Chapter 7

"How strange! To me it means all that is middle-class, all that is of the essence of jingoism, all that is colourless, and without form, and void. It might be a beautiful word, but it is the most debased coin in the currency of language. Certain things are classed as natural, and certain things are classed as unnatural--for all the people born into the world. Individualism is not allowed to enter into the matter. A child is unnatural if it hates its mother. A mother is unnatural if she does not wish to have children. A man is unnatural if he never falls in love with a woman. A boy is unnatural if he prefers looking at pictures to playing cricket, or dreaming over the white naked beauty of a Greek statue to a game of football under Rugby rules. If our virtues are not cut on a pattern, they are unnatural. If our vices are not according to rule, they are unnatural. We must be good naturally. We must sin naturally. We must live naturally, and die naturally. Branwell Brontë died standing up, and the world has looked upon him as a blasphemer ever since. Why must we stand up to live, and lie down to die? Byron had a club foot in his mind, and so Byron is a by-word. Yet twisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies. It is natural to one man to live like Charles Kingsley, to preach gentleness, and love sport; it is natural to another to dream away his life on the narrow couch of an opium den, with his head between a fellow-sinner's feet. I love what are called warped minds, and deformed natures, just as I love the long necks of Burne-Jones' women, and the faded rose-leaf beauty of Walter Pater's unnatural prose. Nature is generally purely vulgar, just as many women are vulgarly pure. There are only a few people in the world who dare to defy the grotesque code of rules that has been drawn up by that fashionable mother, Nature, and they defy--as many women drink, and many men are vicious--in secret, with the door locked and the key in their pockets. And what is life to them? They can always hear the footsteps of the detective in the street outside."

"Society must have its police while Society has its criminals," said Lady Locke, a little warmly.

"Yes. The person who is called a 'copper,' because you can only bribe him with silver, or with gold."

"I think it is essentially a question of the preponderance of numbers," she added more quietly. "Warped and twisted minds are in the minority. If more than half the world had club feet, we should not think the club-footed man a cripple."

"Ah! that is just the mistake that every one makes nowadays. Unnatural minds are far more common, and therefore, according to the middle-class view, more natural than people choose to suppose. I believe that the tyranny of minorities is the plague that we suffer under. How intensely interesting it would be to take a census of vices. Why should we take infinite trouble to find out how old we are. Age is a question of temperament, just as youth is a question of health. We are not interesting because of what we are, but because of what we do."

"But we reveal what we are by our acts."

Esmé Amarinth looked at her with surprised compassion.

"Forgive me," he said. "That is a curious old fallacy that lingers among us like an old faith, unable to get away from people's minds because it has literally not a leg to stand upon, or to walk with. We reveal what we are not by our acts."

"How can that be? By our words. Surely that is what you mean?"

"No, we lie indeed perpetually. That is what makes life so curious, and sometimes so interesting. We lie to the world in open deeds, to ourselves in secret deeds. We have a beautiful passion for all that is theatrical, and we have two kinds of plays in which we indulge our desire of mumming, the plays that we act for others, and the plays that we act for ourselves. Both are interesting, but the latter are engrossing. Our secret virtues, our secret vices, are the plays that we act for our own benefit. Both are equally selfish, and bizarre, and full of imagination. We make vices of our virtues, and virtues of our vices. The former we consider the duty that we owe to others, the latter the duty that we owe to ourselves. If we practise the latter with the greatest earnestness, are stricter about the rehearsals, in fact, it is not wonderful."

"But then, if you explain everything away like that, there is no residuum left. Where is the reality? Where is the real man?"

Mr. Amarinth smiled with a wide sweetness.

"The real man is a Mrs. Harris," he replied. "There is, believe me, 'no sich a person.'"

"But really that is absurd," Lady Locke said. "There must be an ego somewhere."

"If there were, should we not learn a permanent means of satisfying it? We are always sending out actions to knock upon its door, and the answer is always--not at home. Then we send out other actions of a different kind. We knock in all sorts of various ways. Yet 'not at home' is always the answer."

Lady Locke looked at him with a distaste that she could scarcely conceal.

"You are very amusing," she said bluntly. "But you are not very satisfactory. I wonder if you have a philosophy of life?"

"I have," he said, "a beautiful one."

"What is it?"

"Take everything--and nothing seriously. And in your career of deception always, if possible, include yourself among those whom you deceive."

"Esmé! Esmé!" cried Lord Reggie's petulant boyish voice. "Where are you? We have finished the practice, and Mrs. Windsor wants us to come in to supper. Oh! here you are. Lady Locke, the boys say they like my anthem. Jimmy thinks it is beautiful. Isn't he a dear boy?"

"Does _he_ include himself among those whom he deceives?" she thought, as they walked towards the house.

The two tall footmen, more rigidly supercilious in their powdered hair than ever, were already arranging the ecstatic and amazed little choir boys in their seats. Tables had been placed in horse-shoe fashion, and in the centre of the horse-shoe Mrs. Windsor took her seat, with Mr. Smith, who had just arrived, Madame Valtesi, and Lady Locke. Lord Reggie and Esmé Amarinth sat among the boys at the ends of the two sides of the horse-shoe. Tommy was on Lord Reggie's right hand. The tall footmen moved noiselessly about handing the various dishes, but at first a difficulty presented itself. Jimmy Sands was far too nervous to accept any food from the gorgeous flunkeys. He started violently and blushed most prettily whenever they came near him. But he shook his head shyly at the dishes, and as all the other boys followed his lead, the supper at first threatened to be a failure. It was not until Mr. Smith went round personally putting chicken and foie gras and other delights upon their plates, that they found courage to fall to, and then they were much too shy to talk. With their heads held well over their food they gobbled mutely, occasionally shooting side glances at one another and at their entertainers, and watching furtively with a view of discovering whether they were doing the right thing.

Mrs. Windsor found them most refreshing.

"How sweet innocence is!" she languidly ejaculated, as she saw little Tim Wright, a fair baby of eight, drop a large truffle head downwards into his lap. "We Londoners pay for our pleasures, Mr. Smith, I can assure you. We lose our freshness. We are not like happy choir-boys."

That Mrs. Windsor was quite unlike a happy choir boy was fairly obvious. Her fringed yellow hair, her tired, got-up eyes, her powdered cheeks, betrayed her _mondaine_. She was indeed an acute and bizarre contrast to the troop of shyly enchanted children by whom she was surrounded. But Mr. Amarinth looked even more out of place than she did, although he was, as always, tremendously at his ease. His large and sleek body towered up at the end of the long table. His carefully crimped head was smilingly bowed to catch the whispered confidences of Jimmy Sands, and the green carnation, staring from the lapel of his evening coat, seemed to watch with a bristling amazement the homely diversions of an unaccustomed rusticity.

The little boys were all hopelessly in love with Lord Reggie, to whom they had learnt, over the anthem, to draw near with a certain confidence, but they gazed upon Amarinth with an awe that made their bosoms heave, and could not reply to his remarks without drawing in their breath at the same time--a circumstance which rendered their artless communications less lucidly audible than might have been desired. Amarinth, however, was serenely gracious, and might be heard conversing about rustic joys and the charms of the country in a way that would have done every credit to Virgil. Lady Locke could not resist listening to his rather loud voice, and the fragments she heard amused her greatly. At one moment he was hymning the raptures of bee-keeping, at another letting off epigrams on the fascinating subject of hay-making.

"Ah! dear boy," she heard him saying to the ingenuous Jimmy, "cling to your youth! Cling to the haytime of your life, ere the fields are bare, and all the emotions are stacked away for fear of the rain. There is nothing like rose-pure youth, Jimmy. One day your round cheeks will grow raddled, the light will fade from your brown eyes, and the scarlet from your lips. You will become feeble and bloated and inane--a shivering satyr with a soul of lead. The sirens will sing to you, and you will not hear them. The shepherds will pipe to you, and you will not dance. The flocks will go forth to feed, and the harvests will be sown and gathered in, and the voice of the green summer will chant among the red and the yellow roses, and the serenades of the bees will make musical the scented air. By the ruined, moss-clothed barn the owl will build her nest, and the twilight will tread a measure with the night. And the rustic maidens will gather the shell-pink honeysuckle with their lovers, and the amorous clouds will slumber above the exquisite plough-boy with his primrose locks, as he wanders, whistling, on his way. Nature, inartistic, monotonous Nature, will renew the sap of her youth, and the dewy freshness of her first pale springtime, but the sap of your youth will have run dry for ever, and the voice of your springtime will be mute and toneless. Ah, Jimmy, Jimmy! cling to your youth!"

Jimmy looked painfully embarrassed, and helped himself to some pickled walnuts which one of the tall footmen handed to him at that moment. Mrs. Windsor had a vague idea that all poor people lived upon pickles, and she had commanded her housekeeper to lay in a large store of them for this occasion. Having landed them safely upon his plate, Jimmy proceeded to devour them, helping himself to some cold beef as a species of condiment, and keeping an amazed eye all the time upon Amarinth, who surveyed the horse-shoe table with a glance of comfortable and witty superiority.

"I have composed a catch, Jimmy," he proceeded, "a beautiful rainbow catch, which we will flute presently in the moonlight. Do you know 'Three Blind Mice'?"

"Yes, sir," answered Jimmy, with a sudden smile of radiant understanding, while the little boys nearest leaned their round heads forward, happy in hearing an expression which they could well understand.

"How beautiful it is in its simplicity! My catch is even simpler and more beautiful. We will sing it, Jimmy, as no nightingales could ever sing it. Take some more of those walnuts. Their rich mahogany colour reminds me of the background of a picture by Velasquez."

Jimmy took some more with wondering acquiescence, and Amarinth leaned back negligently peeling a peach, and smiling--as if, having begun to smile, he had fallen into a reverie and forgotten to stop.

Madame Valtesi was a little bored. Youth did not appeal to her at all, except in young men, of whom she was pertinaciously fond. As to small boys, she considered them an evil against which somebody ought to legislate. These small boys, though they had been slow in beginning to eat, were slower still in finishing. Their appetites seemed to grow gradually but continuously, with what they fed upon, and it was impossible for the tall footmen to take them unawares and remove their plates, having regard to the fact that, as they never spoke, they were always steadily eating. The feast seemed interminable.

"I am afraid they will all be very seedy to-morrow," she croaked to Mr. Smith, whose asceticism seemed to have been left at home on this occasion. "Surely they are bursting by this time."

"I trust not," he replied; "I sincerely trust not. Much food late at night is certainly imprudent, but really I have not the heart to stop them."

"But they will never stop. I believe they think it would be bad manners."

Mr. Smith cast his eyes round, and, observing that the little boys' faces were considerably flushed, and that an air of mere gourmandising had decidedly set in, suddenly became ascetic again. After making certain that all the people of the house had finished, he, therefore, abruptly rose to his feet, knocked upon the table with the handle of a knife, and muttered a rapid and unintelligible High Church grace. The effect of this was astonishing. A tableau ensued, in which the mouths of all the performers were seen to be wide open for at least half a minute, while spoons full of pudding, or fruit, were lifted towards them, and the round eyes above them were focussed with a concentration of complete surprise and agitation upon the intermittent clergyman, who had sat down again, and was speaking to Mrs. Windsor about chasubles. Then, as at a signal, all the spoons, still full, were pensively returned to the plates, and an audible sigh stole softly round the room. The gates of Paradise were swinging to.

Mrs. Windsor rose, and said, as she went out, to Mr. Amarinth--

"Do teach them your catch now. We will go into the garden. If only they had on their nightgowns? It is such a disappointment."

In the garden, which was rather dark, for the moon had not yet fully risen, Lady Locke found Lord Reggie standing by her side with Tommy, who had formed a passionate attachment to him, and showed it violently both in words and deeds.

"Let us sit down here," he said, drawing forward a chair for her. "Esmé wants me to hear his music from a distance. Tommy, you go in and sing. We want to listen to you."

Tommy ran off excitedly.

Lady Locke and Lord Reggie sat down silently. A few yards away Mrs. Windsor, Madame Valtesi, and Mr. Smith formed a heterogeneous and singularly inappropriate group. Through the lighted windows of the drawing-room a multitude of bobbing small heads might be discerned, and the large form of Esmé Amarinth in the act of reciting the words of his catch.

Lord Reggie looked at Lady Locke, and sighed softly.

"Why are beautiful things so sad?" he said. "This night is like some exquisite dark youth full of sorrow. If you listen, you can hear the murmur of his grief in the wind. It is as if he had shed tears, and known renunciations."

"We all know renunciations," she answered. "And they are sad, but they are great too. We are often greatest when we give something up."

"I think renunciations are foolish," he said. "I only once gave up a pleasure, and the remembrance of it has haunted me like a grey ghost ever since. Why do people think it an act of holiness to starve their souls? We are here to express ourselves, not to fast twice in a week. Yet how few men and women ever dare to express themselves fully?"

Lady Locke looked up, and seemed to come to a sudden resolution.

"Do you ever express your real self by what you say or do?" she asked.

"Yes, always nearly."

"Even by wearing that green carnation?"

There was a ring of earnestness in her voice that evidently surprised him a little.

"Because," she went on, speaking more rapidly, "I take that as a symbol. I cannot help it. It seems like the motto of your life, and it is a tainted motto. Why----"

But at this moment a delicate sound of "Sh-sh!" came from Mrs. Windsor, and the voice of Jimmie Sands, an uncertain treble with a quaver in it, was heard singing Esmé Amarinth's catch. He sang it right through before the other circling voices rippled in--

"Rose-white youth, Pas-sionate, pale, A singing stream in a silent vale, A fairy prince in a prosy tale, Ah! there's nothing in life so finely frail As rose-white youth."

"Rose-white youth," chimed the other voices, one upon one, until the air of the night throbbed with the words, and they seemed to wander away among the sleeping pageant of the flowers, away to the burnished golden disc of the slowly ascending moon.

Lord Reggie, with his fair head bent, listened with a smile on his lips, a smile in his grey blue eyes, and Lady Locke watched him and listened too, and thought of his youth and of all he was doing with it, as a sensitive, deep-hearted woman will.

And the shrill voices wound on and on, and, at last, detaching themselves one by one from the melodic fabric in which they were enmeshed, slipped into silence.

Then Mrs. Windsor spoke aloud and plaintively--

"How exquisite!" she said. "If only they had had on their little nightgowns!"

And Mr. Smith was shocked.

XI.

Lord Reggie had quite made up his mind to ask Lady Locke to marry him. He didn't in the least wish to be married, and felt that he never should. But he also felt that marriage did not matter much either way. In modern days it is a contract of no importance, as Esmé Amarinth often said, and therefore a contract that can be entered into without searching of heart or loss of perfect liberty. To him it simply meant that a good-natured woman, who liked to kiss him, would open an account for him at her banker's, and let him live with her when he felt so disposed. He considered that such an arrangement would not be a bad one, especially as the good-natured woman would in course of time cease to like kissing him, and so free him from the one awkwardness that walked in the train of matrimony. He told Esmé Amarinth of his decision.

Esmé sighed.

"So you are to be a capitalist, Reggie," he said. "Will you sing in the woods near Esher? Will you flute to the great god whom stockbrokers vulgarly worship? I wonder what a stockbroker is like. I don't think I have ever seen one. I go out in Society too much, I suppose. Society has its drawbacks. You meet so few people in it nowadays, and Royalties are of course strictly tabooed. I was dining with Lady Murray last week and mentioned the Prince by mistake. She got quite red all down her neck and snorted--you know how she snorts, as if she had been born a Baroness!--'One must draw the line somewhere.' The old aristocracy draws it at Princes now, and who can blame them? Vulgarity has become so common that it has lost its charm, and I shall really not be surprised if good manners and chivalry come into vogue again. How strange it will feel being polite once more, like wearing a long curled wig, and making a leg and carrying a sword. You would look perfectly charming in a wig, Reggie, and a cloak of carnation velvet with rosy shadows in the folds. You would wear it beautifully, as you wear your sins, floating negligently over your shoulders. Yes, you will be a strange and unique capitalist. The average capitalist has the face of a Gentile, and the stupidity of a Jew. I wonder how the fallacy that the Jews are a clever race grew up? It is not the man who makes money that is clever, it is the man who spends it. The intelligent pauper is the real genius. I am an intelligent pauper."

"You are marvellous, Esmé. You are like some heavy scent that hangs in clouds upon the air. You make people aware of you, who have never seen you, or read you. You are like a fifth element."

"What shall I give you for a wedding present, Reggie? I think I will give you the book of Common Prayer in the vulgar tongue. One would think it was something written by a realist. The adjectives would apply to the productions of George Moore, which are boycotted by Smith on account of their want of style or something of the sort. If George Moore could only learn the subtle art of indecency he might be tolerable. As it is, he is, like Miss Yonge, merely tedious and domesticated. He ought to associate more with educated people, instead of going perpetually to the dependent performances of the independent theatre, whose motto seems to be, 'If I don't shock you, I'm a Dutchman!' How curiously archaic it must feel to be a Dutchman. It must be like having been born in Iceland, or educated in a Grammar School. I would give almost anything to feel really Dutch for half-an-hour."

Reggie was looking a little pensive. The performance of his anthem on the morrow weighed slightly upon his mind. He had an uneasy feeling that Jimmy Sands and his followers would throw nuances to the winds when they found themselves in the public eye. When the critical morning was over he meant to propose to Lady Locke, and in the meanwhile he supposed that he ought to woo her, or court her, or do something of the kind. He was not in the least shy, but he had not the faintest idea how to woo a woman. The very notion of such a proceeding struck him as highly ridiculous and almost second-rate. It was like an old-fashioned notion.

"Esmé," he said, "what do people do before they propose? I suppose they lead up to it in some absurd way. If I were a rustic I could go and sit upon a stile with a straw in my mouth, and whistle at Lady Locke, while she stood staring at me and giggling. But I am not a rustic--I am an artist. Really, I don't see what I can do. Will she expect something?"

"My dear Reggie, women always expect something. Women are like minors, they live upon their expectations."

"Well, then," Reggie said petulantly, "what am I to do? Shall I ask her to take a walk, or what? I really can't put my arm round her waist. One owes something to oneself in spite of all the nonsense that Ibsen talks."

"One owes everything to oneself, and I also owe a great deal to other people--a great deal that I hope to live long enough never to repay. A debt of honour is one of the finest things in the world. The very name recalls a speech out of 'Guy Livingstone.' By the way, I sometimes wish that I had been born swart as he was. I should have pleased Miss Rhoda Broughton, and she is so deliciously prosaic. Is she not the woman who said that she was always inspired to a pun by the sight of a cancer hospital? or am I thinking of Helen Mathers? I can never tell them apart--their lack of style is so marvellously similar. Why do women always write in the present tense, Reggie? Is it because they have no past? To go about without a past, must be like going about without one's trousers. I should feel positively indecent."

"There is no such thing as indecency, Esmé, just as there are no such things as right and wrong. There are only art and imbecility. But how shall I prepare for my proposal? What did you do?"

"I did nothing. My wife proposed to me, and I refused her. Then she went and put up some things called banns, I believe. Afterwards she sent me a white waistcoat in a brown paper parcel, and told me to meet her at a certain church on a certain day. I declined. She came in a hired carriage--a thing like a large deep bath, with two enormously fat parti-coloured horses--to fetch me. To avoid a scene I went with her, and I understand that we were married. But the colour of the window behind the altar was so atrocious, and the design--of Herodias carrying about the head of John the Baptist on a dish--so inartistically true to life, that I could not possibly attend to the service."

"Poor Esmé," said Lord Reggie, in a tone charged with pathos, "I must trust in my intuitions, then?"

"That is like trusting in one's convictions, Reggie. For the sake of the stars do not be sensible. I would far rather see you lying in your grave. Trust rather in your emotions."