"Jim won't be back till very late, I expect," said Mrs. Windsor to her
cousin, as they passed through the hall that night about twelve o'clock,
after their return from the opera. "I am tired, and cannot go to my
parties. Come to my room, Emily, and we will drink some Bovril, and have
a talk. I love drinking Bovril in secret. It seems like a vice. And then
it is wholesome, and vices always do something to one--make one's nose
red, or bring out wrinkles, or spots, or some horror. Two cups of
Bovril, Henderson," she added to the butler, in a parenthesis. "Take off
your cloak, Emily, and lie down on this sofa. What a pity we can't have
a fire. That is the chief charm of the English summer. It nearly always
necessitates fires. But to-night it is really warm."
Lady Locke took off her cloak quietly, and laid it down on a chair. She
looked fresh and healthy, but rather emotional. She had not been to
"Faust" for such a long time, that to-night she had been deeply moved,
despite the intercepting chatter of her companions. Mr. Amarinth's
epigrams had been especially voluble during the garden scene.
"It has been a delightful evening," she said.
"Do you think so? I thought you would like Lord Reggie."
"I meant the music."
"The music! Oh! I see. Yes, 'Faust' is always nice; a little threadbare
though, now. Old operas are like old bonnets, I always think. They ought
to be remodelled, retrimmed from time to time. If we could keep Gounod's
melodies now, and get them reharmonised by Saint-Saëns or Bruneau, it
would be charming."
"I think it is a mercy something stands still nowadays," said Lady
Locke, lying down easily on the sofa, and leaning her dark head against
the cushions. "If all the old-fashioned operas and pictures and books
were swept away, like the old-fashioned people, we should have no
landmarks at all. London is not the same London it was ten years ago."
Mrs. Windsor lifted her eyebrows.
"The same London! I should hope not. Why, Aubrey Beardsley and Mr.
Amarinth had not been invented then, and 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray' had
never been written, and women hardly ever smoked, and----"
"And men did not wear green carnations," Lady Locke said.
Mrs. Windsor turned towards her cousin, and lifted her darkened eyebrows
to her fair fringe.
"Emily, what do you mean? Ah! here is our Bovril! I feel so delightfully
vicious when I drink it, so unconventional! You speak as if you disliked
our times."
"I hardly know them yet. I have been a country cousin for ten years, you
see. I am quite colonial."
"Poor dear child. How horrid. I suppose you have hardly seen chiffon. It
must have been like death. But do you really object to the green
carnation?"
"That depends. Is it a badge?"
"How do you mean?"
"I only saw about a dozen in the Opera House to-night, and all the men
who wore them looked the same. They had the same walk, or rather waggle,
the same coyly conscious expression, the same wavy motion of the head.
When they spoke to each other, they called each other by Christian
names. Is it a badge of some club or some society, and is Mr. Amarinth
their high priest? They all spoke to him, and seemed to revolve round
him like satellites around the sun."
"My dear Emily, it is not a badge at all. They wear it merely to be
original."
"And can they only be original in a buttonhole way? Poor fellows."
"You don't understand. They like to draw attention to themselves."
"By their dress? I thought that was the prerogative of women."
"Really, Emily, you _are_ colonial. Men may have women's minds,
just as women may have the minds of men."
"I hope not."
"Dear yes. It is quite common nowadays."
"And has Lord Reginald Hastings got a woman's mind?"
"My dear, he has a very beautiful mind. He is poetic, imaginative, and
perfectly fearless."
"That's better."
"He dares do anything. He is not afraid of Society, or of what the
clergy and such unfashionable and limited people say. For instance, if
he wished to commit what copy-books call a sin, he would commit it, even
if Society stood aghast at him. That is what I call having real moral
courage."
Lady Locke sipped her Bovril methodically.
"I see," she said rather drily; "he is not afraid to be wicked."
"Not in the least; and how many of us can say as much? Mr. Amarinth is
quite right. He declares that goodness is merely another name for
cowardice, and that we all have a certain disease of tendencies that
inclines us to certain things labelled sins. If we check our tendencies,
we drive the disease inwards; but if we sin, we throw it off. Suppressed
measles are far more dangerous than measles that come out."
"I see; we are to aim at inducing a violent rash that all the world may
stare at."
Her cousin glanced at her for a moment with a tinge of uneasy inquiry.
She was not very sharp, although she was very receptive of modern
philosophy.
"Well," she said, a little doubtfully, "not quite that, I suppose."
"We are to sin on the house-top and in the street, instead of in the
privacy of a room with the door locked. But what will the London County
Council say?"
"Oh, they have nothing to do with our class. They only concern
themselves with acrobats, and respectable elderly women who are fired
from cannons. That is so right. Respectable elderly women do so much
harm. Mr. Amarinth said to-night--in the garden scene, if you
remember--that prolonged purity wrinkled the mind as much as prolonged
impurity wrinkled the face. Nature forces us to choose whether we will
spoil our faces with our sins, or our minds with our virtues. How true."
"And how original. This Bovril is very comforting, Betty; as reviving
as--an epigram."
"Yes, my cook understands it. That must be so sweet for the Bovril--to
be understood! Do you like Lord Reggie?"
"He has a beautiful face. How old is he? Twenty?"
"Oh no, nearly twenty-five. Three years younger than you are. That is
all."
"He looks astonishingly young."
"Yes. He says that his sins keep him fresh. A sinner with a young lamb's
heart among the full grown flocks of saints, you know. Such a quaint
idea, so original."
"I want you to tell me which is original, Mr. Amarinth or Lord Reggie?"
"Oh! they both are."
"No, they are too much alike. When we meet with the Tweedledum and
Tweedledee in mind, one of them is always a copy, an echo of the other."
"Do you think so? Well, of course Mr. Amarinth has been original longer
than Lord Reggie, because he is nearly twenty years older."
"Then Lord Reggie is the echo. What a pity he is not merely vocal."
"What do you mean, dear?"
"Oh! nothing. And who started the fashion of the green carnation?"
"That was Mr. Amarinth's idea. He calls it the arsenic flower of an
exquisite life. He wore it, in the first instance, because it blended so
well with the colour of absinthe. Lord Reggie and he are great friends.
They are quite inseparable."
"Yes."
"They are both coming down to stay with me in Surrey next week, and I
want you to come too. I always spend a week in the country in June, a
week of perfect rusticity. It is like a dear little desert in the oasis,
you know. We do nothing, and we eat a great deal. Nobody calls upon us,
and we call upon no one. We go to a country church on Sunday once, just
for the novelty of it; and this year Mr. Amarinth and Lord Reggie are
going to have a school treat. Last year they got up a mothers' meeting
instead, and Mr. Amarinth read his last essay on 'The Wickedness of
Virtue' aloud to the mothers. They so enjoyed it. One of them said to me
afterwards, 'I never knew what religion really was before, ma'am.' They
are so deliciously simple, you know. I call my stay in the desert 'the
Surrey week.' It is such fun. You will come, won't you?"
Lady Locke was laughing almost against her will.
"Is Jim to be there?" she asked, putting the china bowl, that had held
her Bovril, down upon the tiny table, covered with absurd silver
knickknacks, at her side.
"Dear no. Jim stays in town, and has his annual rowdy-dowdy week. He
looks forward to it immensely. Will you come?"
"If I may bring Tommy? I don't like to part from him. I am an
old-fashioned mother, and quite fond of my boy."
"But that's not old-fashioned. It is our girls we dislike. We always
take the boys everywhere. You must not mind close quarters. We live in a
sort of big cottage that I have built near Leith Hill. We walk up the
hill nearly every day after lunch. Tommy can play about with the
curate's little boys. They all wear spectacles; but I believe they are
quite nice-minded, so that will be all right, as you are so particular."
"And do green carnations bloom on the cottage walls?"
"My dear Emily, green carnations never bloom on walls at all. Of course
they are dyed. That is why they are original. Mr. Amarinth says Nature
will soon begin to imitate them, as she always imitates everything,
being naturally uninventive. However, she has not started this summer
yet."
"That is lazy of her."
"Yes. Well, good-night, dear. I am so glad you will come. Breakfast in
your room at any time you like of course. Will you have tea or hock and
seltzer?"
"Tea, please."
They kissed.