And dealt and dealt. “What tricks!” quoth I!
“They’re tricks, you bet!” the smiling cheat replied—
“My husband is ‘on duty’ gone,
And ‘green’ young subalterns are all my game,
And till they’re drained of gold and silver, too,
I’ll do, I’ll do, I’ll do!”
And she does “do.” She has found out the way to make those “green young subalterns” pay her bills and ruin themselves. It is a thoroughly up-to-date manner of spending the Sunday.
Country-house “week-end” parties are generally all bridge-parties. They are all carefully selected, with an eye to the main chance. The “play” generally begins on Saturday evening, and goes on all through Sunday up to midnight. One woman, notorious for her insensate love of gambling, lately took lessons in “cheating” at bridge before joining her country-house friends. She came away heavier in purse by five hundred pounds, but of that five hundred, one hundred and fifty had been won from a foolish little girl of eighteen, known to be the daughter of a very wealthy, but strict father. When the poor child was made to understand the extent of her losses at bridge, she was afraid to go home. So she purchased some laudanum “for the toothache,” and tried to poison herself by swallowing it. Fortunately, she was rescued before it was too late, and her Spartan “dad,” with tears of joy in his eyes, paid the money she had lost at cards thankfully, as a kind of ransom to Death. But she was never again allowed to visit at that “swagger” house where she had been “rooked” so unmercifully. And when we remember how fond Society is of bragging of its little philanthropies, its “bazaars” and carefully-calculated “charities,” we may, perhaps, wonder whether, among the list of good and noble deeds it declares itself capable of, it would set its face against bridge, and make “gambling-parties” once for all unfashionable and in “bad form”? This would be true philanthropy, and would be more productive of good than any amount of regular church attendance. For there is no doubt that very general sympathy is accorded to people who find that going to church is rather an irksome business. It is not as if they were often taught anything wonderfully inspiring or helpful there. They seldom have even the satisfaction of hearing the service read properly. The majority of the clergy are innocent of all elocutionary art. They read the finest passages of Scripture in the sing-song tone of a clerk detailing the items of a bill. It is a soothing style, and quickly induces sleep; but that is its only recommendation.
When not playing bridge, Society’s “Sunday observance” is motoring. Flashing and fizzling all over the place, it rushes here, there, and everywhere, creating infinite dust, smelling abominably, and looking uglier than the worst demons in Dante’s “Inferno.” Beauty certainly goes to the wall in a motor. The hideous masks, goggles, and caps which help to make up the woman motorist’s driving gear, are enough to scare the staunchest believer in the eternal attractiveness of the fair sex, while the general get-up of the men is on a par with that of the professional stoker or engine-driver. Nevertheless, no reasonable woman ought to mind other women looking ugly if they like; while men, of course, are always men, and “masters of the planet,” whether dirty or clean. And no one should really object to the “motor craze,” seeing that it takes so many useless people out of one’s immediate horizon and scatters them far and wide over the surface of the earth. Society uses Sunday as a special day for this “scattering,” and perhaps it is doing itself no very great harm. It is getting fresh air, which it needs; it is “going the pace,” which, in its fevered condition of living fast, so as to die more quickly, is natural to it; and it is seeing persons and places it never saw before in the way of country nooks and old-fashioned roadside inns, and rustic people, who stare at it with unfeigned amusement, and wonder “what the world’s a’-comin’ to!” Possibly it learns more in a motor drive through the heart of rural England than many sermons in church could teach it. The only thing one would venture to suggest is that in passing its Sundays in this fashion, Society should respect the Sundays of those who still elect to keep the seventh day as a day of rest. Fashionable motorists might avoid dashing recklessly through groups of country people who are peacefully wending their way to and from church. They might “slow down.” They might take thoughtful heed of the little children who play unguardedly about in many a village street. They might have some little consideration for the uncertain steps of feeble and old persons who are perchance blind or deaf, and who neither see the “motor” nor hear the warning blast of its discordant horn. In brief, it would not hurt Society to spend its Sundays with more thought for others than Itself. For the bulk and mass of the British people—the people who are Great Britain—still adhere to the sacred and blessed institution of a “day of rest,” even if it be not a day of sermons. To thousands upon thousands of toiling men and women, Sunday is still a veritable God’s day, and we may thank God for it! Nay, more; we should do our very best to keep it as “holy” as we can, if not by listening to sermons, at least by a pause in our worldly concerns, wherein we may put a stop on the wheels of work and consider within ourselves as to how and why we are working. Sunday is a day when we should ask Nature to speak to us and teach us such things as may only be mastered in silence and solitude—when the book of poems, the beautiful prose idyll, or the tender romance, may be our companion in summer under the trees, or in winter by a bright fire—and when we may stand, as it were, for a moment and take breath on the threshold of another week, bracing our energies to meet with whatever that week may hold in store for us, whether joy or sorrow. Few nations, however, view Sunday in this light. On the Continent it has long been a day of mere frivolous pleasure—and in America I know not what it is, never having experienced it. But the British Sunday, apart from all the mockery and innuendo heaped upon it by the wits and satirists of the present time and of bygone years, used to be a strong and spiritually saving force in the national existence. Dinner-parties, with a string band in attendance, and a Parisian singer of the “café chantant” to entertain the company afterwards, were once unknown in England on a Sunday. But such “Sabbath” entertainments are quite ordinary now. The private house copies the public restaurant—more’s the pity!
Nevertheless, though Society’s Sunday has degenerated into a day of gambling, guzzling, and motoring in Great Britain, it is well to remember that Society in itself is so limited as to be a mere bubble on the waters of life—froth and scum, as it were, that rises to the top, merely to be skimmed off and thrown aside in any serious national crisis. The People are the life and blood of the nation, and to them Sunday remains still a “day of rest,” though, perhaps, not so much as in old time a day of religion. And that it is not so much a day of religion is because so many preachers have failed in their mission. They have lost grip. There is no cause whatever for their so losing it, save such as lies within themselves. There has been no diminution in the outflow of truth from the sources of Divine instruction, but rather an increase. The wonders of the universe have been unfolded in every direction by the Creator to His creature. There is everything for the minister of God to say. Yet how little is said! “Feed my sheep!” was the command of the Master. But the sheep have cropped all the old ways of thought down to the bare ground, and their inefficient shepherds now know not where to lead them, though their Lord’s command is as imperative as ever. So the flock, being hungry, have broken down the fences of tradition, and are scampering away in disorder to fresh fields and pastures new. Society may be, and is, undoubtedly to blame for its lax manner of treating religion and religious observances; but, with all its faults, it is not so blameworthy as those teachers of the Christian faith, whose lack of attention to its needs and perplexities help to make it the heaven-scorning, God-denying, heart-sore, weary, and always dissatisfied thing it is. Society’s Sunday is merely a reflex of Society’s own immediate mood—the mood of killing time at all costs, even to the degradation of its own honour, for want of something better to do!