"If I don't get some sprinting training this fall, they'll shunt me off the track team," said Frank, his face falling with a sudden anxious monition.
"I perceive the same trait in the professions, Mr. Jardine. No longer do you see a politician pointed out as a close and powerful debater, or a lawyer as a cogent reasoner. Why, they used to make all manner of discriminations in a man's mental endowments. One was no lawyer, but a popular speaker—could carry a jury with him against both law and fact; another had no eloquence, nor appreciation of principles, but was grounded in case learning and precedent; another had a splendid choice of words, and a magnetic presence, and a gift of oratory—and the house would be crowded whenever he spoke. Now, they tell me a judge would virtually order such an orator to sit down—ask him to come to the point, or to be brief. They consider all this too flamboyant—spread-eagleism."
"There does seem a great change in recent years," said Jardine, ceasing his thoughtful puffing of his cigar, taking it out of his mouth and looking critically at its ash; "there are now no world-famous orators, very few politicians of real parts, rarely indeed a statesman; the notable lawyers are mostly old men of other days, of other traditions."
"And yet," said Mrs. Laniston, admirably capable of presenting the antithesis, "though imagination, æstheticism, hero-worship, ambition, all the aspirations are dead, this is pre-eminently the age of the fake and the blatherskite. People are capable of credulity, but not of credence. They are superstitious, but they have no faith. The 'isms' of any fantastic sort will flourish, and the churches are empty. The adoption of queer creeds, of fake cures, of quack medicines, of dangerous beautifiers, of impossible methods of learning, of absurd processes of art and illustration, of fantastic devices in edibles would abash the pretended miracle workers of the Middle Ages. You can scarcely buy a yard of genuine goods or a pound of unadulterated food. People don't care for reading as they once did; the art of conversation is dead; nobody writes letters any more—your friends send you souvenir postcards."
She fanned silently a few moments, her delicate, diamonded hand all the more dainty for the simulation of a man's shirtsleeve and cuff, which her plaited linen blouse affected, her eyes fixed on the panorama of storm on the horizon while the air here was so suave that the grey-streaked curls on her brow did not stir with the motion of her rocking. She suddenly resumed, interested in another branch of the subject.
"Instead of the solid business of education, that ought to be as solemn as prayer, the acquisition of knowledge and the mental training for the battle of life being held up as a great opportunity and privilege for the young, it is made attractive, alluring, easy; the fakers have found that royal road to learning. I was dismayed when I had got Lucia and Ruth beyond the geography, and spelling, and arithmetic phase. I said to them, 'Now, if you don't want to learn anything further, you can stay at home, but every day that you do stay at home you shall sew—plain sewing—from morning till night.' Mr. Laniston said I ought to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. But they developed into quite hard students. They balked just enough to get a bowing acquaintance with needle and thimble. I had my way—I hate half measures. They know what they do know, thoroughly. I can't tolerate incompetence. Unless a thing is excellent in its way I can make no terms with it, no allowance because of partiality or affection. Now, Mr. Laniston loves music, and he knows something about it. But he would sit and listen, with all the delight in life, to Ruth as she bleated out of time and tune—the poor child has no voice and no taste—her talent is for painting. But I stopped that. I said, 'Because her lispings please you, she shan't make a show of herself.' And I stopped the lessons. Lucia is altogether different, a fine voice and a fine ear, but she can't draw a straight line. So she had every musical advantage, and I saw to it that she availed herself of them. We had many a battle royal. 'The sons of harmony came to cuffs,'" she quoted, with a laugh.
The accession of Mr. Jardine's interest was so apparent when Mrs. Laniston spoke of Lucia that she might have been tempted to continue the subject, for she made a point of deserving her reputation as an agreeable woman, had not the young lady in question suddenly issued from the door of the hotel. Her cousin Ruth was following, and, after a glance of inquiry, they smilingly took their way along the verandah toward the door of the ladies' parlour, where the party sat. The eyes of both were intently fixed on Mrs. Laniston, as if in anticipation of some effect, she scarcely knew what. Suddenly she remembered the plundered trunk, left defenceless at their mercy. Mr. Jardine was devoutly grateful that they had seen fit to remove their hats. He was priggish, even old-fashioned in certain persuasions, and the sight of a young lady at table, on the verandah, at the piano, all day, in a hat, was at variance with his taste. He had no idea that the hats had disappeared because of an incongruity with adjuncts, very lately assumed, of the white dresses. The jacket of Lucia's gown had been laid aside, and she now wore, in lieu of the plain white linen blouse, one of fine white Irish lace. It had dainty elbow sleeves (Mrs. Laniston still conserved a plump arm). It had a belt, a stock collar, and at each elbow a knot of delicately tinted ribbons of a sea-shell pink, with rainbow stripes of faint blue, brown, fawn, and a thread of red. Nothing could have better accorded with the fair, fresh complexion, the brown hair, in a luxuriant pompadour roll, half crushed down on one side of the forehead, the long, romantic, dark grey eyes, with their drooping black lashes. He could not imagine why they should be received in such cold silence by this woman, with her evident motherly doting on them both. Ruth was a bit the more showy; she had confiscated a bolero of alternate lace insertion and lilac ribbon, and she had found a lilac ribbon for her blond hair. Mrs. Laniston had a moment of wonder as to where that blue messaline waist could be—certainly it had not been in that trunk! Since she remained silent, Mr. Jardine's manner was marked with an accession of humorous cordiality as he rose and placed chairs for the two.
"And what are the commands of your ladyship for this evening?" he said, looking admiringly at Lucia.
"The Ferris Wheel, of course!" she exclaimed, with enthusiasm.
He could have fallen on the spot. He had ignored the Ferris Wheel, and he had rested supine in the fatuous conviction that she had forgotten it. He was indescribably tired of the street fair. Its inanities would have been insupportable to a man of his type in its best estate, but hampered with the thousand sensitive points that beset the escort of a lady in an amusement utterly beneath her pretensions and custom, so remote from her comprehension that she was as if on another planet, made heavy draughts on his amiability, his endurance, even his savoir faire. He hardly knew how to meet the unprecedented problem it presented in the interest of his fair charges. If he had had his way neither should have shown her face in so motley a throng. But he was exacting, a bit old-fashioned, and had not even Mrs. Laniston's philosophy that would give them a little line in matters of scant importance that she might more easily curb them when circumstances required this. They would soon tire of a harmless folly, but a monotony of dulness could not be maintained. The prospect of further experiences of the street fair strained the tension of his equanimity almost to the breaking point. He could scarcely endure the thought how nearly they had escaped it all; a little more—but for the causeless delay of their preparations—and the "hack," with its strong, fleet horses would have been at the door. To be sure it would have whirled them into the midst of the mountain storm, but the thought of wind and lightning, thunder and torrents of rain was less abhorrent to him at that moment than the recurrence of the trials of the "show."