would look so pretty standing in the moonlight after supper and singing catches in them--like the angels, you know."

"Do the angels sing catches after supper?" Madame Valtesi asked of Lady Locke, who was trying to restrain the pardonable excitement of Tommy. "I am so ignorant about these things."

Lady Locke did not hear. She was watching the rather fussy movements of Lord Reggie, who was darting about, sorting out the copies of his anthem which the village organist had laboriously written out that day. His face was pale, and his eyes shone with eagerness.

"After all," Lady Locke thought, "he is very young, and has a good deal of freshness left in him. To-night, even among these boys, he looks like a boy."

The choir were quite fascinated by him. Most of them had never seen a lord before, and his curious fair beauty vaguely appealed to their boyish hearts. Then the green carnation that he wore in his evening coat created a great amazement in their minds. They stared upon it with round eyes, scarcely certain that it could be a flower at all. Jimmy Sands, the head boy, was specially magnetised by it. It appeared to mesmerise him, and to render him unaware of outward things. Whenever it moved his eyes moved too, and he even forgot to blush as he lost himself in its astonishing green fascinations.

"How exquisite rose-coloured youth is," Amarinth said softly to Mrs. Windsor, as Lord Reggie ranged the little boys before him, and prepared to strike a chord upon the piano. "There is nothing in the world worth having except youth, youth with its perfect sins, sins with the dew upon them like red roses--youth with its purple passions and its wild and wonderful tears. The world worships youth, for the world is very old and grey and weary, and the world is becoming very respectable, like a man who is too decrepit to sin. Ah, dear friend, let us sin while we may, for the time will come when we shall be able to sin no more. Why, why do the young neglect their passionate pulsating opportunities?"

He sighed, as the wind sighs through the golden strings of a harp, musically, pathetically. These little chorister boys made him feel that his youth had slipped from him, and left him alone with his intellect and his epigrams. Sometimes he shivered with cold among those epigrams. He was tired of them. He knew them so well, and then so many of them had foreign blood in their veins, and were inclined to taunt him with being English. Ah! youth with its simple puns and its full-blooded pleasures, when there is no gold dust in the hair and no wrinkles about the eyes, when the sources of an epigram, like the sources of the Nile, are undiscoverable, and the joy of being led into sin has not lost its pearly freshness! Ah! youth--youth! He sighed, and sighed again, for he thought his sigh as beautiful as the face of a young Greek god!

"Sing it daintily!" cried Lord Reggie, playing the spinet-like prelude with the soft pedal down. "Let it tinkle."

And the little rosy boys tried to let it, squeaking wrong notes with all their might and main, and fixing their eyes upon Lord Reggie and his carnation, rather than upon their sheets of music.

"Thy lips are like a thread, like a thre-eda o-of scar-let, and thy speech, thy spee-eech i-is come-ly," they squealed at the top of their village voices, strong in the possession of complete unmusicalness. And Lord Reggie wandered about over the piano, holding his fair head on one side, and smiling upon them with his pale blue eyes. He trusted rather in repetition than in correction, and eliminated the wrong notes gradually by dint of playing the right ones himself over and over again.

After hearing his anthem about five times, Mrs. Windsor and her guests adjourned to the garden, leaving Tommy Locke seated on the music stool by Lord Reggie's side, gazing at him with excited adoration, and joining in the chorus with all his might.

Amarinth accompanied Lady Locke.

"Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet," he murmured, "like a thread of scarlet. Solomon must have lived a very beautiful life. He understood the art of life, the magic of moods. Why do we not all live for our own sensations, instead of for other people? Why do we consider the world at all? The world taken _en masse_ is a monster, crammed with prejudices, packed with prepossessions, cankered with what it calls virtues, a puritan, a prig. And the art of life is the art of defiance. To defy. That is what we ought to live for, instead of living, as we do, to acquiesce. The world divides actions into three classes: good actions, bad actions that you may do, and bad actions that you may not do. If you stick to the good actions, you are respected by the good. If you stick to the bad actions that you may do, you are respected by the bad. But if you perform the bad actions that no one may do, then the good and the bad set upon you, and you are lost indeed. How I hate that word natural."

"Why? I think it is one of the most beautiful of words."