"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.