The Green Carnation — Context and Discussion

inth had not been invented then, and 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray' had never been written, and women hardly ever smoked, and----"

"And men did not wear green carnations," Lady Locke said.

Mrs. Windsor turned towards her cousin, and lifted her darkened eyebrows to her fair fringe.

"Emily, what do you mean? Ah! here is our Bovril! I feel so delightfully vicious when I drink it, so unconventional! You speak as if you disliked our times."

"I hardly know them yet. I have been a country cousin for ten years, you see. I am quite colonial."

"Poor dear child. How horrid. I suppose you have hardly seen chiffon. It must have been like death. But do you really object to the green carnation?"

"That depends. Is it a badge?"

"I only saw about a dozen in the Opera House to-night, and all the men who wore them looked the same. They had the same walk, or rather waggle, the same coyly conscious expression, the same wavy motion of the head. When they spoke to each other, they called each other by Christian names. Is it a badge of some club or some society, and is Mr. Amarinth their high priest? They all spoke to him, and seemed to revolve round him like satellites around the sun."

"My dear Emily, it is not a badge at all. They wear it merely to be original."

"And can they only be original in a buttonhole way? Poor fellows."

"You don't understand. They like to draw attention to themselves."

"By their dress? I thought that was the prerogative of women."

"Really, Emily, you _are_ colonial. Men may have women's minds, just as women may have the minds of men."

"Dear yes. It is quite common nowadays."

"And has Lord Reginald Hastings got a woman's mind?"

"My dear, he has a very beautiful mind. He is poetic, imaginative, and perfectly fearless."

"He dares do anything. He is not afraid of Society, or of what the clergy and such unfashionable and limited people say. For instance, if he wished to commit what copy-books call a sin, he would commit it, even if Society stood aghast at him. That is what I call having real moral courage."

Lady Locke sipped her Bovril methodically.

"I see," she said rather drily; "he is not afraid to be wicked."

"Not in the least; and how many of us can say as much? Mr. Amarinth is quite right. He declares that goodness is merely another name for cowardice, and that we all have a certain disease of tendencies that inclines us to certain things labelled sins. If we check our tendencies, we drive the disease inwards; but if we sin, we throw it off. Suppressed measles are far more dangerous than measles that come out."

"I see; we are to aim at inducing a violent rash that all the world may stare at."

Her cousin glanced at her for a moment with a tinge of uneasy inquiry. She was not very sharp, although she was very receptive of modern philosophy.

"Well," she said, a little doubtfully, "not quite that, I suppose."

"We are to sin on the house-top and in the street, instead of in the privacy of a room with the door locked. But what will the London County Council say?"

"Oh, they have nothing to do with our class. They only concern themselves with acrobats, and respectable elderly women who are fired from cannons. That is so right. Respectable elderly women do so much harm. Mr. Amarinth said to-night--in the garden scene, if you remember--that prolonged purity wrinkled the mind as much as prolonged impurity wrinkled the face. Nature forces us to choose whether we will spoil our faces with our sins, or our minds with our virtues. How true."

"And how original. This Bovril is very comforting, Betty; as reviving as--an epigram."

"Yes, my cook understands it. That must be so sweet for the Bovril--to be understood! Do you like Lord Reggie?"

"He has a beautiful face. How old is he? Twenty?"

"Oh no, nearly twenty-five. Three years younger than you are. That is all."

"He looks astonishingly young."

"Yes. He says that his sins keep him fresh. A sinner with a young lamb's heart among the full grown flocks of saints, you know. Such a quaint idea, so original."

"I want you to tell me which is original, Mr. Amarinth or Lord Reggie?"

"No, they are too much alike. When we meet with the Tweedledum and Tweedledee in mind, one of them is always a copy, an echo of the other."

"Do you think so? Well, of course Mr. Amarinth has been original longer than Lord Reggie, because he is nearly twenty years older."

"Then Lord Reggie is the echo. What a pity he is not merely vocal."