When our temper is ruffled, we do not fret with it those we meet—when our heart is bitter, we do not spit our gall in the faces of our friends—when our blood boils in our veins we are careful to let none of it squirt on and blister the hand that is extended to us. A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain—that is true, but a man or a woman may smile, and smile, and be exceedingly sorrowful, may dance and laugh with an aching heart. Who does not remember Andersen’s story of the little mermaid, who obtained from the witch power to shed her squamous tail at the cost of feeling knives pierce her soles every footstep she took? And the little mermaid danced at the prince’s wedding—at the wedding of the prince whom she had once held to her heart, and for the love of whom she had shed her fish’s tail, and danced with a rosy face, though every step was a mortal agony. Do we not love and venerate the little mermaid, because, instead of howling or whining, and holding up her bleeding soles to extract commiseration from all, she dropped her skirts over them, and danced and warbled, and flushed as the rose, so that none supposed she leaped with pain, and sang to still her heart, and flushed with stress of anguish? So is it with all who have gone through the great discipline of culture, they no more expose their wounds and cry out for sympathy than they expose deformities.
I remember the bridge over the Gave at Pau, on each side of which through its entire length sat beggars exhibiting sores and soliciting alms. But these were men and women in rags, and those who wear only the rags of culture do the same, they draw aside their tatters and expose their wounds to our shocked eyes.
But it is not so with such as have gone through the school and learnt its lessons. They are not for ever obtruding themselves, their worries, their distresses on every one they meet, their own proper self with its torn veins, and festering grief, and distilling blood is folded over with silk, and a jewelled brooch clasps the lace over the swelling, suffering bosom, and all who see it admire the jewels and are kept in ignorance of what is beneath. In the primitive Church the disciplina arcani was enforced, the doctrine of holy reserve taught; for there were certain mysteries of which the faithful were required to keep the secret; and culture, modern culture, has also its disciplina arcani, its doctrine of reserve, a reserve to be observed on all selfish pains and sorrows, a mantling over with a cloak of mystery everything which can jar with the pleasure and the cheerfulness and the brightness of the day to others.
So, with a heart quivering with apprehension and racked with grief for Arminell, Lady Lamerton moved about the terrace with a placid face, and with her thoughts apparently engrossed wholly in making her guests at home and happy. She insisted on Sir Bosanquet Gammon and the rector playing at aunt Sally, whilst Lady Gammon looked on with a face green with horror. She brought a garden chair herself to old and tottery Mrs. Calwoodleigh, who was standing looking on at her daughter playing lawn tennis. She found a timid little cluster of husband and wife and daughters, fresh arrivals in the neighbourhood, and knowing no one, and introduced them to a dozen nice families. She broke up a flirtation with a young officer, which she thought undesirable, by sweeping away with her the young lady into the orchid house to admire a clump of Dissa grandiflora. She interrupted a political discussion in the nick of time, before the parties became angry and personal. She singled out a little old maid outrageously dressed, who was prowling about the flowers, and delighted her by presents of cuttings and little pots of bulbs, more than she could carry, but which the gardener was bidden convey to Miss Bligh’s carriage. She galvanised into life a drooping cluster of young and smooth parsons, and set them playing La Crosse with as many charming girls. She pointed out the tables where were claret and champagne cups, strawberries and cream, to certain thirsty and heavy souls which had been gravitating sideways in that direction for some time. She caught an antiquary, and carried him off to the end of the garden to show him a Romano-British stone with ogams nicked at the angle, which had been discovered used as a footbridge, and set up by Lord Lamerton to save it from destruction.
“Here, Mr. Fothergill, I must leave you to copy the inscription. Lady Gammon is anxious to have the polarisation of light explained, and I must take her to the library for an encyclopædia—fortunately the study to-day is not invaded by the public.”
Behind her back many a remark was made on her excellence as a hostess, her cheerfulness, her amiability. Every one liked Lady Lamerton; they could not fail to do so, she took such pains to make herself agreeable. Only Arminell despised her, and despised her for those very qualities which won to her the hearts of her acquaintances. Arminell thought her lacking in depth and sincerity. It was true that she was without intensity of conviction, but that was characteristic of breadth; it was true that she was unreal, and that was part of her culture; so to some folks everything is unreal but Zolaism, the Morgue, discourtesy, breach of good manners, the refuse heap. Man is unreal clothed in skin, the only genuine man is he who has been excoriated, with every nerve and muscle and vein exposed; the canvas only is real, not the Madonna di San Sisto looking with her ineffably earnest eyes out of it; lamp-black and treacle and old rags are the reality, not the Book of Psalm and Song, printed out of the former on the transubstantiated latter; catgut and deal and brass only are real, not the symphony of Beethoven, not the march from the Kemenate in “Lohengrin,” played on the instruments manufactured out of these vulgar materials. The pelting rain is real, not the gilded evening cloud that contains the stored moisture; in a word, that only is real, and commendable, and to be observed, which is gross material, offensive. I know that the sweetness and fragrance of that old culture which was but another name, as I have already said, for charity, is passing away, like the rising incense, perhaps again to be caught and scented only in the courts of heaven. I know that it is in fashion now to be rude and brusque, and to deny oneself no freedom, and exercise on oneself no restraint, so as to be quite natural. But what is that save to revert to social Adamanism and Bosjesmanism—to savagery in its basest and nastiest form—to renounce the form as well as the power of culture.
Phædrus tells in one of his fables of an old woman who found an empty amphora of old Falernian wine; she put her nose to the mouth and snuffed and said, “If you smell so sweet when void, how sweet you must be when full.”
Well! let us say that half the politeness and grace and charm of society is unreal. It is the aroma of the old Falernian. How much better, no doubt, if the vessel be full of that most precious old Falernian, that perfect courtesy of heart which suffereth long and is kind; vaunteth not itself, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, believeth all things, loveth all things, endureth all things. But, I ask, is not an empty amphora of Falernian more grateful than one full of asafœtida?
The evening light slanted over the park, making the grass yellow as corn, and casting purple shadows behind the elms. The front of the house toward the terrace was glorified, the plate glass windows gleamed as if rolled out of sunlight. The terrace was alive with people in their gayest dresses, in light summer colours, pink and turquoise, strawberry, spring green, crimson and cream. The band was playing, and the scarlet uniforms of the military formed a brilliant patch of colour at the end of the terrace against a bank of yews.
Below the terrace was the tennis-court, reached by a flight of several steps, and against the wall that upheld the terrace roses were trained, and were in masses of flower, scenting the air.