CHAPTER XI
Lionel often sat in his library pondering over all kinds of abstruse questions. He did not know his old London again, and smiled at the revolution in social life. Nowadays, one house was as good as another. Mrs So-and-So’s luncheon parties, Lady X.’s dinners and bridge réunions were no longer sought for, since frocks and frills had vanished and packs of cards crumbled to dust. Dancing also was impossible under the present régime, for the laisser-aller of a ball-room seemed intolerable in the new Paradise regained. In fact, no respectable mother would consent to take her daughter to any of these brawls. Lionel recalled the first—and the last—ball of this season. It was at Lady Wimberley’s. When the ball opened, the hurry and scurry of London apes was such, that he had turned to his faithful guide and told him,—
“Nothing on earth would induce me to dance this evening—or ever. Not even with Gwen.”
“Especially not with Miss Towerbridge,” had replied the funny little buffoon. “Happiness has no need to bump, elbow or kick, to manifest its gladness.” They had both left the house, and given the hint to London Society.
And thus the fashion for balls, late dinners, evening receptions died out, as smart women lost the taste for such vulgar dissipations. Lionel laughed outright at Lady Carey’s remark that the end of the world was nigh, for Society was perishing from dulness. Still, all the fussiness of the little woman could not alter the bare fact that it was quite unnecessary to turn night into day, since the days were quite long enough to contain the occupations of the present Society. Complexion and figure greatly benefited from this normal mode of life; and the absence of corset and waistcoat urged the English man and woman to watch over their diet, if they did not intend to turn their bodies into living advertisements of their passions and depravities.
Had anyone told Lionel a year ago what London would be like at the present moment, he would no doubt have burst into Homeric laughter; but now that the thing was done, it all seemed so simple and so rational, that he hardly realised it. It amused him very much to see daily, at the Pall Mall Committee of Public Kitchens, Lord Petersham conversing with a well-known butcher of Belgravia. But Petersham, whatever he may have thought, dissembled artfully, and argued with himself that they were both, he and the butcher, sitting on the Board to judge of the quality of the meat—and who would be more likely to judge impartially of the catering than a butcher, especially when he consumed the victuals each day.
He recalled how hard it had been to persuade Sinclair the fastidious, to breakfast with him at the dining-hall of the ex-Swan & Edgar. Although the critic partook of the delicious meal, he would not be won over to the cause; but he admitted that the butter and the eggs were extra fresh; that the meat was irreproachable, the fish first-rate; he even went so far as to recognise that all things were transacted on a bona-fide method. But when Lionel told him that the whole secret lay in the fact that the interest of all was the interest of each, then Sinclair laughed and said—“tommy rot.” There was nothing more to say to a man who pooh-poohed the greatest and noblest of reforms.
“But why on earth, if your are so anxious to reform the depravity of our Society, why have you begun by administering to their appetites? It seems to me that you might have found some nobler mission for the regeneration of Britishers.”
“My dear fellow,” had calmly replied Lionel, “to stem a chaotic revolution, after the total collapse of all manufacturers, we had first of all to think of feeding our hungry populations. Before you lift up the soul of man, you must feed his body. But at the same time that we are satisfying the physical need of men and women, we are unconsciously weaving into a close tissue the contradictory codes of morals of buyers and sellers. Every producer is a member of our dining-halls, and benefits directly by the genuineness of the goods he delivers to the Committee. Is it not a colossal triumph?”
Danford, who was close by when Lionel had spoken to Sinclair, had added,—