"Haven't a care in the world," said Lord Charles, "except the confounded inspectors. But they are never hard on a man of my birth, and I manage to escape accumulating more than I can conveniently spend. The fact is, Mr. Howard, I hate work, and I like making myself comfortable. There are plenty of others like me. Old Perry is one of them, but, of course, he has a family, and must keep up appearances."
"Mr. Howard already knows me too well not to believe that all I do is dictated by humanitarianism," said Mr. Perry. "Lord Charles is cut off from the society of his equals. His family has disowned him. At first they combined to take small sums of money from him, and tried to help him out of the morass into which he had sunk. But they have long since given it up. He now, as you see, wallows—absolutely wallows—in his degradation, and I fear he is past all hope."
"Not a bit," said Lord Charles, again hoisting himself in his chair. "I am hoping to have a very good dinner to-night, and another one to-morrow. Now I am going to play bridge. I don't know whether you would care for a rubber, Mr. Howard?"
For some reason Mr. Perry seemed to desire me to accept this invitation. He said he had some important business to think over, and we might leave him where he was.
"Old Perry can't put away the liquor he used to," said Lord Charles, as we went out of the room. "He's had too much of it. He wants a little nap now. He's a nice old fellow, and you'll have a good time at Magnolia Hall as long as you stay there."
The card-room was well occupied. We cut into a table with two other men, one of whom was the stockbroker who had made the luckycoupthat afternoon, and the other was a disagreeable sort of fellow who, I learnt afterwards, had inherited a great deal of money and had done little all his life to diminish it. His name was Brummer; he had the manners of a costermonger, and not of one in the higher walks of that calling, if there are such.
Lord Charles treated both of them with a careless good-nature which seemed to subdue somewhat the exuberance of their vulgarity; but I thought that before we made up our table they looked about as if they would rather have joined another one. And it was evident that they suspected me of being what Brummer called contemptuously "a —— philanthropist," when the stockbroker told him I had come into the club with Mr. Perry.
Lord Charles was my partner, and I took the precaution of asking him what the points were to be, before we began.
"Oh, club points—a sovereign," he said, in an off-hand manner, and I could only hope that my luck would stand good, for they were much higher than I was accustomed to.
However, I had over ten pounds in my pocket and did not suppose that there would be much difficulty in getting more in Upsidonia if I wanted it. So I sat down with no particular uneasiness.
It was a long rubber, but it ended in Lord Charles leaving the declaration to me, and my declaring "no trumps," with four aces and a long suit of diamonds.
When he had expressed his satisfaction, and Brummer had sworn heavily at our luck, I leant back in my chair to watch him play the hand.
He was just about to begin, when there was some commotion in the room, and I looked up to see two men in blue uniforms coming towards us with notebooks in their hands.
Brummer let out a violent oath, and muttered something about the —— inspectors. Lord Charles looked up at them and said: "Hullo! Come for a drink?"
They ignored this pleasantry, and the superior of them asked what stakes we were playing for.
"Club stakes, of course," said Brummer. "Pound points, and a hundred on the rubber."
This was a most unpleasant shock to me, until I reflected that the rubber was certainly ours by the cards on the table, and I need not play another one. So I was enabled to give my attention to the inspector, who enquired if I was a member of the club, and, when I said that I was a visitor, asked the name of my introducer.
Then he looked at the table and said: "None of you are drinking anything. When did you last imbibe?"
"A good idea!" said Lord Charles. "Let's have drinks all round. What's yours, Inspector?"
The inspector smiled indulgently, and went away to another table. Brummer and the other man immediately became violently abusive.
"They wouldn't dare put their noses into a poor man's club," said Brummer; and the other man asked: "Why should we be forced to drink, if we don't want to?"
"I always do want to," said Lord Charles. "I want a whisky and soda now as much as I ever wanted anything in my life. You'll join me, Mr. Howard?"
But I declined. There were limits.
"Why do they insist upon your drinking?" I asked.
"Oh, because it's a club, and the wine-merchants have been kicking up a row lately. They say the supply is beginning to exceed the demand;[20]that we're getting abstemious, but I'm sure I don't know where they get their information from. Now then—you've led a spade, Brummer. Very good. I put on the ace. I play out Dummy's seven diamonds and his two other aces; put myself in with a small club, and make my king, queen, and knave—grand slam."
He put his cards down on the table, and Brummer and his partner, after looking at them suspiciously, accepted the inevitable, and proceeded to add up the score.
We had won two hundred and thirty-four points, and quite a pleasant feeling came over me as I contemplated receiving that number of pounds.
But my satisfaction was short-lived. To my unspeakable horror, I saw Lord Charles cheerfully handing over bank notes and gold to the stockbroker, and realised that I was expected to do the same to the odious Brummer. I ought to have anticipated it. If you won at anything in Upsidonia, of course, you paid out money; if you lost, you received it.
What was I to do? In my distress I mumbled something about having thought that the points were a pound a hundred, and then a gleam of relief came to me when it struck me that Brummer would be better pleased than anything at my omitting to pay him, especially as he had bitterly complained at his want of luck in losing the rubber, as ill-bred players always do, and had made himself intensely disagreeable to his partner for losing a possible trick at an earlier point of the game.
But unfortunately, Brummer took my evident unwillingness to pay up as an offensive mark of patronage.
"We don't want none of your blooming charity here," he said. "'Oo the something, something are you, to come 'ere crowing over us? If you win a rubber in this 'ere club, you fork out same as if you was playing with the nobs."
"Oh, yes, Howard," said Lord Charles, "you needn't be shy. Brummer don't mind taking it a bit. Why, it's a fleabite to him. He's got a hundred thousand sitting on his chest at home."
"But I tell you I haven't got it," I said. "I've only got about fifteen pounds in the world."
"Well, then, what do you want to come poking yourself in 'ere for in that rig out?" enquired Brummer with more oaths. "We ain't a wild beast show, are we? I thought there was something fishy about you when Perry first brought you in."
"What's this? What's this?" exclaimed a voice at my elbow. "I say, Brummer, my man, don't forget yourself, you know. No language! It's one of the rules of the club, to which we have all subscribed."
I looked round to see standing behind me an athletic-looking young man in the dress of a curate.[21]
"Ah, Thompson!" said Lord Charles. "Come to see we're all behaving ourselves, eh? It's all right. Brummer was just going to write out a U. O. Me to give to Mr. Howard. Here's a fountain pen, Brummer. You can write it on the back of the score."
Brummer scrawled "U. O. Me £234" and signed his name to it in an execrable fist, and I put it in my pocket, wondering what I was to do about it. Then Brummer and the stockbroker got up and left the table.
Lord Charles introduced me to Mr. Thompson, and then drifted off himself, with a sort of determined carelessness.
Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Thompson gripped me affectionately by the arm just above the elbow, and led me out of the room. "Very pleased to make your acquaintance, old fellow," he said heartily. "You and I must get to know each other better. Some night, when you've got nothing better to do, you must come round to my digs and have a yarn, and a cup of coffee. Now, what have you beendoing with yourself all day?"
I was led into the big room again, and deposited in a chair, from which I could see Mr. Perry slumbering by the window in the evening sunlight, while the curate took one next to me, in which he sat upright, with his legs crossed, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat.
"After all," he said, looking at me with manly but somewhat embarrassing tenderness, "smoking and drinking and playing cards aren't everything in the world, are they! You feel that yourself, I know. It's so jolly to feel you've done something with your day—something to raise a pal."
I muttered something to the effect that itwasrather jolly; but he did not seem to want me particularly to help in the conversation.
"Do you take any interest in Coleoptera?" he asked, and proceeded, clasping his hands and cracking their joints: "Coleoptera is larks. A few fellows come round to me every Tuesday evening, and we teach each other something about the beggars. How would you like to join us to-night?"
"I don't know where it is," I said.
He gave me the address of his rooms, with a half-concealed air of eagerness.
"I mean I don't know where Coleoptera is," I said. "I never could tackle geography."
"Oh, I see!" he said, not turning a hair, for which I respected him. "No, you've got it wrong, old chap. Coleoptera is beetles, you know. The fact is that I wanted to get up some subject that would give fellows like you a taste for science. There's a good deal to be lost over it, you know. Have you ever heard of Professor Gregory? He began just like that, reading with a parson fellow who took an interest in him—I mean, took an interest in science. Gregory was the son of a ground landlord, you know, and ifhecould raise himself to what he is now, anybody could. Why don't you try it, old chap? I'm sure you look intelligent enough."
I looked as modest as possible under the circumstances, and he seemed to regard me more closely. "What's your line?" he asked. "What are you doing to scare off the oof-bird?"[22]
I don't know what I should have replied to this question, but at that moment Mr. Perry, whom I had observed gradually waking up,came over to us and said: "Ah, Howard, I see you're in good hands, but I think we must be going off now. The carriage is at the door, and my good Thomas won't like to be kept waiting."
The curate looked at me again, with a slightly different expression, and Mr. Perry said to him: "We don't often get a Highlander here, do we, Thompson? Mr. Howard is making social enquiries. I dare say he has learnt quite a lot from you."
The curate suddenly laughed. "I am afraid I have put my foot in it, sir," he said. "If you come among us disguised as a rich man, you can't complain of being treated like one."[23]
He was a good fellow, and we shook hands warmly as we parted.
We arrived home in time to dress for dinner. Lord Arthur had laid out my evening clothes, and was still in the room, evidently ready for a little conversation.
"Well, I suppose you met some pretty low-down swabs at old Perry's club," he began "What did you do there?"
"I played bridge," I said, "and lost—I mean won—two hundred and thirty-four pounds. I have accepted a U. O. Me for it. What do you do if you haven't got the money?"
"Why, wait till you get landed with some, and swop itoff. You're jolly lucky! It's a dangerous game. Why, you might have had to receive it! Who did you play with?"
"Lord Charles Delagrange was my partner. Do you know him?"
His face changed. "He's my uncle, I'm sorry to say," he said stiffly. "But if I were to meet him in the street I should look the other way. He's a swab of the first water."
"He seems cheerful enough," I said, "and enjoys his life thoroughly, to all appearances."
"I dare say he does. But there must be times when he asks himself whether the company he keeps is worth the price he pays for it. He can't get any other. I shouldn't think there's a servants' hall in the country that would be open to him now."
"I suppose the best society in the place is to be found in the servants' hall."
"Of course it is—the best female society. You must come and dine with us one night here. We'll give you a very poor dinner."
"Thank you. You are very kind."
"Not at all. Of course, it's a little different in this house. We have to keep up the farce, and we don't like to put people like the Perrys out. We generally choose a night for ourparties when they are dining out. In other houses you can just tell them upstairs that there won't be any regular dinner for them, when you think of having guests of your own."
At that moment Edward came into the room, and Lord Arthur left us, saying that he must go and help Mr. Blother with the table.
Edward seemed a trifle disturbed. "I say," he said, "what is all this about your being a Highlander?"
"Well, Miss Miriam and I settled it between ourselves that England must be in the Highlands somewhere," I explained.
He looked at me with some suspicion. "It's all very well to have a joke," he said, "and the story you made up to me was certainly very ingenious and amusing, though highly absurd. But I don't think you ought to want to keep it up any longer. It amused Miriam, but there's always the danger, where a young girl lives in such surroundings as these, that she may get a taste for luxury. You ought not to make it out to her that people could live anywhere in the way you pretend without disgrace. It is apt to confound right and wrong."
"My dear fellow," I said, "I quite see your point. But Miss Miriam is so level-headed that I am sure she would never be affected in that way."
"Perhaps not," he said. "Still, I think it is time you dropped it. Of course, I shouldn't dream of asking you where you really do come from, if you don't want to tell me. It is quite obvious that you are well-born and well-educated, and that is enough for me."
"My dear Edward, if you will let me call you so, I appreciate your delicacy. All I have told you is true, but I have not the slightest wish to publish it abroad if you think it would be better that I shouldn't."
"I think it ismuchbetter that you shouldn't, unless you wish to lie under the suspicion of being touched in the head."
"No, I don't wish that at all. As I am already supposed to be a Highlander, suppose we keep to that."
"Well, if you like," he said unwillingly. "But if you are supposed to have come from the Highlands, you ought to be more than a little learned. I wonder you haven't already been asked what your subject is. Is there any branch of learning in which you are an expert?"
"I took a First Class in the Classical Schools of my university, and am aFellow of my College, if you know what that means."
His face brightened.[24]"Of course, youarea Highlander," he said, with a smile. "I don't know why you want to make such a mystery of it; I suppose it is out of modesty. Well, I won't bother you any more; I must go and dress. My married sister, by the by, is coming to dine with her husband. He is a very good fellow, and I am sure you will get on with him. He is striving hard to overcome the defects of his birth. You remember that I told you my sister had married into the Stock Exchange."
I found the family assembled in the drawing-room. I was quite pleased to see Miriam again. I thought she looked very sweet in her white frock. She had a lovely neck and shoulders, and her hair was very soft and fair. She smiled at me as I came in, in a friendly fashion, and seemed quite to have forgotten that a slight cloud had hung over us when we had last parted. I remembered that I had not yet pumped Edward about the mystery of the garden.
I was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Eppstein. Mr. Perry's eldest daughter must have been some years older than Miriam. She was good-looking, but wore a prim pinched-up expression. Her husband looked nervous. He was a youngish dark man, with a small moustache and hot hands. He said: "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir," when we were introduced.
I took in Mrs. Perry, and had Miriam on the other side of me. Owing to the smallness of the party, Mr. and Mrs. Eppstein sat next to one another, on the other side of the table.
Curiously enough, the question I had been meaning to ask of Edward was answered for me during the conversation with which we began.
"I have a piece of news for you," said Mrs. Eppstein, to the company generally. "They say that Lady Grace Perkins has asked Sir Hugo Merton into her garden."
Everyone expressed that sort of interest with which the news of an unexpected engagement is received.
"Hugo Merton!" exclaimed Lord Arthur, who was handing round the soup. "Why, I thought he was always hanging round little Rosie Fletcher's gate."
"She wouldn't give him the invitation he wanted," said Mr. Blother, "and I suppose he got tired of waiting for it. A glass of sherry, Edward?"
"No thank you," said Edward. "Didn't Lady Grace ask John Hardy into her garden last summer?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Eppstein; "it was he who told Herman." She turned to her husband. "Thelargespoon, pet," she whispered, and then asked aloud: "Didn't he say that her garden was very badly kept, dear?"
Mr. Eppstein blushed awkwardly. "He said it wasn't so tyesty as some he'd been in," he said.
This reply caused some slight embarrassment, which Mr. Perry sought to dissipate by saying: "John Hardy has certainly received invitations from a good many ladies. No doubt he has a way with him."
"It is quite time he asked for a key," said Mrs. Perry somewhat severely. "It is not fair on nice girls that he should go from one garden to another as he does. And it is very ill-bred to talk about them to others."
"I didn't arst 'im abaht it," said Mr. Eppstein.
"'Ask,' pet, not 'arst,'" whispered his wife.
Mr. Eppstein accepted the correction. "I didn't ask him," he said. "I fancy he was upset like at getting the chuck, and wanted to sye somethink narsty."
"Very likely that was it," said Mr. Perry, covering Mrs. Eppstein's further corrections. "Well, I am sure I hope Lady Grace and Sir Hugo will be happy together, and that it will end in his asking her for a key. He wants a wife, and a home of his own. Our friend, Sir Hugo, is employed in a large drapery establishment, Mr. Howard, where they have the system of living in. You don't know anything about that over the mountains."
"And you don't know anything about my lady's garden, either," said Edward, leaning forward to address me across his sister. "I suppose you hardly understand what we have been talking about?"
"I have gathered something of what it means," I said, glad to be able to avow my ignorance, for Miriam's benefit, "but I didn't know before. I suppose if a lady asks a man into her garden, it means that she—she likes him?"
"She would not do it," said Mrs. Perry, "unless he had first shown that he likedher, and would be glad to have the invitation."
"Rather a delicate subject for conversation at the dinner-table, isn't it?" put in Mr. Blother, from the carving-table, where he was slicing the salmon. "Why not let the men explain it when the ladies have left the room?"
This suggestion was acceded to, and we talked on other subjects as long as the ladies were with us.
Mrs. Eppstein seemed anxious that I should understand that, although she had married beneath her, she had not done it for fun, so to speak. She talked a great deal about lifting the richer classes, and her husband seemed quite to fall in with her views upon the subject. I noticed that as dinner progressed he drank considerably more wine than Edward did, though not so much as Mr. Perry, and was inclined to take a larger share in the conversation than at the beginning.
The subject of the servants[25]was introduced over dessert, and Eppstein waxed eloquent and indignant at being expected to give up the use of his library after dinner, because the house-maid was reading up for matriculation at the Culbut University, and wanted a quiet room to work in.
"Well, of course, wecansit in the drawing-room," said Mrs. Eppstein. "I don't mind that so much. But what I really had to put down my foot about the other day was the new parlour-maid objecting to Herman and me talking together at meals. I said, 'It may be quite reasonable to impose silence upon the usual rich and vulgar family, but I should never think of submitting to such a rule myself.' And then she had the impudence to say that she didn't mindmytalking, and I could talk to her if I liked, but the master's accent was so disagreeable that it unfitted her for her work. I told her that my husband and I were one, and that if I could put up with itshecould."
"Domestic servants are not what they were," said Mrs. Perry. "There used to be something like friendship between them and their mistresses. I know many ladies, who went out to service as girls, who still visit their old mistresses, and even ask them to their own houses. But that kindly feeling is getting rare nowadays. I do not think it is all the fault of the mistresses, either, although with the spread of education, they are certainly getting very uppish."
"I think that it is entirely the fault of the servants," said Edward. "The rich are notcontent now to be mere drudges, and to spend their lives on being waited on hand and foot. And it is not right that they should be. Servants are really a parasitical class, and it is unfair that the burden of providing them with work should be put upon the rich, when they are so over-burdened already with having to consume more than their fair share of the produce of the country."
"There'll be a strike some day," said Eppstein rather excitedly. "You mark my words. If the rich was to combine together and say they wouldn't eat no more than they wanted to, and all was to agree to chuck the food they didn't want away, p'raps the poor would think twice about piling it up on them."
"That would be a serious day for the country," said Mr. Perry. "We must work by legitimate means, not anarchy. The solution of the problem of over-production can only come, I feel sure, by more individual members of the community sympathising with the rich, and sharing their lives, as we try to do here. It is not easy, I know. I have spent my own time in a humble endeavour to lead the way, but sometimes I am rather inclined to sink under the burden. I have my moments of dejection. There are times when I feel as if I positively cannot face the prospect of another rich meal."
He sat at the foot of the table with his shirt-front crumpled and eyes slightly glazed, and it was not difficult to believe that this was one of the moments he had so feelingly alluded to, in which his philanthropic efforts sat heavily on him.
But Edward, who had been as abstemious as had been permitted him, leant forward and put his hand on his father's. "Cheer up, dad," he said. "You are doing a noble work; you must not faint under it."
"I do feel rather faint," said Mr. Perry. "I wish Blother would bring the brandy."
The ladies left us at this point, and Edward, who was in a mood of harangue, went into this question of food, which counted for so much in the economic problems of Upsidonia.
"You see, it must all come down to that in the end," he said. "Agricultural and pastoral pursuits are so much sought after that the over-production of food is the most serious item in the general over-production ofthe country. The cry of 'back to the towns' is all very well, but people won't live in artificial surroundings if they have once tasted the pleasure and excitement of hard bodily toil; and you can't make them."
"Well, you wouldn't like it yourself for long," said Eppstein, "not if you know when you're well off. 'Ow did you get 'ere from the 'Ighlands? Walk? Tell us abaht it."
"We were going to tell Howard about my lady's garden," said Edward. "You see, Howard, in the country there is room for everybody, and the young men and young girls can go courting in a natural way, in lanes with briar hedges and nightingales and the moon, and all that sort of thing. They can secure the necessary privacy. But in towns there is so little privacy. It is the one thing in which the rich are really better off than the poor, because they have large houses and gardens of their own."
"Which seem to belong more to their servants than to them," I said.
"Well, of course, the servants have to be considered. I am not an extremist, and I do not advocate, as some do, that property should carry no disadvantages other than those obviously inherent in it. If the rich, for instance,were allowed to surround themselves with the gracious things of life—space, freedom, flowers, art, leisure for study and self-improvement—without the checks that a wise State has imposed upon the abuse of those things, the incentive to break loose from the bonds of property would be lessened. Don't you agree with me, Herman?"
"It's a bore, sometimes, to 'ave to eat too much," Eppstein corroborated him.
"Quite so!" said Mr. Perry, awakening suddenly out of a species of trance. "Quite so, Herman! Then why eat too much? I ask you—whyeat too much?"
"'Cos the State makes you," said Eppstein.
"Ah!" said Mr. Perry, wagging his head with an expression of deep wisdom. "But now you're talking politics." He then relapsed into his former air of aloofness.
"Well, to come back to my lady's garden," said Edward. "It is generally acknowledged that it is a good thing for young girls to be alone sometimes, and in beautiful surroundings, so that they may feed their minds on beautiful thoughts. So every girl in the towns, when she reaches a certain age, has a garden of her own given to her, which she has to look after entirely herself. She can retire into it whenever she pleases, and nobody may break in on her privacy. When she accepts the attentions of a man, she invites him into her garden, and if the intimacy between them stands the test, by and by he asks her for a key. If she consents to give him one, he has the right to enter her garden whenever he pleases."
"A very pretty notion," I said, thinking all the time how dreadfully forward I must have seemed to Miriam in asking her to show me the garden—which she must naturally have taken to meanhergarden—after about an hour's acquaintance, and wondering how soon I could get her to ask me to see it of her own accord.
Eppstein laughed rather vulgarly. "You should see the old maids standing with their garden gates wide open," he said.
"Oh, not all of them, Herman," expostulated Edward. "And some of the old maids' gardens are as beautifully kept as any young girl's, and it is quite a privilege to be invited into them. You are not expected to ask for a key, and if you did they wouldn't give you one."
"Oh, wouldn't they!" exclaimed Eppstein."You try, my boy. Now look 'ere, I'll tell you. When I was courtin' Amelia——"
But he did not continue his reminiscences, for Mr. Perry, suddenly emerging from his gloomy trance, sang with a happy smile:
"When I married A-me-li-ar, Rum-ti tumti tum,"—and then laughed consumedly.
We all shared in his hilarity, and when he had relapsed once more into his solemn and even dejected mood, with the same suddenness as he had emerged from it, I asked: "Do they give up their gardens when they marry?"
"Seldom at once," said Edward. "They need not give them up at all, and there are cases of old men and women still keeping up the gardens in which they first made love to one another, and retiring to them frequently. But in practice they are generally given up within a year or so. They haven't the time to look after them."
At this point Mr. Perry said that he felt rather giddy. He thought he had done rather too much during the day, and would be better in bed. So Mr. Blother was summoned to help him upstairs, and we went into the drawing-room without him.
We talked, and Miriam played to us.It was delightful to sit by the open window, looking out on to the lovely garden, which lay mysterious under a sky of spangled velvet, and listen to the sweet music she made.
By and by I felt that I did not want to talk any more, and fortunately I was left to myself for a time, where I could see the garden, and by turning my head could also see Miriam, her fair hair irradiated by the shaded lamp that stood by the piano.
Soft thoughts began to steal over me—very soft thoughts, and very sweet ones. I thought how delightful it would be to sit every evening like this and listen to Miriam playing; and still more delightful if there should come a time when she would shut the piano and come across the room and put her hand on my shoulder, and look out on to the moonlight lawn and the dark shrubs and the starry sky with me; and neither of us would want to speak, but only to feel that the other was there.
And the night before I had spent in prison, and had not even known that there was such a girl as Miriam!
It was about a week after I had been welcomed into the Perry family that we were all asked to take high tea at the house of Mrs. Perry's sister, the Countess of Blueberry.
The most important thing that had happened in the meantime was that I had fallen deeply in love with Miriam. We had been much together, and our conversations had largely concerned themselves with the curious state of things obtaining in the country from which I had come. Miriam was deeply interested in what I told her, but I had to be very careful. In some respects she became more and more inclined to approve of a country in which wealth might be used to lessen care, instead of increasing it, and in which even the richest were under no cloud of inferiority. The pictures I painted of English life under conditions of monetary ease appealed alike to her natural tastes, of which in Upsidonia she had to be ashamed, if she were to show right feeling, and to the philanthropic ideals in which she had been brought up. She could never get it out of her mind that we showed great nobility of behaviour in treating rich people with a total absence of contempt, and I did not desire that she should, although I insisted upon the fact itself.
But every now and again I came up against a painful shrinking. I had to be extraordinarily careful how I dealt with the subject of food, for instance, and I think that if I had ever described to her a city banquet, or even a college feast, I should have wiped out at a stroke all the admiration she was inclined to show for the habits and customs of my beloved country.
But short as had been the time since I had come to Magnolia Hall, I had already adapted myself somewhat to the Upsidonian point of view—indeed, a good deal more than I should have thought possible.
In the matter of food and drink, I was now inclined to despise the delicate living that I had at first taken such pleasure in. I can onlysay on my own behalf—if I have seemed to represent myself as greedier than I will confess to being—that I had been living a hard active life for some weeks past, and was in the most abounding physical health; also that Mrs. Lemon, the Perrys' cook, was a supreme artist.[26]After all, my usual life was necessarily abstemious, and it had happened to me before to get very tired of luxurious living, when I had been staying with friends accustomed to it, and to go back to my own moderate habits with relief.
So I now ate and drank sparingly at Magnolia Hall, and was inclined to feel the same disgust towards those who did neither as was commonly expressed around me. And it did not any longer seem curious to me that contempt for luxury should be a general and genuine feeling in Upsidonia. It was encouraged by constant expression, and those who might be temperamentally inclined towards what is called "doing themselves well," were ashamed of indulging their inclinations out of respect for public opinion.[27]
In the matter of clothes I had also somewhat changed my point of view.It is gratifying to feel one's self well-dressed, if everyone is well-dressed around one; but if one is not suitably dressed as well, the gratification disappears. It was not long before I began to feel, walking about the streets of Culbut, in the excellent clothes for which I still owed money to the Universal Stores, that I was not in the fashion. It was rather as if I had turned out to shoot, amongst a crowd of men in tweeds and woollens, wearing a shiny silk hat, varnished boots, and striped trousers with creases down them. I discovered that it was only in the most exclusive set, of which Lord Potter was one of the leaders, that it was the fashion to go ragged and dirty. The ordinary members of the educated classes were as clean as we are. But they liked old clothes, and didn't want to be bothered with large collections of them, or of anything else. Those who spent the day in bodily toil always changed in the evening, wearing the newer of their two suits, which took the place of the other one when that was entirely worn out.
The mention of Lord Potter reminds me of an encounter I had with that nobleman a few days after I had hoped I had seen the last of him, in the police court.
I was walking along the road from Culbut toMagnolia Hall, and had reached the point at which the villas were beginning to get larger and to stand in gardens of some extent, when I saw a filthy-looking tramp crossing the road from one gate to the other, and recognised him as I passed as Lord Potter.
He did not look at me, but when I had gone on a few yards, he called out: "Hi, you fellow!" in an authoritative voice.
I took no notice, and he called out again more loudly, so I turned round to see what he wanted.
"Didn't you hear me call?" he asked angrily. "Which is Hoggenschlick's house?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Well, just run in and ask if Hoggenschlick lives here, and tell him that Lord Potter wants to see him. I think this is the house. If it isn't, it is the one across the road."
"Don't you think you might find out which it is for yourself?" I asked. "I'm not your servant."
His face changed as he recognised me. "Oh, it's you!" he exclaimed disagreeably; "and dressed like the cad I knew you were when I first saw you. If you give me any of your impudence you'll find yourself in trouble again, and I'll take care you don't get off this time. I shall keep my eye on you. Where are you living?"
"Where I can get a wash sometimes," I replied. "You don't seem to be so fortunate."
Then I turned round and walked on, leaving him very angry.
But to return to Miriam. England, and English life, was a little secret between us; I did not talk about them to anybody else, and asked her not to do so. The fact that she entered willingly into this understanding, which I found so agreeable, being in that state of mind in whichanyunderstanding with her would have pleased me, was very gratifying, as tending to show that she had something of the same feeling about it as I had. Oh, we were getting on very well! But she had not yet invited me into her garden.
The Earl of Blueberry was, as I have said, a suburban postman, and as it was his month for making an evening round he was not present at Lady Blueberry's tea-party. And their only son, the Young Viscount Sandpits, had just been commissioned to one of the smart gangs of navvies in which the aristocratic youth of Culbut were delighted to serve, if they were of good enough physique. He, also, was on a night shift, and I did not see him at that time. But the young Ladies Susan and Cynthia Maxted were there, and extremely nice and well-mannered children they were, and very pretty too. They wore clean print frocks, hand-knitted worsted stockings, and serviceable shoes.
Mrs. Perry, Miriam, and Mollie also wore clothes suitable for the occasion. Edward had on a suit of threadbare serge, which he had told me, coming along, that he reserved for such occasions as this; and I wore again the clothes in which I had come into Upsidonia.
We were the only men of the party. Tom was playing cricket, and Mr. Perry had said that he was not feeling very well, and would dine quietly at his club.
Lady Blueberry received us most graciously in her charming kitchen, from which we went into the parlour, where the table was spread.
Blueberry House was typical of those in the aristocratic quarters of Culbut. You entered by way of the scullery and kitchen, which, with a small yard, were in front of the house. But immediately behind these was a large room occupying the whole breadth of the house, and looking out on to a peaceful park.[28]
We were left for a few minutes in the parlour, while Lady Blueberry tookthe scones out of the oven and made the tea, and the Ladies Susan and Cynthia, with Mollie's help, brought plates and the teapot to the table.
The parlour was cool and airy, with well-polished floor-boards, but no carpet. The walls were whitewashed and hung with family portraits, some of which seemed to me to be very fine. There was an equestrian portrait of the first Earl of Blueberry in the dress of a royal stableman, that looked to me like a Vandyke, which, of course, it could not have been; and another of an eighteenth century countess carrying a milkpail, which I should have sworn was a Sir Joshua if I had seen it anywhere else. A charming group of Lady Blueberry and her two daughters, with their own kitchen as a background, was by the famous Upsidonian artist, Corporal, who had also painted Lord Blueberry with his letter-bag, and the gallant young Sandpits, in corduroys, with his pick and shovel.
Lord Blueberry was a dignified figure of a man in this picture, and I thought as I looked at it that I should have felt some hesitation in offering him a tip at Christmas time. But if I had been a resident in Culbut, he, no doubt, would have given me one, and I should not have dared to refuse. Young Lord Sandpits was extremely handsome, and stood up boldly, with his muscular arms bare to the elbows, the picture of virile youth. The artist had got some wonderful lines into this picture, especially in the hang of the trousers, which were strapped below the knee.
The furniture in Lady Blueberry's parlourall seemed to be old, but there was very little of it. There were no easy chairs, and, indeed, no upholstery at all, or anything that detracted from the air of severe simplicity that was the note of the room, and attracted strongly by its restfulness. With the exception of the family portraits, there was no ornament whatever. The tea-table was set with crockery of the cheapest description, but all the shapes were good, and the colour was pleasing. A grand piano in a corner of the room seemed a somewhat incongruous feature, but Miriam told me as I looked at it that her cousin Susan was exceptionally gifted musically, and she would get her to play for me after tea.[29]
Lady Blueberry presided most graciously at the tea-table. She had thatperfectly natural air of courtesy combined with dignity which is the mark of a great lady anywhere. She was formed in a classical mould, which the severe lines of her afternoon-gown of black alpaca, relieved with touches of white at the neck and wrists, suited admirably. Her abundant hair was brushed back from her broad and placid brow, and knotted simply on the nape of her neck. There were marks of toil on her beautifully shaped hands, which, according to Upsidonian ideas, became them better than jewels.
We talked about a step-sister of Lord Blueberry's—a Mrs. Claude Chanticleer—who was a prominent member of the dirty set. Mrs. Perry had asked about her, and Lady Blueberry's calm face had been somewhat overshadowed as she told us that Tricky, as they called her, had been causing her family considerable anxiety.
"She is always going in for some new extravagance," she said. "She and Claudie gave up their two rooms, as you know, about a year ago, when Mrs. Chetwynd-Jones died of pneumonia, and took possession of her railway arch."
"But they only use that for a town residence, don't they?" asked Mrs. Perry.
"Well, of course they went out of town for the hop-picking, and went from one barn party to another through the rest of the autumn; but they were in town for the whole of the winter, and I am quite sure that Tricky must have suffered a good deal from exposure."
"She leads such a rackety life, too," said Edward. "I was coming home from my Lads' Club very late one night in January, and I saw Claudie and Mrs. Claudie and a lot of others round a watchman's shelter. None of them were speaking a word, and they all looked as if they would die of cold before the morning."
"And they call that pleasure!" said Lady Blueberry.
"Do they really persuade themselves that it is pleasure?" I asked.
"They say that endurance is the highest form of pleasure," said Lady Blueberry. "And of course it is so in a way. At least, no sensible person would leave endurance of hardships out of their life altogether. But the dirty set, as they call them, are so eager for new sensations that they never use any method of life moderately, and would just as soon throw it over altogether, whether it was helpful or not, if anybody started some new craze."
"Susan and I saw Auntie Tricky in the gallery of the opera," said Lady Cynthia, "the night that Aunt Maude took us. Uncle Claudie wasn't there. Auntie Tricky was with Lord Hebron. And we saw them supping together at the whelk stall in Paradise Row when wewere coming home."
"That will do, dear," said Lady Blueberry, with calm authority. "Lord Hebron is an old friend of Uncle Claudie's, and no doubt he had asked him to look after Auntie Tricky for the evening."
"It is a good thing, at any rate," said Edward, "that they got through the winter in their railway arch. It would not be so bad now. And I suppose they will soon be off to the strawberry fields?"
"I am not sure," said Lady Blueberry. "Tricky came to see me the other day, and told me she thought of going in for the complicated life this summer. It seems to me a perfectly insane idea. After the privations she has gone through her digestion will not stand it. But there it is! It is a new idea; others are taking it up, and, of course, Tricky must be in the movement."
"Besides," said Edward, "the complicated life, as it is practised by the dirty set, is such a sham. If they lived it seriously, as we do, year in and year out, and really did live it with all its drawbacks, they would very soon get tired of it."
"Of course they would," said Lady Blueberry. "It is not the same thing at all."
"How do they live it?" I enquired.
"They make up a party," said Lady Blueberry, "and descend upon some large house in the country, where they live a life of ease and luxury as long as it amuses them. I think myself that to play at being rich in that way is extremely immoral. It has already been known to give some of the younger people who have practised it a taste for luxury that has led them into a life of degradation. I believe young Bertie Pilliner has been quite ruined by it. I heard the other day that he had acquired a motor-car, and joined a golf club. And he used to be such a nice boy. He was in Sandpit's gang, but, of course, he had to be requested to go."
"What becomes of the people whose houses they descend upon?" I enquired. "Do they live with them as their guests?"
Lady Blueberry laughed pleasantly. "That would not suit them at all," she said. "They choose their house—generally the most elaborate one they can find—and write and tell the owners that they are to leave it by a certain date. Then they take possession of it, and live just as if they were rich themselves, but, as Edward says, they suffer none of the inconveniences. They refuse to do the least littlething that the servants tell them, and as they are not among their own possessions they do not feel the burden of them. It is only because the servants like to have people they can associate with, instead of their masters and mistresses, and the owners of the houses are glad to have somebody to consume their stores while they can go away for a holiday, that the system is possible at all."
"It is a very dangerous game to play at," said Edward, "and goes directly against all our work. If the movement spreads to any extent it will prove to be an immense temptation to those whose principles are not firmly fixed. They will see the complicated life in an entirely false aspect, and think that it is always like that, and, perhaps, even that it is preferable to the simple life. Then the very foundations of society will be undermined, and we shall have such a revolution as it makes me tremble to think of."
He spoke so earnestly that the young Lady Cynthia, who was of a sympathetic disposition, burst into tears, and implored her mother not to let Auntie Tricky lead the complicated life any more.
Lady Blueberry soothed her tenderly, and said that she would do what she could to prevent it, and soon afterwards we rose from the table.
Mrs. Perry stayed in the house to help her sister wash up, and, no doubt, to have a little intimate conversation with her; and Edward went off with apologies, to some engagement in the way of self-improvement. The rest of us adjourned to the park, and when we had seen the children happily amusing themselves in the pony paddocks, where there were hurdles, and a little water-jump, I had the delight, which I had hoped all along might come to me, of wandering alone with Miriam through the bosky shades of that beautiful pleasance.
Miriam seemed at first a little nervous, but we soon fell into easy converse, which gradually drifted, with possibly a little urging on my part, into one of a more confidential nature. I will not repeat any of it; perhaps it is not worth repeating. I said things that come easily to the lips of any lover, and she received them with a sweet modesty that made me think them almost inspired.
It was a lovely quiet evening; the retired walks in which we strolled amongst the treesand flowers might have been deep in the country, instead of in the heart of a city; and if we met, as we did sometimes, other pairs of lovers, who had fled to these comparative solitudes, they only seemed to justify our own emotional condition. It soon became wooing in dead earnest with me, but I knew that I must not pass a certain point in my declarations until Miriam gave me to understand that I had leave to do so.
At last, when once or twice she had turned from me, twisting her handkerchief in her little ungloved hands, and pausing as if about to say something which she could not make up her mind to say, I cried: "Oh, this heavenly garden! I shall never forget walking here with you this evening as long as I live."
Then she turned towards me, and smiled and blushed and dropped her eyes again, and said: "Would you like to walk with me inmygarden?"
At these words I forgot all about Upsidonia, and the possibility of shocking her by accelerating its etiquette. Hang etiquette at so sweet a moment! I took her in my arms and kissed her.
And apparently etiquette was the same atthis stage in Upsidonia as everywhere else. Or else she forgot all about it too.
I am not going to describe Miriam's garden. I will only say that of all the gardens I have ever seen, large or small, it remains in my memory as the quietest, the most retired and the most beautiful. It was not long before I asked for a key, and Miriam gave me one; and I was free of that enchanted spot, and of all the sweet intercourse it brought me.
When, on that evening, we hurried away from the comparative solitude of the park, to enfence ourselves in the complete solitude of Miriam's garden, and left Mrs. Perry and Mollie to come home by themselves, the only excuse that we could offer was the true one. Before the evening was out it was known to all the occupants of Magnolia Hall that Miriam had asked me into her garden.
Dear Mrs. Perry smiled on us and kissed us both. She was an unworldly woman, and only desired her daughter's happiness. Mollie showed a gratifying excitement at the unexpected news; Tom eyed me rather suspiciously, and, while not witholding his congratulations, said enigmatically that it was my white flannel suit, but he supposed he should get used to it in time. Edward expressed some doubts. I had to have it out with Edward. But that was later. When he came home that night I had already interviewed Mr. Perry.
Mr. Perry was as kind as possible, but, as was only natural, wanted to know something about my circumstances.
"You are aware," he said, "of the great work in which my life is spent. I am not able to do as much for my daughters as I should look to doing, if I lived as my neighbours do. But I will do what I can. You shall allow me three hundred pounds a year, and I will get rid of it as best I can. At five per cent interest, that would be tantamount to a settlement of six thousand pounds; and I should charge my estate with it, so that you would not suffer in the event of my death."
I thanked him suitably, and, gathering my wits about me, offered to settle upon Miriam Mr. Brummer's U. O. Me for two hundred and thirty-four pounds, and my account with the Universal Stores of a hundred pounds odd.
"I am sorry to say that those are the only debts I have in the world," I said, "but on the other hand I do not earn much money."
"Excuse my asking the question," said Mr. Perry diffidently, "but what is your occupation?"
"I will make a clean breast of it to you," I said. "I am a University Extension lecturer, and am also employed in editing educational works."
"A very honourable occupation," said Mr. Perry. "A scholar is always a respectable person, and his calling is not a lucrative one."
"I hope," I said, "that there will never be any doubt about my being able to support Miriam in the poor way in which a daughter of yours ought to live."
Mr. Perry sighed pensively. "I will not deny," he said, "that I should have liked a larger settlement. I have already sacrificed one daughter to my passion for the amelioration of mankind, and although Herman Eppstein's character is irreproachable I suffer somewhat from the remarks of my friends as to that marriage. I should have liked Miriam to make what the world calls a good match, and to be placed beyond all risk of wealth. Still, with what I can do for you, you will start your married life in embarrassed circumstances, and we must hope that no unforeseen accidents will occur. If you keep to your comparatively ill-paid work, and avoid the temptation that so many young men fall into, of trying to get poor quick, all will go well. It is something, at any rate, to have a daughter marrying into a Highland family, and my friends can hardly reproach me with another misalliance in that respect."
He said this with an agreeable smile, and I left him, feeling that I had got through the interview more easily than I could have hoped for.
I had the congratulations of Lord Arthur. He himself was in the stage of walking out, or rather of walking in her garden, with a house-maid from a neighbouring establishment—one of the prettiest of the débutantes of the season—and was inclined towards sympathy with my state of mind. He said that the earlier a fellow settled down in life the better it was for him, and directly he and his fiancée could find a situation as butler and housekeeper to an amenable married couple without encumbrances, their wedding would take place. He talked more about his own love affair than about mine, and made it plain—although I amsure that he did not intend to—that my engagement was but a moderate affair beside his. His father was a Marquis, and would largely decrease his younger son's allowance upon his marriage; and his prospective father-in-law was a Dean of aristocratic lineage, who was prepared to settle on his daughter the whole debt for repairing the West front of his cathedral.
Edward's attitude was a mixture of pleasure and anxiety. He said he liked me personally, and there was no one to whom he would rather see his sister married if he saw no difficulties in the way. "You won't tell us where you come from," he said rather peevishly. "No one can call me curious about my neighbours' affairs—I have far too many and important ones of my own to occupy me—but if you are going to marry my sister Ishouldlike to know something more about you. Howdidyou come here? If you walked from the Highlands, you couldn't have come into Culbut on the side on which my father first saw you."
"I have already told you how I came," I said. "I walked over the moors, and came through an underground passage into the wood where your father found me. I don't profess to understand it; but that is exactly how it happened."
He looked at me suspiciously. "My dear fellow," he said, "you are playing with me. My father found you asleep in a little copse that you have to pass through to get to the Female Penitentiary, which he was visiting that afternoon. Beyond that there is at least a mile of suburb; it is on the high-road to the town of Somersault, and the country is well populated all the way."
"I am not surprised to hear it," I said. "I told you that I did not understand what had happened. But I have given you the facts as I remember them."
"Then it is very plain," said Edward, "that you must have suffered in your brain, and have escaped from some lunatic asylum. Your behaviour when we first met would seem to point to that; and the wildness of the ideas which you disclosed to me was more like what one would expect to exist in the brain of a maniac than anything else. I think it is very likely that you do come from the Highlands; or why should you have mentioned that region at all? Your appearance is good, and it is evident that you have come from some place where you have filled a position of dignity."
"I am glad that it strikes you like that," I said. "But I don't feel in the least like a lunatic. In fact, I am quite sure that I am as sane as you are."
"I think you are,now," said Edward; "and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't remain so. If that is really the solution of your eccentricities, then all my difficulties are done away with, and I can welcome you, my dear fellow, cordially as a brother-in-law."
"Oh!" I said, somewhat taken aback. "You don't think that I might break out again?"
"I should think it is unlikely; but if you did, we could easily have you put away for a time. The great advantage would be that Miriam could always get a divorce on the ground of insanity of partner, whenever she wished it."
"Is that a ground for divorce in Upsidonia?"
"Yes; the passing of that law has been a great boon. People under suspicion of weak intellect have become much more marriageable than they were before."
"I shouldn't like to begin married life with the idea of a divorce hanging over me."
"I don't say that Miriam would allow herself to count on a divorce at present; and if I were you I should not tell her that you have suffered from brain trouble."
"I won't," I said.
"No; and I won't, either. But one never knows what may happen in married life, and it would be a comfort to know that Miriam would not be tied to you for life if you turned out badly."
"Well, supposing we leave it at that," I said. "I think you're wrong about my brain trouble, but if your idea comforts you at all, keep it by all means; but keep it to yourself."