XII
A MODERN SABINE
"Ah, that's the trouble. We're all far too complex nowadays."
"We live in a complex age," I returned profoundly.
"True, very true," he replied, and twisted the ribbon of his eyeglassround one finger. "Very little is left that is simple and primitive andbeautiful."
I favoured him with the cosmic shrug of his cult, and said nothingeloquently. The understanding was complete.
Cicely Vicars's "evening" was ground I had not hitherto explored, and Ihad marked for my own at once the young man drooping mincingly over thepiano. He was smooth and fair, inclined to premature stoutness, andlooked remotely. Mrs. Vicars informed me that he was a playwright, adramatic critic, and a Fashion; that he promised brilliant things, andthat the name under which he wrought was Eleanor Macquoid. She addedthat he had intuition beyond his years.
Now people went to Mrs. Vicars's "evening" for intellectual intercourseand the exchange of ideas--an object in which they would not be balked.Carrie had said as much to me.
"You ought to come, Rol," she had remarked on one occasion. "It'sso--it's awfully new, Rol, really."
"Indeed?" I had said. "In what way is it particularly--pardon me--up todate?"
"Oh," she replied, "it's so _real_, Rollo." Then, reassuringly, "Theydon't talk about the soul, you know--you needn't be afraid of that.It's--it's instinct. The soul is quite too old, you know."
"A full season behind," I assented gravely. "And so the soul, _chez_Mrs. Vicars, is superseded in favour of the dilettante animal? Is thatso, my sister?"
"Yes," she agreed doubtfully, and added, "Of course there areoutsiders."
It turned out, as Caroline had said, to be Instinct, Primal Sanity, andthe Elemental Paganism, and very prettily put I heard it. No one was_blase_. They said so. They were enthusiastic. My young man declared itwith an animation that brought him near to spilling the liqueurcarefully poised on his knee. He spoke of the keen joy of living,delicately and epigrammatically, digressing to observe that he preferredIndian cigarettes to Brazilian, and adding that after all there wasnothing like the great rough kindnesses of the Mother Earth. CicelyVicars's gathering was indisputably in the vanguard of the latest cry.
Mr. Eleanor Macquoid seemed to take to me, for he spoke almostimmediately of "people who understand." I was evidently admitted onsight to the mystery, and improved the occasion accordingly. I examinedmy finger nails--I had seen him do so--and dropped my pearls of wisdomnonchalantly, as not expecting they would be gathered up.
He was talking softly, and almost sleepily, on the picturesqueness ofMass and Brute Bulk.
"There is something quite Titanic," he said, "in the conception of aworld where nothing was as yet ruled and squared out for us; whereeverything was vague and shifting."
"It is an especially gigantic thought," I replied appreciatively. "Theinsistence nowadays of the Social Nexus----"
I paused, and he nodded comprehendingly at the cue.
"Yes," he replied, "that also is true. Ah, if it were only possible toescape from the bewildering system into the clean fields and therain-washed heather----"
"To evade the ever-present Self, and to take refuge in the great unhewnpassions?" I queried gently.
"Exactly," he replied, again carefully contemplating his nails, "to knowagain the crude and volcanic life. Everything is tertiary in thesedays--we have no primaries. Nothing rude or red."
I forbore to challenge the remark as to rudeness, and agreed that frommy observation it hardly appeared to be an age of epics. He approved,passing his hand over his sleek, clean hair.
"And yet," he continued, judicially weighing each word, and turning tothe nails of the other hand, "and yet--why? Why should we, the heirs ofthe centuries, be in reality the slaves of them? Why should we not love,for instance, as the rugged, forgotten ones loved? Why should we lovethrough the post-office and by chaperonage--through engagements andmarriages? Why should we not----"
He forbore to say what, and sighed, apparently for the days when hemight have loved with a stone axe in untracked forests and throughrivers in flood. I offered him a cigarette.
He lighted it, and gazing before him as though he were culling a nascentthought from the smoke, went on slowly and prophetically.
"Nevertheless," he said, more softly than ever, "the strong man shallcome; and when he shall appear--the man for whom we are waiting--the manwho shall break the bonds and go back--back----"
It was a characteristic of most of his sentences that he finished themby watching the films of smoke before him. This time he made aremarkably perfect smoke ring. I thought of Caroline, and wondered whatshe was doing in such a _milieu_.
I was fain to speak.
"And what form of creative expression do you adopt, Mr. Macquoid?" Iasked gracefully.
He replied with a modest diffidence:
"The drama. One is but a mouthpiece--a medium; yet the speech fromliving lips with the living person before the eyes----"
"You are doubtless right," I replied; "words are unconvincing; thingsmust be seen to be believed."
He noticed nothing, and proceeded to speak of the modern Frenchchansonette.
Now Caroline, I remembered, had, before her engagement, accounted for alarge portion of her time in putting together the materials for acomedy, which, however, she had since discontinued under the somewhatexclusive demands of courtship. I had never been privileged to see thework in question, but understood that a knotty proposal scene had,coincidentally, been abandoned precisely at the time that she could, hadshe wished, have given it an autobiographical interest. Bassishaw'slove, besides interrupting the course of art, bade fair to cut it offaltogether just when it would have given the true note that the stage,it is declared, is aching for. But even young authors have scruples inmaking their own affairs public, and so Caroline had willed it.
Nevertheless, it could do Caroline no harm to meet Mr. Eleanor Macquoid;and Mr. Macquoid himself could do no less than accept resignedly thelatter-day limitations of love in the presence of my sister. After all,Mrs. Vicars's salon was for the interchange of ideas.
"My sister," I remarked, "is interested in the drama, and has herselfhalf-realised aspirations in the way of comedy."
Mr. Macquoid would be charmed; and I presented him. I was called awayfor a few moments by Mrs. Vicars. By the time I returned Mr. Macquoidwas talking, his remarks being apparently directed to the point at whichCaroline's comedy had been relinquished.
"It is difficult," he observed, with a polite interest, "to know what todo with one's young leads nowadays. I suppose they must love--thePhilistine still clings to the conventional love-theme--but it is all sostale. In the old days it was different."
From the angle of Caroline's chin I saw that it was anything but staleto her, and that the remark was unfortunate. She was evidently ofopinion that the subject of love, however much used, had had anythingbut adequate treatment, and that in one or two important respects shewas in a position to direct a new light on the literary treatment of it.
"What do you mean, Mr. Macquoid?" she asked.
"Merely," he replied casually, "that there is so little dash and--andhigh-handedness about our modern methods of love-making. You get yourcouples together, and they talk in the same weary way--the same old flattalk, talk, talk----"
I smiled at the description as applied to Bassishaw, whose fluency wasnot remarkable, and Caroline looked coldly before her.
"You refer to the stage, Mr. Macquoid?" she asked.
"I refer to modern love-making," he replied rashly. "We have no romanticmethods left. It has become a business and a bore. When we do get it outit's one kiss and thank Heaven it's over."
Caroline looked emphatic contradiction. I interposed.
"The Roman soldiery, it is related," I said, "being once in want ofwives----"
Caroline interrupted me quickly.
"I think, Mr. Macquoid," she retur
ned, "that people love just aspassionately nowadays as they ever did."
He might have seen what was the matter, but he was on his own subject,and went blindly at it.
"True," he replied, "true. But the surroundings, the circumstances, thelittleness of everyday life--they crush it out. We love by rule andetiquette, at social functions and in gas-lit drawing-rooms."
I looked at Caroline for a confirmation of Bassishaw's methods, but thepersonal equation was too much for her contemplation of the artisticside of the question.
"Of course we do, Mr. Macquoid," she returned, waiving, it seemed to me,the part that had to do with the gas. "What else can we do?"
Eleanor Macquoid raised his eyebrows and shoulders in a deferentialgesture that was supposed to explain the way.
"The wind still blows," he said, "the rain, the open air----"
"The parks," I suggested, "are already----"
"--but," he continued, "we wear frock-coats and carry umbrellas. Wemarry, and our children resume the same hopeless round. There is noromance, no poetry, no heroism in it. We become engaged for a certainperiod to please our friends, and marry out of consideration for oneanother. We have no impulse, no real instinct. We have no--no militantlove."
He seemed to receive a fresh start from the last phrase, and, alas!ruined himself irretrievably.
"Why," he exclaimed, "even those to whom we might look for a vigorousexpression of it--those who lead lives of adventurous excitement--oursoldiers and sailors--are just as bad. As you remarked, Mr. Butterfield,the Roman soldiers----"
The social system might be attacked, disintegrated, and shown wanting inthe eyes of amateur modern paganism; the spirit of the age might bearraigned and condemned by twenty juries of the advanced salons; modishculture might stalk hock-deep in the wreckage of civilisation; but--toCaroline the prestige of the army was vested in the person of Bassishaw.Bassishaw's mode of love-making had been compared to its disfavour withthe practices of Roman legions.
She raised her head disdainfully without glancing at the unconscious Mr.Eleanor Macquoid, spoke half over her shoulder, and condemned a greatnation in Bassishaw's defence.
"I don't think very highly, Mr. Macquoid, of the Romans. I think thatwhen they--that on that occasion at least--they were horrid,and--and--unnecessarily rough, and that nice people would never havedone it. It may make good pictures, but one would rather be a pleasantperson than an unpleasant picture. And I don't care a bit what anybodysays; soldiers are just as good as--anybody else."
And better, beyond comparison better, her shoulders seemed to say as sheturned away. Macquoid shifted his other elbow to the piano, and thenlooked at me.
"I am afraid, Mr. Butterfield, that I have not been able to help yoursister much in the play. After all, the real impulse must come fromwithin."
"It is," I replied, "a pleasing reticence when the real impulse staysthere. The self-sacrifice imposed by art is not necessarily a sacrificeof one's self."
"Very true," he answered approvingly, and took coffee.