Part 35 (1/2)

”Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way,” said Lady Silverhampton; ”I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't.”

Lord Stonebridge began to argue. ”But that wouldn't be the other way; it would be the same thing.”

”How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are, except by algebra; and as n.o.body here knows any algebra, you can't prove it at all.”

”Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as saying that that person is like you.”

”Not at all. If you said that I was like Connie Esdaile, I should embrace you before the a.s.sembled company; and if you said she was like me, she'd never forgive you as long as she lived. It is through reasoning out things in this way that men make such idiotic mistakes.”

”Isn't it funny,” Elisabeth remarked, ”that if you reason a thing out you're always wrong, and if you never reason about it at all you're always right?”

”Ah! but that is because you are a genius,” murmured Cecil Farquhar.

Lady Silverhampton contradicted him. ”Not at all; it's because she is a woman.”

”Well, I'd rather be a woman than a genius any day,” said Elisabeth; ”it takes less keeping up.”

”You are both,” said Cecil.

”And I'm neither,” added Lord Bobby; ”so what's the state of the odds?”

”Let's invent more invisible costumes,” cried Lady Silverhampton; ”they interest me. Suggest another one, Elisabeth.”

”I should design a special one for lovers in the country. Don't you know how you are always coming upon lovers in country lanes, and how hard they try to look as if they weren't there, and how badly they succeed? I should dress them entirely in green, faintly relieved by brown; and then they'd look as if they were only part of the hedges and stiles.”

”How the lovers of the future will bless you!” exclaimed Lord Bobby. ”I only regret that my love-making days are over before your patent costumes come out. I remember Sir Richard Esdaile once coming upon Violet and me when we were spooning in the shrubbery at Esdaile Court, and we tried in vain to efface ourselves and become as part of the scenery. You see, it is so difficult to look exactly like two laurel bushes, when one of you is dressed in pink muslin and the other in white flannel.”

Lady Robert blushed becomingly. ”Oh, Bobby, it wasn't pink muslin that day; it was blue cambric.”

”That doesn't matter. There are as many laurel bushes made out of pink muslin as out of blue cambric, when you come to that. The difficulty of identifying one's self with one's environment (that's the correct expression, my dear) would be the same in either costume; but Miss Farringdon is now going, once for all, to remove that difficulty.”

”I came upon two young people in a lane not long ago,” said Elisabeth, ”and the minute they saw me they began to walk in the ditches, one on one side of the road and one on the other. Now if only they had worn my costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as that; you wouldn't be able to hear a word she said.”

”Ah! my dear young friend, that wouldn't matter,” Lord Bobby interposed, ”nor in any way interfere with the pleasure of the walk. Really nice men never make a fuss about little things like that. If only their mothers-in-law are kind enough to go out walking with them, they don't a bit mind how far off they walk. It is in questions such as this that men are really so much more unselfish than women; because the mothers-in-law do mind--they like us to be near enough to hear what they say.”

”Green frocks would be very nice for the girls, especially if they were fair,” said Lady Robert thoughtfully; ”but I think the men would look rather queer in green, don't you? As if they were actors.”

”I'm afraid they would look a bit dissipated,” Elisabeth a.s.sented; ”like almonds-and-raisins by daylight. By the way, I know nothing that looks more dissipated than almonds-and-raisins by daylight.”

”Except, perhaps, one coffee-cup in the drawing-room the morning after a dinner party,” suggested Farquhar.

Elisabeth demurred. ”No; the coffee-cup is sad rather than sinful. It is as much part and parcel of a bygone time, as the Coliseum or the ruins of Pompeii; and the respectability of the survival of the fittest is its own. But almonds-and-raisins are different; to a certain cla.s.s of society they represent the embodiment of refinement and luxury and self-indulgence.”

Sir Wilfred Madderley laughed softly to himself. ”I know exactly what you mean.”

”Well, I don't agree with Miss Farringdon,” Lord Bobby argued; ”to my mind almonds-and-raisins are an emblem of respectability and moral worth, like chiffonniers and family alb.u.ms and British matrons. No really bad man would feel at home with almonds-and-raisins, I'm certain; but I'd appoint as my trustee any man who could really enjoy them on a Sunday afternoon. Now take Kesterton, for instance; he's the type of man who would really appreciate them. My impression is that when his life comes to be written, it will be found that he took almonds-and-raisins in secret, as some men take absinthe and others opium.”

”It is scandalous to reveal the secrets of the great in this manner,”

said Elisabeth, ”and to lower our ideals of them!”