Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 30
CHAPTER XXX.
HOW THE FISH CAME TOGETHER.
Lady Lamerton did her utmost. She was lively, quite sprightly even. She moved among her guests with a pleasant smile and a courteous word for every one. The lawn-tennis courts were occupied by four sets of players. A cluster of young men and girls were at a table blowing soap bubbles, and finding fund for laughter in the process. A group of their seniors were making a party for bowls. Some of the guests stood on the terrace looking down at the lawn-tennis players and pretending to take interest in the games. The majority of those present wandered about the gardens, shrubberies, and conservatories.
A little hand was thrust into that of Lady Lamerton, and on looking down she saw Giles.
"Mamma, where is papa? I want to go with him."
"He has had to leave, dear, for a few minutes; he will return in perhaps half an hour."
"But I can run after him. Where is he?"
"You cannot follow him, Giles, he is walking fast, and is about something that your presence would disturb. Are there no little boys here for you to play with? Yes, there are the two Fountaynes. I invited them expressly."
"I do not want to play. I had rather walk with papa."
"But he would wish you to take the little boys and show them your pony. We cannot, my dear, always do what we like. We must bestir ourselves to make our guests happy."
"Very well, mamma, I will go with the Fountaynes as papa wishes it."
He let go her hand, and went off. She looked affectionately after the child for a moment, and then resumed her duties as hostess, with an anxious heart but an untroubled brow.
From the first moment that our intelligence dawns, the first lessons impressed on us, lessons never pretermitted, from which no holiday gives release, relentlessly and systematically enforced, are those of self-suppression. We are not allowed as children even to express our opinions decidedly, to hate heartily any person or anything. We are required, for instance, to say nothing more forcible than—we are not devoted to our governess, and not partial to bread-and-butter pudding. We are instructed either to keep silence altogether relative to our feelings, which is best of all, a counsel of perfection; or if we cannot do that, to give utterance to them in an inoffensive and unobjectionable manner. We are taught to speak of a stupid person as amiable, and of a disagreeable person as well-intentioned. Our faces are not suffered to express what our tongues are not permitted to speak, consequently the facial muscles are brought into as complete control as the tongue.
Consequently also when we are thoroughly schooled, we wear masks perpetually and always go about with gloved tongues. At first, in the nursery and in the schoolroom, there are kicks and sulks, when the mask and the glove are fitted on, and yet, in time, we become so habituated to them that we are incapable of conceiving of life as endurable without the wearing of them.
I know that I have become so accustomed to a ring on my little finger, that if perchance I have forgotten it, and gone into society, I have blushed to the roots of my hair, and stammered and been distracted, thinking myself insufficiently clothed, simply because I had left my ring on the washhand-stand. And it is the same with our masks and gloves, we grow to like them, to be uncomfortable without them, to be afraid to show our faces or move our tongues when unprotected by mask and glove.
A circus horse becomes so used to the bearing rein that even when he is allowed to gallop without one, he runs with arched neck.
We are all harnessed from our cradle, with bearing reins, not only to give our necks the proper curve, but also to prevent us from taking the bit in our mouths, kicking out, plunging over the barriers, and deserting the ring, and the saw-dust, the lights, and the crack of the manager's whip.
Round and round our ring we go, now at an amble, then at a canter, and at last at a gallop, but always under restraint; the only liberty allowed and taken is now and again to make our hoofs sound against the barriers, and to send a little sawdust in the faces of the lookers-on, who clap hands and laugh or scream. We dance in our arena to music, and spin about, and balance ourselves on precarious bases, take a five-barred gate at a leap, and go over a score of white poles, dexterously lowered to allow of a leap without accident. Then we fall lame, and lie down, and allow a pistol to be exploded in our ears, and permit ourselves to be carried out as dead. But whatever jump we make has been pre-arranged and laboriously practised, and whatever performance we be put through has been artificially acquired. We never snap our bearing rein, never utter a defiant snort, toss our heads, kick out at those who would detain us, and dash away to pastures green and free moorside.
Possibly our happiness would be greater were we to burst away from the perpetual mill-round, but I know very well what the result would be. We would rapidly degenerate on the moorside into uncouth, shaggy creatures, destitute of gloss and grace, and forget all our circus manners.
That which the grooming and breaking-in are to a horse, that culture is to a man, a sacrifice of freedom. The lower classes of men, the great undisciplined, or imperfectly disciplined bulk of mankind look on at the easy motions and trained grace of the higher classes, with much the same puzzlement as would a cluster of wild ponies stand and watch the passing of a cavalcade of elaborately-trained horses. Both would be equally ignorant of the amount of self-abnegation and submission to rule which go to give ease and gloss.
According to a Mussulman legend, the Queen of Sheba had some smack of savagery about her; she had goat's hair on her ankles. King Solomon heard this by report, and being desirous of ascertaining the truth, he had water poured over the pavement of his court when she came to visit him. As she approached she raised her skirt, and Solomon detected the goat's hair.
There are a good many men as well as women who appear in the best courts nowadays with hair about their hocks; they have been insufficiently groomed. But in this they differ from the Queen of Sheba, that they persistently show us their hocks, and even thrust them in our faces. Merciful powers! how many half-broken, ill-trimmed cobs I have met with, kicking up their undocked heels, showing us that they can jump over poles and overleap hurdles, that they can balance themselves on chairs, and dance and rear on their hind legs, and paw the air, and whinny for applause. We politely pat our palms, and look all the while, not at their antics, but at their hocks, not at all impressed with their silver and spangled trappings, but very conscious of the hair about their hoofs.
It is the fashion for moralists to hold up their hands, and shake their heads, and declaim against the artificialities, the disguises of social life, and to say that every word spoken and look given should be sincere; that men and women should scorn concealment and hate subterfuge. But—would the world be tolerable were it so constituted? I mean the world of men. Is it so in the world of nature? Is that above screens and disguises? Is that ruthlessly true, and offensively genuine in its operations? Where is there not manifest a desire to draw the veil over what is harsh and unbecoming? The very earth covers her bald places with verdure, obscures her wounds, and drapes her ragged edges. So the function of culture is the softening of what is rough, the screening of what is unseemly, the disguising of all that may occasion pain. It is nothing else but charity in its most graceful form, that spares another at the cost of self.
I have been in a volcanic region where there were innumerable craters, great and small. Those on the plain, hardly rising above a few feet out of it, showed all their bare horror, their torn lips, their black throats, their sides bristling with the angular lava that had boiled out of their hot and angry hearts, long ago, but ever showing. They were perfectly genuine, expressing their true nature in ugly nakedness. But there were other volcanoes rising to mountain heights, and these had mantled themselves in snow, had choked and smoothed over their clefts, and hung garlands of silver, and dropped gauzy veils over their vitreous precipices; the very craters, the sources of the fire, were filled to the brim and heaped up to overflow with unsullied snow, rising white, rounded, innocent, as a maiden's bosom. Which was best? I know which was the pleasantest to see.
So is it with humanity. We are all volcanoes with fire in our hearts. Some have broken forth and torn themselves to pieces, some are in a chronic state of fume, and dribble lava and splutter cinders perpetually, and others are exhausted. Surely it is best to hide our fires, and drape our savagery, and bury our snags and dust the white snow over all that is rugged and gloomy and ungentle.
Or—to revert to our former illustration, if we have hair on our heels, which is best, to expose it, or, like the Queen of Sheba, let down our skirts over it?
When our temper is ruffled, we do not fret with it those we meet—when our heart is bitter, we do not spit our gall in the faces of our friends—when our blood boils in our veins we are careful to let none of it squirt on and blister the hand that is extended to us. A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain—that is true, but a man or a woman may smile, and smile, and be exceedingly sorrowful, may dance and laugh with an aching heart. Who does not remember Andersen's story of the little mermaid, who obtained from the witch power to shed her squamous tail at the cost of feeling knives pierce her soles every footstep she took? And the little mermaid danced at the prince's wedding at the wedding of the prince whom she had once held to her heart, and for the love of whom she had shed her fish's tail, and danced with a rosy face, though every step was a mortal agony. Do we not love and venerate the little mermaid, because, instead of howling or whining, and holding up her bleeding soles to extract commiseration from all, she dropped her skirts over them, and danced and warbled, and flushed as the rose, so that none supposed she leaped with pain, and sang to still her heart, and flushed with stress of anguish? So is it with all who have gone through the great discipline of culture; they no more expose their wounds and cry out for sympathy than they expose deformities.
I remember the bridge over the Gave at Pau, on each side of which through its entire length sat beggars exhibiting sores and soliciting alms. But these were men and women in rags, and those who wear only the rags of culture do the same, they draw aside their tatters and expose their wounds to our shocked eyes.
But it is not so with such as have gone through the school and learnt its lessons. They are not for ever obtruding themselves, their worries, their distresses on every one they meet, their own proper self with its torn veins, and festering grief, and distilling blood is folded over with silk, and a jewelled brooch clasps the lace over the swelling, suffering bosom, and all who see it admire the jewels and are kept in ignorance of what is beneath. In the primitive Church the disciplina arcani was enforced, the doctrine of holy reserve taught; for there were certain mysteries of which the faithful were required to keep the secret; and culture, modern culture, has also its disciplina arcani, its doctrine of reserve, a reserve to be observed on all selfish pains and sorrows, a mantling over with a cloak of mystery everything which can jar with the pleasure and the cheerfulness and the brightness of the day to others.
So, with a heart quivering with apprehension and racked with grief for Arminell, Lady Lamerton moved about the terrace with a placid face, and with her thoughts apparently engrossed wholly in making her guests at home and happy. She insisted on Sir Bosanquet Gammon and the rector playing at aunt Sally, whilst Lady Gammon looked on with a face green with horror. She brought a garden chair herself to old and tottery Mrs. Calwoodleigh, who was standing looking on at her daughter playing lawn-tennis. She found a timid little cluster of husband and wife and daughters, fresh arrivals in the neighbourhood, and knowing no one, and introduced them to a dozen nice families. She broke up a flirtation with a young officer, which she thought undesirable, by sweeping away with her the young lady into the orchid house to admire a clump of Dissa grandiflora. She interrupted a political discussion in the nick of time, before the parties became angry and personal. She singled out a little old maid outrageously dressed who was prowling about the flowers, and delighted her by presents of cuttings and little pots of bulbs, more than she could carry, but which the gardener was bidden convey to Miss Bligh's carriage. She galvanised into life a drooping cluster of young and smooth parsons, and set them playing La Crosse with as many charming girls. She pointed out the tables where were claret and champagne cups, strawberries and cream, to certain thirsty and heavy souls which had been gravitating sideways in that direction for some time. She caught an antiquary, and carried him off to the end of the garden to show him a Romano-British stone with ogams nicked at the angle, which had been discovered used as a footbridge, and set up by Lord Lamerton to save it from destruction.
"Here, Mr. Fothergill, I must leave you to copy the inscription. Lady Gammon is anxious to have the polarisation of light explained, and I must take her to the library for an encyclopædia—fortunately the study to-day is not invaded by the public."
Behind her back many a remark was made on her excellence as a hostess, her cheerfulness, her amiability. Every one liked Lady Lamerton; they could not fail to do so, she took such pains to make herself agreeable. Only Arminell despised her, and despised her for those very qualities which won to her the hearts of her acquaintances. Arminell thought her lacking in depth and sincerity. It was true that she was without intensity of conviction, but that was characteristic of breadth; it was true that she was unreal, and that was part of her culture; so to some folks everything is unreal but Zolaism, the Morgue, discourtesy, breach of good manners, the refuse heap. Man is unreal clothed in skin, the only genuine man is he who has been excoriated, with every nerve and muscle and vein exposed; the canvas only is real, not the Madonna di San Sisto looking with her ineffably earnest eyes out of it; lamp-black and treacle and old rags are the reality, not the Book of Psalm and Song, printed out of the former on the transubstantiated latter; catgut and deal and brass only are real, not the symphony of Beethoven, not the march from the Kemenate in "Lohengrin," played on the instruments manufactured out of these vulgar materials. The pelting rain is real, not the gilded evening cloud that contains the stored moisture; in a word, that only is real, and commendable, and to be observed, which is gross, material, offensive. I know that the sweetness and fragrance of that old culture which was but another name, as I have already said, for charity, is passing away, like the rising incense, perhaps again to be caught and scented only in the courts of heaven. I know that it is in fashion now to be rude and brusque, and to deny oneself no freedom, and exercise on oneself no restraint, so as to be quite natural. But what is that save to revert to social Adamanism and Bosjesmanism—to savagery in its basest and nastiest form—to renounce the form as well as the power of culture.
Phædrus tells in one of his fables of an old woman who found an empty amphora of old Falernian wine; she put her nose to the mouth and snuffed and said, "If you smell so sweet when void, how sweet you must be when full."
Well! let us say that half the politeness and grace and charm of society is unreal. It is the aroma of the old Falernian. How much better, no doubt, if the vessel be full of that most precious old Falernian, that perfect courtesy of heart which suffereth long and is kind; vaunteth not itself, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, believeth all things, loveth all things, endureth all things. But, I ask, is not an empty amphora of Falernian more grateful than one full of asafœtida?
The evening light slanted over the park, making the grass yellow as corn, and casting purple shadows behind the elms. The front of the house toward the terrace was glorified, the plate-glass windows gleamed as if rolled out of sunlight. The terrace was alive with people in their gayest dresses, in light summer colours, pink and turquoise, strawberry, spring green, crimson and cream. The band was playing, and the scarlet uniforms of the military formed a brilliant patch of colour at the end of the terrace against a bank of yews.
Below the terrace was the tennis-court, reached by a flight of several steps, and against the wall that upheld the terrace roses were trained, and were in masses of flower, scenting the air.
The lawn-tennis ground formed a second terrace banked up from the park which sloped away rapidly thence to the winding river Ore.
In the midst of the flower-beds and moving coloured kaleidoscope of figures on the gravelled terrace was a fountain and a basin. In the latter floated water-lilies, and gold fish darted, and carried off the crumbs cast to them. The water that leaped out of a triton's shell was turned in the evening sun as it fell, into amethysts.
Away, across the valley, stood the little church with its tower peeping out of limes, now all alight with the western sun; and the cock on its top was turned to a bird of fire.
"Hark!" exclaimed the rector, "I hear our bell. Good heaven! Surely I've not forgotten—I did not know there was to be a funeral. I did not know any one was ill—in danger. It is tolling."
Then the band, which had rested for a moment and shaken the moisture out of their wind instruments, and cleared their throats with iced ale, came to attention as the conductor rattled his staff on the music-stand, and beat, one, two, three, four! Then with a blast and crash and rattle—
"Se-e-e the conquer-ing her-er-er-er-er-o comes,
Sou-ou-ound the trum-pets,
Be-e-eat the drums."
At that moment, again, a little hand was thrust into that of Lady Lamerton, and again she saw her boy, Giles, at her side. He was looking pale, and was crying.
"What is the matter, Giles? You are shivering. Have you taken a chill? Go indoors, dear."
"Mamma," said the boy, "I want papa. I have shown the Fountayne boys my pony and the horses, and my goat, and rabbits, whatever I thought papa would like them to see, and now I want papa. Where is papa?"
"My dear, you must go indoors. What is that? In pity—what is going on? Surely the public are not going to invade the terrace."
Yes—they were.
A large party had been shown the state apartments, had looked at the pictures, tried the sofas, made jokes over the family portraits, attempted to finger the china, and then had assembled at the drawing-room windows which commanded the terrace and the lawn-tennis courts.
"Seeing the 'ouse without the master, is like 'Amlet with the part of 'Amlet left out," observed one of the sight-seers. "I say, flunkey, point us out the noble lord, and I'll tip you a copper."
"Gentlemen and ladies," said the august butler, "I must request that you will not press to the windows. It is time to move on. There is another party waiting to go over the house."
"Ah! but suppose we don't choose to move on, Old Heavy? Ain't the place open to us? Was any time specified for us to be trotted out? Show us the statute," laughed a lawyer's clerk.
However, after some urging and remonstrance, the throng was got outside the state drawing-room, into the entrance hall.
"I say, you coves!" shouted the young man from the bespoke department of Messrs. Skewes, "Follow me, and I will get you a sight of his lordship and all the blue-blooded aristocrats below."
He led the way, and was followed at a run to the glass door opening upon the steps that descended to the terrace: the rush was so sudden that the butler had not time or thought to interpose.
"Hark!" called the lawyer's clerk. "By George, if the band ain't doing us the compliment by anticipation of striking up 'See the conquering hero comes!' which means us—the British public. Lend a shove, Tommy, and we'll be down among them and have some ices and sherry cobbler too, and take a squint at the noble lord himself."
A united thrust against the double glass doors drove them apart, and down the steps, and out upon the terrace poured the Public.
At that same moment the iron gates were swung apart, and another party entered through them—not of the sight-seers, but villagers in their working clothes and shirt-sleeves.
"See-e-e the conquer-ing her-er-er-er-er-o comes,
Sou-ou-ound the trum-pets,
Be-e-eat the drums."
The conductor of the band looked round, and what he saw made him hold up his staff. The music instantly ceased.
Also, simultaneously, all talking among the guests ceased.
Also, instantaneously, the sight-seers who had been jostling one another, and laughing loudly, and egging one another on, and were pouring down the steps, halted and ceased to be heard.
Nothing, indeed, was heard but the toll of the distant bell, and the crunch of the gravel under the feet of the advancing party of villagers.
The fish of the three ponds had mixed for once, and were silent in the presence of the all-conquering hero to whom all submit—Death.