The big loggia at Grote was set into the house; the dining-room lay
along one side of it, the Italian drawing-room along the other, and a
door in the inner wall of it communicated with the entrance hall. The
open front was supported by six Corinthian columns, two set against the
side walls, while the other four divided into equal spaces its frieze of
metopes and triglyphs. It was raised a couple of steps above the broad
gravel walk which ran along the southern façade of the house, and
bordered the lawn. On the other side of that was the stone-balustraded
terrace which fringed the edge of the beech-clad hill that plunged
steeply down into the Thames valley. A broad opening had been cut
through these woods opposite the centre of the terrace, and from the
iron gates there you could look down on the mirror of the stream below
which reflected the roofs and orchards of the village opposite. They
were still milky-green with the verdure of the spring, and ran on past
the house and formed the broad, mile-long avenue that led to the
high-road beyond the park-gates.
The loggia gave the impression of great space and coolness on this
broiling June afternoon. It was floored with squares of black and white
marble, over which were laid some half dozen big Persian rugs, but the
walls were bare save for panels framed in stone wreaths of fruit and
flowers. In the centre of it stood a long dining-table, from a corner of
which lunch had only recently been cleared away, and Lady Grote and a
couple of friends who had arrived with her that morning, were lounging
in a group of easy chairs that stood just inside the strip of sunlight
lying along the edge of the steps.
Lady Grote had just rejoined the other two after seeing off Mr.
Stoughton, the inexorable Socialist who had also lunched with her, and
had now returned to London.
“He practically told me that Grote and I were thieves,” she remarked
rather plaintively. “He said that all this”--and she indicated the
surroundings--“really belonged to the human race in general and not to
us. We had stolen it.”
“If you are thieves,” said Lord Thorley in his calm, philosophical
voice, “then he is the receiver of stolen goods. He ate and drank in
your pilferings with immense appetite.”
“I know. I thought it was not quite consistent of him. And he has gone
to the station in the Rolls-Royce of which I have robbed him and others.
But after all, why be consistent? Gracie is consistent, but I can’t
think of anybody else who is.”
Lady Massingberd stirred gently in her chair.
“Is that a testimonial or an accusation?” she asked.
“I think it’s an accusation. It’s inconsistent to be consistent, if you
see what I mean.”
“I think I should perhaps see better if you explained.”
Helen Grote considered a moment, half closing her eyes as if to focus
her ideas.
“What I mean is this,” she said. “That we are each of us such a bundle
of opposite and contradictory tendencies and desires, the results of
heredity, if you will, or of environment, that unless we continually did
a large quantity of contradictory things, we shouldn’t be consistent
with ourselves, or express ourselves. Mr. Stoughton, for instance,
expresses himself beautifully: he is a Socialist and says that we have
no right to possess anything nice, or to money which we didn’t earn: we
are thieves and receivers of stolen goods. I am sure he is sincere in
his outrageous belief. But on the other hand, he is clearly very fond of
large quantities of food and wine, and likes going to the station in an
expensive and stolen motor-car. That again is quite sincere, and he is
right to eat and drink the stuff I have stolen. He wouldn’t be
consistent with himself if he was not inconsistent. I really believe
that means something.”
“Let us go on talking about me,” said Lady Massingberd. “We seem to have
strayed from the subject.”
“Not far. I was coming back to you. You are consistent. You are
completely convinced that nothing in the world matters two straws, and
that the sole object of life is to extract from it all the enjoyment you
can.”
“And there you are!” remarked Lord Thorley, shielding his eyes against
the glare.
“I don’t think I’m there at all. You make me out not only completely
selfish, but also utterly shallow.”
“No, not shallow,” said Lady Grote. “No one with convictions is shallow.
You don’t drift in the least, you go steaming away in a well-defined
line, with a wake of foam and waves behind you. And occasional corpses
which you have thrown overboard,” she added, to complete the picture.
“Thank you, darling. And do explain also why I’m not selfish. It would
make me feel more comfortable.”
“Certainly I can explain that: it is quite easy. You do quantities of
kind and unselfish things. It gives you enjoyment to do them.”
“It would be very kind of you, for instance, to pass me those matches,”
remarked Henry Thorley. “I’m sure you would enjoy it. Thanks.”
Lady Massingberd sat stiffly up in her chair. She looked rather like a
smart young guardsman who had chosen to dress in a tailor-made gown.
“That is just like you, Helen,” she said. “You always impute low motives
to people. You are good enough--I don’t know about your sincerity--to
say I do kind things, but only because it amuses me.”
“No, I never said that. I said you enjoyed it,” said Helen. “I don’t
think that anything amuses you.”
“Worse and worse. I have no sense of humour, then.”
“In that sense you haven’t. Things don’t tickle you, as Americans say,
as they tickle me. You didn’t see the humour of Mr. Stoughton, for
instance. You took him quite seriously: I had to point out to you the
humour of his inconsistencies. I don’t say for a moment that you can’t
see a funny joke, but you don’t see a serious joke like Mr. Stoughton.”
“No, it is true I didn’t see the joke in Mr. Stoughton, if there was
one. I thought him merely very rude and ill-mannered and altogether
without breeding.”
“I don’t know where he would have got his breeding from,” said Lord
Thorley. “That would have been stolen, if he had any.”
“He hadn’t: he had appropriated nothing in that line. I can’t understand
you, Helen. You like seeing the weirdest sorts of people. Do you
remember when you found you had asked a black bishop, a lion-tamer and a
suffragette to dine with you?”
Lady Grote leaned laughing back in her chair.
“Do I remember?” she said. “And do I not remember that Grote came up to
town unexpectedly that night? He arrived in the middle of dinner, gave
one glance at us and fled to his club. I didn’t see him again for six
months. Poor Grote!”
“Poor Grote indeed! But we are going to see him to-day, aren’t we?”
“Yes: he comes this evening. You see, Robin is coming too, and he adores
Robin.”
“But tell me why you like suffragettes and lion-tamers and black
bishops?” asked Lady Massingberd. “You are--it’s a terrible word--but
you’re aristocratic to your finger-tips, and yet I really think you like
riff-raff of that sort more than anybody. Anyhow it amuses you most. But
then, of course you’ve got a sense of humour,” she added bitingly.
“Darling, I never said you hadn’t: I explained that away beautifully.
But the real difference between us is that I like people: I like the
human race, and you don’t like the human race. You like what they call
‘a few friends,’ which is far more genteel.”
“Oh, I’m genteel, too, am I?” asked Lady Massingberd in a voice that
would have frozen molten pitch.
“Yes, you are genteel: it is very, very nice to be genteel. You like a
few friends, as I said, and they are all of the class which you allowed
yourself to call aristocratic. My dear, I believe that you think that
when Moses came down from Sinai he brought with him not the tables of
the law but the original edition of Burke’s Peerage. The Dukes of Edom:
that’s what you like.”
Lady Massingberd began counting on her brown, strong fingers.
“One selfish: two shallow: three without sense of humour: four genteel:
five snob,” she said. “There’s a nice handful of qualities.”
Lady Grote laughed again: she had the laugh of a child, open mouthed and
abandoned.
“You won’t listen to my explanation,” she said. “I’ve explained away
everything but genteel, which I can’t do, and now I’ll explain away
snob. You aren’t in the least a snob in the ordinary sense: you don’t
like princes better than dukes and dukes than marquises, like Mr. Boyton
who is coming down here this evening, but you like a certain quality
which you call breeding. If a prince hasn’t got it you don’t like him.
Lots of them haven’t. But you like a certain quality which usually goes
with generations of living comfortably in castles. Now I don’t, at least
I don’t like that to the exclusion of those who haven’t got it. I can
make friends with those who haven’t got a trace of it. Indeed, I think I
must have had some great-great-grandmother who came from the
music-halls, if they had them in those days, and heredity makes me want
to go back there.”
“I can’t think why people are down on snobs,” remarked Lord Thorley, in
his slow, suave voice. “Snobs are so pleasant if one happens to be an
earl or something. But the earl-variety of snob is unfortunately
becoming rather scarce. They ought to create snobs instead of peers.
With a pension.”
“Henry so often appears to be talking nonsense when he is really talking
sense,” remarked Lady Grote. “He hasn’t had the opportunity to talk much
at present owing to Gracie and me. Shall we let him talk for a little?”
“If he’s got anything to say,” remarked Lady Massingberd austerely.
“He has. I always know when Henry has something to say, because when he
has something to say he is rather silent; when he has nothing to say, he
talks.”
“You’re the biggest snob I know, Helen,” said Henry gently.
“That sounds like having something to say. Do say it.”
“Well, the good old crusted snob who likes earls as such is about
extinct, except for your friend Mr. Boyton. But another sort of snob has
sprung up, of which you are a perfect specimen. You are snobbish about
success. You don’t like the rank and file of the Socialists, you like
their leader, Mr. Stoughton. You don’t like singers, but you like the
finest singer in the world. You like the finest artist, the richest
man----”
“Oh, that’s not being a snob,” said Helen.
“Yes, it is: it is being the up-to-date snob. In old days there was the
snobbism with regard to birth, because prince and duke and so on were
representative of the most successful class. They had seats in the House
of Lords, and controlled the seats in the House of Commons. They were
richer than anybody else, they mattered most. Nowadays other people are
much richer, Germans and Jews and such-like. Nowadays other people
matter more, because the opera and the Russian ballet and such-like
interest us more than marquises. We care less about territorial
possessions and more about being amused. I don’t say you are the worse
for being a snob: I only remark that you are one.”
“Go on: I love being talked about,” said Lady Grote.
“You have led a very happy life then, darling,” said Lady Massingberd,
looking at her fingers, each of which connoted some odious quality.
“Oh, shut up, Gracie!” said Lady Grote. “Go on, Henry.”
“Well, you’re a snob, and what’s the harm of that? I think it’s very
sensible of you. The efficient people of the world are naturally more
interesting than others. They have won success, and to have won success
implies gifts: it implies character. They have got their hall-mark: the
world has recognized them: they have shown strength and determination.
So far, so good.”
“Then tell me about the bad part. Whenever anyone says ‘So far, so
good,’ it means there’s something awful coming.”
“You don’t think it awful, so you won’t mind. But it is a fact that a
quantity of your successful people are bounders. That’s one of the
penalties of success: it so often makes you a bounder. To be successful
in the rough and tumble of a profession blunts your gentler qualities.
Competition has been your business, and the habit of competition makes a
very disagreeable by-product. It makes you inconsiderate of other
people: it makes you square your shoulders and elbow people in the
face.”
“That’s right,” said Lady Massingberd, almost smacking her lips. “Give
it her hot: she told me I was genteel and selfish and--and what was my
third finger?”
“Marriage-ring finger, dear,” said Helen wildly, completely forgetting
for the moment that Gracie had divorced her husband only six months ago.
Then suddenly she remembered, and gave a shriek of laughter.
“Oh, I wish I could say that sort of thing when I wanted to,” she
exclaimed. “I only make awful gaffes by accident. It must be lovely to
make them on purpose. But there’s more to follow, Henry. You got to
where I liked people who elbowed others in the face.”
“Yes, I stick to that. You don’t like them because they elbow other
people in the face, mind: you only like them though they do these
elbowings. And there’s much more to follow.”
“Out with it,” said Lady Massingberd. “My third finger is for my
marriage ring. Never shall I forget that.”
“Go on, Henry,” said Helen.
“I am going on. You make a profound mistake. You think you are being
democratic: I have known you even think you were socialistic. But you
are only being snobbish. The opera bores you very much----”
“She doesn’t know one note from another,” interjected Lady Massingberd.
“But you go in order to pay homage to that immense Kuhlmann, about whom
everyone is talking.”
“He is coming down here this afternoon,” murmured Lady Grote.
“I felt sure of it. So probably is that man who wrote the play which the
Lord Chamberlain refused to license. You don’t care for plays.”
“Mr. Hedgekick is perfectly charming,” said Helen, sticking up for her
friends.
“Hedgekick?” asked Lady Massingberd in an awestruck voice.
“Yes, darling: Hedgekick. Why not? Talbot is just as funny, so is
anything beginning with Fitz. I wish you wouldn’t interrupt when Henry
is talking about me.”
“And the worst of all the miserable business,” said Lord Thorley, “is
that you think you are being democratic and open-minded, and are among
those who say, ‘One man is as good as another,’ and ‘God made us all.’
You don’t really think anything of the sort. A few men are much better
than the others, and the others can go hang. You worship success. Could
there be anything narrower or less democratic?”
“Anyhow, I had a suffragette to dinner,” remarked Lady Grote. “She was a
criminal, too: she had scragged some picture in the Royal Academy and
was sent to prison.”
“That was precisely why you asked her to dinner. She was in the world’s
eye.”
“Like a cinder from the engine,” said Lady Massingberd.
“Exactly. And if a notorious murderer was allowed to go out to dinner,
you would certainly ask him the night before he was hanged.”
Lady Grote did not attempt to defend herself.
“Yes, that’s all quite true as far as it goes,” she said. “But it
doesn’t go far enough.”
“It goes a great deal too far,” said Lady Massingberd. “I never knew how
dreadful you were.”
“May the prisoner at the bar speak?” said Helen. “She’s going to,
anyhow. It’s just this. I’m human.”
She pointed her finger suddenly at Lady Massingberd. “Gracie, don’t say
I’m much too human,” she said, “because that’s cheap. And you get into
humanity most surely and quickly by going blind for the people who have
succeeded in their own lines. I adore them. I don’t particularly care
what they do, so long as they do it better than anybody else. If that is
being a snob--well, I am one. I like people about whom the world is
talking. They are concentrated people. They may be colossally rich, and
that’s interesting, because they smoulder with power. They may sing,
they may tell me, like Mr. Stoughton, that I’m a thief: they may dance.
I like the grit that makes success. It’s what they are that interests
me, not what they do.”
“In the case of the dancer, it’s what his legs do,” said Gracie
succinctly.
“My dear, your great fault is that you can’t forgive,” said Helen. “You
are pricking me with pins because I said you were genteel. That’s small
of you. Now whatever I am, I’m not small. I’m not bound like you by any
restriction of class: I’m much more a woman than a lady, if that makes
it clearer to you. I don’t care whether the person who interests me
comes from a slum, or South Kensington, or a palace: it doesn’t seem to
me to matter. Therein I’m much bigger also than people like Mr.
Stoughton, and those novelists, for whom, as someone said, the sun
always rises in the East End. They think that if you dress for dinner
you can’t be interesting. That’s a shallow view, if you like.”
Lord Thorley, with a wrinkling movement of his nose, displaced the
pince-nez which he habitually wore. This gave him a lost sort of look.
“I don’t know where we’ve got to,” he remarked.
“We’ve got to the fact that I am more human than either of you, and
therefore bigger. I know perfectly well how to be _grande dame_ and how
to be _gamin_. I know it from the inside too: I _am_ both. Grote used to
say that he never knew which of me was coming down in the morning. But
whichever it was, it always adored people.”
Lord Thorley gave a long, abstracted sigh.
“That is so amazing of you,” he said. “I can’t understand your being so
completely taken up with people, as individuals, as you are.
Collectively I agree with you: when people form masses and parties, you
can deal with the principles that are evolved.”
“In fact, you prefer the abstract to the concrete,” said Lady
Massingberd.
He gave them a charming smile.
“Apart from the people I am privileged to call my friends, I certainly
do,” said he. “It is delightful to sit here and discuss Helen’s
snobbishness, because she’s a friend. But I have not the slightest
desire to discuss Mr. Stoughton’s inconsistency. It doesn’t seem to me
to matter whether he is inconsistent or not. All Socialists, I am aware,
are very muddle-headed, and, indeed, have no constructive scheme to
propose. Mr. Stoughton seems to me a very ordinary representative of the
class without any clear ideas to lay before us, beyond the notion that
we are thieves. I think that possibly we are, but he could tell us no
more than that our goods ought to belong to the State. He hadn’t the
slightest notion of how the State would dispose of them. He didn’t see
that if A., for instance, is industrious and frugal, he will, though all
property is equally distributed to-day, be richer at the end of the year
than B., who is idle and spendthrift. Eventually he admitted that, but
when I asked him if he proposed to have further distributions of
property annually, he had nothing better to say than that this was a
detail which could be worked out. It isn’t a detail: it lies at the root
of the whole affair. The clever, the frugal and the industrious will
always amass property, and periodical distributions of wealth would only
put a premium on idleness and extravagance. How far the fact that our
great-grandfathers were hard-working justifies our being rich to-day is,
of course, a totally different question.”
He sat there gently tapping the knuckles of one hand with the pince-nez
he held in the other, looking dreamily out over the sunny lawn. Then
suddenly he seemed to recollect himself, and glanced from one to the
other of his companions.
“Dear me, I have been bringing principles into this very charming
discussion on personalities,” he said. “Naturally, I grant you that to
arrive at principles, you must study persons. They must be analysed and
dissected: all principles are the spirit distilled from persons. But I
am more concerned really with the result of that distillation than with
the individual grapes that have gone to it.”
“But, then, why did you adopt politics as your profession?” asked Lady
Massingberd. “I always wanted to know that. Surely in a political career
you are entirely concerned with persons as individuals.”
“Not in my view of it. Indeed, I should say precisely the opposite.
Anyone who attempts to be a constructive politician deals entirely with
forces and tendencies, with the evolution of the nation’s collective
mind. Of course, there are tub-thumpers and rhetoricians of the new
order who attack individuals, and tell us what they have seen in one
particular Staffordshire potter’s house, and contrast it with the
deer-park and the Vandycks of somebody else. Mr. Stoughton--was that his
name?--was of that class. But the man whose ideas deal with big
movements does not concern himself with isolated and probably misleading
phenomena. He does not have to see a thing for himself and tell
everybody what he has seen. You need not go to Australia, in fact, in
order to learn to think imperially. Who coined that phrase, by the way?”
He turned to Lady Grote, as he spoke. She knew as much about politics as
she knew about the lunar theory, and very wisely hazarded no
conjectures on the subject.
“You are very suggestive,” she said. “But I think what you say is
completely wrong from beginning to end. All the heads of different
professions just now, like you Ministers of State, and the heads of the
Church, like bishops, know nothing at all of what is really going on.
Public opinion isn’t made in Whitehall, any more than Christianity is
made in cathedrals. And anyone who professes to control the course of
either must have first-hand knowledge of the subject. Why is the Church
out of touch with the people? Simply because bishops live in palaces.
And why is the State out of touch with the people? Simply because
Ministers sit in their offices, in an academic manner, and are
unacquainted with what public opinion is. You and they have not the
smallest idea what individuals want: you have no first-hand information.
Was there ever a more ridiculous assembly than the House of Commons,
unless it is the House of Lords? A man is elected to the House of
Commons, let us say, by the majority of one vote. He represents half of
the constituents who elect him, plus one man. It is no answer to say
that somebody else is elected with a majority of three thousand. He only
represents the majority of the electorate. It doesn’t come out square;
there is no use in saying it does. And, good Lord, the House of Lords!”
Lord Thorley had adjusted his pince-nez again, and looked at her as
through a microscope.
“And about the House of Lords?” he asked.
“My dear, you are not a professor, and I am not an undergraduate. You
ask that as if you were trying to examine me, and determine my place by
the intelligence of my answers. That is the fault of your party, which
is the same as mine. The Government are like school-masters: they don’t
seem to recollect that they were elected by the school itself. You
are--to adopt Gracie’s horrid phrase--aristocratic, and you can’t
understand that nowadays there is no aristocracy. I suppose I belong to
it, but I am quite certain that it doesn’t exist. We are like things in
the Red King’s dream. When he wakes we shall all find that there aren’t
any of us. Why should there be? As you said yourself, that which the
House of Lords used to represent has gone elsewhere. Germans and Jews
and Hittites--whatever they are--have got it. The House of Lords is an
Aunt Sally, and everybody throws darts at its silly face. And they stick
there every time.”
He wrinkled his pince-nez off his nose again.
“My dear Helen,” he said, “I had no idea you were such a Radical.”
She gave a little despairing sigh.
“I am nothing of the kind!” she said. “I am no more a Radical than I am
a Tory. But I do know this, that in some weird way the whole world is
going into a melting-pot. We’re all going to be chucked in. What sort of
soup shall we make, I wonder?”
Lord Thorley, who had sunk back into his chair, sat a little more
upright, and grasped the lapels of his coat in his hands.
“Without calling attention to the fact that soup is not usually made in
a melting-pot,” he observed, “I don’t believe in the melting-pot. Ever
since I can remember the country has supposedly been on the verge of
some gigantic cataclysm. At one time it has been socialism, at another a
European war, at another Home Rule. At no period that I can remember has
there not been some terrible thunder-cloud in the sky, and now I have
seen too many thunder-clouds to believe in thunder. And if you look at
a book of memoirs of whatever age, you will always find precisely the
same thing. The writers invariably represent their country as on the
edge of an abyss. The ground is always trembling with subterranean
menaces. But when was the volcano actually in a state of eruption in
England? It never has been. It has smoked and steamed sometimes; that
has always been its safety-valve.”
He looked serenely, triumphantly, at his companions, as if, in the
character of a teacher, he had algebraically “proved” some problem, or
as if, in the character of a conjuror, he had brought off some clever
piece of manipulation. But Lady Grote shook her head at him.
“You think you can prove things by a theory,” she said. “But
unfortunately experience can disprove your theory.”
He laughed gaily and rose.
“That is just where we part company,” he said. “The theory itself is
founded on collective experience.”
“But the conditions now are different.”
“That is what every age says of its own age,” he replied, “and in each
case it is wrong. Behind the conditions and governing them is that great
immutable force called human nature. And behind human nature is the
infinitely greater force and the most immutable of all, which, by one
name or another, we agree to be God!”
He stood twisting his pince-nez by the string for a moment’s silence.
“But here’s this lovely Saturday afternoon running to seed,” he said.
“May I borrow a motor, my dear Helen, and go out for a run? And can’t I
persuade you to come with me?”
“I wish I could, but my guests will be beginning to arrive before
long.”
“Dear me, yes, I forgot. I was thinking that you and Gracie and I would
be passing a quiet Sunday. Do you expect many people?”
“I think about thirty. I never really expect anybody till he arrives,
for he may make some subsequent engagement.”
“And when he arrives you naturally cease to expect him, because he is
already there. So you have no expectations with regard to people, and I
wish you would apply the same principle with regard to cataclysms. But I
think I shall go out, if I may, and return when your guests have mostly
come. Then I can plunge head first into them. Seeing guests arrive one
by one always rather reminds me of wading out on a flat shore to bathe.”
She laughed.
“My dear, order your car, will you? and take your header on your return.
But don’t ask Gracie to go with you, because she would certainly say
‘Yes,’ and I want her here for moral support.”
“Very well. I feel no qualm about not offering you my moral support,
because you would find me a broken reed.”
He looked round the great cool loggia a moment.
“Dear me, Grote’s ancestors were thieves with a great deal of taste,” he
observed.
He drifted away in a rather rudderless manner, lost in subtle
speculations on the subject that had been under discussion. Much the
most interesting of these was Lady Grote herself, for whom he
entertained the greatest admiration and the strongest affection of which
he was capable. That, though it lacked any ardent quality, was
undoubtedly deep; its very quietness almost guaranteed that. His pulses
never beat quick for anybody, but for his friends they beat most
satisfactorily full. Passions of any sort, whether of temper or of
temperament, were quite unknown to him: his analytic mind lived in a
cool, pleasant cave with its affections grouped tidily round it, and his
admirable conscience keeping a sort of sentry-go at the mouth of it, to
call him out, when required, for the fulfilment of his public duties.
But the moment they were over, it saluted, and let him bestow himself at
ease again.
He seldom was surprised at anything, for if anything at all startling
came across him, he always felt that a better knowledge of the soil from
which it sprang would have enabled him to conjecture its existence. He
had been unaware, for instance, until to-day, that Lady Grote was one of
the cataclysmic party, whose bogies, whenever they appeared in the
public Press, he looked at with mild and easily-satisfied curiosity. The
future of Ireland was of these, labour trouble was another; even
suffragettes were periodically supposed to contribute a menace to the
tranquillity of this decently-ordered realm, or the possibility of a
European war. Lady Grote had not said which of these she thought
threatening, but she had spoken of the melting-pot being on the fire....
He found himself standing in the drawing-room in front of the great
Vandyck picture of the Lady Grote of the period, who had been an
ancestress of his own. Not till then did he remember that he had come
indoors to order a motor-car--had he driven down from London in his own
car that morning? He could not recollect whether he had or not, and
pressed a bell to order it if it was here, and, if not, one of his
hostess’s. Waiting for it to be answered, he continued looking vaguely
at the antique Lady Grote and thinking of the modern one.
How baffling to the analyst was the vivid and flame-like quality of her
mind! No desire for the brooding activity of thought ever touched her;
she was always eager for experience and psychical adventures in living;
she loved coming in contact each day with new minds; she explored them
like a traveller in unknown lands, but made no maps of them, no notes
even of the fresh flora and fauna. She must be forty years old now, and
yet in eagerness and elasticity of mind, just as in her fresh youth of
body, she showed no signs of age and of the mellowness that age brought
with it. She had still about her all the delicious effervescence and
experimentalism of youth: her life was passed in the foam of rapids, and
never by any chance did she float into a back-water. Time, with the
buffetings and adventures that it brought, wrote no wrinkles on her, nor
ever so slightly bruised her: the very quality of her vitality, like a
wind, swept away catastrophes from her path in a mere cloud of dust.
He never made inquiries into the truth of scandals about his friends;
such things did not interest him, but for as long as he had known her
the world’s tongue had never ceased wagging about her affairs. Whatever
they had been, they had in no way coarsened her or made her common: she
remained the high-bred, exquisite woman, perched on a pinnacle of what
he must suppose was called social standing. His passion for analysis did
not trouble to exert itself over what that meant. In this prosperous,
thoughtless, democratic day there was no end to the ingredients which
composed it. She was a power, a centre, a comet....
Years ago there had been an awkward time, when Robin was quite a small
boy. Grote had wanted to take very extreme steps, most ill-advised steps
in Lord Thorley’s opinion, with regard to it. He had interested himself
in that, and eventually he had persuaded Grote to be reconciled with her
again. No good could come of it, only harm all round, especially for the
boy.... Naturally he had never spoken to Helen of what he had done on
that occasion; probably to this day she was ignorant that it was he who
had saved the situation. Besides Grote himself ... and then with a
slight sense of disgust, as if he had seen an objectionable paragraph in
a book, Lord Thorley turned over that page in his mind. All the rest, as
far as he personally knew, was mere scandal and gossip. He had no means
of judging its truth or falsity; he only knew that the subject-matter of
it was unattractive to him, even positively distasteful.
It seemed that the bells in this house were answered with truly artistic
deliberation, and going again to the side of the chimney-piece to repeat
the summons, he observed that he had merely turned on the lights of the
glass chandelier that hung in the centre of the room. He had been
vaguely conscious of a good deal of sunlight about, and had even
wondered where it came from.
“Dear me, dear me!” he said to himself, as he pressed the correct
button. “I must really try to be a little more observant in practical
affairs. Helen would never have done that. It is distinctly a waste of
nervous force to attend too closely to trivial matters, but I suppose
there is a compromise to be arrived at.”