Part 22 (2/2)
Miss Tibb.u.t.t looked quite shocked.
”Oh, but, my dear, she couldn't really.”
”She did,” nodded Trix.
Miss Tibb.u.t.t appealed helplessly to Father Dormer.
”Why do people believe such extraordinary things?” she demanded almost wrathfully.
Father Dormer laughed. ”That's a question I cannot pretend to answer. But I suppose that if people reject the truth, and yet want to believe something beyond mere physical facts, they can invent anything, that is if they happen to be endowed with sufficient imagination.”
”Then the devil must help them invent,” said Miss Tibb.u.t.t with exceeding firmness.
After dinner they had coffee in the garden. A big moon was coming up in the dusk behind the trees, its light throwing the shadows dark and soft on the gra.s.s.
”It's so astonis.h.i.+ngly silent after London,” said Trix, gazing at the blue-grey velvet of the sky.
She looked more than ever elfin-like, with the moonlight falling on her fair hair and pointed oval face, and the s.h.i.+mmering green of her dress.
”I wonder why we ever go to bed on moonlight nights,” she pursued.
”Brilliant suns.h.i.+ne always tempts us to do something--a long walk, a drive, or boating on a river. Over and over again we say, 'Now, the very next fine day we'll do--so and so.' But no one ever dreams of saying, 'Now, the next moonlight night we'll have a picnic.' I wonder why not?”
”Because,” said Doctor Hilary smiling, and watching her, ”the old and staid folk have no desire to lose their sleep, and--well, the conventions are apt to stand in the way of the young and romantic.”
”Conventions,” sighed Trix, ”are the bane of one's existence. They hamper all one's most cherished desires until one is of an age when the desires become non-existent. My aunt Lilla is always saying to me, 'When you're a much older woman, dearest.' And I reply, 'But, Aunt Lilla, _now_ is the moment.' I know, by experience, later is no good. When I was a tiny child my greatest desire was to play with all the grubbiest children in the parks. Of course I was dragged past them by a haughty and righteous nurse. I can talk to them now if I want to, and even wheel their perambulators. But it would have been so infinitely nicer to wheel a very dirty baby in a very ramshackle perambulator when I was eight.
Conventions are responsible for an enormous lot of lost opportunities.”
”Mightn't they be well lost?” suggested Father Dormer.
Trix looked across at him.
”Serious or nonsense?” she demanded.
”Whichever you like,” he replied, a little twinkle in his eyes.
”Oh, serious,” interpolated Miss Tibb.u.t.t.
Trix leant a little forward, resting her chin on her hands.
”Well, seriously then, conventions--those that are merely conventions for their own sake,--are detestable, and responsible for an enormous lot of unhappiness. 'My dear (mimicked Trix), you can be quite polite to so and so, but I cannot have you becoming friendly with them, you know they are not _quite_.' I've heard that said over and over again. It's hateful. I'm not a socialist, not one little bit, but I do think if you like a person you ought to be able to be friends, even if you happen to be a d.u.c.h.ess and he's a chimney-sweep. The motto of the present-day world is, 'What will people think?' People!” snorted Trix wrathfully, warming to her theme, ”what people? And is their opinion worth twopence halfpenny? Fancy them a.s.sociating with St. Peter if he appeared now among them as he used to be, with only his goodness and his character and his fisherman's clothes, instead of his halo and his keys, as they see him in the churches.”
The two men laughed. Miss Tibb.u.t.t made a little murmur of something like query. The d.u.c.h.essa's face looked rather white, but perhaps it was only the effect of the moonlight.
”But, Miss Devereux,” said Doctor Hilary, ”even now the world--people, as you call them, are quite ready to recognize genius despite the fact that it may have risen from the slums.”
”Yes,” contended Trix eagerly, ”but it's not the person they recognize really, it's merely their adjunct.”
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