The Rubicon Part 8

The dowager took a second cup of tea. She had been accustomed to consider tea as a destructive agent in the days of seven o'clock dinner, but as Eva refused personally to dine till half-past eight, she found that, though perhaps destructive, it was less unpleasant than pure inanition. She had enunciated some startling warnings as to what would happen to people who dined at half-past eight earlier in her sojourn in London, and Eva had told her, with great courtesy, that she was quite at liberty to dine at seven or half-past six, or six if she liked, but she was afraid that her daughter-in-law would be unable to share the meal with her. Whether her mother-in-law's const.i.tution had become so strongly fortified by the use of drugs that she could now afford to play tricks with it, we are not called upon to say; at any rate, the half-past eight dinner had, at present, made no perceptible inroads on her digestive or vital powers.

Eva had finished tea, and proceeded to light a cigarette.

"After our dreadfully keen encounter," she explained, "I want soothing.

Argument is very trying to the nerves. Tobacco, on the other hand, is eminently soothing. Permit me to soothe myself."

Old Lady Hayes watched these proceedings through eyelids drooped over vigilant, irritated eyes.

Eva's whole personality was radically abhorrent to her. Her complete modernity seemed to her an epitome of all that is unsuitable to woman.

Even her best points--her extreme tolerance, her cold purity--were repugnant, because they were the outcome of what she considered a wrong principle. Tolerance, according to the old lady's code, was the fruit of charity--Eva's tolerance was the fruit of indifferences. In the same way, the purity, the utter stainlessness of Eva's mind was the result of fastidiousness, which, according to the other, was the sinful opposite of charity. Purity _via_ fastidiousness, not morality, was to her the fig on the thistle, the grape on the thorn, which, however excellent in itself, could not be good because it must partake of the nature of its parent stem.

"Of course, I know how utterly you must disapprove of me," continued Eva with sincerity; "my whole system, or rather want of system, of life, must seem to you to be utterly inexcusable. Life is a complicated business and rather tiresome at the best. It is continually fractious and annoying and irritating. Its whole object seems to be to make one angry. But my plan is to bear with it; to treat it as a tiresome child, not to let it irritate and annoy me, to avoid all possible collisions with it--and, to do all this, you mustn't be serious or too particular."

"I was brought up to believe in moral responsibilities," said the old lady, "in some idea of duty, in a notion that it was not our mission simply to amuse ourselves and disregard others."

"Just so," said Eva; "that ill.u.s.trates very well what I mean by reducing things to an absurdity. Duty dominated everything, and the port wine affairs were merely regarded as interludes. Of course, if men are brought up to believe in these ponderous responsibilities, they must have interludes. We have done away, or rather you made it inevitable that we should do away, with responsibilities and interludes alike."

"And not unnaturally you have nothing left."

"Quite so. We are human beings who find themselves in a state of consciousness, and a state of consciousness demands that you should do something or think something. We fulfil those demands to a certain extent, but we do not make a mumbo-jumbo of them. You see there have always been a certain number of people with a desire to do certain things--to be kind, to be respectable and reasonable; and a certain number of these have a tendency--we all have tendencies--to construct a theory about what they do. They have, to begin with, a genius for doing their duty, and doing your duty is an unremunerative occupation in this wicked world. Then there comes in their inexorable need of making a theory. Duty is unremunerative here, but amusing oneself is remunerative. Therefore there must be a place and a time when the balance is struck, when to have done your duty is remunerative, and not to have done your duty is unremunerative; and the Paradiso and the Inferno are already made."

The blood of all the clans was up.

"Do you mean to say," gasped the dowager, "that you deny the existence of--'

"Ah, my dear lady," said Eva, "do not let us say things we shall be sorry for afterwards. I deny nothing, and I affirm nothing. I am only pointing out that many people do deny and affirm a great many things.

The fault lies with them. If they had affirmed nothing, and denied nothing, would the fact that I did the same seem so horrible to you?

Would you have evolved all your system of denials and affirmations out of your own inner consciousness?"

This was a little too much. Old Lady Hayes surged up out of her chair and confronted her.

"You believe nothing--you fear nothing--you love nothing. All you care for, are your wretched little hair-splittings about tendencies, and the modern view of life. When you call my beliefs superst.i.tions and inventions, you think you have annihilated them."

"Excuse me," said Eva, "I have no wish to annihilate them, nor do I pretend to do so. I wish I shared them. It must make everything so very easy if it is labelled right or wrong; if every choice is like a cross road with a sign-post, 'Heaven and h.e.l.l.' It must be so like those little allegories about children with bare feet walking along a dusty road, with flowers by the side, and lions and tigers hiding among the flowers. Having read the allegories, of course, you know that if you only keep to the road, it will soon become flowery, and beautiful boots will mysteriously grow on to your feet. And you have the inestimable satisfaction of seeing the lions and tigers gnawing at the bones of the people who go to pick flowers, and of reflecting that not only do they have no beautiful boots, but that the lions and tigers have eaten them up, so that the beautiful boots would be no use to them even if they had them. No doubt you expect me to be seized upon soon, and eaten. It must be very unpleasant. I notice that you never go to help them; you are too much occupied in walking along your tight-rope road."

"This is mere burlesque."

"And who is the author of this burlesque?" asked Eva.

"Perhaps it is another characteristic of your generation to ridicule the most sacred beliefs of others," she replied. "I should have thought any code of good manners would have forbade that. Jews take off their hats when they come into a Christian church."

Eva rose without any show of haste or impatience.

"_Au revoir_," she said. "You will excuse me, I know. I have half-a-hundred things to do."

She went through the open window into the drawing-room. As she pa.s.sed the head of the stairs, she saw a well-known figure coming up, preceded by a footman.

"Ah, Jim," she cried, "how late you are. Come to my room. I have been discussing religious questions with my mother-in-law, and, well--and so we parted in more senses than one. Have you had tea? No? Bring Mr.

Armine some tea to my room."

"She's rather a powerful old lady, isn't she?" asked Jim, who, since the Hayes' return from abroad, had managed to establish himself on a fairly intimate footing.

"She has been abusing me with immense power and vigour," said Eva. "I am the incarnation of all that is horrible in her eyes. The one incomprehensible thing to that generation is this generation."

"The converse holds, too," said he.

"No; I understand them perfectly. Their nature is the basis of ours; we are the heirs of all previous ages, just as they were. The later development has incorporated the earlier, but it is contrary to the nature of the earlier to understand the later. Just in the same way, I understand what I was a year ago, though, if I saw now what I should be in another year, it would probably be incomprehensible to me."

"I shouldn't have thought you would change much."

Eva took a book from a small table near her, and opened it with a quick, dramatic movement.

"It is like that," she said. "Whether I have changed, or only discovered, I don't know. But a year ago the book was shut, and now I have read the first chapter."

"At any rate, you have some ideas about the last chapter, then; I suppose all the characters have come on the stage?"

"Ah! but who can tell what will happen to them? No character can be uninfluenced by circ.u.mstances. If it is a book worth reading, they will have altered by the end. Circ.u.mstances have led me to open the book, they will determine my subsequent career; and circ.u.mstances, in the shape of gout or cancer or something, will make me close it."

"Is it interesting reading?"

Eva looked at him, with a smile gathering on her mouth.

"Particularly interesting," she said. "I am sure you are interested too."

In the silence that followed, a tap came at the door, which was repeated, and Lord Hayes entered. He was irreproachably dressed in a black frock coat, with a fine gardenia in his b.u.t.ton-hole. He was rather short-sighted, and blinked in the manner of a small, tame owl.

"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said; "but I tapped, and there was no answer, and so I came in."

Eva turned to him.

"It is of no consequence. Have you had tea?"

"I found some tea in the drawing-room, thank you. I am bound to say it was rather cold?"

"Have you seen your mother?"

"Yes; she was not cordial. Her manner implied that she had been a little upset about something. She is going to stay with the Davenports for a week, in Hyde Park Gardens, she said, before she goes down into the country. She has, in fact, determined to leave us on the day after to-morrow, instead of stopping till next week."

Eva pointed to a box of cigarettes.

"You may smoke," she said; "Jim, the matches are by you."

"A cigarette would be very refreshing," said Lord Hayes. "The heat and the noise have made me a little fatigued. And, I suppose, we shall be up very late to-night. My mother informed me she would not be present at our little dance."

"Not even at the cotillion?" asked Eva.

"The cotillion ought to be very pretty," said he. "I am satisfied with the appearance of the room. I sent word to Aston not to spare the choicest orchids. Have you seen the staircase since they put the flowers in?"