‘Ah, of course. From your own strictly subjective point of view that’s very natural. I also look at the question abstractly from the side of the empirical ego, and correctly deduce a corresponding conclusion. Only then, you see, the terms of the minor premiss are luckily reversed.’
‘Well, my dear fellow,’ said the curate, ‘the fact about the tea-things is this. You eat up your income, devour your substance in riotous living; I prefer to feast my eyes and ears to my grosser senses. You dine at high table, and fare sumptuously every day; I take a commons of cold beef for lunch, and have tea off an egg and roll in my own rooms at seven. You drink St. Emilion or still hock; I drink water from the well or the cup that cheers but not obfuscates. The difference goes to pay for the crockery. Do likewise, and with your untold wealth you might play Aunt Sally at Oriental blue, and take cock-shots with a boot-jack at hawthorn-pattern vases.’
‘At any rate, Berkeley, you always manage to get your money’s worth of amusement out of your money.’
‘Of course, because I lay myself out to do it. Buy a bottle of champagne, drink it off, and there you have to show for your total permanent investment on the transaction the memory of a noisy evening and a headache the next morning. Buy a flute, or a book of poems, or a little picture, or a Palissy platter, and you have something to turn to with delight and admiration for half a lifetime.’
‘Ah, but it isn’t everybody who can isolate himself so utterly from the workaday world and live so completely in his own little paradise of art as you can, my dear fellow. Non omnia possumus omnes. You seem to be always up in the aesthetic clouds, with your own music automatically laid on, and no need of cherubim or seraphim to chant continually for your gratification. Play me something of your own on your flute now, like a good fellow.’
‘No, I won’t; because the spirit doesn’t move me. It’s treachery to the divine gift to play when you don’t want to. Besides, what’s the use of playing before YOU when you’re not the dean of a musical cathedral? David was wiser; he played only before Saul, who had of course all the livings in his own gift, no doubt. I’ve got a new thing running in my head this very minute that you shall hear though, all the same, as soon as I’ve hammered it into shape—a sort of villanette in music, a little whiff of country freshness, suggested by the new ethereal acquisition, little Miss Butterfly. Have you seen Miss Butterfly yet?’
‘Not by that name, at any rate. Who is she?’
‘Oh, the name’s my own invention. Mademoiselle Volauvent, I mean—the little bit of whirligig thistledown from Devonshire, Oswald’s sister, you know, of Oriel.’
‘Ah, that one! Yes; just caught a glimpse of her in the High on Thursday. Very pretty, certainly, and as airy as a humming-bird.’
‘That’s her! She’s coming here to lunch this morning. If you’re a good boy, and will promise not to say anything naughty, you may stop and meet her. She’s a nice little thing, but rather timid at seeing so many fresh faces. You mustn’t frighten her by discussing the Absolute and the Unconditioned, or bore her by talking about Aristotle’s Politics, or the revolutions in Corcyra. For you know, my dear Le Breton, if you HAVE a fault, it is that you’re such a consummate and irrepressible prig; now aren’t you really?’