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_ "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 Good-wood,
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 patronising 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 monopolised 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 civilisation 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 organise
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 specialise 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 book."
"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett." _
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