 Chapter 4 Whether Philip Christie liked it or not, the Montyths and he were soon fairly committed to a tolerably close acquaintance with Bertram Ingledew. For, as chance would have it, on the Monday morning Bertram went up to town in the very same carriage with Philip and his brother-in-law to set himself up in necessaries of life for a six or eight-month stay in England. When he returned that night to Brackenhurst with two large trunks full of under-clothing and so forth, he had to come round once more to the Montyths, as Philip anticipated, to bring back the Gladstone bag and the brown portmanteau. He did it with so much graceful and gracious courtesy, and such manly gratitude for the favour done him, that he left still more deeply than ever on Frida's mind the impression of a gentleman. He had found out all the right shops to go to in London, he said, and he had ordered everything necessary to social salvation at the very best tailors, so strictly in accordance with Philip's instructions, that he thought he should now transgress no more the sumptuary rules in that matter made and established as long as he remained in this realm of England. He had commanded a black cutaway coat, suitable for Sunday morning, and a curious garment called a frock coat, buttoned tight over the chest to be worn in the afternoon, especially in London, and a still quainter coat made of shiny broadcloth with strange tails behind, which was considered respectable after 7 p.m., for a certain restricted class of citizens. Those who paid a particular impost known as income tax, as far as he could gather from what the tailor told him. Though the classes who really did any good in the state, the working men and so forth, seemed exempted by general consent from wearing it. Their dress indeed, he observed, was, strange to say, the least cared for and evidently the least costly of any bodies. He admired the mon teeth children so unaffectedly too, telling them how pretty and how sweet-mannered they were to their very faces, that he quite won Frieder's heart, though Robert did not like it. Robert had evidently some deep-seated superstition about the matter, for he sent Mamie, the eldest girl, out of the room at once, she was four years old, and he took little Archie, the two-year-old, on his knee, as if to guard him from some moral or social contagion. In Bertram remembered how he had seen African mothers beat or pinch their children till they made them cry, to avert the evil omen when he praised them to their faces. And he recollected too, that most fetishistic races believe in nemesis, that is to say, in jealous gods who, if they see you love a child too much, or admire it too greatly, will take it from you, or do it some grievous bodily harm, such as blinding it or maiming it, in order to pay you out for thinking yourself too fortunate. He did not doubt therefore, but that in Scotland, which he knew by report to be a country exceptionally given over to terrible superstitions, the people still thought their sanguinary Calvinistic deity, fashioned by a race of stern John Knox's in their own image, would do some harm to an overpraised child, to wean them from it. He was glad to see, however, that Frida at least did not share this degrading and hateful belief, handed down from the most fiendish of savage conceptions. On the contrary, she seemed delighted that Bertram should pat little Mamie on the head, and praise her sunny smile and her lovely hair, just like her mother's. To Philip, this was all a rather serious matter. He felt he was responsible for having introduced the mysterious alien, however unwillingly, into the bosom of Robert Monteith's family. Now, Philip was not rich, and Frida was supposed to have made a good match of it. That is to say, she had married a man a great deal wealthier than her own upbringing. So Philip, after his kind, thought much of the Monteith's connection. He lived in lodgings at Brackenhurst, at a highly inconvenient distance from town, so as to be near their house, and catch whatever rays of reflected glory might fall upon his head like a shadowy halo from their horses and carriages, their dinners and garden parties. He did not like, therefore, to introduce into his sister's house anybody that Robert Monteith, that moneyed man of oil in the West African trade, might consider an undesirable acquaintance. But as time wore on, and Bertram's new clothes came home from the tailors, it began to strike the civil servant's mind that the mysterious alien, though he excited much comment and conjecture in Brackenhurst, was accepted on the whole by local society as rather an acquisition to its ranks than otherwise. He was well off, he was well dressed, he had no trade or profession, and Brackenhurst, under manned, hailed him as a godsend for afternoon tea's and informal tennis-parties. That ineffable air of distinction as of one royal-born, which Philip had noticed at once the first evening they met, seemed to strike and impress almost everybody who saw him. People felt he was mysterious, but at any rate he was someone. And then he had been everywhere except in Europe, and had seen everything except their own society, and he talked agreeably when he was not on taboos, and in suburban towns, don't you know, an outsider who brings fresh blood into the field, who has anything to say we do not all know beforehand, is always welcome. So Brackenhurst accepted Bertram Engeldu before long as an eccentric but interesting and romantic person. Not that he stopped much in Brackenhurst itself. He went up to town every day almost as regularly as Robert Montese and Philip Christie. He had things he wanted to observe there, he said, for the work he was engaged upon. And the work clearly occupied the best part of his energies. Every night he came down to Brackenhurst with his notebook crowned full of modern facts and illustrative instances. He worked most of all in the East End, he told Frieder confidentially. There he could see best the remote results of certain painful English customs and usages he was anxious to study. Still he often went West, too, for the West End taboos, though not in some cases so distressing as the East End ones, were at times much more curiously illustrative and ridiculous. He must master all branches of the subject alike. He spoke so seriously that after a time Frieder, who was just at first inclined to laugh at his odd way of putting things, began to take it all in the end quite as seriously as he did. He felt more at home with her than with anybody else at Brackenhurst. She had sympathetic eyes, and he lived on sympathy. He came to her so often for help in his difficulties that she soon saw he really meant all he said, and was genuinely puzzled in a very queer way by many varied aspects of English society. In time the two grew quite intimate together, but on one point Bertram would never give his new friend the slightest information, and that was the whereabouts of that mysterious home he so often referred to. Oddly enough no one ever questioned him closely on the subject. A certain singular reserve of his, which alternated curiously with his perfect frankness, pointed them from trespassing so far on his individuality. People felt they must not. Somehow when Bertram Ingled you let it once be felt he did not wish to be questioned on any particular point, even women managed to restrain their curiosity, and he would have been either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue questioning him any further. So though many people hazarded guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the point-blank question, Who are you, if you please? and what do you want here? The alien went out a great deal with the Montice. Robert himself did not like the fellow, he said. One never quite knew what the juicy was driving at. But Frieder found him always more and more charming, so full of information, while Philip admitted he was excellent form and such a capital tennis player. So whenever Philip had a day off in the country, they three went out in the fields together, and Frieder at least thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the freedom and freshness of the newcomer's conversation. On one such day they went out, as it chanced, into the meadows that stretch up the hill behind Brackenhurst. Frieder remembered it well afterwards. It was the day when an annual satanalia of vulgar vice usurps and pollutes the open downs at Epsom. Bertram did not care to see it, he said, the rabble of a great town turned loose to desecrate the open face of nature, even regarded as a matter of popular custom. He had looked on at much the same orgy as before in New Guinea and on the Zambezi, and they only depressed him, so he stopped at Brackenhurst and went for a walk instead in the fresh summer meadows. Robert Montice, for his part, had gone to the Derby, so they called that orgy, and Philip had meant to accompany him in the dog-cart, but remained behind at the last moment to take care of Frieder, for Frieder, being a lady at heart, always shrank from the pollution of vulgar assemblies. As they walked together across the lush green fields, thick with campion and yellow rattle, they came to a dense copse with a rustic gate, above which a threatening notice-board frowned them straight in the face, bearing the usual selfish and anti-social inscription, trespassers will be prosecuted. Let's go in here and pick orchids, Bertram suggested, leaning over the gate. Just see how pretty they are. The scented white butterfly, it loves moist bogland. Now, Mrs. Montice, wouldn't a few long sprays of that lovely thing look charming on your dinner-table? But it's preserved, Philip, interposed with an awestruck face. You can't go in there. It's Salinal Longdance and his awfully particular. Can't go in there? Oh, nonsense! Bertram answered with a merry laugh, vaulting the gate like a practised athlete. Mrs. Montice can get over easily enough, I'm sure. She's as light as a fawn. May I help you over? And he held one hand out. But it's private! Philip went on in a somewhat horrified voice, and the pheasants are sitting. Private? How can it be? There's nothing sewn here. It's all wild wood. We can't do any damage. If it was growing crops, of course, one would walk through it not at all, or at least very carefully. But this is pure woodland. Are the pheasants tabooed, then? Or why meant we go near them? They're not tabooed, but they're preserved, Philip answered somewhat testily, making a delicate distinction without a difference after the fashion dear to the official intellect. This land belongs to Sir Lionel Longdon, I tell you, and he chooses to let all down in pheasants. He bought it and paid for it, so he has a right, I suppose, to do as he likes with it. That's the funniest thing of all about these taboos, Bertram mused, as if half to himself. The very people whom they injure and inconvenience the most, the people whom they hamper and cramp and debar, don't seem to object to them, but believe in them and are afraid of them. In Samoa, I remember, certain fruits and fish and animals and so forth were tabooed to the chiefs, and nobody else ever dared to eat them. They thought it was wrong, and said if they did, some nameless evil would at once overtake them. These nameless terrors, these bodiless superstitions are always the deepest. People fight hardest to preserve their bogies. They fancy some appalling, unknown dissolution would at once result from reasonable action. I tried one day to persuade a poor devil of a fellow in Samoa, who'd caught one of these fish, and who was terribly hungry, that no harm would come to him if he cooked it and ate it. But he was too slavishly frightened to follow my advice. He said it was taboo to the God-descended chiefs. If a mortal man tasted it he would die on the spot. So nothing on earth would induce him to try it. Though to be sure even there nobody ever went quite so far as to taboo the very soil of earth itself, everybody might till and hunt where he liked. It's only in Europe where evolution goes furthest that taboo has reached that last silly pitch of injustice and absurdity. Well, we're not afraid of the fetish, you and I, Mrs. Montice. Jump up on the gate. I'll give you a hand over." And he held out one strong arm as he spoke, to aid her. Frida had no such fanatical respect for the bogie of vested interests as her superstitious brother, so she mounted the gate gracefully. She was always graceful. Bertram took her small hand and jumped her down on the other side, while Philip, not liking to show himself less bold than a woman in this matter, climbed over it after her, though with no small misgivings. They strolled on into the wood, picking the pretty white orchids by the way as they went, for some little distance. The rich mould underfoot was thick with sweet woodruff and trailing loose strife. Every now and again, as they stirred the lithe brambles that encroached upon the path, a pheasant rose from the ground with a loud whirr before them. Philip felt most uneasy. You'll have the keepers after you in a minute," he said, with a deprecating shrug. This is just full nesting time. They're down upon anybody who disturbs the pheasants. But the pheasants can't belong to any one. Bertram cried with a greatly amused face. You may taboo the land. I understand that done. But surely you can't taboo a wild bird that can fly as it likes from one piece of ground away into another. Philip enlightened his ignorance by giving him offhand a brief and profoundly servile account of the English game-laws, interspersed with sundry anecdotes of poachers and poaching. Bertram listened with an interested but gravely disapproving face. And do you mean to say, he asked at last, they send men to prison as criminals for catching or shooting hares and pheasants? I certainly," Philip answered, it's an offence against the law and also a crime against the rights of property. Against the law, yes. But how on earth can it be a crime against the rights of property? Obviously the pheasants, the property of the man who happens to shoot it. How can it belong to him and also to the fellow who taboo's the particular piece of ground it was snared on? It doesn't belong to the man who shoots it at all," Philip answered rather angrily. It belongs to the man who owns the land, of course, and who chooses to preserve it. Oh, I see," Bertram replied. They knew disregard the rights of property altogether and only consider the privileges of taboo. As a principle that's intelligible, one sees it's consistent. But how is it that you all allow these chiefs, landlords, don't you call them, to taboo the soil and prevent you all from even walking over it? Don't you see that if you chose to combine in a body and insist upon the recognition of natural rights, if you determined to make the landlords give up their taboo and cease from injustice they'd have to yield to you, and then you could exercise your native right of going where you pleased and cultivate the land in common for the public benefit instead of leaving it as now to be cultivated anyhow, or turned into waste for the benefit of the tabooers. But it would be wrong to take it from them," Philip cried, growing fiery red and half losing his temper, for he really believed it. It would be sheer confiscation, the lands their own, they either bought it or inherited it from their fathers. If you were to begin taking it away, what guarantee would you have left for any of the rights of property generally? You didn't recognize the rights of property of the fellow who killed the pheasant, though. Bertram interposed, laughing, and imperturbably good-humoured. But that's always the way with these taboos everywhere. They subsist just because the vast majority, even of those who are obviously wronged and injured by them, really believe in them. They think they're guaranteed by some divine prescription. The fetish guards them. In Polynesia, I recollect, some chiefs could taboo almost anything they liked, even a girl or a woman, or fruit and fish and animals and houses. And after the chief had once said, it is taboo, everybody else was afraid to touch them. Of course the fact that a chief or a landowner has bought and paid for a particular privilege or species of taboo or has inherited it from his fathers doesn't give him any better moral claim to it. The question is, is the claim in itself right and reasonable? For a wrong is only all the more a wrong for having been long and persistently exercised. The central Africans say, this is my slave. I bought her and paid for her. I have a right, if I like, to kill her and eat her. The king of Ebo on the west coast had a hereditary right to offer up as a human sacrifice the first man he met every time he quitted his palace. And he was quite surprised, audacious, free thinkers should call the morality of his right in question. If you English were all in a body to see through this queer land taboo now, which drives your poor off the soil and prevents you all from even walking at liberty over the surface of the waste in your own country, you could easily, oh Lord, what shall we do? Philip interposed in a voice of abject terror, if here isn't Sir Lionel. And sure enough, right across the narrow path in front of them stood a short, fat, stumpy, unimpressive little man with a very red face and a Norfolk jacket, boiling over with anger. What are you people doing here? He cried, undeterred by the presence of a lady and speaking in the insolent, supercilious voice of the English landlord in defence of his pheasant preserves. This is private property. You must have seen the notice at the gate. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Yes, we did see it. Bertram answered with his unruffled smile. And thinking it an uncalled-for piece of aggressive churlishness both in form and substance, why, we took the liberty to disregard it. Sir Lionel glared at him. In that servile neighbourhood almost entirely inhabited by the flunkies of Vildom, it was a complete novelty to him to be thus bearded in his den. He gasped with anger. What do you mean to say? He gurgled out, growing purple to the neck. You came in here deliberately to disturb my pheasants and then brazen it out to my face like this, sir. Go back the way you came or I'll call my keepers. No, I will not go back the way I came. Bertram responded deliberately, with perfect self-control and with a side glance at Frida. Every human being has a natural right to walk across this corpse, which is all waste-ground and has no crops sewn in it. The pheasants can't be yours, their common property. Besides, there's a lady. We mean to make our way across the corpse at our leisure, picking flowers as we go, and come out into the road on the other side of the spinny. It's a universal right of which no country and no law can possibly deprive us. Sir Lionel was livid with rage. Strange as it may appear to any reasoning mind, the man really believed he had a natural right to prevent people from crossing that strip of wood where his pheasants were sitting. His ancestors had assumed it from time immemorial, and by dint of never being questioned had come to regard the absurd user-patient as quite fair and proper. He placed himself straight across the narrow path, blocking it up with his short and stumpy figure. Now look here, young man," he said, with all the insolence of his cast. If you try to go on, I'll stand here in your way, and if you dare to touch me it's a common assault, and by George you'll have to answer at law for the consequences." Bertram Ingledew for his part was all sweet reasonableness. He raised one deprecating hand. Now, before we come to open hostilities, he said in a gentle voice with that unfailing smile of his, let's talk the matter over like rational beings. Let's try to be logical. This cops is considered yours by the actual law of the country you live in. Your tribe permits it to you. You're allowed to taboo it. Very well, then. I make all possible allowances for your strange hallucination. You've been brought up to think you had some mystic and intangible claim to this corner of earth, more than other people, your even Christians. That claim, of course, you can't logically defend, but failing arguments you want to fight for it. Wouldn't it be more reasonable now to show you had some right or justice in the matter? I'm always reasonable. If you can convince me of the propriety and equity of your claim, I'll go back as you wish by the way I entered. If not, well, there's a lady here, and I'm bound as a man to help her safely over. Soliano almost choked. I see what you are. He gasped out with difficulty. I've heard this sort of rubbish more than once before. You're one of these damned land-nationalizing radicals. On the contrary, Bertram answered a bane as ever with charming politeness of tone and manner. I'm a born conservative. I'm tenacious to an almost foolishly sentimental degree of every old custom or practice or idea, unless indeed it's either wicked or silly, like most of your English ones. He raised his hat and made as if he would pass on. Now, nothing annoys an angry savage or an uneducated person so much as the perfect coolness of a civilized and cultivated man when he himself is boiling with indignation. He feels its superiority and a front on his barbarism. So, with a vulgar oath, Soliano flung himself point-blank in the way. Damn it all! No, you rogue, sir! he cried. I'll soon put a stop to all that I can tell you. You shan't go on one step without committing an assault upon me. And he drew himself up four-square as if for battle. Oh, just as you like! Bertram answered coolly, never losing his temper. I'm not afraid of taboos. I've seen too many of them. And he gazed at the fat little angry man with a gentle expression of mingled contempt and amusement. For a minute, Frieder thought they were really going to fight and drew back in horror to await the contest. But such a warlike notion never entered the man of peace's head. He took a step backward for a second and calmly surveyed his antagonist with a critical scrutiny. Soliano was short and stout and puffy. Bertram Ingledew was tall and strong and well-knit and athletic. After an instant's pause during which the dowty baronet stood doubling his fat fists and glaring silent wrought that his lither opponent, Bertram made a sudden dart forward, seized the little stout man bodily in his stalwart arms, and lifting him like a baby in spite of kicks and struggles, carried him a hundred paces to one side of the path, where he laid him down gingerly without unnecessary violence on a bed of young bracken. Then he returned quite calmly, as if nothing had happened, to Frieder's side with that quiet little smile on his unruffled countenance. Frieder had not quite approved of all this small episode, for she too believed in the righteousness of taboo like most other English women, and devoutly accepted the common priestly doctrine that the earth is the landlords and the fullness thereof. But still, being a woman and therefore an admirer of physical strength in men, she could not help applauding to herself the masterly way in which her squire had carried his antagonist captive. When he returned she beamed upon him with friendly confidence, but Philip was very much frightened indeed. You'll have to pay for this, you know," he said. This is a law abiding land. He'll bring an action against you for assault and battery, and you'll get three months for it." I don't think so. Bertram answered, still placid and unruffled. There were three of us who saw him, and it was a very ignominious position indeed for a person who sets up to be a great chief in the country. He won't like the little boys on his own estate to know the great Sir Lionel was lifted up against his will, carried about like a baby, and set down in a bracken bed. Indeed, I was more than sorry to have to do such a thing to a man of his years. But you see, he would have it. It's the only way to deal with these tabooing chiefs. You must face them and be done with it. In the Caroline Islands once I had to do the same thing to a casique who was going to cook and eat a very pretty young girl of his own retainers. He wouldn't listen to reason. The law was on his side. So, being happily not a law-abiding person myself, I took him up in my arms and walked off with him bodily and was obliged to drop him down into a very painful bed of stinging plants like nettles, so as to give myself time to escape with the girl clear out of his clutches. I regretted having to do it so roughly, of course, but there was no other way out of it. As he spoke, for the first time it really came home to Frieda's mind that Bertram Ingledew, standing there before her, regarded in very truth the Polynesian chief and Sir Lionel Longdon as much about the same sort of unreasoning people, savages to be argued with and cajoled if possible, but if not, then to be treated with calm firmness and force, as an English officer on an exploring expedition might treat a wrathful Central African kinglet. And in a dim sort of way, too, it began to strike her by degrees that the analogy was a true one. That Bertram Ingledew, among the Englishmen with whom she was accustomed to mix, was like a civilised being in the midst of barbarians who feel and recognise but dimly and half unconsciously his innate superiority. By the time they had reached the gate on the other side of the hangar, Sir Lionel overtook them, boiling over with indignation. Your card, sir! He gasped out inarticulately to the calmly innocent alien. You must answer for all this, your card, I say, instantly. Bertram looked at him with a fixed gaze, Sir Lionel, having had good proof of his antagonist's strength, kept his distance cautiously. Certainly not, my good friend, Bertram replied in a firm tone. Why should I, who am the injured and insulted party, assist you in identifying me? It was you who aggressed upon my free individuality. If you want to call in the aid of an unjust law to back up an unjust and irrational taboo, you must find out for yourself who I am and where I come from. But I wouldn't advise you to do anything so foolish. Three of us here saw you in the ridiculous position into which, by your obstinacy, you compelled me to put you. And you wouldn't like to hear us recount it in public with picturesque details to your brother magistrates. Let me say one thing more to you," he added, after a pause, in that peculiarly soft and melodious voice of his. Don't you think, on reflection, even if you're foolish enough and illogical enough really to believe in the sacredness of the taboo by virtue of which you try to exclude your fellow tribesmen from their fair share of enjoyment of the soil of England? Don't you think you might at any rate exercise your imaginary powers over the land you arrogate to yourself with a little more gentleness and common politeness? How petty and narrow it looks to use even an undoubted right, far more a tribal taboo, a tyrannical and needlessly aggressive manner. How mean and small and low and churlish! The damage we did, your land, as you call it, if we did any at all, was certainly not a hipony worth. Was it consonant with your dignity as a chief in the tribe to get so hot and angry about so small a value? How grotesque to make so much fuss and noise about a matter of a hipony! We who were the aggrieved parties, we whom you attempted to debar by main force from the common human right to walk freely over earth wherever there's nothing sown or planted, and who were obliged to remove you as an obstacle out of our path at some personal inconvenience. He glanced to scants at his clothes, crumpled and soiled by Sir Lionel's unseemly resistance. We didn't lose our tempers or attempt to revile you. We were cool and collected. But a taboo must be on its very last legs when it requires the aid of terrifying notices at every corner in order to preserve it. And I think this of yours must be well on the way to abolition. Still, as I should like to part friends. He drew a coin from his pocket and held it out between his finger and thumb with a courteous bow toward Sir Lionel. I gladly tender you a hipony in compensation for any supposed harm we may possibly have done your imaginary rites by walking through the wood here. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of the British Barbarians this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding The British Barbarians by Grant Allen Chapter 5 for a day or two after this notable encounter between tabooer and taboo-breaker Philip moved about in a most uneasy state of mind. He lived in constant dread of receiving a summons as a party to an assault upon a most respectable and respected landed proprietor who preserved more pheasants and owned more ruinous cottages than anybody else except the Duke round about Brackenhurst. Indeed, so deeply did he regret his involuntary part in this painful escapade that he never mentioned a word of it to Robert Monteith nor did Frieda either. To say the truth, husband and wife were seldom confidential one with the other. But to Philip's surprise Bertram's prediction came true. They never heard another word about the action for Trespass or the threatened prosecution for assault and battery. Sir Lionel found out that the person who had committed the gross and unheard-of outrage of lifting an elderly and respectable English landowner like a baby in arms on his own estate was a lodger at Brackenhurst variously regarded by those who knew him best as an escaped lunatic and as a foreign nobleman in disguise fleeing for his life from a charge of complicity in a nihilist conspiracy. He wisely came to the conclusion, therefore, that he would not be the first to divulge the story of his own ignominious defeat unless he found that damned radical chap was going boasting around the countryside how he had balked Sir Lionel. And as nothing was further than boasting from Bertram Ingledew's gentle nature and as Philip and Frieder both held their peace for good reasons of their own, the baronet never attempted in any way to rake up the story of his grotesque disgrace on what he considered his own property. All he did was to double the number of keepers on the borders of his estate and to give them strict notice that whoever could succeed in catching the damned radical or anti-delicto as trespasser or poacher should receive most instant reward and promotion. During the next few weeks, accordingly, nothing of importance happened from the point of view of the Brackenhurst chronicler, though Bertram was constantly round at the Monteiths Garden for afternoon tea or a game of lawn tennis. He was an excellent player. Lawn tennis was most popular at home, he said, in that same mysterious and non-committing phrase he so often made use of. Only he found the rackets and balls, very best London make, rather clumsy and awkward. He wished he had brought his own along with him when he came here. Philip noticed his style of service was particularly good and even wondered at times he did not try to go in for the All England Championship. But Bertram surprised him by answering with a quiet smile that though it was an excellent amusement he had too many other things to do with his time to make a serious pursuit of it. One day towards the end of June the strange young man had gone round to the Grange. That was the name of Frieder's house for his usual relaxation after a very tiring and distressing day in London on important business. The business whatever it was had evidently harrowed his feelings not a little for he was sensitively organised. Frieder was on the tennis lawn. She met him with much lamentation over the unpleasant fact that she had just lost a sister-in-law whom she had never cared for. Well, but if you never cared for her Bertram answered looking hard into her lustrous eyes it doesn't much matter. Oh, I shall have to go into mourning all the same Frieder continued somewhat pettishly and wasted all my nice new summer dresses it's such a nuisance. Why do it then? Bertram suggested watching her face very narrowly. Well, I suppose because of what you would call a fetish Frieder answered, laughing. I know it's ridiculous, but everybody expects it and I'm not strong-minded enough to go against the current of what everybody expects of me. You will be by and by. Bertram answered with confidence. There are queer things these death taboos sometimes people cover their heads with filth or ashes and sometimes they bedisen them with crepe and white streamers. In some countries the survivors are bound to shed so many tears to measure in memory of the departed and if they can't bring them up naturally in sufficient quantities they have to be beaten with rods or pricked with thorns or stung with nettles till they've filled to the last drop the regulation bottle. In Swaziland too when the king dies so the queen told me every family of his subjects has to lose one of its sons or daughters in order that they may all truly grieve at the loss of their suffering. I think there are more horrible and cruel devices in the way of death taboos and death customs than anything else I've met in my researches. Indeed most of our nomologists at home believe that all taboos originally arose out of ancestral ghost worship and sprang from the craven fear of dead kings or dead relatives. They think fetishes and gods and other imaginary supernatural beings were all in the last resort developed out of ghosts, hostile or friendly and from what I see abroad I inclined to agree with them. But this morning's superstition now surely it must do a great deal of harm in poor households in England. People who can very ill afford to throw away good dresses must have to give them up and get new black ones and that often at the very moment when they're just deprived of the aid of their only support and breadwinner. I wonder it doesn't occur to them that this is absolutely wrong and that they oughtn't to prefer the meaningless fetish to their clear moral duty. They're afraid of what people would say of them, Frida ventured to interpose. You see, we're all so frightened of breaking through an established custom. Yes, I noticed that always wherever I go in England, Bertram answered. There's apparently no clear idea of what's right and wrong at all in the ethical sense, as apart from what's usual. I was talking to a lady up in London today about a certain matter I may perhaps mention to you by and by when occasion serves and she said she'd been always brought up to think so and so. It seemed to me a very queer substitute indeed for thinking. I never thought of that," Frida answered slowly. I've said the same thing a hundred times over myself before now and I see how irrational it is. But there, Mr. Inkled you, that's why I always like talking with you so much. You make one take such a totally new view of things." She looked down and was silent a minute. Her breast heaved and fell. She was a beautiful woman, very tall and queenly. Bertram looked at her and paused. Then he went on hurriedly just to break the awkward silence. And this dance had exited her then. I suppose you won't go to it. Oh, I can't, of course," Frida answered quickly. And my two other nieces, Robert's side, you know, who have nothing at all to do with my brother Tom's wife out there in India, they'll be so disappointed. I was going to take them down to it. Nasty thing! How annoying of her! She might have chosen some other time to go and die, I'm sure, than just when she knew I wanted to go to Exeter. Well, if it would be any convenience to you, Bertram put in with a serious face. I'm rather busy on Wednesday, but I could manage to take up a portmanteau to town with my dress-things in the morning, meet the girls at Paddington and run down by the evening express in time to go with them to the hotel you meant to stop at. They're those two pretty blondes I met here at tea last Sunday, aren't they? Frida looked at him half incredulous. He was very nice, she knew, and very quaint and fresh and unsophisticated and unconventional. But could he be really quite so ignorant of the common usages of civilized society as to suppose it possible he could run down alone with two young girls to stop by themselves without even a chaperone at a hotel at Exeter? She gazed at him curiously. Oh, Mr. Ingled you, she said. No, you're really too ridiculous. Bertram coloured up like a boy. If she had been in any doubt before, as to his sincerity and simplicity, she could be so no longer. Oh, I forgot about the taboo, he said. I'm so sorry I hurt you. I was only thinking what a pity those two nice girls should be cheated out of their expected pleasure by a silly question of pretended mourning, where even you yourself, who have got to wear it, don't assume that you feel the slightest tinge of sorrow. I remember now, of course, what a lady told me in London the other day. Your young girls aren't even allowed to go out travelling alone without their mother or brothers in order to taboo them absolutely beforehand for the possible husband who may someday marry them. It was a pitiful tale. I thought it almost painful and shocking. But you don't mean to say, Frieda cried, equally shocked and astonished in her turn, that you'd let young girls go out alone anywhere with unmarried men. Goodness gracious, how dreadful! Why not? Bertram asked with transparent simplicity. Why just consider the consequences? Frieda exclaimed with a blush after a moment's hesitation. There couldn't be any consequences unless they both liked and respected one another. Bertram answered in the most matter-of-course voice in the world. And if they do that, we think at home it's nobody's business to interfere in any way with the free expression of their individuality. In this the most sacred and personal matter of human intercourse. It's the one point of private conduct about which we're all at home most sensitively anxious not to meddle, to interfere, or even to criticise. We think such affairs should be left entirely to the hearts and consciences of the two persons concerned, who must surely know best how they feel towards one another. But I remember having met lots of taboos among other barbarians in much the same way, to preserve the mere material purity of their women. A thing we at home wouldn't dream of even questioning. In New Ireland, for instance, I saw poor girls confined for four or five years in small wicker-work cages where they're kept in the dark and not even allowed to set foot on the ground on any pretext. They're shut up in these prisons when they're about fourteen and there they're kept strictly tabooed till they're just going to be married. I went to see them myself, it was a horrid sight. The poor creatures were confined in a dark, close hut without air or ventilation in that stifling climate which is as unendurable from heat as this one is from cold and damp and fogginess. And there they sat in cages, coarsely woven from broad leaves of the pandanus trees so that no light could enter, for the people believed that light would kill them. No man might see them because it was close to boo but at last with great difficulty I persuaded the chief and the old lady who guarded them to let them come out for a minute to look at me. A lot of beads and cloth overcame these people's scruples and with great reluctance they opened the cages but only the old woman looked. The chief was afraid and turned his head the other way mumbling charms to his fetish. Out they stole one by one poor souls ashamed and frightened, hiding their faces in their hands thinking I was going to hurt them or eat them just as your nieces would do if I proposed today to take them to Exeter and a dreadful sight they were cramped with long sitting in one close position and their eyes all blinded by the glare of the sunlight after the long darkness. I've seen women shut up in pretty much the same way in other countries but I never saw quite so bad a case as this of New Ireland. Well you can't say we've anything answering to that in England Frida put in looking across at him with her frank open countenance. No not quite like that in detail perhaps but pretty much the same in general principle Bertram answered warmly your girls here are not cooped up in actual cages but they're confined in barrack schools as like prisons as possible and they're repressed at every turn in every natural instinct of play or society. They mustn't go here or they mustn't go there they mustn't talk to this one or to that one they mustn't do this or that or the other their whole life is bound round I'm told by a closely woven web of restrictions and restraints which have no other object or end in view than the interests of a purely hypothetical husband. The Chinese cramped their women's feet to make them small and useless you cramp your women's brains for the self-same purpose. Even lights excluded for they mustn't read books that would make them think they mustn't be allowed to suspect the bare possibility that the world may be otherwise than as their priests and nurses and grandmothers tell them though most even of your own men know it well to be something quite different. Why I met a girl at that dance I went to in London the other evening who told me she wasn't allowed to read a book called Tests of the Derbavilles that I'd read myself and that seemed to me one of which every young girl and married woman in England ought to be given a copy. It was the one true book I had seen in your country and another girl wasn't allowed to read another book which I'd since looked at called Robert Ellesmere an ephemeral thing enough in its way I don't doubt but proscribed in her case for no other reason on earth than because it expressed some mild disbelief as to the exact literary accuracy of those lower Syrian pamphlets to which your priests attach such immense importance. Oh, Mr. Engelt you! Frieder cried trembling yet profoundly interested. If you talk like that any more I shan't be able to listen to you. There it is you see. Bertram continued with a little wave of the hand. You've been so blinded and bedimmed by being deprived of light when a girl that now when you see even a very faint ray it dazzles you and frightens you. That mustn't be so. It needn't I feel confident. I shall have to teach you how to bear the light. Your eyes I know are naturally strong. You were an eagle-born. You'd soon get used to it. Frieder lifted them slowly those beautiful eyes and met his own with genuine pleasure. Do you think so? she asked half whispering. In some dim, instinctive way she felt this strange man was a superior being and that every small crumb of praise from him was well worth meriting. Why, Frieder, of course I do! he answered without the least sense of impertinence. Do you think if I didn't I'd have taken so much trouble to try and educate you? For he had talked to her much in their walks on the hillside. Frieder did not correct him for his bold application of her Christian name though she knew she ought to. She only looked up at him and answered gravely, I certainly can't let you take my nieces to Exeter. I suppose not. He replied, hardly catching at her meaning. One of the girls at that dance the other night told me a great many queer facts about your taboos on these domestic subjects. So I know how stringent and how unreasoning they are. And indeed I found out a little bit for myself for there was one nice girl there to whom I took a very great fancy and I was just going to kiss her as I said good night when she drew back suddenly almost as if I'd struck her though we'd been talking together quite confidentially a minute before. I could see she thought I really meant to insult her. Of course I explained it was only what I'd have done to any nice girl at home under similar circumstances but she didn't seem to believe me. And the oddest part of it all was that all the time we were dancing I had my arm round her waist as all the other men had theirs round their partners and at home we consider it a much greater proof of confidence and affection to be allowed to place your arm round a lady's waist than merely to kiss her. Frieder felt the conversation was beginning to travel beyond her ideas of propriety so she checked its excursions by answering gravely. Oh! Mr. Ingled you don't understand our code of morals but I'm sure you don't find your East End young ladies so fearfully particular. They certainly haven't quite so many taboos Bertram answered quietly but that's always the way in tabooing societies these things are naturally worse among the chiefs and great people. I remember when I was stopping the Ott Danoms of Borneo the daughters of chiefs and great son-descended families were shut up at eight or ten years old in a little cell or room as a religious duty and cut off from all intercourse with the outside world for many years together. The cells dimly lit by a single small window placed high in the wall so that the unhappy girl never sees anybody or anything but passes her life in almost total darkness. She meant leave the room on any pretext whatever not even for the most pressing and necessary purposes. None of her family may see her face but a single slave woman's appointed to accompany her and wait upon her. Long want of exercise stunts her bodily growth and when at last she becomes a woman and emerges from her prison her complexion has grown worn and pale and wax-like. They take her out in solemn guise and show her the sun, the sky, the land, the water, the trees, the flowers and tell her all their names as if to a newborn creature. Then a great feast is made, a poor, crouching slave is killed with a blow of the sword and the girl is solemnly smeared with his reeking blood by way of initiation. But this is only done, of course, with the daughters of wealthy and powerful families. And I find it pretty much the same in England. In all these matters your poorer glasses are relatively pure and simple and natural. It's your richer and worse and more selfish glasses among whom sex taboos are strongest and most unnatural. Frida looked up at him a little pleadingly. "'Do you know, Mr. Ingledew?' she said in a trembling voice. "'I'm sure you don't mean it for intentional rudeness, but it sounds to us very like it when you speak of our taboos and compare us openly to these dreadful savages. "'I'm a woman that I know, but I don't like to hear you speak so about my England.'" The words took Bertram fairly by surprise. He was wholly unacquainted with that rank form of provincialism which we know as patriotism. He leaned across towards her with a look of deep pain on his handsome face. "'Oh, Mrs. Montice!' he cried earnestly. "'If you don't like it, I'll never again speak of them as taboos in your presence. "'I didn't dream you could object. "'It seems so natural to us, well, to describe like customs by like names in every case. "'But if it gives you pain, why sooner than do that I'd never again say a single word while I live about an English custom.'" His face was very near hers, and he was a son of Adam like all the rest of us, not a being of another sphere, as Frida was sometimes half tempted to consider him. What might next have happened he himself hardly knew, for he was an impulsive creature, and Frida's rich lips were full and crimson, had not Philip's arrival with the two Miss Hardies to make up a set, diverted for the moment the nascent possibility of a leading incident. CHAPTER VI It was a Sunday afternoon in full July, and a small party was seated under the spreading mulberry tree on the Monteith's lawn. General Clavager was of the number, that well-known constructor of scientific frontiers in India or Africa. And so was Dean Chalmers, the popular preacher, who had come down for the day from his London house to deliver a sermon on behalf of the society for superseding the existing superstitions of China and Japan by the dying ones of Europe. Philip was there too, enjoying himself thoroughly in the midst of such good company. And so was Robert Monteith, bleak and grim as usual, but deeply interested for the moment in dividing metaphysical and theological cobwebs with his friend the Dean, who, as a brother Scotsman, loved a good discussion better almost than he loved a good discourse. General Clavager, for his part, was congenially engaged in describing to Bertram his pet idea for a campaign against the Mardi and his men in the interior of the Sudan. Bertram rather yawned through that technical talk. He was a man of peace, and schemes of organised bloodshed interested him no more than the details of a projected human sacrifice given by a central African chief with native gusto would interest an average European gentleman. At last, however, the general happened to say casually, I forget the exact name of the place I mean, I think it's Malolo, but I have a very good map of all the district at my house down at Warnborough. What? Warnborough in Northamptonshire? Bertram exclaimed with sudden interest. Do you really live there? I'm Lord of the Manor. General Clavager answered with a little access of dignity. The Clavagers or Clavijeros were a Spanish family of Andalusian origin who settled down at Warnborough under Philip and Mary and retained the Manor no doubt by conversion to the Protestant side after the accession of Elizabeth. That's interesting to me. Bertram answered with his frank and fearless truthfulness. Because my people came originally from Warnborough before— well, before they emigrated. Philip, listening as scants, pricked up his ears eagerly at the tell-tale phrase. After all, then, a colonist. But they weren't anybody distinguished, certainly not Lords of the Manor. He added hastily as the general turned a keen eye on him. Are there any Ingledews living now in the Warnborough district? One likes, as a matter of scientific heredity, to know all one can about one's ancestors and one's county and one's collateral relatives. Well, there are some Ingledews just now at Warnborough? The general answered with some natural hesitation, surveying the tall, handsome young man from head to foot, not without a faint touch of soldierly approbation. But they can hardly be your relatives, however remote. They're people in the most humble sphere of life. Unless indeed— well, we know the vicissitudes of families, perhaps your ancestors and the Ingledews that I know drifted apart a long time ago. Is he a cobbler? Bertram inquired, without a trace of Merve's aunt. The general nodded. Well, yes, he said politely. That's exactly what he is, though, as you seem to be asking about presumed relations, I didn't like to mention it. Oh, then, he's my ancestor," Bertram put in, quite pleased at the discovery. That is to say, he added, after a curious pause, my ancestor's descendant. Almost all my people, a little way back, you see, were shoemakers or cobblers. He said it with dignity, exactly as he might have said there were dukes or lordchancelers. But Philip could not help pitying him, not so much for being descended from so mean a lot, as for being full enough to acknowledge it on a gentleman's lawn at Brackenhurst. Why, with manners like his, if he had not given himself away, one might easily have taken him for a descendant of the Plantagenets. So the general seemed to think too, for he added quickly, but you're very like the Duke and the dukes of Bertram. Is he also a relative? The young man coloured slightly. Yes, he answered hesitating, but were not very proud of the Bertram connection. They never did much good in the world, the Bertrams. I bear the name, one may almost say, by accident, because it was handed down to me by my grandfather Ingleduke, who had Bertram blood, but was a vast dealer better man than any other member of the Bertram family. I'll be seeing the Duke on Wednesday. The general put in with marked politeness. And I'll ask him, if you like, about your grandfather's relationship. Who was he exactly? And what was his connection with the present man or his predecessor? Oh, don't please! Bertram put in half-pleadingly it is true, but still with that same ineffable and indefinable air of a great gentleman that never for a moment deserted him. The Duke would never have heard of my ancestors, I'm sure, and I particularly don't want to be mixed up with the existing Bertrams in any way. He was happily innocent and ignorant of the natural interpretation the others would put upon his reticence after the true English manner. But still he was vaguely aware from the silence that ensued for a moment after he ceased that he must have broken once more some important taboo and defended once more some much revered fetish. To get rid of the awkwardness he turned quietly to Frida. What do you say, Mrs. Montieth? he suggested, to a game of tennis. As bad luck would have it he had floundered from one taboo headlong into another. The dean looked up open-mouthed with a sharp glance of inquiry. Did Mrs. Montieth then permit such frivolities on the Sunday? You forget what day it is, I think, Frida interposed gently with a look of warning. Bertram took the hint at once. So I did, he answered quickly. At home, you see, we let no man judge us of days and of weeks and of times and of seasons. That puzzles us so much. With us what's wrong today can never be right and proper to-morrow. But surely, the dean said, bristling up, some day is set apart in every civilised land for religious exercises. Oh, no! Bertram replied, falling in cautiously into the trap. We do right every day of the week alike, and never do puja of any sort at any time. Then where do you come from? The dean asked severely, pouncing down upon him like a hawk. I've always understood the very lowest savages have at least some outer form or shadow of religion. Yes, perhaps so, but we're not savages, either low or otherwise, Bertram answered cautiously, perceiving his error. And as to your other point, for reasons of my own, I prefer for the present not to say where I come from. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. As you didn't, I saw about my remote connection with the Duke of East Anglia's family. And we're not accustomed, where I live, to be disbelieved or doubted. It's perhaps the one thing that really almost makes us lose our tempers. So if you please, I won't go any further at present into the debatable matter of my place of origin. He rose to stroll off into the gardens, having spoken all the time in that peculiarly grave and dignified tone that seemed natural to him whenever anyone tried to question him closely. Nobody save a churchman would have continued the discussion, but the dean was a churchman and also a scot, and he returned to the attack unabashed and unbaffled. But surely, Mr. Ingledew, he said in a persuasive voice, your people, whoever they are, must at least acknowledge a creator of the universe. Bertram gazed at him fixedly, his eye was stern. My people, sir, he said slowly, in very measured words, unaware that one must not argue with a clergyman, acknowledge and investigate every reality they can find in the universe, and admit no phantoms. They believe in everything that can be shown or proved to be natural and true, but in nothing supernatural, that is to say imaginary or non-existent. They accept plain facts, they reject pure fantasies. How beautiful those lilies are, Mrs. Monty's, such an exquisite colour! Shall we go over and look at them? Not just now! Frida answered, relieved at the appearance of Martha with the tray in the distance. Here's tea coming! She was glad of the diversion, for she liked Bertram immensely, and she could not help noticing how hopelessly he had been flandering all that afternoon, right into the very midst of what he himself would have called their taboos and joss business. But Bertram was not well out of his troubles yet. Martha brought the round tray, Oriental brass finely chased with flowing Arabic inscriptions, and laid it down on the dainty little rustic table. Then she handed about the cups. Bertram rose to help her. May and I do it for you," he said, as politely as he would have said it to a lady in her drawing-room. Now thank you, sir! Martha answered, turning red at the offer, but with the imperturbable solemnity of the well-trained English servant. She knew her place, and resented the intrusion. But Bertram had his own notions of politeness too, which were not to be likely set aside for local class distinctions. He could not see a pretty girl handing cups to guests without instinctively rising from his seat to assist her. So, very much to Martha's embarrassment, he continued to give his help in passing the cake and the bread and butter. As soon as she was gone, he turned round to Philip. That's a very pretty girl and a very nice girl, he said simply. I wonder now, as you haven't a wife, you've never thought of marrying her. The remark fell like a thunderbolt on the assembled group. Even Frida was shocked. Your most open-minded woman begins to draw a line when you touch her class prejudices in the matter of marriage, especially with reference to her own relations. Why, really, Mr. Inkled you? she said, looking up at him reproachfully. You can't mean to say you think my brother could marry the Parliament. Bertram saw at a glance, he had once more unwittingly run his head against one of the dearest of these strange peoples taboos, but he made no retort openly. He only reflected in silence to himself how unnatural and how wrong they would all think it at home that a young man of Philip's age should remain nominally celibate. How horrified they would be at the abject misery and degradation such conduct on the part of half his caste must inevitably imply for thousands of innocent young girls of lower station, whose lives he now knew were remorselessly sacrificed in vile dens of tainted London to the supposed social necessity that young men of a certain class should marry late in a certain style and keep a wife in the way she's been accustomed to. He remembered with a checked sigh how infinitely superior they would all at home have considered that wholesome, capable, good-looking Martha to an empty-headed and useless young man like Philip. And he thought to himself how completely taboo had overlaid in these people's minds every ethical idea, how wholly it had obscured the prime necessities of healthy vigorous and moral manhood. He recollected the similar, though less hideous taboos he had met with elsewhere, the castes of India and the horrible pollution that would result from disregarding them. The vile Egyptian rule, by which the Divine King, in order to keep up the so-called purity of his royal and God-descended blood, must marry his own sister, and so foully pollute with monstrous abortions the very stock he believed himself to be preserving intact from common or unclean influences. His mind ran back to the strange and complicated forbidden degrees of the Australian black fellows, who are divided into cross-classes, each of which must necessarily marry into a certain other and into that other only, regardless of individual tastes or preferences. He remembered, the profound belief of all these people, that if they were to act in any other way than the one prescribed, some nameless misfortune or terrible evil would surely overtake them. Yet nowhere, he thought to himself, had he seen any system which entailed in the end so much misery on both sexes, though more particularly on the women, as that system of closely tabooed marriage founded upon a broad basis of prostitution and infanticide, which has reached its most appalling height of development in hypocritical and puritan England. The ghastly levity with which all Englishmen treated this most serious subject, and the fatal readiness with which even Frida herself seemed to acquiesce in the most inhuman slavery ever devised for women on the face of this earth, shocked and saddened Bertram's profoundly moral and sympathetic nature. He could sit there no longer to listen to their talk. He bethought him at once of the sickening sights he had seen the evening before in a London music-hall, of the corrupting mass of filth underneath, by which alone this abomination of iniquity could be kept externally decent, and this vile system of false celibacy whitened outwardly to the eye like oriental sepulchres. And he strolled off by himself into the shrubbery, very heavy in heart, to hide his real feelings from the priest and the soldier, whose coarser-grained minds could never have understood the enthusiasm of humanity which inspired and informed him. Frida rose and followed him, moved by some unconscious wave of instinctive sympathy. The four children of this world were left together on the lawn by the rustic table, to exchange views by themselves on the extraordinary behaviour and novel demeanour of the mysterious alien. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 The British Barbarians by Grant Allen Chapter 7 As soon as he was gone a sigh of relief ran half unaware through the little square party. They felt some unearthly presence had been removed from their midst. General Clavager turned to Monteith. That's a curious sort of chap, he said slowly in his military way. Who is he and where does he come from? Ah, where does he come from? That's just the question. Monteith answered, lighting a cigar and puffing away dubiously. Nobody knows. He's a mystery. He pauses in the role. You'd better ask Philip. It was he who brought him here. I met him accidentally in the street. Philip answered with an apologetic shrug, by no means well pleased at being thus held responsible for all the stranger's moral and social daegaries. It's the merest chance acquaintance. I know nothing of his antecedents. I lent him a bag and he's fastened himself upon me ever since like a leech and come constantly to my sisters. But I haven't the remotest idea who he is or where he hails from. He keeps his business wrapped up from all of us in the profoundest mystery. He's a gentleman anyhow. The general put in with military decisiveness. How manly of him to acknowledge at once about the cobbler being probably a near-relation. Most men, you know, Christie, would have tried to hide it. He didn't for a second. He admitted his ancestors had all been cobblers till quite a recent period. Philip was astonished at this verdict of the generals, for he himself, on the contrary, had noted with silent scorn that very remark as a piece of supreme and hopeless stupidity on Bertram's part. No fellow can help having a cobbler for a grandfather, of course, but he need not be such a fool as to volunteer any mention of the fact spontaneously. Yes, I thought it bold of him, Montice answered. Almost bolder than was necessary, for he didn't seem to think we should be at all surprised at it. The general mused to himself. He's a fine, soldierly fellow," he said, gazing after the tall retreating figure. I should like to make a dragoon of him. He's a very man for a saddle. He'd dash across country in the face of heavy guns any day with the best of them. He rides well," Philip answered, and has a wonderful seat. I saw him on that bay mare of wilders in town the other afternoon, and I must say he rode much more like a gentleman than a cobbler. Oh, he's a gentleman," the general repeated with unshaken conviction. A thoroughbred gentleman. And he scanned Philip up and down with his keen grey eye, as if internally reflecting that Philip's own right to criticise and classify that particular species of humanity was a trifle doubtful. I should much like to make a captain of his arse of him. He'd be splendid as a leader of a regular horse, the very man for a scrimmage. For the general's one idea when he saw a fine specimen of our common race was the Zulus or the Red Indians, what an admirable person he would be to employ in killing and maiming his fellow creatures. He'd be better engaged so, the dean murmured reflectively, than in diffusing these horrid revolutionary and atheistic doctrines. For the church was as usual in accord with the sword, theoretically all peace, practically all bloodshed and rapime and aggression, and anything that was not his own opinion envisaged itself always to the dean's crystallised mind as revolutionary and atheistic. He's very like the Duke, though. General Clavager went on, after a moment's pause, during which everybody watched Bertram and Frida disappearing down the walk round a clump of syringes. Very like the Duke! And you saw he admitted some sort of relationship, though he didn't like to dwell upon it. You may be sure he's a by-blow of the family somehow. One of the Bertram's perhaps the old Duke who was out in the Crimea may have formed an attachment for one of these ingledew girls, the cobbler's sisters. I daresay they were no better in their conduct than they ought to be, and this may be the consequence. I'm afraid the old Duke was a man of loose life and doubtful conversation, the dean put in, with a tone of professional disapprobation for the inevitable transgressions of the great and the high-placed. He didn't seem to set the example he ought to have done to his poorer brethren. Oh, he was a thorough old rip, the Duke, if it comes to that. General Clavager responded, twirling his white moustache. And so's the present man a rip of the first water. They're a regular bad lot, the Bertram's root and stock. They never set an example of anything to anybody—bar horse-breeding, as far as I'm aware—and even at that their trainers have always fairly cheated them. The present Duke's a most exemplary churchman, the dean interposed with Christian charity for a nobleman of position. He gave us a couple of thousand last year for the Cathedral Restoration Fund. And that would account, Philip put in, returning abruptly to the previous question, which had been exercising him meanwhile, for the peculiarly distinguished air of birth and breeding this man has about him. For Philip respected a Duke from the bottom of his heart, and cherished the common Britannic delusion that a man who has been elevated to that highest degree in our barbaric rank system must acquire at the same time a nobler type of physique and countenance, exactly as a Duke changes his Semitic features for the European shape on conversion and baptism. Oh, dear, no! The general answered in his most decided voice. The Bertram's were never much to look at in any way, and as for the old Duke, he was as insignificant a little monster of red-haired ugliness as ever you'd see in a day's march anywhere. If he hadn't been a Duke, with a rent-roll of forty-odd thousand a year, he'd never have got that beautiful Lady Camilla to consent to marry him. But, bless you, women will do anything for the strawberry leaves. It isn't from the Bertram's this man gets his good looks, it isn't from the Bertram's. Old Ingledew's daughters are pretty enough girls. If their aunts were like him, it's there your young friend got his air of distinction. We never know who's who nowadays. The Dean murmured softly. Being himself the son of a small Scot tradesman, brought up in the Free Kirk, and elevated into his present exalted position by the early intervention of a balial scholarship and a studentship of Christchurch, he felt at liberty to moralise in such non-committing terms on the gradual decay of aristocratic exclusiveness. I don't see it much matters what a man's family was, the general said stoutly, so long as he's a fine, well-made, soldierly fellow like this Ingledew body capable of fighting for his queen and country. He is an Australian, I suppose. What tall chaps they do send home to be sure. Those Australians are going to lick us all round the field presently. That's the curious part of it, Philip answered. Nobody knows what he is. He doesn't even seem to be a British subject. He calls himself an alien, and he speaks most disrespectfully at times, well, not exactly perhaps of the queen in person, but at any rate of the monarchy. Utterly destitute of any feeling of respect for any power of any sort, human or divine, the dean remarked with clerical severity. For my part, Montice interposed, knocking his ash off savagely. I think the man's a swindler, and the more I see of him the lesser like him. He's never explained to us how he came here at all, or what a dickens he came for. He refuses to say where he lives, or what's his nationality. He poses as a sort of unexplained Casperhauser. In my opinion, these mystery men are always impostors. He had no letters of introduction to anybody at Brackenhurst, and he thrust himself upon Philip in a most peculiar way. Ever since which, he's insisted upon coming to my house almost daily. I don't like him myself. It's Mrs. Montice who insists upon having him here. He fascinates me, the general said frankly. I don't at all wonder the women like him. As long as he was by, though I don't agree with one word he says, I couldn't help looking at him and listening to him intently. So he does me," Philip answered, since the general gave him the cue. And I notice it's the same with people in the train. They always listen to him, though sometimes he preaches the most extravagant doctrines. Oh, much worse than anything he said here this afternoon. He's really quite eccentric. What sort of doctrines? the dean inquired with language zeal. Not, I hope, irreligious. Oh, dear, no," Philip answered. Not that so much. He troubles himself very little, I think, about religion. Social doctrines, don't you know? Such very queer views about women and so forth. Indeed, the dean said quickly, drawing himself up very stiff, for you touch the Ark of God for the modern cleric when you touch the question of the relations of the sexes. And what does he say? It's highly undesirable men should go about the country inciting to rebellion on such fundamental points of moral order in public railway carriages. For it is a peculiarity of minds constituted like the deans, say, ninety-nine percent of the population, to hold that the more important a subject is to our general happiness, the less ought we all to think about it and discuss it. Why, he has very queer ideas, Philip went on slightly hesitating, for he shared the common vulgar inability to phrase exposition of a certain class of subjects in any but the crudest and ugliest phraseology. He seems to think, don't you know, that recognized forms of vice. Well, what all young men do. You know what I mean. Of course it's not right, but still they do them. The dean nodded a cautious acquiescence. He thinks they're horribly wrong and distressing, but he makes nothing at all of the virtue of decent girls and the peace of families. If I found a man preaching that sort of doctrine to my wife or my daughters, Monteith said savagely, I know what I'd do. I'd put a bullet through him. And quite right, too, the general murmured approvingly. Professional considerations made the dean refrain from endorsing this open expression of murderous sentiment in its fullest form. A clergyman ought always to keep up some decent semblance of respect for the gospel and the ten commandments, or at least the greater part of them. So he placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together in the usual deliberative clerical way, gazed blankly through the gap, and answered with mild and perfunctory disapprobation. A bullet would perhaps be an unnecessarily severe form of punishment to meet out. But I confess I would excuse the man who was so far carried away by his righteous indignation as to duck the fellow in the nearest horse pond. Well, I don't know about that, Philip replied, with an outburst of unwonted courage and originality, for he was beginning to like, and he had always from the first respected Bertram. There's something about the man that makes me feel, even when I differ from him most, that he believes it all, and is thoroughly in earnest. I dare say I'm wrong, but I always have a notion he's a better man than me in spite of all his nonsense, higher and clearer and differently constituted, and that if only I could climb to just where he has got, perhaps I should see things in the same light that he does. It was a wonderful speech for Philip, a speech above himself, but all the same by a fetch of inspiration he actually made it. Intercourse with Bertram had profoundly impressed his feeble nature, but the dean shook his head. A very undesirable young man for you to see too much of, I'm sure, Mr. Christie, he said, with marked disapprobation. For in the dean's opinion it was a most dangerous thing for a man to think, especially when he's young. Thinking is, of course, so likely to unsettle him. The general, on the other hand, nodded his stern grey head once or twice, reflectively. He's a remarkable young fellow, he said after a pause, a most remarkable young fellow. As I said before, he somehow fascinates me. I'd immensely like to put that young fellow into a smart hazar uniform, mount him on a good charger of the Punjab breed, and send him helter-skelter, pull devil, pull baker, among my old friends the Durrani's on the northwest frontier.