"Faith is the most plural thing I know. We are all supposed to believe
in the same thing in different ways. It is like eating out of the same
dish with different coloured spoons. And we beat each other with the
spoons, like children."
"And the dish gives us indigestion," said Madame Valtesi. "I once spent
a week with an aunt who had taken to Litany, as other people take to
dram-drinking, you know. We went to Litany every day, and I never had so
much dyspepsia before in my life. Litany, taken often, is more
indigestible than lobster at midnight."
"How exquisite the moon is!" said Lady Locke, rising and going towards
the window.
"The moon is the religion of the night," said Esmé. "Go out into the
garden all of you, and I will sing to you a song of the moon. It is very
beautiful. I shall give it to Jean de Reszke, I think. My voice will
sound better from a distance. Good voices always do."
He sat down at the piano, and they strolled out through the French
windows into the green and silent pleasaunce.
His voice was clear and open, and he spoke rather than sang the
following verses, while they stood listening till the rippling
accompaniment trickled away into silence:--
Oh! beautiful moon with the ghostly face,
Oh! moon with the brows of snow,
Rise up, rise up from your slumbering place,
And draw from your eyes the veil,
Lest my wayward heart should fail
In the homage it fain would bestow--
Oh! beautiful moon with the ghostly face,
Oh! moon with the brows of snow.
Oh! beautiful mouth like a scarlet flow'r,
Oh! mouth with the wild, soft breath,
Kiss close, kiss close in the dream-stricken bow'r,
And whisper away the world;
Till the wayward wings are furled,
And the shadow is lifted from death--
Oh! beautiful mouth like a scarlet flow'r,
Oh! mouth with the wild, soft breath!
Oh! beautiful soul with the outstretched hands,
Oh! soul with the yearning eyes,
Lie still, lie still in the fairy lands
Where never a tear may fall;
Where no voices ever call
Any passion-act, strange or unwise--
Oh! beautiful soul with the outstretched hands,
Oh! soul with the yearning eyes!
The song was uttered with so much apparent passion that Lady Locke felt
tears standing in her eyes when the last words ceased on the cool air of
the night.
"How beautiful," she said involuntarily to Lord Reggie, who happened to
be standing beside her. "And how wrong!"
"Surely that is a contradiction in terms," the boy said. "Nothing that
is beautiful can possibly be wrong."
"Then how exquisitely right some women have been whom Society has
hounded out of its good graces," Madame Valtesi remarked.
"Yes," said Reggie. "And how exquisitely happy in their rectitude."
"But not in their punishment," said Mrs. Windsor. "I think it is so
silly to give people the chance of whipping you for what they do
themselves."
"Society only loves one thing more than sinning," said Madame Valtesi,
examining the moon magisterially through her tortoise shell eyeglass.
"And what is that?" said Lady Locke.
"Administering injustice."