'Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus
sages.'--LA FONTAINE.
With the winter came many invitations, but they were nearly all refused,
for Mr. Loftus had long since dispensed himself from attending county
festivities, and Sibyl, though she had recovered her health, was always
delicate. Lady Pierpoint had had doubts as to whether she ought to
winter in England, but not only was Sibyl herself determined so to do,
but when Lady Pierpoint saw her in London before Christmas with a
vivid colour and an elasticity of bearing which made a marked contrast
to the drooping, listless demeanour of the previous winter, her doubts
were at once set at rest.
Presently, however, an invitation came for a masked ball in the
immediate neighbourhood, which Mr. Loftus decided could not be refused.
'But why should we go?' said Sibyl, 'if we don't care about it. And I
hate balls, and I hate society. I was saying so to the Gresleys only
yesterday. I love my own fireside and a book.'
Sibyl had no idea how much these occasional mild flourishes, which found
great favour at the Vicarage, annoyed Mr. Loftus. She put them forth,
poor thing! with a view to showing him how much she had in common with
him.
'It is a mistake to say you hate society,' said Mr. Loftus, 'because
you are not in a position to hate what you have never seen. Personally,
I can see nothing peculiarly obnoxious in my fellow-creatures when they
have their diamonds and white ties on. I do not even discover that they
are more worldly in ball-gowns than on other occasions.'
'But it is all so empty and vain,' said Sibyl; 'and though I dare say I
have not seen much, still, the small-talk is so wearying, and I suppose
that is the same everywhere. I should not mind society if there was any
real conversation, anything _deep_.'
Sibyl loved the word 'deep.' She used it on the occasions when others
use the word 'trite,' she meaning the same as they did, but looking at
the trite from a different angle. From her point of vantage,
eccentricity was originality, and a wholesale contradiction of
established facts a new view.
Mr. Loftus was so close on the verge of annoyance that he was obliged to
be amused instead.
'I have heard many people say they hated society,' he said, smiling, and
Sibyl smiled back at him, delighted at having won his approbation by the
nobility and originality of her sentiments.
'I have generally found that they are persons to whom, probably for some
excellent reason, society has shown the cold shoulder, or those, like
the Gresleys, who have never seen anything of it, and who call
garden-parties, and flower-shows, and bazaars, and all those dismal
local functions, society.'
'She is not going to this masked ball,' said Sibyl. 'I asked her, and
she said, "Of course not. Her husband being a clergyman made it quite
impossible." I wonder why she always says things are quite impossible
for the clergy that most of the other clergy do. She said the same about
the Hunt Ball.'
'That was because of the pink coats of the men and the new gowns of the
women, and also partly because they were not asked. It happened to be a
good ball, consequently it was dangerous. Dowdiness has from a very
early date of this world's history been regarded as a sacrifice
acceptable to the Deity, so naturally pretty gowns and electric light
are considered to be the perquisites of the Evil One.'
'But are we really going to this ball?'
'We are. It would be unneighbourly not to do so. I met Lady Pontesbury
yesterday in D----, and she begged us to support her, and to bring even
numbers. People cannot give balls in the country, Sibyl, if none of the
neighbours will take the trouble to fill their houses. I have seen very
cruel things of that kind done. Ours is the largest house in the
neighbourhood, and, as it now has a mistress, we must fill it.'
The idea of society having any claim on her was a new light to Sibyl.
She had always considered herself superior to its blandishments. But now
that she discovered that Mr. Loftus actually regarded certain social
acts as a duty, and this masked ball as one in particular, she
immediately changed her opinion, and forthwith looked upon it as a duty
also. It was a duty which, as its fulfilment drew near, became less and
less unpleasant to anticipate.
She had until now lent a sympathetic ear to the Gresleys when they
talked of society as a snare, and had echoed Mr. Gresley's remarks on
the same.
'Balls are not wrong in themselves,' Mr. Gresley would say in his chest
voice, keeping his hand in before Sibyl and his admiring wife. 'It is
only the abuse of them that is blameworthy. Use the world as not abusing
it. A carpet dance among young people I should be the last to blame. We
cannot keep the bow always at full stretch. But when it comes to ball
after ball, party after party, and pleasure is made a business, instead
of a recreation, by which I mean that which restores elasticity to the
exhausted faculties, recreates us in fact, and renews our energy for
our work, then indeed----' And Mr. Gresley would express himself at that
length which is apparently the one great compensation of the teacher who
has no pupils.
Sibyl enjoyed his conversation very much. She thought Mr. Gresley a very
sensible person, and his opinions were in harmony with her own.
Mrs. Gresley had also declared, after a brief visit to Kensington in
July during the 'sales,' that she had neither the means nor the
inclination to throw herself into the social whirlpool which she and Mr.
Gresley had dispassionately viewed from two green chairs in the Row, and
which Mr. Gresley had estimated 'at its true worth.' If she had
possessed both the means and the inclination, she would perhaps have
discovered that she was no nearer to that vortex than the many
thousands who annually make a pilgrimage to London only to be tossed on
the outermost ripple of the whirlpool, and who revolve for ever on the
rim of society like Saturn's rings, without approaching the central
luminary. But that it is difficult to be loved of Society and ensnared
by her the Gresleys and Sibyl did not know, any more than that certain
crimes require great qualities in order to commit them.
Mr. Loftus might have been able to relieve their ignorance, but, as
Sibyl told the Gresleys, he did not care much for conversation.
A habit of silence was certainly growing upon him since his marriage.