“I shall do your hair for you, mother dear,” said Eva one morning. They
were both in Lady Carey’s dressing-room, as it was the time when the
maid was rung for to attend to her mistress’s coiffure.
“A very good idea, Eva. I must say I never feel quite at my ease with
Elise, and I ring for her as seldom as I can now. It does seem so funny
to give orders to a person who stands just as naked as you are.”
“Oh! I am so glad! I have been longing to arrange your lovely hair in my
own way,” and Eva clapped her hands with joy.
“You are very brusque, Eva—here are the hairpins, and the brush is in
that drawer.”
Eva held the mass of auburn hair in her fingers, and softly brushed it
off the delicate temples of her mother.
“I am afraid, dear child, you have lost a great deal of your ladylike
grace since you have been a regular attendant at these public
tournaments. You associate with such a queer lot there; I am sure it
must be fatal to good manners.”
In a few seconds Eva had wound the rich coils of hair into a Grecian
knot on the shapely head of her mother.
“You look a perfect dear, mother; so like the Medici Venus—you don’t
know how perfectly lovely you are.” The girl kissed Lady Carey and sat
at her feet.
“My poor child, I do not know what is to become of us all.”
“You need not be anxious, mother”—Eva leaned her graceful head on her
mother’s lap. “It is useless to try to stem the tide; nothing that you
can ever do will prevent what has to be.”
“What do you aim at, child?” asked Lady Carey, as she tidied her combs
and brushes.
“Nothing, mother—but—I often crave for freedom.”
“Is there anything you want to say, Eva?” Lady Carey laid her hand on
the girl’s hair. “I have heard and seen such strange things lately, that
I might just as well know all.”
“Oh! darling mother, I could not bear to do anything which you would
consider underhand; although my actions would only be the reflection of
my own convictions.”
Lady Carey took her daughter’s face in her two hands and stared hard at
her. “Are you thinking of doing the same mad thing as Gwen? If so, say
it at once; I had rather be prepared for the worst.”
No answer came. Eva dropped her eyelids and spoke no word. At last she
softly murmured, “I love Sinclair.”
“Oh! for the matter of that, many have done the same,” derisively
remarked her mother, as she gently pushed away the face she held.
“Yes,” breathlessly answered the girl, “but he loves me.”
“Hum! He has told that to many. All this is nonsense, you must put all
this out of your silly head. Sinclair is not a marrying man; besides, he
is not the husband _I_ would wish you to have.”
Eva stood up and looked straight at her mother. “He is the husband _I_
have chosen.”
“My poor girl, Sinclair is not the man to stick to one woman. He is
hypercritical and cynical, I should even say—cruel, where a woman’s love
is concerned.”
“But, mother, he has repudiated his past errors—you heard what he said a
week ago?”
“Pooh! that was only hysteria, it will pass! It is better to speak to
you plainly, Eva; he was Lady Vera’s lover for two years. I know all
about it, as I was her confidante through it all. He nearly drove her
out of her senses with his capricious moods; her husband, as you know,
divorced her; and ever afterwards Sinclair invented new modes of torture
for the woman who, I believe, sincerely loved him. She gave him up at
last and threw herself at the head of that silly Bob Leyland, who is
good to her in his own way.”
“As to Sinclair’s relations with Lady Vera, that is no news to me, my
dear mother. How can a girl remain ignorant of these scandals after one
London season? If the friends or enemies of the man or the woman do not
tell her all about it, it is very easy for her to find it out for
herself. Women like Lady Vera are living advertisements, and they would
no more wish to hide their intrigues than Epps and Cadbury would wish to
stop the advertising of their cocoas. It is all part of the social
business; and the pit and gallery would be swindled out of their sport
were Society’s sewers to be thoroughly cleansed.”
“But it will always be the case as long as there exists an Upper Ten;
and, after all, when we think of it, it was much worse in Charles II.’s
time and under the Georges,” replied Lady Carey.
“I have no doubt it was so,” said Eva. “They were coarse, but we are
suggestive; they were brutal in the pursuit of indecorous pleasures, we
are complex in our vulgar dissipations. We combine the corruption of a
Louis XV. with the casuist of a Loyola. The Georges were everything that
is bad, I grant you, but they were not effeminate; they lived up to
their standard of military chivalry, which we do not, although we
pretend to believe in a military code of honour.”
“What on earth will you put in its place, child?”
“Honesty.”
“How suburban, Eva. I expect my grocer or my housekeeper to possess that
_bourgeois_ quality; but a gentleman must have a higher ideal of
chivalry.”
“There is nothing more exalted than perfect honesty, dear mother; and
the proof is that your grocer and your housekeeper cannot afford to live
up to its standard, for it does not pay.”
“You are quite terrible, Eva, with your subversive theories! I cannot
imagine where you picked up these queer ideas. I have always been most
particular to surround you with what we were used to call well-bred
people.”
“Yes, the Lady Veras and company,” retorted Eva.
Lady Carey ignored the remark and continued, “I always feared Gwen would
have a fatal influence over you. But what could I do? It is so difficult
to weed out one’s friends when one belongs to a certain set.”
“My dear mother, Gwen was saved in time, for she would have turned into
a Lady Vera had not Society’s foundations suddenly collapsed. She had
been taught all the tricks of a perfect woman of the world, and would
have even outdistanced Lady Vera, for she possessed more brains and more
animal spirits. So, you see, there is still hope for a Sinclair to
develop into a paragon of virtue, to suit even your fastidious ideal of
a son-in-law.”
“My dear Eva, pray do not accuse me of such a Philistine notion as to
require in my son-in-law any of the qualities absolutely needed in a
bank accountant or in a land agent. Heaven forbid! I am larger minded
than that, and I know that a man must live. You see, Sinclair is all
right, and we all run after him and make love to him, and look forward
to the clever sayings that drop from his cynical lips; but”—a pout was
on her lips, as she looked for the proper word to express her
sentiment—“well, he is not what we are accustomed to consider
a—gentleman. It is extraordinary how these upstarts end by believing
they can do anything. His father was tutor to Lord Farmiloe’s son; and,
instead of going into the army as his father wished him to do, Sinclair,
after leaving Oxford, began to dabble in questionable journalism, and
soon developing that wonderful power of criticism, he became the terror
of all artists, known or unknown. I know, perhaps better than most
women, what it is to suffer from a man who does not consider his wife’s
love all-sufficient to his happiness.” Lady Carey relaxed her hard
expression, her eyes were for one instant dimmed by a passing mist, and
her lips trembled, whilst a lump rose in her throat; but it was soon
over. “Your father _was_ a gentleman, and I could not wish a daughter of
mine to have a more courteous man for a husband. He treated me, before
the world, as he ought to have treated the woman who bore his name, and
carried on his numerous intrigues with the discipline and gallantry of a
true soldier, who held his sword at the service of his king, and his
soul at the mercy of his God, but brooked no restraint nor reproach from
anyone in this world.”
“What a convenient way of dismissing all moral obligations,” remarked
Eva.
“When you have seen as much of the world as I have, my dear Eva, you
will know that philosophy plays a large part in our social training, and
helps to soften the coarseness of life. We leave the rioting of the mind
to the plebeian classes, who have not, like us, to keep up appearances
and traditions of _bienséance_.”
“Yes, but the world’s philosophy is no longer the enduring stoicism of a
Spartan, nor is it the calm acceptance of human frailty of a Marcus
Aurelius; it is a cynical acquiescence in the general depravity of the
over-fed and over-clothed worshippers of Mammon, who smile at their
neighbour’s weaknesses, hoping that he in turn will shut his eyes to
their foibles. Philosophy is your capital which pays you back heavy
dividends.”
“How bitter you are, my dear girl. You are too young to think or speak
like that; and you cannot lay down any such rule of conduct. Of course I
know that things are awkward at present, and that the future is not
pleasant to contemplate; and it grieves me to the quick that my child
should be in close contact with the vulgarity of life.”
“Do not worry yourself, mother; I am seeing life for the first time, and
it is very beautiful. Society is as far removed from true life as the
sun is from the moon. You fashionable mothers have a strange way of
bringing up your children. As the Chinese tortured their women’s toes to
prevent their running away, so you cramped our youthful minds,
obliterated our organ of perception and twisted our judgment so as to
make us incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. You showed us
little pictures encircled in trivial frames, and told us that these were
the sights we had to view for the rest of our lives. We put questions to
you about the people with whom you surrounded us in our infancy, but you
answered scornfully, that they were our inferiors whom we need not
consider. Later on, the same game of mystification went on with our
teachers whom we had to treat only as educational cramming machines.
When we developed into women, the bandages were swathed more tightly
round our expanding brains, and we were then informed, at the most
perplexing cross-roads of our lives, that no decent girl inquired into
any social problems: a tub, a game of golf, and the admission into the
smart set were all-sufficient to assuage feminine yearning. If, as often
happened, the hygienic and worldly remedies failed to cure the patient,
the whole was dismissed in these words: ‘A lady does not mention such
things!’ This was the prologue to matrimony! When you, the mothers of
Society, had brought your victims safely to the stake, you turned your
eyes up to heaven and begged for God’s blessing, which you deserved less
than the devil’s benediction, for in your culpable and wilful ignorance
you were playing a ghastly trick in sending out defenceless beings into
an arena of wild beasts. Do you believe that your drawing-room
philosophy will be of any use to the victims of your social wisdom? No,
your philosophy thrives on champagne and truffles, not on the
understanding of human passions. How often has a girl brought to the
conjugal market a young heart and a healthy constitution, to close a
bargain with a cynical flesh dealer; and very soon had to learn how to
smuggle cunningly out of the unfair contract? But it was useless to
recriminate with the only friend God gave us—our mothers; for we were at
once advised to read the first part of the Marriage Service; and we
learnt through cruel experience that there was no escape, no relief, for
those born and bred in our unnatural Society.”
“What has come over you, Eva? Who has been poisoning your mind?” Lady
Carey’s voice was trembling, and she did not dare look at her daughter.
The latter impulsively fell on her knees, and encircling her mother’s
waist with her arms, she said passionately,—
“You believed us to be safe when you had told us never to look inside a
certain closet; and like Blue Beard you fed us on kick-shaws and
soap-bubbles as long as we never opened that secret closet—life. Why
were we not to know the realities of existence? Why did you travesty
life into a Music Hall burlesque? What God created, you belittled; what
nature gave to man, you turned into a deadly weapon against him. Love
came into the world, pure and generous, but it was led astray in social
haunts and became debauchery; ambition prompted man to create something
true and beautiful, but he wandered in trimmed paths of artificiality,
and his natural instinct was transformed into a passion for worldly
power and riches. What you called character was merely callousness
erected into a principle; what you thought was philosophy was only an
abnormal power of frivolity, which would have made even a butterfly
blush. Oh! mother, mother, cannot you see what a sham it all was?”
Lady Carey was not unintelligent; she knew that what her daughter said
was perfectly correct. She quite realised that this was what they had
lived through, but she did not approve of the spirit of revolt, and
always had considered it vulgar to kick against the rules of Society.
Still, her opposition was not altogether sincere, and her displeasure
did not arise at what her daughter said, but at the fact of her daughter
saying it. Had Lionel, or any other, put forward these ideas, she would
have been the first to laugh, and to agree with what he said.
“Forgive me, dearest mother, for saying these cruel things to you, but
if you only knew how much I love, you could not blame me. Set me free,
my own mother! After all, it is my life I am pleading for, and I am
willing to take the responsibility of all that will follow.”
“This influence which has such an effect upon you all must be very
powerful.” Tears were slowly dropping from Lady Carey’s eyes and
trickling down her cheeks. “Can it be that I have never known you
really, Eva? How is it that for many years I have looked after you—for I
have not, like so many, been neglectful of my maternal duties—and yet
know no more to-day about your nature than I did on the day you were
born? For the last few years, since you were presented, we have lived
the same life, seen the same people, and yet we were as much divided
from each other as if you had been at the North Pole.”
“But, darling mother, I was far away from my true nature, so do not
blame yourself alone; you see, necessity made me think differently.”
“But then, necessity ought to have acted in the same way upon me,”
replied Lady Carey. “Still, I cannot see as you do.”
“Because you are stiffening yourself against the inevitable; you are not
so blind as not to be able to see. Oh! mother, if you knew how I love
you, how I want you to be happy!”
“Child, you are all I have in the world, for, as I have said before, I
have suffered. You have never known this, my child, for I hid it from
everyone; but all that you have just said has brought back to my mind
past scenes which I had determined to forget for ever. My girlhood! my
marriage! your words brought all back to me so distinctly. But what is
it that makes you so happy, so keenly interested in all your
surroundings? I should like to know what it is, for I have not become an
idiot, and I might yet learn.”
“Love, love has been the teacher! Oh! mother, I know you have always
loved me, but you allowed worldly barriers to divide us. Let yourself
go, do not be guided by your stubborn prejudices, and judge our present
world from the standard of our past Society.”
“Ah! my poor child, I know of no other standard but that of a well-bred
woman of the world; still, to show you that I have no silly prejudice,
and that I can turn my mind to anything, I shall try to let myself go;
but mind you, it will be only out of sheer _ennui_, not from any other
motive. I shall enter into all your plans; it will at least be something
to do.”
Eva stood up and, taking both her mother’s hands, lifted her from her
chair; the two women laughed joyously, and putting their arms round one
another’s necks, they left the room to go down to luncheon.