“And what form of creative expression do you adopt, Mr. Macquoid?” I
asked gracefully.
He replied with a modest diffidence:
“The drama. One is but a mouthpiece--a medium; yet the speech from
living lips with the living person before the eyes----”
“You are doubtless right,” I replied; “words are unconvincing; things
must be seen to be believed.”
He noticed nothing, and proceeded to speak of the modern French
chansonette.
Now Caroline, I remembered, had, before her engagement, accounted for a
large portion of her time in putting together the materials for a
comedy, which, however, she had since discontinued under the somewhat
exclusive demands of courtship. I had never been privileged to see the
work in question, but understood that a knotty proposal scene had,
coincidentally, been abandoned precisely at the time that she could, had
she wished, have given it an autobiographical interest. Bassishaw’s
love, besides interrupting the course of art, bade fair to cut it off
altogether just when it would have given the true note that the stage,
it is declared, is aching for. But even young authors have scruples in
making their own affairs public, and so Caroline had willed it.
Nevertheless, it could do Caroline no harm to meet Mr. Eleanor Macquoid;
and Mr. Macquoid himself could do no less than accept resignedly the
latter-day limitations of love in the presence of my sister. After all,
Mrs. Vicars’s salon was for the interchange of ideas.
“My sister,” I remarked, “is interested in the drama, and has herself
half-realised aspirations in the way of comedy.”
Mr. Macquoid would be charmed; and I presented him. I was called away
for a few moments by Mrs. Vicars. By the time I returned Mr. Macquoid
was talking, his remarks being apparently directed to the point at which
Caroline’s comedy had been relinquished.
“It is difficult,” he observed, with a polite interest, “to know what to
do with one’s young leads nowadays. I suppose they must love--the
Philistine still clings to the conventional love-theme--but it is all so
stale. In the old days it was different.”
From the angle of Caroline’s chin I saw that it was anything but stale
to her, and that the remark was unfortunate. She was evidently of
opinion that the subject of love, however much used, had had anything
but adequate treatment, and that in one or two important respects she
was in a position to direct a new light on the literary treatment of it.
“What do you mean, Mr. Macquoid?” she asked.
“Merely,” he replied casually, “that there is so little dash and--and
high-handedness about our modern methods of love-making. You get your
couples together, and they talk in the same weary way--the same old flat
talk, talk, talk----”
I smiled at the description as applied to Bassishaw, whose fluency was
not remarkable, and Caroline looked coldly before her.
“You refer to the stage, Mr. Macquoid?” she asked.
“I refer to modern love-making,” he replied rashly. “We have no romantic
methods left. It has become a business and a bore. When we do get it out
it’s one kiss and thank Heaven it’s over.”
Caroline looked emphatic contradiction. I interposed.
“The Roman soldiery, it is related,” I said, “being once in want of
wives----”
Caroline interrupted me quickly.
“I think, Mr. Macquoid,” she returned, “that people love just as
passionately nowadays as they ever did.”
He might have seen what was the matter, but he was on his own subject,
and went blindly at it.
“True,” he replied, “true. But the surroundings, the circumstances, the
littleness of everyday life--they crush it out. We love by rule and
etiquette, at social functions and in gas-lit drawing-rooms.”
I looked at Caroline for a confirmation of Bassishaw’s methods, but the
personal equation was too much for her contemplation of the artistic
side of the question.
“Of course we do, Mr. Macquoid,” she returned, waiving, it seemed to me,
the part that had to do with the gas. “What else can we do?”
Eleanor Macquoid raised his eyebrows and shoulders in a deferential
gesture that was supposed to explain the way.
“The wind still blows,” he said, “the rain, the open air----”
“The parks,” I suggested, “are already----”
“--but,” he continued, “we wear frock-coats and carry umbrellas. We
marry, and our children resume the same hopeless round. There is no
romance, no poetry, no heroism in it. We become engaged for a certain
period to please our friends, and marry out of consideration for one
another. We have no impulse, no real instinct. We have no--no militant
love.”
He seemed to receive a fresh start from the last phrase, and, alas!
ruined himself irretrievably.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “even those to whom we might look for a vigorous
expression of it--those who lead lives of adventurous excitement--our
soldiers and sailors--are just as bad. As you remarked, Mr. Butterfield,
the Roman soldiers----”
The social system might be attacked, disintegrated, and shown wanting in
the eyes of amateur modern paganism; the spirit of the age might be
arraigned and condemned by twenty juries of the advanced salons; modish
culture might stalk hock-deep in the wreckage of civilisation; but--to
Caroline the prestige of the army was vested in the person of Bassishaw.
Bassishaw’s mode of love-making had been compared to its disfavour with
the practices of Roman legions.
She raised her head disdainfully without glancing at the unconscious Mr.
Eleanor Macquoid, spoke half over her shoulder, and condemned a great
nation in Bassishaw’s defence.
“I don’t think very highly, Mr. Macquoid, of the Romans. I think that
when they--that on that occasion at least--they were horrid,
and--and--unnecessarily rough, and that nice people would never have
done it. It may make good pictures, but one would rather be a pleasant
person than an unpleasant picture. And I don’t care a bit what anybody
says; soldiers are just as good as--anybody else.”
And better, beyond comparison better, her shoulders seemed to say as she
turned away. Macquoid shifted his other elbow to the piano, and then
looked at me.
“I am afraid, Mr. Butterfield, that I have not been able to help your
sister much in the play. After all, the real impulse must come from
within.”
“It is,” I replied, “a pleasing reticence when the real impulse stays
there. The self-sacrifice imposed by art is not necessarily a sacrifice
of one’s self.”
“Very true,” he answered approvingly, and took coffee.