VIII.
Esmé Amarinth was generally amusing and whimsical in conversation, but, like other men, he had his special moments, and the half-hour after dinner, when the ladies, longing to remain as invisible listeners, had retired to the bald deserts of feminine society, was usually his time of triumph. His mental stays were then unfastened. He could breathe forth his stories freely. His wittiest jokes, nude, no longer clad in the shadowy garments of more or less conventional propriety, danced like bacchanals through the conversation, and kicked up heels to fire even the weary men of society. He expanded into fantastic anecdote, and mingled many a bon mot with the blue spirals of his mounting cigarette smoke. But to-night Mr. Smith's gentle, "I never smoke, thank you," reminded him that the fate of Lord Reggie's anthem was hanging in the balance. He resolved to tread warily among clerical prejudices, so, lighting a cigarette, and pushing the claret away from him with one plump hand, he drew his chair slowly towards Mr. Smith's, and a sweet smile spread deliberately over his rather large and intelligent face.
"I was very much interested in your remark about doctrine and music at dinner," he began in his most carefully modulated voice, "and I wanted to pursue the subject a little farther, only the minds of ladies are so curious and unexpected, that I thought it better to refrain. Have you noticed that many women make a kind of profession of being shocked?"
"Surely no," said Mr. Smith, sipping his water with an inquiring air.
"Yes, positively it is so, especially if a truth about religion is uttered. They are apt to think that all truths about religion are blasphemous. It is wonderful how ready good women are to find blasphemy where it is not, and to confuse reasoning with ribaldry."
"Ah!" said the curate, looking the more ascetic because he was slightly confused in mind.
"Now you spoke of music ousting doctrine. Do you not think that the truest, the most poignant doctrine, speaks, utters itself through the arts. Music has its religion and its atheism, painting its holiness and its sin. A statue, in its white and marble stillness, may suggest to us dreams in which the angels walk, or visions that I will not characterise in the presence of an ordained priest. Even architecture may incline us to worship, and a few broken fragments of stone to faith. Have you ever been in Greece?"
"I have never been out of my own country," said Mr. Smith, "except once, when I spent a week in Wales."
"I have never made an exhaustive study of Welsh art," said Amarinth, "but I believe Mr. Gladstone thinks it gallant, while others prefer to call it little. But the point I wanted to suggest was merely this, that we can draw doctrine from the music and the painting of men, as well as from literature and sermons."
"I have never thought of it before," said Mr. Smith doubtfully.
"Mozart and Bach have given me belief that not even the subversive impotencies of Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the terribly obvious 'mysteries' of Dr. A. C. Mackenzie, have been able to take from me," murmured Lord Reggie.
"Ah! Reggie, each decade has its poet Bunn," remarked Amarinth. "We have our Bunn in Mr. Joseph Bennett, but where are his plums? Religion dwells in the arts, Mr. Smith, as irreligion so often, unhappily, lurks in the sciences."
"Indeed I have no opinion of science," the curate said with authoritative disapproval.
"Science is too often a thief. Art is a prodigal benefactor. She provides for us an almshouse in which we can take refuge when we are old and weary. And in music especially—in good music—all doctrine is crystallised. The man who has genius gathers together all his highest thoughts and aspirations, all his beliefs, his trust, his faith, and gives them forth in his art, in his music, or in his picture. Lord Reginald, for instance, would convert more men to Christianity by his exquisite and purple anthem than most preachers by all their sermons."
"Indeed, has Lord Reginald composed an anthem?" asked the curate, gazing upon Reggie with a priestly approval.
"He has, and one that Roman Catholics have delighted in. Forgive my allusion to an alien faith, but the Romanists, with all their mistakes, are not unmusical."
"I see much good in Rome," said Mr. Smith solemnly, "although it is mingled with many errors. No, not any nuts, thank you; I never touch nuts. I should like to hear this anthem."
"I could play it to you with pleasure," Reggie said, drooping his fair head slightly, "but of course it is all wrong on a piano. It requires the organ and sweet boys' voices."
"We have anthems in the church here," said Mr. Smith. "We have even done masses."
"How exquisite!" said Amarinth. "A village mass. There is something beautifully original in the notion. Ah! Mr. Smith, if your boys could have done Lord Reggie's anthem they would have learnt the doctrine of music."
"Perhaps they—would it be possible—on Sunday?" Mr. Smith said, glowing gently.
Amarinth got up, dropping his cigarette end into his finger bowl.
"Reggie, we have found a true artist in Chenecote," he said. "Play Mr. Smith your purple notes, and I will go and take my coffee on the lawn. The moon washes the night with silver, and, thank Heaven! there are no nightingales to ruin the music of the stillness with their well-meant but ill-produced voices. Nature's songster is the worst sort of songster I know."
He walked with an ample softness into the little hall, and passed out through the French windows of the drawing room into the shadowy garden.
On the lawn he found Lady Locke sitting alone, sipping her coffee in a basket chair. Madame Valtesi and Mrs. Windsor had strolled into the scented rose garden to discuss the inner details of a forthcoming divorce case. The murmur of their voices, uttering names of co-respondents, was faintly heard now and then as they passed up and down the tiny formal paths.
Esmé Amarinth sank down into a chair by Lady Locke and sighed heavily.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"You have a beautiful soul," he said softly, "and I have a beautiful soul too. Why should there not be a sympathy between us? Lady Locke, I am the victim of depression. I am suffering from the malady of life. I usually have an attack of it in the morning, but it flies when the stars come out and leaves me brilliant. What can be the matter with me to-night? I ask myself the question with the most poignant anxiety, I can assure you."
She glanced at his large and solemn face, at his ample cheeks and loose mouth, and smiled slightly.
"Some circumstances have been unkind to you, perhaps?" she said.
"That could not hurt me," he answered, "for, thank Heaven! I am no philosopher, and never take facts seriously. Circumstances, my dear Lady Locke, are the lashes laid into us by life. Some of us have to receive them with bared ivory backs, and others are permitted to keep on a coat—that is the only difference."
"Are you a pessimist?" she asked.
"I hope so. I look upon optimism as a most quaint disease, an eruption that breaks out upon the soul, and destroys all its interest, all its beauty. The optimist dresses up the amazing figures of life like Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses, and pipes a foolish tune—the Old Hundredth or some such thing—for them to dance to. We cannot all refuse to see anything but comic opera peasants around us."
"Yet we need not replace them with pantomime demons."
"Demons, as you call them, are much more interesting. Nothing is so unattractive as goodness, except, perhaps, a sane mind in a sane body. Even the children find the fairies monotonous, I believe. An eternal smile is much more wearisome than a perpetual frown. The one sweeps away all possibilities, the other suggests a thousand."
"Every one of them sinister."
"Why not? Where would be the drama without the crime? The clash of swords is the music of the world. People talk so much to me about the beauty of confidence. They seem to entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. The Apostle Thomas was artistic up to a certain point. He appreciated the value of shadows in a picture. To be on the alert is to live. To be lulled in security is to die."
"But if you pushed that amusing theory to its limits you would arrive at the contradiction in terms—to be happy is to be miserable."
"Certainly. To be what is commonly called happy is a mental complaint demanding careful treatment. The happy people of the world have their value, but only the negative value of foils. They throw up and emphasise the beauty, and the fascination of the unhappy. Scarlet and black are the finest of all the colours. And to cease to doubt is to despair—for a really talented man or woman. That is why people become sceptics. They desire to save themselves from intellectual annihilation."
"Yet the mental pleasure of proving a case may be keen."
"But it cannot be lasting. You do not see the delight that must attend upon conjecture. Let me put it to you in another way. Can you conceive loving a man whom you felt you understood?"
"Certainly. Especially if he were difficult for other people to understand."
"Ah! you begin to appreciate the value of doubt. We often begin by desiring others to enjoy what we shall eventually want for ourselves. The moment we understand a human being, our love for that human being spreads his wings preparatory to flying out of the window."
Lady Locke, who had begun to look earnest, seemed to recollect herself with an effort, and dispelled the gravity that was settling over her face with a smile.
"You go very far in your admirable desire to amuse," she said.
"I think not," he answered, putting down her cup with an elaborate serenity. "One must perpetually doubt to be faithful. Perplexity and mistrust fan affection into passion, and so bring about those beautiful tragedies that alone make life worth living. Women once felt this while men did not, and so women once ruled the world. But men are awakening from their mental slumber, and are becoming incomprehensible. Lord Reggie is an instance of what I mean. The average person finds him exquisitely difficult to comprehend. He fascinates by being sedulously unexpected. Listen to his anthem. He is beginning to play it. How unexpected it is. It always does what the ear wants, and all modern music does what the ear does not want. Therefore the ear always expects to be disappointed, and Lord Reggie astonishes it by never disappointing it."
The faint music of the piano now tinkled out into the night, and numerous simple harmonies and full closes fell melodiously upon their hearing.
"Lord Reggie is certainly very unlike his anthem," said Lady Locke, listening a little sadly.
"Reggie is unlike everything except himself. He is completely wonderful, and, wonderfully complete. He lives for sensations, while other people live for faiths, or for convictions, or for prejudices. He would make any woman unhappy. How beautiful!"
"Is it always a sign of intelligence to be what others are not?"
But she received no direct answer to her question, for at this moment Madame Valtesi and Mrs. Windsor came to them across the lawn. They had finished trying the divorce case.
"What is that about intelligence?" Madame Valtesi asked croakily.
"Dear Lady!" said Esmé, getting up out of his chair slowly, "intelligence is the demon of our age. Mine bores me horribly. I am always trying to find a remedy for it. I have experimented with absinthe, but gained no result. I have read the collected works of Walter Besant. They are said to sap the mental powers. They did not sap mine. Opium has proved useless, and green tea cigarettes leave me positively brilliant. What am I to do? I so long for the lethargy, the sweet peace of stupidity. If only I were Lewis Morris!"
"Unfortunate man! You should treat your complaint with the knife. Become a popular author."
She laughed without smiling, an uncanny habit of hers, and turned to the window.
"I hear Mr. Smith saying that he must go," she said.
Mrs. Windsor rustled forward to speed the parting guest.
That night Esmé said to Reggie in the smoking room—
"Reggie, Lady Locke will marry you if you ask her."
"I suppose so," the boy said.
"Shall you ask her?"
"I suppose so. Mr. Smith is going to do my anthem on Sunday."
They lit their cigarettes.