“I think, Danford, you have already, with your short cuts of humour and satire, led me through a dark labyrinth compared to which Dante’s Inferno was but child’s play. You have often been my faithful Virgil, and drawn my attention to the tragedy of our past world of artificiality.”
“Indeed, my lord, tragedy of the most painful kind; for Society drew out each day a new code of morals to suit a fresh want, and a catechism was issued to befit a gospel of histology. It was not actually read out in church, like the Athanasian Creed, but it was religiously obeyed in and out of God’s house.”
“What would Society have said had a woman been to the Army and Navy Stores at 10 a.m. in the same décolleté gown which she wore at last night’s ball?” This was Gwen, who mischievously looked at Lionel.
“My dear Gwen, think for one minute of the soldier enwrapping himself in the judge’s gown; the apronless and capless housemaid appearing in the hall with a tiara on her head (even were it paid out of her earnings); or the butler pompously opening the door in a Field-Marshal’s uniform?”
“Bedlam or Portland Bay would have been their next abode,” replied Danford; “you are evoking in your mind’s eye a social upheaval, and in one instant hurling to the ground a whole structure which took centuries to erect. The dignity of magistracy, the punctilio of military honour, the ancestral breeding of nobility, would all be hopelessly annihilated were you to transpose from one body on to another the outward signs of each. Not only had Dame Fashion preached a new gospel, but new passions were thereof discovered to make Society’s blood rush more violently, and different forms of sorrows henceforth filled the hearts of women.”
“Oh! how true you are, Mr Danford,” suddenly broke in Nettie; “how often have I seen women of fashion sad unto death at the contemplation of their wardrobes.”
“And the pity of it all was that women truly writhed under the sting of these petty grievances,” added Eva.
“You are slowly finding out for yourself, Miss Carey,” remarked Danford, “that an eleventh commandment had been written out by Society: ‘Thou shall not be—shabby.’”
“What a host of innocent women have been sent to perdition in trying to obey this law to the letter,” retorted Lionel.
“Ah! Fashion, what crimes were committed in thy name!” comically added Nettie.