containing thoughts upon the great unknown, to which are added speculations upon her hereafter

it is not often that i find the time to take part in mrs albert grundy’s thursdays—the third and fifth thursdays of each month, from 4 to 6.30 p.m.—but on a certain afternoon pleasant weather and the sense of long-accrued responsibility drew me to fernbank.

it was really very nice, after one got there. perhaps it would have been less satisfactory had escape from the drawing-room been a more difficult matter. inside that formal chamber, with its blinds down-drawn to shield the carpet from the sun, the respectable air hung somewhat heavily about the assembled matronhood of brompton and the kensingtons. the units in this gathering changed from time to time—for mrs albert’s circle is a large and growing one—but the effect of the sum remained much the same. the elderly ladies talked about the amiability and kindliness of the duchess of teck; and argued the continental relationships of the duchesses of connaught and albany, first into an apparently hopeless tangle of burgs and hausens and zollerns and sweigs, then triumphantly out again into the bright daylight of well-ordered and pellucid genealogy. the younger wives spoke in subdued voices of more juvenile princesses on the lower steps of the throne, with occasional short-winged flights across the north sea in imaginative search of a suitable bride for the then unwedded duke of york, if an importation should be found to be necessary—about which opinions might in all loyalty differ. the few young girls who sat dutifully here beside their mammas or married sisters talked of nothing at all, but smiled confusedly and looked away whenever another’s glance, caught theirs—and, i daresay, thought with decent humility upon marchionesses.

but outside, on the garden-lawn at the rear of the house, the almanach de gotha threw no shadow, and the pungent scent of jasmine and lilies drove the leathery odour of debrett from the soft summer air. the gentle london haze made whistlers and maitlands of the walls and roof-lines and chimney-pots beyond. the pretty girls of fernbank held court here on the velvet grass, with groups of attendant maidens from sympathetic myrtle lodges and cedarcrofts and chestnut villas—selected homesteads stretching all the way to remote west kensington. they said there was no one left in london. why, as i sat apart in the shade of the ivy overhanging the garden path, and watched this out-door panorama of the grundys’ friendships, it seemed as if i had never comprehended before how many girls there really were in the world.

and how sweet it was to look upon these damsels, with their dainty sailor’s hats of straw, their cheeks of devon cream and damask, their tall and shapely forms, their profiles of faultless classical delicacy! what if, in time, they too must sit inside, by preference, and babble of royalties and the peerage, and politely uncover those two aggressive incisors of genteel maturity when they were asked to have a third cup of tea? that stage, praise heaven, should be many years removed. we will have no memento mori bones or tusks out here in the sunlit garden—but only tennis balls, and the inspiring chalk-bands on the sward, and the noble grace of english girlhood, erect and joyous in the open air. # much as i delighted in this spectacle, it forced upon me as well a certain vague sense of depression. these lofty and lovely creatures were strangers to me. i do not mean that their names were unknown to me, or that i had not exchanged civil words with many of them, or that i might not be presented to, and affably received by, them all. the feeling was, rather, that if it were possible for me to marry them all, we still to the end of our days would remain strangers. i should never know what to say to them; still less should i ever be able to guess what they were thinking.

the tallest and most impressive of all the bevy—the handsome girl in the pale brown frock with the shirt-front and jacketed blouse, who stands leaning with folded hands upon her racket like an indolent diana—why, i punted her about the whole reach from sunbury to walton during the better part of a week, only last summer, not to mention sitting beside her at dinner every evening on the houseboat. we were so much together, in truth, that my friends round about, as i came to know afterwards, canvassed among themselves the prospect of our arranging never to separate. yet i feel that i do not know this girl. we are friends, yes; but we are not acquainted with each other.

more than once—perhaps a dozen times—in driving through the busier of london streets, my fancy has been caught by this thing: a hansom whirling smartly by, the dark hood of which frames a woman’s face—young, wistful, ivory-hued. it is like the flash exposure of a kodak—this bald instant of time in which i see this face, and comprehend that its gaze has met mine, and has burned into my memory a lightning picture of something i should not recognise if i saw it again, and cannot at all reproduce to myself, and probably would not like if i could, yet which leaves me with the feeling that i am richer than i was before. in that fractional throb of space there has been snatched an unrehearsed and unprejudiced contact of human souls—projected from one void momentarily to be swept forward into another; and though not the judgment day itself shall bring these two together again, they know each other.

now that i look again at the goddess in the pale-brown gown, these unlabelled faces of the flitting hansoms seem by comparison those of familiar companions and intimates.

i get no sense of human communion from that serene and regular countenance, with its exquisite nose, its short upper-lip and glint of pearls along the bowed line of the mouth, its correctly arched brows and wide-open, impassive blue eyes. i can see it with prophetic admiration out-queening all the others at henley, or at goodwood, or on the great staircase of buckingham palace. i can imagine it at monte carlo, flushed a little at the sight of retreating gold; or at the head of a great noble’s table, coldly poised above satin throat and shoulders, and stirring no muscle under the free whisperings of his excellency to the right. i can conceive it in the divorce court, bearing with metallic equanimity the rude scrutiny of a thousand unlicensed eyes. but my fancy wavers and fails at the task of picturing that face at my own fireside, with the light of the home-hearth painting the fulness of her rounded chin, and reflecting back from her glance, as we talk of men and books and things, the frank gladness of real comradeship.

but—tchut!—i have no fireside, and the comrades i like best are playing halfcrown whist at the club; and these are all nice girls—hearty, healthful, handsome girls, who can walk, run, dance, swim, scull, skate, ride as no others have known or dared to do since the glacial wave of christianity depopulated the glades and dells of olympus. they will mate after their kind, and in its own good time along will come a new generation of straight, strong-limbed, thin-lipped, pink-and-white girls, and of tow-headed, deep-chested lads, their brothers—boys who will bully their way through rugby and harrow, misspell and misapprehend their way into the army, the navy, and the civil service, and spread themselves over the habitable globe, to rule, through sheer inability to understand, such baboos and matabele and mere irishry as imperial destiny delivers over to them.

the vision is not wholly joyous, as it with diffidence projects itself beyond, into that further space where new strange other generations walk—the girls still taller and more coldly tubbed, the boys astride a yet more temerarious saddle of dull dominion. reluctant prophecy discerns beneath their considerable feet the bruised fragments of many antique trifles—the bric-à-brac of an extinct sentimental fraction that had a sense of humour and could spell—and, to please mamma, the fig-leaves have quite overspread and hidden the statues in their garden. but power is there, and empire; they still more serenely loom above the little foreign folks who cook, and sing to harps and fiddles, and paint for their amusement; such as it is under their shaping, they possess the earth.

so, as the sun goes down in the hammersmith heavens, i take off my hat, and salute the potential mothers of the new rome.