Passing, passing—ah! whither? Why? Does the heart know why? Can the soul say where? I pass, but I pause to catch ev'ry cry, To watch ev'ry face, be it foul or fair. I must hear all the notes of the nightingales— Do they sing to a God or to graven things— And not till the last faint flute-note fails Will I stay my flight, will I fold my wings.

When the last chord died away, Mrs. Windsor's voice was heard saying—

"I remember now, it made me cry. How dismal it is."

"Yes," said Madame Valtesi, "as dismal as a wet Derby or a day at the seaside. I hope your anthem will be more lively, Lord Reggie. But of course it will. We always keep our sorrows for the drawing-room, and our chirpiness for church. For sheer godless merriment commend me to the grand chant. It always reminds me of the conspirators' chorus in the 'Huguenots.' I used to hear it as a child. One hears so many things as a child, doesn't one? Childhood is one long career of innocent eavesdropping, of hearing what one ought not to hear."

"Yes," said Esme, getting up from the piano. "And maturity is one long career of saying what one ought not to say. That is the art of conversation. Only one must always say it with intention, otherwise people think one grossly improper. Intention is everything. Artless impropriety is quite played out. Yvette Guilbert gave it its death-blow. It only lingers now in the writings of Ouida and the poems of Arthur Symonds. Why are minor poets so artless, and why do they fancy they are so wicked? What curious fancies even unintelligent people have. No minor poet has ever been wicked, just as no real artist has ever been good. If one intends to be good, one must take it up as a profession. It is quite the most engrossing one in the world. Have you ever been with a good person who is taking a holiday from being good? It is like falling into the Maelstrom. They carry you off your feet. Their enjoyment terrifies the imagination. They are like a Sunday school let loose in the Moulin Rouge, or Mr. Toole when he has made a pun! Sometimes I wish that I could be good too, in order to have such a holiday. Are you really going to bed, Lady Locke? Eleven! I had no idea it was so early. I am going to sit up all night with Reggie, saying mad scarlet things, such as Walter Pater loves, and waking the night with silver silences. Good-night. Come, Reggie, let us go to the smoking-room, since we are left alone. I will be brilliant for you as I have never been brilliant for my publishers. I will talk to you as no character in my plays has ever talked. Come! The young Endymion stirs in his dreams, and the pale-soul Selene watches him from her pearly car. The shadows on the lawns are violet, and the stars wash the spaces of the sky with primrose and with crimson. The night is old yet. Let me be brilliant, dear boy, or I feel that I shall weep for sheer wittiness, and die, as so many have died, with all my epigrams still in me."



XII.

The cottage was full of the curious suppressed rustling that seems to be inseparable from church-going in England. Good people invariably rustle, and so bad people, trying to be good, are inclined to rustle too. At least that was what Madame Valtesi said as she stood in the tiny, sage-green hall hung with fans, and finished buttoning her long Suede gloves. She still wore her big and shady hat. She declared it made her feel religious, and nobody was prepared to dispute the assertion. Tommy was clamouring for his promised green carnation; but Lord Reggie, in obedience to Lady Locke's request, told him that the one he had intended for him had faded away in the night, had faded exquisitely, as the wicked fade after flourishing like green bay trees; and Tommy, though inclined to tears, was soothed by a promise that he should sit on the organ seat and turn over in the anthem. Lady Locke looked rather serious, and Mrs. Windsor strangely dissipated. She always did look particularly dissipated on Sunday mornings, although she was not aware of it; and to-day she was intent on being decisively rustic, and as countrified in her piety as possible. She wore an innocent gown powdered with pimpernels, and a little bonnet that she thought holiness itself, consisting as it did of a very small bow and a very large spike. Lord Reggie and Esme Amarinth honoured the day with frock coats and tall hats; and the former was in a state of considerable excitement about his anthem.

Through the drowsy summer air the five bells of Chenecote Church chimed delicately, and prayer-books were at a premium. Everybody except Lady Locke had come down without one, and Mrs. Windsor was in despair.

"We must have them," she said piteously, "or the congregation will be dreadfully shocked. Congregations are so easily shocked in the country. I wonder if the servants have any? Servants always have prayer-books and that kind of thing, don't they? I will ask."

She rang the bell, and one of the tall footmen appeared.

"Simpson, we want four prayer-books," she said. "Are there any in the house?"

Simpson looked exceedingly doubtful, but said he would go and see. Eventually he returned with three.

"There is one more, ma'am—the upper housemaid's," he said, handing them on a salver. "But she wrote comments in it when she belonged to the Salvation Army, and she can't rub them out, ma'am, so she don't like to show it."

"Really!" said Mrs. Windsor, looking mystified. "Well, never mind, we must try and manage with these. Oh! Lord Reggie, you won't want one, of course, because you will be behind the curtain. I forgot that. We are going to walk. It is only ten minutes or so, and I thought it would be more rustic, especially as the roads are dusty. Now, I think we ought to start. If we are late it will create a scandal, and Mr. Smith will be horrified."

"How dutiful the atmosphere is!" Madame Valtesi said to Amarinth as they set forth. "We are so frightfully punctual that I feel quite like an early Christian. I wonder why the Christians were always so early before we were born? They are generally very late now."

"I suppose they have grown tired," he answered, arranging the carnation in his buttonhole meditatively. "Probably we suffer from the activity of our forefathers. When I feel fatigued I always think that my grandfather must have been what is called an excellent walker. How very Sabbath the morning is!"

There was, in fact, a Sunday air in the quiet country road. The geese had ceased from their mundane proceedings in the pond, and were meditating over their sins in some cloistered nook of the farmyard. The fields looked greenly pious, emptied as they were of labourers. In the flowery hedgerows the birds chirped with a chastened note; and even the summer wind touched the walkers as a bishop touches the heads of kneeling candidates at Confirmation. Or so, at least, Lady Locke thought with a pleasant fancifulness that she kept entirely to herself. The bells chimed on monotonously; and now and then, as they walked, they caught sight of neatly-dressed rustics in front of them, strolling mildly to the church, tricked out in all the black bravery of broadcloth, or decked in sprigged muslins and chip hats.

Mrs. Windsor was quite delighted.

"Is not this novel?" she exclaimed, setting her white veil straight, and spreading a huge parasol to the sun. "I feel so righteous. It is pleasant to feel righteous, isn't it? So much pleasanter than to be good. I hope Mr. Smith will not preach a long sermon; but he looks rather like a man who would. People who have nothing to say always do preach long sermons, don't they? They keep hoping they will have something to say presently, I suppose."

"And they hope out loud," said Madame Valtesi. "People who hope out loud are very trying. I know so many. Dear me, how dusty it is! I feel as if I were drowning. Are we nearly there?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Windsor; "there is the common—that is the common where Mr. Smith has checked the rowdyism. I wish he had not broken up all the idle comers before we came. I should so like to have met one."

"Mr. Smith has decidedly been premature," Amarinth said gravely. "Clergymen often are. They take away our sins before we have had time to sit down with them. There go the school children, I suppose. They look intensely clean. So many people look intensely clean, and nothing else. That is all one can say about them. Half the men I know have absolutely no other characteristic. Their only talent is that they know how to wash. Perhaps that is why men of genius so seldom wash. They are afraid of being mistaken for men of talent. What will happen when we come into church. Will everybody stand up?"

"I hope you will all sit down to hear my anthem," Lord Reggie said rather nervously. "It will be much better. Please, do! Lady Locke, will you promise to sit down? People attend so much more closely when they are sitting. If they stand up they always look about and think all the time about sitting down."

"Just as when people are asking you to stay they are always wondering if you will go," said Madame Valtesi, casting a vicious glance at Tommy, who was delightedly stirring up the dust.

"I will sit down certainly," said Lady Locke, "if you wish it; but I could listen equally well standing. I do hope Jimmy Sands will sing his little bit of solo correctly; I shall feel quite nervous till it is over."

Lord Reggie looked at her with earnest pleasure, and even with a momentary affection. He had never liked her so much before.

"Don't any of you stare at him while he is singing," he said, "or he will get sharp. He always does; I have noticed it."

"What a pity staring does not have that effect upon all of us," said Madame Valtesi. "London would be quite brilliant. I have looked at people for hours, but they have never got sharp."

"There goes the five minutes' bell," said Lady Locke; "we are just in time."

When they reached the churchyard Lord Reggie and Tommy went round to the vestry, and the rest of the party made their way to a front pew, amid the suppressed excitement of the rest of the congregation. Mr. Amarinth especially created a sensation; but he always expected to do that. Ever since he had made a name for himself by declaring that he was pleased with the Equator, and desired its further acquaintance, he had been talked about. Whenever the public interest in him showed signs of flagging he wrote an improper story, or published an epigram in one volume, on hand-made paper, with immense margins, or produced a play full of other people's wit, or said something scandalous about the North Pole. He had ruined the reputation of more than one eminently respectable ocean which had previously been received everywhere, and had covered Nature with confusion by his open attacks upon her. Just now he was living upon his green carnation, which had been freely paragraphed in all the papers; and when that went out of vogue he had some intention of producing a revised version of the Bible, with all the inartistic passages cut out, and a rhymed dedication to Mr. Stead, whose Review of Reviews always struck him as only a degree less comic than the books of that arch-humorist Miss Edna Lyall, or the bedroom imaginings of Miss Olive Schreiner. The villagers of Chenecote gaped open-mouthed at his green carnation and crimped hair; and the exhortation as delivered in a presto mumble by Mr. Smith was received with general apathy, as the opera of "Faust" is received on an off night in the opera season.

Lord Reggie and Tommy were completely hidden behind the curtain that shielded the organ seat; but the presence and agitation of the former were indicated by the confused perambulations of Jimmie Sands, who was perpetually dodging to and fro in a flushed manner between his place and the organ, receiving instructions, and conveying whispered directions to his youthful colleagues in the choir. The village organist had been deposed from his high estate for the time being, and Lord Reggie commanded the organ entirely—this fact becoming apparent during the service in the abrupt alternations of loud and soft, the general absence of pedal notes, and the continued employment of the vox humana as a solo stop during the singing of the psalms, to the undoing of the men in the choir, and the extreme astonishment of the unused congregation. At the beginning of the second lesson, too, Lord Reggie made his presence known by the performance of a tumultuous and unexpected obligato, which completely drowned the opening verses of the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and caused the painted windows at the extreme end of the church to crackle in a manner that suggested earthquakes and the last great day.

"What is he doing?" whispered Madame Valtesi to Amarinth. "Is it in the thirty-nine articles?"

"No," replied Esme; "he is only getting up from his seat. How wonderful he is! I never heard anything more impressive in my life. After all, unpremeditated art is the greatest art. Such an effect as that could never have been produced except impromptu."

The anthem passed off fairly well, although Jimmy Sands went rather flat, perhaps owing to the fact that none of the party from the cottage so much as glanced at him during his performance.

"He evidently made allowance for our staring," Madame Valtesi said afterwards. "However, it can't be helped; we shall know better another time. I thought his singing flat gave a touch of real character to the anthem."

Mrs. Windsor was congratulating Mr. Smith on his charming little service, and condoling with him on having been unable to pronounce the blessing. This formality had been rendered impossible by the ingenious action of Lord Reggie, who had forgotten about it, and evoked continuous music from the organ ever since the amen of the prayer preceding it, finally bursting into a loud fugue by Bach, played without the pedal part, just when the curate was venturing to meekly insert it into a second's interstice of comparative silence, brought about by the solo employment of the vox humana without accompaniment.

"However," said Mrs. Windsor, "I daresay it won't much matter for once in a way, will it? It is no good making ourselves miserable about comparative trifles."

"He might leave out a curse or two when he next reads the Commination Service, and balance matters in that way," said Madame Valtesi, aside to Amarinth.

"The rusticity of the service was quite delicious," Mrs. Windsor went on graciously. "So appropriate! Everything was so well chosen and in character! Ah, Mr. Smith, although you are a clergyman, I am certain you must have the artistic temperament."

"I trust not," Mr. Smith said very gravely—"I earnestly trust not. The artistic temperament is a sin that should be sternly struggled against, and, if possible, eliminated. In these modern days I notice that every wickedness that is committed is excused on the ground of temperament."

They were walking home across the common as he said this, and Lady Locke turned to Lord Reggie, who was by her side, still rather flushed by his exertions.

"Are you one of those who make a god of their temperament?" she said. "What Mr. Smith says seems to me rather true."

"I think one's temperament should be one's leader in life, certainly," he answered.

"The blind leading the blind."

"It is beautiful to be blind. Those who can see are always avoiding just the very things that would give them most pleasure. Esme says that to know how to be led is a much greater art than to know how to lead."

"I don't care to hear the opinions of Mr. Amarinth," she answered in a low voice. "His epigrams are his opinions. His actions are performed vicariously in conversation. If he were to be silent he would cease to live."

"You don't know Esme at all, really," Reggie said.

"And you know him far too well," she answered.

He looked at her for a moment rather curiously.



XIII.

Sunday afternoon is always a characteristic time. Even irreligious people, who have no principles to send them to sleep, or to cause them to take a weekly walk, or to induce them to write an unnecessary letter to New Zealand—why are unnecessary letters to New Zealand invariably written on Sunday afternoons?—even irreligious people are generally in an unusual frame of mind on the afternoon of the day of rest. They don't feel week-day. There is a certain atmosphere of orthodoxy which affects them. Possibly it causes them to feel peculiarly unorthodox. Still, it affects them. In the country, in summer especially, Sunday afternoon lays a certain spell upon everybody. It goes to their heads. They fall under its strange influence, even against their will, and become, in a measure, different from themselves. Solemn people are often unnaturally flippant on Sunday afternoon, and flippant people frequently retire to bed on the verge of tears. The hearty bow-wow girl is conscious of being unpleasantly chastened by some invisible power; and the stupid young man sinks into a strange apoplectic condition, with his chin sunk on his waistcoat, and his mind drowned in the waters of forgetfulness. Sloth is in the air, and a decorous desultoriness pervades humanity. It is as if thunder was in the social atmosphere. The repose is not quite natural. Those who are in high positions, and therefore have something to live down to, long to imitate the hapless rustic, and wander forth among the fields, sucking a straw, and putting their arm round a waist. Unmelodious persons are almost throttled by a desire to whistle; but the true singer feels as dumb as a tree. Lunch pervades the human consciousness, and the prospect of tea engages the mind to an extent which is neither quite normal nor entirely free from a suspicion of greediness. Dogs snore much louder than usual, and the confirmed sufferer from insomnia sleeps with an indecent soundness never attained by the beauty in the fairy tale. Undoubtedly, Sunday throws the world entirely out of gear, and that is one of its chief worldly charms. It is well to be out of gear at least once in the week.

This particular Sunday afternoon had not left the party at the cottage unscathed, as the acute observer would have immediately seen on penetrating into the pretty shady garden, with its formal rose walks, and its delightful misshapen yew trees. Madame Valtesi, for instance, was knitting, a thing she had scarcely ever been noticed to do within the memory of man. Mrs. Windsor was going about in garden gloves, with a spud and a pair of clippers, damaging the flower-beds, with an air of duty and almost sacred responsibility. Mr. Amarinth was reading the newspaper like a married man; and Lord Reggie was lying in a hammock, trying to kill flies by clapping his hands together. Lady Locke was indoors, writing the unnecessary letter to New Zealand, which has already been referred to; and Tommy, fatigued to tears by luncheon, had gone to bed, and was dreaming in an angry manner about black beetles, unable quite to attain the dignity of a nightmare, and yet deprived of the sweet repose which is popularly believed to shut the door on the nose of the doctor.

Yes, decidedly, it was Sunday afternoon!

The weather was very hot and languid, and the bees kept on buzzing all the time. Bung was engaged in investigating the coal-hole, apparently under the impression that hidden treasure was not foreign to its soil; and conversation entirely languished. Madame Valtesi dropped her stitches, Lord Reggie failed to kill his flies, and Mr. Amarinth misunderstood the drift of leading articles. The Sabbath mind was very much in evidence, and the Sabbath mind verges on imbecility. The bells chiming for afternoon service rose on the still air, and died away; but nobody moved. Evidently enthusiasm for rusticity combined with religion was fading away. A silence reigned, and the hour for tea drew slowly on. But presently Amarinth, after reading all the advertisements on the cover of his newspaper, put it down slowly and glanced around, with the puffy expression of a person suppressing a grown-up yawn.

His eyes wandered about, to Mrs. Windsor immersed in amateur gardening of the destructive kind, to Lord Reggie in his hammock, to Madame Valtesi dropping stitches in her low chair. He sighed and spoke—

"Newspapers are very enervating," he said. "I wonder what a journalist is like? I always imagine him a person with a very large head—with the particular sort of large head, you know, that is large because it contains absolutely nothing."

"I thought journalists were the people who sell newspapers at the street corners," said Lord Reggie.

"Oh! I don't fancy they are so picturesque as that," said Esme, again suppressing a yawn. "Madame Valtesi, you ought to know; you run a theatre, and people who run theatres always know journalists. It seems to be in the blood."

"How can I talk?" she replied. "Don't you see that I am knitting?"

"Are you doing a stitch in time, the sort of stitch that is supposed to rhyme with nine? I wonder why it is that we always give ourselves up to occupations that we dislike on Sunday. I have not read a newspaper for years. One learns so much more about what is happening in the world if one never opens a newspaper. I once wrote an article for a newspaper, but that was before I had met Sala. Ever since then I have been haunted by the fear that if I did it again I might grow like him. I believe he has lived in Mexico. His style always strikes me as decidedly Mexican. I met him at dinner, and he told me facts that I did not previously know, all the time I was trying to eat. Afterwards in the drawing-room he gave a lecture. I rather forget the subject, but I think it was, 'Eggs I have known.' He knew a great many. It was very instructive and uninteresting. I think he said he had patented it. How does one patent a lecture?"

"Esme, you are talking nonsense!" Madame Valtesi said, dropping two more stitches with an air of purpose.

"I hope I am. People who talk sense are like people who break stones in the road: they cover one with dust and splinters. What is Mrs. Windsor doing?"

"Looking for slugs," said Lord Reggie.

"Why?"

"To kill them."

"How dreadful! They live such gentle lives among the roses. Do let us talk about religion. I want to try and feel appropriate. Ah! here is Lady Locke. Lady Locke, we were just going to begin talking about religion."

"Indeed!" she said, coming forward slowly, and looking a little colonial after the completion of her task. "Do you know anything about the subject?"

"No. That is why I want to talk about it. Vivacious ignorance is so artistic."

"It is too common to be that," said Madame Valtesi. "Ignorant people are always vivacious, just as really clever men never wear spectacles. Wearing spectacles is the most played-out pose I know. I wonder the Germans still keep it up."

"A nation that keeps up their army would keep up anything," said Esme. "Germans always talk about foreign politics and native beer. Oh! Mrs. Windsor has just permitted a slug to live. I can see that by the way in which she is taking off her gloves and trying not to look magnanimous. Is it nearly tea-time, Mrs. Windsor?" he added, as she came up, a little flushed with under exertion. "I only ask because I am not thirsty. Tea is one of those delightful things that one takes because one does not want it. That is why we are all so passionately fond of it. It is like death, exquisitely unnecessary."

"I have found several slugs," she answered triumphantly; "but I can't kill them. They move so fast, at least when they are frightened. You would never believe it. I came upon one under a leaf just now, and it started just like a person disturbed in a nap. It fell right off the leaf, and I couldn't find it again."

"I suppose slugs have nerves, then," Reggie said, getting up out of his hammock, "and get strung up like people who over-work. Just think of a strung-up slug! There is something weird in the idea. A slug that started at its own shadow. Here is tea! Oh, Mrs. Windsor, where are the tents to be for the school treat to-morrow?"

"At the end of the croquet lawn. Mr. Smith says the children are terribly excited about it. Esme, you must address the children before they sing their hymn on going away. They always end with a hymn. Mr. Smith thinks it quiets them."

"I wonder if singing a hymn would quiet me when I am excited," said Esme, musing over his tea-cup.

"Are you ever excited?" asked Lady Locke.

"Sometimes, when I have invented a perfect paradox. A perfect paradox is so terribly great. It makes one feel like a trustee. Can you understand the sensation? Have you ever felt like a trustee?"

"I don't think I have," Lady Locke said, laughing.

"Then, dear lady, you have never yet really lived. To-morrow I shall feel like a trustee, for I am going to invent some marvellous pale paradoxes for the children—paradoxes like early dewdrops with the sun upon them. Mrs. Windsor, I shall address the children upon the art of folly, upon the wonderful art of being foolishly beautiful. After they are tired with their games and their graceful Arcadian frolics, gather them in an irregular group under that cedar tree, and while the absurd sun goes down, endeavouring, as the sun nearly always does in country places, to imitate Turner's later pictures, I will speak to them wonderful words of strange and delicate meaning, words that they can easily forget. The only things worth saying are those that we forget, just as the only things worth doing are those that the world is surprised at!"

"The world is surprised at nearly everything," said Lord Reggie. "It was surprised when Miss Margot Tennant married only a Home Secretary! A world that could be surprised at that could be surprised at anything. The world is surprised at Esme because he does not know how to make a pun, and because he dares to show the French what can be done with their drama. The world is surprised at me because I never go to Hurlingham, and because I have never read Mrs. Humphrey Ward's treatises! The world is even surprised when Mr. Gladstone is found to have been born in several places at the same time—as if he would be born at different times!—and M. Zola turns out to be crazily respectable. When is the world not surprised?"

"Virtue in any form astonishes the world," Madame Valtesi said. "I once did a good action. When I was very young I married the only man who did not love me. I thought he ought to be converted. Every one who knew me was astounded."

"If the world is surprised at good actions," Lady Locke said, "it is our own fault. We have trained it."

"Nothing is more painful to me than to come across virtue in a person in whom I have never previously suspected its existence," said Esme, putting down his tea-cup with a graceful gesture of abnegation. "It is like finding a needle in a bundle of hay. It pricks you. If we have virtue we should warn people of it. I once knew a woman who fell down dead because she found a live mouse in the pocket of her gown. A live virtue is like a live mouse. Indeed the surprises of virtue are far greater than the surprises of vice. We are never surprised when we hear that a man has gone to the bad; but who can fathom our wonderment when we are obliged to believe that he is gone to the good?"

"I hate a good man," Madame Valtesi said, with a certain dignity.

"Then you ought to lead one about with you in a string," said Esme. "It is so splendid to have some one always near to hate. It is like spending the day with a hurricane, or being born an orphan. I once knew a man who had been born an orphan. He had been so fortunate as never to have experienced the tender care of a mother, or the fostering anxiety of a father. There was something great about him, the greatness of a man who has never known trouble. Why are we not all born orphans?"

"I dare say it is a pity," Mrs. Windsor said rather sleepily. "It would save our parents a lot of trouble."

"And our children a great deal of anxiety," said Esme. "I have two boys, and their uneasiness about my past is as keen as my uneasiness about their future. I am afraid they will be good boys. They are fond of cricket, and loathe reading poetry. That is what Englishmen consider goodness in boys."

"And what do they consider goodness in girls?" asked Lady Locke.

"Oh, girls are always good till they are married," said Madame Valtesi. "And after that it isn't supposed to matter."

"English girls are like country butter," said Esme—"fresh. That is all one can say about them."

"And that is saying a good deal," said Lady Locke.

"I don't think so," said Lord Reggie. "Nothing is really worth much till it is a trifle stale. A soul that is fresh is hardly a soul at all. Sensations give the grain to the wood, the depth and dignity to the picture. No fruit is so worthless as the fruit with the bloom upon it."

"Yes," said Esme. "The face must be young, but the soul must be old. The face must know nothing, the soul everything. Then fascination is born."

"Perhaps merely an evil fascination," said Lady Locke.

"Fascination is art. I recognise no good or evil in art," Esme answered. "In England we have no art, just because we do recognise good and evil. Glasgow thinks it is shameful to be naked; yet even the Bible declares that the ideal condition is to be naked and unashamed; and Glasgow, being in Scotland, naturally gives the lead to England. We have no art. We have only the Royal Academy, which is remarkable merely for the badness of its cuisine, and the coiffure of its well-meaning President. Our artists, as they call themselves, are like Mr. Grant Allen: they say that all their failures are 'pot-boilers.' They love that word. It covers so many sins of commission. They set down their incompetence as an assumption, which makes it almost graceful, and stick up the struggle for life as a Moloch requiring the sacrifice of genius. And then people believe in the travesty. Mr. Grant Allen could have been Darwin, no doubt; but Darwin could never have been Mr. Grant Allen. But what is the good of trying to talk about what does not exist. There is no such thing as art in England."

"Shall we talk of the last new novel?" said Madame Valtesi. "Unfortunately I have not read it. I am told it is full of improper epigrams, and has not the vestige of a plot. So like life!"

"Some one said to me the other day that life was like a French farce," said Mrs. Windsor—"so full of surprises."

"Not the surprises of a French farce, I hope," said Madame Valtesi. "Esme, I am quite stiff from knitting so long. Take me to the drawing-room and sing to me a song of France. Let us try to forget England."

"Lady Locke, will you come for a stroll in the yew tree walk?" said Reggie. "I see Mrs. Windsor is trying to read 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe!' She always reads that on Sunday!"

Lady Locke assented.



XIV.

When Lord Reggie asked Lady Locke to come with him into the yew tree walk that Sunday afternoon, he fully intended to tell her that he would be glad to marry her. It seemed to him that Sunday was a very appropriate day for such a confession, and would give to his remarks a solemnity that they might otherwise lack. But somehow the conversation became immediately unmanageable, as conversations have a knack of doing, and turned into channels which had less than nothing to do with marriage. By a series of ingenious modulations Lord Reggie might doubtless have contrived eventually to arrive at the key in which he wanted to breathe out his love song; but the afternoon was too sultry for ingenuities, and so they talked about the influence of Art on Nature, and his anthem, until it was time to dress for dinner.

Lady Locke was a woman, and so it may be taken for granted that she divined her companion's original intention, and was perhaps a little amused at his failure to carry it into an act. But she manifested no consciousness, and disappeared to her bedroom without displaying either disappointment or triumph. She did, however, in fact know that Lord Reggie meant to ask her the fateful question, and she had quite decided now how she meant to answer it.

She had fallen into a curious sort of fondness for this tired, unnatural boy, whom she considered as twisted as if he had been an Egyptian cripple, zigzagging along a sandy track on his hands with his legs tied round his neck; and two or three days ago she had even thought seriously what she would say to him if he asked her to join lives with him permanently. The motherly feeling had verged on something else, very different; and when one day he carelessly touched her hand she had felt her heart beating with a violence that was painfully natural. But now, more than one incident that had since occurred had forged links in a new chain of resolution that held her back from a folly. Although possibly she hardly knew it, the scrap of conversation that she had chanced to overhear between Lord Reggie and Tommy had really decided her to meet the former with a refusal if he asked her to be his wife. It had opened her eyes, and shown her in a flash the influence that a mere pose may have upon others who are not posing. Her mother's heart flushed with a heat of anger at the idea of Tommy, her dead soldier's son, developing into the sort of young man whom she chose to christen "Modern"; and as her heart flushed, unknown to her her mind really decided. She still fancied that Lord Reggie was nothing more than a whimsical poseur, bitten by the tarantula of imitation that preys upon weak natures. She still fancied what she hoped. But incertitude strengthened resolve, and she never intended to be Lady Reggie Hastings. Yet she meant Lord Reggie to propose to her. She liked him so well that, womanlike, she could not quite forbear the pleasure of hearing him even pretend that he loved her—she supposed he would feel bound to pretend so much; and his proposal would give to her an opportunity of saying one or two things to him—of preaching that affectionate sermon, in fact, that she had long ago written in her thoughts.

Sweet women love to preach to those whom they like, and Lady Locke liked Lord Reggie very much, and wished strongly to have the chance of telling him so.

But he said nothing that night, and she had to wait for a while. The weather, which had certainly shown the most graceful politeness to the Surrey week, was still in a complaisant frame of mind when Monday morning dawned, and the tents were put up for the school children, and the Aunt Sallies and other instruments of amusement were posed in their places about the garden, without any fear arising lest the rain should prevent their being used. Esme Amarinth spent the morning in reflecting upon his address, and constructing pale paradoxes; and the rest of the party at the "Retreat" did nothing with all the quiet ingenuity that seems inbred in the English race.

At four o'clock the sound of lusty singing in the dusty distance announced the approach of the expected guests, who, under the direction of Mr. Smith, expressed their youthful feelings of anticipation and excitement in a processional hymn, whose words dealt with certain ritualistic doctrines in a spirit of serene but rather incompetent piety, and whose tune was remarkable for the Gounod spirit that pervaded its rather love-lorn harmonies. As Mr. Amarinth said, it sounded like a French apostrophe to a Parisian Eros, and was tinged with the amorous music colour of Covent Garden.

Mrs. Windsor received the party with weary grace, and a general salute that might have included all the national schools in the kingdom, so wide and so impersonal was its manner. She impressed the children as much as Madame Valtesi frightened them by examining them with a stony and sphinx-like gravity through her tortoise-shell eyeglass. The teachers conducted the programme of games—in which, however, Lady Locke, Tommy, and Lord Reggie fitfully took part; and after tea had been munched with trembling delight in the largest of the tents, and more games had been got through, Mr. Smith distributed small presents to all the children, some of whom were quite unstrung by the effort they had to make not to seem too happy in the presence of "the quality." The curate then took his leave, as he was obliged to visit a sick parishioner, and, as the sun was evidently on the point of beginning to imitate Turner's later pictures, Mrs. Windsor directed that the children should be assembled under the great cedar tree on the lawn, to hear Esme Amarinth's promised address.

The picture that the garden presented at this moment was quite a pretty one. The sun, as I have said, was declining towards the West in a manner strongly suggestive of a scene at the Lyceum Theatre after many rehearsals with a competent lime-light man. The monstrous yew trees cast gross misshapen shadows across the smooth, velvet lawns. The air was heavy with the scents of flowers. Across the gleaming yellow of the sky a black riband of homeward passing rooks streamed slowly towards the trees they loved. Under the spreading branches of the cedar stood the big motley group of flushed and receptive children, flanked by their more staid teachers, and faced by Bung, who sat upon his tail before them, and panted serenely, with his tongue hanging out sideways nearly to the ground. Dotted about upon creaking garden chairs were Mrs. Windsor, Madame Valtesi, Lady Locke, and Lord Reggie, while Tommy in a loose white sailor suit scampered about from one place to another, simmering in perfect enjoyment. And the central figure of all was Esme Amarinth, who stood leaning upon an ebony stick with a silver knob, surveying his audience with the peculiar smile of humourous self-satisfaction that was so characteristic of his large-featured face.

Just before he began his address Mrs. Windsor fluttered up to him, and whispered in his ear—

"Don't make any classical allusions, will you, Esme? I promised Mr. Smith there should be nothing of that kind. He thinks classical allusions corrupting. Of course he's wrong—good people always are—but perhaps we ought to humour him, as he is the curate, you know."

Esme assented with a graceful bend of his crimpled head, and in a clear and deliberate voice began to speak.

"The art of folly," he said, "that is to say, the art of being consciously foolish beautifully, has been practised to some extent in all ages, and among all peoples, from the pale, clear dawn of creation, when, as we are told, the man Adam, in glorious nudity, walked perfectly among the perfect glades of Eden, down to the golden noontide of this nineteenth century, in which we subtly live and subtly suffer. Always throughout the circling ages the soul of man has to some slight extent aspired after folly, as Nature aspires after Art, and as the old and learned aspire after the wonderful ignorance that lies hidden between the scarlet covers of the passionate book of youth. Always there have been in the world earnest men and earnest women striving with a sacred wisdom to compass the highest forms of folly, seeking with a manifold persistence to sound the depths of that violet main in which the souls of the elect rock to and fro eternally. But although, even in the morning of the world, there were earnest seekers after lies, the pursuit of ignorance has never been carried on with such unswerving fidelity and with so much lovely unreason as is the case to-day. We are beginning, only beginning, to understand some of the canons of the beautiful art of folly."

Here Esme changed his ebony stick into his other hand, and glanced round at Lord Reggie, with a delicate smile of self-approbation. Then he proceeded, without clearing his throat.

"The mind of man has, however, always clung with a poetic persistence to certain fallacies which have greatly interfered with the proper progress of folly, and have terribly hindered the evolution of disorder out of order, and of unreason out of reason. To give only a few instances. For centuries upon centuries we have been told by those unenlightened beings called philosophers, sages, and thinkers, that children should obey their parents, that the old should direct the young, that Nature is the mother of beauty, and that wisdom is the parent of true greatness. For centuries upon centuries we have had instilled into us the malign conception that in renunciation we shall find peace, and in starvation the most satisfying plenty. Men and women have lived to be dumb, instead of living to speak; have stopped their ears to the alluring cries of folly; have gone to the grave with all their sublime absurdities still in them, unuttered, unexpressed, unimpressed upon the wildly sensible people by whom they have been surrounded and environed. The art of folly has been trampled in the dust by the majority; while poor reasonable human beings have been offering up sacrifices to propriety, respectability, common sense, and a thousand grotesque idols, whose very names fall as unmelodiously upon the ear as the shrill and monotonous discords of the nightingales that torture us with their murmurings towards the latter end of May—whose very names, when written down upon smooth paper, or, as formerly, graved upon tablets of wax with instruments of ivory, are as disagreeable to the eye as the crude colouring of the Atlantic Ocean, or the unimaginable ugliness of a fine summer's day in the midland counties of England. But at last there seems to be a prospect of better things, the flush of a wonderful dawn in the hitherto shadowy sky. A star with a crimson mouth has arisen in the East to guide wise men and women out of the straight and narrow way down which they have been stumbling so long. I believe, I tremblingly dare to believe, that a bright era of undisciplined folly is about to dawn over the modern world, and therefore I speak to you, beautiful pink children, and I ask you to recognise your youth, and your exquisite potentiality for foolishness. For in youth, only in delicate, delicious youth, can we acquire the rudiments of the beautiful art of folly. When we are old we are so crusted with the hideous lichen of wisdom and experience, so gnarled with thought, and weather-beaten with knowledge, that we can only teach. We have lost the power to learn, as all teachers infallibly do."

At this point in Esme's address the face of the national schoolmaster, a grey person, rather conceited in his own wisdom than wise in his own conceit, began to present—as a magic lantern presents pictures upon a sheet—various expressions, all of which partook of uneasiness and indignation. He glanced furtively around, stared defiantly at the children, and shifted from one foot to the other like a boy who is being lectured. Esme observed his disquietude with considerable satisfaction.

"People teach in order to conceal their ignorance, as people smile in order to conceal their tears, or sin, too often, merely to draw away a curious observation from the amplitude and endurance of their virtue. The beautiful falling generation are learning to do things for their own sake, and not for the sake of Mrs. Grundy, who will soon sit alone in her dowdy disorder, a chaperon bereft of her debutante, the hopeless and frowsy leader of a lost and discredited cause. Yes, wisdom has nearly had its day, and the stars are beginning to twinkle in the violet skies of folly.

"It is not, alas! given to all of us to be properly foolish. The custom of succeeding ages has rendered wisdom a hereditary habit with thousands upon thousands of us, and even the destructive influence of myself, of Lord Reginald"—here he indicated Reggie, with one plump, white hand—"and of a few, a very few others, among whom I can include Mr. Oscar Wilde, has so far failed to uproot that pestilent plant from its home in the retentive soil of humanity. What was bad enough for our ridiculous fathers is still bad enough for too many of us. We are still content with the old virtues, and still timorous of the new vices. We still fear to clasp the radiant hands of folly, and drown our good impulses in the depths of her enchanted eyes. But many of us are comparatively elderly, and, believe me, the elderly quickly lose the divine power of faculty of disobedience. If it were my first word to you, children, I would say to you—learn to disobey. To know how to be disobedient is to know how to live."

The national schoolmaster at this point planted his feet in the first position with sudden violence, and gave vent to a hem that was a revelation of keen though inarticulate emotion. Esme indicated that he had heard the sound by slightly elevating his voice.

"Learn," he said, "to disobey the cold dictates of reason; for reason acts upon life as the breath of frost acts upon water, and binds the leaping streams of the abnormal in the congealing and icy band of the normal. All that is normal is to be sedulously avoided. That is what the modern pupil will teach in the future his old-fashioned masters. That is what you may, if you will have the courage, impress upon the pastors and masters, who must learn to look to you for guidance."

Extreme disorder of mind was now made manifest in the fantastic postures assumed by the entire staff of teachers, who began to turn their feet in, to construct strange patterns with their fingers, and in all other known ways to mutely express the dire forebodings of those who feel that their empire is passing away from them.

"It has hitherto been the privilege of age to rule the world. In the blessed era of folly that privilege will be transferred to youth. Never forget, therefore, to be young, to be young, and, if possible, consciously foolish."

The expressions of the children at this point indicated intelligent acquiescence, and Esme's face was irradiated with a tranquil smile.

"It is very difficult to be young, especially up to the age of thirty," he continued, "and very difficult to be properly foolish up to any age at all; but we must not despair. Genius is the art of not taking pains, and genius is more common than is generally supposed. If we do not take proper pains, there is no reason why even the cleverest among us should not in time learn to practise beautifully the beautiful art of folly. It is always well to be personal, and as egoism is scarcely less artistic than its own brother, vanity, I shall make no apology for now alluding, in as marked a manner as possible, to myself. I"—he spoke here with superb emphasis—"I am absurd. For years I have tried in vain not to hide it. For years I have striven to call public attention to my exquisite gift, to impress its existence upon a heartless world, to lift it up as a darkness that all may see, and for years I have practically failed. I have practically failed, but I am not without hope. I believe that my absurdity is at last beginning to obtain a meed of recognition. I believe that a few fine spirits are beginning to understand that artistic absurdity, the perfection of folly, has a bright and glorious future before it. I am absurd, and have been so for very many years, and in very many ways. I have been an aesthete. I have lain upon hearth-rugs and eaten passion-flowers. I have clothed myself in breeches of white samite, and offered my friends yellow jonquils instead of afternoon tea. But when aestheticism became popular in Bayswater—a part of London built for the delectation of the needy rich—I felt that it was absurd no longer, and I turned to other things. It was then, one golden summer day, among the flowering woods of Richmond, that I invented a new art, the art of preposterous conversation. A middle-class country has prevented me from patenting my exquisite invention, which has been closely imitated by dozens of people much older and much stupider than myself; but nobody so far has been able to rival me in my own particular line of business, and my society 'turns' at luncheon parties, dances, and dinners are invariably received with an applause which is almost embarrassing, and which is scarcely necessary to one so admirably conceited as myself."

At this point, Esme, whose face had been gradually assuming a pained and irritated expression, paused, and looking towards the West, which was barred with green and gold, and flecked with squadrons of rose-coloured cloudlets, exclaimed in a voice expressive of weakness—

"That sky is becoming so terribly imitative that I can hardly go on. Why are modern sunsets so intolerably true to Turner?"

He looked round as if for an answer; but, since nobody had anything to say, he passed one hand over his eyes, as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and continued with rather less vivacity—

"For the true artist is always conceited, just as the true Philistine is always fond of going to the Royal Academy. I have brought the art of preposterous conversation to the pitch of perfection; but I have been greatly handicapped in my efforts by the egregious wisdom of a world that insists upon taking me seriously. There is nothing that should be taken seriously, except, possibly, an income or the music halls, and I am not an income or a music hall, although I am intensely and strangely refined. Yet I have been taken seriously throughout my career. My lectures have been gravely discussed. My plays have been solemnly criticised by the amusing failures in literature who love to call themselves 'the gentlemen of the press.' My poems have been boycotted by prurient publishers; and my novel, 'The Soul of Bertie Brown,' has ruined the reputation of a magazine that had been successful in shocking the impious for centuries. Bishops have declared that I am a monster, and monsters have declared that I ought to be a bishop. And all this has befallen me because I am an artist in absurdity, a human being who dares to be ridiculous. I practise the exquisite art of folly, an art that will in the future take rank with the arts of painting, of music, of literature. I was born to be absurd. I have lived to be absurd. I shall die to be absurd; for nothing can be more absurd than the death of a man who has lived to sin, instead of having lived to suffer. I married to be absurd; for marriage is one of the most brilliant absurdities ever invented by a prolific imagination. We are all absurd; but we are not all artists, because we are not all self-conscious. The artist must be self-conscious. If we marry seriously, if we live solemnly, and die with a decent gravity, we are being absurd; but we do not know it, and therefore our absurdity has no value. I am an artist, because I am consciously absurd; and I wish to impress upon you to-day, that if you wish to live improperly, you must be consciously absurd too. You must commit follies; but you must not be under the impression that you are performing sensible acts, otherwise you will take rank with sensible people, who are invariably and hopelessly middle class."

An interruption occurred here—one of the smallest children who was stationed in the front of the group under the cedar tree suddenly bursting into a flood of tears, and having to be led, shrieking, away to a distant corner of the garden. Esme followed its convulsed form with his eyes, and then remarked—

"That child is being absurd; but that child is not an artist, because it is not conscious of its absurdity. Remember, then, to be self-conscious, to set aside the normal, to be young, and to be eternally foolish. Take nothing seriously, except yourselves, if possible. Do not be deceived into thinking the mind greater than the face, or the soul grander than the body. Strike the words virtue and wickedness out of your dictionaries. There is nothing good and nothing evil. There is only art. Despise the normal, and flee from everything that is hallowed by custom, as you would flee from the seven deadly virtues. Cling to the abnormal. Shrink from the cold and freezing touch of Nature. One touch of Nature makes the whole world commonplace. Forget your Catechism, and remember the words of Flaubert and of Walter Pater, and remember this, too, that the folly of self-conscious fools is the only true wisdom! And now sing to us your hymn, sing to us under the cedar tree self-consciously, and we will listen self-consciously, even as Ulysses listened to——"

But here a gentle and penetrating "Hush!" broke from the lips of Mrs. Windsor, and Esme paused.

"Sing to us," he said, "and we will listen as the old listen to the voices of youth, as the nightingale listens to the properly trained vocalist, as Nature listens to Art. Sing to us, beautiful rose-coloured children, until we forget that you are singing a hymn, and remember only that you are young, and that some day, in the long-delayed fulness of time, you will be no longer innocent."

He uttered the last words in a tone so soft and so seductive that it was like honey and the honeycomb, and then stood with his eyes fixed dreamily upon the children, who had been getting decidedly red and fidgety, unaccustomed to be directly addressed, and in so fantastic a manner. The relief of the teachers at the cessation of Amarinth's address was tumultuously obvious. They once more turned out their toes. The anguished expression died away from their faces, and they ceased to twist their fingers into curious patterns suggestive of freehand drawings. The national schoolmaster, unlocking his countenance, and delightedly assuming his wonted air of proud authority, stepped forward and called for the Old Hundredth; and in the gentle evening air the well-known tune ascended like incense to the darkening heavens. Shrilly the youthful voices rose and fell, until the amen came as a full stop. Then the little troop was marshalled two and two, made a collective obeisance to Mrs. Windsor and her guests, and wheeled out of the garden into the drive at a quick step, warbling poignantly, "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Gradually the sound decreased in volume, decreased in a long diminuendo, and at last faded away into silence.

Mrs. Windsor sighed.

"Children are very sticky," she remarked. "I am glad I never had any."

"Yes," said Madame Valtesi; "they are as adhesive as postage-stamps. What time do we dine to-day?"

"Not till half-past eight."

"I shall go in, and sit down quietly and try to feel old. Youth is quite terrible, in spite of what Esme says. Esme, youth is not passionate; it is merely sticky and excited."

"What a pity it is not self-consciously sticky," he murmured, accompanying her into the house.

"Why?"

"Then perhaps it might be induced to wash occasionally. I wonder if I can find a hock and seltzer. I feel like a volume of sermons—so very dry."



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. Esme 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 Esme 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 Graiae, 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 Esme. "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 Esme, 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.



NOVELS BY MAARTEN MAARTENS.

THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life. By MAARTEN MAARTENS, author of "God's Fool," "Joost Avelingh," etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"Until the Appletons discovered the merits of Maarten Maartens, the foremost of Dutch novelists, it is doubtful if many American readers knew that there were Dutch novelists. His 'God's Fool' and 'Joost Avelingh' made for him an American reputation.... He is a master of epigram, an artist in description, a prophet in insight."—Boston Advertiser.

"It would take several columns to give any adequate idea of the superb way in which the Dutch novelist has developed his theme and wrought out one of the most impressive stories of the period.... It belongs to the small class of novels which one can not afford to neglect."—San Francisco Chronicle.

"Maarten Maartens stands head and shoulders above the average novelist of the day in intellectual subtlety and imaginative power."—Boston Beacon.

GOD'S FOOL. By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make palatable a less interesting story of human lives or one less deftly told."—London Saturday Review.

"A remarkable work."—New York Times.

"Maarten Maartens has secured a firm footing in the eddies of current literature.... Pathos deepens into tragedy in the thrilling story of 'God's Fool.'"—Philadelphia Ledger.

"The story is wonderfully brilliant.... The interest never lags; the style is realistic and intense; and there is a constantly underlying current of subtle humor.... It is, in short, a book which no student of modern literature should fail to read."—Boston Times.

JOOST AVELINGH. By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"So unmistakably good as to induce the hope that an acquaintance with the Dutch literature of fiction may soon become more general among us."—London Morning Post.

"A novel of a very high type. At once strongly realistic and powerfully idealistic."—London Literary World.

"Full of local color and rich in quaint phraseology and suggestion."—London Telegraph.

"Maarten Maartens is a capital story-teller."—Pall Mall Gazette.

"Our English writers of fiction will have to look to their laurels."—Birmingham Daily Post.



HANDY VOLUMES OF FICTION.

PEOPLE AT PISGAH. By EDWIN W. SANBORN.

"A most amusing extravaganza."—The Critic.

MR. FORTNER'S MARITAL CLAIMS, and Other Stories. By RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.

"When the last story is finished we feel, in imitation of Oliver Twist, like asking for more."—Public Opinion.

GRAMERCY PARK. A Story of New York. By JOHN SEYMOUR WOOD, author of "An Old Beau," etc.

"A realistic story of New York life, vividly drawn, full of brilliant sketches."—Boston Advertiser.

A TALE OF TWENTY-FIVE HOURS. By BRANDER MATTHEWS and GEORGE H. JESSOP.

"The reader finds himself in the midst of tragedy; but it is tragedy ending in comedy. The story is exceptionally well told."—Boston Traveller.

A LITTLE NORSK; or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen. By HAMLIN GARLAND, author of "Main Traveled Roads," etc.

"There is nothing in story-telling literature to excel the naturalness, pathos, humor, and homelike interest with which the little heroine's development is traced."—Brooklyn Eagle.

TOURMALIN'S TIME CHEQUES. By F. ANSTEY, author of "Vice Versa," "The Giant's Robe," etc.

"Each cheque is good for several laughs."—New York Herald.

FROM SHADOW TO SUNLIGHT. By the MARQUIS OF LORNE.

"In these days of princely criticism—that is to say, criticism of princes—it is refreshing to meet a really good bit of aristocratic literary work, albeit the author is only a prince-in-law."—Chicago Tribune.

ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM. By KATE SANBORN.

"A sunny, pungent, humorous sketch."—Chicago Times.

ON THE LAKE OF LUCERNE, and Other Stories. By BEATRICE WHITBY.

"The stories are pleasantly told in light and delicate vein, and are sure to be acceptable to the friends Miss Whitby has already made on this side of the Atlantic."—Philadelphia Bulletin.

Each, 16mo, boards, with specially designed cover, 50 cents.



HANDY VOLUMES OF FICTION.

Each, 12mo, flexible cloth, with special design, 75 cents.

THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. By GILBERT PARKER.

"To tell such a story convincingly a man must have what I call the rarest of literary gifts—the power to condense. Of the good feeling and healthy wisdom of this little tale others no doubt have spoken and will speak. But I have chosen this technical quality for praise, because in this I think Mr. Parker has made the furthest advance on his previous work. Indeed, in workmanship he seems to be improving faster than any of the younger novelists."—A. T. QUILLER-COUCH, in the London Spectator.

THE FAIENCE VIOLIN. By CHAMPFLEURY. Translated by W. H. BISHOP.

"The style is happy throughout, the humorous parts being well calculated to bring smiles, while we can hardly restrain our tears when the poor enthusiast goes to excesses that have a touch of pathos."—Albany Times-Union.

TRUE RICHES. By FRANCOIS COPPEE.

"Delicate as an apple blossom, with its limp cover of pale green and its stalk of golden-rod, is this little volume containing two stories by Francois Coppee. The tales are charmingly told, and their setting is an artistic delight."—Philadelphia Bulletin.

"The author scarcely had a thought of sermonizing his readers, but each of these little stories presents a moral not easily overlooked, and whose influence lingers with those who read them."—Baltimore American.

A TRUTHFUL WOMAN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. By KATE SANBORN, author of "Adopting an Abandoned Farm," etc.

"The veracious writer considers the pros of the 'glorious climate' of California, and then she gives the cons. Decidedly the ayes have it.... The book is sprightly and amiably entertaining. The descriptions have the true Sanborn touch of vitality and humor."—Philadelphia Ledger.

A BORDER LEANDER. By HOWARD SEELY, author of "A Nymph of the West," etc.

"We confess to a great liking for the tale Mr. Seely tells.... There are pecks of trouble ere the devoted lovers secure the tying of their love-knot, and Mr. Seely describes them all with a Texan flavor that is refreshing."—New York Times.

"A swift, gay, dramatic little tale, which at once takes captive the reader's sympathy and holds it without difficulty to the end."—Charleston News and Courier.



MANY INVENTIONS. By RUDYARD KIPLING. Containing fourteen stories, several of which are now published for the first time, and two poems. 12mo, 427 pages. Cloth, $1.50.

"The reader turns from its pages with the conviction that the author has no superior to-day in animated narrative and virility of style. He remains master of a power in which none of his contemporaries approach him—the ability to select out of countless details the few vital ones which create the finished picture. He knows how, with a phrase or a word, to make you see his characters as he sees them, to make you feel the full meaning of a dramatic situation."—New York Tribune.

"'Many Inventions' will confirm Mr. Kipling's reputation.... We would cite with pleasure sentences from almost every page, and extract incidents from almost every story. But to what end? Here is the completest book that Mr. Kipling has yet given us in workmanship, the weightiest and most humane in breadth of view."—Pall Mall Gazette.

"Mr. Kipling's powers as a story-teller are evidently not diminishing. We advise everybody to buy 'Many Inventions,' and to profit by some of the best entertainment that modern fiction has to offer."—New York Sun.

"'Many Inventions' will be welcomed wherever the English language is spoken.... Every one of the stories bears the imprint of a master who conjures up incident as if by magic, and who portrays character, scenery, and feeling with an ease which is only exceeded by the boldness of force."—Boston Globe.

"The book will get and hold the closest attention of the reader."—American Bookseller.

"Mr. Rudyard Kipling's place in the world of letters is unique. He sits quite aloof and alone, the incomparable and inimitable master of the exquisitely fine art of short-story writing. Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson has perhaps written several tales which match the run of Mr. Kipling's work, but the best of Mr. Kipling's tales are matchless, and his latest collection, 'Many Inventions,' contains several such."—Philadelphia Press.

"Of late essays in fiction the work of Kipling can be compared to only three—Blackmore's 'Lorna Doone,' Stevenson's marvelous sketch of Villon in the 'New Arabian Nights,' and Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles.'... It is probably owing to this extreme care that 'Many Inventions' is undoubtedly Mr. Kipling's best book."—Chicago Post.

"Mr. Kipling's style is too well known to American readers to require introduction, but it can scarcely be amiss to say there is not a story in this collection that does not more than repay a perusal of them all."—Baltimore American.

"As a writer of short stories Rudyard Kipling is a genius. He has had imitators, but they have not been successful in dimming the luster of his achievements by contrast.... 'Many Inventions' is the title. And they are inventions—entirely original in incident, ingenious in plot, and startling by their boldness and force."—Rochester Herald.



A JOURNEY IN OTHER WORLDS. A Romance of the Future. By JOHN JACOB ASTOR. With 9 full-page Illustrations by Dan Beard. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"An interesting and cleverly devised book.... No lack of imagination.... Shows a skillful and wide acquaintance with scientific facts."—New York Herald.

"The author speculates cleverly and daringly on the scientific advance of the earth, and he revels in the physical luxuriance of Jupiter; but he also lets his imagination travel through spiritual realms, and evidently delights in mystic speculation quite as much as in scientific investigation. If he is a follower of Jules Verne, he has not forgotten also to study the philosophers."—New York Tribune.

"A beautiful example of typographical art and the bookmaker's skill.... To appreciate the story one must read it."—New York Commercial Advertiser.

"The date of the events narrated in this book is supposed to be 2000 A. D. The inhabitants of North America have increased mightily in numbers and power and knowledge. It is an age of marvelous scientific attainments. Flying machines have long been in common use, and finally a new power is discovered called 'apergy,' the reverse of gravitation, by which people are able to fly off into space in any direction, and at what speed they please."—New York Sun.

"The scientific romance by John Jacob Astor is more than likely to secure a distinct popular success, and achieve widespread vogue both as an amusing and interesting story, and a thoughtful endeavor to prophesy some of the triumphs which science is destined to win by the year 2000. The book has been written with a purpose, and that a higher one than the mere spinning of a highly imaginative yarn. Mr. Astor has been engaged upon the book for over two years, and has brought to bear upon it a great deal of hard work in the way of scientific research, of which he has been very fond ever since he entered Harvard. It is admirably illustrated by Dan Beard."—Mail and Express.

"Mr. Astor has himself almost all the qualities imaginable for making the science of astronomy popular. He knows the learned maps of the astrologers. He knows the work of Copernicus. He has made calculations and observations. He is enthusiastic, and the spectacular does not frighten him."—New York Times.

"The work will remind the reader very much of Jules Verne in its general plan of using scientific facts and speculation as a skeleton on which to hang the romantic adventures of the central figures, who have all the daring ingenuity and luck of Mr. Verne's heroes. Mr. Astor uses history to point out what in his opinion science may be expected to accomplish. It is a romance with a purpose."—Chicago Inter-Ocean.

"The romance contains many new and striking developments of the possibilities of science hereafter to be explored, but the volume is intensely interesting, both as a product of imagination and an illustration of the ingenious and original application of science."—Rochester Herald.



STANDARD FRENCH FICTION.

PICCIOLA. By X. B. SAINTINE. With 130 Illustrations by J. F. GUELDRY. 8vo. Cloth, gilt, $1.50.

"Saintine's 'Picciola,' the pathetic tale of the prisoner who raised a flower between the cracks of the flagging of his dungeon, has passed definitely into the list of classic books.... It has never been more beautifully housed than in this edition, with its fine typography, binding, and sympathetic illustrations."—Philadelphia Telegraph.

"'Picciola' is an exquisite thing, and deserves such a setting as is here given it."—Hartford Courant.

"The binding is both unique and tasteful, and the book commends itself strongly as one that should meet with general favor in the season of gift-making."—Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.

AN ATTIC PHILOSOPHER IN PARIS; or, A Peep at the World from a Garret. Being the Journal of a Happy Man. By EMILE SOUVESTRE. With numerous Illustrations. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.50.

"A suitable holiday gift for a friend who appreciates refined literature."—Boston Times.

"It possesses a charming simplicity of style that makes it extremely fascinating, while the moral lesson it conveys commends itself to every heart. The work has now become a French classic. It is beautifully gotten up and illustrated, and is a delight to the eye as well as to the mind and heart."—Chicago Herald.

"The influence of the book is wholly good. The volume is a particularly handsome one."—Philadelphia Telegraph.

"It is a classic. It has found an appropriate reliquary. Faithfully translated, charmingly illustrated by Jean Claude with full-page pictures, vignettes in the text, and head and tail pieces, printed in graceful type on handsome paper, and bound with an art worthy of Matthews, in half-cloth, ornamented on the cover, it is an exemplary book, fit to be 'a treasure for aye.'"—New York Times.

THE STORY OF COLETTE. A new large-paper edition. With 36 Illustrations. 8vo. Cloth, $1.50.

"There is not a line in this little idyl that is not as sweet and fresh as a June morning."—Boston Commercial Bulletin.

"One of the gems of the season.... It is the story of the life of young womanhood in France, dramatically told, with the light and shade and coloring of the genuine artist, and is utterly free from that which mars too many French novels. In its literary finish it is well-nigh perfect, indicating the hand of the master."—Boston Traveller.

"The binding is exquisite."—Rochester Union and Advertiser.



BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES (Sara Jeannette Duncan).

A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY. A novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

Few literary debutantes have met with the success obtained by Sara Jeannette Duncan's first book, "A Social Departure." Her succeeding books showed the same powers of quick observation and graphic description, the same ability to identify and portray types. Meantime, the author has greatly enlarged her range of experience and knowledge of the world. A true cosmopolite, London, Paris, and Calcutta have become familiar to her, as well as New York and Montreal. The title of her new book is no misnomer, and the author's vigorous treatment of her theme has given us a book distinguished not only by acute study of character, command of local color, and dramatic force, but also by contemporaneous interest.

THE SIMPLE ADVENTURES OF A MEMSAHIB. With 37 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

"It is impossible for Sara Jeannette Duncan to be otherwise than interesting. Whether it be a voyage around the world, or an American girl's experiences in London society, or the adventures pertaining to the establishment of a youthful couple in India, there is always an atmosphere, a quality, a charm, peculiarly her own."—Brooklyn Standard-Union.

A SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I Went Round The World by Ourselves. With 111 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.75.

"Widely read and praised on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, with scores of illustrations which fit the text exactly and show the mind of artist and writer in unison."—New York Evening Post.

"It is to be doubted whether another book can be found so thoroughly amusing from beginning to end."—Boston Daily Advertiser.

AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON. With 80 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.50.

"One of the most naive and entertaining books of the season."—New York Observer.

"So sprightly a book as this, on life in London as observed by an American, has never before been written."—Philadelphia Bulletin.

"Overrunning with cleverness and good will."—New York Commercial Advertiser.

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.