“I am very thirsty, Eva.” Lady Carey had just come in from her drive,
after having much enjoyed, as well as admired, the new system of
be-your-own-policeman. She was not lacking in the power of observation,
and could very well appreciate the rational side of London’s new mode of
life; although she would sooner have perished than owned to anyone her
thoughts on the subject.
“Let me pour you a cup of tea, mother,” replied Eva, as she went to the
tea table. “I forgot to tell you that Gwen had returned to town. I saw
her this morning at the dining-halls and she struck me as being more
beautiful than ever.”
“Gwen used to be a very smart girl,” sneeringly remarked Lady Carey, as
she took the cup handed to her.
“I mean that her expression is more ethereal than ever, mother. She
gives one the impression that a radiant vision has been revealed to
her.”
“My dear girl—she looked—on Lionel! and he is no mean creature.” Lady
Carey gave vent to her suppressed mirth. “When did they return from
their—what d’ye call it—moral spring cleaning?”
“Mother, how can you be so irreverent? Do you not think it very sensible
of them to run away from the crowd, and hide their bliss in the
wilderness?”
“No, I call it decidedly vulgar.”
“But when you married, did you not send all your social duties to
Jericho? You must have longed for solitude with the man you loved.”
“Not at all, my dear; there was plenty of time for all that when we went
to Italy after the wedding. Besides, we did not mention these things in
my time; one did what everyone else did, it was neither painful nor
exhilarating, it was the custom, and one thought no more of it. But
there is something clownish in running away anyhow, and Heaven knows
where, as these two have done.”
“Gwen says they were supremely happy staying with two cottagers.”
“Labourers! The girl must be demented. I could pass over their evading
the religious ceremony; I am not bigoted, and pride myself on being
large-minded; but when the flower of our aristocracy behave like
shoe-blacks, I do think it is time to cry out. I cannot forgive them
their want of good taste, and am inclined to believe they do it for
effect.”
“Oh, dear! no, mother. They believe intensely in the reform of Society.”
“Such strong opinions are unseemly; and it is hardly the thing to take
such a serious step in life, without advising your friends and
acquaintances.”
“I do not see what Society has to do with private life,” answered Eva,
who was standing at the foot of her mother’s couch.
“My dear child, it is downright anarchism! Where is the moral restraint
that keeps us all in order! We may frown at dull, old Mrs Grundy; but no
well-organised Society can very well do without her, after all.”
“Oh! Mrs Grundy died from the shock of seeing herself in nature’s garb.
She was only a soured old schoolmistress, who each morning glanced at
the columns of her _Court Journal_ with suspicious eyes. She ran down
the names of births, marriages and deaths, chuckling inwardly at the
comforting feeling that all her social infants were well under her
thumb, and that none had escaped her lynx eye.”
“I hear a ring at the bell,” suddenly interrupted Lady Carey.
“Do you expect anyone, mother dear?”
“Not anyone, dear child. But it is Thursday, and that used to be my day
at home.” The dainty woman sighed heavily.
“I think I hear Lionel’s voice in the hall.” Eva turned towards the door
as it was opened to let in Lady Somerville and her husband.
“I am glad to see you, Gwen”—Lady Carey rose to kiss the Countess.
“Well, Lionel,” as she resumed her seat on the couch, “I am ashamed of
you. What on earth possessed you to carry her off in that wild fashion?
You know, my dear boy, a good many centuries have passed since Adam and
Eve, and I have no doubt that the Almighty Himself would consider their
conduct improper.”
“You are the same as ever, Lady Carey, as lighthearted as of yore.”
“You surely did not expect me to change my views, did you, dear Lionel?
You are too funny for words! But I suppose that is your privilege. You
always do whatever you like and are accepted wholesale by the rest of
the world. Luckily nothing can alter the fact that you are a gentleman.”
“Oh! for goodness’ sake strike out that word from your vocabulary!”
hotly exclaimed Lionel. “It means absolutely nothing but impunity to do
every disgraceful action under the sun.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear Lionel, the word means everything. A bad
action committed by a gentleman is very different from one committed by
a plebeian; the first knows what he is about, and whatever he does, he
never forgets that he is born a gentleman.”
“The more shame to him for not behaving like one,” muttered Lionel.
“Oh! dear boy, you are too radical, indeed. Well, tell me, had you many
sins to confess? Had Gwen a heap of peccadilloes on her conscience?”
Lionel smiled, but remained silent.
“Oh! oh! are they so appalling that my matronly ear cannot hear them?
Fie on you both!” and Lady Carey looked very arch.
“These are mysteries that we have tried to solve alone.”
“Where has your sense of humour gone to, my poor fellow? But, never
mind, forgive my importunate questions; you don’t know how ghastly dull
life has become. Everything is so uniform, the days so long, the
amusements so scarce; and what dreadful plays your new stage Society is
producing! Oh! my dear boy, it is too awful. Still, one must go to them,
or else we should all be left out in the cold, and Society would crumble
away.”
“And you really believe that Society does exist?” sententiously
questioned Danford, as he entered the room and bowed to the hostess.
“There is nothing so pernicious as delusions, Lady Carey; Society is a
huge spectrum reflecting all sorts of coloured shapes, which appear to
each one perfect in _contour_. No one ever thinks of striking the lens,
because they each of them have seen their own likeness reflected in it,
and believe in its reality. But the reality is only the semblance of
reality; strike the lens, and the likeness will suddenly appear out of
proportion; and when broken to atoms, the whole phantasmagoria will
vanish, leaving the real substance untouched. You have lived under the
delusion that the social phantom was substantial; you must admit now
that it was a deity created by man.”
“It would not exist any longer were we to give up playing our part in
the tournament; but there is still life in the old British lion, Mr
Danford. Do take a cup of tea.”
“A Society in which members do not know each other, even by sight, has
not many chances of leading the game.”
“Don’t you find, Mr Danford, that we are making progress in what you
call the science of observation?” inquired Lady Carey.
“It is difficult to tell, Lady Carey. I do not find that we always deal
with conscientious pupils. Observation can be developed in time; but it
is the lack of memory that is so disastrous. Mrs Webster, for instance,
cannot remember more than half-a-dozen faces.”
“Dear me, my dear guide, I do not wish to remember more than that number
at present.”
“Ah! but Mrs Webster is not exclusive, and she had to give up having a
reception the other day, because her guide had sprained his ankle. Mind
you, Mrs Webster is sincere, she wishes to improve in the art; but other
pupils are more puzzling, as, for instance, the vain people, who make
hopeless blunders, and insist on telling you they know quite well who’s
who, but they are having you on; this makes our work most trying.”
No sooner had Danford spoken these words, than the door was thrown open,
and Montagu Vane and Sinclair entered. Lady Carey smiled on them and
offered her right hand to be kissed.
“How delightful it is to know that there are a few—alas! a very
few—_salons_ where one can go and have a chat.”
The little Apollo tripped across the room to greet Gwen and Lionel.
“My dear Mr Vane, I am afraid I am the only one here who can sympathise
with you.”
“If we do not strongly oppose this vulgarising view of life, art will
totally disappear from our social circles,” remarked Sinclair, as he sat
down on a small settee beside Eva.
“Yes,” echoed Vane, “I am doing my level best to devise some means of
checking this downfall of art. I suggested to Lord Mowbray this morning
that we should invent a sort of artificial vestment. This is my plan.
Each one would carry round his neck, wrist or waist, a small electric
battery, which would throw a lovely colour all over one’s body, which
would at least adorn, if it could not conceal it.”
“What a strange thing that we should, in a London drawing-room, openly
discuss this question of nudity, when a few weeks ago no respectable
person would have admitted the existence of shirt or trousers,”
laughingly remarked Lady Carey.
“Ah! that was the British cant!” retorted Lionel. “Let us hail the storm
which knocked that false modesty out of us all.”
“My dear Lady Carey,” resumed Vane, “it is not a question of decency at
present, but a matter of artistic feeling. I should propose organising
the thing in this way: Dukes would have a red colour thrown over their
lordly forms; Earls and Barons a blue shade; Baronets, yellow; commoners
would have no colour, but the members of the Royal Family would have red
and yellow stripes. Ladies would naturally have their shades too,
according to their rank: Duchesses, pink; Countesses, pale green; and so
on. This is a rough sketch of course.”
“I quite see what you mean, Mr Vane,” remarked Danford; a sort of mirage
peerage.
Montagu Vane glanced up at the remark, and curtly replied, “It would at
all events acquaint the public with the social standing of the person
whom he elbowed in the street, and differentiate a peer of the realm
from a—social guide.”
“Or a—_dilettante_,” mischievously added Danford.
“I should have thought that what was more important than finding out in
what way one man was differentiated from another, was to discover the
points in which they were alike,” said Lionel. “You are catching at a
straw, my dear Montagu; your system is shallow, and you will never
persuade the Upper Ten of its practicableness. For my part, I plainly
refuse to envelop my carcass with a Loie Fuller’s sidelight.”
“Your decision is law amongst your peers, my lord,” and Danford bowed.
“We had better start a Society for the obtaining of accurately reported
news. Newspapers have disappeared, and with them the necessity has died
out for falsifying the truth,” said Lionel.
“I do protest,” interrupted Sinclair, “against plain facts being handed
to me by unimaginative people who pass on an ungarnished piece of news
without as much as adding one poor little adjective. It is too brutally
literal.”
“It all comes, as I was saying,” apologetically remarked Vane, “from a
complete lack of artistic feeling.”
“There you are right,” hurriedly said Lionel; “for Parliament is broken
up from the lack of dramatic power in its members, and militarism will
inevitably die out with the disappearance of military distinctions.”
“And dramatic art is buried since the study of local colour and
environment has been abandoned,” sharply added Vane.
“Yes,” sadly echoed Lady Carey, “imagination has been insulted by some
terrible creature called Nature.”
“Dear Lady Carey,” suavely murmured the little _dilettante_, “we can
thank God that we have still a few _salons_—though, alas! a very
few—where we can bask in the sunshine of gossip.” Then turning to
Lionel, “But do not let me deter you from your plan; and pray telephone
to me whenever you want my house for your new Society. I consider it a
duty to keep _en evidence_; if we cannot prevent your reforms, we can at
least patronise them, for when Society ceases to lead, it will
disappear.”
“You are speaking words of the greatest wisdom, Mr Vane,” said Danford,
“words which make me think deeply. You could indeed do a great deal for
the sake of Society, by urging upon members of the Royal Family that it
is in their power to prevent the annihilation of their house.”
“In what way can I do this?” Vane turned towards the little artist; in
an instant he seemed to have forgotten his grievance against the tribe
of buffoons.
“Well, Mr Vane, the illness of Mrs Webster’s guide made me ponder these
grave questions, and I discussed the point with the Committee of Social
Guides. We all know what a gift Royal Princes possess for remembering
faces; therefore we have come to the conclusion that such a talent
should not be wasted. Someone must discreetly approach our Royal
Highnesses, and beg of them to allow their names to be added to the list
of social guides. You will no doubt agree with me that this is the only
way in which our Royal Family can be made useful, for since the storm,
nothing has been heard of them, and no one seems to know what they are
up to.”
“The suggestion is not a bad one, Mr Danford,” slowly answered Vane. “We
all know how eager our Princes are to meet every wish of their
subjects.”
“Yes, this is indeed true,” added Lady Carey, “and Society might then
recover some of its prestige.”
“I do not know whether these illustrious guides will have any sidelights
to throw on life’s problems, or any philosophical _aperçu_ on human
beings; but those who will employ them will be sure, at any rate, of an
infallible guide to the finding of a person’s identity, and of an
accurate knowledge of the Peerage which would put a Debrett to shame.
Although I myself believe that since the disappearance of garments, the
public has become eager to know that which lies concealed within the
inner heart of men and women.”
“This idea of Royal Guides is sure to take like wild-fire amongst the
American millionaires,” broke in Lionel.
“_There_ you are right,” briskly retorted Vane, “but that reminds me
that we have not seen anything of the fashionable Yankees.”
“I can tell you about them, Mr Vane,” mysteriously answered the little
buffoon. “They are meditating; and although you do not notice their
presence, still they are at large; but the _mot d’ordre_ has been given
to all the guides never to disclose the identity of the United States’
citizens until they give us leave.”
“How lonely it must be for them to remain in that isolation,” remarked
Lady Carey.
“Not a bit of it,” replied Lionel; “they are quite able to entertain
each other. It is we who are the losers, not they, for the invasion of
American heiresses upon our Piccadilly shores has vivified our rotten
old Society. Lord Petersham used to remark that our girls looked like
drowned mermaids at the end of the season, whilst an American maiden was
as fresh at Goodwood as she had been at the Private View.”
“Quite true,” said Sinclair, “the American girl is cute, not _blasé_.”
“Yes,” broke in Lady Carey, “she came over here to have a good time and
carried that creed up to the last.”
“They invariably aim straight and high,” continued Lionel, “and the
Americans will be the first to attach Royal Guides to their households.”
“I wonder which of our Royal Princes Mrs Pottinger will choose?” said
Lady Carey, bursting out laughing. “I cannot help roaring when I think
of the vulgar woman entertaining us all in her palace. There she was on
deck, full sail and long-winded; for hours she would hold forth on
English politics, Christian science, European hotels, with that
rhythmical monotony so peculiar to her race.”
“That is just why they will carry the day, if you do not look out,”
wistfully remarked Danford; “their memory is always ready to help their
fluency.”
“The conversation of an American,” said Sinclair, “resembles a sermon
without a text, an address minus the vote of thanks.”
“You know what she called London Society?” inquired Lord Somerville.
“She named it her buck-jumper; but she was bent on mastering it,
although it kicked and reared as she forced her gilded spurs into its
flanks. At times the incongruity of the buck-jumper fairly puzzled her.
One thing she could not swallow, that was Society’s meanness. You know
what she said to the Duke of Salttown? ‘That England was the country for
cheap kindness and expensive frauds.’”
“Ha! ha! ha!” they all laughed.
“Wonderful race!” exclaimed Sinclair, “whether it is the President of
the United States, a cowboy, or a fashionable woman, they are all gifted
with that intuition which divines ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ in each face they
meet; just as the red Indian measures distance with his far-seeing eye,
and discovers a white spot on the horizon which is likely to develop
into a blizzard. In everything they undertake, they first see the aim,
go for it, win it, and sit down afterwards without a flush or a puff.”
“Perhaps America is destined to shape our future civilisation,” said
Lady Carey; “I am sure I do not care who is to be our saviour, as long
as we are saved from this anarchy.”
“My dear Lady Carey,” replied Lord Somerville, as he walked to the
chimney and leaned his elbow on the marble mantelpiece, “we shall have
to coin another word for the future Society that is staring us in the
face, for the old word civilisation has a nasty flavour about it. At
times we have worn war-paint and feathers; at others, charms round our
necks, crosses on our hearts, decorations on our breasts; but the
cruelty of the savage was no more execrable than the dogmatic ferocity
of Torquemada, nor in any way more inhuman than the ruthlessness of
George I. Nor was Queen Eleanor’s kerchief more indicative of mediæval
depravity than Queen Elizabeth’s frill an emblem of Renaissance levity.
Each of these historical eras was but a different stage of barbarism. We
had more ornaments than Hottentots, and less principles than monkeys. As
long as we have two different creeds, half-a-dozen codes of honour, and
hundreds of punctilios, we shall never be civilised. Instead of adding
more labels to human beings, we must, first of all, find out what a
human being is. We are taught virtue in the nursery, but we are
compelled to commit crimes when out of it. The morning prayer says one
thing, and life as we make it teaches another. Step by step we are
trained to family deceit, political Pharisaism, commercial fraud,
diplomatic mendacity, art quackery; and all that in the name of a
Redeemer who lashed the vendors out of the temple, and died for the love
of truth and peace.”
“Someone said that it needed three generations to make a gentleman,”
murmured Vane in his silvery voice.
“No doubt the dogmatist who said that must have thought of Poole and La
Ferriere as the modern Debretts; for our present aristocracy is nothing
more than a nobility of vestments. Generation after generation has
handed down to us the art of carrying the soldier’s sword, the judge’s
robes, the Court train, or of bearing a proud head under the Prince of
Wales’s nodding plumes. It is the atavism of garment which has made us
what we are. But in the race of life; in the fight for the post of
honour; in the hour of darkness and sorrow, when failure brings down the
curtain on our lives, clothes will be of no help. The noble sweep of a
satin train, the long-inherited art of bowing oneself out of a room,
will be of little service in the final bowing out into eternity. Your
grandmother’s corselet or your great-grandfather’s rapier and jerkin
will lie idly on the ground, for we are not allowed any luggage on the
other side. The real fact is that the whole social structure was a big
farce.”
“A farce more likely to turn into a tragedy,” saucily retorted Vane.
“See how matters are going on in South Africa; or at least see what is
_not_ going on; for by this time we must be the laughing-stock of a
handful of farmers. War is bound to cease, and we shall have to retreat
ignominiously, as we cannot send any more men out there, owing to the
confusion at the War Office. It appears they cannot distinguish our
valiant officers from the men.”
“Ah! This is the first blow struck at the principle of warfare,” replied
Lionel. “When you think of it in cold blood, it is quite impossible to
admit of war. Try and boycott your neighbour, persuade him into giving
up his will to yours; order his meals, eat three parts of them yourself,
invade his house, break his furniture; and if he in any way objects,
then use the convincing arguments of artillery and bayonets. After that,
you will see how it works.”
“Yes, the history of nations is nothing else but a series of thefts,
murders and duplicity; and were any of our personal friends to commit a
quarter of what sovereigns and governments commit in one day’s work, we
should promptly strike their names off our visiting list,” said
Gwendolen. Perhaps this remark struck home, for no one replied. Vane got
up briskly on to his feet, and bowed daintily over Lady Carey’s hand.
“Ta-ta, Mr Danford,” he nodded to the little mimic, and left the room.
“I shall walk a little way with you, Lionel,” said Sinclair, who had got
up to say good-bye to his hostess.
“Come along with us,” replied Lionel. “Good-bye, dear Lady Carey. I am
going to ring up old Victor de Laumel by telephone, and ask him what
they think of us in ‘_la ville lumière_.’”
“My dear boy,” said Lady Carey, “you may be sure of this, that the smart
Parisians would have found a way out of this difficulty before now. But
at any rate, they never would have taken it _au serieux_, as you are
doing; for they are too punctilious on the question of good taste, and
more than anything fear ridicule!”