Sunday afternoon is always a characteristic time. Even irreligious
people, who have no principles to send them to sleep, or to cause them
to take a weekly walk, or to induce them to write an unnecessary letter
to New Zealand--why are unnecessary letters to New Zealand invariably
written on Sunday afternoons?--even irreligious people are generally in
an unusual frame of mind on the afternoon of the day of rest. They don't
feel week-day. There is a certain atmosphere of orthodoxy which affects
them. Possibly it causes them to feel peculiarly unorthodox. Still, it
affects them. In the country, in summer especially, Sunday afternoon
lays a certain spell upon everybody. It goes to their heads. They fall
under its strange influence, even against their will, and become, in a
measure, different from themselves. Solemn people are often unnaturally
flippant on Sunday afternoon, and flippant people frequently retire to
bed on the verge of tears. The hearty bow-wow girl is conscious of
being unpleasantly chastened by some invisible power; and the stupid
young man sinks into a strange apoplectic condition, with his chin sunk
on his waistcoat, and his mind drowned in the waters of forgetfulness.
Sloth is in the air, and a decorous desultoriness pervades humanity. It
is as if thunder was in the social atmosphere. The repose is not quite
natural. Those who are in high positions, and therefore have something
to live down to, long to imitate the hapless rustic, and wander forth
among the fields, sucking a straw, and putting their arm round a waist.
Unmelodious persons are almost throttled by a desire to whistle; but the
true singer feels as dumb as a tree. Lunch pervades the human
consciousness, and the prospect of tea engages the mind to an extent
which is neither quite normal nor entirely free from a suspicion of
greediness. Dogs snore much louder than usual, and the confirmed
sufferer from insomnia sleeps with an indecent soundness never attained
by the beauty in the fairy tale. Undoubtedly, Sunday throws the world
entirely out of gear, and that is one of its chief worldly charms. It is
well to be out of gear at least once in the week.
This particular Sunday afternoon had not left the party at the cottage
unscathed, as the acute observer would have immediately seen on
penetrating into the pretty shady garden, with its formal rose walks,
and its delightful misshapen yew trees. Madame Valtesi, for instance,
was knitting, a thing she had scarcely ever been noticed to do within
the memory of man. Mrs. Windsor was going about in garden gloves, with a
spud and a pair of clippers, damaging the flower-beds, with an air of
duty and almost sacred responsibility. Mr. Amarinth was reading the
newspaper like a married man; and Lord Reggie was lying in a hammock,
trying to kill flies by clapping his hands together. Lady Locke was
indoors, writing the unnecessary letter to New Zealand, which has
already been referred to; and Tommy, fatigued to tears by luncheon, had
gone to bed, and was dreaming in an angry manner about black beetles,
unable quite to attain the dignity of a nightmare, and yet deprived of
the sweet repose which is popularly believed to shut the door on the
nose of the doctor.
Yes, decidedly, it was Sunday afternoon!
The weather was very hot and languid, and the bees kept on buzzing all
the time. Bung was engaged in investigating the coal-hole, apparently
under the impression that hidden treasure was not foreign to its soil;
and conversation entirely languished. Madame Valtesi dropped her
stitches, Lord Reggie failed to kill his flies, and Mr. Amarinth
misunderstood the drift of leading articles. The Sabbath mind was very
much in evidence, and the Sabbath mind verges on imbecility. The bells
chiming for afternoon service rose on the still air, and died away; but
nobody moved. Evidently enthusiasm for rusticity combined with religion
was fading away. A silence reigned, and the hour for tea drew slowly on.
But presently Amarinth, after reading all the advertisements on the
cover of his newspaper, put it down slowly and glanced around, with the
puffy expression of a person suppressing a grown-up yawn.
His eyes wandered about, to Mrs. Windsor immersed in amateur gardening
of the destructive kind, to Lord Reggie in his hammock, to Madame
Valtesi dropping stitches in her low chair. He sighed and spoke--
"Newspapers are very enervating," he said. "I wonder what a journalist
is like? I always imagine him a person with a very large head--with the
particular sort of large head, you know, that is large because it
contains absolutely nothing."
"I thought journalists were the people who sell newspapers at the street
corners," said Lord Reggie.
"Oh! I don't fancy they are so picturesque as that," said Esmé, again
suppressing a yawn. "Madame Valtesi, you ought to know; you run a
theatre, and people who run theatres always know journalists. It seems
to be in the blood."
"How can I talk?" she replied. "Don't you see that I am knitting?"
"Are you doing a stitch in time, the sort of stitch that is supposed to
rhyme with nine? I wonder why it is that we always give ourselves up to
occupations that we dislike on Sunday. I have not read a newspaper for
years. One learns so much more about what is happening in the world if
one never opens a newspaper. I once wrote an article for a newspaper,
but that was before I had met Sala. Ever since then I have been haunted
by the fear that if I did it again I might grow like him. I believe he
has lived in Mexico. His style always strikes me as decidedly Mexican. I
met him at dinner, and he told me facts that I did not previously know,
all the time I was trying to eat. Afterwards in the drawing-room he gave
a lecture. I rather forget the subject, but I think it was, 'Eggs I have
known.' He knew a great many. It was very instructive and uninteresting.
I think he said he had patented it. How does one patent a lecture?"
"Esmé, you are talking nonsense!" Madame Valtesi said, dropping two more
stitches with an air of purpose.
"I hope I am. People who talk sense are like people who break stones in
the road: they cover one with dust and splinters. What is Mrs. Windsor
doing?"
"Looking for slugs," said Lord Reggie.
"Why?"
"To kill them."
"How dreadful! They live such gentle lives among the roses. Do let us
talk about religion. I want to try and feel appropriate. Ah! here is
Lady Locke. Lady Locke, we were just going to begin talking about
religion."
"Indeed!" she said, coming forward slowly, and looking a little colonial
after the completion of her task. "Do you know anything about the
subject?"
"No. That is why I want to talk about it. Vivacious ignorance is so
artistic."
"It is too common to be that," said Madame Valtesi. "Ignorant people are
always vivacious, just as really clever men never wear spectacles.
Wearing spectacles is the most played-out pose I know. I wonder the
Germans still keep it up."
"A nation that keeps up their army would keep up anything," said Esmé.
"Germans always talk about foreign politics and native beer. Oh! Mrs.
Windsor has just permitted a slug to live. I can see that by the way in
which she is taking off her gloves and trying not to look magnanimous.
Is it nearly tea-time, Mrs. Windsor?" he added, as she came up, a little
flushed with under exertion. "I only ask because I am not thirsty. Tea
is one of those delightful things that one takes because one does not
want it. That is why we are all so passionately fond of it. It is like
death, exquisitely unnecessary."
"I have found several slugs," she answered triumphantly; "but I can't
kill them. They move so fast, at least when they are frightened. You
would never believe it. I came upon one under a leaf just now, and it
started just like a person disturbed in a nap. It fell right off the
leaf, and I couldn't find it again."
"I suppose slugs have nerves, then," Reggie said, getting up out of his
hammock, "and get strung up like people who over-work. Just think of a
strung-up slug! There is something weird in the idea. A slug that
started at its own shadow. Here is tea! Oh, Mrs. Windsor, where are the
tents to be for the school treat to-morrow?"
"At the end of the croquet lawn. Mr. Smith says the children are
terribly excited about it. Esmé, you must address the children before
they sing their hymn on going away. They always end with a hymn. Mr.
Smith thinks it quiets them."
"I wonder if singing a hymn would quiet me when I am excited," said
Esmé, musing over his tea-cup.
"Are you ever excited?" asked Lady Locke.
"Sometimes, when I have invented a perfect paradox. A perfect paradox is
so terribly great. It makes one feel like a trustee. Can you understand
the sensation? Have you ever felt like a trustee?"
"I don't think I have," Lady Locke said, laughing.
"Then, dear lady, you have never yet really lived. To-morrow I shall
feel like a trustee, for I am going to invent some marvellous pale
paradoxes for the children--paradoxes like early dewdrops with the sun
upon them. Mrs. Windsor, I shall address the children upon the art of
folly, upon the wonderful art of being foolishly beautiful. After they
are tired with their games and their graceful Arcadian frolics, gather
them in an irregular group under that cedar tree, and while the absurd
sun goes down, endeavouring, as the sun nearly always does in country
places, to imitate Turner's later pictures, I will speak to them
wonderful words of strange and delicate meaning, words that they can
easily forget. The only things worth saying are those that we forget,
just as the only things worth doing are those that the world is
surprised at!"
"The world is surprised at nearly everything," said Lord Reggie. "It was
surprised when Miss Margot Tennant married only a Home Secretary! A
world that could be surprised at that could be surprised at anything.
The world is surprised at Esmé because he does not know how to make a
pun, and because he dares to show the French what can be done with their
drama. The world is surprised at me because I never go to Hurlingham,
and because I have never read Mrs. Humphrey Ward's treatises! The world
is even surprised when Mr. Gladstone is found to have been born in
several places at the same time--as if he would be born at different
times!--and M. Zola turns out to be crazily respectable. When is the
world not surprised?"
"Virtue in any form astonishes the world," Madame Valtesi said. "I once
did a good action. When I was very young I married the only man who did
not love me. I thought he ought to be converted. Every one who knew me
was astounded."
"If the world is surprised at good actions," Lady Locke said, "it is our
own fault. We have trained it."
"Nothing is more painful to me than to come across virtue in a person in
whom I have never previously suspected its existence," said Esmé,
putting down his tea-cup with a graceful gesture of abnegation. "It is
like finding a needle in a bundle of hay. It pricks you. If we have
virtue we should warn people of it. I once knew a woman who fell down
dead because she found a live mouse in the pocket of her gown. A live
virtue is like a live mouse. Indeed the surprises of virtue are far
greater than the surprises of vice. We are never surprised when we hear
that a man has gone to the bad; but who can fathom our wonderment when
we are obliged to believe that he is gone to the good?"
"I hate a good man," Madame Valtesi said, with a certain dignity.
"Then you ought to lead one about with you in a string," said Esmé. "It
is so splendid to have some one always near to hate. It is like spending
the day with a hurricane, or being born an orphan. I once knew a man who
had been born an orphan. He had been so fortunate as never to have
experienced the tender care of a mother, or the fostering anxiety of a
father. There was something great about him, the greatness of a man who
has never known trouble. Why are we not all born orphans?"
"I dare say it is a pity," Mrs. Windsor said rather sleepily. "It would
save our parents a lot of trouble."
"And our children a great deal of anxiety," said Esmé. "I have two boys,
and their uneasiness about my past is as keen as my uneasiness about
their future. I am afraid they will be good boys. They are fond of
cricket, and loathe reading poetry. That is what Englishmen consider
goodness in boys."
"And what do they consider goodness in girls?" asked Lady Locke.
"Oh, girls are always good till they are married," said Madame Valtesi.
"And after that it isn't supposed to matter."
"English girls are like country butter," said Esmé--"fresh. That is all
one can say about them."
"And that is saying a good deal," said Lady Locke.
"I don't think so," said Lord Reggie. "Nothing is really worth much till
it is a trifle stale. A soul that is fresh is hardly a soul at all.
Sensations give the grain to the wood, the depth and dignity to the
picture. No fruit is so worthless as the fruit with the bloom upon it."
"Yes," said Esmé. "The face must be young, but the soul must be old. The
face must know nothing, the soul everything. Then fascination is born."
"Perhaps merely an evil fascination," said Lady Locke.
"Fascination is art. I recognise no good or evil in art," Esmé answered.
"In England we have no art, just because we do recognise good and evil.
Glasgow thinks it is shameful to be naked; yet even the Bible declares
that the ideal condition is to be naked and unashamed; and Glasgow,
being in Scotland, naturally gives the lead to England. We have no art.
We have only the Royal Academy, which is remarkable merely for the
badness of its cuisine, and the coiffure of its well-meaning President.
Our artists, as they call themselves, are like Mr. Grant Allen: they say
that all their failures are 'pot-boilers.' They love that word. It
covers so many sins of commission. They set down their incompetence as
an assumption, which makes it almost graceful, and stick up the struggle
for life as a Moloch requiring the sacrifice of genius. And then people
believe in the travesty. Mr. Grant Allen could have been Darwin, no
doubt; but Darwin could never have been Mr. Grant Allen. But what is the
good of trying to talk about what does not exist. There is no such thing
as art in England."
"Shall we talk of the last new novel?" said Madame Valtesi.
"Unfortunately I have not read it. I am told it is full of improper
epigrams, and has not the vestige of a plot. So like life!"
"Some one said to me the other day that life was like a French farce,"
said Mrs. Windsor--"so full of surprises."
"Not the surprises of a French farce, I hope," said Madame Valtesi.
"Esmé, I am quite stiff from knitting so long. Take me to the
drawing-room and sing to me a song of France. Let us try to forget
England."
"Lady Locke, will you come for a stroll in the yew tree walk?" said
Reggie. "I see Mrs. Windsor is trying to read 'Monsieur, Madame, et
Bébé!' She always reads that on Sunday!"
Lady Locke assented.