MOONLIGHT AND THEORIES
The little party of two men and two women were assembled in the
drawing-room. Trix had not yet put in an appearance. But, then, the
dinner gong had not sounded. Trix invariably saved her reputation for
punctuality by appearing on the last stroke.
Miss Tibbutt and Father Dormer were sitting on the sofa; Pia was in an
armchair near the open window, and Doctor Hilary was standing on the
hearthrug. His dress clothes seemed to increase his size, and he did not
look perfectly at home in them; or, perhaps, it was merely the fact that
he was so seldom seen in them. Doctor Hilary in a shabby overcoat or
loose tweeds, was the usual sight.
Father Dormer was a tallish thin man, with very aquiline features, and
dark hair going grey on his temples. At the moment he and Miss Tibbutt
were deep in a discussion on rose growing, a favourite hobby of his.
Deeply engrossed, they were weighing the advantages of the scent of the
more old-fashioned kinds, against the shape and colour of the newer
varieties, with the solemnity of two judges.
"They're pretty equally balanced in my garden," said Father Dormer. "I
can't do without the old-fashioned ones, despite the beauty of the newer
sorts. I've two bushes of the red and white--the York and Lancaster rose.
I was a Lancashire lad, you know."
And then the first soft notes of the gong sounded from the hall, rising
to a full boom beneath the footman's accomplished stroke.
There was a sound of running steps descending the stairs, and a final
jump.
"Keep it going, Dale," said a voice without. And then Trix entered the
room, slightly flushed by her rapid descent of the stairs, but with an
assumption of leisurely dignity.
"I'm not late," she announced with great innocence. "The gong hasn't
stopped."
Doctor Hilary, who was facing the door, looked at her. He saw a small,
elf-like girl in a very shimmery green frock. The green enhanced her
elf-like appearance.
"Deceiver," laughed Pia. "We heard you quite, quite distinctly."
Obviously caught, Trix echoed the laugh.
"Well, anyhow I'd have been in before the echo stopped," she announced.
They went informally into the dining-room, where the light of shaded wax
candles on the table mingled with the departing daylight, for the
curtains were still undrawn.
"I like this kind of light," remarked Trix, as she seated herself.
Trix almost always thought aloud. It meant that conversation in her
presence seldom flagged, since her brain was rarely idle; though she
could be really marvellously silent when she perceived that silence was
desirable.
"Do you know this garden?" she said, addressing herself to Doctor Hilary,
by whom she was seated.
He assented.
"Well, isn't it lovely? That's what made me nearly late,--going round it
again. I've been round five times since yesterday. It's just heavenly
after London. Roses _versus_ petrol, you know." She wrinkled up her nose
as she spoke.
"You ought to see the gardens of Chorley Old Hall, Miss Devereux," said
Father Dormer. "Not that I mean any invidious comparison between them and
this garden," he added, with a little smile towards the Duchessa.
"Chorley Old Hall," remarked Trix. "I used to go there when I was a tiny
child. There was a man lived there, who used to terrify me out of my
wits, his eyes were so black. But I liked him, when I got over my first
fright. What has become of him?"
"He died a short time ago," said the Duchessa quietly. "Oh," said Trix
regretfully. Possibly she had contemplated a renewal of the
acquaintanceship.
"He'd been an invalid for a long time," explained the Duchessa. She was a
little, just a trifle anxious as to whether the conversation might not
prove embarrassing for Doctor Hilary. There was a feeling in the village
that the journey, which Doctor Hilary had permitted--some, indeed, said
advocated--had been entirely responsible for the death.
But Doctor Hilary was eating his dinner, apparently utterly and
completely at his ease.
"Anyhow the gardens aren't being neglected," said Father Dormer. "They've
got a new under-gardener there who is proving rather a marvel in his
line. In fact Golding confesses that he'll have to look out for his own
laurels. He's a nice looking fellow, this new man, and a cut above the
ordinary type, I should say. I used to see him in church after Mass on
Sundays at one time. But he has given up coming lately."
"Really," said the Duchessa.
Trix looked up quickly, surprised at the intonation of her voice.
"Oh, he isn't a Catholic," smiled Father Dormer. "Perhaps curiosity
brought him in the beginning, and now it has worn off."
Trix was still looking at the Duchessa. She couldn't make out the odd
intonation of her voice. It had been indifferent enough to be almost
rude. But, if it were intended for a snub, Father Dormer had evidently
not taken it as such. Yet there was a little pause on the conclusion of
his remark, almost as if Doctor Hilary and Miss Tibbutt had had the same
idea as herself. At least, that was what Trix felt the little pause to
mean. And then she was suddenly annoyed with herself for having felt it.
Of course it was quite absurd.
She looked down at her plate of clear soup. It had letters of a white
edible substance floating in it.
"I've got an A and two S's in my soup," she remarked pathetically. "I
don't think it is quite tactful of the cook."
There was an instant lowering of eyes towards soup plates, an announcing
of the various letters seen therein. Trix had an application for each,
making the letters stand as the initials for words.
"C. S.," said Miss Tibbutt presently, entering into the spirit of the
game.
"Sure there isn't a T?" asked Trix.
"No," said Miss Tibbutt peering closer, "I mean there isn't one."
"Well then, it can't be Catholic Truth Society. My imagination has given
out. I can only think of Christian Science. I don't think it's quite
right of you, Tibby dear."
Miss Tibbutt blinked good-humouredly.
"Aren't they the people who think that the Bible dropped down straight
from heaven in a shiny black cover with S. P. G. printed on it?" she
asked.
Trix shook her head.
"No," she declared solemnly, "they're Bible Christians. The Christian
Science people are the ones who think we haven't got any bodies."
"No bodies!" ejaculated Miss Tibbutt.
"Well," said Trix, "anyhow they think bodies are a false--false something
or other."
"False claim," suggested Father Dormer.
"That's it," cried Trix, immensely delighted. "How clever of you to have
thought of it. Only I'm not sure if it's the bodies are a false claim, or
the aches attached to the bodies. Perhaps it's both."
"I thought that was the New Thought Idea," said Pia.
Trix shook her head. "Oh no, the New Thought people think a lot about
one's body. They give us lots of bodies."
"Really?" queried Doctor Hilary doubtfully.
"Oh yes," responded Trix. "I once went to one of their lectures."
"My dear Trix!" ejaculated Miss Tibbutt flustered.
"It was quite an accident," said Trix reassuringly. "A friend of mine,
Sybil Martin, was coming up to town and wanted me to meet her. She
suggested I should meet her at Paddington, and then go to a lecture on
psychometry with her, and tea afterwards. I hadn't the faintest notion
what psychometry was, but I supposed it might be first cousin to
trigonometry, and quite as dull. But she wanted me, so I went. It _was_
funny," gurgled Trix.
Doctor Hilary was watching her.
"You'd better disburden your mind," he said.
Trix crumbled her bread, still smiling at the recollection.
"Well, the lecture was held in a biggish room, and there were a lot of
odd people present. But the oddest of all was the lecturer. She wore a
kind of purple velvet tea-gown, though it was only three o'clock in the
afternoon. She talked for a long time about vibrations, and things that
bored me awfully, and people kept interrupting with questions. One man
interrupted particularly often. He kept saying, 'Excuse me, but am I
right in thinking--' And then he would give a little lecture on his own
account, and look around for the approval of the audience. I should have
flung things at him if I had been the purple velvet lady. It was so
obvious that he was not desiring _her_ information, but merely wishful to
air his own. There was a text on the wall which said, 'We talk abundance
here,' and when I pointed out to Sybil how true it was, she wasn't a bit
pleased, and said it didn't mean what I thought _in the least_. But she
wouldn't explain what it did mean. After the lecture, the purple velvet
lady held things--jewelry chiefly--that people in the audience sent up to
her, and described their owners, and where they'd got the things from.
There was quite a lot of family history, and people's characteristics and
virtues and failings, and very, _very_ private things made public, but no
one seemed to mind."
"That's the odd thing about those people," said Doctor Hilary
thoughtfully. "Disclosing their innermost thoughts, feelings, and
so-called experiences, seems an absolute mania with them. And the more
public the disclosure the better they are pleased. But go on, Miss
Devereux."
"Well," said Trix, "at last she began describing a sort of Cleopatra
lady, and--and rather vivid love scenes, and--and things like that. When
she'd ended, the bracelet turned out to belong to a little dowdy woman
looking like a meek mouse. I thought the purple velvet lady would have
been really upset and mortified at her mistake. But she wasn't in the
least. She just smiled sweetly, and returned the bracelet to the owner,
and said that the dowdy little woman had been Cleopatra in a former
incarnation. Of course when she began on _that_ tack, I saw the kind of
lecture I'd really let myself in for, and I knew I'd no business to be in
the place at all, so I made Sybil take me away. It was nearly the end,
and she didn't mind, because she missed the silver collection. But she
talked to me about it the whole of tea-time, and she really believed it
all," sighed Trix pathetically.
Miss Tibbutt looked quite shocked.
"Oh, but, my dear, she couldn't really."
"She did," nodded Trix.
Miss Tibbutt appealed helplessly to Father Dormer.
"Why do people believe such extraordinary things?" she demanded almost
wrathfully.
Father Dormer laughed. "That's a question I cannot pretend to answer. But
I suppose that if people reject the truth, and yet want to believe
something beyond mere physical facts, they can invent anything, that is
if they happen to be endowed with sufficient imagination."
"Then the devil must help them invent," said Miss Tibbutt with exceeding
firmness.
After dinner they had coffee in the garden. A big moon was coming up in
the dusk behind the trees, its light throwing the shadows dark and soft
on the grass.
"It's so astonishingly silent after London," said Trix, gazing at the
blue-grey velvet of the sky.
She looked more than ever elfin-like, with the moonlight falling on her
fair hair and pointed oval face, and the shimmering green of her dress.
"I wonder why we ever go to bed on moonlight nights," she pursued.
"Brilliant sunshine always tempts us to do something--a long walk, a
drive, or boating on a river. Over and over again we say, 'Now, the very
next fine day we'll do--so and so.' But no one ever dreams of saying,
'Now, the next moonlight night we'll have a picnic.' I wonder why not?"
"Because," said Doctor Hilary smiling, and watching her, "the old and
staid folk have no desire to lose their sleep, and--well, the conventions
are apt to stand in the way of the young and romantic."
"Conventions," sighed Trix, "are the bane of one's existence. They hamper
all one's most cherished desires until one is of an age when the desires
become non-existent. My aunt Lilla is always saying to me, 'When you're a
much older woman, dearest.' And I reply, 'But, Aunt Lilla, _now_ is the
moment.' I know, by experience, later is no good. When I was a tiny child
my greatest desire was to play with all the grubbiest children in the
parks. Of course I was dragged past them by a haughty and righteous
nurse. I can talk to them now if I want to, and even wheel their
perambulators. But it would have been so infinitely nicer to wheel a very
dirty baby in a very ramshackle perambulator when I was eight.
Conventions are responsible for an enormous lot of lost opportunities."
"Mightn't they be well lost?" suggested Father Dormer.
Trix looked across at him.
"Serious or nonsense?" she demanded.
"Whichever you like," he replied, a little twinkle in his eyes.
"Oh, serious," interpolated Miss Tibbutt.
Trix leant a little forward, resting her chin on her hands.
"Well, seriously then, conventions--those that are merely conventions for
their own sake,--are detestable, and responsible for an enormous lot of
unhappiness. 'My dear (mimicked Trix), you can be quite polite to so and
so, but I cannot have you becoming friendly with them, you know they are
not _quite_.' I've heard that said over and over again. It's hateful. I'm
not a socialist, not one little bit, but I do think if you like a person
you ought to be able to be friends, even if you happen to be a Duchess
and he's a chimney-sweep. The motto of the present-day world is, 'What
will people think?' People!" snorted Trix wrathfully, warming to her
theme, "what people? And is their opinion worth twopence halfpenny? Fancy
them associating with St. Peter if he appeared now among them as he used
to be, with only his goodness and his character and his fisherman's
clothes, instead of his halo and his keys, as they see him in the
churches."
The two men laughed. Miss Tibbutt made a little murmur of something like
query. The Duchessa's face looked rather white, but perhaps it was only
the effect of the moonlight.
"But, Miss Devereux," said Doctor Hilary, "even now the world--people, as
you call them, are quite ready to recognize genius despite the fact that
it may have risen from the slums."
"Yes," contended Trix eagerly, "but it's not the person they recognize
really, it's merely their adjunct."
"What do you mean?" asked Miss Tibbutt. Father Dormer smiled
comprehendingly.
"I mean," said Trix slowly, "they recognize the thing that makes the
show, and the person because of that thing, not for the person's own
self. Let me try and explain better. A man, born in the slums, has a
marvellous voice. He becomes a noted singer. He's received everywhere and
feted. But it's really his voice that is feted, because it is the fashion
to fete it. Let him lose his voice, and he drops out of existence. People
don't recognize him himself, the self which gave expression to the voice,
and which still _is_, even after the voice is dumb."
Father Dormer nodded.
"Well," went on Trix, "I maintain that that man is every bit as well
worth knowing afterwards,--after he has lost his voice. And even if he'd
never been able to give expression to himself by singing, he might have
been just as well worth knowing. But the world never looks for inside
things, but only for external things that make a show. So if Mrs. B.
hasn't an atom of anything congenial to me in her composition, but has a
magnificent house and heaps of money, it's quite right and fitting I
should know her, so people would say, and encourage me to do so. But it's
against all the conventions that I should be friendly with little Miss F.
who lives over the tobacconist's at the corner of such and such a street,
though she _is_ thoroughly congenial to me, and I love her plucky and
cheery outlook on life." She stopped.
"Go on," encouraged Doctor Hilary.
"Well," laughed Trix, "take a more extreme case. Sir A. C. is--well, not
a bad man, but not the least the kind of man I care about, but he may
take me in to dinner, and, on the strength of that brief acquaintance, to
a theatre if he wants, provided I have some other woman with me as a sort
of chaperon, and he can talk to me by the hour, and that all on account
of his money and title. Mr. Z. is a really white man, but he's a
'come-down,' through no fault of his own, and a bus-conductor. I happen
to have spoken to him once or twice; and like him. But I mightn't even
walk for half an hour with him in the park, if I'd fifty authorized
chaperons attending on me. That's what I mean about conventions that are
conventions for their own sake." She stopped again.
"And what do you suggest as a remedy?" asked Father Dormer, smiling.
"There isn't one," sighed Trix. "At least not one you can apply
universally. Everybody must just apply it for themselves, and not exactly
by defying conventions, but by treating them as simply non-existent."
The Duchessa made a little movement in the moonlight.
"Which," she said quietly, "comes to exactly the same thing as defying
them, and it won't work."
"Why not?" demanded Trix.
"You'd find yourself curiously lonely after a time if you did."
"You mean my friends--no, my acquaintances--would desert me?"
"Probably."
"Well, I'd have the one I'd chanced it all for."
"Yes," said the Duchessa slowly and deliberately, "but you'd have to be
very sure, not only that the friend was worth it, but that you were worth
it to the friend."
There was rather a blank silence. Trix gave a little gasp. It was not so
much the words that hurt, as the tone in which they had been spoken. It
was a repetition of the little scene at dinner, but this time
intensified. And it was so utterly, so entirely unlike Pia. Trix felt
miserably squashed. She had been talking a good deal too, perhaps,
indeed, rather foolishly, that was the worst of it. No doubt she _had_
made rather an idiot of herself. She swallowed a little lump in her
throat. Well, anyhow that inflection in Pia's tone must be covered at
once. That was the first, indeed the only, consideration.
"I never thought of all those contingencies," she laughed. There was the
faintest suspicion of a quiver in her voice. "Let's talk about the
moonlight. But it was the moonlight began it all."
* * * * *
Two hours later the garden lay deserted in the same moonlight.
A woman was sitting by an open window, looking out into the garden. She
had been sitting there quite a long time. Suddenly her eyes filled with
tears.
"Oh, Trix, Trix," she said half aloud, "if only it would work. But it
won't. And it was the moonlight that began it all."