“Yes, and likely to be the last of that kind; but I shall leave your lordship to judge for yourself.”
“Ta-ta, Danford—shall see you to-morrow early about the Dining-Halls scheme.”
CHAPTER IX
Nettie Collins, Gwendolen’s social guide, declared she had nothing more to teach her pupil now she had made such progress in the art of observation, recognised her lover, and just lately known her father again. This last event had been curious. One day, Gwen was walking through the rooms of the National Gallery, enjoying the beauty of art that had been hidden from her for so many years; as she stood in front of Pinturicchio’s “Story of Griselda,” wondering at the past generations who not only allowed, but insisted on women turning themselves into beasts of burden, she noticed a middle-aged man of commanding stature, close to her, gazing at the same picture. She looked up and her eyes met his; her present surroundings vanished, and she lived in an evoked dream, which brought back past scenes and long-buried joys. As she stared at him, she little by little reconstructed the scenes of her childhood, and as in a trance her lovely lips faintly murmured the word “Father.”
“What a magician is love,” thought Gwendolen, when she retired that night to her bedroom, after long hours of conversation with her father. What could Nettie teach her now? Still she kept the sprightly little guide by her, to help her in working out the problems of social reforms. The two reformers put their clever heads together, and assisted by Eva Carey—Gwendolen’s bosom friend—they organised several guilds for the purpose of bringing together the East-End factory girls and the West-End fair damsels. They came to the conclusion that the West-Enders had been often enough in the dark continent of Stepney, Hackney, and Bow, to amuse, sing or recite, read and teach the poor isolated classes, who, after all, knew no more of their instructors and entertainers than if they had come down from the planet Mars. The three friends thought this time they would have the East-End on a visit to the West-End, and on their own ground would make them acquainted with that world which they had only read about in penny shockers. Since the disappearance of clothes, misery had lost a good deal of its sting, and envy and rancour were things of the past civilisation. Hitherto the craving for money had robbed our world of the one virtue which opens every heart to sympathy: Pity. How could a factory girl, who struggled on five shillings a week, ever imagine that the owner of a West-End mansion needed sympathy? Money was the great soother, and in the eyes of those who did not eat enough, it granted one the privileges of eating more than your fill, of lying in bed when having a headache, of taking a holiday when run down in health; it even went so far, in their ignorant minds, as to pad the aching throbs of a broken heart. The East-Ender knew no limit to what money could do, because he had none himself and was convinced that to possess in abundance the things which he sorely lacked must doubtless be the cause of all happiness. He was so grossly one-sided and ignorant that he was inclined to believe that even the laws of nature could be altered by the power of riches; but however foolish he may have been, he was not alone in judging in this dogmatic manner. The West-Ender was equally uninformed as to what lay beneath the sordid rags of the classes of which he knew nothing; he endowed the poorer classes with a callousness of feeling which at first sight seemed in keeping with their reeky clothes and shabby environments, and denied them any particle of that romance which he believed could only be the privilege of the well-dressed. And thus the two antipodes of London lived in a baneful ignorance of one another. But now that the vanishing of toggery had laid bare the two hearts of our social world, Gwen was determined to put the picture of humanity in proper perspective, and to soften the crudity of light and darkness that had been so offensive to both parties. Over and over again Gwen gathered her friends and her friends’ friends in the various parks of London. They played and laughed under the trees, they listened to Nettie’s amusing recitals of her adventurous life, which were varied—for she made her début at Hackney’s Music Hall, and ended her career at the Alhambra! She greatly diverted her audience, for her ideas of the world at large were always flavoured with a grain of good-humoured satire and gentle humour. She was fresh and impulsive, human and perceptive, and possessed the invaluable gift of developing in the East-Ender girls the precious sense of humour and discrimination which lightens every burden, and seems to filter through opaque dulness like a ray of sunlight.
How much more pleasant were those pastoral entertainments than the old-fashioned At Home, or even than the attractive garden parties! Tournaments were organised to promote the love of beauty, and to develop the imaginative power that lies more or less dormant in everyone, but more particularly so amongst the London poorer classes. The first one was a floral tournament. Every girl of the East-End and the West-End was to appear in the prettiest, and most original floral accoutrement; they were granted full permission to use their imagination to conceive wonderful designs and combination of colours; Gwen hoped in this way to instil in the Anglo-Saxon race an æsthetic knowledge of decoration which was sorely lacking. Another time she aimed at a more ambitious entertainment, and started a series of historical tournaments. A group of girls were selected amongst the West and East-End maidens, and to each of them an historical character was given to impersonate. Historians were invited to lecture on historical subjects so as to acquaint the girls with the character they wished to personify. This new mode of inoculating the taste for history was as instructive as it was dramatic; besides, it developed memory, for there was no doubt that the East-Ender’s ignorance, as related to past and present history, was not more appalling than that of the Mayfair belle. Nettie decided that the first three tournaments ought to be consecrated to personages of our own times, or at least the Victorian age; for uncultured minds could not be supposed to interest themselves in historical characters so far removed from the present period as Charles II., Henry VIII., or Alfred. It was gradually that the dramatic study of history was to take them backwards, instead of making them leap into a far-distant abyss, expecting the bewildered brain to grope its way back to our throbbing present.
Lionel frequently came to surprise Gwendolen in Kensington Gardens, where she rehearsed with the girls. He came in through the gates facing the Memorial Monument. By the way, the statue had been, with due respect, removed to a private niche in the In Memoriam Museum of discarded monuments, where only members of the Royal Family were admitted to see it, on applying first to the Lord Chamberlain. Already the younger members of the family showed a distinct repulsion to seeing their ancestor robed in such abnormal garments, and one of the royal infants had been seized with a fit in the arms of his nurse at the sight of it.
Lionel, one lovely day in June, walked down the Long Avenue of Kensington Palace Gardens; at a distance he could perceive the groups of lissome nymphs surrounding Gwen, some scattered under the trees, others lying on the grass; and his Greek appreciation of art made him hail this pastoral scene as a great success. Those who had visited the Wallace Collection would no doubt compare the picture to a Boucher; but Lionel, who had more discrimination, thought it put him in mind of a Corot. Perhaps he was right.
“Here you are, Lionel,” and Gwen walked up to him as he came near. “We are having a final rehearsal of our passion tournament. I have already told you of it. Bella will represent Love; Violet has chosen Anger; Flora begs to be Dignity, and so on. They are quite excited about it, the more so as no reading up can help them in this; they will have to work out their own ideas about the passions they wish to personify. You see, Lionel, we have had enough of external excitement, we must now look inwardly for all our pleasures. It is a step higher than historical impersonation, though we intend to make the two studies work together.—Nettie, I shall leave you in charge of them, for you are sure to give them useful hints about their parts and to develop a little more subtlety into their monodrama.—Come, Lion, my Lion, let us stroll under the trees; I have so much to say to you.” And she looked into his eyes, and caressingly held his hand close to her cheek, as they walked away. His heart was full, and he thought deeply and analysed minutely his emotions, trying to define the newly-acquired standard of morals that was slowly transforming their old rotten Society into a rational sociality. One feature of the old world had certainly disappeared since the storm—lascivious curiosity. How could morbid erotism find any place in our reformed republic? Eve-like nakedness robbed a woman of all impure suggestiveness. It was the half-clad, half-disrobed, that had made man run amok in the race for brutal enjoyment; for the goods laid out in the shop windows are not by far so alluring as what peeps behind the counter.
“Gwen, how lovely you are! Your face is a crystal reflecting every beautiful emotion in your heart. Even Raphael would have despaired of fixing your expression.”