The Edwardians Read Online Free Page B

that than in anything else. Don’t hurry, darling. I shall be late anyhow.”
    One half of Sebastian detested his mother’s friends; the other half was allured by their glitter. Sometimes he wanted to gallop away by himself to the world’s ends, sometimes he wanted to give himself up wholly to the flattering charm of pretty women. Sometimes he wished to see his whole acquaintance cast into a furnace, so vehemently did he deprecate them, sometimes he thought that they had mastered the problem of civilisation more truly than the Greeks or Romans. “Since one cannot have truth,” cried Sebastian, struggling into his evening shirt, “let us at least have good manners.” The thought was not original: his father had put it into his head, years ago, before he died. But this brings us to Sebastian’s private trouble: he never could make up his mind on any subject. It was most distressing. He had, apparently, no opinions but only moods,—moods whose sweeping intensity was equalled only by the rapidity of their change. He could never accustom himself to their impermanence; whatever state of mind was upon him at the moment, he instantly believed to be his settled outlook upon life. Momentarily alarmed when it deserted him, he changed over at once in oblivious optimism. Between-whiles, when no particular mood possessed him, he worried over his own instability. Something, he thought, must be wrong with him. He contrasted himself with the people he knew: how calm they were, how certain, how self-assured! With what unfaltering determination did they appear to have pursued their chosen path from its beginning right up to its end!—No, not yet right up to its end. Most of the people he knew at home were in their middle age; some certainly were old, the old Duchess of Hull, for instance, progressing, though still indomitably, towards her grave; but it was obvious that as they had begun, so did they mean to conclude. The world would be with them, late, as soon. They had known their own minds; they had stuck to their opinions. They had made their choice. How enviable! They had settled their scheme of values. How reposeful! But was it, he wondered, a very good choice? Were those values so very valuable? His mood underwent a violent revulsion. He wanted suddenly to be up on the roof again, this time under the stars. Sulky and critical, he shut his disappointed spaniels into his bedroom and went downstairs to obey his mother’s summons.
    On leaving Lady Roehampton, Lucy went to her own room: the great house was quiet; all the guests were safely shut into their rooms till dinner; no one was about, except a housemaid beating up the cushions or a footman emptying the wastepaper basket. Along the passages, the windows were open, for it was a warm July evening, and the pigeons cooing on the battlements made the silence murmurous as though the grey stone of the walls had itself become vocal. Lucy hurried through the empty rooms. She detested solitude, even for half an hour; the habit of constant company—it could scarcely be called companionship—had unfitted her for her own society, and now she sagged and felt forlorn. She ought to look into the schoolroom, she thought, and say good night to Viola, who, in dressing gown and pigtails, would be eating her supper, but the idea, no sooner than conceived, filled her with boredom. She decided to summon her favourite Sebastian instead. Reaching her room, where her maid, Button, was laying out her dress, she said, “Send word to his Grace, Button, that I should like to see him here for a few minutes.”
    Oh, the weariness of life, she thought, sitting down at her dressing table; and then she remembered how Leonard Anquetil had looked at her when she had shown him the garden after tea, and a slight zest for life revived. She sat with lowered eyes, smiling a downward smile, while her thoughts dawdled over Leonard Anquetil and her fingers played with the