So, if your courage still insists On scorning thoughts prudential, And you regard the novelists' Commandments as essential, With some more daring person live; For me, a brief perusal Of modern fiction makes me give A kind but firm refusal!
LETTERS FROM A DÉBUTANTE.
My dear Marjorie,—You are hard on poor Oriel Crampton when you say that philanthropy, brisk walks, a bad temper, and a taste for collecting postage-stamps, form the most hideous combination any human being could imagine. Of course, I admit he's a little dreary. All is now over between us. Things reached a climax one rainy afternoon when Baby Beaumont, in a mood of intense juvenility, offered "to teach Oriel to make barley-sugar." Forgeting his school-days, Oriel patronisingly said he was glad to learn from anyone. So Baby seized Oriel's arm, twisted it round in the classical manner, and then hit the twist. It was quite impossible to help laughing when Oriel, pale with fury, declared he could take a joke, supposed this was the New Humour, and left the room. "What can you expect," said Baby, "of the middle-aged?" (Oriel is not twenty-four yet.)
That evening I wrote a note, putting an end to our engagement.
I gave it to him in the billiard-room, and—he gave me one at the same time, and—to the same effect! I felt dreadfully hurt at his throwing me over. He wrote, "I feel I have no right to ask you, who are so fitted to shine in the society of the gay and decadent" (this meant Baby), "to share a life that will be wholly dedicated to the amelioration of the condition of the poorer classes," &c.
In the midst of our agitation, we were compelled to play "musical chairs" with the others, as if nothing had happened! What a mockery it seemed!
We parted amicably. He asked if I should like to hear, from time to time, of the progress of his life-work, and I promised to be his sister.... When he went away, a strange sense of loss came over me.... One page in my life had been turned for ever!... Baby tried to console me by observing that now there would be a chance of getting plenty of hot water for baths. Oriel used to drink it all.
At the tennis-party Mrs. Lorne Hopper seemed utterly bored by Captain Mashington. She said my dress wanted "taking up on the shoulders," and that the sleeves were exaggerated. (Exaggerated! I should hope they were!) Mr. Lorne Hopper seemed nice, and very quiet, and harmless at first, but it gradually came out that he does sketches at the piano in the style of Corney Grain, and what is worse, expects to be asked to do them.
Lady Taymer implored us all to laugh, and we did our best to please our hostess; but the room was nearly empty in five minutes.