The Green Carnation Part 7

"But what would you buy there?"

"That is just what I wish to know. May I have the governess cart? I want to try and feel like a governess."

"Of course. I will order it. Will you drive yourself?"

"Oh no, I am too blind. Lady Locke, won't you come with me? I am sure you can drive. I can always tell by looking at people what they can do.

I could pick you out a dentist from a crowd of a hundred people."

"Or a driver?" said Lady Locke. "I think I can manage the white pony.

Yes, I will come with pleasure."

"I shall go into the drawing-room and compose my anthem for Sunday,"

said Lord Reggie. "I am unlike Saint Saens. I always compose at the piano."

"And I will go into the rose-garden," said Esme, "and eat pink roses.

There is nothing more delicious than a ripe La France. May I, Mrs.

Windsor? Please don't say 'this is liberty hall,' or I shall think of Mr. Alexander, the good young manager who never dies--but may I?"

"Do. And compose some Ritualistic epigrams to say to Mr. Smith to-night.

How delightfully rustic we all are! So nave! I am going to order dinner, and add up the household accounts for yesterday."

She rustled away with weary grace, rattling delicately a large bunch of keys that didn't open any thing in particular. They were a part of her get up as a country hostess.

A few moments later some simple chords, and the sound of a rather obvious sequence, followed by intensely Handelian runs, announced that Lord Reggie had begun to compose his anthem, and Madame Valtesi and Lady Locke were mounting into the governess cart, which was rather like a large hip bath on wheels. They sat opposite to each other upon two low seats, and Lady Locke drove sideways.

As they jogged along down the dusty country road, between the sweet smelling flowery banks, Madame Valtesi said--

"Do governesses always drive in tubs? Is it part of the system?"

"I don't know," answered Lady Locke, looking at the hunched white figure facing her, and at the little shrewd eyes peering from beneath the shade of the big and aggressively garden hat. "What system do you mean?"

"The English governess system; simple clothes, no friends, no society, no money, no late dinner, supper at nine, all the talents, and bed at ten whether you are inclined to sleep or not. Do they invariably go about in tubs as well?"

"I suppose very often. These carts are always called governess carts."

Madame Valtesi nodded enigmatically.

"I am glad I have never had to be a governess," said Lady Locke thoughtfully. "From a worldly point of view, I suppose I have been born under a lucky star."

"There is no such thing as luck in the world," Madame Valtesi remarked, putting up a huge white parasol that abruptly extinguished the view for miles. "There is only capability."

"But some capable people are surely unlucky."

"They are incapable in one direction or another. Have you not noticed that whenever a man is a failure his friends say he is an able man. No man is able who is unable to get on, just as no woman is clever who can't succeed in obtaining that worst, and most necessary, of evils--a husband."

"You are very cynical," said Lady Locke, flicking the pony's fat white back with the whip.

"All intelligent people are. Cynicism is merely the art of seeing things as they are instead of as they ought to be. If one says that Christianity has never converted the Christians, or that love has ruined more women than hate, or that virtue is an accident of environment, one is sure to be dubbed a cynic. And yet all these remarks are true to absolute absurdity."

"I scarcely think so."

"But, then, you have been in the Straits Settlements for eight years.

They are true in London. And there are practically not more than about five universal truths in the world. One must always locate a truth if one wishes to be understood. What is true in London is often a lie in the country. I believe that there are still many good Christians in the country, but they are only good Christians because they are in the country--most of them. Our virtues are generally a fortunate, or unfortunate, accident, and the same may be said of our vices. Now, think of Lord Reggie. He is one of the most utterly vicious young men of the day. Why? Because, like the chameleon, he takes his colour from whatever he rests upon, or is put near. And he has been put near scarlet instead of white."

Lady Locke felt a strange thrill of pain at her heart.

"I am sure Lord Reggie has a great deal of good in him!" she exclaimed.

"Not enough to spoil his charm," said Madame Valtesi. "He has no real intention of being either bad or good. He lives like Esme Amarinth, merely to be artistic."

"But what in Heaven's name does that word mean?" asked Lady Locke. "It seems almost the only modern word. I hear it everywhere like a sort of refrain."

"I cannot tell you. I am too old. Ask Lord Reggie. He would tell you anything."

The last words were spoken with slow intention.

"What do you mean?" said Lady Locke hastily.

"Here we are at the post-office. Would it not be the proper thing to do to get some stamps? No? Then let us stop at the linen-draper's. I feel a strong desire to buy some village frilling. And there are some deliciously coa.r.s.e-looking pocket-handkerchiefs in the window, about a yard square. I must get a dozen of those."

At lunch that day Lord Reggie announced that he had composed a beautiful anthem on the words--

"Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks."

"They sound exactly like something of Esme's," he said, "but really they are taken from the 'Song of Solomon.' I had no idea that the Bible was so intensely artistic. There are pa.s.sages in the Book of Job that I should not be ashamed to have written."

"You remind me of a certain lady writer who is very popular in kitchen circles," said Esme, "and whose husband once told me that she had founded her style upon Mr. Ruskin and the better parts of the Bible. She brings out about seven books every year, I am told, and they are all about sailors, of whom she knows absolutely nothing. I am perpetually meeting her, and she always asks me to lunch, and says she knows my brother. She seems to connect my poor brother with lunch in some curious way. I shall never lunch with her, but she will always ask me."

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," Mrs. Windsor said, with a little air of aptness.

"That is one of the greatest fallacies of a melancholy age," Esme answered, arranging the huge moonstone in his tie with a plump hand; "suicide would be the better word. 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray' has made suicide quite the rage. A number of most respectable ladies, without the vestige of a past among them, have put an end to themselves lately, I am told. To die naturally has become most unfas.h.i.+onable, but no doubt the tide will turn presently."

"I wonder if people realise how dangerous they may be in their writings," said Lady Locke.

"One has to choose between being dangerous and being dull. Society loves to feel itself upon the edge of a precipice, I a.s.sure you. To be harmless is the most deadly enemy to social salvation. Strict respectability would even handicap a rich American nowadays, and rich Americans are terribly respectable by nature. That is why they are always so anxious to get into the Prince of Wales' set."

"I suppose Ibsen is responsible for a good deal," Mrs. Windsor said rather vaguely. Luncheon always rendered her rather vague, and after food her intellect struggled for egress, as the sun struggles to emerge from behind intercepting clouds.

"I believe Mr. Clement Scott thinks so," said Amarinth; "but then it does not matter very much what Mr. Clement Scott thinks, does it? The position of the critics always strikes me as very comic. They are for ever running at the back of public opinion, and shouting 'come on!' or 'go back!' to those who are in front of them. If half of them had their way, our young actors and actresses would play in Pinero's pieces as Mrs. Siddons or Charles Kean played in the pieces of Shakespeare long ago. A good many of them found their claims to attention on the horrible fact that they once knew Charles d.i.c.kens, a circ.u.mstance of which they ought rather to be ashamed. They are monotonous dwellers in an unenlightened past like Mr. Sala, who is even more commonplace than the books of which he is for ever talking. Mr. Joseph Knight is their oracle at first nights, and some of them even labour under the wild impression that Mr. Robert Buchanan can write good English, and that Mr. George R.

Sims--what would he be without the initial?--is a minor poet."

"Dear me! I am afraid we are all wrong," said Mrs. Windsor, still rather vaguely; "but do you know, we ought really to be thinking of our walk up Leith Hill. It is a lovely afternoon. Will you attempt it, Madame Valtesi?"

"No, thank you. I think I must have been constructed, like Providence, with a view to sitting down. Whoever thinks of the Deity as standing? I will stay at home and read the last number of 'The Yellow Disaster.' I want to see Mr. Aubrey Beardsley's idea of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He has drawn him sitting in a wheelbarrow in the gardens of Lambeth Palace, with underneath him the motto, 'J'y suis, j'y reste.' I believe he has on a black mask. Perhaps that is to conceal the likeness."

"I have seen it," Mrs. Windsor said; "it is very clever. There are only three lines in the whole picture, two for the wheelbarrow and one for the Archbishop."

"What exquisite simplicity!" said Lord Reggie, going out into the hall to get his straw hat.