“What you say,” Maddock said slowly and courteously, “is very interesting and instructive, Mr. Hawkesbury, and I perceive that the ground which you, and I think I may say Mr. Fitzgerald,” (Fitzgerald smiled and bowed), “and myself have in common is large enough to admit of our working—at any rate not in opposition to one another. Is not our mutual object the enlightenment of the unintelligent mass of the People and of the Middle-class? I am, I am sure, grateful to you, sir, for the manner in which you have brought this home to me. I always felt that underneath all our differences—I mean, the differences of our beliefs, religious or social—we had a common ground, the advancement of a really good and true Civilization, and now, I think, I know this. He renders us a great service who makes our feelings self-conscious, who turns them into the articulate thought of words.”
There was a slight pause.
“And now,” said Gildea, in his half-amused way, “we will, if you please, go down to lunch. Mr. Alcock particularly asked me not to wait for him, and we have waited, it seems unconsciously, for over half-an-hour.”
They went down together into the dining-room, chatting lightly and pleasantly.
IV.
The dining-room was the corresponding room on the ground story to the sitting-room up above. It was quite as well furnished, but in a different style. A fine rather than an exquisite form of beauty had been sought after. It was a saying of Gildea’s that a dining-room ought to give you an impression somewhat similar to that of a beach-brake in spring: the architecture and furniture should have clear outlines, the colours should be clear, the lights should be clear. All massiveness and duskiness was to be avoided. A meal ought to be a repast, not a feast: we should rise pleasantly satisfied, not dully satiated. In a sitting-room, on the other hand, the sworn abode of the sweet and delicate talk and music of women, just as the dining-room was that of the serene discussions of men, there should be something of the lush luxuriance in shape and colour of the midsummer woods, knights and ladies and all the figures of romance and fairy-tale passing together. But such an arrangement of rooms as this, he would say with his bright half-mocking smile, was at present like a damsel of the Middle Ages suddenly awakened in the dull derisive streets of London or Manchester. This will only come to pass in that wonderful Future, when we have all learned that Beauty and Truth are synonyms, and Keats has statues and altars like Sophokles of old.
Considerable time, wealth and trouble had been spent on this house. Sydney and Melbourne had been ransacked for beautiful things worthy of Gildea’s ideas of “the nest,” as he called it to himself, that he desired; for this was indeed one, and not the least remarkable, of his freaks. It had been aroused in this fashion. One afternoon, sauntering across a road in the Domain, he had almost been run over by someone riding a splendid bay horse. Looking up, with a fine touch of anger, he had perceived that it was a lady, who was looking down at him with a look, he suddenly felt, so precisely his own that, the ludicrous aspect of the thing coming upon him, he smiled. She too, at once following his change of feeling, smiled, and then in a moment, with a slight courteous movement of hand and body, had passed. It had all taken place in a few seconds. Her face and form made up between them, he thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he had not seen few so-called whether in Europe or elsewhere. Beauty in women was, according to Gildea, a thing which was not in reality to be seen in the present world, implying, as it did, perfection of form and perfection of spirit, καλον κἀγαθον. The Athens of Perikles had produced female beauty; in the face and form of the Venus of Milo the highest physical and spiritual perfection of the time is apparent. Florence too, in such a woman as Vittoria Colonna, had produced female beauty, and the Renascence had incarnated it in a Marie Stuart; but, so far, our Modernity was not ripe for it. Lovely female faces it, as all times, had in abundance, but these faces knew nothing of spiritual perfection: they knew nothing of life, they were not beautiful. And the female faces that did know of life, the faces of women like George Sand, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, were quite wanting in physical perfection. They imply mental passion, the struggle of pain: they have not reached to the serene pleasure of spiritual sovereignty. No, Beauty, καλον κἀγαθον, is to be a produce of the Future when Modernity has passed through the pangs of its travail and, in the bright light of health and youthfulness, “grows in wisdom and stature” to the perfect self.—But this face that he had seen for a moment, was, he thought, really beautiful.
A few yards from him a man was standing looking back at the rider passing along under the trees. Gildea came to him, and asked him courteously if he happened to know who the lady was?
“No,” said the man, “I don’t know who she is, but I often see her.”
And on this incident Gildea had founded a freak which had for some time amused him. He intended to see this woman again, and, if he was correct in his supposition (which he used amusedly to doubt to himself) that she was some phenomenal anticipation of the Future, to possess her. He set about choosing and furnishing a house, therefore, which should, as far as possible, be worthy of such an individual, and much amusement it occasionally afforded him. A private enquiry-office was meantime seeking her out; and, about a month ago, Gildea to his surprise had been informed that she was, beyond doubt, a Miss Medwin, niece of the well-known squatter, english, eccentric even to the extent of riding about and shooting in man’s clothes on one of Mr. Medwin’s stations in New South Wales, and, moreover, strongly suspected of having had, and of still having, an intrigue with a Mr. Frank Hawkesbury, a writer and man of uncertain means, in Melbourne. Gildea laughed much on receiving this unasked-for report, (He had just by accident made the acquaintance of Hawkesbury), and his interest in his freak somewhat revived; but his all but conviction that he was incorrect in his view of Miss Medwin (if it were indeed she), prevented him from having any great interest in the matter or any great anticipations of success. As usual, however, he was satisfied to find that he had any interest or anticipations at all. He learned from Mrs. Medwin that she was in a short time coming to Sydney for a week or so on her road up to one of Mr. Medwin’s New South Wales stations to which she had not been for years, and would be pleased to see him. A few days ago, then, she and Miss Medwin had arrived, and were waiting for Mr. Medwin who was detained by business in Melbourne. Hence Gildea’s invitation to Mrs. Medwin and her niece, to come and make tea for him and go for a sail in the “Petrel.”