"Jack, Dodo makes me the happiest of men. I am afraid sometimes
that she is too clever, and wishes I was more so, but it makes no
difference. Last night, as I was in the smoking-room she sent to say
she wanted to see me, and I went up. She said that she wanted to talk
to me, now she had got rid of all those tiresome people, and said so
many charming things that I got quite conceited, and had to stop her.
I often wonder, Jack, what I have done to deserve her. And she went on
talking about our yachting, and those months in London when we were
first engaged, and she told me to go on smoking, and she would have a
cigarette too. And we sat on talking, till I saw she was tired, and
then I went away, though she would hardly let me."
This communication had only the effect of making Jack rather
uncomfortable. Knowing what he did, he knew that this was not all
genuine on Dodo's part. It was obviously an effort to keep it up, to
use a vulgar term. And since it was not all genuine, the doubt occurred
as to whether any of it was. Jack had a profound belief in Dodo's
dramatic talents. That the need for keeping it up had appeared already
was an alarming symptom, but the real tragedy would begin on that day
when Dodo first failed to do so. And from that moment Jack regarded his
prophecy as certain to be fulfilled. The overture had begun, and in
course of time the curtain would rise on a grim performance.
They drove up to the door, and entered the large oak-panelled hall,
hung all round with portraits of the family. The night was cold, and
there was a fire sparkling in the wide, open grate. As they entered,
an old collie, who was enjoying the fruits of a well-spent life on the
hearthrug, stretched his great, tawny limbs, and shoved a welcoming
nose into Chesterford's hand. This produced heartburnings of the
keenest order in the mind of a small fox-terrier pup, who consisted
mainly of head and legs, which latter he evidently considered at
present more as a preventive towards walking than an aid. Being unable
to reach his hand the puppy contented himself with sprawling over his
boots, and making vague snaps at the collie. It was characteristic of
Chesterford that all animals liked him. He had a tender regard for
the feelings of anything that was dependent on him. Dodo thought this
almost inexplicable. She disliked to see animals in pain, because they
usually howled, but the dumb anguish of a dog who considers himself
neglected conveyed nothing to her. From within a door to the right,
came sounds of talking and laughter.
There was something pathetic in the sight of this beautiful home,
and its owner standing with his back to the fire, as Jack divested
himself of his coat. Chesterford was so completely happy, so terribly
unconscious of what Jack felt sure was going on. He looked the model
of the typical English gentleman, with his tall stature and well-bred
face. Jack remembered passing on the road a labourer who was turning
into his cottage. The firelight had thrown a bright ray across the
snow-covered road, and inside he had caught a momentary glimpse of
the wife with a baby in her arms, and a couple of girls laying the
table-cloth. He remembered afresh Dodo's remark about waiting until
the chimney smoked, and devoutly hoped that the chimney of this
well-appointed house was in good order.
Chesterford led the way to the drawing-room door, and pushed it open
for Jack to enter. Dodo was sitting at the tea-table, talking to some
half-dozen people who were grouped round her.
As Jack entered, she rose and came towards him with a smile of welcome.
"Ah, Jack," she said, "this is delightful; I am tremendously glad to
see you! Let's see, whom do you know? May I introduce you to Miss
Grantham? Mr. Broxton. I think you know everybody else. Chesterford,
come here and sit by me at once. You've been an age away. I expect
you've been getting into mischief." She wheeled a chair up for him, and
planted him down in it. He looked radiantly happy.
"Now, Jack," she went on, "tell us what you've been doing all these
months. It's years since we saw you. I think you look all right. No
signs of breaking down yet. I hoped you would have gone into a rapid
consumption, because I was married, but it doesn't seem to have made
any difference to anybody except Chesterford and me. Jack, don't you
think I shall make an excellent matron? I shall get Maud to teach
me some of her crochet-stitches. Have you ever been here before?
Chesterford, you shut it up, didn't you, for several years, until you
thought of bringing me here? Sugar, Jack? Two lumps? Chesterford, you
mustn't eat sugar, you're getting quite fat already. You must obey me,
you know. You promised to love, honour and obey. Oh, no; I did that.
However, sugar is bad for you."
"Dodo keeps a tight hand on me, you see," said Chesterford, from the
depths of his chair. "Dodo, give me the sugar, or we shall quarrel."
Dodo laughed charmingly.
"He would quarrel with his own wife for a lump of sugar," said Dodo
dramatically; "but she won't quarrel with him. Take it then."
She glanced at Jack for a moment as she said this, but Jack was talking
to Miss Grantham, and either did not see, or did not seem to. Jack
had a pleasant impression of light hair, dark grey eyes, and a very
fair complexion. But somehow it produced no more effect on him than do
those classical profiles which are commoner on the lids of chocolate
boxes than elsewhere. Her "discoverer" was sitting in a chair next her,
talking to her with something of the air of a showman exhibiting the
tricks of his performing bear. His manner seemed to say, "See what an
intelligent animal." The full sublimity of Lord Ledgers' remark had not
struck him till that moment.
Miss Grantham was delivering herself of a variety of opinions in a
high, penetrating voice.
"Oh, did you never hear him sing last year?" she was saying to Lord
Ledgers. "Mr. Broxton, you must have heard him. He has the most lovely
voice. He simply sings into your inside. You feel as if someone had
got hold of your heart, and was stroking it. Don't you know how some
sounds produce that effect? I went with Dodo once. She simply wept
floods, but I was too far gone for that. He had put a little stopper on
my tear bottle, and though I was dying to cry, I couldn't."
"I always wonder how sorry we are when we cry," said Lord Ledgers in
a smooth, low voice. "It always strikes me that people who don't cry
probably feel most."
"Oh, you are a horrid, unfeeling monster," remarked Miss Grantham;
"that's what comes of being a man. Just because you are not in the
habit of crying yourself, you think that you have all the emotions,
but stoically repress them. Now I cultivate emotions. I would walk ten
miles any day in order to have an emotion. Wouldn't you, Mr. Broxton?"
"It obviously depends on what sort of emotion I should find when I
walked there," said Jack. "There are some emotions that I would walk
further to avoid."
"Oh, of course, the common emotions, 'the litany things,' as Dodo calls
them," said Miss Grantham, dismissing them lightly with a wave of her
hand. "But what I like is a nice little sad emotion that makes you
feel so melancholy you don't know what to do with yourself. I don't
mean deaths and that sort of thing, but seeing someone you love being
dreadfully unhappy and extremely prosperous at the same time."
"But it's rather expensive for the people you love," said Jack.
"Oh, we must all make sacrifices," said Miss Grantham. "It's quite
worth while if you gratify your friends. I would not mind being acutely
unhappy, if I could dissect my own emotions, and have them photographed
and sent round to my friends."
"What a charming album we might all make," said Lord Ledgers. "Page 1.
Miss Grantham's heart in the acute stage. Page 2. Mortification setting
in. Page 3. The lachrymatory gland permanently closed by a tenor voice."
"Poor old Chesterford," thought Jack, "this is rather hard on him."
But Chesterford was not to be pitied just now, for Dodo was devoting
her exclusive conversation to him in defiance of her duties as hostess.
She was recounting to him how she had spent every moment of his absence
at the station. Certainly she was keeping it up magnificently at
present.
"And Mrs. Vivian comes to-morrow," she was saying. "You like her, don't
you, Chesterford? You must be awfully good to her, and take her to see
all the drunken idlers in the village. That will be dear of you. It's
just what she likes. She has sort of passion for drunken cabmen, who
stamp on their wives. If you stamped on me a little every evening, she
would cultivate you to any extent. Shall I lie down on the floor for
you to begin?"
Chesterford leant back in his chair in a kind of ecstasy.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, "you are wonderfully good to me. But I must go and
write two notes before dinner; and you must amuse your guests. I am
very glad Jack has come. He is a very good chap. But don't make him an
apostle."
Dodo laughed.
"I shall make a little golden hoop for him like the apostles in the
Arundels, and another for you, and when nobody else is there you can
take them off, and play hoops with them. I expect the apostles did that
when they went for a walk. You couldn't wear it round your hat, could
you?"
Miss Grantham instantly annexed Dodo.
"Dodo," she said, "come and take my part. These gentlemen say you
shouldn't cultivate emotions."
"No, not that quite," corrected Jack. "I said it was expensive for your
friends if they had to make themselves miserable, in order to afford
food for your emotions."
"Now, isn't that selfish?" said Miss Grantham, with the air of a martyr
at the stake. "Here am I ready to be drawn and quartered for anyone's
amusement, and you tell me you are sorry for your part, but that it
costs too much. Maud, come off that sofa, and take up the daggers for a
too unselfish woman."
"I expect I don't know much about these things," said Maud.
"No; Maud would not go further than wrapping herself in a
winding-sheet of blue worsted," remarked Dodo incisively.
Maud flushed a little.
"Oh, Dodo!" she exclaimed deprecatingly.
"It's no use hitting Maud," said Dodo pensively. "You might as well hit
a feather bed. Now, if you hit Jack, he will hit back."
"Well, I'd prefer you hit me," said Jack, "than that you should hit
anyone who can't hit back."
"Can't you see that I have determined not to hit feather beds," said
Dodo in a low tone. "Really, Jack, you do me an injustice."
Jack looked up at her quickly.
"Do you say that already?" he asked.
"Oh, if you are going to whisper, I shall whisper too," remarked Miss
Grantham calmly. "Lord Ledgers, I want to tell you a secret."
"I was only telling. Jack he was stupid," said Dodo. "I thought I would
spare him before you all, but I see I have to explain. Have you seen
Bertie yet, Jack? He's in the smoking-room, I think. Edith Staines
is probably there too. She always smokes after tea, and Chesterford
doesn't like it in the drawing-room. You know her, don't you? She's
writing a symphony or something, and she's no use except at meal-times.
I expect she will play it us afterwards. We must make Bertie sing too.
There's the dressing-bell. I'm going to be gorgeous to-night in honour
of you, Jack."
Jack found himself making a quantity of reflections, when he retired
to his room that night. He became aware that he had enjoyed himself
more that evening than he had done for a very long time. He questioned
himself as to when he had enjoyed himself so much, and he was
distinctly perturbed to find that the answer was, when he had last
spent an evening with Dodo. He had formed an excellent habit of being
exactly honest with himself, and he concluded that Dodo's presence had
been the cause of it. It was a very unpleasant blow to him. He had
accepted her refusal with an honest determination to get over it. He
had not moped, nor pined, nor striven, nor cried. He had no intentions
of dying of a broken heart, but the stubborn fact remained that Dodo
exercised an unpleasantly strong influence over him. He could have
repeated without effort all she had said that night. She had not said
anything particularly remarkable, but somehow he felt that the most
striking utterances of other men and women would not have produced any
such effect on him. It really was very inconvenient. Dodo had married
a man who adored her, for whom she did not care two pins' heads, and
this man was one of his oldest friends. Decidedly there was something
left-handed about this particular disposition of destiny. And the worst
of it was that Chesterford was being hopelessly duped. About that he
felt no doubt. Dodo's acting was so remarkably life-like, that he
mistook it at present for reality. But the play must end some time,
and the sequel was too dark and involved to be lightly followed out.
He could not conceive why this elaborate drama on Dodo's part did
not disgust him more. He wished he had been deceived by it himself,
but having been behind the scenes, he had seen Dodo, as it were, in
the green-room, putting on the rouge and powder. But failing that, he
wished that a wholesome impulse of disgust and contempt had superseded
his previous feelings with regard to her. But he believed with her that
under the circumstances it was the best thing to do. The marriage was a
grand mistake, true, but given that, was not this simply so many weeks
of unhappiness saved? Then he had an immense pity for Dodo's original
mistake. She had told him once that she was no more responsible for her
philosophy than for the fact that she happened to be five foot eight
in height, and had black eyes and black hair. "It was Nature's doing,"
she had said; "go and quarrel with her, but don't blame me. If I had
made myself, I should have given myself a high ideal; I should have
had something to live up to. Now, I have no ideal. The whole system
of things seems to me such an immense puzzle, that I have given up
trying to find a solution. I know what I like, and what I dislike.
Can you blame me for choosing the one, and avoiding the other? I like
wealth and success, and society and admiration. In a degree I have
secured them, and the more I secure them the more reason I have to be
satisfied. To do otherwise would be like putting on boots that were too
large for me--they are excellent for other people, but not for me. I
cannot accept ideals that I don't feel. I can understand them, and I
can sympathise with them, and I can and do wish they were mine; but,
as Nature has denied me them, I must make the best of what I have."
Jack felt hopeless against this kind of reasoning, and angry with
himself for letting this woman have such dominion over him. In a
measure he felt himself capable of views bounded by a horizon not
so selfishly fatalistic, and the idea of the smoking chimney in the
cottage did not seem to matter, provided that Dodo was sitting on
the other side of the hearthrug. He would willingly have sacrificed
anything else, to allow himself to give full reins to his thought on
this point. But the grand barrier which stood between him and Dodo,
was not so much her refusal of him, but the existence of her husband.
At this Jack pulled himself up sharp. There are certain feelings of
loyalty that still rank above all other emotions. Miss Grantham would
certainly have classed such among the litany things. There was nothing
heroic about it. It simply consisted in a sturdy refusal to transgress,
even in vaguest thought, a code which deals with the most ordinary and
commonplace virtues and vices. There is nothing heroic in a street boy
passing by the baker's cart without a grab at the loaves, and it sounds
almost puritanical to forbid him to cast a glance at them, or inhale
a sniff of their warm fragrance. "Certainly this side of morality is
remarkably dull," thought Jack; and the worst of it is, that it is
not only dull but difficult. With practice most of us could become
a Simeon Stylites, provided we are gifted with a steady head, and
a constitution that defies showers. It is these commonplace acts of
loyalty, the ordinary and rational demands of friendship and society,
that are so dreadfully taxing to most of us who have the misfortune not
to be born saints. Then Jack began to feel ill-used. "Why the deuce
should Chesterford be born a marquis and not I? What has he done to
have a title and fortune and Dodo that I have been given the chance to
do?" It struck him that his reflections were deplorably commonplace,
and that his position ought to be made much more of. He wondered
whether this sort of situation was always so flat. In novels there is
always a touch of the heroic in the faithful friend who is loyal to
his cousin, and steadily avoids his cousin's wife; but here he is in
identically the same situation, feeling not at all heroic, but only
discontented and quarrelsome with this ill-managed world. Decidedly he
would go to bed.
Owing to a certain habit that he had formed early in life he slept
soundly, and morning found him not only alive, but remarkably well and
hearty, and with a certain eagerness to follow up what he had thought
out on the previous night. He was in an excellently managed household,
which imposed no rules on its inhabitants except that they should
do what they felt most inclined to do; he was in congenial company,
and his digestion was good. It is distressing how important those
material matters are to us. The deeper emotions do but form a kind of
background to our coarser needs. We come down in the morning feeling
rather miserable, but we eat an excellent breakfast, and, in spite of
ourselves, we are obliged to confess that we feel distinctly better.
As Jack crossed the hall, he met a footman carrying a breakfast tray
into the drawing-room. The door was half open, and there came from
within the sounds of vigorous piano-playing, and now and then a bar
or two of music sung in a rich, alto voice. These tokens seemed to
indicate that Miss Edith Staines was taking her breakfast at the piano.
Jack found himself smiling at the thought; it was a great treat to
find anyone so uniformly in character as Miss Staines evidently was.
He turned into the dining-room, where he found Miss Grantham sitting
at the table alone. Dodo was lolling in a great chair by the fire, and
there were signs that Lord Chesterford had already breakfasted. Dodo
was nursing a little Persian kitten with immense tenderness. Apparently
she had been disagreeing with Miss Grantham on some point, and had made
the kitten into a sort of arbitrator.
"Oh, you dear kitten," she was saying, "you must agree with me, if you
think it over. Now, supposing you were very fond of a tom-cat that
had only the woodshed to lie in, and another very presentable torn
belonging to the Queen came--Ah, Jack, here you are. Chesterford's
breakfasted, and there's going to be a shoot to-day over the home
covers. Edith is composing and breakfasting. She says she has--an idea.
So Grantie and I are going to bring you lunch to the keeper's cottage
at half-past one."
"And Bertie?" asked Jack.
"Oh, you must get Edith to tell you what Bertie's going to do. Perhaps
she'll want him to turn over the pages for her, or give her spoonfuls
of egg and bacon, while she does her music. He's in the drawing-room
now. Edith's appropriated him. She usually does appropriate somebody.
We told Chesterford to get Bertie to come if possible, but Edith's
leave is necessary. Maud is going to meet Mrs. Vivian, who comes this
afternoon, and, as she has some shopping to do, she will lunch in
Harchester, and drive out afterwards; Ledgers has had a telegram, and
has made a blasphemous departure for town. He comes back this evening."
"Well, Dodo," remarked Miss Grantham, "now let's go on with what we
were discussing. Mr. Broxton will make a much better umpire than the
kitten."
"Oh, shut up, Grantie," said Dodo, with fine candour, "Jack agrees with
neither of us."
"Tell me what it is," said Jack, "and then I'll promise to agree with
somebody."
"I don't care about your agreeing with me," said Miss Grantham. "I know
I'm right, so it doesn't signify what anybody else thinks."
Miss Grantham, it may be noticed, showed some signs of being ruffled:
"Oh, now, Grantie's angry," said Dodo. "Grantie, do be amiable. Call
her Grantie, Jack," she added with feeling.
"Dodo, darling," said Miss Grantham, "you're really foolish, now and
then. I'm perfectly amiable. But, you know, if you don't care for a
man at all, and he does care for you a great deal, it's sure to be a
failure. I can't think of any instance just now, but I know I'm right."
Dodo looked up and caught Jack's eye for a moment. Then she turned to
Miss Grantham.
"Dear Grantie, please shut up. It's no use trying to convince me. I
know a case in point just the other way, but I am not at liberty to
mention it. Am I, Jack?"
"If you mean the same as the case I'm thinking of, certainly not," said
Jack.
"Well, I'm sure this is very pleasant for me," said Miss Grantham, in
high, cool tones.
At this moment a shrill voice called Dodo from the drawing-room.
"Dodo, Dodo," it cried, "the man brought me two tepid poached eggs! Do
send me something else. Is there such a thing as a grilled bone?"
These remarks were speedily followed up by the appearance of Miss
Staines at the dining-room door. In one hand she held the despised
eggs, in the other a quire of music paper. Behind her followed a
footman with her breakfast-tray, in excusable ignorance as to what was
required of him.
"Dear Dodo," she went on, "you know when I'm composing a symphony I
want something more exciting than two poached eggs. Mr. Broxton, I
know, will take my side. You couldn't eat poached eggs at a ball--could
you? They might do very well for a funeral march or a nocturne,
but they won't do for a symphony, especially for the scherzo. A
brandy-and-soda and a grilled bone is what one really wants for a
scherzo, only that would be quite out of the question."
Edith Staines talked in a loud, determined voice, and emphasised her
points with little dashes and nourishes of the dish of poached eggs. At
this moment one of them flew on to the floor and exploded. But it is an
ill wind that blows nobody any good, and at any rate this relieved the
footman from his state of indecision. His immediate mission was clearly
to remove it.
Dodo threw herself back in her chair with a peal of laughter.
"Go on, go on," she cried, "you are too splendid. Tell us what you
write the presto on."
"I can't waste another moment," said Edith. "I'm in the middle of the
most entrancing motif, which is working out beautifully. Do you mind
my smoking in the drawing-room? I am awfully sorry, but it makes all
the difference to my work. Burn a little incense there afterwards. Do
send me a bone, Dodo. Come and hear me play the scherzo later on. It's
the best thing I've ever done. Oh, by the way, I telegraphed to Herr
Truffen to come to-morrow--he's my conductor, you know. You can put
him up in the village or the coal-hole, if you like. He's quite happy
if he gets enough beer. He's my German conductor, you know. I made him
entirely. I took him to the Princess the other day when I was at Aix,
and we all had beer together in the verandah of the Beau Site. You'll
be amused with him."
"Oh, rather," said Dodo; "that will be all right. He can sleep in the
house. Will he come early to-morrow? Let's see--to-morrow's Sunday.
Edith, I've got an idea. We'll have a dear little service in the
house--we can't go to church if it snows--and you shall play your Mass,
and Herr What's-his-name shall conduct, and Bertie, and Grantie, and
you and I will sing. Won't it be lovely? You and I will settle all that
this afternoon. Telegraph to Truffler, or whatever his name is, to come
by the eight-twenty. Then he'll be here by twelve, and we'll have the
service at a quarter past."
"Dodo, that will be grand," said Edith. "I can't wait now. Good-bye.
Hurry up my breakfast--I'm awfully sharp-set."
Edith went back to the drawing-room, whistling in a particularly shrill
manner.
"_Oh_, did you ever!" said Dodo, who was laughing feebly in her chair.
"Edith really is splendid. She is so dreadfully sure of herself, and
she tells you so. And she does talk so loud--it goes right through your
head like a chirping canary. Chesterford can't bear her."
Jack laughed.
"She was giving him advice about the management of his kennels at
dinner last night," he said. "I heard her say to him impressively, as
she left the room, 'Try brimstone.' It took Chesterford at least five
minutes to recover. He was dreadfully depressed."
"He must take Mrs. Vivian in to-night," said Dodo. "You'll hear them
talking about slums, and over-crowding, and marriage among minors, and
the best cure for dipsomaniacs. The other night they were talking about
someone called 'Charlie,' affectionately but gravely, and I supposed
they meant your brother, Jack, but it was the second laundress's young
man. Oh, they shook their heads over him."
"I don't think common people are at all interesting," said Miss
Grantham. "They only think about things to eat, and heaven, and three
aces, and funerals."
She had by this time finished her breakfast, and stood warming her back
in a gentlemanly manner by the fire.
The door opened and Lord Chesterford came in.
"Morning, Jack," he said, "what a lazy chap you are. It's half-past
ten, and you're still breakfasting. Dodo, what a beastly smell of
smoke."
"Oh, it's Edith," remarked Dodo. "You mustn't mind her, dear. You know
she's doing a symphony, and she has to smoke to keep the inspiration
going. Dear old boy, you are so sweet about these things; you've never
made a fuss since I knew you first. You look very nice this morning.
I wish I could dress in a homespun Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers.
Grantie and I are going to bring you lunch. What should you like? You'd
better have some champagne. Don't step in that egg, dear; it will make
your nice brown boots all beastly. It's awfully cold. You'd better have
two bottles. Tell Raikes to send you two. Chesterford, I wish you'd
tell Raikes to cut off the end of his nose. I'm always afraid he'll
hit me with it when he hands things. He might have it grafted into his
chin, you know; he hasn't got any chin. Jack, have you finished? Yes,
you'd better start. We'll meet you at the bothy. I'll go and ask Edith
if she can spare Bertie."
"What does she want Bertie for?" said Chesterford.
"Oh, I expect she'll let him come," remarked Dodo; "she's really busy
this morning. She's been composing since a quarter past eight."
Dodo went across the hall and opened the drawing-room door. Edith was
completely absorbed in her work. The grilled bone lay untouched on a
small table by the piano. Bertie was sitting before the fire.
"Bertie," said Dodo, "are you coming shooting?"
This woke Edith up.
"Oh, it's splendid," she said. "Dodo, listen to this."
She ran her hands over the piano, and then broke out into a quick,
rippling scherzo. The music flew on, as if all the winds of heaven
were blowing it; then it slowed down, halted a moment, and repeated
itself till Dodo burst out: "Oh, Edith, it's lovely! I want to dance."
She wheeled a table out of the way, kicked a chair across the room,
and began turning and twisting with breathless rapidity. Her graceful
figure looked admirable in the quick movements of her impromptu dance.
Bertie thought he had never seen anything so deliciously fresh. Dodo
danced with peculiar abandon. Every inch of her moved in perfect time
and harmony to the music.
She had caught up a thin, Indian shawl from one of the sofas, and
passed it behind her back, round her head, this way and that, bending,
till at one moment it swept the ground in front of her, at another
flew in beautiful curves high above her head, till at last the music
stopped, and she threw herself down exhausted in an arm-chair.
"Oh, that was glorious," she panted. "Edith, you are a genius. I never
felt like that before. I didn't dance at all, it was the music that
danced, and pulled me along with it."
"That was the best compliment my music has ever received," said Edith.
"That scherzo was meant to make you want to dance. Now, Dodo, could I
have done that after eating two poached eggs?"
"You may have grilled bones seven times a day," said Dodo, "if you'll
compose another scherzo."
"I wanted a name for the symphony," said Edith, "and I shall call
it the 'Dodo.' That's a great honour, Dodo. Now, if you only feel
miserable during the 'Andante,' I shall be satisfied. But you came
about something else, I forget what."
"Oh, about Bertie. Is he coming shooting?".
"I wish it was right for women to shoot," said Edith. "I do shoot when
I'm at home, and there's no one there. Anyhow I couldn't to-day. I
must finish this. Dodo, if you are going to take lunch with them, I'll
come with you, if you don't go too early. You know this music makes
me perfectly wild, but it can't be done on poached eggs. Now set me
down at the Handel Festival, and I'll be content with high tea, cold
meat and muffins, you know. Handel always reminds me of high tea,
particularly the muffins. He must have written the 'Messiah' between
tea and dinner on Sunday evening, after an afternoon service in summer.
I've often thought of taking the Salvation Army hymn-book and working
the tunes up into fugual choruses, and publishing them as a lost work
of Handel's, Noah, or Zebedee's children, or the Five Foolish Virgins.
I don't believe anyone would know the difference."
Dodo was turning over the leaves of Edith's score book.
"I give it up," she said at last; "you are such a jumble of opposites.
You sit down and write a Sanctus, which makes one feel as if one wants
to be a Roman Catholic archbishop, and all the time you are smoking
cigarettes and eating grilled bone."
"Oh, everyone's a jumble of opposites," said Edith, "when you come to
look at them. It's only because my opposites are superficial, that
you notice them. A Sanctus is only a form of expression for thoughts
which everyone has, even though their tastes appear to lie in the
music-hall line; and music is an intelligible way of expressing these
thoughts. Most people are born dumb with regard to their emotions, and
you therefore conclude that they haven't got any, or that they are
expressed by their ordinary actions."
"No, it's not that," said Dodo. "What I mean is that your Sanctus
emphasises an emotion I should think you felt very little."
"I!" said Edith with surprise. "My dear Dodo, you surely know me
better than that. Just because I don't believe that grilled bones are
necessarily inconsistent with deep religious feeling, you assume that I
haven't got the feeling."
Dodo laughed.
"I suppose one associates the champions of religion with
proselytising," she said. "You don't proselytise, you know."
"No artist does," said Edith; "it's their business to produce--to give
the world an opportunity of forming conclusions, not to preach their
own conclusions to the world."
"Yes; but your music is the expression of your conclusions, isn't it?"
"Yes, but I don't argue about it, and try to convert the world to it.
If someone says to me, 'I don't know what you mean! Handel seems to me
infinitely more satisfactory, I can understand him,' I simply say, 'For
Heaven's sake, then, why don't you go to hear Handel? Why leave a creed
that satisfies you?' Music is a conviction, but Handel's music has
nothing to do with my convictions, nor mine with Handel's."
Edith sat down sternly, and buried herself in heir convictions.