Their ways were ways of pleasant grace,They toiled not neither did they spin;But since their smiles made glad the place,Dare men of sterner cast of faceAccount such carelessness a sin?
It was on a sunny September afternoon that Paul Seaton first saw Esdaile Court; and the mellowed Elizabethan house, with its stately avenues and large lake, was very pleasant to look upon in the autumn sunlight. On his arrival he was ushered by a stout and pompous butler into the drawing-room, where Lady Esdaile was taking tea with her son and daughter, aged respectively nine and fourteen. Lady Esdaile had been a great beauty in her day, and at eight-and-thirty was still a lovely woman.
"How do you do, Mr. Beaton?" she began. "How nice of you to come just in time for tea! Violet and Dick are having tea with me to-day for a treat, but they generally have it in the schoolroom, don't you know? Come, children, this is Mr. Beaton who is so kind as to come and teach Dick."
Violet, who inherited her mother's beauty, treated the new tutor to a supercilious little nod; but Dick, a plain and wholesome little boy, thrust a sticky and jam-besprinkled palm into Paul's outstretched hand.
"I say," said Dick, "I've been out shooting with father to-day."
"Have you?" replied Paul with polite interest. "I hope you have had good sport."
Dick shook his little red head. "We had bad luck," he said, "shocking bad luck; only four brace and a couple of hares all day. But father let me carry the birds home, and I got my clothes covered with blood," he added more cheerfully.
"As Dick has been out all day, and walked so far, I am letting him have an egg with his tea," said Lady Esdaile, "and he insists upon eating bread and jam with it. I wish he wouldn't! Do you think it will make him ill?"
"I cannot say. It is not a combination that would suit me, but other times other manners, you know, Lady Esdaile."
"What a fuss you make about a chap, mother!" exclaimed Dick with scorn. "I'm all right and feel as fit as a fiddle. But it is enough to make a fellow sick to hear you talking so much about whether things are good for us or not."
"Very well, darling. But promise me you will leave off eating jam with your egg the minute you begin to feel not quite well. And, oh! Mr. Sebright, I was forgetting all about you, and you have had such a long journey and must want your tea dreadfully! How stupid I am!"
"Not at all. The journey from Chayford is quite a short one really, only there are so many changes it makes it rather troublesome."
"I know. I hate changes, don't you? just when you've got your things all about the carriage and are settling yourself down to a nice book, a horrid guard or porter or something comes shouting at you, and makes you jump out of your carriage and leave half your things behind. And my maid never will help at stations, because she hates travelling and is offended with me every time I take her from home. She says the train makes her giddy or something. And you see I can't go without her, because I couldn't do my own hair to save my life."
"I suppose not," said Paul, feeling very much amused by her ladyship's flow of conversation.
"And there, I have gone and forgotten your tea again! How careless I am! I am afraid this tea is not very fresh, Mr. Sebright; in fact it has stood for over an hour; but Simmons (that is the butler) is so dreadfully offended if I send out for fresh tea to be made during the afternoon, that I really dare not do it. You won't mind much, will you, if it is rather strong and cold?"
Paul smiled, and forsook the paths of rectitude so far as to assure her ladyship that tea on the lees was the beverage he fancied above all others.
"Oh, how dear of you to say that! And you can have as much hot water as you like, though the hot water is cold too. But it will take off the bitter taste which makes the special nastiness of old tea. Is it very bad, now you come to drink it?" asked Lady Esdaile with sympathetic interest.
Paul lied bravely. "It is delicious."
"I am so glad. It really is tiresome having a butler who takes offence if you ask him to do anything!"
"It must make life very difficult, Lady Esdaile."
"It does; very difficult indeed. I often don't get enough to eat, because I daren't ask for more when Simmons is carving; but I make up with vegetables, because the footmen hand them, and I'm not afraid of a footman. Still, vegetables without meat are very fattening, don't you think? and the dread of my life is to get fat. I don't think that any woman looks well when she is fat, do you?"
"I really don't know," answered Paul, who had hitherto lived among women who cared for none of these things. "I am afraid I never thought about it."
"How quaint of you! But you are awfully clever, you see, and so never think about anything but books and sums and things. Now I'm not a bit clever or learned or anything."
Paul again wandered from the path of the upright by expressing polite surprise at this platitude.
"Have another cup of tea—do," begged Lady Esdaile. "If you don't, I shall know you told a story about its not tasting as bad as we expected."
And Paul was so charmed by her ladyship's beauty and good-nature, that he asked for another cup, and swallowed the same without wincing. Nevertheless he possessed the spirit of a philanthropist, so he remarked: "There is a sort of arrangement, I've seen somewhere, of putting the tea-leaves into a little bag and pouring the hot water over them. Then the leaves are removed; so that however long the tea stands, it never gets any stronger."
"What a lovely idea! and it would be such fun taking the tea-leaves out again while they were all wet."
"It would make a jolly mess, I bet!" agreed Dick enthusiastically. "You'd always let me do it, wouldn't you, mother?"
"Of course, darling, if you would promise to take care not to burn your fingers."
"I'd make a fine splash all over the cloth!" chuckled Dick.
"What a dirty boy you are!" said Violet reprovingly.
Dick did not reply to his sister in words; but he turned upon her such a wilfully contorted countenance that Violet dissolved into laughter.
"But I'm afraid Simmons wouldn't approve of that arrangement," sighed Lady Esdaile. "He always sets his face against anything fresh. I remember once Sir Richard bought a new kind of carving-knife—apatent masticator, I think it was called, or some such disgusting name—and Simmons said he would give notice rather than demean himself by using it. He had carved for the family for thirty years, he said, and his own right hand had been enough all that time, and would be till the end; it wasn't true, because he had always used a carving-knife of some sort; but Simmons is quite poetical when he is excited."
"What did Sir Richard do?" asked Paul.
"Oh! he roared with laughter and threw the thing behind the fire. To tell the truth, I believe Richard is as much afraid of Simmons as I am; but he'd rather die than own it."
Paul very soon settled down in his new quarters at Esdaile Court. He liked the place and the people. The latter were so different from everything that he had been accustomed to, that they completely fascinated him. Their wheels were all well oiled; and so they took life easily, and never seemed to look below the surface of things. And yet they did their duty in the state of life to which they were called; and they were high-minded and upright and well-bred, and were careful to act honourably and charitably towards their neighbours, and to go to the parish church regularly once every Sunday. They never talked about their hearts or their souls or their consciences; but ate and drank and were merry, and made the corner of the earth where their lot was cast a better place for their being in it.
Sir Richard Esdaile was a typical fox-hunting English squire, a good many years older than his beautiful wife, of whom he was intensely proud. He and Paul got on very well together, though they had nothing in common, save their mutual respect and admiration. As for little Dick, he at once began to adore Paul, and appointed his tutor his final court of appeal in all things; and Paul grew very fond of Dick, and was a better man for it.
"I suppose Dick will go into the army when he grows up," said Paul to Lady Esdaile one day.
"I suppose so, if he can get through those silly, tiresome examinations. And if he does, I do hope he'll go into a regiment where there is a pretty uniform; a blue one would be best for him with his red hair. I don't like scarlet with red hair, do you, Mr. Seaton?" Lady Esdaile had mastered Paul's name by this time.
Paul laughed. "I don't think it matters to a man what colour his clothes are."
"Don't you?"
"No; do you?"
"Oh! yes, dreadfully. I always adore to see men in dark blue. Think how nice a blue serge morning-suit looks on a man, and how sweet sailors always are! Of course a pink coat looks jolly for hunting, but I don't like red uniforms half as well as blue ones—especially for fair hair."
Lady Esdaile's way of looking at life was a source of never-ending amusement to Paul; she always seemed to be gazing at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. And Paul was not as severe on frivolity as he had been in the days when he so ruthlessly passed sentence on Alice; he was becoming more a man of the world, and consequently more sympathetic with, and tender towards, human nature. For life teaches a man more than all the Universities rolled in one.
"I've just had such a fright," Lady Esdaile confided to her son's tutor, when the latter had been about a year at Esdaile.
"What is the matter? Can I assist in anyway?" asked Paul, who was the help of the family in all difficulties, from the writing of French menus to the letting of cats out of traps.
"I was afraid Isabel Carnaby was coming to live with us."
"But who is Isabel Carnaby? I fear I cannot gauge the extent of your anxiety till I know who the lady is."
"Oh! I thought everybody knew Isabel. She is my husband's niece He had two sisters, Lady Farley and Mrs. Carnaby. Isabel was the Carnabys' only child, and Mrs. Carnaby died when she was born. It was a pity Mrs. Carnaby died, she had such lovely blue eyes and such a knack of knowing what suited her. She was the best-dressed woman I ever met, and Major Carnaby was devoted to her."
"Is Major Carnaby dead?" asked Paul.
"Yes; he died out in India while Isabel was still a child, and she has lived with the Farleys ever since. She is fairly well off; and her father left word in his will that when she was of age she must decide whether to live with the Farleys or with us, as both Sir Benjamin and my husband were ready to take her for her mother's sake. She has just come of age, and I was dreadfully afraid she would decide to come to us."
"And you wouldn't have liked it?"
"No. I hate girls of that age; they always say you are getting stout, and that your hair isn't all your own."
Paul concealed a smile. "Did she give the apple to Sir Benjamin?" he inquired.
"Yes; to my great relief. Sir Benjamin has got a governorship out in India, so Isabel has chosen to go on living with them. She is just the sort of girl to like being with 'Excellencies,' and all that sort of thing."
"What is Miss Carnaby like? Is she pretty?"
"Oh! no; not pretty, but smart and stylish, and knows how to put her clothes on. And she is dreadfully clever. She positively terrified me the last time she was over in England."
"What sort of cleverness? Does she write books?" asked Paul, who was always interested in literary ventures.
"Good gracious, no; not so bad as that!" replied Lady Esdaile, looking shocked. "But she reads a good deal, and says sharp things, and you never know whether she is laughing at you or not. She makes me quite nervous."
"I don't like that sort of sharpness—especially in a woman."
"No more do I. And then Isabel is so abominably vain. And I don't see anything to be conceited about in mere cleverness; do you? It isn't as if she were pretty."
"Still even clever people are sometimes conceited, Lady Esdaile."
"Oh! of course cleverness in a man is awfully nice, and quite a thing to be conceited about," owned her ladyship graciously. "I can't tell you how much my husband and I admire your cleverness, nor how thankful we are for Dick to have the advantage of it. But I don't think it is quite the thing for a girl; do you? Prettiness is so much more important."
"I suppose beauty is the best gift for a woman to possess," said Paul; "but there are clever women and clever women; and Miss Carnaby seems—from your description—to be exactly the sort of clever woman that I specially detest."
Lady Esdaile shook her head. "Men don't generally detest her," she confessed, "she is a man's woman out and out. And she is a woman's woman too," she added; "she really can make herself awfully pleasant if she likes, and she has a wonderful knack of getting on with anybody. She is simply splendid if you have got a lot of dull people in hand; there is nobody she cannot talk to. I believe if she met the man in the moon she would find out that he and she had a lot of mutual acquaintances, even if they weren't related to one another."
"Then she has her good points?"
"Yes. It seems to me that the great question everybody is asking everybody else is: 'Do you know the So-and-Sos?' If you do know them, the conversation flourishes; and if you don't, it drops. The So-and-Sos are really far more important as a conversational opening than the weather. I always think it ratherbourgeoisto talk about the weather; don't you?"
"It certainly is a hackneyed subject," owned Paul.
"Well, Isabel invariably does know the So-and-Sos; and therefore, socially, she is a success. Take her to the dreariest tea-party, and in five minutes there is a buzz of conversation."
"Then she is popular, I presume, and therefore spoiled. I don't generally like what are termed popular people, I am afraid."
"To a certain extent she is popular," said Lady Esdaile grudgingly. "That is to say, she has always crowds of men fluttering round her. Sir Richard expects that she will make a brilliant marriage out in India; but I'm not so sure. The clever women may get the most partners, but it is the handsome ones that make the best matches."
"Well, anyway, I am very glad she is not coming here."
"Oh! I daresay you'd have got on with her all right. You and she could have talked about books and things, don't you know?"
Paul smiled. "But there are other things to be talked about besides books, Lady Esdaile."
"Yes; but some people find books awfully interesting. I should myself if they didn't always send me to sleep before I had properly got into them."
And Paul smiled again.
So Isabel Carnaby did not come to Esdaile Court just then, and Paul went on with his teaching of Dick; and made wonderful progress, considering the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture a scholar. He also tried his hand at literature, and earned an additional hundred a year by his contributions to magazines; whereby life at the cottage at Chayford was made considerably easier than it would otherwise have been.
At Chayford things went on much the same as usual. Edgar continued to woo Alice in silence, and consequently in vain; but he comforted himself by the idea that, as she grew older and found how false and fickle the world is, she would learn the value of one faithful heart that would never fail her, however unworthy she might prove herself to be. As for her, her mind was still full of thoughts of Paul. He was not on the spot, it is true, as Edgar was, but he came home every holidays; and it takes an exceptionally clever woman to forget a man in three months—even when she has another man to help her.
The little blind god, as he softly trod,Did a dart for his bow prepare;And he sharpened it with a woman's wit,And he feathered it with her hair.
When Paul had been four years at Esdaile Court, and Dick was considered nearly ready for Eton, the Farleys' term of Indian governorship came to an end, and they returned to England bringing their niece with them. As Lady Esdaile had predicted, Isabel had failed to make a brilliant marriage out in India; but whether that were her fault or her misfortune, Isabel alone (with the exception of two or three young officers who were still too sore to refer to the subject) could say.
To Paul's horror, the Anglo-Indian trio came to stay at Esdaile, and he was appointed to take Miss Carnaby in to dinner on the night of her arrival. He disliked all he had heard of the girl, and he made up his mind to snub her as much as was compatible with good manners, and not to allow her to fall into the error of imagining for one moment that he would ever be dragged captive at her chariot-wheels.
The Farley party had arrived only just in time to dress; and the drawing-room was already half full of county magnates and their attendant wives, when Sir Benjamin and his two ladies came in.
Sir Benjamin was short and stout, and her ladyship was tall and thin; she evidently possessed the remains of striking beauty, which he—as evidently—did not. Isabel followed them with an air of perfect assurance that somehow irritated Paul; she really was not good-looking enough to give herself such airs, he thought; for he was as yet too unlearned to know that her gown was fresh from Paris, and was the very acme of the prevailing fashion.
"Let me present you to Miss Carnaby," said Lady Esdaile's voice. "Isabel, this is Mr. Seaton, who will take you in to dinner."
Paul prepared himself to meet a fellow-Greek, and to return Miss Carnaby's bow as superciliously as she made it; but he was completely taken aback when she held out a friendly little ungloved hand, saying: "I'm so awfully pleased to meet you, Mr. Seaton! Dick tells me that you can blow birds' eggs better than any man he knows; and a past-master in any art is always interesting to me."
"It is very kind of you to say so, Miss Carnaby." Paul was still a little stiff. He certainly had some excuse for feeling annoyed; he had armed himself to rebuff airs and graces, and here was the most natural girl he had ever met in his life. He felt that even Joanna and Alice would seem affected beside her, she was so perfectly at her ease.
"I'm so glad you are taking me in to dinner," she continued, as the whole party trooped dining-room-wards; "all the other men in the room are so old. And I'm dreadfully tired of going in to dinner with my extreme seniors. Would you believe it? One week—since we came home—the united ages of the men who took me in to dinner amounted to three hundred. I looked inDebrett, and added them up."
Paul thawed sufficiently to smile. "That was rather rough on you!"
"It was simply unbearable. They would explain things to me, and try to instruct me. And they ran to anecdotes and statistics at the slightest provocation. One told me of all the reductions in rent he'd made to his tenants during the last twenty years; and another gave me such an exhaustive description of every attack of gout he'd ever suffered, that I could write a biography of that man's big toe."
"Nevertheless I hope you showed a teachable spirit in listening to them."
"Oh! yes. I didn't really listen, but I kept counting a hundred and then saying, 'How very interesting'. And then counting another hundred, and saying it again. You can't think what a good idea it was. It was like my aunt's plan of counting imaginary geese to send yourself to sleep; which, by the way, always keeps me awake the whole night."
"I know. My mother favours that plan too, but she always call them sheep. She makes them go through a gate, she says; I tried it once, but my gate kept swinging-to and squeezing the sheep, till I was quite wild with anxiety and consequently more wakeful than ever."
Isabel laughed. "But I punished my last old gentleman," she said.
"What did you do?"
"When I found that my partner for Saturday's dinner was older than any of his predecessors, my usually amiable spirit rebelled."
"And what form did the rebellion take?"
"I discovered that by breathing hard, when my old gentleman wasn't looking, I could make the candle-shade in front of us catch fire whenever I liked. So when there came any course that he was particularly keen on, I blew with my mouth, and the shade blazed. My poor partner had to save the women and children by extinguishing the fire; and while he was engaged in this act of heroism, the footman—thinking he had finished—removed his plate, and he saw its dainties no more."
Paul laughed outright.
"Have you ever noticed," asked Isabel, as the plates were being changed, "that the bit of toast underneath ahors d'œuvre—which, mark you, is appointed to be cut by a little silver fork—is always of a consistency which would defy a steam-hammer?"
"Is it?"
"Invariably; and therefore the little silver fork is usually bent or broken, while the piece of toast springs unscratched into the air and lands upon the carpet."
"You speak feelingly," said Paul.
"I have learnt in suffering what I teach in ordinary conversation. The fish-fork is also a source of much distress to me."
"How is that? It never strikes me as an instrument of destruction."
"Well, you see, it is in this way," explained Miss Carnaby. "Some people have fish-forks as well as fish-knives—sort of half-bred dessert-forks, don't you know? with ivory handles. Now, we don't have these at home—we use ordinary silver forks, so I am not prepared for them."
"I see; they take you unawares."
"Precisely. The consequence is I use a common fork for my fish; and then, when I get to the secondentrée, my sin finds me out, and I am left with nothing on my hands but a large knife and this nasty little half-caste dessert-fork."
"Whatever do you do?" asked the amused Paul.
"I fling myself upon the mercy of the man who has taken me in; and I confess I have never found my confidence misplaced. He invariably gives me his own silver fork, and, if he is a brave man, asks one of the footmen for another for himself; but if he is only of a normal courage, he eats his ownentréewith my fish-fork, in shame and confusion of face."
"You might write a book on the Sorrows of Dining," suggested Paul.
"So I could; at least you and I could do it together."
Paul could not help feeling flattered, though he tried his hardest not. "I should describe what I have suffered at the hands of an undermined jelly," he said. "Don't you know the horrid, insinuating way the thing has of curtsying to you; and—when you respond to its inviting attitude—of flinging itself bodily upon your neck, and burying yourself and it in the common ruins?"
Isabel laughed with delight. "I know exactly. And another evil and bitter thing is helping oneself to strawberries."
"When they are in a pyramid, you mean?" said Paul.
"Yes; and the strawberry at the apex of the pyramid suffers from suicidal tendencies; and is prone to hurl itself from its giddy height to perdition, if you so much as breathe."
Paul laughed.
"And its path to destruction," added Miss Carnaby, "leaves a lurid, crimson stain right across the hostess's tablecloth."
"Like Tennyson's 'Maud,'" said Paul, "when
Her feet had touched the meadows,And left the daisies rosy."
Isabel smiled. "What an apt quotation!"
Paul looked pleased. "I think our treatise upon the Sorrows of Dining promises to be a success," he said.
"What a pretty girl Violet has grown!" remarked Isabel, looking down the table at her cousin.
"Yes; and so like her mother," agreed Paul.
"Is she in love with anybody yet, do you think?"
Now Paul had a strong suspicion that a certain Lord Robert Thistletown and Violet were by no means indifferent to each other; but he was not going to gossip about the Esdailes, even to Isabel, so he said discreetly: "I'm sure I can't say. She would not be very likely to confide in me even if she were."
"I suppose not. But an author like you ought to discover love stories without having to be told them, like some people discover water by means of hazel twigs."
Paul smiled. "I am not an author yet," he said.
"But, joking apart, you really write a good deal, don't you, Mr. Seaton? Uncle Richard tells me that the delightful and fascinating short stories signed P.S., which one comes across now and again in various magazines, are yours."
"They are certainly mine, Miss Carnaby; but I am afraid that their delightfulness and fascination exist only in your rose-coloured imagination."
"Don't be foolish! Every one thinks they are splendid. You must know you are clever, and I call it affectation for people to pretend they don't recognize their own good points. Now I, for instance, never pretend that I'm not clever. If I'd had my choice I'd rather have been pretty, I confess; but that is neither here nor there."
"It would be useless for you to pretend that you are not clever; nobody would be taken in. Clever as you are, you would not be clever enough for that."
"You don't know how clever I am," said Isabel; "I once succeeded in making a man think I was not clever."
"And what effect did the delusion have upon him?"
"He fell in love with me on the spot."
"Still he might have done that, even if he'd known you were clever," suggested Paul. "There is no limit, I believe, to the folly of the heart of man in affairs of this kind. I daresay he knew you were clever all the time, and was only a 'deceiver ever' when he pretended he thought you were not. Men will forgive even cleverness in a woman they really care for; you have no idea how weak they are."
"As long as the woman is not cleverer than they are themselves, I suppose."
"Of course; that goes without saying. Besides, no man is so supernaturally humble as to believe that the cleverest woman in the world is quite as clever as he is himself. He only knows that she is cleverer than all his friends."
"If ever I think a man is in danger of thinking me too clever," said Isabel meditatively, "I always ask him how to spell a word—any word will do, provided it is not too difficult for him. You can't think how it at once restores the equilibrium between the sexes. And if—in addition to spelling the word—he can give you its derivation, both the man and the scholar stand for ever vindicated."
"That's a good plan," said Paul, "a very good plan. Now that you mention it, I notice I have often felt distinct pleasure when a woman has asked me how to spell a word; and the pleasure has risen to pure joy when I have superadded the derivation."
"But you are wandering from the point," said Isabel reprovingly. "I was saying how I liked your stories, and you were saying that you weren't really clever."
"Excuse me, Miss Carnaby, you are inaccurate; what I said, or intended to say, was that I thought I was so clever that I ought to do something better than write such stories as those. Humility is not one of my many virtues, as you will perceive as you come to know me better."
"It isn't one of mine, either."
"No; I'd already perceived that, though I have only known you for half an hour."
Isabel laughed. "You are very candid."
"Candour has a place, I am glad to say, in myrépertoireof excellencies. I derive much pleasure from the exercise of it myself, and as no one takes any notice of my opinion, it really doesn't do any harm."
"I suppose you feel you ought to write a big book, instead of sticking to short stories?"
"I should like to write a big book," replied Paul.
"Well, I am sure you can, and therefore I am sure you will."
Paul looked at the speaker appreciatively. "It is true that if a man can write a book he will do it sooner or later; but how did you come to know a thing like that?"
"I can't tell. I knew it of myself without being told. I always say that writing is like flirting; if you can't do it, nobody can teach you to do it; and if you can do it, nobody can keep you from doing it."
Paul smiled. "You are quite right. If I don't write a book it will prove that I can't write a book. But, all the same, I hope and believe I can."
"I'm afraid I must talk a bit to the man on my other side," said Isabel. "I don't want to, but he keeps clearing his throat like a clock that is going to strike, and I cannot any longer disregard the sign."
"I suppose I also ought to exchange pleasure for duty, and endeavour to converse with the old lady on my left."
"You ought to change new lamps for old, you mean," suggested Isabel. "Allow me to express a hope that the old one will be as brilliant as the new."
"It is unwise to hope for impossibilities, and generally leads to disappointment," replied Paul.
After Paul and Isabel had duly fulfilled their duty to their neighbours, Isabel said: "You mustn't be in too great a hurry to begin your book. Experience, as well as genius, is required for the writing of books."
"That is very true, and that is why I am waiting. I don't want to seem conceited, but I am speaking candidly to you now, and I feel and know I have the power to write what would be worth reading. But where I am weak is in the experience of life. I have always lived in a small world, and small worlds—though perhaps the most comfortable places of residence—are not good training-grounds or seminaries of learning."
"My experience is that small worlds and big worlds are pretty much alike," replied Isabel. "I have lived in both, and I don't see much difference."
"I don't mean that small worlds are really less interesting than big ones. Human nature is, of course, the same in both; and it is human nature that is the most interesting thing in life. As you say, the deeper things are the same in small worlds as in great ones, but their outer aspects differ in different cases; and the more cases one sees, the wider are one's sympathies."
"But seeing a lot of people is not knowing them," objected Isabel. "We are all more or less like the Man in the Iron Mask, and take abundant pains to hide our real faces from our fellows."
"Which we have no right to do, in my opinion. We are not bound to lay our souls bare for every one to look at, but as much as we do show ought to be part of our real selves, and not a mask to put people off the scent. It seems to me that to take the trouble to conceal ourselves, argues an exaggerated idea of our own importance."
"Which reminds me," said Isabel, "of a funny old man we once met at atable d'hôte; he told us in strict confidence that he was the mayor of Little Pettifog, but begged us not to mention it again as he was travelling incog."
Paul laughed. "A most happy instance! It seems to me that there are a good many mayors of Little Pettifog travellingincog.; don't you think so?"
"Yes, I do; and—like you—I have no patience with them."
"But, on the other hand," said Paul, "I think it is, as a rule, our own fault if people behave like the Man in the Iron Mask with us, and proves that we are the same. Don't you think that the world is a very fair mirror, and that people treat us very much as we treat them?"
"Certainly; and if you are single-minded towards your friends, and think more of what is due to them than to you, they in turn will be single-minded towards you, and think more of what is due to you than to themselves. At least, that has been my experience so far."
"And mine too."
"And in the same way if you are time-serving, you will find other people the same," added Isabel.
"Of course, when we are very young, we are anxious that other people should adequately love and fulfil their duty to us; while, as we grow older, we realize that that is their part of the business, not ours, and that what we have to do is to adequately love and fulfil our duty to them. This is merely a question of growth, and the development of a sense of proportion."
"I believe in human nature as a whole. I have trusted a good many people more or less, and none of them as yet have ever failed me," Isabel said.
"And never will as long as you trust them," added Paul; "but only when you begin to doubt them."
"I quite agree with you there. Again, I do not a bit mind being laughed at; in fact, if the joke is a good one, I am ready to join in it; so I generally show my real self to people, and am not afraid of what is called 'giving myself away'. Consequently people as a rule show their real selves to me."
"It is a great mistake to be afraid of 'giving oneself away'. I don't know a more paralyzing form of fear."
"It seems to me," replied Isabel, "that life is very much like swimming or skating; one has to let oneself go before one can get on at all."
"And we have all got to be ourselves. The best possible edition of ourselves, I admit; but still ourselves, and not anybody else; and therefore we must expand along our own lines, and not along other people's."
"Do you remember the duchess's baby inAlice in Wonderland, who 'made a very ugly baby but a very handsome pig'? Now so many people are like that; they make stupendous efforts to become ugly babies, instead of settling down comfortably as handsome pigs."
"Milton's Satan was wiser in his generation than the children of light," remarked Paul; "he preferred ruling as a handsome pig to serving as an ugly baby, if you remember; only he put the case in more forceful words. Still the sentiment is the same. But he was not supposed to take the highest view."
"But wouldn't you rather be the ruling pig than the serving baby?" asked Isabel.
"I'm afraid I would; but that doesn't make it right."
"Still you said just now that we must be ourselves and not anybody else."
"And I say so still, Miss Carnaby; but one must not press the rule too far. We must, of course, live our own lives and cultivate our own characters, and must not try to grow roses on apple-trees nor lilies on oaks. But our healthy desire for individuality must not carry us into the error of becoming a law unto ourselves, and doing whatsoever is right in our own eyes."
"I think I see what you mean."
"I speak from experience," continued Paul; "as I told you, I was brought up in a narrow world, and also in a very religious one; and I was taught that few things were right and that many things were wrong, and that we must all try and conform ourselves to the same pattern. As I grew older, and saw more of the world, I found that this view of life was too narrow a one, and then I joined in the modern worship of Individuality and the glorification of Humanity; and I abused all law and order because they tended to cramp and conform the individual. Now a second reaction has set in; and I see that the Truth lies half way between the two extremes—as, in fact, it generally does."
Isabel's eyes glistened; Paul interested her extremely. "Then you mean that one must be the master of one's individuality, and not its slave?" she said.
"Or in better words, 'As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness,'" answered Paul; "you see, the highest life is a life of contradictions, and this is merely one of them."
"Tell me about your own people," said Isabel impulsively, "I'm sure they must be nice."
And Paul, to his surprise, found himself telling Miss Carnaby all about his father and his mother and Joanna, and his life at Oxford, and his boating; and his struggle to get on, and his dreams of fame. And Isabel seemed to understand it all as thoroughly as he did himself.
Paul had never talked so well in his life before. He admired Miss Carnaby enough to desire above all things to make a good impression on her; and he was not yet sufficiently in love with her to be awkward and tongue-tied in her presence. When a man admires without loving, he is conversationally at his best. There comes a later stage when he utters banalities, and makes inane jokes, and inwardly curses himself for appearing such an ass in the sight of the prettiest eyes in the world; and he has no idea that the prettiest eyes in the world see through a stone wall as far as most people, and very much prefer this style of conversation to rounded sentences and finished periods.
As Paul sat smoking in his own room that night he said to himself: "I never saw a woman with such blue eyes in my life."
Which was not true; he had seen scores of women with equally blue eyes, but he had never taken the trouble to notice them.
Then he mused, his thoughts still running on Isabel: "Think of calling such a girl as that vain! She isn't a bit vain. It is the other women that are so beastly jealous of her!"
Which also was not true; Isabel was extremely vain, and Paul had already done his best to make her more so; but his eyes were blinded that he could not see.
"Love," she said, "is just a gameThat does for summer weather!""Love," he answered, "is a flamePutting lesser lights to shame:Making wealth and rank and fameWeigh lighter than a feather!""Sure," she cried, "we mean the same;Love is but a fancy nameFor you and me together."
When Paul Seaton and Dick Esdaile were respectively twenty-six and thirteen, the former was offered the post of editor to the new magazine,The Pendulum, and the latter was considered fit to enter Eton. So Paul concluded his pleasant life at Esdaile Court and went to live in London, to prepare himself the more fully for that great book he meant to write some day. By that time his friendship with Miss Carnaby was an established factor in his existence. Paul called it friendship, because he was as yet too poor to call it by any other name; but the other name was ready, as soon as Paul had secured a sufficient status and income to allow him to rechristen the sentiment. He was very glad to take up his abode in London. But, there again, London was only a euphemism for Isabel. Living in London meant seeing Isabel frequently; therefore London was the most desirable place of residence under the sun.
Lady Farley was always "at home" on Thursday afternoons, and consequently Thursday became Paul's Sabbath. He called as often as he dared; and when he felt it but decent to allow a Thursday to elapse without his dropping in at Prince's Gate, he sympathized with the Irish peasant who said: "His Riverence is going to Dublin Fair, so there will be no Sunday this week".
And Isabel also measured time by Thursday afternoons, and felt such seasons a blank indeed if they did not bring Paul. She waited till he arrived before she ordered up the second brew of tea, and she took care to pour his cup out first; she talked to him for as much time as she could spare from other visitors; and listened to him all the time that she was conversing with them, and he was talking to somebody else; she introduced him only to clever men and to plain women; and, in short, she generally behaved herself as all right-minded and right-mannered young women do under similar circumstances. She derived almost as much happiness as Paul did from their friendship; but she pretended that she did not know that friendship was only anom de plume; all the same, she could have found the right name in the dictionary with her eyes shut.
Tickets of admission into Eden are variously worded; and Paul Seaton received one—after he had been for a year or so editor ofThe Pendulum—couched in the following terms:—
"DEAR MR. SEATON,
"Sir Benjamin, Isabel and I leave town on the 10th, and we shall be so pleased to see you if you will run down to Farley Castle on the following Saturday, and spend the Sunday with us.
"Yours very truly,"CAROLINE FARLEY."
When Paul arrived at Farley Castle on that blissful and broiling Saturday afternoon, he found a distinguished company drinking tea upon the lawn. The Esdailes were there, with Violet; and there was a Peer and a Cabinet Minister; also Lord Robert Thistletown, a younger son of the Marquis of Wallingford; likewise Miss Ethel Gordon, a celebrated beauty; and one or two others, that merely served as padding.
Lady Farley duly presented Paul to her other guests, and he sat down to be refreshed in (and by) their company.
"That is a capital article of yours on art and education in the current number ofThe Pendulum, Seaton," remarked Sir Benjamin, after a due discussion of the heat of the weather and the lateness of Saturday trains.
"It is very kind of you to say so," replied Paul, "but I felt it was far too large a subject to be treated in so small a space, and my limits handicapped me a good deal."
"I also read it with much interest," said Lord Wrexham, "though I fear I did not agree with it all. It appears to me that we require education to make us understand art, rather than that art is in itself an education."
Paul shook his head. "Of course education helps us with technique; but I think that art itself is independent of education. The artist, like the poet, is born, not made."
"Then do you mean to say," asked Lord Wrexham, "that the artist of to-day is none the better for the art produced in the centuries that lie behind him?"
"He is a richer man," replied Paul, "but not, I think, a better artist. There is no heritage in art, as there is in science. The artist is complete in himself, without ancestors or successors."
"Like Melchizedek," suggested Sir Benjamin.
"Exactly," said Paul, "but the man of science, on the contrary, builds on foundations which his predecessors have laid, and reaps what they have sown."
"I think you are about right," remarked Mr. Kesterton, the Cabinet Minister, "an ordinary plumber now knows more than Galileo did, and a chemist's assistant more than Jenner: but our innumerable host of minor poets have not yet out-Shakespeared Shakespeare, nor do our modern impressionists put Raphael and Michael Angelo to shame."
"Still some of the modern pictures are very pretty, don't you think?" chimed in Lady Esdaile, "and so much more interesting than the old ones. Do you know, I get rather tired of nothing but Madonnas and Holy Families? Of course they are very nice in their way, and devout and religious and all that; but if I had to choose a picture, I'd much rather have a hunting scene or a railway station or a Scotch moor."
Mr. Kesterton did not answer. Some men, he felt, were appointed to govern kingdoms, and some to talk to silly women; but no man could reasonably be expected to do both.
"My lady's tastes are modern," said Sir Richard, smiling.
"Yes, they are," agreed Sir Richard's wife. "I'd rather read a new novel than all Shakespeare's things put together; and I enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan far more than Handel and Mozart."
"So do I, Lady Esdaile," chimed in Lord Robert Thistletown. "I am 'the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time,' and I cannot waste my time in looking back, like Lot's wife."
"But if, as you say, the artist is born not made, how can art be an education?" inquired Lord Wrexham.
"Art is really the interpretation of nature," replied Paul; "therefore the artist has the power to reveal to others what he alone has the eyes to discover for himself. He will not teach other men to be artists; he will only show them what he has seen. Do I make myself clear, Lord Wrexham? I know what I mean, but I am afraid I put it rather badly."
"Not at all; I quite grasp your meaning," said his lordship graciously, "though I am not yet sure that I concur with it."
"If art is an integral part of a good education, as Mr. Seaton asserts," remarked Mr. Kesterton, "we shall have to spend more money on public picture-galleries; and how the Exchequer of the future will stand it, goodness only knows. I am thankful to think that by that time I shall be where budgets cease from troubling."
"I am going to write an article forThe Pendulumon love as education—a sort of opposition shop to Mr. Seaton's school of art," said Isabel Carnaby. "There is really nothing so admirable from an educational point of view as the process known as 'falling in love'; and I consider that a Government that makes education compulsory, ought to insist upon every one's falling in love at least once before he or she is five-and-twenty. I should call it 'passing the seventh standard,' seven being the perfect number, you know."
"A capital idea, my dear young lady!" said Mr. Kesterton graciously, for Isabel always amused him. "Should you erect special schools for the purpose, may I ask?"
"Yes, gorgeous red and white palaces, like the board-schools; and they would be called 'Highest Grade Schools,' and I should superintend them myself."
"And no one better qualified! Is it impertinent to ask if you would combine the office of object with that of instructress?"
"Not necessarily. Of course it is better for men to fall in love with me than with any one else—teaches them more, I mean, and bores them less. But I shouldn't make it asine quâ non. I should advise it, but not insist upon it. If they preferred to do so, the pupils might fall in love with somebody else; but it would be like learning literary style fromThe Polite Letter Writer, instead of from the classics."
"I should undertake the girls' department," cried Lord Robert, "it is more than a liberal education to a woman to fall in love with me—it includes all the extras, and a year's finishing abroad into the bargain."
Isabel shook her head. "I'm not so sure about that."
"It is so. When a girl falls in love with me, she realizes at once that brains and beauty and wealth are mere worthless and vulgar attributes; but that a heart of gold, beating under a pocket of very small silver, is the only thing really worthy of a woman's regard. This has a most elevating and refining effect on their dear little characters, bless 'em! It has indeed! Therefore I shall put aside my constitutional shyness, and undertake the girls' department of the 'Highest Grade School'."
"You have no constitutional shyness to put aside, Lord Bobby," said Lady Farley; "so your sacrifice to the common weal is not so stupendous after all."
"How you misjudge me!" sighed Lord Robert. "It is ever my fate to be misjudged by my dearest and best! Shyness is my bane, my besetment; and it is only my exquisite unselfishness which enables me to overcome it as I do, in order to make other people happy by the uninterrupted flow of my improving conversation. And this is all the thanks I get."
"I suppose everybody feels shy sometimes," said Miss Carnaby.
"Not everybody," argued Lord Robert, "take my word for it, you never do."
"Yes I do, under certain circumstances."
"When? do tell us," besought Violet Esdaile.
Isabel thought for a moment. "I am shy of people who make me feel things," she replied slowly.
"Do you mean you feel shy of a man if you think he is going to make you an offer, or to pull one of your teeth out?" inquired Lord Robert with friendly interest.
"Roughly speaking, yes."
"That's a pity! Because in either case it is sport to them, you see; so it is unfortunate if it is death to you."
Isabel smiled. "My dear Lord Bobby, how absurd you are! Now perhaps you will respond to my confidence, and tell us when you feel shy."
Bobby thought for a moment. "When my boots creak," he answered.
Everybody laughed. "It is no laughing matter, I can assure you," he continued. "I've got a pair now that make me feel as timid as an unfledged school-girl every time I put them on. I wore them to go to church only last Sunday; and they sang such a processional hymn to themselves all the way up the aisle, that by the time I reached our pew I was half dead with shame, and 'the beauty born of murmuring sound' had 'passed into my face'; but it wasn't the type of beauty that was becoming to me—it was too anxious and careworn for myretrousséstyle."
"Weren't your people awfully ashamed of you?" asked Isabel.
"There were none of them there except my mother; and she sat at the far end of the pew, and tried to look as if I were only a collateral."
"I wonder if your mother ever feels shy?" remarked Violet.
"Dreadfully, of her own maid. She has had her for a long time; and I believe that when a maid has had a right of way across your head for over seven years, she can do your hair in what style she likes and you may not interfere. That, I am told, is the law with regard to rights of way."
"Do you ever feel shy?" inquired Isabel of Mr. Kesterton.
"Only when I'm introduced to babies, and their mothers look as if they expected me to kiss them—to kiss the babies, I mean—not the mothers; that would not make me feel nearly so shy. I am always being godfather to the terrible little things, and giving them spoons; but I confine myself to the silver variety."
"Are you many godfathers?"
"This is what I am, Miss Carnaby. I am one husband, three fathers, nine grandfathers and seventeen godfathers—thirty gentlemen in one, so ten times better than Cerberus. And what it costs me in presents is something fabulous."
Isabel turned to Lord Wrexham. "When are you shy?"
"Always. I invariably feel that I am boring people, and this makes me bore them all the more."
"And you, Uncle Benjamin?"
"When I go out shooting, my dear. I am a bad shot at best; and, knowing this, I am consequently generally at my worst."
"My governor is a first-rate shot," announced Lord Robert proudly. "I know no young man who is equal to him; but I'm a poor hand at the job myself. Now-a-days fathers shoot better than their sons, as a rule, I think; a proof of the decadence of the race. (That's a good sentence! I shall wait till you have all forgotten it, and then make use of it again.) Does your father shoot much?" he inquired, turning to Paul.
Paul smiled. "My father is a Methodist minister," he said, "so he knows nothing about sport."
"Dear me, how queer!" exclaimed Ethel Gordon, looking at Paul with as much curiosity as if he had said his father was a giraffe; but Lord Robert came to the rescue. "I've got an uncle in that line of business," he remarked airily, "at least he is a bishop; and he is the best old chap I ever met in my life—a regular saint, don't you know? I daresay your governor is the same."
"He is a good man," answered Paul simply.
"So is my Uncle Ambrose; and there is nothing like it after all. It takes time, you bet, to be as good as that; but it pays in the long run. I wish you knew my uncle; you'd like him. He gives away everything he has to charity, and he really cares for nothing in the world but how to make other folks better and happier. He is the Bishop of Ditchester."
"I know Lord Ambrose Thistletown by name, of course, well," said Paul.
"It is a beastly see," continued Bobby, "all smoke and manufactures and working men, and things of that kind. They have offered him better ones, but he will stay on there because he thinks he can do more good among poor people than among rich ones; and I guess he is about right."
"That is very noble of him!"
"Oh! he is like that all through; a regular good sort, out and out; but his wife is simply awful. She is always worrying him to go to a place where there would be a bigger palace, and more swagger friends for her; and she is for ever preaching to the poor old man about the claims of birth, and the duties of rank, and rot of that sort."
"Poor Lord Ambrose!" said Isabel sympathetically.
"She is simply sickening," continued Bobby, "when she gets on her high horse, and rates the bishop for not properly fulfilling the duties of his position and the claims of his station; she feels those claims so strongly herself, she says, that she should consider it a sin to disregard them. She was the daughter of an archdeacon, you know," and Bobby chuckled to himself.
"She can't bear me," said Lady Esdaile, "she thinks I am worldly because I wear a fringe, and dance round-dances. And so she gives me a cheap and religious little book every time she meets me."
Lord Bobby clapped his hands with delight. "I know them," he cried. "TheMammon WorshippersandOutlandish Womenare two of her 'choicest gifts in store'; but she has plenty of others for those who need them. What irritates me in the woman is that she is such a toady; she dismisses her servants without characters if she finds they are not strict teetotalers; and yet once, when that horrid Lord Watertight was regularly drunk at a party, she said it was his animal spirits only that carried him away, and that he was a most lovable young man. Spirits carried him away, I confess, but they were vegetable and not animal ones."
"That was just like her," said Lady Esdaile.
"She not only believes that the king can do no wrong, but that the peerage can do no wrong, either—which is carrying a good principle to an untenable extreme," continued Lord Bobby. "But did you ever hear the poem that Lady Eleanor Gregory wrote about her?"
"No; was it very smart?" asked Lady Farley. "Eleanor's verses generally are."
"Awfully good. I wish I could repeat it to you, but I can only remember one verse. This is it:—
"A bishop must not revel in strong drink;Though he may take a little, I have heard,Just for the sake of—no, I do not thinkIt maidenly to use the Pauline word:I only say he'll take some, should there ceaseTo be beneath his apron perfect peace."
Everybody was amused and Mr. Kesterton shouted with laughter. "Capital," he cried, "capital! Lady Eleanor is a clever little girl. But it is a pity she does not confine herself to penning humorous verses, instead of indulging in the love-sick ditties we frequently read in the magazines above her signature."
"Still she can write good poetry," remarked Paul.
"That may be; but I don't like young ladies to wear the willow in print in that fashion. I may be old-fashioned, but that is my opinion."
"And mine too," agreed Lord Wrexham.
"I expect her willow is an artificial flower," said Isabel, "or she would not wave it before the public eye. The people who have really felt things don't write about them."
"Then don't you think the faithless swain of her poems is a real person?" wondered Ethel Gordon.
"I once asked her if he was," answered Lord Robert. "Everybody was asking the question behind her back, I told her, and I thought it a more effective plan to ask it before her face."
"And what did she say? Was she angry with you?" inquired Miss Gordon.
"Not she; she merely laughed, and said she had drawn a beau at a venture, and it was therefore only a fancy portrait."
"Very smart again," murmured Mr. Kesterton approvingly. "Girls who can make jokes like that ought not to waste their time reeling out poetry as easily as if they were ravelling an old stocking. They should leave that to the dull, sentimental women, who wear their hearts on their sleeves and their curls down their backs."
"Was Lady Ambrose very furious at the poem?" asked Lady Esdaile. "It was just the sort of thing to make her mad if any one but a ladyship had written it."
"I don't think she ever saw it," replied Bobby, "but the bishop did, and enjoyed it immensely. He loves a joke, does the dear old bishop, and loves it all the more if his wife is out of it. I remember that she was described therein as 'a godly Venus, rising from the sea'; and my father has called Lady A. 'the godly Venus' ever since."
Mr. Kesterton chuckled appreciatively.
"What I can't stand is humbug," continued Lord Robert, "and when I see that woman ready to sell what she is pleased to call her soul for money and position and all that, and then hear her jawing against Mammon and worldliness and things of that sort, it makes me feel positively sick."
Paul smiled, and could not help thinking of Mrs. Martin. He remembered a tale he had once heard of some Staffordshire colliers who went to see the sights of London, and their surprise reached its height when one exclaimed: "I say, Bill, they've got the same old moon here as we've got at Tipton!" The sights of London are still very wonderful and well worth seeing; but they've got the same old human nature there as they've got at Tipton, and everywhere else under the sun.
That "week-end" was a season of perfect bliss to Paul; partly because he was in the company of some of the best-mannered and most brilliant people in England but principally because Isabel Carnaby was nice to him. He carried her prayer-book to church for her on Sunday morning, and the scent of Russia-leather sent a thrill through him all his life afterwards; while the sound of her voice in the hymns made those particular psalms stand out from the rest ofHymns Ancient and Modernfor ever in Paul Seaton's ears.
On their way back from church, Isabel asked him if he had begun to write his book.
"Not yet," answered he, "you know you told me not to be in a hurry, and I've taken your advice. I feel I am decidedly mellower than I was, but I'm not yet ripe."
"Shall you write under your own name?"
"No. If you write under your own name you cannot help being handicapped, to some extent, by your circumstances and surroundings. You know what your friends will expect of you, and you feel bound in some measure to fulfil their expectations. But if you write under anom de plumeyou are quite free."
"I see what you mean, and I think I agree with you," said Isabel.
"For instance, I should say lots of things that my father would not agree with, my opinions on most matters being different from his, though my admiration and respect for his character are greater than they ever were. He has found truth and righteousness, and I hope to find them some day; but I shall travel by different roads and use different methods from those by which he has been led. Mind you, I do not say, or even think, that mine are better than his, but they are different, owing to the difference in our characters and our generations."
"I perfectly understand," said Isabel sympathetically.
"Then, do you see? if I wrote as his son, he would have to bear in a measure the onus of my work, and that would not be fair to him."
"You are quite right. But do not wait too long before you begin your book; do not wait till you areblaséand cynical and have lost all your illusions."
"Do you like people to keep their illusions?" Paul asked.
"Yes, oh! yes. I always pray that I may never outlive my illusions or my front teeth, though all else may fail me."
Paul laughed. Then he said more seriously: "It seems to me that the more you see of the world and men and things, and the better you understand them, the less cynical you ought to be. I believe thattout comprendre est tout pardonner."
"I am so glad to hear you say that! It is what I have always thought."
"It disgusts me," continued Paul, "that when people tell you to look at anything as a man of the world, they mean you are to take the most disagreeable view possible."
"I know."
"When you begin life, you think that everything is rose-colour; this is crude. You find that some things are not rose-colour, and then you think that everything is blue-mouldy; this also is crude. But when you have really seen life and the world, you know that some things are rose-colour and some are blue-mouldy, and that the majority are neither one nor the other. To me the blue-mouldy stage is only one degree less raw and crude than the rose-colour one, and much more objectionable."
"How well you put things!" exclaimed Isabel. "You seem to think all the thoughts which I have thought, but have struggled in vain to express; but you are able also to express them. And one grand thing about you is that you always say all that you think."
Paul smiled. "Not quite all."
"Do you mean that there are Bluebeard's chambers in your heart that even I have not looked into."
"Yes."
"But I want to look in," persisted Isabel.
"But you can't—yet."
"Can I ever?"
"I don't know. It depends on whether you are willing to wait or not. But, as you said to me, you mustn't be in a hurry," replied Paul.
"I know most of your heart and mind; but this, I suppose, is an additional exhibition, like the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud's; and one has to pay six-pence extra to see it."
"Only it isn't a chamber of horrors, and sixpence isn't enough."
"But I've got more than sixpence."
"I know you have, Miss Carnaby, but I haven't; and it is I who have to pay this entrance-fee. That is why I am saving up my money, and editing magazines, and writing stupid stories."
"Do you think I should be interested if I ever did see it?" asked Isabel.
"I don't know."
"But what do you think?"
"You might, or you might not," replied Paul.
"Anyhow you might tell me what it is like. Do tell me what it is like, dear Mr. Seaton."
Paul thought for a moment. "It is rather like an ordinary looking-glass," he said, "in fact you couldn't tell the difference."
Isabel laughed. "How silly you are!"
"In some things; but not in this."
"There is the gong!" exclaimed Isabel. "We are late."
At lunch that day Lord Wrexham took upon himself to expound to Paul a new system of surface-drainage, whereof he thought most highly; and so Paul did not again get word with Isabel, till they two started for a walk across the park in the afternoon.
"Lord Wrexham was terribly agrarian to-day, wasn't he?" said Isabel. "He is awfully boring when he begins to explain things."
"But he is a nice man," answered Paul; "and he would be really interesting to listen to, if a fellow wasn't wanting to talk to you all the time instead."
"Oh! I find him dreadfully tiresome when he becomes agricultural and explanatory."
"You really ought not to abuse him, for he admires you most tremendously."
Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "I know he does; men of that age always do. I shouldn't be surprised if you admired me when you are as old as Lord Wrexham."
"I shouldn't, either," said Paul.
"I think I should rather like it if you did."
"Should you? then I'll try. I always try to do what you want, you know, however difficult it may be."
Isabel laughed. "I am fond of admiration," she said.
"So I should have supposed."
"But I'm not one of those tiresome, exacting women, who are always longing to be first with everybody. I can't stand the sort of women who suffer from what they call 'heart-hunger'. Can you?"
"They are pretty bad," agreed Paul.
"But I'm not like that, am I?"
"No; you like people to admire you, and you take a good deal of trouble to ensure this result: but you are not in the leastexigeante. I don't think you'd expect to be first with a person unless that person was first with you; and then, of course, you'd have a right to expect it."
"That is quite true; how well you understand me! I don't want men to go in jeopardy of their lives by fetching water for me from the wells of Bethlehem; but I do want them to be ready and willing to take me down to supper at balls, and to bring me refreshments at evening parties."
Paul smiled. "You appear to be a wonderfully reasonable woman."
"I'm so glad you think that! I always consider my 'sweet reasonableness' one of my strong points."
"But it is only because you don't really care," continued Paul, "the minute you begin to care, you'll be as unreasonable as the rest of them."
Isabel frowned. "How horrid you are!"
"Am I? I'm sorry for that. But it grieves my righteous soul to see you hugging your negligences and ignorances, and mistaking them for virtues."
"I wish you were not so nasty!" sighed Isabel; "when you are as nasty as this, it makes a walk with you a toil instead of a pleasure."
"Well, don't make it a danger instead of a toil; which you will do if you walk on that damp grass."
"I shall walk on the damp grass as long as you are disagreeable."
"I wish you wouldn't," and Paul's face grew quite anxious. "You'll be certain to catch cold if you do, and I do so hate you to have a cold. I can see your feet are quite wet already." And then Paul smiled to himself, remembering how Edgar Ford had once said: "A man must be at a woman's feet before he knows when they are getting wet, and is ready to lay his cloak across the puddles to keep them dry."
"I shall walk in the damp till you leave off being disagreeable," persisted Isabel.
"Well, what is it that you want me to say?"
"I want you to say that you think I am a most reasonable woman—not that I only appear to be."