That evening, after dinner, Lady Locke said to Lord Reggie--
"I don"t wish my little boy to wear flowers. He is too young. I heard you promising him a carnation for to-morrow. You mustn"t think me rude, but, please, don"t give him one."
Lord Reggie looked rather surprised.
"I am afraid he will be disappointed," he said.
"I cannot help that. And he will have forgotten it in five minutes.
Children are as volatile as--as----"
"As lovers," said Madame Valtesi, who was smoking a cigarette in a chair by the window. "And forget as soon."
"Every one forgets," Esme Amarinth said, with a gracious smile that illuminated his large features with slow completeness. "It is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have learned the art of living. I wish people would forget me; but somehow they never do. Long after I have completely forgotten them they remember me. Then I have to pretend that I remember them, and that is so fatiguing."
"Esme," said Mrs. Windsor, "do sing us your song of the pa.s.ser-by. That is all about remembering and forgetting, and all that sort of thing. So sweet. I remember it made me cry when I heard it--or was it laugh? Which did you mean it to do?"
"I did not mean it to do anything. The poet who means much is little of a poet. I will sing you the song; but it is dreadfully direct in expression. I wrote it one night at Oxford when I was supremely drunk. I remember I wept as I wrote, great, wonderful tears. Yes, I will sing it.
It is full of the sorrow, the white burnished sorrow of youth. How divine the melancholies of youth are! With age comes folly, and with folly comes the appalling merriment of experience. Experienced men are always merry. They see things as they really are. How terrible! until we can see things as they really are not we never truly live."
He went slowly to the piano, sat down, and played a plaintive, fleeting air--an air that was like a wandering moonbeam, the veritable phantom of a melody. Then he sang this song, in a low and almost toneless voice, uttering the notes rather than vocalising them.
THE SONG OF THE Pa.s.sER-BY.
Pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing--ah! sad heart, sing; But you cannot keep me beyond to-day, For I am a wayward bird on the wing-- A wayward waif, who will never stay.
The ivory morn, and the primrose eve, And the twilight, whispering late and low, They kiss the hem of the spell I weave; They tremble, and ask me where I go.
Pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing--ah! sweet soul, sigh; But you cannot keep me beyond to-night, For I am a wilful wanderer by-- A wilful waif on a fanciful flight.
The shadowy moon, and the crimson star, And the wind that steals from the Western wave, They watch the ways where my wild wings are; They murmur and marvel what I crave.
Pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing--ah! pa.s.sion glow; But you cannot light me a lasting flame, By which I may linger, linger and know My spark and yours from one furnace came.
You whisper and weep, and your words are tears, And your tears are words I remember yet; But the flame dies down with the dying years, And nothing lives that forgets to forget.
Pa.s.sing, pa.s.sing--ah! whither? Why?
Does the heart know why? Can the soul say where?
I pa.s.s, but I pause to catch ev"ry cry, To watch ev"ry face, be it foul or fair.
I must hear all the notes of the nightingales-- Do they sing to a G.o.d or to graven things-- And not till the last faint flute-note fails Will I stay my flight, will I fold my wings.
When the last chord died away, Mrs. Windsor"s voice was heard saying--
"I remember now, it made me cry. How dismal it is."
"Yes," said Madame Valtesi, "as dismal as a wet Derby or a day at the seaside. I hope your anthem will be more lively, Lord Reggie. But of course it will. We always keep our sorrows for the drawing-room, and our chirpiness for church. For sheer G.o.dless merriment commend me to the grand chant. It always reminds me of the conspirators" chorus in the "Huguenots." I used to hear it as a child. One hears so many things as a child, doesn"t one? Childhood is one long career of innocent eavesdropping, of hearing what one ought not to hear."
"Yes," said Esme, getting up from the piano. "And maturity is one long career of saying what one ought not to say. That is the art of conversation. Only one must always say it with intention, otherwise people think one grossly improper. Intention is everything. Artless impropriety is quite played out. Yvette Guilbert gave it its death-blow.
It only lingers now in the writings of Ouida and the poems of Arthur Symonds. Why are minor poets so artless, and why do they fancy they are so wicked? What curious fancies even unintelligent people have. No minor poet has ever been wicked, just as no real artist has ever been good. If one intends to be good, one must take it up as a profession. It is quite the most engrossing one in the world. Have you ever been with a good person who is taking a holiday from being good? It is like falling into the Maelstrom. They carry you off your feet. Their enjoyment terrifies the imagination. They are like a Sunday school let loose in the Moulin Rouge, or Mr. Toole when he has made a pun! Sometimes I wish that I could be good too, in order to have such a holiday. Are you really going to bed, Lady Locke? Eleven! I had no idea it was so early. I am going to sit up all night with Reggie, saying mad scarlet things, such as Walter Pater loves, and waking the night with silver silences. Good-night.
Come, Reggie, let us go to the smoking-room, since we are left alone. I will be brilliant for you as I have never been brilliant for my publishers. I will talk to you as no character in my plays has ever talked. Come! The young Endymion stirs in his dreams, and the pale-soul Selene watches him from her pearly car. The shadows on the lawns are violet, and the stars wash the s.p.a.ces of the sky with primrose and with crimson. The night is old yet. Let me be brilliant, dear boy, or I feel that I shall weep for sheer wittiness, and die, as so many have died, with all my epigrams still in me."
XII.
The cottage was full of the curious suppressed rustling that seems to be inseparable from church-going in England. Good people invariably rustle, and so bad people, trying to be good, are inclined to rustle too. At least that was what Madame Valtesi said as she stood in the tiny, sage-green hall hung with fans, and finished b.u.t.toning her long Suede gloves. She still wore her big and shady hat. She declared it made her feel religious, and n.o.body was prepared to dispute the a.s.sertion. Tommy was clamouring for his promised green carnation; but Lord Reggie, in obedience to Lady Locke"s request, told him that the one he had intended for him had faded away in the night, had faded exquisitely, as the wicked fade after flourishing like green bay trees; and Tommy, though inclined to tears, was soothed by a promise that he should sit on the organ seat and turn over in the anthem. Lady Locke looked rather serious, and Mrs. Windsor strangely dissipated. She always did look particularly dissipated on Sunday mornings, although she was not aware of it; and to-day she was intent on being decisively rustic, and as countrified in her piety as possible. She wore an innocent gown powdered with pimpernels, and a little bonnet that she thought holiness itself, consisting as it did of a very small bow and a very large spike. Lord Reggie and Esme Amarinth honoured the day with frock coats and tall hats; and the former was in a state of considerable excitement about his anthem.
Through the drowsy summer air the five bells of Chenecote Church chimed delicately, and prayer-books were at a premium. Everybody except Lady Locke had come down without one, and Mrs. Windsor was in despair.
"We must have them," she said piteously, "or the congregation will be dreadfully shocked. Congregations are so easily shocked in the country.
I wonder if the servants have any? Servants always have prayer-books and that kind of thing, don"t they? I will ask."
She rang the bell, and one of the tall footmen appeared.
"Simpson, we want four prayer-books," she said. "Are there any in the house?"
Simpson looked exceedingly doubtful, but said he would go and see.
Eventually he returned with three.
"There is one more, ma"am--the upper housemaid"s," he said, handing them on a salver. "But she wrote comments in it when she belonged to the Salvation Army, and she can"t rub them out, ma"am, so she don"t like to show it."
"Really!" said Mrs. Windsor, looking mystified. "Well, never mind, we must try and manage with these. Oh! Lord Reggie, you won"t want one, of course, because you will be behind the curtain. I forgot that. We are going to walk. It is only ten minutes or so, and I thought it would be more rustic, especially as the roads are dusty. Now, I think we ought to start. If we are late it will create a scandal, and Mr. Smith will be horrified."
"How dutiful the atmosphere is!" Madame Valtesi said to Amarinth as they set forth. "We are so frightfully punctual that I feel quite like an early Christian. I wonder why the Christians were always so early before we were born? They are generally very late now."
"I suppose they have grown tired," he answered, arranging the carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole meditatively. "Probably we suffer from the activity of our forefathers. When I feel fatigued I always think that my grandfather must have been what is called an excellent walker. How very Sabbath the morning is!"
There was, in fact, a Sunday air in the quiet country road. The geese had ceased from their mundane proceedings in the pond, and were meditating over their sins in some cloistered nook of the farmyard. The fields looked greenly pious, emptied as they were of labourers. In the flowery hedgerows the birds chirped with a chastened note; and even the summer wind touched the walkers as a bishop touches the heads of kneeling candidates at Confirmation. Or so, at least, Lady Locke thought with a pleasant fancifulness that she kept entirely to herself. The bells chimed on monotonously; and now and then, as they walked, they caught sight of neatly-dressed rustics in front of them, strolling mildly to the church, tricked out in all the black bravery of broadcloth, or decked in sprigged muslins and chip hats.
Mrs. Windsor was quite delighted.
"Is not this novel?" she exclaimed, setting her white veil straight, and spreading a huge parasol to the sun. "I feel so righteous. It is pleasant to feel righteous, isn"t it? So much pleasanter than to be good. I hope Mr. Smith will not preach a long sermon; but he looks rather like a man who would. People who have nothing to say always do preach long sermons, don"t they? They keep hoping they will have something to say presently, I suppose."
"And they hope out loud," said Madame Valtesi. "People who hope out loud are very trying. I know so many. Dear me, how dusty it is! I feel as if I were drowning. Are we nearly there?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Windsor; "there is the common--that is the common where Mr. Smith has checked the rowdyism. I wish he had not broken up all the idle comers before we came. I should so like to have met one."
"Mr. Smith has decidedly been premature," Amarinth said gravely.
"Clergymen often are. They take away our sins before we have had time to sit down with them. There go the school children, I suppose. They look intensely clean. So many people look intensely clean, and nothing else.
That is all one can say about them. Half the men I know have absolutely no other characteristic. Their only talent is that they know how to wash. Perhaps that is why men of genius so seldom wash. They are afraid of being mistaken for men of talent. What will happen when we come into church. Will everybody stand up?"
"I hope you will all sit down to hear my anthem," Lord Reggie said rather nervously. "It will be much better. Please, do! Lady Locke, will you promise to sit down? People attend so much more closely when they are sitting. If they stand up they always look about and think all the time about sitting down."
"Just as when people are asking you to stay they are always wondering if you will go," said Madame Valtesi, casting a vicious glance at Tommy, who was delightedly stirring up the dust.
"I will sit down certainly," said Lady Locke, "if you wish it; but I could listen equally well standing. I do hope Jimmy Sands will sing his little bit of solo correctly; I shall feel quite nervous till it is over."