Читать книгу The storm of London: a social rhapsody онлайн

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“Was it the sense of duty that prompted the actions of these menials?” He could not bring himself to think that, and he could not help believing that amongst his own superior class the sense of duty was always accompanied by a powerful sense of the fitness of things, so that if a virtue clashed with prejudices and the accepted standard of propriety, it was desirable that they should build up some new duty more in harmony with their worldly principles. There, no doubt, lay the difference between the upper classes and the lower, and which made the former shrink before breaking the laws of decorum, when the latter saw no objection to performing daily pursuits in their skins, unconcerned with higher motives of purity and exalted ideals.

Whether Lord Somerville had touched the keynote of social ethics remained unknown, but he retired early to his pallet and slept soundly through the still night.

Next day was the same, the day after identical, and the week passed thus without any change in the London phenomenon. Had the carpet in the Arabian tales carried the whole metropolis to some undiscovered planet, the wonderment could not have been greater. After a few days, Lionel observed that the L.C.C. Neptune had acquired more ease, more laisser-aller in his movements and postures, and decidedly sat less stiffly on his high perch; the butcher’s boy also carried his tray on his shoulder with distinct dash and comeliness. From his daily observations he came to the conclusion that London life, in its mechanical working, was going on pretty much as usual. He questioned his faithful valet, who by this time had become more than a servant, being newsagent and Court circular rolled into one. What he learned through the keyhole was astounding. No House of Commons, no Upper House were sitting! How could anything go on at that rate? Ah! that was the strangest part of it, for materially everything seemed to be as usual; the tradespeople came round for orders, and there was no danger of starving. The wheels of life kept on rolling, for, those who represented the axle were still in the centre of the wheel, and nothing could remove them. It was the upper part of the edifice that had given way, or at least had willingly retired into modest seclusion. The wheels might run for a long time without the coach, but the coach had no power to advance in any way without the wheels. This is what puzzled Lionel so much; he had always believed that if Society took it into its head to strike, the world would come to a standstill; and here was a colossal emergency in which one part of the edifice went on as if nothing had happened, while the other—in his eyes the important one—was forced to retire behind its walls, if it meant to keep sacred the principles of modesty and decorum; and still the whole structure had not foundered. Of course it could not last for ever. Nothing did last; and this axiom consoled Lord Somerville, as he cradled himself into the belief that the present condition would never answer in this eminently aristocratic empire. Why had not such a thing happened to Parisians? “I could safely declare that they would not have made such a fuss about it. They would have taken the adventure as it is, if transient, and would have accepted the joke with rollicking fun; if serious, they would have made the best of it, seen the plastic side of the situation, and at once endeavoured to live up to it as gracefully as possible. Yes, there lay the whole difference between the Latin race and the Anglo-Saxon; the former aimed at beauty, and the other, as the Bishop of Sunbury had said at Islington, aimed at a moral attitude.