Part 23 (1/2)

”What do you mean?” asked Miss Tibb.u.t.t. Father Dormer smiled comprehendingly.

”I mean,” said Trix slowly, ”they recognize the thing that makes the show, and the person because of that thing, not for the person's own self. Let me try and explain better. A man, born in the slums, has a marvellous voice. He becomes a noted singer. He's received everywhere and feted. But it's really his voice that is feted, because it is the fas.h.i.+on to fete it. Let him lose his voice, and he drops out of existence. People don't recognize him himself, the self which gave expression to the voice, and which still _is_, even after the voice is dumb.”

Father Dormer nodded.

”Well,” went on Trix, ”I maintain that that man is every bit as well worth knowing afterwards,--after he has lost his voice. And even if he'd never been able to give expression to himself by singing, he might have been just as well worth knowing. But the world never looks for inside things, but only for external things that make a show. So if Mrs. B.

hasn't an atom of anything congenial to me in her composition, but has a magnificent house and heaps of money, it's quite right and fitting I should know her, so people would say, and encourage me to do so. But it's against all the conventions that I should be friendly with little Miss F.

who lives over the tobacconist's at the corner of such and such a street, though she _is_ thoroughly congenial to me, and I love her plucky and cheery outlook on life.” She stopped.

”Go on,” encouraged Doctor Hilary.

”Well,” laughed Trix, ”take a more extreme case. Sir A. C. is--well, not a bad man, but not the least the kind of man I care about, but he may take me in to dinner, and, on the strength of that brief acquaintance, to a theatre if he wants, provided I have some other woman with me as a sort of chaperon, and he can talk to me by the hour, and that all on account of his money and t.i.tle. Mr. Z. is a really white man, but he's a 'come-down,' through no fault of his own, and a bus-conductor. I happen to have spoken to him once or twice; and like him. But I mightn't even walk for half an hour with him in the park, if I'd fifty authorized chaperons attending on me. That's what I mean about conventions that are conventions for their own sake.” She stopped again.

”And what do you suggest as a remedy?” asked Father Dormer, smiling.

”There isn't one,” sighed Trix. ”At least not one you can apply universally. Everybody must just apply it for themselves, and not exactly by defying conventions, but by treating them as simply non-existent.”

The d.u.c.h.essa made a little movement in the moonlight.

”Which,” she said quietly, ”comes to exactly the same thing as defying them, and it won't work.”

”Why not?” demanded Trix.

”You'd find yourself curiously lonely after a time if you did.”

”You mean my friends--no, my acquaintances--would desert me?”

”Probably.”

”Well, I'd have the one I'd chanced it all for.”

”Yes,” said the d.u.c.h.essa slowly and deliberately, ”but you'd have to be very sure, not only that the friend was worth it, but that you were worth it to the friend.”

There was rather a blank silence. Trix gave a little gasp. It was not so much the words that hurt, as the tone in which they had been spoken. It was a repet.i.tion of the little scene at dinner, but this time intensified. And it was so utterly, so entirely unlike Pia. Trix felt miserably squashed. She had been talking a good deal too, perhaps, indeed, rather foolishly, that was the worst of it. No doubt she _had_ made rather an idiot of herself. She swallowed a little lump in her throat. Well, anyhow that inflection in Pia's tone must be covered at once. That was the first, indeed the only, consideration.

”I never thought of all those contingencies,” she laughed. There was the faintest suspicion of a quiver in her voice. ”Let's talk about the moonlight. But it was the moonlight began it all.”

Two hours later the garden lay deserted in the same moonlight.

A woman was sitting by an open window, looking out into the garden. She had been sitting there quite a long time. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

”Oh, Trix, Trix,” she said half aloud, ”if only it would work. But it won't. And it was the moonlight that began it all.”

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE MOORLAND