“What would Society have said had a woman been to the Army and Navy Stores at 10 a.m. in the same _décolleté_ gown which she wore at last night’s ball?” This was Gwen, who mischievously looked at Lionel.
“My dear Gwen, think for one minute of the soldier enwrapping himself in the judge’s gown; the apronless and capless housemaid appearing in the hall with a tiara on her head (even were it paid out of her earnings); or the butler pompously opening the door in a Field-Marshal’s uniform?”
“Bedlam or Portland Bay would have been their next abode,” replied Danford; “you are evoking in your mind’s eye a social upheaval, and in one instant hurling to the ground a whole structure which took centuries to erect. The dignity of magistracy, the punctilio of military honour, the ancestral breeding of nobility, would all be hopelessly annihilated were you to transpose from one body on to another the outward signs of each. Not only had Dame Fashion preached a new gospel, but new passions were thereof discovered to make Society’s blood rush more violently, and different forms of sorrows henceforth filled the hearts of women.”
“Oh! how true you are, Mr Danford,” suddenly broke in Nettie; “how often have I seen women of fashion sad unto death at the contemplation of their wardrobes.”
“And the pity of it all was that women truly writhed under the sting of these petty grievances,” added Eva.
“You are slowly finding out for yourself, Miss Carey,” remarked Danford, “that an eleventh commandment had been written out by Society: ‘Thou shall not be—shabby.’”
“What a host of innocent women have been sent to perdition in trying to obey this law to the letter,” retorted Lionel.
“Ah! Fashion, what crimes were committed in thy name!” comically added Nettie.
“There is no doubt also,” said Lionel, “that the demoralisation of our past Society was greatly caused by that misinterpreted activity which in a great sense led to artificiality and deception. No proper time was allowed for development; we had clothed art, clothed charity, clothed education; and in every branch of industry and artistic pursuit the fruit had to be picked ere it was ripe. The weighty question of pauperism was settled over the tea-cups when a bazaar organised by fashionable women had realised fifty pounds; the last word of realistic art had been said when a well-known sculptor had put the final touch to his statue of a ballet dancer, by sticking on the skirt a flounce of real gold lace. As to education, it was to be imbibed, as air is pumped into a rubber tyre, strongly and promptly, so as to lose no time, for the next race was at hand and we had to start, even if we punctured on the road.”