Falcon's Chase is apt to be considered somewhat dreary and dull by
those members of the fashionable world who only exist to kill time,
and see no beauty in Nature's handiwork.
But to Lauraine the whole place is beautiful beyond words. The great
dark forest lands that shelter the deer in their coverts, the old
bridle-paths, where the boughs meet overhead, the solemn, stately old
mansion itself, shut in by elm-woods and mighty oaks of centenarian
growth, the stillness and solitude and repose that breathe
everywhere, these have for her an exceeding charm, an ever-varying
delight. For days and days she does nothing but wander about,
sometimes alone, sometimes with Lady Etwynde.
The weather is mild and the sky is grey and soft. The keen, salt air
of the sea braces and refreshes her tired frame, and languid spirits.
Her friend is enchanted with the place, and throws æstheticism to the
winds and goes about in a neat tailor-made gown of homespun, and
abolishes the nimbus around her fair head, and evinces an energy and
alertness that would astonish her admirers of the
"lilies-and-languor" class.
One closing evening they stand on the summit of the great cliffs, at
whose base a wild sea is breaking tempestuously. A wilder sky is
above their heads, one that foretells a storm close at hand.
Lauraine turns her face seaward, and the fierce wind and dashing
spray seem to give it a new and wonderful beauty. "It is glorious!"
she murmurs, as she stands there in a sort of rapture. "It seems as
if one could move, breathe, be free in a place like this."
"Free?" says Lady Etwynde. "Is any one that? As long as life
shackles our souls, so long does bondage curb our wishes. I never
met a single person, man or woman, who could do exactly as they
wished."
"Well, you have not much to complain of," laughs Lauraine. "You live
as you like, do what you like, go where you like, and have no
domestic responsibilities."
"True," says her friend, with sudden gravity, "yet for all that I
have felt a pang of envy sometimes when I have seen a poor
beggar-woman in the streets press her child to her breast, and look
with real love at its poor, pale, wizened face."
"What a confession for a disciple of Culture--one who has educated
her eyes and taste to such perfection that a _criante_ bit of
furniture, a false tone of colour, a mistaken arrangement of
draperies, will torture her as a discordant note tortures the ear of
a musician! So you haven't outlived feminine weakness yet, my dear?"
"I suppose Nature always exacts her rights from us at some period or
another," answers Lady Etwynde. "I have become accustomed to hear I
am passionless and cold, and find it less trouble to live up to the
character than to deny it. People are always so sure they know us
better than we know ourselves. Being a single woman, it is rather a
comfort to have such a reputation, and as I dislike men, and
patronize fools, I am safe."
"But you are not cold-hearted at all," says Lauraine, turning her
face, with its beautiful sea-kissed bloom, to that lovely languid one
of her æsthetic friend. "Don't you really care to marry?"
"What should I gain?" asks Lady Etwynde, tranquilly. "_Le mieux est
l'ennemi du bien_, you know. I am very well off. I can do pretty
much--not exactly--as I please. I have no one to control me, or
consult. I can follow my own whims and vagaries. Am I not well
enough?"
"And yet you envied the beggar-woman?"
"That was in one of those moments when Nature was whispering at my
heart. Nothing touches me like a child's sorrow or love. I have
often longed to adopt one, but--well, I suppose the _feeling_ would
not be there?"
"You might marry for--love," suggests Lauraine.
"My dear," murmurs her friend, with delicate scorn and faint
reproach, "at thirty years of age?"
"That is not old for a beautiful woman," says Lauraine, with
unconscious but most sincere flattery. "And it is our natures that
make us old, I think, more than actual years."
Lady Etwynde smiles her pensive, moonlit smile.
"I shall never love," she says, calmly. "Men are so uninteresting;
and, besides, people always seem so unhappy when they are married."
Lauraine colours hotly, and her eyes turn seaward.
"Yes," she says in a low voice. "The people we know and meet--in
Society. But to them marriage has been chiefly a matter of
arrangement, or convenience. There is not often any _heart_ in it."
"And if there were it would not last," answers Lady Etwynde.
"Sentiment is lovely in theory; you cannot reduce it to practice,
though."
"I think it might be possible," says Lauraine, dreamily. "Even
fashion and the world cannot kill feeling. If people would only be
more true to themselves--less artificial, less exaggerated--they
would be much happier."
"Doubtless; but far less comfortable! My dear Lauraine, Society
suits its age, and always has suited it. It is no use wishing things
could be altered."
"I suppose not," sighs Lauraine.
"You are rather romantic," continues Lady Etwynde, as they turn back
from the great bold headland and move towards the narrow path that
leads into the woods of Falcon's Chase. "It is an unfortunate
quality for either man or woman. They will never see persons or
things as they really are. They will love, and invest the person
loved with every attribute they would _wish_ them to possess, and
which, alas! they never do. They throw a halo of imagination round
every head that is dear to them. Their existence is a series of
shocks and disappointments. They see their fairy weapons broken time
after time in the world's rough warfare. They stand and look at life
with wistful, feverish eyes, praying, 'Be as I fancy you,' and it
never will. They break their hearts over the sufferings and sorrows
they see, and intensify their own by too keen a sympathy. They are
never understood, especially by those they love the best. They are
like the poets who sing to deaf ears and go through life
misunderstood, even if not scorned, and not ridiculed."
"What makes you think I am romantic?"
"A thousand things. Your love of nature and solitude, your artistic
fancies, your emotional capacity, your extreme sensitiveness. I have
a weakness for studying character. When I first saw you I said to
myself: 'She is not happy.' 'She is full of idealities.' 'She cares
nothing for the world.' 'She will not be content only to--live.' Am
I right, or not?"
"Can one ever know oneself quite?" murmurs Lauraine, colouring
softly. "Do you really think I am not--happy?"
"Think! It scarcely needs consideration. But I am not going to
encourage you in morbid sentiment. I do not think you are a weak
woman. I hope not. But I fancy you will need all your strength at
some time in your life."
"You talk like a sibyl. Do you possess the gift of second sight in
addition to your other accomplishments?" laughs Lauraine.
"I don't think so. It only needs a little thought, a mental trick of
putting two and two together, to read most characters. Of course
there is a great deal of mediocrity to be met with, and yet it is
surprising how widely even mediocrities differ when you give yourself
the trouble of analysing them. Human nature is like a musical
instrument--there are but few notes, seven in all--but look at what
volumes of melody have been written on those notes."
"And, to pursue your metaphor, what a difference in the sound of the
keys to each individual touch: some give back but a dull thud; others
a rich, full, resonant sound, full of life and melody."
"True, and therein lies the danger for many natures. The master-hand
that produces the highest order of melody is perhaps too often that
of some passing stranger who goes carelessly by--and who, so to
speak, finds the instrument open--runs his hands lightly over the
keys, awakens brilliance, life, beauty, where others have produced
but dull, prosaic sounds, and then goes away and--forgets."
"Ah, if we were only wood and leather, and had wire for our strings,
not hearts and souls, we should not miss the player, or sigh for the
vanished music," says Lauraine. "Unfortunately, forgetfulness is not
always possible for us, desire it as we may."
"Have you ever desired it?" asks Lady Etwynde, quickly. "Pardon me,"
she adds, as she notices the sudden whiteness of the beautiful face.
"I should not have asked. But you will not misjudge me, idle
curiosity had nothing to do with the question."
"I know that," says Lauraine, quickly. "Yes, if there is one thing I
desire on earth it is the possibility of forgetfulness."
"The one thing that never comes for trying--or seeking--or praying,"
murmurs Lady Etwynde, dreamily. Alas, those melodies! A sad day
indeed it is for the woman who confesses--
'The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the foot-steps of thy soul.'
It is a beautiful idea, is it not? That is one advantage of
poetry--it clothes a thought in grace so exquisite that we feel as if
conversing with a being from another world. I never can understand
people saying they don't like, or can't comprehend it. Sense,
memory, love, pleasure, joy, pain, all that is sensitive, emotional,
purest, best, is acted upon and intensified by poetry. A word, a
line, will thrill us to the very core and centre of our beings--will
make joy more sweet---pain less bitter--love more exquisite and life
less hard, even beneath its burden of regrets."
"You love poetry so much?" questions Lauraine.
"More than anything. But by poetry I don't mean merely beautiful
verses. I include all grand and noble thoughts that imagination has
coloured, and that are read as prose. A really poetic nature is one
that sees beauty in the simplest of created things as well as in the
grandest; that is humble and yet great; that drinks at every fountain
of nature; that steeps itself in the enchantment of a scene, not
measuring merely the height of a mountain from the sea level, or
dwelling on the possible discomfort of a storm at a particular
altitude; that knows its mind to be full of longings and yet can only
partially satisfy them; that would fain be glorified, filled,
enriched; and, alas! knows only too well that the wings of the mind
are beating against the prison-bars of a stern and hard existence,
from which escape is only possible in dreams, or--death!"
"Do you not think that such a nature must be intensely unhappy?"
"I said so at the beginning of our conversation. But still it holds
the two extremes that make up life--happiness and misery; it gets
more out of each than natures more placid and commonplace and
content. It really lives, and the others--stagnate."
"You must have read a great deal, and thought a great deal," says
Lauraine, looking admiringly up at her friend's thoughtful face. "Do
you know I think you are the only woman I have ever met who talks
about other things besides dress and fashion? I don't think I ever
heard you say a scandalous word of anybody. You put me in mind of
something a friend of mine once said, 'Women who are intellectual
always talk of _things_; women who are shallow, of _persons_.' There
is a great deal in that if you come to think of it. How wearisome it
is to hear of nothing but 'names' in a conversation; and yet I know
heaps of men and women who are considered brilliant and witty and
amusing, and whose whole conversation turns upon nothing else but
gossip respecting other men, or women."
"I quite understand you. Society is eminently artificial, and
objects to strong emotions, and would rather not be called upon to
feel anything. 'Why _will_ people go on writing?' said a lady to me
one day. 'Everything has been said that can be said. Literature is
only repetition.'"
"'My dear madam,' I told her, 'light is always light;' but I suppose
you will acknowledge there is a difference between having our streets
illuminated with oil-lamps hung on a rope, or brilliant with gas and
electricity. Art and science and literature must progress with their
age. Scott and Fielding and Smollett don't suit the nineteenth
century, any more than perhaps Braddon, Ouida, and Rhoda Broughton
may suit the twentieth. Nevertheless, each has had its day and held
its champions, irrespective of what a coming generation will say on
the subject. The immediate good, excitement, benefit, is all Society
thinks of now. It has laid its demands on each respective
cycle--birth, or heroism, or refined manners, or even mind. But in
our age it worships the golden calf alone. _You_ don't know, and I
don't; but all our reward is to be wondered at, and never to 'get on'
with people. It is Lady Jean Salomans who 'gets on.' But then she
knows her age and accepts it, and goes with it. I dare say, being a
clever woman, she laughs in her sleeve at one set, and yawns after a
prolonged dose of the other; but she's the most popular woman in
London, and there's something in that more satisfactory nowadays than
in saying: 'I am the Queen of England.' You and I will never be
'popular' in her sense, Lauraine, because we don't take the trouble,
or perhaps appreciate, the reward. As for you, my dear, you are too
transparent for Society. You show if you are bored or pleased, or
happy or sad. That doesn't do. You should always go about masked,
or you are sure to offend some one or other. You are young, and have
been very much admired, and have a splendid position. Socially you
might take the lead of Lady Jean, but you never will. You don't care
enough about the 'honour and glory' of social success."
"No; it seems to me unutterably wearisome."
"Exactly, and you show that you feel it to be so. I have done the
same for long, but then I covered my dereliction with the cloak of
eccentricity. You simply do nothing but look like a martyr."
"Why will people live and act as if this life was the be-all and
end-all of existence, I wonder?" murmurs Lauraine. "Fancy fretting
one's soul away in the petty worries of social distinction, the
wretched little triumphs of Fashion. To me it seems such an awfully
humiliating waste of time."
"You laugh at my enthusiasm for Culture," answers Lady Etwynde; "but
that really is the only way to reform the abuses that disfigure an
age so advanced and refined as ours. Invention and science have
never done so much for any period as for this, and yet men and women
shut themselves out from intellectual pleasures, and demand scarce
anything but frivolity, excitement, and amusement--not even well-bred
amusements either. The gold of the millionaire gilds his vulgarity,
and lifts him to the level of princes. Good birth and refinement,
and purity and simplicity, are treated as old-fashioned prejudices.
We are all pushing and scrambling in a noisy bewildering race. We
don't want to think or to reason, or to be told of our follies in the
present, or of retribution in the future. Gilt and gloss is all we
ask for, no harsh names for sins, no unpleasant questioning about our
actions. Ah me! it is very sad, but it is also very true. Society
is a body whose members are all at variance as to the good, and
agreed as to the evil. The passions, the absurdities, the interests,
the relations of life are either selfishly gratified, or equally
selfishly ignored. It is not of the greatest good to the greatest
number that a man or woman thinks now; but just the greatest amount
of possible gratification to their respective selves. With much that
should make this age the most highly-cultured the world has known,
there is, alas! much more that renders it hopelessly and vulgarly
abased."
"And there is no remedy?"
"My dear, there are many. But Society hugs its disease, and cries
out at the physic. It knows of the cancer, but will not hear of the
operator's knife. Perhaps, after all, it is right. Think of the
trouble of being highly bred, highly educated, pure in thought and
tone, sparkling and not vulgar, amusing and yet refined, dignified
yet never offending, proud yet never contemptuous. Why, it would be
a complete revolution. Fancy forsaking artifice, living in a real
Palace of Truth, where everything was honest, definite,
straightforward! Think of our poor pretty painted butterflies,
forsaking their rose gardens and beaten by the storms and cold winds
of stern prejudices and honestly-upheld faiths. Ah, no! It is
simply preaching a crusade against infidels, who are all the more
vindictive in opposition because civilization, instinct, and reason
tell them they are in the wrong... Why, here we are almost at the
lodge, and here comes baby to meet us. Ah, Lauraine, thank God after
all, that we are women. Would a child's smile and broken prattle be
a volume of such exquisite poetry to any other living creature?"
Two little eager feet are toddling to meet Lauraine, two tiny arms
clasp her neck as she runs forward and snatches up the little figure.
A thrill of sweet, pure joy flies through her heart. "Heaven has not
left me comfortless," she thinks.