Lady Locke and Lord Reggie were left alone together for the time. Mrs.
Windsor had gone into the cottage to write a note, asking the curate of
Chenecote to dine the next day. She always asked the curate to dine
during the Surrey week. She thought it made things so deliciously
rustic. Lord Reggie was still looking very tired, and eating a great
many strawberries. He did both mechanically, and as if he didn't know he
was doing them. As Lady Locke glanced at him, she felt that he certainly
fulfilled her expectations, so far as being cool and young went. His
round baby collar seemed to take off quite five years from his age, and
his straw hat, with its black riband, suited him very well. Only the
glaring green carnation offended her sight. She longed to ask him why he
wore it. But she felt she had no right to. So she watched him looking
tired and eating strawberries, until he glanced up at her with his
pretty blue eyes.
"These strawberries are very good," he said. "I should finish them,
only I hate finishing anything. There is something so commonplace about
it. Don't you think so? Commonplace people are always finishing off
things, and getting through things. They map out their days, and have
special hours for everything. I should like to have special hours for
nothing. That would be much more original."
"You are very fond of originality?"
"Are not you?"
"I don't quite know. Perhaps I have not met many original people in my
life. You see I have been out of England a great deal, and out of
cities. I have lived almost entirely among soldiers."
"Soldiers are never original. They think it is unmanly. I once spent a
week with the commander of one of our armies of occupation, and I never
heard the same remarks so often in all my life. They thought everything
was an affectation. Once, when I mentioned Matthew Arnold at the mess,
they thought he was an affectation."
"Oh, surely not."
"They did, really. I explained that he had been a school-inspector. I
thought that might reassure them. But they evidently did not believe me.
They knew nothing about anything or anybody. That would have been
rather charming, only they thought they knew everything."
"I think you must have been unfortunate in your experience."
"Perhaps I was. I know I tried to be manly. I talked about Wilson
Barrett. What more could I do? To talk about Wilson Barrett is generally
supposed to show your appreciation of the heroic age. Of course nobody
thinks about him now. But I was quite a failure. I went to five
dinner-parties, I remember, during that week, and we all conversed about
machine-guns at each of them. I felt as if the whole of life was a
machine-gun, and men and women were all quick-firing parties."
"I suppose we are most of us a little inclined to talk shop, as it is
called."
"But we ought to talk general shop, the shop in which everything is sold
from Bibles to cheap cheese. Only we might leave out the Bibles. Mrs.
Humphrey Ward has created a corner in them."
"You have finished the strawberries after all."
Reggie burst into an almost boyish laugh.
"So I have. We none of us live up to our ideals, I suppose. But really I
have none. I agree with Esmé that nothing is so limited as to have an
ideal."
"And yet you look sometimes as if you might have many," she said, as if
half to herself. The curious motherly feeling had come upon her again, a
kind of tenderness that often leads to preaching.
Reggie glanced up at her quickly, and with a pleased expression. A
veiled tribute to his good looks delighted him, whether it came from man
or woman. Only an unveiled one surpassed it in his estimation.
"Ah! but that means nothing," he said. "It is quite a mistake to
believe, as many people do, that the mind shows itself in the face. Vice
may sometimes write itself in lines and changes of contour, but that is
all. Our faces are really masks given to us to conceal our minds with.
Of course occasionally the mask slips partly off, generally when we are
stupid and emotional. But that is an inartistic accident. Outward
revelations of what is going on inside of us take place far more seldom
than silly people suppose. No more preposterous theory has ever been put
forward than that of the artist revealing himself in his art. The
writer, for instance, has at least three minds--his Society mind, his
writing mind, and his real mind. They are all quite separate and
distinct, or they ought to be. When his writing mind and his real mind
get mixed up together, he ceases to be an artist. That is why Swinburne
has gone off so much. If you want to write really fine erotic poetry,
you must live an absolutely rigid and entirely respectable life. The
'Laus Veneris' could only have been produced by a man who had a
Nonconformist conscience. I am certain that Mrs. Humphrey Ward is the
most strictly orthodox Christian whom we have. Otherwise, her books
against the accepted Christianity could never have brought her in so
many thousands of pounds. I never read her, of course. Life is far too
long and lovely for that sort of thing; but a bishop once told me that
she was a great artist, and that if she had a sense of gravity, she
would rival George Eliot. Dickens had probably no sense of humour. That
is why he makes second-rate people die of laughing. Oscar Wilde was
utterly mistaken when he wrote the 'Picture of Dorian Gray.' After
Dorian's act of cruelty, the picture ought to have grown more sweet,
more saintly, more angelic in expression."
"I never read that book."
"Then you have gained a great deal. Poor Oscar! He is terribly truthful.
He reminds me so much of George Washington."
"Shall we walk round the garden if you have really finished tea?" said
Lady Locke, rising. "What a delicious afternoon it is, so quiet, so
detached from the rest of the year, as Mr. Amarinth might say. I am glad
to be away from London. It is only habit that makes London endurable."
"But surely habit makes nothing endurable. Otherwise we should like
politics, and get accustomed to the presence of solicitors in Society."
"I do like politics," Lady Locke said, laughing. "How beautiful these
roses are! Ah, there is Tommy. You don't know my little boy, do you?"
Tommy, in fact, now came bounding towards them along a rose alley. His
cheeks were flushed with excitement, and, as he drew nearer, they saw
that his brown eyes were sparkling with a dimmed lustre behind a large
pair of spectacles, that were set rakishly upon his straight little
nose.
"My dear boy," exclaimed his mother, "what on earth are you doing? How
hideous you are!"
"Harry Smith has lent them to me," cried Tommy exultantly. "He says I
look splendid in them."
"That is all very fine, but Harry Smith requires them, and you don't.
His father won't like it. You must give them back, Tommy. Shake hands
with Lord Reginald Hastings. He has come to stay here."
Tommy shook hands scrutinisingly, and at once broke conversational
ground with--
"Do you know who the great Athanasius was?"
"He was an excellent person, who will always be widely known to fame for
his omissions. He did not write the Athanasian creed. For that reason he
will always be deserving of our respect."
Tommy listened to these remarks with profound attention, and expressed
himself very well satisfied with this addition to his youthful
knowledge. He thrust his hot hand into Lord Reggie's with the artless
remark--
"You are more clever than Cousin Betty!" and invited him to join
forthwith in a game of ball upon the bowling-green. To Lady Locke's
surprise, Lord Reggie did not resist the alluring temptation, but ran
off with the boy quite light-heartedly. She stood watching them as they
disappeared across the smooth, green lawn.
"I can't understand him," she thought to herself. "He seems to be
talented, and yet an echo of another man, naturally good-hearted, full
of horrible absurdities, a gentleman, and yet not a man at all. He says
himself that he commits every sin that attracts him, but he does not
look wicked. What is he? Is he being himself, or is he being Mr.
Amarinth, or is he merely posing, or is he really hateful, or is he only
whimsical, and clever, and absurd? What would he have been if he had
never seen Mr. Amarinth?"
She began vaguely to dislike Mr. Amarinth, vaguely to like Lord Reggie.
Her boy had taken a fancy to him, and she was an unreasonably motherly
mother. People who are unreasonably motherly like by impulse wholly very
often, and hate by impulse. Their mind has no why or wherefore with
which to bolster up their heart. She went slowly towards the cottage to
dress for dinner, and all the time that she was walking, she continued,
rather strenuously, to like Lord Reggie.
That evening, after dinner, there was music in the small drawing-room,
which was exquisitely done up in Eastern style, with an arched roof,
screens of wonderfully carved wood brought from Upper Egypt, Persian
hangings and embroideries, divans and prayer rugs, on which nobody ever
prayed. Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth both played the piano in an easy,
tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for
deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the
soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his
own, which he frankly acknowledged was very beautiful. He described it
as a hymn without words, which, he said softly, all hymns should be.
There was archaic simplicity, not to say baldness, about it which sent
Mrs. Windsor into exotic raptures, and, as it was exceedingly short, it
made its definite mark.
There was a moon in the night, full, round, and serene, and the French
windows stood open to the quiet garden. The drawing-room was very dimly
lighted, and as Reggie played, he was in shadow. His white, sensitive
face was only faintly to be seen. It looked pure and young, Lady Locke
thought, as she watched him. He was so enamoured of his hymn that he
played it over and over again, and, from his touch, it seemed as if he
were trying to make the Steinway grand sound as much like a spinet as
possible.
Madame Valtesi sat on a sofa with her long, slim feet supported upon an
embroidered cushion. She was smoking a cigarette with all the complete
mastery of custom. Mrs. Windsor stood near the window, idly following
with her eyes the perambulations of Bung, who was flitting about the
garden like a ghost with a curled tail and a turned-up nose. Mr.
Amarinth leaned largely upon the piano, in an attitude of rapt
attention. His clever, clean-shaved face wore an expression of seraphic
sensuality.
Lady Locke listened quietly. She had never heard any hymn so often
before, and yet she did not feel bored.
At last Lord Reggie stopped, and said, "Esmé, the curate comes to dine
to-morrow. Remember to be very sweet to him. I want to play the organ on
Sunday morning, and he must let us do an anthem. I will compose one. We
can get up a choir practice on Friday night, if Mrs. Windsor does not
mind."
"Oh, charming!" Mrs. Windsor cried from the window. "I love a choir
practice above all things. Choir boys are so pretty. They must come to
the practice in their nightgowns, of course. I am sure Mr. Smith will be
delighted. But you must remember to be very high church to-morrow night.
Mr. Smith is terribly particular about that."
"I don't think I know how to be High Church," said Madame Valtesi very
gravely. "Does one assume any special posture of body, or are one's
convictions to be shown only in attitude of mind?"
"Oh, there is no difficulty," said Lord Reggie. "All one has to do is to
abuse the Evangelical party. Speak disrespectfully of the Bishop of
Liverpool, and say that Father Staunton and the Bishop of Lincoln are
the only preachers of true doctrine in England. The Ritualists are very
easily pleased. They put their faith in preachers and in postures. If I
were anything, I would be a Roman Catholic."
"Should you like to confess all your sins?" asked Lady Locke, in some
surprise.
"Immensely. There is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or
woman how bad one has been. It is intellectually fascinating. One of the
greatest pleasures of having been what is called wicked is, that one has
so much to say to the good. Good people love hearing about sin. Haven't
you noticed that although the sinner takes no sort of interest in the
saint, the saint has always an uneasy curiosity about the doings of the
sinner? It is a case of the County Council and Zaeo's back over and over
again."
"Yes, we love examining each other's backs," said Madame Valtesi.