Let.i.tia (Lady Lambourne) has a distinct voice and decided opinions.
She continued, as though no interruption had taken place:
"If the matter was only for love, too, I should still have nothing to say; but it is so often for a string of pearls, or some new carriage-horses."
"But, surely, it is more logical to have that reason than no reason at all, like the case of your poor cousin. I understood that was sheer foolishness, and Lord Edam did not even pretend to care for her."
Lady Lambourne looked daggers and remained speechless. "What scandalous things you are all saying," laughed Lady Grenellen from her sofa. "Let.i.tia, you are sitting there and being epigrammatic, just like the people in those unreal society plays they had last year. We are all perfectly contented and happy if you would let us alone."
"One cannot but deplore the change," said Lady Lambourne.
"Personally, I am delighted with everything as it is," cooed Babykins.
"Life must be much pleasanter now than in your day, dear Lady Lambourne; such a fuss and pretending, and such hypocrites you must all have been--as, of course, human nature was the same then, and since the beginning of time. We have always eaten and drank too rich food and wine in our cla.s.s and have not had enough to do, so we can"t help being as we are, can we?"
"Babykins, you silly darling, as if what we eat makes any difference!"
said Lady Grenellen, puffing her cigarette-smoke into cloudy rings in the neatest way.
"Of course it does, Cordelia! Food makes all the difference, you know.
I have kept those white pigs for four years and I know all about it."
Babykins has the most pathetic blue eyes, and her childish voice is arresting. Lady Grenellen went into a fit of laughter.
"You are perfectly mad about those horrid pigs!" she told her.
Lady Lambourne interrupted again, in a dignified voice. "Human nature was _not_ the same in my day--as you call it--Mrs. Parton-Mills" (thus she discovered to me Babykins" name). "We lived much more simply, and enjoyed our pleasures and did our duties, and stayed at home more."
"And I expect you were frightfully bored, Let.i.tia, darling," said Lady Grenellen, "and that is why you never stay at home now."
It seemed to me quite wonderful how they could be so disrespectful to this elderly lady, but she did not seem at all offended.
"You are incorrigible, Cordelia," was all she said, and she laughed.
"You had no bridge, and it must have been exactly like it still is when I stay with Edward"s relations in Scotland," Babykins continued.
"As we arrive there I feel "goose-flesh" on my arms, with the stiffness and decorum of everything. We chat about the weather at tea, and no one ever says a word they really think; and we play idiotic, childish games of cards for love in the evening; and it is all feeble and wearisome, and the guests are always looking at the clock."
Lady Tilchester came and joined us; it seemed a breath of fresh sunlight illuminating the scene.
"You appear all to be talking scandal," she said.
Imperceptibly the conversation changed, and we were discussing the war news when the double doors of the dining-room opened.
Augustus looked very flushed in the face and unattractive as he came towards us, but Lady Grenellen moved her skirts and made room for him on her sofa. She smiled at him divinely, and was perfectly lovely to him--as friendly and caressing as if he were an equal. It perfectly astonished me. I could not talk and joke familiarly that with Augustus any more than if he were one of the footmen. And she is a viscountess, and must at least know what a gentleman is.
Half the party moved off to play bridge in one of the drawing-rooms; the rest arranged themselves comfortably, two and two. Lady Tilchester and Mr. Budge wandered into the music-room, and I, who had not stirred, found myself almost alone by the fireplace with the Duke.
He proceeded to say a number of things to me that astonished me greatly. I should not have understood them all had I not been to those plays in Paris.
I suppose he was beginning to make love to me--if this is what is called making love. His personality is not attractive, so it did not touch me at all, and I am only able to look upon men now through eyes which see coa.r.s.e brutes. Perhaps they may be really nice, some of them, but as I look at them one after another, the thought always comes, how revolting could they appear in the eyes of their wives?
This is not nice of me, and I am sure grandmamma would reprove me for it.
III
Next day, Sunday, some of us went to church. Augustus insisted upon my going. He thought it would be a good opportunity of showing I was in Lady Tilchester"s company, although what it could have mattered to the Harley villagers I do not know.
He himself stayed behind with Lady Grenellen, he said, to take her for a walk in the woods.
After lunch every one seemed to play bridge but Lady Tilchester and I and her politician and the weak-eyed Duke. We climbed the hill to the ruins of the old castle and there sat until tea-time.
"Isn"t it a bore for me I shall have to marry an heiress?" the Duke said, pathetically. "Marriage is the most tiresome ennui at any time, but to be forced through sheer beggary to take some ugly woman you don"t like and don"t want is cruel hard luck, is it not?"
"Yes," I said, feelingly.
He was melted by the sympathy in my voice.
"You are a delicious woman; you seem to understand one directly.
People have got into the way of thinking it is no hardship to have to do these things for the sake of one"s t.i.tle, but I can see you are sympathetic."
"Yes, indeed!" I said.
"Cordelia Grenellen is arranging it for me. I have not seen her yet--I mean the heiress."
"If I were a man I think I should keep my freedom and--and--work," I faltered.
He looked at me, perfectly astonished.
"But what can I do?" he asked. "Only go into the city, and that is quite played out now. I have no head for business, and it would seem to me to be rather mean just to trade upon my name to get unsuspecting people to take shares in concerns; whereas if I marry an heiress it is a square game--I at least give her some return for her money."
"There is a great deal in what you say," I agreed.
"I told Cordelia--she is a cousin of mine, you know--I told her I would not have a very ugly one, and I should prefer that she should be a good, healthy brewer"s daughter. Our family is over-well bred. You see, if you are going to sacrifice yourself to keep up your name, you may as well choose some one that will be of some ultimate use to it. Now we want a strain of thick red blood in our veins; ours is a great deal too blue. We are becoming reedy shaped, and more or less idiotic."
He said all this quite gravely. He had evidently studied the subject, and as I looked at him I felt he was perfectly right. If he represented the type of his race, it had certainly grown effete.
"I won"t have an American," he continued. "They are intellectual companions before marriage, and they are generally so agreeable you don"t notice how nervous and restless they are really, but I would not contemplate one as a wife. I must have a solid English cow-woman."
He stretched himself by my side and began pulling a bit of gra.s.s to pieces. His hands look transparent, and he has the most beautifully shaped filbert nails; his ears, on the contrary, are not perfect, but stick out like a monkey"s.
"You see, I should always live my own life," he went on, lazily. "I worship the beautiful. The pagans" highest expression of beauty which moved the world was in sculpture--cold and pure marble of divine form.
That awakened their emotions; one reads they had a number of emotions.
The Renaissance people, to take a medium time, expressed themselves by painting glorious colors on flat canvas; they also had emotions. Those two arts now are more or less dead. At any rate, they have ceased to influence ma.s.ses of people. Our great expression is music. We are moved by music. It gives us emotions _en bloc_--all of us--some by the tune of "Tommy Atkins," and others by Wagner. Well, all these three--sculpture, painting, and music--give me pleasure, but I should not want my cow d.u.c.h.ess to understand any of them. I should want her to have numbers of chubby children and to fulfil her social duties, and never have to go into a rest-cure, or have a longing for sympathy."
I said a few "yeses" and "reallys" during this long speech, and he continued, like a mill grinding coffee:
"It don"t do to over-breed. You are bound to turn out some _toques_ if not altogether idiotic, and then my sense of beauty is outraged by the freaks that happen in our shapes--you should see my two sisters, the plainest women in England. Now you give me joy to look at. You are quite beautiful, you know. I never saw any one with a nose as straight and finely cut as yours. Why do you keep putting your parasol so that I cannot see it?"
"One uses a parasol to keep off the sun, which is hot. Would you wish me to get a sunstroke to oblige you?" And I put down my parasol still lower.