Lady Durwent was blessed in the possession of a cook whose artistry was beyond question, if the same could not be said of the guests to whom she so frequently ministered. She was a descendant of the French, that race which makes everything tend towards development of the soul, and consequently looks upon a meal as something of a sacrament. She prepared a dinner with a balance of contrast and climax that a composer might show in writing a tone poem.
On this eventful evening, therefore, the dinner-party, stimulated by her art and by potent wines (gazing with long-necked dignity at the autocratic whisky-decanter), rapidly assumed a crescendo and an accelerando—the two things for which a hostess listens.
H. Stackton Dunckley had held the resolutionist in a duel of language—a combat with broadswords—and honours were fairly even. The short-sleeved Johnston Smyth had waged futurist warfare against the modernist Pyford, while the Honourable Miss Durwent sat helplessly between them, with as little chance of asserting her rights as the Dormouse at the Mad Hatter's tea-party. The American had held his own in badinage with the daughter of Italy on one side and his hostess on the other, the latter, however, being too skilled in entertaining to do more than murmur a few encouragements to the spontaneity that so palpably existed.
'Let me see,' said Lady Durwent as the meal came to a close and the butler looked questioningly at her. 'Shall we'—she opened the caverns of her throat, producing a volume that instantly silenced every one—'SHALL WE HAVE COFFEE IN HERE OR IN THE DRAWING-ROOM? I suppose you gentlemen, as usual, want to chat over your port and cigars alone.'
H. Stackton Dunckley protested that absence from the ladies, even for so short a time, would completely spoil his evening—receiving in reward a languorous glance from Lady Durwent. Johnston Smyth, who had done more than ample justice to the wines, offered to 'pink' at fifty yards any man who would consider the proposition for a moment. Only Norton Pyford, in a sort of befuddled gallantry, suggested that the ladies might have sentimental confidences to exchange, and leered amorously at Elise Durwent.
'Well,' said Lady Durwent, 'I am sure we are all curious to hear what Mr. Selwyn thinks of England, so I think we shall have coffee here. Is it agreeable to every one?'
Unanimous approval greeted the proposal, and, at a sign from the hostess, cigarettes, cigars, and coffee made their appearance, with the corresponding niceties of 'Just one, please,' 'Well, perhaps a cigarette might be enjoyable,' 'I know men like a cigar,' 'After you, old man,' and all those various utterances which tickle the ear, creating in the speaker's breast the feeling of saying the right thing and doing it rather well.
Throughout the dinner the daughter of the house had sat practically without a remark, and even when chorus effects were achieved by the rest, remained with almost immobile features, merely glancing from one to another, momentarily interested or openly bored. Several times the American had looked furtively at the arresting face, marred by too apparent mental resentment, but the barricade of Johnston Smyth's angular personality had been too powerful for him to surmount with anything but the most superficial persiflage.
He had watched her take a cigarette, accepting a light from Smyth, who surrounded the action with a ludicrous dignity, when she looked up and met his eyes.
'Mr. Selwyn,' she said, speaking with the same rapidity of phrasing that had both held and exasperated him before, 'we are all waiting for the verdict of the Man from America.'
'Over there,' he smiled, 'it is customary to take evidence before giving a verdict.'
'Good,' boomed the resolutionist; 'very good!'
'Then,' said Lady Durwent, 'we seven shall constitute a jury.'
'Order!' Johnston Smyth rose to his feet and hammered the table with a bottle. 'Oyez, oyez, you hereby swear that you shall well and truly try'——
'Can't,' said Norton Pyford, pulling himself up; 'I'm prejudiced.'
'For or against?'
'Against the culprit.'
'My discordant friend,' said Smyth, producing a second bottle from an unsuspected source and making it disappear mysteriously, 'means that he is prejudiced against England. Am I right, sir?'
'Not exactly,' drawled the composer. 'I don't mind England—but I think the English are awful.'
'That is a nice point,' said Lady Durwent.
'Ah,' broke in Madame Carlotti, 'but, much as I detest the English, I hate England more.Nom de Dieu! I—a daughter of the Mediterranean, where the sun ees so rarely a stranger, and the sky and the water it ees always blue. In Italy one lives because she ees alive—it ees sufficient. Here it ees always gray, gray—always g-r-ray. When the sun comes—sacramento! he sees his mistake and goes queek away. Ah, Signor Selwyn, it eesdésolantthat I am compelled to live here.'
A roar of unfeeling laughter greeting her familiar plaint, Madame Carlotti took a hitch in her gown and reimprisoned some of her person which had escaped from custody.
'Then,' said Johnston Smyth, 'if we are all of a mind, there is no need to have a trial. You have all seen the accusation in Mr. Selwyn's eye, you have considered the unbiassed evidence of the lovely Carlotti'——
'But jurors can't give evidence,' muttered Mr. Dunckley.
'My dear sir, I know she can't, but she did,' said Smyth triumphantly. 'Oyez, oyez—all in favour'——
'But,' interrupted the American, 'are we not to hear any one for the defence?'
'No,' said Smyth, who was thoroughly happy as a self-constituted master of ceremonies. 'No one would accept the brief.'
'Then,' said Selwyn, 'I apply for the post of counsel for the defence, for in the limited time I have been in your country I have seen much that appeals to me.'
'Of course, it is a well-known fact,' said Dunckley sententiously, 'that American humour relies on exaggeration.'
'No, no,' said Johnston Smyth, hushing the voices with apianissimomovement of his hands, 'it is not humour on Mr. Selwyn's part, but gratitude. In return for Christopher Columbus discovering America, this gentleman is going to repay the debt of the New World to the Old by discovering England.'
'SHALL WE HAVE SOME PORT?' said Lady Durwent, opening the sluice-gates of her vocal production.
'Speaking of America,' said Mrs. Le Roy Jennings a few minutes later,Johnston Smyth having sat down in order to do justice to the wine ofPortugal, 'she is in the very vanguard of progress. Women haveachieved an independence there unknown elsewhere in the world.'
'That is true,' said Lady Durwent, who knew nothing whatever about it.
'You are right,' said Madame Carlotti.
'The other day in Paris I heard an American woman whistling. "Have you lost your dog?" I asked. "No," she says; "my husband."'
A chorus of approval greeted this malicious sally, followed by the retailing of various anti-American anecdotes that made up in sting what they lacked in delicacy. These showed no signs of abatement until, slightly nettled, Selwyn put in an oar.
'I had hoped,' he said, 'to find some illuminating points in the conversation to-night. But it seems as if you treat not only your own country in a spirit of caricature, but mine as well. We are a very young race, and we have the faults of youth; but, then, youth always has a future. It was a sort of post-graduate course to come to England and Europe to absorb some of the lore—or isn't it one of your poets who speaks of "The Spoils of Time"? Your past is so rich that naturally we look to you and Europe for the fundamental things of civilisation.'
'And what have you found?' asked Elise Durwent.
'Well,' said the American, 'much to admire—and much to deplore.'
'In other words,' said Johnston Smyth, 'he has been to Edinburgh and toLondon.'
'That is so,' smiled Selwyn; 'but I don't'——
'All people,' said Smyth serenely, 'admire Edinburgh, but abuse London. Over here a man will jest about his religion or even his grandfather, but never about Edinburgh. On the other hand, as every one damns London, and as an Englishman is never so happy as when he has something on hand to grouse about, London's population has grown to some eight millions.'
'I think, Mr. Smyth,' said Lady Durwent, 'that you are as much a philosopher as a painter.'
'Lady Durwent,' said the futurist, 'all art is philosophy—even oldPyford's here, though his amounts almost to theology.'
For a few minutes the conversation drifted in inconsequential channels until H. Stackton Dunckley becalmed everything with a laborious dissertation on the lack of literary taste in both England and America. Selwyn took the opportunity of studying the elusive beauty of Elise Durwent, which seemed to provoke the eye to admiration, yet fade into imperfection under a prolonged searching. Pyford grew sleepy, and even Smyth appeared a little melancholy, when, on a signal from Lady Durwent, brandy and liqueurs were served, checking Mr. Dunckley's oratory and reviving every one's spirits noticeably.
'Mr. Selwyn,' said Mrs. Le Roy Jennings in her best manner, 'after you have subjected England to a microscopic examination for a sufficient length of time, you will discover that we are a nation of parasites.'
'I would rather you said that than I, Mrs. Jennings.'
'Parasites,' reiterated the speaker, fixing an eye on some point on the wall directly between Selwyn and the hostess. 'We sprawl over the world—why? To develop resources? No! It is to reap the natural growth of others' endeavours? Yes! The Englishman never creates. He is the world's greatest brigand'——
'Too thoroughly masculine to be really cruel,' chimed in the irrepressible Smyth.
'Brigand,' repeated Mrs. Jennings, not deigning the artist so much as a glance, 'skimming the earth of its surface riches, and rendering every place the poorer for his being there.'
There was an awesome silence, which no one seemed courageous enough to break.
'Yes,' said H. Stackton Dunckley finally, 'and in addition England is decadent.'
'But, Mr. Selwyn'—again the American heard the voice of Elise Durwent, that quick intensity of speech that always left a moment of startled silence in its wake—'you have discovered something admirable about England. Won't you tell us what it is?'
'Well,' he said, smiling, 'for one thing, no one can deny the beauty of your women.'
'All decadent nations,' said H. Stackton Dunckley, 'produce beautiful women—it is one of the surest signs that they are going to pieces. The Romans did at the last, and Rome and England are parallel cases. As Mrs. Le Roy Jennings says, they are parasitic nations. What did the Romans add to Greek art? The Greeks had this'—he made an elliptical movement of his hands—'the Romans did that to it'—he described a circle, then shrugged his shoulders, convinced that he had said something crushing.
'So you think English women beautiful, Mr. Selwyn?' said Lady Durwent, trying to retrieve the conversation from the slough of her inamorato's ponderosity.
'Undoubtedly,' answered the American warmly. 'It is no doubt the out-of-door life they lead, and I suppose the moist climate has something to do with their wonderful complexions, but they are womanly as well, and their voices are lovely.'
'I smell a rat,' said Smyth, who had in his mouth an unlit cigarette, which had fastened itself to his lip and bobbed up and down with his speech, like a miniature baton. 'When a man says a woman's voice is sweet, it means that she has bored him; that what she has to say interests him so little that he turns to contemplation of her voice. This American is a devilish cute fellow.'
A babble of voices took up the charge and demanded immediate explanation.
'To a certain extent,' said Selwyn stoutly, 'there is much in what Mr.Smyth says.'
'List to the pigmy praising the oracle,' chanted the artist.
'I do not think,' went on the American, 'that the English girls I have met are as bright or as clever as the cultured young women of the continent of America. In other words, with all her natural charm, the English girl does not edit herself well.'
'In that,' said H. Stackton Dunckley, 'she reflects the breed. TheAnglo-Saxon has an instinctive indifference to thought.'
'As soon as an Englishman thinks,' minced Madame Carlotti, 'he leaves England with itscattivoclimate and goes to the Colonies.C'est pourquoithe Empire ees so powerful—its brains are in the legs.'
'Come, come,' laughed Selwyn, 'is there no one here but me who can discover any merit in Old England?'
'Yes,' said Pyford gloomily; 'London is only seven hours from Paris.'
'Ah—Parigi!' ejaculated Madame Carlotti with the fervour born of the feeling in all Latin women that Paris is their spiritual capital.
'And yet,' said Selwyn, after a pause to see if Madame Carlotti's exuberance was going to develop any further, 'in literature, which I suppose is the natural art of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, we still look to you for the outstanding figures. With all our ability for writing short stories—and I think we are second only to the French in that—England still produces the foremost novelists. In the sustained effort required in the formation of a novel, England is yet first. Of course, musically, I think England is very near the bottom.'
'And yet,' said Johnston Smyth, 'we are the only people in the world candid enough to have a monument to our lack of taste.'
Every one looked at the artist, who stroked his left arm with the back of his right hand, like a barber sharpening a razor.
'In that part of London known as Kingsway,' he said, 'there is a beautiful building called "The London Opera House"!' He thrust both hands out, palms upwards, as if the building itself rested on them. 'It stands in a commanding position, with statues of the great composers gazing from the roof at the passing proletariat emanating from the Strand. Inside it is luxuriously equipped, as bents the home of Opera.'
'Yes,' said the American, as the speaker paused.
Smyth produced a watch from nowhere in particular. 'It is just past ten,' he said. 'I am not sure whether it is Charlie Chaplin or Mary Pickford showing on the screen at this hour, at the London Opera House.'
A murmur of applause acknowledged the artist's well-planned climax. He looked about with a satisfied smile, then replaced the watch with the air of pocketing both it and the subject.
'But—you have opera?' said Selwyn wonderingly.
'Of course,' said Smyth; 'and where? In a vegetable-market. In Covent Garden. Yet England has been accused of hypocrisy! What other nation is so candid?'
By one of those unspoken understandings that are the rules of mobs and dinner-parties, it was felt that the topic was ceasing to be exhaustive and becoming exhausting. Lady Durwent glanced, interrogatively about the table; Madame Carlotti took a hitch in her gown; Norton Pyford emptied his glass and sat pensively staring at it as if it had hardly done what he expected, but on the whole he felt inclined to forgive it; Johnston Smyth made a belated attempt to be sentimental with the Honourable Miss Durwent, whose lips, always at war with each other, merely parted in a smile that utterly failed to bring any sympathy from her eyes; Mrs. Le Roy Jennings took a last sip of coffee, and finding it quite cold, put it down with a gesture of finality.
'Lady Durwent,' said Austin Selwyn—and the quality of his voice was lighter and more musical than it had been—'I suppose that a man who deliberately goes to a country to gather impressions lays himself open to the danger of being influenced by external things only. If I were to base my knowledge of England on what her people say of her, I think I should be justified in assuming that the century-old charge of her decadence is terribly true. Yet I claim to have something of an artist's sensitiveness to undercurrents, and it seems to me that there is a strong instinct of race over here—perhaps I express myself clumsily—but I think there is an England which has far more depth to it than your artists and writers realise. For some reason you all seem to want to deny that; and when, as to-night, it is my privilege to meet some of this country's expressionists, it appears that none has any intention of trying to reveal what is fine in your life as a people—you seek only to satirise, caricature, or damn altogether. If I believe my ears, there is nothing but stupidity and insularity in England. If I listen to my senses, to my subconscious mind, I feel that a great crisis would reveal that she is still the bed-rock of civilisation.'
Madame Carlotti raised her glass.
'To America's next ambassador to England!' she cried.
The momentous evening was drawing to a close.
Rain, in fitful gusts, had been besieging the windows, driven by an ill-tempered wind that blustered around the streets, darting up dark alleys, startling the sparks emerging from chimney-pots, roaring across the parks, slamming doors, and venting itself, every now and then, in an ill-natured howl.
Inside the refuge of No. 8 Chelmsford Gardens a fire threw its merry warmth over the large music-room, and did its best to offset the tearful misery of the November night.
Conversation had dwindled in energy with the closing hour of the affair, and seizing an auspicious moment, Norton Pyford had reached the piano, and for twenty minutes demonstrated the close relation of the chord of C Minor to the colour brown. Modernist music, acting on unusual souls as classical music on ordinary souls, stimulated the flagging conversational powers of the guests, and he was soon surrounded by a gesticulating group of dissenting or condoning critics.
Selwyn noticed that Elise Durwent had not left her seat by the fire, and absenting himself from the harmonic debate, he took a chair by hers.
'You are pensive, Miss Durwent,' he said.
She smiled, with a slight suggestion of weariness, though her eyes had a softness he had not seen in them before.
'I am very dull company to-night,' she said, 'but ever since I was a child, rain beating against the windows has always made me dreamy. I suppose I am old-fashioned, but it is sweeter music to me than Mr. Pyford's new harmonies.'
He laughed, and leaning towards the fire, rubbed his hands meditatively. 'You must have found our talk wearisome at dinner,' he said.
'No,' she answered, 'it was not so bad as usual. You introduced a note of sincerity that had all the effect of a novelty.'
Her mannerism of swift and disjointed speech, which broke all her sentences into rapidly uttered phrases, again annoyed him. Though her voice was refined, it seemed to be acting at the behest of a whip-like brain, and she spoke as if desirous rather of provoking a retort than of establishing any sense of compatibility. Yet she was feminine—gloriously, delicately feminine. The finely moulded arms and the gracefulness of body, indicated rather than revealed beneath her blue gown, intrigued the eye and the senses, just as the swiftly spoken words challenged the brain and infused exasperation in the very midst of admiration. The complicated elements of the girl offered a peculiar fascination to the eternal instinct of study possessed by the young American author.
'Miss Durwent,' he said, 'if I was sincere to-night, it was because you encouraged me to be so.'
'But I said nothing.'
'Nevertheless, you were the inspiration.'
'I never knew a girl could accomplish so much by holding her tongue.'
A crash of 'Bravos' broke from the group around the piano; Pyford had just scored a point.
'You know,' resumed Selwyn thoughtfully, 'a man doesn't go to a dinner-party conscious of what he is going to say. It is the people he meets that produce ideas in him, many of which he had never thought of before.'
She tapped the ground with her foot, and looked smilingly at his serious face. 'It is the reverse with me,' she said. 'I go out to dinner full of ideas, and the people I meet inspire a silence in me of unsuspected depth.'
'May I smoke?' asked Selwyn, calling a halt in the verbal duel.
'Certainly; I'll join you. Don't smoke your own cigarettes—there are some right in front of you.'
He reached for a silver box, offered her a cigarette, and struck a match. As he leaned over her she raised her face to the light, and the blood mounted angrily to his head.
Though a man accustomed to dissect rather than obey his passions, he possessed that universal quality of man which demands the weakness of the feminine nature in the woman who interests him. He will satirise that failing; if he be a writer, it will serve as an endless theme for light cynicism. He will deplore that a woman's brains are so submerged by her emotions; but let him meet one reversely constituted, and he steers his course in another direction with all possible speed.
Selwyn had come to her with a comfortable, after-dinner desire for atête-à-tête. He expected flattering questions about his writings, and would have enjoyed talking about them; instead of which this English girl with the crimson colouring and the maddening eyes had coolly kept him at a distance with her rapier brain. He felt a sudden indignation at her sexlessness, and struck a match for his own cigarette with such energy that it broke in two.
'Miss Durwent,' he said suddenly, lighting another match, 'I want to see you again—soon.' He paused, astonished at his own abruptness, and an awkward smile expanded until it crinkled the very pinnacle of his nose.
'I like you when you look like that,' she said. 'It was just like my brother Dick when he fell off a horse. By the way, do you ride?'
'Yes,' he said, watching the cigarette-smoke curl towards the fireplace, 'though I prefer an amiable beast to a spirited one.'
'Good!' she said, so quickly that it seemed like the thrust of a sword in tierce. 'You have the same taste in horses as in women. Most men have.'
'Miss Durwent'—his face flushed angrily and his jaw stiffened—'I'll ride any horse you choose in England, and'——
'And break the heart of the most vixenish maiden in London! You are a real American, after all. What is it you say over there? "Shake!"'
She slapped her hand into his, and he held it in a strong grip.
'But youwilllet me see you again soon?'
'Certainly.' She withdrew her hand from his with a firmness that had neither censure nor coquetry in it, and the heightened colour of her cheeks subsided with the sparkle of her eyes.
'When?' he said.
'To-morrow morning, if you like. I shall have horses here at eleven, and we can ride in the Row, providing you will put up with anything so quiet as our cattle.'
'That is bully of you. I shall be here at eleven.'
'I thought all Americans used slang,' she said.
'You are the first English girl I have met,' he answered with extraordinary venom in his voice, 'who has not said "ripping."'
* * * * * *
Twenty minutes later Austin Selwyn, unable to secure a taxi, tramped along Oxford Street towards his hotel. He had just reached the Circus when the malignant wind, hiding in ambush down Regent Street, rushed at him unawares and sent his hat roistering into the doorway of a store. With a frown, Selwyn stopped and stared at the truant.
'Confound the wretched thing!' he said.
Austin Selwyn rose from his bed and looked at Berners Street glistening in a sunlight that must have warmed the heart of Madame Carlotti herself. With a lazy pleasure in the process, he recalled the picture of Elise Durwent sitting in the dim shadows of the firelit room; he felt again the fragrance of her person as he leaned over her with the lighted match. On the canvas of his brain was thrown the rich colouring of the English girl, with the copper-hued luxury of hair and the eyes that seemed to steal some magic from the fire; and he saw again those warring lips, the crimson upper one chiding the passionate scarlet of its twin.
Idly, while enjoying the unusual dissipation of a pre-breakfast cigarette, he tried to imagine the course of incident and heredity that had produced her strange personality. That there was a bitterness somewhere in her disposition was obvious; but it certainly could not have come from the mother, who was the soul of contentment. He found himself speculating on the peculiar quality of personality, that strange thing which makes an individual something apart from others of his kind, that gift which singles out a girl of ordinary appearance and leaves one of flawless beauty still wagging her pretty head in the front row of the chorus. From that point he began to speculate on the loneliness of personality, which so often robs its owner of the cheery companionship of commonplace people.
On the whole, he regretted that he was going to see her again so soon. Her pertness, which had seemed fairly clever the previous night, would probably descend to triteness in the morning; he could even see her endeavouring to keep up the same exchange of short sentences. Bah! It was like a duel with toothpicks. The stolid respectability of Berners Street lent its aid to the conviction that the morning would hold nothing but anti-climax.
And he was poet enough to prefer an unfinished sonnet to one with an inartistic ending.
Austin Selwyn was twenty-six—an age which has something in common with almost every one of the seven celebrated by Shakespeare. Like most men in their twenties, he had the character of a chameleon, and adapted himself to his surroundings with almost uncanny facility. At college he had been an ardent member of a dozen cliques, even falling under the egotism of the men who dabbled in Spiritualism, but a clarity of thought and a strain of Dutch ancestry kept his feet on the earth when the rest of him showed signs of soaring.
Some moderate wit had said of him at college that he was himself only twice a day—when he got up in the morning and when he went to bed at night. This Stevensonian theory was not quite true, for a chameleon does not cease to be a chameleon because it changes its colour.
It was perhaps his susceptibility to the many vintages of existence that had impelled him to write, authors being more or less a natural result of the economic law of intake and output. As is the habit of most young writers, he wrote on various subjects, put enough material for a two-volume novel into a short story, and generally revelled in the prodigality of literary youth. He was prepared to be a social satirist, a chronicler of the Smart Set, a champion of the down-trodden masses, or a commercial essayist, according to the first public that showed appreciation of his work.
Although he had lived in Boston, that city which claims so close an affinity to ancient Athens (as a matter of fact, has it not been said that Athens is the Boston of Europe?), he was drawn to the great vortex of New York, that mighty capital of modernism which sucks the best brains of an entire continent. For some time he wrote beneath his own standard and with considerable success. Following the example of several successful New York authors, he plunged into a hectic portrayal of 'high' society, a set of people that makes one wonder as to the exact meaning of the adjective. For a short space he came under the influence of the studied Bohemianism of 'Greenwich Village,' and wrote deucedly clever things for the applause of the villagers, then sneered at American taste because people in Arkansas did not like his work. Still retaining his love of Greenwichery, he next succumbed to the money lure of the motion-picture industry, which offered to buy the picture-rights of his stories, provided he would introduce into them the elements which go to make up successful American films.
With the prospect of a bank president's income before him, he succeeded in writing his share of that form of American literature which has a certain love interest, almost obscured by a nasty sexual diagnosis, an element of comedy relief, and, above all, a passionate adherence to the craze of the moment—a work that fades from the mind with the closing of the book, as the memory of the author's name vanishes almost before the last sound of the earth dropped upon his coffin.
He knew that there were sincereliteratiwriting of the abiding things that do not die with the passing of a season, but the clamour of commercialism drowned their voices. As though they were stocks upon an exchange, he heard the cries: 'Brown's getting five thousand dollars a month writing serials for Hitch's;' 'Smith sold two novels on synopsis for thirty thousand dollars;' 'Green's signed up with Tagwicks for four years at two thousand dollars a month writing problem novels.' Into the maelstrom of 'Dollars, Dollars, Dollars,' the sensitive brains of all America were drifting, throwing overboard ideals and aspirations in order to keep afloat in the swirling foam.
And then—the Fates stooped and touched his destiny with a star.
A New York publisher (one of that little group which has for its motto, 'Art for Art's sake,' not 'Art, for God's sake!') noticed him, and spoke of literature as an expression of the soul, a thing not of a season or a decade, but as ageless as a painting.
His ear caught the new song of attainment just as readily as it had received the chorus of 'Dollars.' He wrote a novel of New England life, full of faults, but vibrant with promise; and having gathered together quite a nice sum of money, he went to England, at the advice of the before-mentioned publisher, there and elsewhere in Europe to absorb the less oxygenic atmosphere of older civilisations, which still gives birth to the beginnings of things.
Twice he had visited Paris. The first time, with the instinct of the tourist, he had discovered the vileness of the place—a discovery fairly easy of accomplishment. The second time he had ignored the tourist-stimulated aspect of Paris life, and had allowed his senses to absorb the soul of the Capital of all the Latins, the laboratory of civilisation. And he who has done that is never the same man again. Germany had ministered to his reason, and Italy to his emotions; but he found his greatest interest in London, which offered to him an endless inspiration of changing moods, of vagrant smells, and the effect of a stupendous drama of humanity.
Under the spell of Europe's ageless artistry and the rich-hued meadows of England's literary past he had grown humble. The song of 'Dollars' was less clamorous than the echo of the ocean in the heart of a sea-shell. When he wrote, which was seldom, he approached his paper-littered desk as an artist does his canvas. It was the medium by which he might gain a modest niche in the Hall of the Immortals—or, failing that, his soul at least would be enriched by the sincerity of his endeavour.
In that highly artistic frame of mind he suddenly secured theentréeinto London Society. For some reason, as unaccountable as the reverse, a wave of popularity for Americans was breaking against the oak doors, and he was carried in on the crest. The result was not ennobling. The dormant instinct of satire leaped to life and the idealist became the jester.
But then he was twenty-six and most agreeably susceptible to hap-hazard influence. Being a Bostonian, he acquitted himself with creditablesavoir faire; and being an American, his appreciation of the ridiculous saved him from the quagmire of snobbery, though he made many friends and dined regularly with august people, whose family trees were so rich in growth that they lived in perpetual gloom from the foliage.
Lady Durwent's dinner-party had been an expedition into the artistic fakery of London, and he would have dismissed the whole affair as a stimulating and amusing diversion from the ultra-aristocratic rut if the personality of Elise Durwent had not remained with him like a haunting melody.
He looked at his watch. 'By Jove!' he muttered; 'it's nine o'clock;' and hurriedly completing his ablutions, he dressed and descended to breakfast.
Into the row of splendidly inert houses known as Chelmsford Gardens,Austin Selwyn turned his course. A couple of saddle-horses werestanding outside No. 8, held by a groom of expressionless countenance.From No. 3 a butler emerged, looked at the morning, and retired.Elsewhere inaction reigned.
Ringing the bell, Selwyn was admitted into the music-room of the previous night's scene. The portrait of a famous Elizabethan beauty looked at him with plump and saucy arrogance. In place of the crackling fire a new one was laid, all orderly and proper, like a set of new resolutions. The genial disorder of the chairs, moved at the whim of the Olympians, had all been put straight, and the whole room possessed an air of studied correctness, as though it were anxious to forget the previous evening's laxity with the least possible delay.
'Good-morning.'
Elise Durwent swept into the room with an impression of boundless vitality. She was dressed in a black riding-habit with a divided skirt, from beneath which a pair of glistening riding-boots shone with a Cossack touch. Her copper hair, which was arranged to lie rather low at the back, was guarded by a sailor-hat that enhanced to the full the finely formed features and arched eyebrows. There was an extraordinary sense of youthfulness about her—not the youthfulness of immaturity, but the stimulating quality of the spirit.
'I came here this morning,' began Selwyn vaguely, 'expecting'——
'Expecting a frumpy, red-haired girl with a black derby hat down to her nose.'
He bowed solemnly. 'Instead of which, I find—a Russian princess.'
'You are a dear. You can't imagine how much thought I expended on this hat.'
'It was worth it. You look absolutely'——
'Just a minute, Mr. Selwyn. You are not going to tell me I look charming?'
'That was my intention.'
She sighed, with a pretty pretence at disappointment. 'That will cost me half-a-crown,' she said.
'I beg your'——
'Yes; I wagered myself two-and-six to a "bob" that you wouldn't use that word.'
'It is really your fault that I did,' he said seriously.
She curtsied daintily. 'I make money on Englishmen and lose it on Americans,' she said. 'I have a regular scale of bets. I give ten to one that an Englishman will say in the first ten minutes that I look "topping," five to one on "absolutely ripping" in the first thirty, and even money on "stunning" in the first hour.'
His face, which had been portraying an amusing mixture of perplexity and admiration, broke into a smile which encompassed all his features. 'Do all bets cease at the end of the first hour?' he asked.
'Yes, ra-ther. An Englishman never pays compliments then, because he is used to you. Isn't it awful seeing people getting used to you?'
'Do they ever?'
'Umph'm. The only chance of bagging one of the nobility as a husband is to limit interviews to half-an-hour and never wear the same clothes twice. Startle him! Keep him startled! Save your most daring gown for the night you're going to make him propose, then wear white until the wedding. An Englishman will fall in love with a woman in scarlet, but he likes to think he's marrying one who wears white. Costume, my dear Americano—costume does it. Hence the close alliance between the nobility and the chorus. But come along; we're snubbing the sunlight.'
With something like intoxication in his blood, he followed his imperious, high-spirited companion from the house. He hurried forward to help her to mount, but she had her foot in the stirrup and had swung herself into the saddle before he could reach her side. With less ease, but with creditable horse-management, Selwyn mounted the chestnut and drew alongside the bay, who was cavorting airily, as if to taunt the larger horse with the superior charm of the creature that bestrode him.
'We'll be back, Smith, at twelve-thirty,' she called; and with the tossing of the horses' heads, resentful of the restraining reins, and the clattering of hoofs that struck sparks from the roadway, they made for the Park.
London is a stage that is always set. The youthful Dickens watching the murky Thames found the setting for his moments of horror, just as surely as cheery coach-houses, many of them but little changed to this day, bespoke the entrance of Wellers senior and junior. London gave to Wilde's exotic genius the scenes wherein his brilliantly futile characters played their wordy dramas; then, turning on the author, London's own vileness called to his. Thackeray the satirist needed no further inspiration than the nicely drawn distinction between Belgravia and Mayfair. Generous London refused nothing to the seeking mind. Nor is it more sparing to-day than it was in the past; it yields its inspiration to the gloom of Galsworthy, the pedagogic utterances of Mr. Wells, the brilliant restlessness of Arnold Bennett, and the ever-delightful humour of Punch.
On this morning in November London was in a gracious mood, and Hyde Park, coloured with autumn's pensive melancholy, sparkled in the sunlight. Snowy bits of cloud raced across the sky, like sails against the blue of the ocean. November leaves, lying thick upon the grass, stirred into life, and for an hour imagined the fickle wind to be a harbinger of spring. Children, with laughter that knew no other cause than the exhilaration of the morning, played and romped, weaving dreams into their lives and their lives into dreams. Invalids in chairs leaned back upon their pillows and smiled. Something in the laughter of the children or the spirit of the wind had recalled their own careless moments of full-lived youth.
Paris, despite your Bois de Boulogne; New York, for all the beauties of your Central Park and Riverside Drive—what have you to compare with London's parks on a sun-strewn morning in November?
Reaching the tan-bark surface of Rotten Row, Selwyn and the English girl eased the reins and let the horses into a canter. With the motion of the strong-limbed chestnut the American felt a wave of exultation, and chuckled from no better cause than sheer enjoyment in the morning's mood of emancipation. He glanced at Elise Durwent, and saw that her eyes were sparkling like diamonds, and that the self-conscious bay was shaking his head and cantering so lightly that he seemed to be borne on the wings of the wind. Selwyn wished that he were a sculptor that he might make her image in bronze: he would call it 'Recalcitrant Autumn.' He even felt that he could burst into poetry. He wished——
But then he was in the glorious twenties; and, after all, what has the gorged millionaire, rolling along in his beflowered, bewarmed, becushioned limousine, that can give one-tenth the pleasure of the grip on the withers of a spirited horse?
Sometimes they walked their beasts, and chatted on such subjects as young people choose when spirits are high and care is on a vacation. They were experiencing that keenest of pleasures—joy in thepresent.
They watched London Society equestrianising for the admiration of the less washed, who were gazing from chairs and benches, trying to tell from their appearance which was a duke and which merely 'mister'—and usually guessing quite wrongly. Ladies of title, some of them riding so badly that their steeds were goaded into foam by the incessant pull of the curb bit, trotted past young ladies and gentlemen with note-books, who had been sent by an eager Press to record the activities of the truly great. Handsome women rode in the Row with their children mounted on wiry ponies (always a charming sight); and middle-aged, angular females, wearing the customary riding-hat which reduces beauty to plainness and plainness to caricature, rode melancholy quadrupeds, determined to do that which is done by those who are of consequence in the world.
But pleasures born of the passing hour, unlike those of the past or ofanticipation, end with the striking of the clock. It seemed to AustinSelwyn that they had been riding only for the space of minutes, whenElise asked him the time.
'It is twenty minutes to one,' he said. 'I had no idea time had passed so quickly.'
'Nor I,' she answered. 'Just one more canter, and then we'll go.'
The eager horses chafed at their bits, and pleaded, after the manner of their kind, to be allowed one mad gallop with heaving flanks and snorting triumph at the end; but decorum forbade, and contenting themselves with the agreeable counterfeit, Selwyn and the girl reluctantly turned from the Park towards home.
The expressionless Smith was waiting for them, and looked at the two horses with that peculiar intolerance towards their riders which the very best groom in the world cannot refrain from showing.
'Won't you come in and take the chance of what there is for lunch?' she said as Selwyn helped her to dismount.
'N-no, thanks,' he said.
She pouted, or pretended to. 'Now, why?' she said as Smith mounted the chestnut, and touching his hat, walked the horses away.
'There is no reason,' he said, smiling, 'except—— Look here; will you come downtown and have dinner with me to-night?'
'You Americans are refreshing,' she said, burrowing the toe of her riding-boot with the point of the crop, 'As a matter of fact, I have to go to dinner to-night at Lady Chisworth's.'
'Then have a headache,' he persisted.
'Please,' as her lips proceeded to form a negative.
'Some one would see us, and Lady Chisworth would declare war.'
'Then let us dine in some obscure restaurant in Soho.'
'There's no such thing, old dear. Soho is always full of the best people dining incog. Almost the only place where you are free from your friends is Claridge's.'
'Well'—his nose crinkled at her remark—'then let us go to Claridge's. Miss Durwent, I know I'm too persistent, but it would be a wonderful ending to a bully day. You know you'll be bored at Lady Chisworth's, and I shall be if you don't come.'
'Humph!' She stood on the first of the stone steps, her agile gracefulness lending itself to the picture of healthy, roseate youth.
'Where could we meet?'
'Let me call for you.'
'N-no. That wouldn't do.'
'Would your mother object?'
'Heavens, no!—but the servants would. You see, English morality is largely living up to your servants—and we met only last night.'
'But you will come?' He crossed his hands behind his back and swung the crop against his boots.
'Mr. Selwyn,' she said, 'your books should be very interesting.'
'From now on they will be,' he said, 'if'——
'All right,' she interrupted him with something of the staccato mannerism of the evening before. 'I'll motor down in my little car, and we'll go to the Café Rouge.'
'Good—wherever that may be.'
'No one has discovered it yet but me,' she said. 'Then I shall have a headache at four, and meet you outside Oxford Circus Tube at seven.'
'You're a real sport, Miss Durwent.'
'Ah, monsieur'—she smiled with a roguishness that completely unsettled him for the remainder of the day—'have you no sympathy for my headache?'
Monsieur Anton Beauchamp was the proprietor of the Café Rouge in London. Monsieur Anton Beauchamp was once proprietor of the Café Bleu in Paris.
For many years he had cast envious eyes on London. Did not always his guests, those strange blonde people with the clothes like blankets, pay his prices without question? Did they not drink bad wine and never add the bill?Pardi! if he could have only English as patrons, madame and himself could purchase that wine-shop in the Bou' Mich', and never worry again.
For years the thought of London haunted Anton; and then one day, in a superb moment of decision, he announced his intention of journeying thither. A large entourage followed him to the Gare du Nord, and, with much the same feelings as those of an explorer leaving for the North Pole, he bade a dramatic farewell, and almost missed his train by running back to give a final embrace to Madame Beauchamp.
With no undue mishap he reached London the same night, and next day he lunched at a famous London restaurant. At night he dined at a fashionable establishment in Shaftesbury Avenue. In both places he received ordinary food served without distinction, reckoned up the bill, and found that in each casel'additionwas correct—and rushed madly back to Paris, where he sold the Café Bleu, packed up his belongings, and explained matters to his wife, doing all three things simultaneously.
'The dinner,' he exclaimed in a fever of excitement, 'is served—so! As a funeral. I order what I like, and the waiter he stands therecomme un gendarme, as if it is my name I give. "Any vegetables?" demands he.Mon Dieu! As if vegetables they are no more to him than so much—so much umbrellas. I say, "Garçon, la carte des vins!" and, quite correct, he hands it me with so many wines he has not got, just as in Paris, but—que penses tu?—he permits me to order what wine I choose, so—by myself.C'est terrible! I give him three pennies and say, "Garçon, for such stupidity you should pay the whole bill."'
Monsieur Beauchamp was a man of shrewdness. He knew he could not compete with the established solidity of the Trocadero, the Ritz, the Piccadilly, or the garishness of Frascati's, so he purchased and remodelled an unobtrusive building in an unobtrusive street between Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, but clear of Soho and its adherents. He decorated the place in a rich red, and arranged somecabinets particuliersupstairs, where, by the screening of a curtain, Madame the Wife and Monsieur the Lover could dine without molestation of vulgar eyes.
Monsieur Beauchamp felt himself a benefactor, a missionary. He argued that the only reason Londoners were not so flirtatious as Parisians was lack of opportunity. He, the proprietor of the Café Rouge, would bring light to the inhabitants of the foggy city. To assist in this philanthropic work he brought with him an excellent cook, who had killed a dyspeptic Cabinet Minister by tempting him with dishes intended only for robust digestions, and three young and ambitious waiters; while madame engaged what unskilled labour was required.
Unobtrusively they opened for business, for he knew that publicity would spoil his chance of success. (Once convince a Londoner that he is one of a select few who know a restaurant, and he will stand an hour waiting for a table.) The first customer to enter received such attention that he brought his family the next night. Monsieur Beauchamp issued orders that he should be snubbed.Parbleu! was the Café Rouge forfamilies?
Gradually the justification of Monsieur Beauchamp's policy became evident. Ladies of the Chorus brought their admirers there, and to the former Monsieur Beauchamp paid particular courtesy. Long study of feminine psychology had taught him that, whereas a woman may change her lover, she will not change her favourite café. Therefore, though the man may pay the bill, the woman is the one to please. Artists from Chelsea would come as well to the Café Rouge, celebrating the sale of a picture, and drinking plentifully to the confounding of all art critics. Also, thecabinets particulierswere the scene of some exceedingly expensive and recherché dinners—and almost no one added the bill. When any one did, Monsieur Beauchamp was mortified, and invariably dismissed the same waiter on the spot—thereby gaining for himself and France a reputation for sterling integrity.
'Ma foi! London may be gray,' thought Monsieur Beauchamp, 'but she pays well.'
One November evening Monsieur Anton Beauchamp's critical eye noted the entrance of a dark-haired young man in well-fitting evening clothes, and with him a young lady whose deep-green cloak and white fur round the shoulders set off to perfection her radiant colouring and well-poised figure. Monsieur Beauchamp did not hesitate. After all, he was an artist, and subject to inspiration like other men of genius; so, hurrying downstairs, he waved the waiter aside, and greeted them with a bow which almost amounted to virtuosity.
'Bon soir, monsieur et madame.' He cast an anxious glance about the café, which was two-thirds filled. 'This tabil will do?—Ah, mais non! He grew indignant at the very thought. 'Pardon, monsieur, that one is very nice—par ici—Non, non! Ah—perhaps you would like acabinet particulier?'
The sirenic tone of voice and the gesture of his hands indicated the seraphic pleasure to be obtained only in one of those secluded spots.
The American turned inquiringly to the girl.
'When I was here before,' she said, 'I was at a table just upstairs to the right. Have you one there, Monsieur Beauchamp?'
Nom d'une pipe! She knew him. And she was beautiful, this English lady. As he personally escorted them upstairs, with the importance of a Lord Chamberlain at a Court function, Monsieur Beauchamp speculated on the flirtatious potentialities of the young woman. If she were only clever enough to be fickle, what a source of profit she might be to the Café Rouge! And was she not in appearance much like Mademoiselle Valerie, for whom a member of the Chamber of Deputies had blown out the brains of Monsieur P—— de l'Académie Française?
With the assistance of a waiter, he ushered them to a table almost hidden by a pillar, where a crimson-shaded light sent a soft glow that was guaranteed to make the most of a woman's eyes. Monsieur Beauchamp with his own hands brought them the menu card, while the waiter stood expectantly, crouched for an immediate start as soon as he received the signal. A small waitress appeared with the butter and rolls, and made her way underneath the arms of the proprietor and the waiter like a tug running round two ocean liners. Monsieur Beauchamp could recommend theBarquettes Norvégienne—No? Madame did not so desire? Of course not. He frowned terrifically at the waiter, who glared ferociously at the diminutive waitress.Morbleu! What imbecile suggestedBarquettes Norvégienne? Monsieur Beauchamp mentioned other dishes as an overture to the meal, waxing increasingly wrathy towards the waiter on each veto. Ah! monsieur desiredConsommé Anton. The proprietor's face beamed and his arms were outstretched towards heaven. That this gentleman should orderConsommé Anton, the soup of which he alone knew the secret, and which had been named after himself! Truly, the life of a restaurateur was not without compensations. He turned on the waiter—but that worthy had darted away to execute the order.
The soup appeared. Monsieur Beauchamp stood by with the attitude of an artist watching the hanging of his first painting in the Academy.
'You might let me see the wine list,' said Selwyn.
Monsieur Beauchamp struck an attitude of horror. Had it come to this in the Café Rouge, that a patron mustaskfor the wine list? Brandishing his arms, he rushed from the table, almost colliding with the little waitress, flew downstairs to the very farthest table near the door, seized a wine card, and puffing generously, arrived with the trophy at the table, much as Rothschild's messenger must have reached London with the news that the British were winning at Waterloo. Having then succeeded in making the American order a red wine when he wanted white, Monsieur Beauchamp withdrew in a state of histrionic self-satisfaction.
With a smile of relief Selwyn looked across the table at the girl. Even in the soft glow of the lamp, which made for flattery, it seemed to him that the vivacity of the morning had disappeared, and in its place was the petulance of the previous evening. Her eyes, which seemed when they were riding to have caught something of the alchemy of the skies, were steady and lighter in shade. Again he noticed the suggestion of discontent about the mouth, and the upper lip looked thin and lacking in colour.
'It is your turn to-night to be pensive,' she said.
'I was thinking,' he answered, 'that it is hardly twenty-four hours since we met, and yet I have as many impressions of you as an ordinary woman would give in six months. For instance, last night when you entered the room'——
'But, Mr. Selwyn, any girl knows enough to arrive late when there is no woman within twenty years of her age in the room. The effect is certain.'
There was no humour in her voice, but just a tone of weary, world-wise knowledge. A look of displeasure clouded his face.
'Surely,' he said, 'with your qualities and appearance, you don't need such an elaborate technique.'
'In a world where there is so little that is genuine, why should I debar myself from the pleasure of being a humbug?'
'Come, come,' he said, smiling, 'you are not going to join the ranks ofEngland's detractors?'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'I'm certainly not going to become a professional critic like Stackton Dunckley, who hasn't even the excuse that he's an Irishman; or Lucia Carlotti, who hardly ever leaves London because her dinners cost her nothing. But I reserve the right of personal resentment.'
They were interrupted by a waiter, who removed the soup-plates with studied dexterity, and substitutedTronçon de turbotin Duglère;pommes vapeur, the dish which had delivered the fatal blow against the Cabinet Minister's digestive armour.
'Perhaps I am too personal,' resumed Selwyn after the completion of this task, 'but last night one of the impressions I took away with me was your critical attitude towards your surroundings. Then this morning you were so completely'——
'Charming?'
'——bewitching,' he said, smiling, 'that I thought myself an idiot for the previous night's opinion. But, then, this evening'——
'Mr. Selwyn, you are not going to tell me I'm disappointing, and we just finished with the soup?'
More than her words, the forced rapidity with which she spoke nettled him. With bad taste perhaps, but still with well-meant sincerity, he was trying to elucidate the personality which had gripped him; while she, though seemingly having no objection to serving as a study for analysis, was constantly thrusting her deflecting sentences in his path. To him words were as clay to the sculptor. When he conversed he liked to choose his theme, then, by adroit use of language, bring his artistry to bear on the subject, accentuating a line here, introducing a note of subtlety elsewhere, amplifying, smoothing, finishing with the veneer of words the construction of his mind. Another quality in her that troubled him was the apparent rigidity of her thoughts. Not once did she give the impression that she was nursing an idea in the lap of her mentality, but always that she had arrived at a conclusion by an instantaneous process, which would not permit of retraction or expansion. As though by suggestion he could reduce her phrasing to atempoless quick, his own voice slowed to a drawl.
'Miss Durwent,' he said, 'you are unique among the English girls I have met. I should think that contentment, almost reduced to placidity, is one of their outstanding characteristics.'
'That is because you are a man, and with a stranger we have our company manners on. England is full of bitter, resentful women, but they don't cry about it. That's one result of our playing games like boys. We learn not to whine.'
'I suppose the activities of your suffragettes are a sign of this unrest.'
'Yes—though they don't know what is really the trouble. I do not think women should run the country, but I do feel that we should have something to say about our ordinary day-to-day lives. Man-made laws are stupid enough, but a man-made society is intolerable. Just a very little wine, please.'
For a moment there was silence; then she continued: 'Oh, I suppose if it were all sifted down I should find that it is largely egotism on my part.'
He waited, not wanting to alter her course by any injudicious comment.
'Mr. Selwyn,' she said abruptly, 'do you feel that there is a HigherPurpose working through life?'
'Y-yes,' he said, rather startled, 'I think there is.'
'Sometimes I do,' she went on; 'then, again, I think we're here on this earth for no purpose at all. It often strikes me that Some One up above started humanity with a great idea, but lost interest in us.'
'I think,' he said slowly, 'that every man has an instinctive feeling sometime in his life that he is a small part of a great plan that is working somehow towards the light.'
'Yes. It's a comfortable thought. It's what makes good Christians enjoy their dinner without worrying too much about the poor.'
He made no answer, though he was not one who often let an epigram go by without a counter-thrust; but he could see that the girl was struggling towards a sincerity of expression much as a frightened horse crosses a bridge which spans a roaring waterfall, ready to bolt at the first thing that affrights it.
'Mr. Selwyn,' she said—and for the first time her words had something of a lilt and less incision—'do you think women are living the life intended for them?'
'Why not?' he fenced.
'Well, it seems to me that when any living creature is placed in the world it is given certain powers to use. You saw this morning how our horses wanted to race, and couldn't understand our holding them back. A mosquito bites because that's apparently its job in the world, and it doesn't know anything else. I was once told that if animals do not use some faculty they possess, in time Nature takes it away from them.'
'You are quite a student of natural history, Miss Durwent.'
'No—but every now and then mother unearths a man who teaches us something, like last night.'
He acknowledged the compliment with a slight inclination of his head.The waiter leant expectantly beside him.
'To descend from the metaphysical to the purely physical,' he said, glancing in some perplexity at the terrific nomenclature of Monsieur Beauchamp's dishes, 'do you think we might take a chance on thisPoulet reine aux primeurs; salade lorette? I gather that it has something to do with chicken.'
'It's rather artful of Monsieur Beauchamp to word it so we poor English can get that much, isn't it?'
'Yes. He apparently acts on the principle that a little learning is a common thing.'
As Selwyn gave the necessary order to the waiter, a noisy hubbub of laughter from an adjoiningcabinet particulieralmost drowned his words. There was one woman's voice that was rasping and sustained with an abandon of vulgarity released by the potency of champagne.
Elise Durwent looked across the table at her companion. 'Are you bored with all my talk?' she said. 'You Americans aren't nearly so candid about such things as Englishmen.'
'On the contrary, Miss Durwent, I am deeply interested. Only, I am a little puzzled as to how you connect the usual functions of animals with woman's place in the world.'
With an air of abstraction she drew some pattern on the table-cloth with the prongs of a fork. 'I don't know,' she said dreamily, 'that I can apply the argument correctly, 'but—Mr. Selwyn, when I was a child playing about with my little brother "Boy-blue"—that was a pet name I had for him—I was just as happy to be a girl as he was to be a boy. I think that is true of all children. But ask any woman which she would rather be, a man or a woman, and unless she is trying to make you fall in love with her she will say the former. That is not as it should be, but it's true. Yet, if we are part of your great plan working towards the light, we're entitled to the same share in life as you—more, if anything, because we perpetuate life and have more in common with all that it holds than men have. There, that is a long speech for me.'
'Please don't stop.'
There was a howl in a man's voice from the noisycabinet particulier, followed by a laugh from the same woman as before, which set the teeth on edge.
'That woman in there,' she went on, 'will partly show what I mean. In the beginning we were both given certain qualities. She has lost her modesty through disuse; I'm losing my womanliness and power of sympathy for the same reason. She's more candid about it, that's all. When Dick and I were youngsters I dreamed of life as Casim Baba's cave full of undiscovered treasures that would be endless. Now I look back upon those days as the only really happy ones I shall ever have.'
'You are—how old?'
'Twenty-three.'
'You will grow less cynical as you grow older,' he said, from the altitude of twenty-six.
'I agree,' she said. 'As, unlike the Japanese, we haven't the moral courage of suicide, I shall get used to the idea of being an Englishman's wife; of living in a calm routine of sport, bridge, week-ends, and small-talk—entertaining people who bore you, and in turn helping to bore those who entertain you. In time I'll forget that I was born, as most women are, with a fine perception of life's subtleties, and settle down to living year in and year out with no change except that each season you're less attractive and more petty. After a while I shall even get to like the calm level of being an Englishman's wife, and if I see any girl thinking as I do now, I'll know what a little fool she is. That's what happens to us—we get used to things. Those of us who don't, either get a divorce, or go to the devil, or just live out our little farce. It is a real tragedy of English life that women are losing through disuse the qualities that were given them. That is why an American like you comes here and says we do not edit ourselves cleverly.'
The rapid succession of sentences came to an end, and the colour which had mounted to her cheeks slowly subsided.
'I feel,' he said, 'that I can only vaguely understand what you mean. But is it not possible that you are looking at it too much from the standpoint of an individualist?'
'Women are all individualists,' she broke in; 'or they are until society breaks their spirit. This lumping of people into generations and tuning your son's brain to the same pitch as his medieval ancestors' doesn't interest women—that's man's performance. The great thing about a woman is her own life, isn't it? And the great event in a woman's life is when she has a child—because it'shers. This class and family stuff comes from men, because their names are perpetuated, not ours. There is no snobbery equal to men's; it is more noticeable with women, because it isn't instinctive with them, and they have to talk to show it.'
'Then,' said Selwyn, 'in addition to an Irish Rebellion, we may look for one from English women?'
'Yes. I don't know when, but it will come.'
He produced a cigarette-case. 'Would you care for a cigarette now?' he asked.
'No, thanks. But you smoke.'
'Poor England!' he said in pretended seriousness, tapping the table with the end of the cigarette, 'with two revolutions on her hands, and neither party knowing what it wants.'
'We may not know what we want,' she said, 'but, as an Irishman said the other day, "we won't be satisfied till we get it." If the rebellion of our women doesn't come, I prophesy that in a couple of thousand years, when the supermen inhabit the earth, they will find a sort of land mermaid with an expressionless face, perpetually going through the motion of dealing cards or drinking tea. Then some old fogy will spend ten years in research, and pronounce her an excellent example of the extinct race "Femina Anglica."'
'As one of the tyrants who wishes you well,' said Selwyn, after a laugh in which she joined, 'may I be permitted to know what women want—or think they want?'
'Mr. Selwyn, revolutions never come from people who think. That is why they are so terrible. The unhappiness of so many Englishwomen comes from the life which does not demand or permit the use of half the powers they possess. Nor does it satisfy half their longings. Such a condition produces either stagnation or revolution. Our ultimatum is—give us a life which demands all our resources and permits women unlimited opportunity for self-development.