CHAPTER XIIFalcon's Chase is apt to be considered somewhat dreary and dull by those members of the fashionable world who only exist to kill time, and see no beauty in Nature's handiwork.But to Lauraine the whole place is beautiful beyond words. The great dark forest lands that shelter the deer in their coverts, the old bridle-paths, where the boughs meet overhead, the solemn, stately old mansion itself, shut in by elm-woods and mighty oaks of centenarian growth, the stillness and solitude and repose that breathe everywhere, these have for her an exceeding charm, an ever-varying delight. For days and days she does nothing but wander about, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lady Etwynde.The weather is mild and the sky is grey and soft. The keen, salt air of the sea braces and refreshes her tired frame, and languid spirits. Her friend is enchanted with the place, and throws æstheticism to the winds and goes about in a neat tailor-made gown of homespun, and abolishes the nimbus around her fair head, and evinces an energy and alertness that would astonish her admirers of the "lilies-and-languor" class.One closing evening they stand on the summit of the great cliffs, at whose base a wild sea is breaking tempestuously. A wilder sky is above their heads, one that foretells a storm close at hand.Lauraine turns her face seaward, and the fierce wind and dashing spray seem to give it a new and wonderful beauty. "It is glorious!" she murmurs, as she stands there in a sort of rapture. "It seems as if one could move, breathe, be free in a place like this.""Free?" says Lady Etwynde. "Is any one that? As long as life shackles our souls, so long does bondage curb our wishes. I never met a single person, man or woman, who could do exactly as they wished.""Well, you have not much to complain of," laughs Lauraine. "You live as you like, do what you like, go where you like, and have no domestic responsibilities.""True," says her friend, with sudden gravity, "yet for all that I have felt a pang of envy sometimes when I have seen a poor beggar-woman in the streets press her child to her breast, and look with real love at its poor, pale, wizened face.""What a confession for a disciple of Culture—one who has educated her eyes and taste to such perfection that acriantebit of furniture, a false tone of colour, a mistaken arrangement of draperies, will torture her as a discordant note tortures the ear of a musician! So you haven't outlived feminine weakness yet, my dear?""I suppose Nature always exacts her rights from us at some period or another," answers Lady Etwynde. "I have become accustomed to hear I am passionless and cold, and find it less trouble to live up to the character than to deny it. People are always so sure they know us better than we know ourselves. Being a single woman, it is rather a comfort to have such a reputation, and as I dislike men, and patronize fools, I am safe.""But you are not cold-hearted at all," says Lauraine, turning her face, with its beautiful sea-kissed bloom, to that lovely languid one of her æsthetic friend. "Don't you really care to marry?""What should I gain?" asks Lady Etwynde, tranquilly. "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, you know. I am very well off. I can do pretty much—not exactly—as I please. I have no one to control me, or consult. I can follow my own whims and vagaries. Am I not well enough?""And yet you envied the beggar-woman?""That was in one of those moments when Nature was whispering at my heart. Nothing touches me like a child's sorrow or love. I have often longed to adopt one, but—well, I suppose thefeelingwould not be there?""You might marry for—love," suggests Lauraine."My dear," murmurs her friend, with delicate scorn and faint reproach, "at thirty years of age?""That is not old for a beautiful woman," says Lauraine, with unconscious but most sincere flattery. "And it is our natures that make us old, I think, more than actual years."Lady Etwynde smiles her pensive, moonlit smile."I shall never love," she says, calmly. "Men are so uninteresting; and, besides, people always seem so unhappy when they are married."Lauraine colours hotly, and her eyes turn seaward."Yes," she says in a low voice. "The people we know and meet—in Society. But to them marriage has been chiefly a matter of arrangement, or convenience. There is not often anyheartin it.""And if there were it would not last," answers Lady Etwynde. "Sentiment is lovely in theory; you cannot reduce it to practice, though.""I think it might be possible," says Lauraine, dreamily. "Even fashion and the world cannot kill feeling. If people would only be more true to themselves—less artificial, less exaggerated—they would be much happier.""Doubtless; but far less comfortable! My dear Lauraine, Society suits its age, and always has suited it. It is no use wishing things could be altered.""I suppose not," sighs Lauraine."You are rather romantic," continues Lady Etwynde, as they turn back from the great bold headland and move towards the narrow path that leads into the woods of Falcon's Chase. "It is an unfortunate quality for either man or woman. They will never see persons or things as they really are. They will love, and invest the person loved with every attribute they wouldwishthem to possess, and which, alas! they never do. They throw a halo of imagination round every head that is dear to them. Their existence is a series of shocks and disappointments. They see their fairy weapons broken time after time in the world's rough warfare. They stand and look at life with wistful, feverish eyes, praying, 'Be as I fancy you,' and it never will. They break their hearts over the sufferings and sorrows they see, and intensify their own by too keen a sympathy. They are never understood, especially by those they love the best. They are like the poets who sing to deaf ears and go through life misunderstood, even if not scorned, and not ridiculed.""What makes you think I am romantic?""A thousand things. Your love of nature and solitude, your artistic fancies, your emotional capacity, your extreme sensitiveness. I have a weakness for studying character. When I first saw you I said to myself: 'She is not happy.' 'She is full of idealities.' 'She cares nothing for the world.' 'She will not be content only to—live.' Am I right, or not?""Can one ever know oneself quite?" murmurs Lauraine, colouring softly. "Do you really think I am not—happy?""Think! It scarcely needs consideration. But I am not going to encourage you in morbid sentiment. I do not think you are a weak woman. I hope not. But I fancy you will need all your strength at some time in your life.""You talk like a sibyl. Do you possess the gift of second sight in addition to your other accomplishments?" laughs Lauraine."I don't think so. It only needs a little thought, a mental trick of putting two and two together, to read most characters. Of course there is a great deal of mediocrity to be met with, and yet it is surprising how widely even mediocrities differ when you give yourself the trouble of analysing them. Human nature is like a musical instrument—there are but few notes, seven in all—but look at what volumes of melody have been written on those notes.""And, to pursue your metaphor, what a difference in the sound of the keys to each individual touch: some give back but a dull thud; others a rich, full, resonant sound, full of life and melody.""True, and therein lies the danger for many natures. The master-hand that produces the highest order of melody is perhaps too often that of some passing stranger who goes carelessly by—and who, so to speak, finds the instrument open—runs his hands lightly over the keys, awakens brilliance, life, beauty, where others have produced but dull, prosaic sounds, and then goes away and—forgets.""Ah, if we were only wood and leather, and had wire for our strings, not hearts and souls, we should not miss the player, or sigh for the vanished music," says Lauraine. "Unfortunately, forgetfulness is not always possible for us, desire it as we may.""Have you ever desired it?" asks Lady Etwynde, quickly. "Pardon me," she adds, as she notices the sudden whiteness of the beautiful face. "I should not have asked. But you will not misjudge me, idle curiosity had nothing to do with the question.""I know that," says Lauraine, quickly. "Yes, if there is one thing I desire on earth it is the possibility of forgetfulness.""The one thing that never comes for trying—or seeking—or praying," murmurs Lady Etwynde, dreamily. Alas, those melodies! A sad day indeed it is for the woman who confesses—'The face of all the world is changed, I think,Since first I heard the foot-steps of thy soul.'It is a beautiful idea, is it not? That is one advantage of poetry—it clothes a thought in grace so exquisite that we feel as if conversing with a being from another world. I never can understand people saying they don't like, or can't comprehend it. Sense, memory, love, pleasure, joy, pain, all that is sensitive, emotional, purest, best, is acted upon and intensified by poetry. A word, a line, will thrill us to the very core and centre of our beings—will make joy more sweet—-pain less bitter—love more exquisite and life less hard, even beneath its burden of regrets.""You love poetry so much?" questions Lauraine."More than anything. But by poetry I don't mean merely beautiful verses. I include all grand and noble thoughts that imagination has coloured, and that are read as prose. A really poetic nature is one that sees beauty in the simplest of created things as well as in the grandest; that is humble and yet great; that drinks at every fountain of nature; that steeps itself in the enchantment of a scene, not measuring merely the height of a mountain from the sea level, or dwelling on the possible discomfort of a storm at a particular altitude; that knows its mind to be full of longings and yet can only partially satisfy them; that would fain be glorified, filled, enriched; and, alas! knows only too well that the wings of the mind are beating against the prison-bars of a stern and hard existence, from which escape is only possible in dreams, or—death!""Do you not think that such a nature must be intensely unhappy?""I said so at the beginning of our conversation. But still it holds the two extremes that make up life—happiness and misery; it gets more out of each than natures more placid and commonplace and content. It really lives, and the others—stagnate.""You must have read a great deal, and thought a great deal," says Lauraine, looking admiringly up at her friend's thoughtful face. "Do you know I think you are the only woman I have ever met who talks about other things besides dress and fashion? I don't think I ever heard you say a scandalous word of anybody. You put me in mind of something a friend of mine once said, 'Women who are intellectual always talk ofthings; women who are shallow, ofpersons.' There is a great deal in that if you come to think of it. How wearisome it is to hear of nothing but 'names' in a conversation; and yet I know heaps of men and women who are considered brilliant and witty and amusing, and whose whole conversation turns upon nothing else but gossip respecting other men, or women.""I quite understand you. Society is eminently artificial, and objects to strong emotions, and would rather not be called upon to feel anything. 'Whywillpeople go on writing?' said a lady to me one day. 'Everything has been said that can be said. Literature is only repetition.'""'My dear madam,' I told her, 'light is always light;' but I suppose you will acknowledge there is a difference between having our streets illuminated with oil-lamps hung on a rope, or brilliant with gas and electricity. Art and science and literature must progress with their age. Scott and Fielding and Smollett don't suit the nineteenth century, any more than perhaps Braddon, Ouida, and Rhoda Broughton may suit the twentieth. Nevertheless, each has had its day and held its champions, irrespective of what a coming generation will say on the subject. The immediate good, excitement, benefit, is all Society thinks of now. It has laid its demands on each respective cycle—birth, or heroism, or refined manners, or even mind. But in our age it worships the golden calf alone.Youdon't know, and I don't; but all our reward is to be wondered at, and never to 'get on' with people. It is Lady Jean Salomans who 'gets on.' But then she knows her age and accepts it, and goes with it. I dare say, being a clever woman, she laughs in her sleeve at one set, and yawns after a prolonged dose of the other; but she's the most popular woman in London, and there's something in that more satisfactory nowadays than in saying: 'I am the Queen of England.' You and I will never be 'popular' in her sense, Lauraine, because we don't take the trouble, or perhaps appreciate, the reward. As for you, my dear, you are too transparent for Society. You show if you are bored or pleased, or happy or sad. That doesn't do. You should always go about masked, or you are sure to offend some one or other. You are young, and have been very much admired, and have a splendid position. Socially you might take the lead of Lady Jean, but you never will. You don't care enough about the 'honour and glory' of social success.""No; it seems to me unutterably wearisome.""Exactly, and you show that you feel it to be so. I have done the same for long, but then I covered my dereliction with the cloak of eccentricity. You simply do nothing but look like a martyr.""Why will people live and act as if this life was the be-all and end-all of existence, I wonder?" murmurs Lauraine. "Fancy fretting one's soul away in the petty worries of social distinction, the wretched little triumphs of Fashion. To me it seems such an awfully humiliating waste of time.""You laugh at my enthusiasm for Culture," answers Lady Etwynde; "but that really is the only way to reform the abuses that disfigure an age so advanced and refined as ours. Invention and science have never done so much for any period as for this, and yet men and women shut themselves out from intellectual pleasures, and demand scarce anything but frivolity, excitement, and amusement—not even well-bred amusements either. The gold of the millionaire gilds his vulgarity, and lifts him to the level of princes. Good birth and refinement, and purity and simplicity, are treated as old-fashioned prejudices. We are all pushing and scrambling in a noisy bewildering race. We don't want to think or to reason, or to be told of our follies in the present, or of retribution in the future. Gilt and gloss is all we ask for, no harsh names for sins, no unpleasant questioning about our actions. Ah me! it is very sad, but it is also very true. Society is a body whose members are all at variance as to the good, and agreed as to the evil. The passions, the absurdities, the interests, the relations of life are either selfishly gratified, or equally selfishly ignored. It is not of the greatest good to the greatest number that a man or woman thinks now; but just the greatest amount of possible gratification to their respective selves. With much that should make this age the most highly-cultured the world has known, there is, alas! much more that renders it hopelessly and vulgarly abased.""And there is no remedy?""My dear, there are many. But Society hugs its disease, and cries out at the physic. It knows of the cancer, but will not hear of the operator's knife. Perhaps, after all, it is right. Think of the trouble of being highly bred, highly educated, pure in thought and tone, sparkling and not vulgar, amusing and yet refined, dignified yet never offending, proud yet never contemptuous. Why, it would be a complete revolution. Fancy forsaking artifice, living in a real Palace of Truth, where everything was honest, definite, straightforward! Think of our poor pretty painted butterflies, forsaking their rose gardens and beaten by the storms and cold winds of stern prejudices and honestly-upheld faiths. Ah, no! It is simply preaching a crusade against infidels, who are all the more vindictive in opposition because civilization, instinct, and reason tell them they are in the wrong... Why, here we are almost at the lodge, and here comes baby to meet us. Ah, Lauraine, thank God after all, that we are women. Would a child's smile and broken prattle be a volume of such exquisite poetry to any other living creature?"Two little eager feet are toddling to meet Lauraine, two tiny arms clasp her neck as she runs forward and snatches up the little figure.A thrill of sweet, pure joy flies through her heart. "Heaven has not left me comfortless," she thinks.
Falcon's Chase is apt to be considered somewhat dreary and dull by those members of the fashionable world who only exist to kill time, and see no beauty in Nature's handiwork.
But to Lauraine the whole place is beautiful beyond words. The great dark forest lands that shelter the deer in their coverts, the old bridle-paths, where the boughs meet overhead, the solemn, stately old mansion itself, shut in by elm-woods and mighty oaks of centenarian growth, the stillness and solitude and repose that breathe everywhere, these have for her an exceeding charm, an ever-varying delight. For days and days she does nothing but wander about, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lady Etwynde.
The weather is mild and the sky is grey and soft. The keen, salt air of the sea braces and refreshes her tired frame, and languid spirits. Her friend is enchanted with the place, and throws æstheticism to the winds and goes about in a neat tailor-made gown of homespun, and abolishes the nimbus around her fair head, and evinces an energy and alertness that would astonish her admirers of the "lilies-and-languor" class.
One closing evening they stand on the summit of the great cliffs, at whose base a wild sea is breaking tempestuously. A wilder sky is above their heads, one that foretells a storm close at hand.
Lauraine turns her face seaward, and the fierce wind and dashing spray seem to give it a new and wonderful beauty. "It is glorious!" she murmurs, as she stands there in a sort of rapture. "It seems as if one could move, breathe, be free in a place like this."
"Free?" says Lady Etwynde. "Is any one that? As long as life shackles our souls, so long does bondage curb our wishes. I never met a single person, man or woman, who could do exactly as they wished."
"Well, you have not much to complain of," laughs Lauraine. "You live as you like, do what you like, go where you like, and have no domestic responsibilities."
"True," says her friend, with sudden gravity, "yet for all that I have felt a pang of envy sometimes when I have seen a poor beggar-woman in the streets press her child to her breast, and look with real love at its poor, pale, wizened face."
"What a confession for a disciple of Culture—one who has educated her eyes and taste to such perfection that acriantebit of furniture, a false tone of colour, a mistaken arrangement of draperies, will torture her as a discordant note tortures the ear of a musician! So you haven't outlived feminine weakness yet, my dear?"
"I suppose Nature always exacts her rights from us at some period or another," answers Lady Etwynde. "I have become accustomed to hear I am passionless and cold, and find it less trouble to live up to the character than to deny it. People are always so sure they know us better than we know ourselves. Being a single woman, it is rather a comfort to have such a reputation, and as I dislike men, and patronize fools, I am safe."
"But you are not cold-hearted at all," says Lauraine, turning her face, with its beautiful sea-kissed bloom, to that lovely languid one of her æsthetic friend. "Don't you really care to marry?"
"What should I gain?" asks Lady Etwynde, tranquilly. "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, you know. I am very well off. I can do pretty much—not exactly—as I please. I have no one to control me, or consult. I can follow my own whims and vagaries. Am I not well enough?"
"And yet you envied the beggar-woman?"
"That was in one of those moments when Nature was whispering at my heart. Nothing touches me like a child's sorrow or love. I have often longed to adopt one, but—well, I suppose thefeelingwould not be there?"
"You might marry for—love," suggests Lauraine.
"My dear," murmurs her friend, with delicate scorn and faint reproach, "at thirty years of age?"
"That is not old for a beautiful woman," says Lauraine, with unconscious but most sincere flattery. "And it is our natures that make us old, I think, more than actual years."
Lady Etwynde smiles her pensive, moonlit smile.
"I shall never love," she says, calmly. "Men are so uninteresting; and, besides, people always seem so unhappy when they are married."
Lauraine colours hotly, and her eyes turn seaward.
"Yes," she says in a low voice. "The people we know and meet—in Society. But to them marriage has been chiefly a matter of arrangement, or convenience. There is not often anyheartin it."
"And if there were it would not last," answers Lady Etwynde. "Sentiment is lovely in theory; you cannot reduce it to practice, though."
"I think it might be possible," says Lauraine, dreamily. "Even fashion and the world cannot kill feeling. If people would only be more true to themselves—less artificial, less exaggerated—they would be much happier."
"Doubtless; but far less comfortable! My dear Lauraine, Society suits its age, and always has suited it. It is no use wishing things could be altered."
"I suppose not," sighs Lauraine.
"You are rather romantic," continues Lady Etwynde, as they turn back from the great bold headland and move towards the narrow path that leads into the woods of Falcon's Chase. "It is an unfortunate quality for either man or woman. They will never see persons or things as they really are. They will love, and invest the person loved with every attribute they wouldwishthem to possess, and which, alas! they never do. They throw a halo of imagination round every head that is dear to them. Their existence is a series of shocks and disappointments. They see their fairy weapons broken time after time in the world's rough warfare. They stand and look at life with wistful, feverish eyes, praying, 'Be as I fancy you,' and it never will. They break their hearts over the sufferings and sorrows they see, and intensify their own by too keen a sympathy. They are never understood, especially by those they love the best. They are like the poets who sing to deaf ears and go through life misunderstood, even if not scorned, and not ridiculed."
"What makes you think I am romantic?"
"A thousand things. Your love of nature and solitude, your artistic fancies, your emotional capacity, your extreme sensitiveness. I have a weakness for studying character. When I first saw you I said to myself: 'She is not happy.' 'She is full of idealities.' 'She cares nothing for the world.' 'She will not be content only to—live.' Am I right, or not?"
"Can one ever know oneself quite?" murmurs Lauraine, colouring softly. "Do you really think I am not—happy?"
"Think! It scarcely needs consideration. But I am not going to encourage you in morbid sentiment. I do not think you are a weak woman. I hope not. But I fancy you will need all your strength at some time in your life."
"You talk like a sibyl. Do you possess the gift of second sight in addition to your other accomplishments?" laughs Lauraine.
"I don't think so. It only needs a little thought, a mental trick of putting two and two together, to read most characters. Of course there is a great deal of mediocrity to be met with, and yet it is surprising how widely even mediocrities differ when you give yourself the trouble of analysing them. Human nature is like a musical instrument—there are but few notes, seven in all—but look at what volumes of melody have been written on those notes."
"And, to pursue your metaphor, what a difference in the sound of the keys to each individual touch: some give back but a dull thud; others a rich, full, resonant sound, full of life and melody."
"True, and therein lies the danger for many natures. The master-hand that produces the highest order of melody is perhaps too often that of some passing stranger who goes carelessly by—and who, so to speak, finds the instrument open—runs his hands lightly over the keys, awakens brilliance, life, beauty, where others have produced but dull, prosaic sounds, and then goes away and—forgets."
"Ah, if we were only wood and leather, and had wire for our strings, not hearts and souls, we should not miss the player, or sigh for the vanished music," says Lauraine. "Unfortunately, forgetfulness is not always possible for us, desire it as we may."
"Have you ever desired it?" asks Lady Etwynde, quickly. "Pardon me," she adds, as she notices the sudden whiteness of the beautiful face. "I should not have asked. But you will not misjudge me, idle curiosity had nothing to do with the question."
"I know that," says Lauraine, quickly. "Yes, if there is one thing I desire on earth it is the possibility of forgetfulness."
"The one thing that never comes for trying—or seeking—or praying," murmurs Lady Etwynde, dreamily. Alas, those melodies! A sad day indeed it is for the woman who confesses—
'The face of all the world is changed, I think,Since first I heard the foot-steps of thy soul.'
It is a beautiful idea, is it not? That is one advantage of poetry—it clothes a thought in grace so exquisite that we feel as if conversing with a being from another world. I never can understand people saying they don't like, or can't comprehend it. Sense, memory, love, pleasure, joy, pain, all that is sensitive, emotional, purest, best, is acted upon and intensified by poetry. A word, a line, will thrill us to the very core and centre of our beings—will make joy more sweet—-pain less bitter—love more exquisite and life less hard, even beneath its burden of regrets."
"You love poetry so much?" questions Lauraine.
"More than anything. But by poetry I don't mean merely beautiful verses. I include all grand and noble thoughts that imagination has coloured, and that are read as prose. A really poetic nature is one that sees beauty in the simplest of created things as well as in the grandest; that is humble and yet great; that drinks at every fountain of nature; that steeps itself in the enchantment of a scene, not measuring merely the height of a mountain from the sea level, or dwelling on the possible discomfort of a storm at a particular altitude; that knows its mind to be full of longings and yet can only partially satisfy them; that would fain be glorified, filled, enriched; and, alas! knows only too well that the wings of the mind are beating against the prison-bars of a stern and hard existence, from which escape is only possible in dreams, or—death!"
"Do you not think that such a nature must be intensely unhappy?"
"I said so at the beginning of our conversation. But still it holds the two extremes that make up life—happiness and misery; it gets more out of each than natures more placid and commonplace and content. It really lives, and the others—stagnate."
"You must have read a great deal, and thought a great deal," says Lauraine, looking admiringly up at her friend's thoughtful face. "Do you know I think you are the only woman I have ever met who talks about other things besides dress and fashion? I don't think I ever heard you say a scandalous word of anybody. You put me in mind of something a friend of mine once said, 'Women who are intellectual always talk ofthings; women who are shallow, ofpersons.' There is a great deal in that if you come to think of it. How wearisome it is to hear of nothing but 'names' in a conversation; and yet I know heaps of men and women who are considered brilliant and witty and amusing, and whose whole conversation turns upon nothing else but gossip respecting other men, or women."
"I quite understand you. Society is eminently artificial, and objects to strong emotions, and would rather not be called upon to feel anything. 'Whywillpeople go on writing?' said a lady to me one day. 'Everything has been said that can be said. Literature is only repetition.'"
"'My dear madam,' I told her, 'light is always light;' but I suppose you will acknowledge there is a difference between having our streets illuminated with oil-lamps hung on a rope, or brilliant with gas and electricity. Art and science and literature must progress with their age. Scott and Fielding and Smollett don't suit the nineteenth century, any more than perhaps Braddon, Ouida, and Rhoda Broughton may suit the twentieth. Nevertheless, each has had its day and held its champions, irrespective of what a coming generation will say on the subject. The immediate good, excitement, benefit, is all Society thinks of now. It has laid its demands on each respective cycle—birth, or heroism, or refined manners, or even mind. But in our age it worships the golden calf alone.Youdon't know, and I don't; but all our reward is to be wondered at, and never to 'get on' with people. It is Lady Jean Salomans who 'gets on.' But then she knows her age and accepts it, and goes with it. I dare say, being a clever woman, she laughs in her sleeve at one set, and yawns after a prolonged dose of the other; but she's the most popular woman in London, and there's something in that more satisfactory nowadays than in saying: 'I am the Queen of England.' You and I will never be 'popular' in her sense, Lauraine, because we don't take the trouble, or perhaps appreciate, the reward. As for you, my dear, you are too transparent for Society. You show if you are bored or pleased, or happy or sad. That doesn't do. You should always go about masked, or you are sure to offend some one or other. You are young, and have been very much admired, and have a splendid position. Socially you might take the lead of Lady Jean, but you never will. You don't care enough about the 'honour and glory' of social success."
"No; it seems to me unutterably wearisome."
"Exactly, and you show that you feel it to be so. I have done the same for long, but then I covered my dereliction with the cloak of eccentricity. You simply do nothing but look like a martyr."
"Why will people live and act as if this life was the be-all and end-all of existence, I wonder?" murmurs Lauraine. "Fancy fretting one's soul away in the petty worries of social distinction, the wretched little triumphs of Fashion. To me it seems such an awfully humiliating waste of time."
"You laugh at my enthusiasm for Culture," answers Lady Etwynde; "but that really is the only way to reform the abuses that disfigure an age so advanced and refined as ours. Invention and science have never done so much for any period as for this, and yet men and women shut themselves out from intellectual pleasures, and demand scarce anything but frivolity, excitement, and amusement—not even well-bred amusements either. The gold of the millionaire gilds his vulgarity, and lifts him to the level of princes. Good birth and refinement, and purity and simplicity, are treated as old-fashioned prejudices. We are all pushing and scrambling in a noisy bewildering race. We don't want to think or to reason, or to be told of our follies in the present, or of retribution in the future. Gilt and gloss is all we ask for, no harsh names for sins, no unpleasant questioning about our actions. Ah me! it is very sad, but it is also very true. Society is a body whose members are all at variance as to the good, and agreed as to the evil. The passions, the absurdities, the interests, the relations of life are either selfishly gratified, or equally selfishly ignored. It is not of the greatest good to the greatest number that a man or woman thinks now; but just the greatest amount of possible gratification to their respective selves. With much that should make this age the most highly-cultured the world has known, there is, alas! much more that renders it hopelessly and vulgarly abased."
"And there is no remedy?"
"My dear, there are many. But Society hugs its disease, and cries out at the physic. It knows of the cancer, but will not hear of the operator's knife. Perhaps, after all, it is right. Think of the trouble of being highly bred, highly educated, pure in thought and tone, sparkling and not vulgar, amusing and yet refined, dignified yet never offending, proud yet never contemptuous. Why, it would be a complete revolution. Fancy forsaking artifice, living in a real Palace of Truth, where everything was honest, definite, straightforward! Think of our poor pretty painted butterflies, forsaking their rose gardens and beaten by the storms and cold winds of stern prejudices and honestly-upheld faiths. Ah, no! It is simply preaching a crusade against infidels, who are all the more vindictive in opposition because civilization, instinct, and reason tell them they are in the wrong... Why, here we are almost at the lodge, and here comes baby to meet us. Ah, Lauraine, thank God after all, that we are women. Would a child's smile and broken prattle be a volume of such exquisite poetry to any other living creature?"
Two little eager feet are toddling to meet Lauraine, two tiny arms clasp her neck as she runs forward and snatches up the little figure.
A thrill of sweet, pure joy flies through her heart. "Heaven has not left me comfortless," she thinks.