XV.
It was a romantic evening, and although Lord Reggie prided himself on being altogether impervious to the influences of Nature, he was not unaware that a warm and fantastic twilight may incline the average woman favourably to a suit that she might not be disposed to heed in the early morning, or during the garish sunshine of a summer afternoon. He presumed that Lady Locke was an average woman, simply because he considered all women exceedingly and distinctively average; and therefore, when he saw a soft expression steal into her dark face as she glanced at the faded turquoise of the sky, he decided to propose at once, and as prettily as possible. But Tommy was fussing about, wavy with childish excitement, and at first he could not speak.
"Tommy," said Lady Locke at last, "give me a kiss and run away to your supper. But, before you go, listen to me. Did you attend to Mr. Amarinth's lecture?"
"Yes, yes, yes, mother! Of course, of course, of course!" cried Tommy, dancing violently on the lawn, and trying to excite Bung to a tempest.
"Well, remember that it was meant to be comic. It was only a nonsense lecture, like Edward Lear's nonsense books. Do you see? It was a turning of everything topsy-turvy. So what we have to do is just the opposite of everything Mr. Amarinth advised. You understand, my boy?"
"All right, mumsy," said Tommy. "But I forget what he said."
Lady Locke looked pleased, kissed his flushed little face, and packed him off.
"I hope the school children will do the same," she said to Lord Reggie when he was gone. "What a blessing a short memory can be!"
"Didn't you like the lecture, then?" Reggie asked. "I thought it splendid, so full of imagination, so exquisitely choice in language and in feeling."
"And so self-conscious."
"Yes, as all art must be."
"Art! art! You could make me hate that word!"
Reggie looked for once honestly shocked.
"You could hate art?" he said.
"Yes, if I could believe that it was the antagonist of Nature, instead of the faithful friend. No, I did not like the lecture, if one can like or dislike a mere absurdity. Tell me, Lord Reggie, are you self-consciously absurd?"
He drew his chair a little nearer to hers.
"I don't know," he said; "I hope I am beautiful. If I am beautiful, that is all I wish for. To be beautiful is to be complete. To be clever is easy enough. To be beautiful is so difficult, that even Byron had a club foot with all his genius. Cleverness can be acquired. Hundreds of stupid people nowadays acquire the faculty of cleverness. That is why society is so boring. You find people practising mental scales and five-finger exercises at every party you go to. The true artist will never practise. How soft this twilight is, though not so delicate and subtle as that in Millet's 'Angelus.' Lady Locke, I have something to tell you, and I will tell it to you now, while the stars come out, and the shadows steal from their homes in the trees. Esmé said to-day that marriage was a brilliant absurdity. Will you be brilliantly absurd? Will you marry me?"
He leaned forward, and took her hand rather negligently in his small and soft one. His face was calm, and he spoke in a clear and even voice. Lady Locke left her hand in his. She was quite calm too.
"I cannot marry you," she said. "Do you wish me to tell you why? Probably you do not; but I think I will tell you all the same. I am not brilliant, and therefore I have no wish to be absurd. If I married you I should be merely absurd without being brilliant at all. You do not love me. I think you love nothing. I like you; I am interested by you. Perhaps if you had a different nature I might even love you. But I can never love an echo, and you are an echo."
"An echo is often more beautiful than the voice it repeats," he said.
"But if the voice is quite ugly the echo cannot be beautiful," she answered. "I do not wish to be too frank, but as you have asked me to marry you I will say this. Your character seems to me to be an echo of Mr. Amarinth's. I believe that he merely poses; but do those who imitate him merely pose? Do you merely pose? What Mr. Amarinth really is it is quite impossible to tell. Perhaps there is nothing real about him at all. Perhaps, as he has said, his real man is only a Mrs. Harris. He may be abnormal au fond; but you are not! What is your real self? Is it what I see, what I know?"
"Expression is my life," Lord Reggie said in a rather offended voice, drawing away his hand. A red spot appeared in each of his cheeks. He began to realise that he was refused because he was not admired. It seemed almost incredible.
"Then the expression that I see is you?" she asked.
"I suppose so," he replied, with a tinge of exceedingly boyish sulkiness.
"Then, till you have got rid of it never ask a woman to marry you. Men like you do not understand women. They do not try to; probably they could not if they did. Men like you are so twisted and distorted in mind that they cannot recognise their own distortion. It seems to me that Mr. Amarinth has created a cult. Let me call it the cult of the green carnation. I suppose it may be called modern. To me it seems very silly and rather wicked. If you would take that hideous green flower out of your coat, not because I asked you to, but because you hated it honestly, I might answer your question differently. If you could forget what you call art, if you could see life at all with a straight, untrammelled vision, if you could be like a man, instead of like nothing at all in heaven or earth except that dyed flower, I might perhaps care for you in the right way. But your mind is artificially coloured: it comes from the dyer's. It is a green carnation; and I want a natural blossom to wear in my heart."
She got up.
"You are not angry with me?" she asked.
Lord Reggie's face was scarlet.
"You talk very much like ordinary people," he said, a little rude in his hurt self-love.
"I am ordinary," she said. "I am so glad of it. I think that after this week I shall try to be even more ordinary than I already am."
Then she went slowly into the cottage.
That evening Lord Reggie told Mrs. Windsor that he found he must leave for town on the following morning.
She was horrified, and was still more appalled when Esmé Amarinth expressed an intention of accompanying him.
"It's worse than the Professor's fit last year," she said dolefully. "But perhaps it will be better if we all go back to town to-morrow. You will not care to be rustic without any men, will you, Madame Valtesi?" she added.
"No," replied that lady. "It would be too much like having a bath in Tidman's salt, instead of in the ocean. It would be tame. We three women in this cottage together should be like the Graiæ, only we should not have even one eye and one tooth between us. Perhaps we have been rustic as long as is good for us. I shall go to the French plays to-morrow night. I like them—they always do me so much harm."
"And I will take Tommy to the seaside," said Lady Locke.
"My dear lady," said Esmé. "How terribly normal!"
"And how exceedingly healthy!" she replied.
He looked at her with a deep pity.
Next morning as she bade good-bye to Lord Reggie, she said to him in a low voice—
"Some day, perhaps, you will throw away the green carnation."
"Oh! it will be out of fashion soon," he answered, as he got delicately into the carriage.
"So you have been refused, Reggie," said Esmé, as they drove towards the station. "How original you are! I should never have suspected you of that. But you were always wonderful—wonderful and very complete. When did you decide to be refused? Only last night. You managed it exquisitely. I think that I am glad. I do not want you to alter, and the refining influence of a really good woman is as corrosive as an acid. Ah, Reggie, you will not be singing in the woods near Esher when the tiresome cuckoo imitates Haydn's toy symphony next spring! You will still be living your marvellous scarlet life, still teaching the London tradesmen the exact value of your supreme aristocracy. If you had become a capitalist you might have grown whiskers and become respectable. Why do whiskers and respectability grow together? Here we are at the railway station. Railway stations always remind me of Mr. Terriss, the actor. They are so noisy. The Surrey week is over. Soon we shall see once more the tender grey of the Piccadilly pavement, and the subtle music of old Bond Street will fall furtively upon our ears. Put your feet up on the opposite cushion, dear boy; while I lean out of the railway carriage window and smile the people away. When people try to get into my compartment I always smile at them, and they always go away. They think that I am mad. And are they mistaken? How can one tell? There is only one sanity in all the world, and that is to be artistically insane. Reggie, give me a gold-tipped cigarette, and I will be brilliant. I will be brilliant for you alone, remembering my Whistler as commonplace people remember their obligations, or as Madame Valtesi remembers to forget her birthday. Ah! we are off! Look out of this window, dear boy, and you will see two elderly gentlemen missing the train. They are doing it rather nicely. I think they must have been practising in private. There is an art even in missing a train, Reggie. But one of them is not quite perfect in it yet. He has begun to swear a little too soon!"
THE END.