“After all,” said the Duchess vaguely, “there are
certain things you can't get away from. Right and wrong,
good conduct and moral rectitude, have certain well-defined
limits.”
“So, for the matter of that,” replied Reginald, “has
the Russian Empire. The trouble is that the limits are not
always in the same place.”
Reginald and the Duchess regarded each other with mutual
distrust, tempered by a scientific interest. Reginald
considered that the Duchess had much to learn; in
particular, not to hurry out of the Carlton as though afraid
of losing one's last 'bus. A woman, he said, who is
careless of disappearances is capable of leaving town before
Goodwood, and dying at the wrong moment of an unfashionable
disease.
The Duchess thought that Reginald did not exceed the
ethical standard which circumstances demanded.
“Of course,” she resumed combatively, “it's the
prevailing fashion to believe in perpetual change and
mutability, and all that sort of thing, and to say we are
all merely an improved form of primeval ape---of course you
subscribe to that doctrine?”
“I think it decidedly premature; in most people I know
the process is far from complete.”
“And equally of course you are quite irreligious?”
“Oh, by no means. The fashion just now is a Roman
Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get
the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern
conveniences of the other.”
The Duchess suppressed a sniff. She was one of those
people who regard the Church of England with patronizing
affection, as if it were something that had grown up in
their kitchen garden.
“But there are other things,” she continued, “which I
suppose are to a certain extent sacred even to you.
Patriotism, for instance, and Empire, and Imperial
responsibility, and blood-is-thicker-than-water, and all
that sort of thing.”
Reginald waited for a couple of minutes before replying,
while the Lord of Rimini temporarily monopolized the
acoustic possibilities of the theatre.
“That is the worst of a tragedy,” he observed, “one
can't always hear oneself talk. Of course I accept the
Imperial idea and the responsibility. After all, I would
just as soon think in Continents as anywhere else. And some
day, when the season is over and we have the time, you shall
explain to me the exact blood-brotherhood and all that sort
of thing that exists between a French Canadian and a mild
Hindoo and a Yorkshireman, for instance.”
“Oh, well, `dominion over palm and pine,' you know,”
quoted the Duchess hopefully; “of course we mustn't forget
that we're all part of the great Anglo-Saxon Empire.”
“Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of
Jerusalem. A very pleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a
charming Jerusalem. But still a suburb.”
“Really, to be told one's living in a suburb when one is
conscious of spreading the benefits of civilization all over
the world! Philanthropy---I suppose you will say that is
a comfortable delusion; and yet even you must admit that
whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist,
however distant or difficult of access, we instantly
organize relief on the most generous scale, and distribute
it, if need be, to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. She
had made the same observation at a drawing-room meeting, and
it had been extremely well received.
“I wonder,” said Reginald, “if you have ever walked
down the Embankment on a winter night?”
“Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?”
“I didn't; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy,
practised in a world where everything is based on
competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account.
The young ravens cry for food.”
“And are fed.”
“Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed
upon.”
“Oh, you're simply exasperating. You've been reading
Nietzsche till you haven't got any sense of moral proportion
left. May I ask if you are governed by any laws of
conduct whatever?”
“There are certain fixed rules that one observes for
one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude
to any inoffensive, grey-bearded stranger that you may meet
in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It
always turns out to be the King of Sweden.”
“The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I
was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and
innocent.”
“Now we are only nice. One must specialize in these days. Which
reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a
choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles
and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other
things came to him also.”
“I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred
hook.”
“Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”