Part 7 (1/2)
”Beauty and cleverness in rags have a sorry time of it in this world.
But money, of course, especially if not too new, buys friends, power, good taste, morality. Poverty makes people base and cringing--makes criminals. One is jumped on in this world, scrunched into the earth, into the dirt, if one hasn't money, and yet the hypocrites talk of compensation! Of all the sloppy, canting optimism with which people try to make themselves comfortable that is the sorriest! And while they talk they go on scrambling and scrunching for all they are worth; nasty beasts! They kick a man on the head, and say 'the stupor compensates for the pain.' That is the current theory about the lower cla.s.ses.”
”Yet you enjoy the world, Camelia.”
”I am not jumped on.”
”You jump on other people, then?”
”Not in a sordid manner; I don't have to soil my feet. Why shouldn't I enjoy it?”
”And you think that Sir Arthur's millions would emphasize the enjoyment?”
”Widen it, certainly. But don't be gross, Frances. A great deal depends on him. I am not offering myself for sale, you know.”
”No, I don't think you would. You have no need to.”
”He would really be glaringly golden, wouldn't he, were he not draped with the mossy antiquity of his name?” said Camelia, drawing a white magnolia flower within the window frame, and bending her head to the scented cup.
”An ideal husband, from every point of view,” Mrs. Fox-Darriel resumed; ”clever, very clever, and very good--rather overpoweringly good, Camelia.”
”I think goodness a most charming phenomenon, I shouldn't mind studying it in a husband.”
”Mrs. Jedsley is good. Why don't you study her?”
”There is nothing phenomenal in her goodness, it is a product of circ.u.mstance only. There is Mary,” Camelia added, tipping her chair a little towards the window for a clearer view of the lawn below. ”Mary in a Liberty silk, of yellow-green, and smocked. Why, Mary, why wear a Liberty gown, especially smocked?”
”I have sometimes suspected that your colorless little cousin is here to play the part of a discord that resolves into and heightens your harmony,” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel; ”or is it the post of whipping-boy that she fills?”
Camelia continued to look from the window placidly, only raising her eyebrows a little.
”No, Mary never gets a whipping, not even when I deserve one. Mamma is very fond of Mary; so am I,” she added. Mrs. Fox-Darriel took up her book with a little yawn that Camelia for all her placidity resented.
”How can you read that garbage?” she inquired smilingly, glancing at the t.i.tle.
”The _bete humaine_ rather interests me.”
”Even interpreted by another? The man is far more insupportable than Zola, inasmuch as he is clever, and an artist.”
”That's why I read him. You seem to know a good deal about garbage, my dear.”
”I know a good deal about everything, I fancy!” said Camelia, with her gayest laugh. ”I took a course of garbage once, just enough to make up my mind that I did not care for the flavor. We have a right to choose the phases of life we want to see represented.”
”I like garbage,” Mrs. Fox-Darriel said stubbornly.
”Yes, you are very catholic, I know. I am more limited.” Camelia still eyed the lawn, sniffing at the magnolia. Now she rose suddenly and went to the mirror.
”Mary puts on a sailor hat--so,” she said gravely, setting hers far back at a ludicrous angle. ”Poor Mary!” She tilted the hat forward again, and briskly put the pin through it. ”I am going down to harry Mrs. Jedsley.
Good-bye, Frances.”
”Good-bye. I shall be down to tea presently.”