"The one thing that never comes for trying—or seeking—or praying," murmurs Lady Etwynde, dreamily. Alas, those melodies! A sad day indeed it is for the woman who confesses—
'The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the foot-steps of thy soul.'
It is a beautiful idea, is it not? That is one advantage of poetry—it clothes a thought in grace so exquisite that we feel as if conversing with a being from another world. I never can understand people saying they don't like, or can't comprehend it. Sense, memory, love, pleasure, joy, pain, all that is sensitive, emotional, purest, best, is acted upon and intensified by poetry. A word, a line, will thrill us to the very core and centre of our beings—will make joy more sweet—-pain less bitter—love more exquisite and life less hard, even beneath its burden of regrets."
"You love poetry so much?" questions Lauraine.
"More than anything. But by poetry I don't mean merely beautiful verses. I include all grand and noble thoughts that imagination has coloured, and that are read as prose. A really poetic nature is one that sees beauty in the simplest of created things as well as in the grandest; that is humble and yet great; that drinks at every fountain of nature; that steeps itself in the enchantment of a scene, not measuring merely the height of a mountain from the sea level, or dwelling on the possible discomfort of a storm at a particular altitude; that knows its mind to be full of longings and yet can only partially satisfy them; that would fain be glorified, filled, enriched; and, alas! knows only too well that the wings of the mind are beating against the prison-bars of a stern and hard existence, from which escape is only possible in dreams, or—death!"
"Do you not think that such a nature must be intensely unhappy?"
"I said so at the beginning of our conversation. But still it holds the two extremes that make up life—happiness and misery; it gets more out of each than natures more placid and commonplace and content. It really lives, and the others—stagnate."
"You must have read a great deal, and thought a great deal," says Lauraine, looking admiringly up at her friend's thoughtful face. "Do you know I think you are the only woman I have ever met who talks about other things besides dress and fashion? I don't think I ever heard you say a scandalous word of anybody. You put me in mind of something a friend of mine once said, 'Women who are intellectual always talk of things; women who are shallow, of persons.' There is a great deal in that if you come to think of it. How wearisome it is to hear of nothing but 'names' in a conversation; and yet I know heaps of men and women who are considered brilliant and witty and amusing, and whose whole conversation turns upon nothing else but gossip respecting other men, or women."
"I quite understand you. Society is eminently artificial, and objects to strong emotions, and would rather not be called upon to feel anything. 'Why will people go on writing?' said a lady to me one day. 'Everything has been said that can be said. Literature is only repetition.'"
"'My dear madam,' I told her, 'light is always light;' but I suppose you will acknowledge there is a difference between having our streets illuminated with oil-lamps hung on a rope, or brilliant with gas and electricity. Art and science and literature must progress with their age. Scott and Fielding and Smollett don't suit the nineteenth century, any more than perhaps Braddon, Ouida, and Rhoda Broughton may suit the twentieth. Nevertheless, each has had its day and held its champions, irrespective of what a coming generation will say on the subject. The immediate good, excitement, benefit, is all Society thinks of now. It has laid its demands on each respective cycle—birth, or heroism, or refined manners, or even mind. But in our age it worships the golden calf alone. You don't know, and I don't; but all our reward is to be wondered at, and never to 'get on' with people. It is Lady Jean Salomans who 'gets on.' But then she knows her age and accepts it, and goes with it. I dare say, being a clever woman, she laughs in her sleeve at one set, and yawns after a prolonged dose of the other; but she's the most popular woman in London, and there's something in that more satisfactory nowadays than in saying: 'I am the Queen of England.' You and I will never be 'popular' in her sense, Lauraine, because we don't take the trouble, or perhaps appreciate, the reward. As for you, my dear, you are too transparent for Society. You show if you are bored or pleased, or happy or sad. That doesn't do. You should always go about masked, or you are sure to offend some one or other. You are young, and have been very much admired, and have a splendid position. Socially you might take the lead of Lady Jean, but you never will. You don't care enough about the 'honour and glory' of social success."