Reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying, while the Lordof Rimini temporarily monopolised the acoustic possibilities of thetheatre.
"That is the worst of a tragedy," he observed, "one can't always hearoneself talk. Of course I accept the Imperial idea and theresponsibility. After all, I would just as soon think in Continents asanywhere else. And some day, when the season is over and we have thetime, you shall explain to me the exact blood-brotherhood and all thatsort of thing that exists between a French Canadian and a mild Hindoo anda Yorkshireman, for instance."
"Oh, well, 'dominion over palm and pine,' you know," quoted the Duchesshopefully; "of course we mustn't forget that we're all part of the greatAnglo-Saxon Empire."
"Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of Jerusalem. A verypleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a charming Jerusalem. But still asuburb."
"Really, to be told one's living in a suburb when one is conscious ofspreading the benefits of civilisation all over the world! Philanthropy--Isuppose you will say _that_ is a comfortable delusion; and yet even youmust admit that whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist,however distant or difficult of access, we instantly organise relief onthe most generous scale, and distribute it, if need be, to the uttermostends of the earth."
The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. She had made thesame observation at a drawing-room meeting, and it had been extremelywell received.
"I wonder," said Reginald, "if you have ever walked down the Embankmenton a winter night?"
"Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?"
"I didn't; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy, practised in aworld where everything is based on competition, must have a debit as wellas a credit account. The young ravens cry for food."
"And are fed."
"Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed upon."
"Oh, you're simply exasperating. You've been reading Nietzsche till youhaven't got any sense of moral proportion left. May I ask if you aregoverned by _any_ laws of conduct whatever?"
"There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort.For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-beardedstranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on theContinent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden."
"The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was younger,boys of your age used to be nice and innocent."
"Now we are only nice. One must specialise in these days. Which remindsme of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice ofwhat he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honoursand dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came tohim also."
"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book."
"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett."
REGINALD'S PEACE POEM
"I'm writing a poem on Peace," said Reginald, emerging from a sweepingoperation through a tin of mixed biscuits, in whose depths a macaroon ortwo might yet be lurking.
"Something of the kind seems to have been attempted already," said theOther.
"Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance again. Besides, I've got anew fountain pen. I don't pretend to have gone on any very originallines; in writing about Peace the thing is to say what everybody else issaying, only to say it better. It begins with the usual ornithologicalemotion--
'When the widgeon westward winging Heard the folk Vereeniginging, Heard the shouting and the singing'"--
"Vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?"
"Why not? Anything that winged westward would naturally begin with a_w_."
"Need it wing westward?"
"The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn't have it hang around and lookfoolish. Then I've brought in something about the heedless hartebeestgalloping over the deserted veldt."
"Of course you know it's practically extinct in those regions?"
"I can't help _that_, it gallops so nicely. I make it have all sorts ofunexpected yearnings--
'Mother, may I go and maffick, Tear around and hinder traffic?'
Of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about onthe bare and sun-scorched veldt, but there's no other word that rhymeswith maffick."
"Seraphic?"
Reginald considered. "It might do, but I've got a lot about angels lateron. You must have angels in a Peace poem; I know dreadfully little abouttheir habits."
"They can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest."
"Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful Nocturnes,resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving--
'And the sleeper, eye unlidding, Heard a voice for ever bidding Much farewell to Dolly Gray; Turning weary on his truckle- Bed he heard the honey-suckle Lauded in apiarian lay.'
Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that."
"I agree with you."
"I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't stand beingagreed with. And I'm so worried about the aasvogel."
Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented anunattractive array of rejected cracknels.
"I believe," he murmured, "if I could find a woman with an unsatisfiedcraving for cracknels, I should marry her."
"What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?" asked the Other sympathetically.
"Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought about it all thetime I was dressing--it's dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one'sdressing--and all lunch-time, and I'm still hung up over it. I feel likethose unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety bycoming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowdedthoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it didgive such lovely local colour to the thing."
"Still you've got the heedless hartebeest."
"And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition--when you've worried themeaning out--
'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares, And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.'
Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. There's lotsmore about the blessings of Peace, shall I go on reading it?"
"If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they went on with thewar."
REGINALD'S CHOIR TREAT
"Never," wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, "be a pioneer. It'sthe Early Christian that gets the fattest lion."
Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer.
None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or asense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration.
It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late tobreakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about theuniverse. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even theweather forecast.
Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar's daughter undertook thereformation of Reginald. Her name was Amabel; it was the vicar's oneextravagance. Amabel was accounted a beauty and intellectually gifted;she never played tennis, and was reputed to have read Maeterlinck's _Lifeof the Bee_. If you abstain from tennis _and_ read Maeterlinck in asmall country village, you are of necessity intellectual. Also she hadbeen twice to Fecamp to pick up a good French accent from the Americansstaying there; consequently she had a knowledge of the world which mightbe considered useful in dealings with a worldling.
Hence the congratulations in the family when Amabel undertook thereformation of its wayward member.
Amabel commenced operations by asking her unsuspecting pupil to tea inthe vicarage garden; she believed in the healthy influence of naturalsurroundings, never having been in Sicily, where things are different.
And like every woman who has ever preached repentance to unregenerateyouth, she dwelt on the sin of an empty life, which always seems so muchmore scandalous in the country, where people rise early to see if a newstrawberry has happened during the night.
Reginald recalled the lilies of the field, "which simply sat and lookedbeautiful, and defied competition."
"But that is not an example for us to follow," gasped Amabel.
"Unfortunately, we can't afford to. You don't know what a world oftrouble I take in trying to rival the lilies in their artisticsimplicity."
"You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good life isinfinitely preferable to good looks."
"You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always say beauty isonly sin deep."
Amabel began to realise that the battle is not always to thestrong-minded. With the immemorial resource of her sex, she abandonedthe frontal attack, and laid stress on her unassisted labours in parishwork, her mental loneliness, her discouragements--and at the right momentshe produced strawberries and cream. Reginald was obviously affected bythe latter, and when his preceptress suggested that he might begin thestrenuous life by helping her to supervise the annual outing of thebucolic infants who composed the local choir, his eyes shone with thedangerous enthusiasm of a convert.
Reginald entered on the strenuous life alone, as far as Amabel wasconcerned. The most virtuous women are not proof against damp grass, andAmabel kept her bed with a cold. Reginald called it a dispensation; ithad been the dream of his life to stage-manage a choir outing. Withstrategic insight, he led his shy, bullet-headed charges to the nearestwoodland stream and allowed them to bathe; then he seated himself ontheir discarded garments and discoursed on their immediate future, which,he decreed, was to embrace a Bacchanalian procession through the village.Forethought had provided the occasion with a supply of tin whistles, butthe introduction of a he-goat from a neighbouring orchard was a brilliantafterthought. Properly, Reginald explained, there should have been anoutfit of panther skins; as it was, those who had spotted handkerchiefswere allowed to wear them, which they did with thankfulness. Reginaldrecognised the impossibility, in the time at his disposal, of teachinghis shivering neophytes a chant in honour of Bacchus, so he started themoff with a more familiar, if less appropriate, temperance hymn. Afterall, he said, it is the spirit of the thing that counts. Following theetiquette of dramatic authors on first nights, he remained discreetly inthe background while the procession, with extreme diffidence and thegoat, wound its way lugubriously towards the village. The singing haddied down long before the main street was reached, but the miserablewailing of pipes brought the inhabitants to their doors. Reginald saidhe had seen something like it in pictures; the villagers had seen nothinglike it in their lives, and remarked as much freely.
Reginald's family never forgave him. They had no sense of humour.
REGINALD ON WORRIES
I have (said Reginald) an aunt who worries. She's not really an aunt--asort of amateur one, and they aren't really worries. She is a socialsuccess, and has no domestic tragedies worth speaking of, so she adoptsany decorative sorrows that are going, myself included. In that wayshe's the antithesis, or whatever you call it, to those sweet,uncomplaining women one knows who have seen trouble, and worn blinkersever since. Of course, one just loves them for it, but I must confessthey make me uncomfy; they remind one so of a duck that goes flappingabout with forced cheerfulness long after its head's been cut off. Duckshave _no_ repose. Now, my aunt has a shade of hair that suits her, and acook who quarrels with the other servants, which is always a hopefulsign, and a conscience that's absentee for about eleven months of theyear, and only turns up at Lent to annoy her husband's people, who areconsiderably Lower than the angels, so to speak: with all these naturaladvantages--she says her particular tint of bronze is a naturaladvantage, and there can be no two opinions as to the advantage--ofcourse she has to send out for her afflictions, like those restaurantswhere they haven't got a licence. The system has this advantage, thatyou can fit your unhappinesses in with your other engagements, whereasreal worries have a way of arriving at meal-times, and when you'redressing, or other solemn moments. I knew a canary once that had beentrying for months and years to hatch out a family, and everyone lookedupon it as a blameless infatuation, like the sale of Delagoa Bay, whichwould be an annual loss to the Press agencies if it ever came to pass;and one day the bird really did bring it off, in the middle of familyprayers. I say the middle, but it was also the end: you can't go onbeing thankful for daily bread when you are wondering what on earth verynew canaries expect to be fed on.
At present she's rather in a Balkan state of mind about the treatment ofthe Jews in Roumania. Personally, I think the Jews have estimablequalities; they're so kind to their poor--and to our rich. I daresay inRoumania the cost of living beyond one's income isn't so great. Overhere the trouble is that so many people who have money to throw aboutseem to have such vague ideas where to throw it. That fund, forinstance, to relieve the victims of sudden disasters--what is a suddendisaster? There's Marion Mulciber, who _would_ think she could playbridge, just as she would think she could ride down a hill on a bicycle;on that occasion she went to a hospital, now she's gone into aSisterhood--lost all she had, you know, and gave the rest to Heaven.Still, you can't call it a sudden calamity; _that_ occurred when poordear Marion was born. The doctors said at the time that she couldn'tlive more than a fortnight, and she's been trying ever since to see ifshe could. Women are so opinionated.
And then there's the Education Question--not that I can see that there'sanything to worry about in that direction. To my mind, education is anabsurdly over-rated affair. At least, one never took it very seriouslyat school, where everything was done to bring it prominently under one'snotice. Anything that is worth knowing one practically teaches oneself,and the rest obtrudes itself sooner or later. The reason one's eldersknow so comparatively little is because they have to unlearn so much thatthey acquired by way of education before we were born. Of course I'm abeliever in Nature-study; as I said to Lady Beauwhistle, if you want alesson in elaborate artificiality, just watch the studied unconcern of aPersian cat entering a crowded salon, and then go and practise it for afortnight. The Beauwhistles weren't born in the Purple, you know, butthey're getting there on the instalment system--so much down, and therest when you feel like it. They have kind hearts, and they never forgetbirthdays. I forget what he was, something in the City, where thepatriotism comes from; and she--oh, well, her frocks are built in Paris,but she wears them with a strong English accent. So public-spirited ofher. I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's sodesperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. Not that it reallymatters nowadays, as I told her: I know some perfectly virtuous peoplewho are received everywhere.
REGINALD ON HOUSE-PARTIES
The drawback is, one never really _knows_ one's hosts and hostesses. Onegets to know their fox-terriers and their chrysanthemums, and whether thestory about the go-cart can be turned loose in the drawing-room, or mustbe told privately to each member of the party, for fear of shockingpublic opinion; but one's host and hostess are a sort of human hinterlandthat one never has the time to explore.
There was a fellow I stayed with once in Warwickshire who farmed his ownland, but was otherwise quite steady. Should never have suspected him ofhaving a soul, yet not very long afterwards he eloped with a lion-tamer'swidow and set up as a golf-instructor somewhere on the Persian Gulf;dreadfully immoral, of course, because he was only an indifferent player,but still, it showed imagination. His wife was really to be pitied,because he had been the only person in the house who understood how tomanage the cook's temper, and now she has to put "D.V." on her dinnerinvitations. Still, that's better than a domestic scandal; a woman wholeaves her cook never wholly recovers her position in Society.
I suppose the same thing holds good with the hosts; they seldom have morethan a superficial acquaintance with their guests, and so often just whenthey do get to know you a bit better, they leave off knowing youaltogether. There was _rather_ a breath of winter in the air when I leftthose Dorsetshire people. You see, they had asked me down to shoot, andI'm not particularly imme
nse at that sort of thing. There's such adeadly sameness about partridges; when you've missed one, you've missedthe lot--at least, that's been my experience. And they tried to rag mein the smoking-room about not being able to hit a bird at five yards, asort of bovine ragging that suggested cows buzzing round a gadfly andthinking they were teasing it. So I got up the next morning at earlydawn--I know it was dawn, because there were lark-noises in the sky, andthe grass looked as if it had been left out all night--and hunted up themost conspicuous thing in the bird line that I could find, and measuredthe distance, as nearly as it would let me, and shot away all I knew.They said afterwards that it was a tame bird; that's simply _silly_,because it was awfully wild at the first few shots. Afterwards itquieted down a bit, and when its legs had stopped waving farewells to thelandscape I got a gardener-boy to drag it into the hall, where everybodymust see it on their way to the breakfast-room. I breakfasted upstairsmyself. I gathered afterwards that the meal was tinged with a veryunchristian spirit. I suppose it's unlucky to bring peacock's feathersinto a house; anyway, there was a blue-pencilly look in my hostess's eyewhen I took my departure.
Some hostesses, of course, will forgive anything, even unto pavonicide(is there such a word?), as long as one is nice-looking and sufficientlyunusual to counterbalance some of the others; and there _are_ others--thegirl, for instance, who reads Meredith, and appears at meals withunnatural punctuality in a frock that's made at home and repented atleisure. She eventually finds her way to India and gets married, andcomes home to admire the Royal Academy, and to imagine that anindifferent prawn curry is for ever an effective substitute for all thatwe have been taught to believe is luncheon. It's then that she is reallydangerous; but at her worst she is never quite so bad as the woman whofires _Exchange and Mart_ questions at you without the least provocation.Imagine the other day, just when I was doing my best to understand halfthe things I was saying, being asked by one of those seekers aftercountry home truths how many fowls she could keep in a run ten feet bysix, or whatever it was! I told her whole crowds, as long as she keptthe door shut, and the idea didn't seem to have struck her before; atleast, she brooded over it for the rest of dinner.