The Green Carnation Part 6

"Harry Smith has lent them to me," cried Tommy exultantly. "He says I look splendid in them."

"That is all very fine, but Harry Smith requires them, and you don't.

His father won't like it. You must give them back, Tommy. Shake hands with Lord Reginald Hastings. He has come to stay here."

Tommy shook hands scrutinisingly, and at once broke conversational ground with--

"Do you know who the great Athanasius was?"

"He was an excellent person, who will always be widely known to fame for his omissions. He did not write the Athanasian creed. For that reason he will always be deserving of our respect."

Tommy listened to these remarks with profound attention, and expressed himself very well satisfied with this addition to his youthful knowledge. He thrust his hot hand into Lord Reggie's with the artless remark--

"You are more clever than Cousin Betty!" and invited him to join forthwith in a game of ball upon the bowling-green. To Lady Locke's surprise, Lord Reggie did not resist the alluring temptation, but ran off with the boy quite light-heartedly. She stood watching them as they disappeared across the smooth, green lawn.

"I can't understand him," she thought to herself. "He seems to be talented, and yet an echo of another man, naturally good-hearted, full of horrible absurdities, a gentleman, and yet not a man at all. He says himself that he commits every sin that attracts him, but he does not look wicked. What is he? Is he being himself, or is he being Mr.

Amarinth, or is he merely posing, or is he really hateful, or is he only whimsical, and clever, and absurd? What would he have been if he had never seen Mr. Amarinth?"

She began vaguely to dislike Mr. Amarinth, vaguely to like Lord Reggie.

Her boy had taken a fancy to him, and she was an unreasonably motherly mother. People who are unreasonably motherly like by impulse wholly very often, and hate by impulse. Their mind has no why or wherefore with which to bolster up their heart. She went slowly towards the cottage to dress for dinner, and all the time that she was walking, she continued, rather strenuously, to like Lord Reggie.

That evening, after dinner, there was music in the small drawing-room, which was exquisitely done up in Eastern style, with an arched roof, screens of wonderfully carved wood brought from Upper Egypt, Persian hangings and embroideries, divans and prayer rugs, on which n.o.body ever prayed. Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth both played the piano in an easy, tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his own, which he frankly acknowledged was very beautiful. He described it as a hymn without words, which, he said softly, all hymns should be.

There was archaic simplicity, not to say baldness, about it which sent Mrs. Windsor into exotic raptures, and, as it was exceedingly short, it made its definite mark.

There was a moon in the night, full, round, and serene, and the French windows stood open to the quiet garden. The drawing-room was very dimly lighted, and as Reggie played, he was in shadow. His white, sensitive face was only faintly to be seen. It looked pure and young, Lady Locke thought, as she watched him. He was so enamoured of his hymn that he played it over and over again, and, from his touch, it seemed as if he were trying to make the Steinway grand sound as much like a spinet as possible.

Madame Valtesi sat on a sofa with her long, slim feet supported upon an embroidered cushion. She was smoking a cigarette with all the complete mastery of custom. Mrs. Windsor stood near the window, idly following with her eyes the perambulations of Bung, who was flitting about the garden like a ghost with a curled tail and a turned-up nose. Mr.

Amarinth leaned largely upon the piano, in an att.i.tude of rapt attention. His clever, clean-shaved face wore an expression of seraphic sensuality.

Lady Locke listened quietly. She had never heard any hymn so often before, and yet she did not feel bored.

At last Lord Reggie stopped, and said, "Esme, the curate comes to dine to-morrow. Remember to be very sweet to him. I want to play the organ on Sunday morning, and he must let us do an anthem. I will compose one. We can get up a choir practice on Friday night, if Mrs. Windsor does not mind."

"Oh, charming!" Mrs. Windsor cried from the window. "I love a choir practice above all things. Choir boys are so pretty. They must come to the practice in their nightgowns, of course. I am sure Mr. Smith will be delighted. But you must remember to be very high church to-morrow night.

Mr. Smith is terribly particular about that."

"I don't think I know how to be High Church," said Madame Valtesi very gravely. "Does one a.s.sume any special posture of body, or are one's convictions to be shown only in att.i.tude of mind?"

"Oh, there is no difficulty," said Lord Reggie. "All one has to do is to abuse the Evangelical party. Speak disrespectfully of the Bishop of Liverpool, and say that Father Staunton and the Bishop of Lincoln are the only preachers of true doctrine in England. The Ritualists are very easily pleased. They put their faith in preachers and in postures. If I were anything, I would be a Roman Catholic."

"Should you like to confess all your sins?" asked Lady Locke, in some surprise.

"Immensely. There is nothing so interesting as telling a good man or woman how bad one has been. It is intellectually fascinating. One of the greatest pleasures of having been what is called wicked is, that one has so much to say to the good. Good people love hearing about sin. Haven't you noticed that although the sinner takes no sort of interest in the saint, the saint has always an uneasy curiosity about the doings of the sinner? It is a case of the County Council and Zaeo's back over and over again."

"Yes, we love examining each other's backs," said Madame Valtesi.

Esme Amarinth sighed musically and very loudly, and remarked--

"Faith is the most plural thing I know. We are all supposed to believe in the same thing in different ways. It is like eating out of the same dish with different coloured spoons. And we beat each other with the spoons, like children."

"And the dish gives us indigestion," said Madame Valtesi. "I once spent a week with an aunt who had taken to Litany, as other people take to dram-drinking, you know. We went to Litany every day, and I never had so much dyspepsia before in my life. Litany, taken often, is more indigestible than lobster at midnight."

"How exquisite the moon is!" said Lady Locke, rising and going towards the window.

"The moon is the religion of the night," said Esme. "Go out into the garden all of you, and I will sing to you a song of the moon. It is very beautiful. I shall give it to Jean de Reszke, I think. My voice will sound better from a distance. Good voices always do."

He sat down at the piano, and they strolled out through the French windows into the green and silent pleasaunce.

His voice was clear and open, and he spoke rather than sang the following verses, while they stood listening till the rippling accompaniment trickled away into silence:--

Oh! beautiful moon with the ghostly face, Oh! moon with the brows of snow, Rise up, rise up from your slumbering place, And draw from your eyes the veil, Lest my wayward heart should fail In the homage it fain would bestow-- Oh! beautiful moon with the ghostly face, Oh! moon with the brows of snow.

Oh! beautiful mouth like a scarlet flow'r, Oh! mouth with the wild, soft breath, Kiss close, kiss close in the dream-stricken bow'r, And whisper away the world; Till the wayward wings are furled, And the shadow is lifted from death-- Oh! beautiful mouth like a scarlet flow'r, Oh! mouth with the wild, soft breath!

Oh! beautiful soul with the outstretched hands, Oh! soul with the yearning eyes, Lie still, lie still in the fairy lands Where never a tear may fall; Where no voices ever call Any pa.s.sion-act, strange or unwise-- Oh! beautiful soul with the outstretched hands, Oh! soul with the yearning eyes!

The song was uttered with so much apparent pa.s.sion that Lady Locke felt tears standing in her eyes when the last words ceased on the cool air of the night.

"How beautiful," she said involuntarily to Lord Reggie, who happened to be standing beside her. "And how wrong!"

"Surely that is a contradiction in terms," the boy said. "Nothing that is beautiful can possibly be wrong."

"Then how exquisitely right some women have been whom Society has hounded out of its good graces," Madame Valtesi remarked.

"Yes," said Reggie. "And how exquisitely happy in their rect.i.tude."

"But not in their punishment," said Mrs. Windsor. "I think it is so silly to give people the chance of whipping you for what they do themselves."

"Society only loves one thing more than sinning," said Madame Valtesi, examining the moon magisterially through her tortoise sh.e.l.l eyegla.s.s.

"And what is that?" said Lady Locke.

"Administering injustice."

VII.

"Well, what would you all like to do with yourselves to-day?" asked Mrs.

Windsor on the following morning after breakfast, which was over at half-past ten, for they all got up early as a mark of respect to the country air; and indeed, Mr. Amarinth declared that he had been awake before five, revelling in the flame-coloured music of the farmyard c.o.c.ks.

"I should like to go out shopping," remarked Madame Valtesi, who was dressed in a white serge dress, figured with innocent pink flowers.

"But, my dear, there are no shops!"

"There is always a linen-draper's in every village," said Madame Valtesi; "and a grocer's."