Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/93

Rh shape the field at once, leading it to a point. But she had the wit not to do so.

She laughed, with a little deprecating movement of her arms towards him.

"Oh, be quiet, Lord Brayton," she said, "and don't interrupt your practical prophetess. Dependents, dependents; where were we? Yes, quite so; I mean just that—your scullery-maid, and your boot-boy, and your farmers, and so on. You want and you mean to raise the level, artistically, intellectually. You want everybody about you to care for what is lovely—that is the best word, is it not? for it means so much—and you want to know how begin, though why you ask me to tell you, I can't conjecture. It's no use hanging up Botticelli photographs in the kitchen, or putting a Raphael print in the odd-man's room, or leaving a Shelley in the stables, or whistling the "Unfinished" below the window of your chauffeur, or starting a Shakespeare Society in Brixham, or a literary causerie once a month at—at the Laburnums. Let me think a moment that is not the way, though perhaps some of those things are part of the way. You may see a big stone in a field, where you want to make a road, and though that stone won't make a road, yet it is only by using stones, and breaking them up, that your road will be made. Wait a moment!"

He was quite willing to wait a moment. Her beauty, her vitality, her enthusiasm, her understanding of hiss aims was all worth waiting for. Then she leaned forward, clasping her hands together between her knees, and looked at him straight, speaking quite slowly and weighing her words.

"Be yourself," she said—"be yourself in the truest sense. Pamper your passion for all the things that are lovely. Don't take the scullery-maid by the scruff of the neck, and say, 'Admire that Reynolds, or I give you a week's warning!' but work at everybody on their own lines. Ah, that is just it! That was said as I meant it! Be yourself and be detailed; surround yourself first of all with all that your own sure taste tells you is lovely, and you may be certain that the instinct of perfection will spread. But it will spread by perfection in many lines. Your chef—oh, I am sure this is so, and I will tell you why soon—will come to your room for orders (see your servants yourself, by the way), and something of the atmosphere of you will infect him. He will do his very best in his line. The man who cleans the plate will do his best, when he gradually is infected with the atmosphere of the best. Does it sound ridiculous? If so I will stop."