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If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Mrs Albert Grundy--Observations in Philistia - -Author: Harold Frederic - -Release Date: November 19, 2015 [EBook #50496] -Last Updated: November 6, 2016 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS GRUNDY *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -MRS ALBERT GRUNDY--OBSERVATIONS IN PHILISTIA - -By Harold Frederic - - -[Illustration: 0007] - - - - -_Presenting in Outline the Comfortable and Well-Regulated Paradox over -which She Presides, and showing its Mental Elevation_ - - -I suppose about the name there is no doubt. For sixty years we -have followed that gifted gadabout and gossip, Heine, and called it -Philistia. And yet, when one thinks of it, there may have been a mistake -after all. Artemus Ward used to say that he had been able, with effort, -to comprehend how it was possible to measure the distance between the -stars, and even the dimensions and candle-power, so to speak, of those -heavenly bodies; what beat him was how astronomers had ever found out -their names. So I find myself wondering whether Philistia really is the -right name for the land where She must be obeyed. - -If so, it is only a little more the region of mysterious paradox and -tricksy metamorphosis. We think of it always and from all time as given -over to Her rule. We feel in our bones that there was a troglodyte Mrs -Grundy; we imagine to ourselves a British matron contemporary with the -cave bear and the woolly elephant But her very antiquity only makes it -more puzzling. - -There is an old gentleman who always tries to prove to me that the -French are really Germans, that the Germans are all Slavs, and that the -Russians are strictly Tartars: that is to say, that in keeping-count -of the early races as they swarmed Westward we somehow skipped one, and -have been wrong ever since. There must be some such explanation of how -the domain which She sways came to be called Philistia. - -I say this, because the old Philistia was tremendously masculine. It was -the Jews who struck the feminine note. They used to swagger no end when -they won a victory, and utilise it to the utmost limit of merciless -savagery; but when it came their turn to be thrashed they filled -the very heavens with complaining clamour. We got no hint that the -Philistines ever failed to take their medicine like men. - -Consider those splendid later Philistines, the Norsemen. In all their -martial literature there is no suggestion of a whine. They loved -fighting for its own sake; next to braining their foes, they admired -being themselves hewn into sections. They never blamed their gods when -they had the worst of it. They never insisted that they were always -right and their enemies invariably wrong. They cared nothing about all -that. They demanded only fun. It was their victims, the Frankish and -Irish monks, who shed women’s tears and besought Providence to play -favourites. - -And here is the paradox. The children of these Berserker loins are -become the minions of Mrs Grundy. By some magic she has enshrined -Respectability in their temples. In one division of her empire she makes -Mr Helmer drink tea; in another she sets everybody reading the _Buchholz -Family_; in her chosen island home her husband on the sunniest Sundays -carries an umbrella instead of a walking-stick. Fancy the wild delirium -of delight with which the old Philistines would have raided her -homestead, chopping down her Robert Elsmeres, impaling her Horsleys, and -making the skies lurid with the flames of her semi-detached villa! Yet -we call her place Philistia! - -I know the villa very well. It is quite near to the South Kensington -Museum. The title “Fernbank” is painted on the gate-posts. How -well-ordered and comfortable does life beyond those posts remain! Here -are no headaches in the morning. Here white-capped domestics move with -neat alertness along the avenues of gentle routine, looking neither to -the policeman on the right nor fiery-jacketed Thomas Atkins on the left. -Here my friend Mr Albert Grundy invariably comes home by the Underground -to dinner. Here his three daughters--girls of a type with a diminishing -upper lip, with sharper chins and greater length of limb than of -old--lead deeply washed existences, playing at tennis, smiling in -flushed silence at visitors, feeding contentedly upon Mudie’s stores, -the while their mamma spreads the matrimonial net about the piano or -makes tours of inspection among her outlying mantraps on the lawn. Here -simpers the innocuous curate; here Uncle Dudley, who has seen life in -Australia and the Far West, watches the bulbs and prunes the roses, and, -I should think, yawns often to himself; here Lady Willoughby Wallaby’s -card diffuses refinement from the summit of the card-basket in the hall. - -To this happy home there came but last week--or was it the week -before--a parcel of books. There were four complete novels in twelve -volumes--fruits of that thoughtful arrangement by which the fair reader -in Philistia is given three distinct opportunities to decide whether she -will read the story through or not. Mrs Albert is a busy woman, burdened -with manifold responsibilities to Church and State, to organised -charities, to popularised music, to art-work guilds and the Amalgamated -Association of Clear Starchers, not to mention a weather-eye kept at -all times upon all unmarried males: but she still finds time to open -all these packets of new books herself. On this occasion she gave to -her eldest, Ermyntrude, the first volume of a novel by Mrs --------. It -doesn’t matter what fell to the share of the younger Amy and Floribel. -For herself she reserved the three volumes of the latest work of Mr ---------. - -She tells me now that words simply can _not_ express her thankfulness -for having done so. It seems the selection was not entirely accidental. -She was attracted, she admits, by the charmingly dainty binding of -the volumes, but she was also moved by an instinct, half maternal -prescience, half literary recollection. She thought she remembered -having seen the name of this man-writer before. Where? It came to her -like a flash, she says. Only a while ago he had a hook called _A Bunch -of Patrician Ladies_ or something of that sort, which she almost made -up her mind not to let the girls read at all, but at last, with some -misgivings, permitted them to skim hastily, because though the morals -were rocky--perhaps that wasn’t her word--the society was very good. -But this new book of his had not even that saving feature. Respectable -people were only incidentally mentioned in it. Really it was quite _too_ -low. The chief figure was a farm-girl who for the most part skimmed -milk or cut swedes in a field, and at other times behaved in a manner -positively unmentionable. Mrs Albert told me she had locked the volumes -up, after only partially perusing them. I might be sure _her_ daughters -never laid eyes on them. They had gone back to the library, with a note -expressing surprise that such immoral books should be sent into any -Christian family. What made the matter worse, she went on, was that -Ermyntrude read in some paper, at a friend’s house, that this man, -whoever he may be, was the greatest of English novelists, and that this -particular book of his was a tragic work of the noblest and loftiest -order, which dignified the language. She was sure she didn’t know what -England was coming to, when reporters were allowed to put things -like that in the papers. Fortunately she only took in _The Daily -Tarradiddle_, which one could always rely upon for sound views, and -which gave this unspeakable book precisely the contemptuous little -notice it deserved. - -It was a relief, however--and here the good matron visibly brightened -up--to think that really wholesome and improving novels were still -produced. There was that novel by Mrs --------. Had I read it? Oh, - -I must lose no time! Perhaps it was not altogether so enchanting as that -first immortal work of hers, which had almost, one might say, founded -a new religion. True, one of the girls in it worked altar-cloths for a -church, and occasionally the other characters broke out into religious -conversation; but there were no clergymen to speak of, and the charm -of the other’s ecclesiastical mysticism was lacking. “To be frank, the -first and last volumes were just a bit slow. But oh! the lovely second -volume! A young Englishman and his sister go to Paris. They stumble -right at the start into the most delightful, picturesque, artistic -set. Think of it: Henri Régnault is personally introduced, and delivers -himself of extended remarks----” - -“I met an old friend of Regnault’s at the Club the other day,” - I interposed, “who complained bitterly of that. He said it was -insufferable impudence to bring him in at all, and still worse to make -him talk such blather as is put into his mouth.” - -Mrs Albert sniffed at this Club friend and went on. That Paris part of -the book seemed to her to just palpitate with life. It was Paris to the -very letter--gay, intellectual, sparkling, and oh! so free! The young -Englishman at once set up a romantic establishment in the heart of -Fontainebleau Forest with a French painter-girl. His sister was almost -as promptly debauched by an elderly French sculptor. But you never lost -sight of the fact that the author was teaching a valuable moral lesson -by all this. Indeed, that whole part of the book was called “Storm -and Stress.” And all the while you saw, too, how innately superior the -national character of the young Englishman was to that of the French -people about him. One _knew_ that in good time _he_ would have a moral -awakening, and return to England, marry, settle down, and make money in -his business. Side by side with this you saw the entire hopelessness -of any spiritual regeneration in the French painter-girl or any of -her artistic set. And this was shown with such delicate art--it was so -_perfect_ a picture of the moral contrast between the two nations--that -the girls saw it at once. - -“Then the girls,” I put in--“that is to say, you didn’t lock _this_ book -up?” - -Mrs Albert lifted her eyebrows at me. - -“How do you mean?” she asked. “Do you know who the author is? The idea! -Why, the papers print whole columns about _anything_ she writes. Every -day you may see paragraphs about the mere prospect of books she -hasn’t even begun yet. I suppose such blatant publicity must be very -distressing to her, but the public simply insist upon it. _The Daily -Tarradiddle_ devoted an entire leader to this particular book. I assure -you, all my friends are talking of nothing else--many of them people, -too, whom you would not suspect of any literary tastes whatever, and who -_never_ read novels as a rule. But they don’t regard _this_ as a novel. -They think of it--I quote Lady Willoughby Wallaby’s exact words--as an -exposition of those Christian principles which make our England what it -is.” - - - - -_Setting forth the Untoward Circumstances under which the Right Tale was -Unfolded in the Wrong Company_ - - -Much has been written about that variety of “cab-wit” which occurs to -a man on his way home from dinner: the brilliant sallies he might have -made, the smart retorts which would so bravely have reversed the balance -of laughter had they only come in time. We are less frank about the -other sort. No one dwells in type upon the manner in which we marshal -our old jokes and arrange our epigrams as we drive along to the house of -feasting. - -No doubt the practice of getting up table-talk is going out. The -three-bottle men took it to the grave with them, along with the -snuff-box, and the toupee, and the feather-bed, and other amenities -of the Regency. There never was but one diner-out in the London of my -knowledge who was at pains to prepare his conversations, each for its -special occasion and audience, and he, poor man, broke down under -the strain and disappeared from view. The others are too lazy, too -indifferent, too cocksure of themselves, to go to all this bother. The -old courtly sense of responsibility to the host is perished from among -them. But none the less, the least dutiful and diligent of all their -number does ask himself questions as the whirling rubber tyres bear him -onward, and the cab-mirror shows him the face of a man to whom people -ought to listen. - -The question I asked myself, as I drove past the flaring shop windows -of Old Brompton Road the other evening, was whether the Grundys would -probably like my story of Nate Salsbury and the Citizen of South Bend, -Indiana. A good deal depended upon the decision. It was a story which -had greatly solidified my position in other hospitable quarters; it -could be brought in _apropos_ of almost anything, or for that matter of -quite nothing at all; it had never been printed, so far as I know, in -any of those American comic papers which supply alike the dining-rooms -of Mayfair and the editorial offices of Fleet Street with such humour -as they come into possession of; and I enjoyed telling it. On the other -hand, the Grundys were old friends of mine, who would never suspect that -they had missed anything if I preserved silence on the subject of South -Bend, and who would go on asking me to dinner whether I told new tales -or not; moreover, their attitude towards fresh jokes was always a -precarious quantity, and I had an uneasy feeling that if I told my story -to them and it failed to come off, so to speak, I should never have the -same confidence in it again. - -When I had entered the drawing-room of Fernbank, shaken hands with -Mrs Albert Grundy and Ermyntrude, and stolen a little glance about the -circle as I walked over to the fireplace, it had become clear that the -story was not to be told. Beside the half-dozen of the family, including -the curate, there was a tall young man with a very high collar, -shoulders that sloped down like a Rhine-wine bottle, and a stern -expression of countenance. Uncle Dudley whispered to me, as we held our -hands over the asbestos, that he was a literary party, and the son of -old Sir Watkyn Hump, who was a director in one of Albert’s companies. -The other guests were a stout and motherly lady in a cap and a purplish -smile, and a darkling young woman with a black velvet riband around her -thin neck, and a look of wearied indifference upon her face. This effect -of utter boredom did not visibly diminish upon my being presented to -Miss Wallaby. - -I have an extremely well-turned little brace of sentences with which to -convey the intelligence to a young lady that the honour of taking her -down to dinner has fallen upon me--sentences which combine professions -of admiring pleasure with just a grateful dash of respectful -playfulness; they brought no new light into Miss Wallaby’s somewhat -scornful _pince-nez_. Decidedly I would not tell my South Bend story -_that_ night! - -But all the same I did. What led up to it I hardly know. It was at the -ptarmigan stage, I remember--or was it a capercailzie?--and young Mr -Hump had commented upon the great joy of living in England, where one -could enjoy delicious game all the year round, instead of in a country -like America, where the inhabitants notoriously had nothing but fried -salt pork to eat for many months at a time. Perhaps it was not worth -while, but I ventured the correcting remark that there was no season of -the year when one couldn’t have eighteen edible varieties of wild birds -in America for every one that England has ever heard of. Mr Hump preened -his chin about on the summit of his collar and smiled with superior -incredulity. The others looked grave. Mrs Grundy whispered to me -warningly, over her left shoulder, that Mr Hump had made America his -special subject, and wrote most vigorous and comminatory articles about -it almost every week. I was painfully conscious that Miss Wallaby’s cold -right shoulder had been still further withdrawn from me. - -Well, it was at this grotesquely inauspicious moment that I told my -story. It is easy enough now to see that it was sheer folly, madness -if you like, to do so. I was only too bitterly conscious of that when I -reviewed the events of the evening in my homeward cab. It was _apropos_ -of nothing under the wide sky. But at the moment, I suppose, I hoped -that it would relieve the situation. In one sense it did. - -Baldly summarised, this is the tale. Years ago the admirable Nate -Salsbury was on a “one-night-stand” tour with his bright little company -of comedians through the least urban districts of Indiana, and came upon -South Bend, which is an important centre of the wagon-making industry, -but is not precisely a focussing point of dramatic traditions and -culture. - -In the vestibule of the small theatre that evening there paced up and -down a tall, middle-aged, weasel-backed citizen, his hands plunged deep -in his pockets, doubt and irresolution written all over his face. As -others paid their money and passed in he would watch them with obvious -longing; then he would go and study once more the attractive coloured -bill of the Company, with its bevy of pretty girls in skirts just short -enough to disclose most enticing little ankles; then once more he would -resume his perplexed walk to and fro. At last he made up his mind, and -approached Salsbury with diffidence. “Mister,” he said, “air you the -boss of this show?” “What can I do for you?” asked Nate. “Well--no -offence meant--but--can I--that is to say--will it be all right to -bring a lady to your show?” “That, sir, depends!” responded the manager -firmly. “Well,” the citizen went on, “what I was gittin’ at is this--can -I be perfectly safe in bringin’ _my wife_ here?” - -“Sir,” said Salsbury with dignity, and an eye trained to abstain from -twinkling, “it is no portion of my business to inquire whether she is -your wife or not, but if she comes in here she’s got to behave herself!” - -A solitary note of laughter fell upon the air when I had told this -story, and on the instant Uncle Dudley, perceiving that he had made -a mistake, dropped his napkin, and came up from fishing for it on the -floor red-faced and dumb. All else was deadly silence. - -“I--I suppose they really weren’t married at all?” said the curate, -after a chilling pause. - -“Marriage, I regret to say, means next to nothing in most parts of -America,” remarked Mr Hump, judicially. “The most sacred ties are there -habitually made the subject of ribald jests. I have been assured by -a person who spent nearly three weeks in the United States some years -since that it is an extremely rare experience to meet an adult American -who has not been divorced at least once. This fact made a vivid -impression on my mind at the time, and I--ahem!--have written frequently -upon it since.” - -“I suppose the trouble arises from their all living in hotels--having no -home life whatever,” said Mrs Albert, with a kindly air of coming to my -rescue. - -“Who on earth told you that?” I began, but was cut short. - -“I confess,” broke in Miss Wallaby, with frosty distinctness of tone and -enunciation, “that the assumption upon which the incident just related -is based--the assumption that the la--woman referred to would probably -misconduct herself in a place of public resort--seems to me startlingly -characteristic of the country of which it is narrated. It has been truly -said that the most valuable test of a country’s actual, as distinct -from its assumed, worth, is the respect it pays to its women. Both at -Cheltenham and at Newnham the idea is steadily inculcated--I might -say insisted upon as of paramount importance--that the nation’s real -civilisation rests upon the measure, not alone of chivalrous deference, -but of esteem and confidence which my sex, by its devotion to duty, and -its intellectual sympathy with broad aims and lofty purposes, is able to -inspire and command.” - -“But I assure you,” I protested feebly, “the story I told was a joke.” - -“There are some subjects,” interposed Lady Willoughby Wallaby, the -fixed smile lighting up with an angry, winter-sunset glow her inflamed -countenance--“there are some subjects on which it is best not to joke.” - As she spoke she wagged a mitted thumb at her hostess, and on the -instant the ladies rose. Mr Hump hastened round to hold the door open -as they filed out, their heads high in air, their skirts rustling -indignantly over the threshold. Then he followed them, closing the door -with decision behind him. - -“Gad, Albert,” said Uncle Dudley, reaching over for the port, “I don’t -wonder that the pick of our young fellows go in for marrying American -girls.” - -“Pass it along!” remarked the father of Mrs Albert’s three daughters, in -a voice of confirmed dejection. - - - - -_Annotating Sundry Points of Contact found to exist between the Lady and -Contemporary Art_ - - -Scene.--_Just inside the door of a studio._ - -Time.--_Last Sunday in March, 5 p.m._ - -1st Citizeness. O, thank you _so_ much! - -2nd do. _So_ good of you to come! - -1st do. I _so_ dote upon art! - -2nd do. So kind of you to say so! - -1st do. Thank you _so_ much for asking us! - -2nd do. Delighted, I’m sure! Thank _you_ for coming! - -1st Citizeness. Not at all! Thank you for--for thanking me -for--Well--_good-bye_. (_Exit--with family group_.) - -Husband of 2nd Citizeness (_with gloom_). And who might _those_ thankful -bounders be? - -2nd Citizeness (_wearily_). O, don’t ask _me!_ I don’t know! From -Addison Road way, I should think. - -1st Citizeness (_outside_). Well! If _that_ thing gets into the Academy! - -Family Group. Did you notice the ridiculous way her hair was done? Did -you ever taste such tea in your life? How yellow Mrs. General Wragg is -getting to look in the daylight. Yes--there’s our four-wheeler. (_Exeunt -omnes._) - - -The above is not intended for presentation upon any stage--not even -that of the Independent Theatre. It has been cast into the dramatic -mould merely for convenience’ sake. It embodies what I chiefly remember -about Picture Sunday. - -It has come to be my annual duty--a peculiarly hardy, not to say -temerarious, annual--to convoy Mrs Albert Grundy and her party about -sections of Chelsea and Brompton on the earlier of the two Show -Sabbaths. I drifted into this function through having once shared an -attic with a young painter, whose colleagues used to come to borrow -florins of him whenever one of his pictures disappeared from any shop -window, and so incidentally formed my acquaintance. My claim nowadays -upon their recollection is really very slight. I just know them well -enough to manage the last Sunday in March: even that might be awkward if -they were not such good-natured fellows. - -But it would be difficult to persuade Mrs Albert of this. That good lady -is wont, when the playfully benignant mood is upon her, to describe me -as her connecting link with Bohemia. She probably would be puzzled to -explain her meaning; I certainly should. But if she were provided with -affidavits setting forth the whole truth--viz., that my entire income -is derived from an inherited part-interest in an artificial-ice machine; -that there are two clergymen on the committee of my only club; that I am -free from debt; and that I play duets on the piano with my sister--still -would she cling to the belief that I am a young man with an extremely -gay, rakish side, who could make thrilling revelations of Bohemia if I -would. Of course, I am never questioned on the subject; but I can see -that it is a point upon which the faith of Fernbank is firmly grounded. -Often Mrs Albert’s conversation cuts figure-eights on very thin ice when -we are alone, as if just to show me that _she_ knows. More than once -I have discovered Ermyntrude looking furtively at me, as the wistful -shepherd-boy on the plains of Dura might have gazed at the distant haze -overhanging bold, unspeakable Babylon. I rarely visit the house but -Uncle Dudley winks at me. However, nothing is ever asked me about the -dreadful things with which they suppose me to be upon intimate terms. - -It seemed for a long time, on Sunday, as if an easy escape had been -arranged for me by Providence. At two o’clock, the hour appointed for -our crusade, a heavy fog overhung everything. Looking out from the -drawing-room windows, only the very nearest of the neatly trimmed -firs on the lawn were to be distinguished. The street beyond was utter -blackness. - -At three o’clock the ladies took off their bonnets. It was really too -bad. Uncle Dudley, strolling in from his nap in the library, suggested -that with a lantern we might visit some of the nearer studios: “not -necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.” Mrs -Albert turned a look of tearful vexation upon him, before which he fled. - -“There’s this consolation,” she remarked presently, holding me with an -unwavering eye: “if we are to be defrauded out of our expedition to-day, -that will furnish all the more reason why you should take us next -Sunday--_the_ Sunday. You have often talked of having us see the -Academicians at home--but we’ve never been.” - -“I remember that there has been talk about it,” I said; “but hardly that -the talk was mine. Truth is, I don’t know a single Academician, even by -sight.” - -It was clear that they did not believe me. Mrs Albert continued: “Lady -Wallaby expressed surprise, only last evening, that we should consent to -go about among the outsiders. She and her daughter _never_ do.” - -“Outsiders!” I was tempted into saying. “Why, they can paint the head -off the Academy!” - -Miss Timby-Hucks simpered outright. “You do say such droll things!” she -remarked, somewhat obscurely. “Mamma always declares that you remind her -of the _Sydney Bulletin_.” - -“Whom _do_ you take to the Academy Show Sunday?--or perhaps I oughtn’t -to ask,” came from Ermyntrude. - -“No, we have no right to inquire,” said Mrs Albert; and I turned to the -window and the enshrouded lawn once more. - -All at once the fog lifted. The bonnets were produced again. Nearly -three hours of daylight remained to us. Tidings that the horse was too -lame to be taken out only staggered Mrs Albert for the briefest fraction -of time. There were still four-wheelers in Gilead. Besides, if the -driver happened to be sober, he would know the streets so much better -than their stupid coachman. This would be of advantage, because time -was so limited. We should have to just run in, say “How-d’ye-do,” take -a flying look round, and scamper out again, Mrs Albert said. By firmly -adhering to this rule, she estimated that we might do sixteen or -seventeen studios. - -Heaven alone knows how many we did “do.” Nor have I any clear -recollections of what we saw. A confused vision remains to me of long -hall-ways lined with frames and packing-cases; half-an-acre, more or -less, of painted canvas, out of which only here and there a pair of -bright eyes, a glowing field of poppies, or the sheen from a satin gown, -fixed itself disconnectedly on the memory; hordes and hordes of tall -young women helping themselves to tea and cakes; and always the pathetic -figure of the artist’s wife, or sister, tired to very death, standing by -the door with a wearied smile on her lips, and the polite falsehood, -“So good of you to come!” on her tongue. I wondered, I remember, if she -never forgot herself and said instead, “So kind of you to go!” But under -Mrs Albert’s system there was no time to wait and see. - -Once, indeed, we dallied over our task. Mrs Albert encountered a lady -from Wormwood Scrubs of her acquaintance, who was indiscreet enough to -mention that she had been asked to stop here for supper. The news -spread through the petticoated portion of my group as by magic. Miss -Timby-Hucks came over and asked me, so audibly that the artist-host -had to blush and turn away, if I didn’t think it would be a deliciously -romantic experience to sup in one of these lofty studios, with the -gaslight on the armour, and the great, solemnly silent pictures looking -down upon us as we ate. Mrs Albert lingered for some time looking at -this artist’s work with her head on one side, and eyes filled with rapt, -dreamy enjoyment--but nothing came of it. - -It was after we had been back in Fern-bank for an hour or more--our own -cold repast nearly over--that Mrs Albert thought of something. She laid -down her fork with a gesture of annoyance. “It has just occurred to me,” - she said; “we never went to that Mr Whistler’s, whose pictures are on -exhibition in Bond Street. Everybody’s talking about him, and I did so -want not to miss his studio.” - -“I don’t think he has a Show Sunday,” I said. “I never heard of it, if -he has.” - -“O no, it is only these last few weeks that anybody has heard of him,” - -Mrs Albert replied. “I read the first announcement about his beautiful -pictures in _The Daily Tarradiddle_ only the other day.” - -“Whistler? Whistler?” put in Uncle Dudley. “Why, surely _he’s_ not new. -Why--I remember--he was mixed up in a law-suit, wasn’t it, years ago?” - -“O no, Dudley,” responded Mrs Albert; “I was under that same impression, -till Lady Wallaby set me right. It seems that was another man -altogether--some foreign adventurer who pretended to be able to paint -and imposed upon people--don’t you recall how _The Tarradiddle_ exposed -him?--and Mr Burnt-Jones had him arrested, or something--O, quite a -dreadful person. But _this_ Mr Whistler is an Englishman. I read in _The -Illustrated London News_ that he represented modern British Art. That -alone would make it quite clear it was a different man. I did so want to -see him! Lady-Wallaby tells me she has heard he is extremely amusing in -his conversation--and quite presentable manners, too.” - -“Why don’t you ask him to dinner?” said Mr Albert Grundy. “If he’s -amusing it’s more than most of the men you drum up are.” - -“You seem to think _everybody_ can be asked to dinner, Albert,” the -lady of the house replied. “Artists don’t dine--unless they are in the -Academy, of course. Tea, yes--or perhaps supper; but one doesn’t -ask people to meet them at dinner. It’s like actors--and--and -non-commissioned officers.” - - - - -_Affording a Novel and Subdued Scientific Light, by which divers -Venerable Problems may be Observed Afresh_ - - -It is my opinion,” said Uncle Dudley, stretching out his slippered -feet, and thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat--“it -is my opinion that women are different from men.” - -“Several commentators have advanced this view,” I replied. “For example, -it has been noted that the gentle sex cross a muddy street on their -heels, whereas we skip over on our toes.” - -“That is interesting if true,” responded Uncle Dudley. “What I mean is -that all this talk about the human race is humbug. There are _two_ human -races! And they are getting wider apart every few minutes, too!” - -“Have you mentioned this to any one?” I asked. - -Uncle Dudley went on developing his theme. “I daresay that for millions -of years after the re-separation of the sexes this difference was too -slight to be noticed at all. The cave man, for instance--the fellow who -went around hunting the Ichthyosaurus with a brick tied on the end of an -elm club, and spent the whole winter underground sucking the old bones, -and then whittling them up into Runic buttons for the South Kensington -Museum: I suppose, now, that his wife and sister-in-law, say, didn’t -strike him as being specially different from himself--except, of course, -in that they only got plain bones and gristle and so on to eat, whereas -all the marrow and general smooth-sailing in meats went his way. _You_, -can’t imagine _him_ saying to himself: ‘These female people here are not -of my race at all They are of another species. They are in reality as -much my natural enemies as that long-toed, red-headed, brachycephalous -tramp living in the gum-tree down by the swamp, who makes offensive -gestures as I ride past on my tame _Ursus spelous_’--now, can you?” - -I frankly shook my head. “No, I don’t seem to be able to imagine that. -It would be almost as hard as to guess off-hand where, when, and how you -caught this remarkable scientific spasm.” - -Uncle Dudley smiled. He rose, and walked with leisurely lightness up -and down in front of the chimney-piece, still with his palms spread -like little misplaced wings before his armpits. He smiled again. Then he -stopped on the hearth-rug and looked down amiably upon me. - -“Well--what d’ye think? There’s something in it, eh?” - -“My dear fellow,” I began, “what puzzles me is----” - -“O, I don’t mean to say that I’ve worked it all out,” put in Uncle -Dudley, reassuringly. “Why, I get puzzled myself, every once in a while. -But I’m on the right track, my boy; and, as they say in Adelaide, I’m -going to hang to it like a pup to a root.” - -“How long have you been this way?” I asked, with an affectation of -sympathy. - -Uncle Dudley answered with shining eyes. “Why, if you’ll believe me, it -seems now as if I’d had the germs of the idea in my mind ever since I -came back to England, and began living here at Fernbank. But the thing -dawned upon me--that is to say, took shape in my head--less than a -fortnight ago. It all came about through being up here one evening with -nothing to read, and my toe worse than usual, and Mrs Albert having been -out of sorts all through dinner. Somehow, I felt all at once that I’d -got to read scientific works. I couldn’t resist it. I was like Joan -of Arc when the cows and sheep took partners for a quadrille. I heard -voices--Darwin’s and--and--Benjamin Franklin’s--and--lots of others. I -hobbled downstairs to the library, and I brought up a whole armful of -the books that Mrs Albert bought when she expected Lady Wallaby was -going to be able to get her an invitation to attend the Hon. Mrs -Coon-Alwyn’s Biological Conversaziones. Look there! What do you say to -that for ten days’ work? And had to cut every leaf, into the bargain!” - -I gazed with respect at the considerable row of books he indicated: -books for the most part bound in the scarlet of the International Series -or the maroon of Contemporary Science, but containing also brown covers, -and even green “sport” varieties. - -“Well, and what is it all about?” I asked. “Why have you read -these things? Why not the reports of the Commission on Agricultural -Depression, or Lewis Morris’s poems, or even----” but my imagination -faltered and broke. - -“It was instinct, my boy,” returned Uncle Dudley, with impressive -confidence. “There had been a thought--a great idea--growing and -swelling in my head ever since I had been living in this house. But -I couldn’t tell what it was. As you might say, it was wrapped up in -a cocoon, like the larvæ of the lepidoptera--ahem!--and something was -needed to bring it out.” - -“When I was here last you were trying Hollands with quinine bitters,” I -remarked casually. - -“Don’t fool!” Uncle Dudley admonished me. “I’m dead in earnest. As I -said, it was pure instinct that led me to these books. They have made -everything clear. I only wanted their help to get the husk off my -discovery, and hoist it on my back, us it were, and bring it out here in -the daylight. And so now you know what I’m getting at when I say: Women -are different from Men.” - -“That is the discovery, then?” I inquired. - -Uncle Dudley nodded several times. Then he went on, with emphasised -slowness: “I have lived here now for four years, seeing my sister-in-law -every day, watching Ermyntrude grow up to womanhood and the little girls -peg along behind her, and meeting the female friends who come here -to see them--and, sir, I tell you, they’re not alone a different sex: -they’re a different animal altogether! Take my word for it, they’re a -species by themselves.” - -“Miss Timby-Hucks is certainly very much by herself,” I remarked. - -My friend smiled. “And not altogether her own fault either,” he -commented. “But, speaking of science, it’s remarkable how, when you once -get a firm grip on a big, central, main-guy fact, all the little facts -come in of their own accord to support it. Now, there’s that young -simpleton you met here at dinner a while ago: I mean Eustace Hump. -Do you know that both Ermyntrude and the Timby-Hucks, and even Miss -Wallaby, think that that chap is a perfect ideal of masculine wit and -beauty? You and I would hesitate about using him to wad a horse-pistol -with: but there isn’t one of those girls that wouldn’t leap with joy if -he began proposing to her; and as for their mothers, why, the old ladies -watch him as a kingfisher eyes a tadpole.” - -“Your similes are exciting,” I said; “but what do they go to show?” - -“My dear fellow, science can show anything. I haven’t gone all through -it yet, but I tell you, it’s wonderful! Take this, for instance”--he -reached for a green book on the mantel, and turned over the leaves--“now -listen to this. The book is written by a man named Wallace--nice, -shrewd-looking old party by his picture, you can see--and this is what -he says on page 285: ‘Some peahens preferred an old pied peacock; a -Canada goose paired with a Bernicle gander; a male widgeon was preferred -by a pintail duck to its own species; a hen canary preferred a male -greenfinch to either linnet, goldfinch, siskin, or chaffinch.’ Now, -do you see that? The moment my eyes first lighted on that, I said to -myself: ‘Now I understand about the girls and Eustace Hump.’ Isn’t it -clear to you?” - -“Absolutely,” I assented. “You ought to read a paper at the Royal -Aquarium--before the Balloon Society, I mean.” - -“And then look at this,” Uncle Dudley went on, with animation. “Now, -you and I would ask ourselves what on earth such a gawky, spindling, -poor-witted youngster as that thought he was doing among women, anyhow. -But you turn over the page, and here you have it: ‘Goat-suckers, geese, -carrion vultures, and many other birds of plain plumage have been -observed to dance, spread their wings or tails, and perform strange -love-antics.’ Doesn’t that fasten Hump to the wall like a beetle on a -pin, eh?” - -“But I am not sure that I entirely follow its application to your -original point,” I suggested. - -“About women, you mean? My boy, in science everything applies. The woods -are full of applications. But seriously, women _are_ different. As I -said, in the barbarism at the back of beyond this divergence started. -With the beginning of what we call civilisation, it became more and -more marked. The progress of the separation increases nowadays by -square-root--or whatever you call it. The sexes are wider apart to-day -than ever. They like each other less; they quarrel more. You can see -that in the Divorce Courts, in the diminished proportion of early -marriages, in the increasing evidences of domestic infelicity all about -one.” - -I could not refrain from expressing the fear that all this boded ill for -the perpetuity of the human race. - -Uncle Dudley is a light-hearted man. He was not depressed by the -apprehensions to which I had given utterance. Instead he hummed -pleasantly to himself as he put Wallace back on the shelf. He began -chuckling as a moment later he bethought himself to fill our glasses -afresh. - -“Did I ever tell you my cat story?” he asked cheerily, testing the knob -to see that the door was shut. “Once a little boy came in to his father -and said: ‘Pa, we won’t be troubled any more with those cats howling -about on our roof at night. I’ve just been looking out of the upstairs -window, and they’re all out there fighting and screaming and tearing -each other to pieces. There won’t be one of them alive by morning!’ Then -the father replied: ‘My son, you imagine a vain thing. When increasing -years shall have furnished your mind with a more copious store of -knowledge, you will grasp the fact that all this commotion and dire -disturbance which you report to me only signifies more cats.’” - -At this juncture the servant came in with the soda-water. We talked no -more of science that evening. - - - - -_Touching the Experimental Graft of a Utilitarian Spirit upon the -Aesthetic Instinct in our Sisters_ - - -I HAD strolled about the galleries of Burlington House for a couple of -hours on Press Day, looking a little at pictures here and there, but for -the most part contemplating with admiration the zeal and good faith of -the ladies and gentlemen who stopped, note-book in hand, before every -frame: when some one behind me gave a friendly tug at my sleeve. I -turned, to find myself confronted by a person I seemed not to know--a -small young woman in an alpine hat and a veil which masked everything -about her face except its dentigerous smile. Even as I looked I was -conscious of regret that, if acquaintances were to be made for me in -this spontaneous fashion, destiny had not selected instead a certain -tall, slender, dark young lady, clad all in black and cock’s-plumes, -whom I had been watching at her work of notetaking in room after room, -with growing interest. Then, peering more closely through the veil, I -discovered that I was being accosted by Miss Timby-Hucks. - -“You didn’t know me!” she said, with a vivacious half-giggle, as we -shook hands; “and you’re not specially pleased to see me; and you’re -asking yourself, ‘What on earth is she doing here?’ Now, don’t deny it!” - -“Well, you know,” I made awkward response--“of course--_Press_ day----” - -“Ah, but I belong to the Press,” said Miss Timby-Hucks. - -“Happy Press! And since when?” - -“O it’s nearly a fortnight now. And most _interesting_ I find the work. -You know, for a long time now I’ve been _so_ restless, _so_ anxious to -find some opening to a real career, where I might be my genuine self, -and be an active part of the great whirling stream of existence, and -concentrate my mind upon the actualities of life--don’t you yourself -think it will be _just_ the thing for me?” - -“Undoubtedly,” I replied without hesitation. “And do you find focussing -yourself on the actualities--ah--remunerative?” - -“Well,” Miss Timby-Hucks explained, “nothing of mine has been printed -yet, you see, so that I don’t know as to that. But I am assured it -will be all right. You see, I’m _very_ intimate with a cousin of Mrs -Umpelbaum, who is the wife of the proprietor of _Maida Vale_, and in -that way it came about. Lady-reporters never have any chance, I am told, -unless they have friends in the proprietor’s family, or know the editor -extremely well. It all goes by favour, like--like----” - -“Like the dearest of all the actualities,” I put in. “But how is it they -don’t print your stuff?” - -“I haven’t written any, as yet. The difficulty was to find a subject,” - Miss Timby-Hucks rejoined. “O that awful ‘subject’! I thought and thought -and thought till my head was fit to burst. I went to see Mrs Umpelbaum -herself, and asked her to suggest something. You know she writes a great -deal for the paper herself. She said they hadn’t had any ‘Reminiscences -of Carlyle’ now for some weeks; but afterwards she agreed with me that -would not be quite the thing for one to _begin_ with. She couldn’t -suggest anything else, except that I should have a chat with my -dressmaker. Very often in that way, she said, lady-reporters get the -most _entertaining_ revelations of gossip in high life. But it happened -that just then it was not--not exactly convenient--for me to call upon -my dressmaker; and so _that_ suggestion came to nothing, too.” - -“I had no idea lady-journalism was so difficult,” I remarked, with -sympathy. - -“O indeed, yes!” Miss Timby-Hucks went on. “One can’t expect to be _en -rapport_, as we journalists say, with Society, without spending a great -deal of money. There is one lady-reporter, Mrs Umpelbaum told me, who -has made quite a leading position for herself, solely through -hairdressers and American dentists. But I don’t mind admitting that that -would involve more of an outlay than I could afford, just at the -moment.” - -“So you never got a subject?” I asked. - -“Yes; finally I did. I was over at the Grundys’, telling my troubles, -and Uncle Dudley--you know, being so much with the girls, I always -call him that--Uncle Dudley said that the fashionable thing now -was interviews, and that lady-journalists did this better than -gentlemen-reporters because they had more nerve. By that I suppose he -meant a more delicate nervous organisation, quicker to grasp and absorb -fine shades of character. But that hardly helped me, because whom was I -to interview, and about what? _That_ was the question! But Uncle Dudley -thought a moment, and was ready with a suggestion. Everything depended, -he said, upon making a right start. I must pick out a personality and -a theme at once non-contentious and invested with popular interest His -idea was that I should begin by interviewing Mr T. M. Healy on ‘The -Decline of the Deep-Sea Mock-Turtle Fisheries on the West Coast of -Ireland.’ If I could get Mr Healy to talk frankly on this subject, he -felt sure that I should chain public attention at a bound.” - -“Superb!” I cried. “And did you do it?” - -“No,” Miss Timby-Hucks confessed; “I went to the House and sent in my -card, but it was another Irish Member who came out to see me--I think -his name was Mulhooly. He was very polite, and explained that since -some recent sad event in one of the Committee Rooms, fifteen I think -its number was, it was the rule of his party that, when a lady sent in -a card to one Member, some other Member answered it. It prevented -confusion, he said, and was not in antagonism to the expressed views of -the Church.” - -“Talking of nothing,” I said, leading the way over to a divan, on which -we seated ourselves: “you seem to have finally secured a subject. I -assume you are doing the Academy for _Maida Vale_.” - -“Yes,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks with gentle firmness; “you might say I -have _done_ it. I have been here since the very minute the doors opened, -and I’ve gone twelve times round. I wish I could have seen you earlier. -I should so like to have had your opinion of the various works as we -passed.” - -“It is better not,” I commented. “There are ladies present.” - -The lady-reporter looked at me for a furtive instant dubiously. Then -she smiled a little under her veil. “You _do_ say such odd things!” she -remarked. “I am glad to see that a great many ladies _are_ present. -It shows how we are securing our proper recognition in journalism. -I believe there are actually more of us here than there are -gentlemen-reporters--I should say gentle-men-critics. And it is the -same in art, too. You can see--I’ve counted them up in my catalogue -here--there are this year two hundred and forty-four lady-artists -exhibiting in this Academy three hundred and forty-six works of art. -Think of that! Fifty of them are described as Mrs, and there are one -hundred and ninety-four who are unmarried.” - -“Think of _that!_” I retorted. - -“And there are among them,” Miss Timby-Hucks went on, “one Marchioness, -one Countess, one Baroness, and one plain Lady. I am going to begin my -article with this. I think it will be interesting, don’t you?” - -“I’d be careful not to particularise about the plain Lady,” I suggested. -“That might be _too_ interesting.” - -She was over-full of her subject to smile. “No, I mean,” she said, “as -showing how the ranks of British Art are being filled from the -very highest classes, and are appealing more and more to the female -intellect. I don’t believe it will occur to any one else to count up in -the catalogue. So that will be original with me--to enlighten my sex as -to the glorious part they play in this year’s Academy.” - -“But have you seen their pictures?” I asked, repressing an involuntary -groan. - -“Every one!” replied Miss Timby-Hucks. “They are all good. There isn’t -what I should call a bad one--that is, a Frenchy or immoral one--among -them. I shall say that, too, in my criticism; but of course I shall have -to word it carefully, because I fancy Mr Umpelbaum is a foreigner of -some sort--and you know they’re all so sensitive about the superiority -of British Art.” - -“It is their nature; they can’t help it,” I pointed out. “They try their -best, however, to master these unworthy emotions. Sometimes, indeed, -their dissimulation reaches a really high plane of endeavour.” - -“They have nothing at all on the Continent like our Royal Academy, I am -told,” said Miss Timby-Hucks. “That isn’t generally known, is it? I had -thought of saying it.” - -“It will be a safe statement,” I assured her. “You might go further, -and assert that no other country at any stage of its history has had -anything like the Royal Academy. It is the unique blossom of British -civilisation.” - -Miss Timby-Hucks seemed to like the phrase, and made a note of it on -the back of her catalogue. “Yes,” she continued, “I thought of making -my criticism general, dealing with things like that. But I’ve got -some awfully interesting figures to put in. For example, there are -sixty-eight Academicians and Associates exhibiting: they have one -hundred and thirty-five oil paintings, sixteen water-colour or -black-and-white drawings, eight architectural designs, and twenty-three -pieces of sculpture--a total of one hundred and eighty-two works of art, -or two and sixty-seven hundredths each. I got at that by dividing the -total number of works by the total number of Academicians. Do you think -any one else will be likely to print that first in a daily paper? Mrs -Umpelbaum told me that _Maida Vale_ made a special point of new facts. I -don’t think I shall say much about the pictures themselves. -What _is_ there to say about pictures by the Academicians? As I told -mamma this morning, they wouldn’t be Academicians if they didn’t paint -good pictures, would they? and good pictures speak for themselves. Of -course, I shall describe the subjects of Sir Frederic’s pictures--by the -way, what _is_ a Hesperides?--and some of the others: I’ll get you to -pick out for me a few leading names. But I shall make my main point the -splendid advance of lady-artists--I heard some one say in the other room -there’d never been half so many before--and the elevating effect this -has upon British Art. In fact, mightn’t I say that is what makes British -Art what it is to-day?” - -“It is one of the reasons, undoubtedly,” I assented, as I rose. “There -are others, however.” - -“Ees, I know,” said Miss Timby-Hucks: “the diffusion of Christian -principles amongst us, our high national morality, and the sanctity of -the English home. Mrs Albert said only last night that these lay at the -very foundation of British art.” - -“Mrs Albert is a woman of discernment,” I said, making a gesture of -farewell. - -But Miss Timby-Hucks on the instant thought of something. Her eyes -glistened, her two upper front teeth gleamed. “O, it’s just occurred -to me!” she exclaimed, moving nearer to my side, and speaking-in -confidential excitement. “I know now how that lady-reporter manages with -the hairdressers and dentists. She doesn’t pay them money at all. She -mentions their names in the papers instead. How dull of me not to have -thought of that before! Why--yes--I will!--I’ll put my dressmaker among -the Private View celebrities!” - -One likes to be civil to people who are obviously going to succeed in -the world. I forthwith took Miss Timby-Hucks out to luncheon. - - - - -_Relating to Various Phenomena attending the Progress of the Sex along -Lines of the Greatest Resistance_ - - -My own idea,” said Uncle Dudley, “is that women ought to be confined to -barracks during elections just the same as soldiers.” - -“I was quite prepared to find _you_ entertaining views of that -character,” remarked Miss Wallaby, with virginal severity. “Men who -have wandered about the less advanced parts of the earth, and spent long -periods of time in contact with inferior civilisations, quite generally -do feel that way. Life in the Colonies, and in similar rude and remote -regions, does produce that effect upon the masculine mind. But here -in England, the nerve-centre of the English-speaking race, the point -of concentration from which radiate all the impulses of refinement and -culture that distinguish our generation, men are coming to see these -matters in a different light. They no longer refuse to listen to the -overwhelming arguments in favour of entire feminine equality----” - -“Oh, _I_ admit _that_ at once,” broke in Uncle Dudley. “But do women -nowadays believe in equality among themselves? In my youth they used to -devote pretty well all their energies to showing how much superior they -were to other women.” - -“I spoke of the masculine attitude,” said Miss Wallaby, coldly. “Viewed -intelligently, the gradations and classifications which we maintain -among ourselves, at the cost of such infinite trouble and personal -self-sacrifice, are the very foundation upon which rests the -superstructure of British Society.” - -“I admit that, too,” Uncle Dudley hastened to put in. “Really, we are -getting on very nicely.” - -Miss Wallaby ignored the interruption altogether. “The point is,” she -went on, “that the male mind in England is coming--with characteristic -slowness, no doubt, but still coming--to recognise the necessity of -securing the very fullest and most complete participation of my sex in -public affairs. As the diffusion of enlightenment progresses, men will -more and more abandon the coarse and egoistic standards of their days of -domination by brute force, and turn instead to the ideals of purity and -sweetness which Woman in Politics typifies. It has been observed that -one may pick out the future rulers of England in each coming generation -by scanning the honour-lists of Oxford and Cambridge. How happy a day it -will be for England, and civilisation, when this is said of Girton and -Newnham as well!” - -“I spent a summer in the State of Maine once, some years ago,” - said Uncle Dudley. “That’s the State, you know, where they’ve had a -Prohibition law now for nearly forty years. The excess of females -over males is larger there, I believe, than it is anywhere else in the -world--owing to the fact that all the young men who are worth their salt -emigrate to some other State as soon as they’ve saved up enough for a -railway-ticket. The men that you do see lounging around there, in the -small villages, are all minding the baby, or sitting on the doorstep -shelling peas, or out in the backyard, with their mouths full of -clothes-pins, hanging up sheets and pillow-cases on the line to dry. The -women there take a very active part in politics--and every census shows -that Maine’s population has diminished. Shipbuilding has almost ceased, -farms are being abandoned yearly, the State is mortgaged up to its -eyebrows, and you get nothing but fried clams and huckleberry-pie for -breakfast--but, of course, I suppose there _is_ a good deal of purity -and sweetness.” - -Miss Wallaby rose and walked away from us; the black velvet riband -around her neck, the glint of gas-light on her eyeglasses, the wearied -haughtiness on her swarthy, high-nosed face, seemed to unite in saying -to us that we were very poor creatures indeed. - -“She’s been down to the Retired Licensed Victuallers’ Division of -Surrey, you know,” exclaimed Uncle Dudley, “making speeches in favour of -the sitting Member, old Sir Watkyn Hump.” - -“Ah, that accounts for the milk in the cocoa-nut,” I remarked. - -“Well, no,” my friend mused aloud, “I fancy _young_ Hump accounts for -that. See--she’s gone and cut him out from under the Timby-Hucks’s -guns.” - -It was at one of Mrs Albert Grundy’s evenings at home, and Uncle Dudley -and I now had possession of a quiet corner to ourselves. From this -pleasant vantage-ground we indolently surveyed the throng surrounding -Mrs Albert at the piano end of the room, and stretching off through the -open double doors into the adjoining chamber--a throng of dazzling -arms and shoulders, of light-hued satins and fluffy stuffs, of waving -feathers, and splendid piles of braided hair, and mostly comely faces -wreathed in politic smiles. Here and there the mass of pinks and whites -and creams was broken abruptly by a black coat with a hat under its -sleeve. Dudley and I idly commented upon the fact that almost all these -coats belonged to undersized elderly men, generally with spectacles -and a grey beard, and we noted with placid interest that as they came -in--announced in stentorian tones as Mr and Mrs So-and-so--their wives -as a rule were several inches taller and many many years younger than -themselves. - -Then it was entertaining, too, to watch Mrs Albert shake hands with -these newcomers. She knew just at what angle each preferred that -ceremony, keeping her knuckles well down in welcoming the more -sophisticated and up-to-date people from about Cromwell Road and the -Park, but elevating them breast-high to greet those from around Brompton -way, and hoisting them quite up to the chin-level with the guests -from beyond Earl’s Court, who were still in the toils of last year’s -fashions. - -“Smart woman, that sister of mine!” said Uncle Dudley. “See the way -she’s manoeuvred her shoulder around in front of the Timby-Hucks’s nose, -so as to head her off from getting in and being introduced to the Hon. -Mrs Coon-Alwyn. And--hello! by George, she’s won!--there’s the Dowager -Countess of Thames-Ditton coming in! You’ll never know the anguish, my -boy, that was caused by the uncertainty whether she would come or not. -Emily hasn’t been able to eat these past four days, expecting every -moment the knock of the postman bringing her ladyship’s refusal to come. -The only thing that enabled her to keep up, she said, was fixing her -mind resolutely on the fact that the aristocracy are notoriously -impolite about answering invitations. But now, happy woman--her cup is -fairly running over. This is a great night for Fernbank. -And--look!--hanged if that girl isn’t trying to edge her way in there, -too! See how prettily Emily managed that? Oh, Timby-Hucks! Timby-Hucks! -you’ve put your foot in it this time. You’ll never figure on the -free-list for _this_ show again.” - -Misfortune indeed claimed Miss Timby-Hucks for its very own. Mrs Albert -had twice adroitly interposed her well-rounded shoulders between that -enterprising young woman and social eminence--the second time with quite -obvious determination of purpose. And there, too, behind the door, young -Mr Hump bent his sloping shoulders and cliff-like collar humbly over -Miss Wallaby’s chair, listening with all his considerable ears to her -selected monologues. Ah, the vanity of human aspirations! - -Casting an heroic glance over the field of defeat, Miss Timby-Hucks’s -eye lighted upon our corner, and on the instant her two upper front -teeth gleamed in a smile of relief. At all events, _we_ were left--and -she came towards us with a decisive step. - -“I’ve hardly seen you since the Academy,” she said in her sprightly way -to me, after we had all shaken hands, and she had seated herself between -us on the sofa. - -“And how did your article come out?” I asked politely. - -“Oh, it never came out at all,” she replied. “It seems it got left over -too long. The editor _said_ it was owing to the pressure of interesting -monkey-language matter upon his columns; but _I_ believe it was just -because I’m a lady journalist, and so does the cousin of Mrs Umpelbaum, -the proprietor’s wife. It must have been that--because, long after the -editor gave this excuse, there were the daily papers still printing -their criticisms, ‘Eleventh Notice of the Royal Academy,’ ‘The Spring -Exhibitions--Fourteenth Article,’ and so on. I taxed him with it--told -him I heard they had some still left, that they were going to begin -printing again after the elections were over--but he said it was -different with dailies. All _they_ needed were advertisements and market -reports, and police news, and telegrams about the Macedonian frontier, -and they could print art criticisms and book reviews whole years after -they should have appeared, because nobody ever read them when they were -printed--but weeklies had to be absolutely up to date.” - -“Evil luck does pursue you!” I said, compassionately. “So you haven’t -got into print at all?” - -“O I’m not a bit cast down,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks, with jaunty -confidence. “There’s no such word as fail in my book. The way to succeed -is just to keep pegging away. I know of one lady-journalist who went -every day for nine weeks to interview the Countess of Wimps about her -second son’s having been warned off Newmarket Heath. Every day she was -refused admittance--once she got into the hall and was put out by a -brutal footman--but it never unnerved her. Each morning she went again. -And she would have succeeded by this time, probably--only the Countess -suddenly left England to spend the summer in Egypt.” - -“Yes, Wady Halfa _has_ its advantages, even in July,” said Uncle Dudley. -“It is warm, and there are insects, but one is allowed by law to kill -them--in Egypt.” - - - - -_Illustrating the operation of Vegetables and Feminine Duplicity upon -the Concepts of Maternal Responsibility_ - - -I FELT that I was on sufficiently intimate terms with Mrs Albert Grundy -to tell her that she was not looking well. She gave a weary little sigh -and said she knew it. - -Indeed, poor lady, it was apparent enough. She has taken of late to -wearing her hair drawn up from her forehead over a roll--the effect of -mouse-tints at which Nature is beginning to hint, being frankly helped -out by powder. Everybody about Fernbank recognises that in some way -this reform has altered the whole state of affairs. The very servant -who comes to the door, or who brings in the tea-things, seems to carry -herself in a different manner since the change has been made. Of course, -it is by no means a new fashion, but it was not until the Dowager -Countess of Thames-Ditton brought it in person to Fernbank that Mrs -Albert could be quite sure of its entire suitability. Up to that time it -had seemed to her a style rather adapted to lady lecturers and the wives -of men who write: and though Mrs Albert has the very highest regard for -literature--quite dotes on it, as she says--she is somewhat inclined to -sniff at its wives. - -We all feel that the change adds character to Mrs Albert’s face--or -rather exhibits now that true managing and resourceful temper, which was -formerly obscured and weakened by a fringe. But the new arrangement has -the defects of its qualities. It does not lend itself to tricks. -The countenance beneath it does not easily dissemble anxiety or mask -fatigue. And both were written broadly over Mrs Albert’s fine face. -“Yes,” she said, “I know it.” - -The consoling suggestion that soon the necessity of giving home-dinners -to the directors in her husband’s companies would have ended, and -that then a few weeks out of London, away somewhere in the air of the -mountains or the sea, would bring back all her wonted strength and -spirits, did no good. She shook her head and sighed again. - -“No,” she said, “it isn’t physical. That is to say, it _is_ physical, but -the cause is mental. It is over-worry.” - -“Of all people on earth--_you!_” I replied reproachfully. “Why think -of it--a husband who is the dream of docile propriety, a competency -broadening each year into a fortune, a home like this, such servants, -such appointments, such a circle of admiring friends--and then your -daughters! Why, to be the mother of such a girl as Ermyntrude-------” - -“Precisely,” interrupted Mrs Albert. “To be the mother of such a girl, -as you say. Little you know what it really means! But, no--I know what -you were going to say--_please_ don’t! it is too sad a subject.” - -I could do nothing but feebly strive to look my surprise. To think -of sadness connected with tall, handsome, good-hearted Ermie, was -impossible. - -“You think I am exaggerating, I know,” Mrs Albert went on. “Ah, you do -not know!” - -“Nothing could be more evident,” I replied, “than that I don’t know. I -can’t even imagine what on earth you are driving at.” - -Mrs Albert paused for a moment, and pushed the toe of her wee slipper -meditatively back and forth on the figure of the carpet. - -“Yes, I _will_ tell you,” she said at last. “You are such an old friend -of the family that you are almost one of us. And besides, you are always -sympathetic--so different from Dudley. Well, the point is this. You know -the young man--Sir Watkyn’s son--Mr Eustace Hump.” - -“I have met him here,” I assented. - -“Well, I doubt if you will meet him here any more,” Mrs Albert said, -impressively. - -“The deprivation shall not drive me to despair or drink,” I assured her. -“I will watch over myself.” - -“I dare say you did not care much for him,” said Mrs Albert. “I know -Dudley didn’t. But, all the same, he _was_ eligible. He is an only son, -and his father is a Baronet--an hereditary title--and they are _rolling_ -in wealth. And Eustace himself, when you get to know him, has some very -admirable qualities. You know he _writes!_” - -“I have heard him say so,” I responded, perhaps not over graciously. - -“O, _regularly_, for a number of weekly papers. It is understood that -quite frequently he gets paid--not of course that that matters to -him--but his associations are distinctly literary. I have always felt -that with his tastes and connections his wife--granting of course that -she was the right kind of woman--might at last set up a real literary -_salon_ in London. We have wanted one so long, you know.” - -“Have we?” I murmured listlessly, striving all the while to guess what -relation all this bore to the question of Ermyntrude. I built up in my -mind a hostile picture of the odious Hump, with his shoulders sloping -off like a German wine-bottle, his lean neck battlemented in high -starched walls of linen, and his foolish conceited face--and leaped -hopefully to the conclusion that Ermyntrude had rejected him. I could -not keep the notion to myself. - -“Well--has she sent him about his business?” I asked, making ready to -beam with delight. - -“No,” said Mrs Albert, ruefully. “It never got to that, so far as I can -gather--but at all events it is all over. I expect every morning now -to read the announcement in the _Morning Post_ that a marriage has been -arranged between him and--and--Miss Wallaby!” - -I sat upright, and felt myself smiling. “What!--the girl with the black -ribbon round her neck?” I asked comfortably. - -“It would be more appropriate round her heart,” remarked Mrs Albert, -with bitterness in her tone. “Why, do you know? her mother, for all that -she’s Lady Wallaby, hasn’t an ‘h’ in her whole composition.” - -“Well, neither has old Sir Watkyn Hump,” I rejoined pleasantly. “So it’s -a fair exchange.” - -“Ah, but _he_ can afford it,” put in Mrs Albert. “But the -Wallabys--well, I can only say that I had a right to look for different -treatment at _their_ hands. How, do you suppose, they would ever have -been asked to the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn’s garden-party, or met Lady -Thames-Ditton, or been put in society generally, if I had not taken an -interest in them? Why, that girl’s father, old Sir Willoughby Wallaby, -was never anything but chief of police, or something like that, out in -some Australian convict settlement. I _have_ heard he was knighted by -mistake, but of course my lips are sealed.” - -“I suppose they really have behaved badly,” I said, half -interrogatively. - -“Badly!” echoed the wrathful mother. “I will leave you to judge. It was -done here, quite under my own roof. You know Miss Wallaby volunteered -her services, and went down into the Retired Licensed Victuallers’ -Division of Surrey to electioneer for Sir Watkyn. Do you know, I never -suspected anything. And then Miss Timby-Hucks, she went down also, but -they rather cold-shouldered her, and she came back, and she told me -things, and _still_ I wouldn’t believe it. Well then--three weeks -ago--my Evening At Home--you were here--the Wallabys came as large as -life, and that scheming young person manoeuvred about until she got -herself alone with Eustace and my Ermyntrude, and then she told her a -scene she had witnessed during her recent election experiences. There -was a meeting for Sir Watkyn at some place, I can’t recall the name, -and there were a good many of the other side there, and they hooted and -shouted, and raised disturbance, until at last there was one speaker -they would not hear at all. All this that girl told Ermyntrude -seriously, and as if she were overflowing with indignation. And then she -came to the part where the speaker stood his ground and tried to make -himself heard, and the crowd yelled louder than ever, and still he -doggedly persisted--and then someone threw a large vegetable marrow, -soft and very ripe, and it hit that speaker just under the ear, and -burst all over him!” - -“Ha-ha-ha!” I ejaculated. “The vegetable marrow in politics is new--full -of delightful possibilities and seeds--wonder it has never been thought -of before.” - -“Yes,” said Mrs Albert, with a sigh. “Ermyntrude also thought it was -funny. She has a very keen sense of humour--quite too keen. _She_ -laughed, too!” - -“And why not?” I asked. - -“Why not?” demanded Mrs Albert, with shining eyes. “Because the story -had been told just to trap her into laughing--because--because the -speaker upon whom that unhappy vegetable marrow exploded was--_Eustace -Hump!_” - - - - -_Containing Thoughts upon the Great Unknown, to which are added -Speculations upon her Hereafter_ - - -It is not often that I find the time to take part in Mrs Albert -Grundy’s Thursdays--the third and fifth Thursdays of each month, from 4 -to 6.30 P.M.--but on a certain afternoon pleasant weather and the sense -of long-accrued responsibility drew me to Fernbank. - -It was really very nice, after one got there. Perhaps it would have been -less satisfactory had escape from the drawing-room been a more difficult -matter. Inside that formal chamber, with its blinds down-drawn to shield -the carpet from the sun, the respectable air hung somewhat heavily about -the assembled matronhood of Brompton and the Kensingtons. The units in -this gathering changed from time to time--for Mrs Albert’s circle is a -large and growing one--but the effect of the sum remained much the same. -The elderly ladies talked about the amiability and kindliness of -the Duchess of Teck; and argued the Continental relationships of the -Duchesses of Connaught and Albany, first into an apparently hopeless -tangle of _burgs_ and _hausens_ and _zollerns_ and _sweigs_, then -triumphantly out again into the bright daylight of well-ordered and -pellucid genealogy. The younger wives spoke in subdued voices of more -juvenile Princesses on the lower steps of the throne, with occasional -short-winged flights across the North Sea in imaginative search of a -suitable bride for the then unwedded Duke of York, if an importation -should be found to be necessary--about which opinions might in all -loyalty differ. The few young girls who sat dutifully here beside -their mammas or married sisters talked of nothing at all, but -smiled confusedly and looked away whenever another’s glance, caught -theirs--and, I daresay, thought with decent humility upon Marchionesses. - -But outside, on the garden-lawn at the rear of the house, the _Almanach -de Gotha_ threw no shadow, and the pungent scent of jasmine and lilies -drove the leathery odour of Debrett from the soft summer air. The gentle -London haze made Whistlers and Maitlands of the walls and roof-lines and -chimney-pots beyond. The pretty girls of Fernbank held court here on the -velvet grass, with groups of attendant maidens from sympathetic -Myrtle Lodges and Cedarcrofts and Chestnut Villas--selected homesteads -stretching all the way to remote West Kensington. They said there was -no one left in London. Why, as I sat apart in the shade of the ivy -overhanging the garden path, and watched this out-door panorama of the -Grundys’ friendships, it seemed as if I had never comprehended before -how many girls there really were in the world. - -And how sweet it was to look upon these damsels, with their dainty -sailor’s hats of straw, their cheeks of Devon cream and damask, their -tall and shapely forms, their profiles of faultless classical delicacy! -What if, in time, they too must sit inside, by preference, and babble -of royalties and the peerage, and politely uncover those two aggressive -incisors of genteel maturity when they were asked to have a third cup -of tea? That stage, praise heaven, should be many years removed. We will -have no memento mori bones or tusks out here in the sunlit garden--but -only tennis balls, and the inspiring chalk-bands on the sward, and the -noble grace of English girlhood, erect and joyous in the open air. -# Much as I delighted in this spectacle, it forced upon me as well a -certain vague sense of depression. These lofty and lovely creatures were -strangers to me. I do not mean that their names were unknown to me, or -that I had not exchanged civil words with many of them, or that I might -not be presented to, and affably received by, them all. The feeling was, -rather, that if it were possible for me to marry them all, we still to -the end of our days would remain strangers. I should never know what to -say to them; still less should I ever be able to guess what they were -thinking. - -The tallest and most impressive of all the bevy--the handsome girl -in the pale brown frock with the shirt-front and jacketed blouse, -who stands leaning with folded hands upon her racket like an indolent -Diana--why, I punted her about the whole reach from Sunbury to Walton -during the better part of a week, only last summer, not to mention -sitting beside her at dinner every evening on the houseboat. We were so -much together, in truth, that my friends round about, as I came to know -afterwards, canvassed among themselves the prospect of our arranging -never to separate. Yet I feel that I do not know this girl. We are -friends, yes; but we are not acquainted with each other. - -More than once--perhaps a dozen times--in driving through the busier -of London streets, my fancy has been caught by this thing: a -hansom whirling smartly by, the dark hood of which frames a woman’s -face--young, wistful, ivory-hued. It is like the flash exposure of -a kodak--this bald instant of time in which I see this face, and -comprehend that its gaze has met mine, and has burned into my memory a -lightning picture of something I should not recognise if I saw it again, -and cannot at all reproduce to myself, and probably would not like if I -could, yet which leaves me with the feeling that I am richer than I was -before. In that fractional throb of space there has been snatched an -unrehearsed and unprejudiced contact of human souls--projected from one -void momentarily to be swept forward into another; and though not the -Judgment Day itself shall bring these two together again, they know each -other. - -Now that I look again at the goddess in the pale-brown gown, these -unlabelled faces of the flitting hansoms seem by comparison those of -familiar companions and intimates. - -I get no sense of human communion from that serene and regular -countenance, with its exquisite nose, its short upper-lip and glint of -pearls along the bowed line of the mouth, its correctly arched brows and -wide-open, impassive blue eyes. I can see it with prophetic admiration -out-queening all the others at Henley, or at Goodwood, or on the great -staircase of Buckingham Palace. I can imagine it at Monte Carlo, flushed -a little at the sight of retreating gold; or at the head of a great -noble’s table, coldly poised above satin throat and shoulders, and -stirring no muscle under the free whisperings of His Excellency to the -right. I can conceive it in the Divorce Court, bearing with metallic -equanimity the rude scrutiny of a thousand unlicensed eyes. But my fancy -wavers and fails at the task of picturing that face at my own fireside, -with the light of the home-hearth painting the fulness of her rounded -chin, and reflecting back from her glance, as we talk of men and books -and things, the frank gladness of real comradeship. - -But--tchut!--I have no fireside, and the comrades I like best -are playing halfcrown whist at the club; and these are all nice -girls--hearty, healthful, handsome girls, who can walk, run, dance, -swim, scull, skate, ride as no others have known or dared to do since -the glacial wave of Christianity depopulated the glades and dells of -Olympus. They will mate after their kind, and in its own good time along -will come a new generation of straight, strong-limbed, thin-lipped, -pink-and-white girls, and of tow-headed, deep-chested lads, their -brothers--boys who will bully their way through Rugby and Harrow, -misspell and misapprehend their way into the Army, the Navy, and the -Civil Service, and spread themselves over the habitable globe, to rule, -through sheer inability to understand, such Baboos and Matabele and mere -Irishry as Imperial destiny delivers over to them. - -The vision is not wholly joyous, as it with diffidence projects itself -beyond, into that further space where new strange other generations -walk--the girls still taller and more coldly tubbed, the boys astride -a yet more temerarious saddle of dull dominion. Reluctant prophecy -discerns beneath their considerable feet the bruised fragments of many -antique trifles--the _bric-à-brac_ of an extinct sentimental fraction -that had a sense of humour and could spell--and, to please mamma, the -fig-leaves have quite overspread and hidden the statues in their garden. -But power is there, and empire; they still more serenely loom above the -little foreign folks who cook, and sing to harps and fiddles, and paint -for their amusement; such as it is under their shaping, they possess the -earth. - -So, as the sun goes down in the Hammersmith heavens, I take off my hat, -and salute the potential mothers of the New Rome. - - - - -_Glancing at some Modern Aspects of Master John Gutenberg’s ingenious -but Over-rated Invention_ - - -It was very pleasant thus to meet Uncle Dudley in the Strand. Only here -and there is one who can bear that test. Whole legions of our friends, -decent and deeply reputable people, fall altogether out of the picture, -so to speak, on this ancient yet robust thoroughfare. They do very well -indeed in Chelsea or Highgate or the Pembridge country, where they are -at home: there the surroundings fit them to a nicety; there they produce -upon one only amiable, or at the least, natural, impressions. But to -encounter them in the Strand is to be shocked by the blank incongruity -of things. It is not alone that they give the effect of being lost--of -wandering helplessly in unfamiliar places. They offend your perceptions -by revealing limitations and shortcomings which might otherwise have -been hidden to the end of time. You see suddenly that they are not such -good fellows, after all. Their spiritual complexions are made up for the -dim light which pervades the outskirts of the four-mile radius--and go -to pieces in the jocund radiance of the Strand. It is flat presumption -on their part to be ambling about where the ghosts of Goldsmith and -Johnson walk, where Prior and Fielding and our Dick Steele have passed. -Instinctively you go by, looking the other way. - -It was quite different with Uncle Dudley. You saw at once that he -belonged to the Strand, as wholly as any of our scorned and scornful -sisters on its comers, competing with true insular doggedness against -German cheeks and raddled accents; as fully as any of its indigenous -loafers, hereditary in their riverside haunts from Tudor times, with -their sophisticated joy in drink and dirt, their large self-confidence -grinning through rags and sooty grime. It seemed as if I had always -associated Uncle Dudley with the Strand. - -He was standing in contemplation before a brave window, wherein American -cheese, Danish butter, Norwegian fish, Belgian eggs, German sausages, -Hungarian bacon, French vegetables, Australian apples, and Algerian -fruits celebrate the catholicity of the modern British diet. He turned -when I touched his shoulder, and drew my arm through his. - -“Sir,” said Uncle Dudley, “let us take a walk along the Strand to the -Law Courts, where I conceive that the tide of human existence gets the -worst of it with unequalled regularity and dispatch.” - -On his way he told me that his gout had quite vanished, owing to his -foresight in collecting a large store of the best medical advice, and -then thoughtfully and with pains disregarding it all. He demonstrated to -me at two halting places that his convalescence was compatible with rich -and strong drinks. He disclosed to me, as we sauntered eastward, his -purpose in straying thus far afield. - -“You know Mrs Albert is really a kindly soul,” he said. “It isn’t in her -to keep angry. You remember how sternly she swore that she and Fernbank -had seen the last of Miss Timby-Hucks. It only lasted five weeks--and -now, bless me if the girl isn’t more at home on our backs than ever. -She’s shunted herself off, now, into a new branch of journalism--it -seems that there are a good many branches in these days.” - -“It has been noticed,” I assented. - -“She doesn’t write any more,” he explained, “that is, _for_ the papers. -She goes instead to the Museum or somewhere, and reads carefully every -daily and weekly journal, I believe, in England. Her business is to pick -out possible libels in them--and to furnish her employers, a certain -firm of solicitors, with a daily list of these. They communicate with -the aggrieved people, notifying them that they _are_ aggrieved, which -they very likely would not otherwise have known, and the result is, of -course, a very fine and spirited crop of litigation.” - -“Then that accounts for all the recent----” - -“Perhaps not quite _all_,” put in Uncle Dudley. “But the Timby-Hucks is -both energetic and vigilant, and she tells me she is doing splendidly. -She is very enthusiastic about it, naturally. She says that while -the money is, of course, an object, her real satisfaction is in the -humanitarian aspects of her work.” - -“I am not sure that I follow,” I said doubtingly. - -“No, I didn’t altogether myself at the start,” said Uncle Dudley, “but -as she explains it, it is very simple. You see business is in a bad -way in London--worse, they say, than usual. The number of unemployed is -something dreadful to think of, so I am told by those who have thought -of it. There are many thousands of people with no food, no fire, no -clothes to speak of. Most people are discouraged about this. They can’t -see how the thing can be improved. But Miss Timby-Hucks has a very -ingenious idea. Why, she asks, do not all the Unemployed sue all the -newspapers for libel? Do you catch the notion?” - -“By George!” I exclaimed, “that is a bold, comprehensive thought!” - -“Yes, isn’t it?” cried Uncle Dudley. “I am immensely attracted by it. -For one thing, it is so secure, so certain! Broadly speaking, there are -no risks at all. I suppose there has never yet been a case, no matter -what its so-called merits, in which the English newspaper hasn’t been -cast in damages of some sort Nobody is too humble or too shady to get -a verdict against an editor or newspaper proprietor. Miss Timby-Hucks -relates several most touching instances where the wolf was actually at -the door, the children shoeless and hungry, the mother prostrated by -drink, rain coming through the roof and so on--and everything has been -changed to peace and contentment by the happy thought of bringing a -libel suit. The father now wears a smile and a white waistcoat; the -drains have been repaired; the little children, nicely washed and -combed, kick each other’s shins with brand new boots, and sing -cheerfully beneath a worsted-work motto of ‘God bless our Home!’ I find -myself much affected by the thought.” - -“You had always a tender heart,” I responded. “I suppose there would be -no trouble about the Judges?” - -“Not the least in the world,” said Uncle Dudley, with confidence. “Of -course the Bench would have to be greatly enlarged, but there need be no -fear on that score. There is a mysterious but beneficent rule, my boy, -which you can always count upon in this making of judges--no matter how -hail-fellow-well-met an eminent lawyer may be, no matter how intimate -his connection with newspapers, how large his indebtedness to them for -his career--the moment he gets on the Bench he catches the full, fine, -old-crusted judicial spirit toward the Press. The scales fall with a -bang from his eyes, and he sees the editor and newspaper proprietor -as they really are--designing criminals, mercenary reprobates, social -pests--to be lectured and bullied and put down. O, you may rely on the -Judges! They are as safe as a new Liberal peer is to vote Tory.” - -“But the ‘power of the Press’?” I urged. “If the newspapers combine in -protest, and----” - -“You talk at random!” said Uncle Dudley almost austerely. “I should say -the most certain, the most absolutely reliable, element in the whole -case is the fact that newspapers do not combine. Whenever one editor -gets hit, all the others grin. One journal is mulcted in heavy damages: -the rest have all a difficulty in dissembling their delight. You read in -natural history that kites are given to falling upon one of their kind -which gets wounded or decrepit, and picking out its eyes. Well, kites -are also made of newspapers.” - -“And juries?” I began to ask. - -“Here we are,” remarked Uncle Dudley, turning in toward the guarded -portals of the great hall. - -“I have a friend among the attendants here, a thoughtful and discerning -man. I will learn from him where we may look for the spiciest case. He -takes a lively interest in the flaying of editors. I believe he was once -a printer. He will tell us where the axe gleams most savagely to-day: -where; we shall get the most journalistic blood for our money. You were -speaking of juries. Just take a look at one of them--if you are not -afraid of spoiling your luncheon--and you will see that they speak for -themselves. They regard all newspapers as public enemies--particularly -when the betting tips have been more misleading than usual. They stand -by their kind. They ‘give the poor man a chance’ without hesitation, -without fail. They are here to avenge the discovery of movable types, -and they do it. Come with me, and witness the disembowelling of a daily, -the hamstringing of a sub-editor--a publisher felled by the hand of the -Law like a bullock. Since the bear-pits of Bankside were closed there -has been no such sport.” - -Unhappily, it turned out that none of the Judges had come down to the -Courts that day. There was a threat of east wind in the air. “You see, -if they don’t live, to a certain age they get no pensions, and their -heirs turn a key in the lock on the old gentlemen in weather like this,” - explained Uncle Dudley, turning disappointedly away. - - - - -_Detailing certain Prudential Measures taken during the Panic incident -to a Late Threatened Invasion_ - - -I HOPE,” said Mrs Albert, “that I am as free to admit my errors in -judgment as another. Evidently there has been a mistake in this matter, -and it is equally obvious that I am the one who must have made it. I did -not need to have this pointed out to me, Dudley. What I looked to you -for was advice, counsel, sympathy. You seem not to realise at all how -important this is to me. A false step now may ruin everything--and you -simply sit there and grin!” - -“My dear sister,” replied Uncle Dudley, smoothing his face, “the smile -was involuntary. It shall not recur. I was only thinking of Albert’s -enthusiasm for the----” - -“Yes, I know!” put in Mrs Albert; “for that girl with the zouave -jacket----” - -“_And_ the scarlet petticoat,” prompted Uncle Dudley. - -“_And_ the crinoline,” said the lady. - -“O, he did not insist upon that. I recall his exact words. ‘Whether this -under-garment,’ he said, ‘be made of some stiff material like horsehair, -or by means of steel hoops, is a mere question of detail.’ No, Albert -expressly kept an open mind on that point.” - -“I agree with you,” remarked Mrs Albert coldly, “to the extent that he -certainly does keep his mind on it. He has now reverted to the subject, -I should think, at least twenty times. I am not so blind as you may -imagine. I notice that that Mr Labouchere also keeps on referring, every -week, to another girl in _her_ zouave jacket, whom _he_ remembers with -equal fondness, apparently.” - -“Yes,” put in Uncle Dudley, “those words about the ‘stiff material like -horsehair’ _were_ in _Truth_. I daresay Albert simply read them -there, and just unconsciously repeated them. We often do inadvertent, -unthinking things of that sort.” - -Mrs Albert shook her head. “It is nothing to me, of course,” she said, -“but I cannot help feeling that the middle-aged father of a family might -concentrate his thoughts upon something nobler, something higher, than -the recollection of the charms of a red petticoat, thirty years ago. -That is so characteristic of men. They cannot discuss a question -broadly----” - -“Think not?” queried Uncle Dudley, with interest. “You should listen at -the keyhole sometime, after you have led the ladies out from dinner.” - -“I mean personally, in a general way. They always particularise. Albert, -for example, allows all his views on this very important question to be -coloured by the fact that when he was a young man he admired some girl -in a short red Balmoral petticoat. Whenever conversation touches -upon any phase of the whole subject of costume, out he comes with his -tiresome adulation of that particular garment. Of course, I ask no -questions--I should prefer not to be informed--I try not even to draw -inferences--but I notice that Ermyntrude is beginning to observe the -persistency with which her father----” - -“My good Emily,” urged Uncle Dudley, consolingly, “far back in the -Sixties we all liked that girl; we couldn’t help ourselves--she was -the only girl there was. And we think of her fondly still--we old -fellows--because for us she was also the last there was! When she went -out, lo and behold! we too had gone out, not to come back any more. When -Albert and I babble about a scarlet petticoat, it is only as a symbol of -our own far-away youth. O delicious vision!--the bright, bright red, the -skirt that came drooping down over it, not hiding too much that pretty -little foot and ankle, the dear zouave jacket moulding itself so -delicately to the persuasive encircling arm----” - -“Dudley! I really must recall you to yourself,” said Mrs Albert. “We -were speaking of quite another matter. I am in a very serious dilemma. -First of all, as I explained to you, to please the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn -I became one of the Vice-Presidents of the Friendly Divided Skirt -Association. You know how useful she can be, in helping to bring -Ermyntrude out successfully. And of course everybody _knew_ that, even -if we _did_ have them _made_, we should never _wear_ them. That was -_quite_ out of the question.” - -“And then?” asked Uncle Dudley. - -“Well, then, let me see--yes, next came the Neo-Dress-Improver League. -I never understood what the object was, precisely; it was a kind of -secession from the other, led by the Countess of Wimps, and I needn’t -tell you that she is of the _utmost_ importance to us, and there was -simply _nothing_ for me to do but to become a Lady Patroness of _that_. -You were in extremely nice company--there were seven or eight ladies of -title among the Patronesses, our names all printed together in beautiful -little gilt letters--and you really weren’t committed to anything that -I could make out. No--_that_ was all right. I should do the same -thing again, under the circumstances. No, the trouble came with the -Amalgamated Anti-Crinoline Confederacy. That was where I was too hasty, -I think.” - -“That’s the thing with the protesting post-cards, isn’t it?” inquired -Uncle Dudley. - -“That very feature of it alone ought to have warned me,” Mrs Albert -answered with despondency. “My own better sense should have told me -that post-cards were incompatible with selectness. But you see, the -invitations were sent out by the authoress of _The Street-Sprinkler’s -Secret_, and that gave me the impression that it was to be literary--to -represent Culture and the Arts, you know; and that appealed to me, of -course, very strongly.” - -“I have always feared that your literary impulses would run away with -you,” Uncle Dudley declared gravely. - -“It is my weak side; I don’t deny it,” replied his sister. “Where -letters and authorship, and that sort of thing, you know, are concerned, -it is my nature to be sympathetic. And besides, the Dowager Lady -Thames-Ditton was very pronounced in favour of the movement, and I -_couldn’t_ fly in the face of that, could I? I must say, though, that I -had my misgivings almost from the first. Miss Wallaby told the Rev. Mr -Grayt-Scott that a lady she knew had looked over quite a peck or more of -the post-cards which came in one day, and they were nine-tenths of them -from Earl’s Court.” - -“Yes,” remarked Uncle Dudley, “I think I have heard that the post-card -reaches its most luxuriant state of literary usefulness in that -locality. It was from that point that they tried to rush the -Laureateship, you know.” - -“Well, you can imagine how I felt when I heard it. It is all well enough -to be literary--nobody realises that more than I do--and it is all very -well to be loyal--of course! But one draws the line at Earl’s Court--at -least, that part of it. I say frankly that it serves me right. I should -have known better. One thing I cannot be too thankful for--Ermyntrude -did not send a post-card. Some blessed instinct prompted me to tell her -there was no hurry about it--that I did not like to see young girls -too forward in such matters. And now--why--who knows--Dudley! I have an -idea! Ermie shall join the Crinoline Defence League!” - -“I see--the family will hedge on the crinoline issue. Capital!” - -“You know, after all, we may have to wear them. It’s quite as likely as -not. The old Duchess of West Ham is President of the League, and she is -very influential in the highest quarters. Her Grace, I understand, _is_ -somewhat bandy, but she has always maintained the strictest Christian -respectability, and her action in this matter will count for a great -deal. Just think, if she should happen to take a fancy to Ermyntrude! -That Miss Wallaby has thrust herself forward till she is actually a -member of the Council, and she is going to deliver an address on ‘The -Effect of Modesty on National Morals.’ She told our curate that at -one of the meetings of the Council she came within an ace of being -introduced to the Duchess herself. Now surely, if _she_ can accomplish -all this, Ermie ought to be able to do still more. Tell me, Dudley, what -do _you_ think?” - -“I think,” replied Uncle Dudley musingly, “I think that the scarlet -petticoat, _with_ the zouave jack----” - -Mrs Albert interrupted him with sternness. “Don’t you see,” she -demanded, “that if it _does_ come, the dear girl will share in the -credit of bringing it in, and if it doesn’t come, I shall have the -advantage of having helped to stave it off. Whichever side wins, there -we are.” - -Uncle Dudley rose, and looked thoughtfully out upon the fog, and stroked -his large white moustache in slow meditation. “Yes--undoubtedly,” he -said at last, “there we are.” - - - - -_Dealing with the Deceptions of Nature, and the Freedom from, Illusion -Inherent in the Unnatural_ - - -There was once a woman--obviously a thoughtful woman--who remarked that -she had noticed that if she managed to live till Friday, she invariably -survived the rest of the week. I did not myself know this philosopher, -who is preserved to history in one of Roscoe Conkling’s speeches, but -her discovery always recurs to me about this time of year, when February -begins to disclose those first freshening glimpses of sunlight and blue -skies to bleared, fog-smudged and shivering London. Aha! if we have won -thus far, if we have contrived to get to February, then we shall surely -see the Spring. At least the one has heretofore involved the other--and -there is confident promise in the smile of a noon-day once more able to -cast a shadow, albeit the teeth of the east wind gleam close behind that -smile. - -It was a day for a walk--no set and joyous rural tramp, indeed, with -pipe and wallet, and a helpful spring underfoot in the clean hard -roadway, and an honest, well-balanced stick for the bell-ringing gentry -who shall come at you on wheels from behind--but just an orderly, -contemplative urban ramble, brisk enough for warmth, but with no hurry, -and above all no destination. And it was a day, moreover, for letting -one’s fellow-creatures pass along with scant notice--a winter-ridden, -shuffling, mud-stained company these, conscious of being not at all -worth examination--and for giving eye instead to the house-fronts in the -sunshine, and radiant chimneypots and tiles above them, and the signs of -blessed, unaccustomed blue still further up. There was, it is true, an -undeniable disproportion between the inner look of these things, and -this gladness of the heart because of them. Glancing more closely, one -could see that they were not taking the sun seriously, and, for their -own part, were expecting more fogs next week. And farther westward, when -stucco, brick, and stone gave way to park-land, it was apparent at sight -that the trees were flatly incredulous. - -They say that in Ireland, where the mildness of climate has in the past -prompted many experiments with exotic growths, the trees not really -indigenous to the island never learn sense, but year after year are -gulled by this February fraud into gushing expansively forth with -sap and tender shoots, only to be gripped and shrivelled by the icy -after-hand of March. The native tree, however, knows this trick of old, -and greets the sham Spring with a distinctive, though well-buttoned-up -wink. In Kensington Park region one couldn’t be sure that the trees -really saw the joke. It is not, on the whole, a humourous neighbourhood. -But at all events they were not to be fooled into premature buds and -sprouts and kindred signs of silliness. Every stiffly exclusive drab -trunk rising before you, every section of the brown lacework of twigs up -above, seemed to offer a warning advertisement: “No connection with the -sunshine over the way!” - -Happily the flower-beds exhibited more sympathy. Up through the mould -brave little snowdrops had pushed their pretty heads, and the crocuses, -though with their veined outer cloaks of sulphur, mauve, and other tints -still wrapped tight about them, wore almost a swaggering air to show -how wholly they felt at home. Emboldened by this bravado, less confident -fellows were peeping forth, though in such faltering fashion that one -could scarcely tell which was squill, which narcissus or loitering -jonquil. Still, it was good to see them. They too were glad that they -had lived till February, because after that comes the Spring. - -And it was better still, as I turned to stroll on, to behold coming -toward me down the path, with little swinging step, and shapely head -well up in air, none other than our Ermyntrude. - -I say “our” because--it is really absurd to think of it--it seems only a -few months ago since she was a sprawling tom-boy sort of a little girl, -who sat on my knee and listened with her mouth open to my reminiscences -of personal encounters with unicorns and the behemoth of Holy Writ. She -must be now--by George! she _is_--not a minute under two-and-twenty. And -that means--_hélas!_ it undoubtedly means--that I am getting to be an -old boy indeed. At Christmas-tide--I recall it now--Mrs Albert spoke of -me as the oldest friend of the family. It sounded kindly at the time, -and I had a special pleasure in the smile Ermyntrude wore as she, -with the others, lifted her glass towards me. I won’t say what vagrant -thoughts and ambitions that smile did not raise in my mind--and, lo! -they were toasting me as an amiable elderly friend of the Fernbank -household. No wonder I am glad to have lived till February! - -Ermyntrude had a roll of music in her hands. There was a charming glow -on her cheeks, and a healthy, happy, sparkle in her eyes. She stopped -short before me, with a little exclamation of not displeased surprise! - -“Why, how nice to run upon you like this,” she said, in high spirits. -“We thought you must have gone off to the Riviera, or Algiers, or -somewhere--for your cold, you know. Mamma was speaking of you only -yesterday--hoping that you were taking care of yourself.” - -“Had I a cold?” I asked absently. The air had grown chillier. We walked -along together, and she let me carry the music. - -“O--you haven’t heard,” she exclaimed suddenly, “such news as I have for -you! You couldn’t ever guess!” - -“Is it something about crinoline?” I queried. “Your mother was telling - -“Rubbish!” said Ermyntrude gaily. “I’m engaged!” - -The wind had really got round into the East, and I, fastened my coat -at the collar. “I am sure”--I remarked at last--“I’m sure I -congratulate--the happy young man. Do I know him?” - -“I hardly think so,” she replied. “You see, it’s--it’s what you might -call rather sudden. We haven’t known him ourselves very long--that is, -intimately. You may have heard his name--the Honourable Knobbeleigh -Jones. It’s a very old family though the title is somewhat new. His -father is Lord Skillyduff, you know.” - -“The shipping man?” I said, wearily. - -“Yes. He and papa are together on some board or other. That is how we -came to know them. Papa says he never saw such business ability and -sterling worth combined in one man before--I’m speaking of the father, -you know. He began life in quite a small way, with just a few ships that -he rented, or something like that. Then there was a war on some coast in -Africa or Australia--it begins with an A, I know--oh, _is_ there a place -called Ashantee?--yes, that’s it--and he got the contract to take out -four shiploads of hay to our troops--it would be for their horses, -wouldn’t it?” - -“Yes: the asses connected with the military branch are needed at -home--or at least are kept there.” - -“Well, after he started, he got orders to stop at some place and wait -for other orders. He did so, and he waited four years and eight months. -Those orders never came. The hay all rotted, of course: the ships almost -moulded away: I daresay some of the crew died of old age--But Mr Jones -never stirred from his post. Finally, some English official came on him -by accident--quite! and so he was recalled. Papa says very few men would -have shown such tenacity of purpose and grasp of the situation. Mamma -says his fidelity to duty was magnificent.” - -“Magnificent--yes,” I commented; “but it wasn’t war.” - -“Oh, bless you! there _was_ no war _then_,” explained Ermyntrude. “The -war had been ended for _years_. And all that while the pay for shipping -that hay had been going on, so that the Government owed him--I think -it was £45,000. Of course he got more contracts, and then he was made a -baronet, and could build his own ships; and now he is a lord, and papa -says the War Office would be quite helpless without him.” - -“And the son,” I asked; “what does he do?” - -“Why, nothing, of course!” said Ermyntrude, lifting her pretty brows a -little in surprise. “He is the eldest son.” - -“I didn’t know but he might have gone in for the Army, or Parliament, or -something,” I explained weakly: “just to occupy his mind.” - -She smiled to herself--somewhat grimly, I thought. “No,” she said, -assuming a serious face, “he says doing things is all rot, if you aren’t -obliged to do them. Of course, he goes in for hunting and shooting and -all that, and he has a houseboat and a yacht, and one year he was in the -All-Slumpshire eleven, but that was too much bother. He hates bother.” - -We had come out upon the street now, and walked for a little in silence. - -“Ermie,” I said at last, “you mustn’t be annoyed with me--this is one of -my sentimental days, and you know as an old friend of the family I’ve -a certain right of free speech--but this doesn’t seem to me quite good -enough. A girl like you--beautiful and clever and accomplished, knowing -your way about among books, and with tastes above the ruck--there ought -to be a better outlook for you than this! I know that type of young -man, and he isn’t in your street at all. Come now!” I went on, gathering -courage, “look me in the face if you can, and tell me that you honestly -love this young man, or that you really respect his father, or that you -candidly expect to be happy. I defy you to do it!” - -I was wrong. Ermyntrude did look me in the face, squarely and without -hesitation. She halted for the moment to do so, and her gaze, though not -unkindly, was full of serious frankness. - -“There is one thing I do expect,” she said, calmly. “I expect to get -away from Fernbank.” - - - - -_Suggesting Considerations possibly heretofore Overlooked by -Commentators upon the Laws of Property_ - - -You will find Dudley up in what he calls his library,” said Mrs Albert -in the hallway. “I’m _so_ sorry I must go out--but he’ll be glad to see -you. And--let me entreat you, don’t give him any encouragement!” - -“What!” I cried, “encourage Uncle Dudley? Oh--never, never!” - -“No, just be firm with him,” Mrs Albert went on. “Say that it mustn’t be -thought of for a moment. And Oh--by the way--it’s as well to warn you: -_don’t_ ask him what he did it for! It seems that every one asks him -that--and he gets quite enraged about it now, when that particular -question is put. As like as not he’d throw something at you.” She spoke -earnestly, in low, impressive tones. - -“Wild horses should not drag it from me,” I pledged myself. “I will not -encourage him: I will not enrage him; I swear not to ask him what he did -it for. But--if you don’t mind--could I, so to speak, bear the shock of -learning what it is that he _has_ done?” - -“You haven’t heard?” Mrs Albert asked, glancing up at me, with an -astonished face, as I stood on the stairs. When I shook my head, she put -out her hand to the latch, and opened the door, as if to heighten the -dramatic suspense. Then she turned and looked me in the eye with solemn -intentness. “What has he done?” she echoed in a hollow voice: “You go -upstairs and see!” - -The door closed behind her, and I made my way noiselessly, two steps at -a time, to the floor above. Some vague sense of disaster seemed to -brood over the silent, half-lighted stairway and the deserted landing. -I knocked at Uncle Dudley’s door--almost prepared to find my signal -unanswered. But no, his voice came back, cheerily enough, and I entered -the room. - -“Oh, it’s you!” said my friend, rising from his chair. “Glad to see -you,”--and we shook hands. Standing thus, I found myself staring into -his face with a rude and prolonged fixity of gaze, under which he first -smiled--a strange, unwholesome sort of smile--then flushed a little, -then scowled and averted his glance. - -“Great heavens!” I exclaimed at last. “Why, man alive, what on earth -possessed you to--” - -“Come now!” broke in Uncle Dudley, with peremptory sternness. “Chuck -it!” - -“Yes--I know”--I stammered haltingly along--“I promised I wouldn’t ask -you--but--” - -“But the original simian instincts triumph over your resolutions, eh?” - said my friend, crustily. “Yes, I know. I’ve had pretty nearly a week of -it now. That question has been asked me, I estimate, somewhere about six -hundred and seventy-eight times since last Thursday. It’s only fair to -you to tell you that I have registered a vow to hit the next man who -asks me that fool of a question--‘What did you do it for?’--straight -under his left ear. I probably saved your life by interrupting you.” - -Though the words were fierce, there was a marked return of geniality -in the tone. I took the liberty of putting a hand over Uncle Dudley’s -shoulder, and marching him across to the window. - -“Let’s have a good look at you,” I said. - -“I did it myself; I did it with my little hatchet; I did it because -I wanted to; I had a right to do it; I should do it again if the -fit struck me----” Thus, with mock gravity, Uncle Dudley ran on as I -scrutinised his countenance in the strong light. “And furthermore,” he -added, “I don’t care one single hurrah in Hades whether you like it or -not.” - -“I think on the whole,” I mused aloud--“yes, I think I rather do like -it--now that I accustom myself to it.” - -Uncle Dudley’s face brightened on the instant. “Do you really?” he -exclaimed, and beamed upon me. In spite of his professed indifference to -my opinion, it was obvious that I had pleased him. - -“Sit down,” he said--“there are the matches behind you--hope these -aren’t too green for you. Yes, my boy, I created quite a flutter in the -hen-yard, I can tell you. Did my sister tell you?--she nearly fainted, -and little Amy burst out boo-hooing as if she’d lost her last friend. -When you come to think of it, old man, it’s really too ridiculous, you -know.” - -“It certainly has its grotesque aspects,” I admitted. - -Uncle Dudley looked up sharply, as if suspecting some ironical meaning -in my words. “You really do think it’s an improvement?” he asked, with a -doubtful note in his voice. - -“Of course, it makes a tremendous change,” I said, diplomatically, “and -the novelty tends perhaps to confuse judgment: but I must confess the -result is--is, well, very interesting.” - -My friend did not look wholly satisfied. “It shows what stupid people we -are,” he went on in a dogmatic way. “Why, the way they’ve gone on, you’d -think I had no property rights in the thing at all--that I was merely a -trustee for it--bound to give an account to every Tom-Dick-and-Harry who -came along and had nothing better to occupy his mind with. And then that -eternal, vacuous, woollen-brained ‘What did you do it for?’ Oh, that’s -got to be too sickening for words! And the confounded familiarity of the -whole thing! Why, hang me, if even the little Jew cigar dealer down on -the corner didn’t feel entitled to pass what he took to be some friendly -remarks on the subject. ‘Vy,’ he said, ‘if I could say vidout vlattery, -vot a haddsobe jeddlebad you ver, and vy did you do dot by yourself?’ It -gets on a man’s nerves, you know, things like that.” - -“But hasn’t anyone liked the change?” I asked. - -Uncle Dudley sighed. “That’s the worst of it,” he said, dubiously. -“Only two men have said they liked it--and it happens that they are both -persons of conspicuously weak intellect. That’s rather up against me, -isn’t it? But on the other hand, you know, people who are silliest about -everything else always get credit for knowing the most about art and -beauty and all that. Perhaps in such a case as this, I daresay their -judgment might be better than all the others. And after all, what do -_I_ care? That’s the point I make: that it’s _my_ business and nobody -else’s. If a man hasn’t got a copyright in his own personal appearance, -why there is no such thing as property. But instead of recognising this, -any fellow feels free to come up and say: ‘You look like an unfrocked -priest,’ or ‘Hullo! another burglar out of work,’ and he’s quite -surprised if you fail to show that you’re pleased with the genial -brilliancy of his remarks. I don’t suppose there is any other -single thing which the human race lapses into such rude and insolent -meddlesomeness over as it does over this.” - -“It _is_ pathetic,” I admitted--“but--but it’ll soon grow again.” - -Uncle Dudley laughed a bitter laugh. “By Jove,” he cried, “I’ve more -than half a mind not to let it. It would serve ‘em right if I didn’t. -Why, do you know--you’d hardly believe it! My sister had a dinner party -on here for Saturday night, and after I’d--I’d done it--she cancelled -the invitations--some excuse about a family loss--a bereavement, my boy. -Well, you know, treatment of that sort puts a man on his mettle. I’m -entitled to resent it. And besides--you know--of course it does make -a great change--but somehow I fancy that when you get used to it--come -now--the straight griffin, as they say--what do _you_ think?” - -“I’m on oath not to encourage you,” I made answer. - -“There you have it!” cried Uncle Dudley: “the old tyrannical conspiracy -against the unusual, the individual, the true! Let nobody dare to be -himself! Let us have uniformity, if all else perishes. The frames must -be alike in the Royal Academy, that’s the great thing; the pictures -don’t matter so much. You see our women-folk now, this very month, -getting ready to case themselves in ugly hoops which they hate, at the -bidding of they know not whom, because, if they did not, the hideous -possibility of one woman being different from another woman would darken -the land. A man is not to be permitted the pitiful privilege of seeing -his own mouth, not even once in fifteen years, simply because it -temporarily inconveniences the multitude in their notions as to how he -is in the habit of looking! What rubbish it is!” - -“It _is_ rubbish,” I assented--“and you are talking it. Your sister who -fainted, your niece who wept, your friends who averted their gaze in -anguish, the hordes of casual jackasses who asked why you did it, the -kindly little Jew cigar man who broke forth in lamentations--these are -the world’s jury. They have convicted you--sorrowfully but firmly. You -yourself, for all your bravado, realise the heinousness of your crime. -You are secretly ashamed, remorseful, penitent. I answer for you--you -will never do it again.” - -“And yet it isn’t such a bad mouth, either,” mused Uncle Dudley, with -a lingering glance at the mirror over the mantel. “There is humour, -delicacy of perception, affection, gentleness--ever so many nice -qualities about it which were all hidden up before. The world ought to -welcome the revelation--and it throws stones instead. Ah well!--pass -the matches--let us yield gracefully to the inevitable! It shall grow -again.” - -“Mrs Albert will be so glad,” I remarked. - - - - -_Narrating the Failure of a Loyal Attempt to Circumvent Adversity by -means of Modern Appliances_ - - -If his name was Jabez, why weren’t we told so, I’d like to know?” - demanded Mrs Albert of me, with a momentary flash in her weary glance. -“What right had the papers to go on calling him J. Spencer, year after -year, while he was deluding the innocent, and fattening upon the bodies -of his dupes? To be sure, now that the mask is off, and he has fled, -they speak of him always as Jabez. Why didn’t they do it before, while -honest people might still have been warned? But no--they never did--and -now it’s too late--too late!” - -The poor lady’s voice broke pathetically upon this reiterated plaint. -She bowed her head, and as I looked with pained sympathy upon the -drooping angle of her proud face, I could see the shadows about her lips -quiver. - -A sad tale indeed it was, to which I had been listening--here in -a lonesome corner of the cloistral, dim-lit solitude of the big -drawing-room at Fernbank. It was not a new story. Kensington has known -it by heart for a generation. Bloomsbury learned it earlier, and before -that it was familiar in Soho--away off in the old days when the ruffling -gentry of Golden Square fought for the chance of buying ingenious John -Law’s South Sea scrip. And even then, the experience was an ancient and -half-forgotten memory of Bishopsgate and the Minories. It was the old, -old tragedy of broken fortunes. - -Mrs Albert was clear that it began with the Liberator troubles. I had -my own notion that Mr Albert Grundy was skating on thin ice before the -collapse of the building societies came. However that may be, there was -no doubt whatever that the cumulative Australian disasters had finished -the business. There were melancholy details in her recital which I lack -the courage to dwell upon. The horse and brougham were gone; the -lease of Fernbank itself was offered for sale, with possession before -Michaelmas, if desired; Ermyntrude’s engagement was as good as off. - -“It won’t be a bankruptcy,” said Mrs Albert, lifting her face and -resolutely winking the moisture from her lashes. “We shall escape -that--but for the moment at least I must abandon my position in society. -Dudley is over to-day looking at a small place in Highgate, although -Albert thinks he would prefer Sydenham. My own feeling is that some -locality from which you could arrive by King’s Cross or St Paneras would -be best. One never meets anybody one knows there. Then, when matters -adjust themselves again, as of course they will, we could return -here--to this neighbourhood, at least--and just mention casually having -been out at our country place--on the children’s account, of course. And -Floribel _is_ delicate, you know.” - -“Oh well, then,” I said, trying to put buoyance into my tone, “it isn’t -so had after all. And you feel--Albert feels--quite hopeful about things -coming right again?” - -My friend’s answering nod of affirmation had a certain qualifying -dubiety about it. “Yes, we’re hopeful,” she said. “But a fortnight ago, -I felt positively sanguine. Nobody ever worked harder than I did to -deserve success, any way. I only failed through gross treachery--and -that, too, at the hands of the very people of whom I could never, -_never_ have believed it. When you find the aristocracy openly actuated -by mercenary motives, as I have done this past month, it almost makes -you ask what the British nation is coming to!” - -“Dear me!” I exclaimed, “is it as bad as that?” - -“You shall judge for yourself,” said Mrs Albert gravely. “You know -that I organised--quite early in the Spring--the Loyal Ladies’ Namesake -Committee of Kensington. I do not boast in saying that I really -organised it, quite from its beginnings. The idea was mine; practically -all the labour was mine. But when one is toiling to realise a great -ideal like that, one frequently loses sight of small details. I ought to -have known better--but I took a serpent to my bosom. I was weak enough -to associate with me in the enterprise that monument of duplicity and -interested motives--the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn. Why, she hadn’t so much as -an initial letter to entitle her to belong----” - -“I am not sure that I follow you,” I put in. “Ladies’ Namesake -Committee--initial letter--I don’t seem to grasp the idea.” - -“It’s perfectly simple,” explained Mrs Albert. “The idea was that all -the ladies--our set, you know--whose name was ‘May’ should combine in -subscribing for a present.” - -“But your name is Emily,” I urged, thoughtlessly. - -“Oh, we weren’t exactly literal about it,” said Mrs Albert; “we -_couldn’t_ be, you know. It would have shut out some of our very best -people. But I came very near the standard, indeed. My second name is -Madge. You take the first two letters of that, and the ‘y’ from Emily, -and there you have it. Oh, I assure you, very few came even as near it -as that--and as I said to Dudley at the time, if you think of it, even -_her_ name isn’t _really_ May. It’s only a popular contraction. But that -Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn, she had no actual right whatever to belong. Her -names are Hester Winifred Edith. She hasn’t even one _letter_ right!” - -“Ah, that was indeed treachery!” I ejaculated. - -“Oh, no, that, was not what I referred to,” Mrs Albert set me right. “Of -course, I was aware of her names. I had seen them in the ‘Peerage’ -for years. It was what she did after her entrance that covers her -with infamy. But I will narrate the events in their order. First, we -collected £1100. Of course, our own contribution was not large, but -Ermyntrude and I hunted the various church registers--we don’t speak of -it, but even the Nonconformist ones we went through--and we got a -tremendous number of Christian names more or less what was desired, and -our circulars were sent to _every one_, far and near. As I said, we -raised quite £1100. Then there came the question of the gift.” - -Mrs Albert uttered this last sentence with such deliberate solemnity -that I bowed to show my consciousness of its importance. - -“Yes,” she went on, “the selection of the gift. Now I had in mind a most -appropriate and useful present. Have you heard of the Oboid Oil Engine? -No? Well, it is an American invention, and has been brought over here by -an American, who has bought the European rights from the inventor. He is -in the next building to Albert, in the City, and they meet almost -every day at luncheon, and have struck up quite a friendship. He has -connections which might be of the _utmost_ importance to Albert, and -if Albert could only have been of service to him in introducing this -engine, there is literally _no telling_ what might not have come of it. -Albert does not _say_ that a partnership would have resulted, but I can -read it in his face.” - -“But would an oil engine have been--under the circumstances--you know -what I mean----” I began. - -“Oh, _most_ suitable!” responded Mrs Albert with conviction. “It is -really, it seems, a very surprising piece of machinery. After it’s once -bought, the cheapness of running it is simply _absurd_. It does all -sorts of things at no expense worth mentioning--anything you want it to -do. It appears that if it had been invented at that time, the pyramids -in Egypt could have been built by it for something like 130 per cent, -less than their cost is estimated to have been--or something like that. -Oh, it is quite extraordinary, I assure you. Albert says he could stand -and watch it working for hours--especially if he had an interest in the -company.” - -“But I hadn’t heard that there were any new pyramid plans on just -now--although, when I think of it, Shaw-Lefevre did have some -Westminster Abbey project which----” - -“No, no!” interrupted Mrs Albert. “One of the engine’s greatest uses is -in agriculture. It does _everything_--threshes, garners, mows, milks--or -no, not that, but almost _everything_. No self-respecting farmer, they -say, dreams of being without one--that is, of course, if he knows about -it. You can see what it would have meant, if one had been thus publicly -introduced on the princely farm at Sandringham. All England would have -rung with demands for the Oboid--and Albert feels sure that the American -man would have been grateful--and--and--then perhaps we need never have -left Fernbank at all.” - -My poor friend shook her head mournfully at the thought - -“And the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn?” I asked. - -The fire came back into Mrs Albert’s eye. “That woman,” she said, -with bitter calmness, “was positively not ashamed to intrude her own -mercenary and self-seeking designs upon this loyal and purely patriotic -association. Why, she did it almost openly. She intrigued behind my back -with whole streetsful of people that one would hardly know on ordinary -occasions, paid them calls in a carriage got up for the occasion with -a bright new coat of arms, made friends with them, promised them heaven -only knows what, and actually secured nineteen votes to my three for the -purchase of a mouldy old piece of tapestry--something about Richard -III and Oliver Cromwell meeting on the battlefield, I think the subject -is--which belonged to her husband’s family. Of course, my lips are -sealed, but I have been _told_ that at Christie’s it would hardly have -fetched £100. I say nothing myself, but I can’t prevent people drawing -certain deductions, can I? And when I reflect also that her two -most active supporters in this nefarious business were Lady -Thames-Ditton--whose financial difficulties are notorious--and the -Countess of Wimps---- whose tradespeople--well, we won’t go into -_that_--it does force one to ask whether the fabric of British society -is not being undermined at its very top. In this very day’s paper I -read that the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn has hired a yacht, and will spend the -summer in Norwegian waters--while we--we----” - -The door opened, and we made out through the half-light the comfortable -figure of Uncle Dudley. He was mopping his brow, and breathed heavily -from his long walk as he advanced. - -“Well?” Mrs Albert asked, in a saddened and subdued tone, “Did you see -the place?” - -“There are five bedrooms on the two upper floors,” he made answer, “but -there’s no bath-room, and the bus doesn’t come within four streets of -the house.” - - - - -_Introducing Scenes from a Foreign Country, and also conveying Welcome -Intelligence, together with some Instruction_ - - -It was at a little village perched well up on one of the carriage-roads -ascending the Brocken, a fortnight or so ago, that I received a wire -from Uncle Dudley. It was kind of him to think of it--all the more as he -had good news to tell. “Family lighted square on their feet,” was what -the message said, and I was glad to gather from this that the Grundys -had weathered their misfortunes, and that Mrs Albert was herself again. - -The thought was full of charm. It seemed as if I had never realised -before how fond I was of these good people. In sober fact; I dare say -that I had not dwelt much upon their woes during my holiday. But now, -with this affectionately thoughtful telegram addressing me as their -oldest friend, the one whom they wished to be the first to share the joy -of their rescued state, it was easy enough to make myself believe -that my whole vacation had been darkened with brooding over their -unhappiness. - -It had not occurred to me before, but that was undoubtedly why I had -not liked the Harz so much this year as usual. Now that I thought of -it, walking down the birch-lined footpath towards the hamlet and the -telegraph office, the place seemed to have gone off a good deal. In -other seasons, before the spectre of cholera flooded its sylvan retreats -with an invading horde of Hamburgers, the Harzwald had been my favourite -resort. I had grown to love its fir-clad slopes, its shadowed glens, its -atmosphere of prehistoric myth and legend, as if I were part and product -of them all. Its people, too, had come much nearer to my breast than -any other Germans ever could. I had enjoyed being with them just because -they were what the local schoolmaster disdainfully declared them to -be--_Erdzertrümmerungsprozeszuribekanntevolk_--that is to say, people -entirely ignorant of the scientific theories about geological upheavals -and volcanic formations, and so able cheerfully to put their trust in -the goblins who reared these strange boulders in fantastic piles on -every hill top, and to hear with good faith the shouts of the witches as -they bounded over the Hexentanzplatz. Last year it had seemed even worth -the added discomfort of the swarming Hamburgers to be again in this -wholesome, sweet-aired primitive place. But this year--I saw now -clearly as I looked over Uncle Dudley’s message once more--it had not -been so pleasant. The hotel boy, Fritzchen, whom I had watched year -after year with the warmth of a fatherly well-wisher--smiling with -satisfaction at his jovial countenance, his bustling and competent ways, -and his comical attempts at English--had this season swollen up into -a burly and consequential lout, with a straw-coloured sprouting on his -upper-lip, and a military manner. They called him Fritz now, and he gave -me beer out of the old keg after I had heard the new one tapped. - -The evening gatherings of the villagers in the hotel, too, were -not amusing as they once had been. The huge lion-maned and grossly -over-bearded _Kantor_, or music-master, who came regularly at nightfall -to thump on the table with his bludgeon-like walking stick, to roar -forth impassioned monologues on religion and politics, and to bellow -ceaselessly at Fritzchen for more beer, had formerly delighted me. This -time he seemed only a noisy nuisance, and the half-circle of grave old -retired foresters and middle-aged _Jàger_ officers who sat watching -him over their pipes, striving vainly now and again to get in a word -edgewise about the auctions of felled trees in the woods, or the -mutinous tendencies of the charcoal-burners, presented themselves in the -light of tiresome prigs. If they had been worth their salt, I felt, they -would long ago have brained the Kantor with their stoneware mugs. Even -as I walked I began to be conscious that a three weeks’ stay in the Harz -was a good deal of time, and that the remaining third would certainly -hang on my hands. - -By the time I reached the telegraph station I had my answer to Uncle -Dudley ready in my mind. He liked the forcible imagery of Australia and -the Far West; and I would speak to him at this joyful juncture after -his own heart. It seemed that I could best do this by giving him to -understand that I was celebrating his news--that I was, in one of his -own phrases, “painting the town red.” It required some ingenuity to work -this idea out right, but I finally wrote what appeared to answer the -purpose:--“_Brocken und Umgebung sind roth gemalen_”--and handed it in -to the man at the window. - -He was a young man with close-cropped yellow hair and spectacles, -holding his chin and neck very stiff in the high collar of his uniform. -He glanced over my despatch, at first with careless dignity. Then he -read it again attentively. Then he laid it on the table, and bent -his tight-buttoned form over it as well as might be in a severe and -prolonged scrutiny. At last he raised himself, turned a petrifying gaze -on through his glasses at me, and shook his head. - -“It is not true,” he said. “Some one has you deceived.” - -“But,” I tried to explain to him, with the little German that I knew -scattering itself in all directions in the face of this crisis, “it is a -figure of speech, a joke, a----” - -The telegraph man stared coldly at my luckless despatch, and then at me. -“You would wish to state to your friend, perhaps,” he suggested, “that -they seem as if they had been coloured with red, owing to the change in -the leaves.” - -“No, no,” I put in. “It must be that they _have_ been painted, _are_ -painted, or he will not me understand.” - -“But, my good sir,” retorted the operator with emphasis, “they are _not_ -painted! From the door gaze you forth! What make you with this nonsense, -that Brocken and vicinity are red painted?” - -“Well, then,” I said wearily, oppressed by the magnitude of the task, -“I don’t know how to word it myself, but you can fix it for me. Just say -that I am _going_ to paint them red--that will do just as well. - -“But you shall not! It is forbidden!” exclaimed the official, holding -himself like a poker, and glaring vehemence through his glasses. “It -is strongly forbidden! When you one brush-mark shall make, quick to -the prison go you. In Germany have we for natural beauty respect--also -laws.” - -Reluctantly, but of necessity, I abandoned metaphor, and in a humble -spirit telegraphed in English to Uncle Dudley at his club that I was -very glad. Even as my pen clung in irresolution on the paper over -this word “glad,” the impulse rose in me to add: “_Tired of Harz. Am -returning immediately_.” - -“When the same here is,” remarked the operator, moodily studying the -unknown words, “in Brunswick stopped it will be.” - -I translated it for him, and added, “I go from here home, to be where -officials their own business mind.” - -He nodded, not unamiably, and replied as he handed me out my change: -“Yes, I know: England. So well their own business there officials mind, -that Balfour to Argentina easily comes.” - -Walking up the hillside again, already quite captive to the fascination -of the morrow’s homeward flight, I met at the turn of the path a family -party--father, mother, and two girls in the younger teens--seated along -the rocky siding, and gazing with a common air of dejection upon a -portentous row of bags and portmanteaus at their feet. The notion that -they were Hamburgers died still-born. Nothing more obviously un-German -than these wayfarers was ever seen. - -“I hope, sir,” the man spoke up as I approached, “that I am right in -presuming that you speak English!” - -I bowed assent, and even as I did so, recognised him. “I hope _I_ am -right,” I answered, “in thinking that I have met you before--at Mr -Albert Grundy’s in London--you are the American gentleman with the Oboid -Oil Engine, are you not?” - -“Well, by George!” he cried, rising and offering his hand with frank -delight, and introducing me in a single comprehensive wave to his wife -and daughters. “Yes, sir,” he went on, “and I wish I had an Oboid here -right now--up in the basement of that stone boarding-house on the knoll -there--just for the sake of heating up, and shutting down the valves, -and blowing the whole damned thing sky-high. That would suit me, sir, -right down to the ground.” - -“Were strangers here, sir,” he explained in answer to my question: “we’d -seen a good deal of the Dutch at home--I mean _our_ home--and we thought -we’d like to take a look at ‘em in the place they come from. Well, sir, -we’ve had our look, and we’re satisfied. We don’t want any more on our -plate, thank you. One helping is an elegant sufficiency. Do you know the -trick they played on us? Why, I took a team of horses yesterday from a -place they called Ibsenburg or Ilsenburg, or some such name, and had -it explained to my driver that he was to take us up to the top of the -Brocken, there, and stop all night, and fetch us back this morning. When -we got up as far as Shierke, there, it was getting pretty dark, and the -women-folks were nervous, and so we laid up for the night. There didn’t -seem anything for the driver to do but set around in the kitchen and -drink beer, and he needed money for that, and so I gave him some loose -silver, and told him to make himself at home. We got the words out of a -dictionary for that--_machen sie selbst zu Heim_ we figured ‘em out to -be--and I spoke them at him slowly and distinctly, so that he had no -earthly excuse for not understanding. But, would you believe it, sir, -the miserable cuss just up and skipped out, horses, rig and all, while -we were getting supper! And here we were this morning, landed high and -dry. No conveyance, nobody to comprehend a word of English, no nothing. -We haven’t seen the top of their darned mountain even.” - -“What I’m more concerned about, I tell Wilbur,” put in the lady, “is -seeing the bottom of it. If they had only sense enough to make valises -and bonnet-boxes ball-shaped, we could have rolled ‘em down hill.” - -“There’ll be no trouble about all that,” I assured them, and we talked -for a little about the simple enough process of getting their luggage -carried down to the village, and of finding a vehicle there. I, indeed, -agreed to make one of their party on quitting the Harz, that very -afternoon. - -“And now tell me about the Grundys,” I urged, when these more pressing -matters were out of the way. “I got a wire to-day saying--hinting that -they are in luck’s way again.” - -“Is that so?” exclaimed the American, at once surprised and pleased. -“I’m glad to hear it. I can’t guess what it might be in. Grundy’s got -so many irons in the fire--some white hot, some lukewarm, some frosted -straight through--you never can tell. The funny thing is--he can’t tell -himself. Why, sir, those men of yours in the City of London, they don’t -know any more about business than a babe unborn. If they were in New -York they’d have their eyeteeth skinned out of their heads in the shake -of a lamb’s tail. Why, we’ve been milking them dry for a dozen years -back. And yet, you know, somehow----” - -“Somehow--?” I echoed, encouragingly. - -“Well, sir, somehow--that’s the odd thing about it--they don’t stay -milked.” - - - - -_Disclosing the Educational Influence exerted by the Essex Coast, and -other Matters, including Reasons for Joy_ - - -Sit down here by the fire--no, in the easy chair,” said Ermyntrude, -with a note of solicitude in her kindly voice. “Mamma won’t be home for -half an hour yet, and I want a nice, quiet, serious talk with you. Oh, -it’s going to be extremely serious, and you must begin by playing that -you are at least one hundred and fifty years old.” - -“That won’t be so difficult,” I replied, not without the implication of -injury. “It will only be adding a few decades to the venerableness that -I seem always to possess in your eyes.” - -“Oh!” said Ermie, and looked at me inquiringly for a moment. Then she -seated herself, and gazed with much steadiness into the fire. I waited -for the nice, serious talk to begin--and waited a long time. - -“Well, my dear child,” I broke in upon the silence at last, “I hoped to -have been the very first to come and tell your mother how deeply glad I -was to see you all back again in Fernbank. But that wretched rheumatism -of mine--_at my age_, you know------” - -I was watching narrowly for even the faintest sign of deprecation. She -did not stir an eyelash. - -“Yes,” she suddenly began, still intently gazing into the fire; “papa -has got his money all back, and more. That is, it isn’t the same money, -but somebody else’s--I’m sure I don’t know whose. Sometimes I feel sorry -for those other people, whoever they are, who have had to give it up -to us. Then, other times, I am so glad simply to be in again where it’s -warm that I don’t care.” - -“The firelight suits your face, Ermie,” I said, noting with the pleasure -appropriate to my position as the oldest friend of the family, how -sweetly the soft radiance played upward upon the fair young rounded -throat and chin, and tipped the little nostrils with rosy light. - -“Fortunately,” she went on, as if I had not spoken, “some Americans took -the house furnished in September for three months--I think, poor souls, -that they believed it was the London season--and so we never had to -break up, and we were able to get back again in time for Uncle Dudley to -plant all his bulbs. They seem to have been very quiet people. Mamma -had a kind of notion that they would practise with bucking horses on -the tennis-lawn, and shoot at bottles and clay pigeons here in the -drawing-room. The only thing we could find that they did was to paste -thick paper over the ventilator in the dining-room. And yet a policeman -told our man that they slept with their bedroom windows open all night. -Curious, isn’t it?” - -“I like to have one of these ‘nice, quiet, serious talks’ with you, -Ermie,” I said. - -Even at this she did not lift her eyes from the grate. “Oh, don’t be -impatient--it will be serious enough,” she warned me. “They say, you -know, that drowning people see, in a single instant of time, whole years -of events, whole books full of things. Well, I’ve been under water for -six months, and--and--I’ve noticed a good deal.” - -“Ah! is there a submarine observation station at Clacton-on-Sea? Now you -speak of it, I _have_ heard of queer fish being studied there.” - -“None queerer than we, my dear friend, you may be sure. Mamma was right -in choosing the place. We never once saw a soul we knew. Of course, it -is the dullest and commonest thing on earth--but it exactly fitted us -during that awful period. We were going at first to Cromer, but -mamma learned that that was the chosen resort of dissolute theatrical -people--it seems there has been a poem written in which it is called -‘Poppy land,’ which mamma saw at once must be a cover for opium-eating -and all sorts of dissipation. So we went to Clacton instead. But what -I was going to say is this--I did a great deal of thinking all through -those six months. I don’t say that I am any wiser than I was, because, -for that matter, I am very much less sure about things than I was -before. But I was simply a blank contented fool then. Now it’s different -to the extent that I’ve stirred up all sorts of questions and problems -buzzing and barking about me, and I don’t know the answers to them, and -I can’t get clear of them, and they’re driving me out of my head--and -there you are. That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.” - -I shifted my feet on the fender, and nodded with as sensible an -expression as I could muster. - -“That’s why I said you must pretend to yourself that you are -very old--quite a fatherly person, capable of giving a girl -advice--sympathetic advice. In the first place--of course you know that -the engagement with that Hon. Knobbeleigh Jones has been off for ages. -Don’t interrupt me! It isn’t worth speaking of except for one point. -His father, Lord Skillyduff, was the principal rogue in the combination -which plundered papa of his money. Having got the Grundy money they had -no use for the Grundy girl. Now, he justified his rascality by pleading -that he had to make provision for _his_ daughters, and everybody said -he was a good father. Papa goes in again through some other opening, and -after a long fight brings out a fresh fortune, which he has taken away -from somebody else--and I heard him tell mamma that he was doing it for -the sake of _his_ daughters. People will say _he_ is a good father--I -know _I_ do.” - -“None better in this world,” I assented cordially. - -“Well, don’t you see,” Ermyntrude went on, “that puts daughters in the -light of a doubtful blessing. Papa’s whole worry and struggle was for -us--for _me_. I was the load on his back. I don’t like to be a -load. While we were prosperous, there was only one way for me to get -down--that is by marriage. When we became poor, there was another -way--that I should earn my own living. But this papa wouldn’t listen to. -He quite swore about it--vowed he would rather work his fingers to the -bone; rather do anything, no matter what it was, or what people thought -of him for doing it, than that a daughter of his should take care -of herself. He would look upon himself as disgraced, he said. Those -lodgings of ours at Clacton weren’t specially conducive to good temper, -I’m afraid; for I told him that the real disgrace would be to keep me in -idleness to sell to some other Knobbeleigh Jones, or to palm me off on -some better sort of young man who would bind himself to work for me all -his life, and then find that I would have been dear at the price of -a fortnight’s labour--and then mamma cried.--and papa, he swore -more--and--and--” - -I stirred the fire here, and then blushed to rediscover that it was -asbestos I was knocking about. “How stupid of me!” I exclaimed, and -murmured something about having been a stranger to Fernbank so long. - -Ermyntrude took no notice. “I made a pretence of going up to London on -a visit,” she continued, “and I spent five days looking about, making -inquiries, trying to get some notion of how girls who supported -themselves made a beginning. I talked a little with such few girls that -I knew as were in town, and I cared to see--guardedly, of course. They -had no idea--save in the way of the governess or music teacher. I’d cut -my throat before I’d be either of those--forced to dress like ladies on -the wages of a seamstress, and to smile under the insults of tradesmen’s -wives and their louts of children. An actress I might be, after I had -starved a long time in learning my business--but before that mamma would -have died of shame. Then there are typewriters, and lady journalists -and telegraph clerks--I am surly enough sometimes to do that last to -perfection--but they all have to have special talents or knowledge. As -for saleswomen in the shops--there are a dozen poor genteel wretches -standing outside ready to claw each other’s eyes out for every vacancy. -I went over Euston Road way at noon, and I watched the work-girls come -out of the factories and workshops, and they had such sharp, knowing, -bullying faces that I knew I should be a helpless fool among them. And -watching them--and watching the other girls on the street... in the -Strand and Piccadilly--I told you I was going to talk seriously, my dear -friend--it all came to seem to me like a nightmare. It frightened me. -These were the girls whose fathers had failed to provide for them--that -was absolutely all the difference between them and me. I had looked -lazily down at marriage as a chance of escaping being bored here at -Fernbank. They were all looking fiercely up at marriage as the one only -chance of rescue from weary toil, starvation wages, general poverty and -misery. In both cases the idea was the same--to find some man, no matter -what kind of a man, if only he will take it upon himself to provide -something different. You see what poor, dependent things we really are! -Why should it be so? That’s what I want to know.” - -“Oh, that’s all you want to know, is it?” I remarked, after a little -pause. “Well, I think--I think you had better give me notice of the -question.” - -“I have tried to read what thinkers say about it,” she added; “but they -only confuse one the more. There is a Dr Wallace whom the papers speak -of as an authority, and he has been writing a long article this very -week--or else it is an interview--and he says that everything will be -all right, that all the nice women will marry all the good men, and that -the other kinds will die off immediately, and everybody will be oh, so -happy--in a ‘regenerated society.’ That is another thing I wanted to -ask you about. He speaks--they all speak--so confidently about this -‘regenerated society.’ Do you happen to know when it is to be?” - -“The date has not been fixed, I believe,” I replied. - -The early winter twilight had darkened the room, and the light from the -grate glowed ruddily upon the girl’s face as she bent forward, her chin -upon her clasped hands, looking into the fire. - -“There is another date which remains undetermined,”’ I added, faltering -not a little at heart, but keeping my tongue under fair control. “I -should like to speak to you about it, if I may take off my lamb’s-wool -wig and Santa Claus beard, and appear before you once more as a -contemporary citizen. It is this, Ermie. I am not so very old, after -all. There is only a shade over a dozen years between us--say a baker’s -dozen. My habits--my personal qualities, tolerable and otherwise, -are more or less known to you. I am prosperous enough, so far as this -world’s goods go. But I am tired of living----” - -I stopped short, and stared in turn blankly at the mock coals. A -freezing thought had just thrust itself into the marrow of my brain. She -would think that I was saying all this because her father had regained -and augmented his fortune. I strove in a numb, puzzled way to retrace -what I had just uttered--to see if the words offered any chance of -getting away upon other ground--and could not remember at all. - -“Tired of living,” I heard Ermyntrude echo. I saw her nod her head -comprehendingly in the firelight. She sighed. - -“Yes, except upon conditions,” I burst forth. “I weary of living alone. -There hasn’t been a time for years when I didn’t long to tell you -this--and most of all at Clacton, if I had known you were at Clacton. -You have admitted yourself that _nobody_ knew you were there.” The words -came more easily now. “But always before I shrank from speaking. There -was something about you too childlike, too innocent, too--too----” - -“Too silly,” suggested Ermie, with an affable effect of helping me out. - -Then she unlocked her fingers, and, still looking into the fire, -stretched out a hand backward to me. “All the same,” she murmured, after -a little, “it isn’t an answer to my question, you know.” - -“But it is to mine!” I made glad response, “and in my question all the -others are enwrapped--always have been, always will be. And, oh, darling -one----” - -“That is mamma in the hall,” said Ermyntrude. - - - - -_Describing Impressions of a Momentous Interview, loosely gathered by -One who, although present, was not quite In it_ - - -Mrs Albert has smiled upon my suit to be her son-in-law. - -The smile did not, however, gush forth spontaneously at the outset. When -the opportunity for imparting our great news came, we three were in the -drawing-room, and Mrs Albert, who had just entered, had been allowed to -discover me holding Ermyntrude’s passive hand in mine. She cast a swift -little glance over us both, and seemed not to like what she saw. I -was conscious of the impression on the instant that Ermyntrude did not -particularly like it either. An effect of profound isolation, absurd -enough, but depressingly real, suddenly encompassed me. I began talking -something--the words coming out and scattering quite on their own -incoherent account--and the gist of what they made me say sounded in my -ears as if it were a determined enemy who was saying it Why should I be -speaking of my age, and the fact that I had held Ermie on my knee as a -child, and even of my rheumatism? And did I actually allude to them? -or only hear the clamorous echoes of conscience in my guilty soul, the -while my tongue was uttering other matters? I don’t know, and the fear -that Ermie would admit that she really hadn’t been paying attention has -restrained me from asking her since. - -But Mrs Albert was paying attention. She held me with a cool and -unblinking eye during my clumsy monologue, and she continued this steady -gaze for a time after I had finished. She stirred the small and shapely -headgear of black velvet and bird’s-wing which she had worn in from -the street, just by the fraction of a forward inch, to show that she -understood what I had been saying--and also very much which I had left -unsaid. - -“Hm--m!” the good lady remarked, at length. “I see!” - -“Well, mamma, having seen,” Ermyntrude turned languidly in her chair to -observe, lifting the hand which still rested within mine into full and -patent view, and then withdrawing it abruptly--“having seen, and been -seen, there’s really nothing more to do, is there?” - -“She is very young,” said the mother, in a tentative musing manner which -suggested the thought that I, on the other hand, was very much the other -way. - -Ermyntrude sniffed audibly, and rose to her feet. “I am -three-and-twenty,” she said, “and that is enough, thank you.” There was -something in it all which I did not understand. The sensation of being -out of place, as in the trying-on room of a dressmaker’s, oppressed me. -The sex were effecting sundry manouvres and countermarchings peculiar to -themselves--so much I could see by the way in which the two were talking -with their eyes--hut what it was all about was beyond me. The mother -finally inclined her head to one side, and pursed together her lips. -Ermyntrude drew herself to her full stature, threw up her chin for a -moment like one of Albert Moore’s superb full-throated goddesses, and -then relaxed with that half-cheerful sigh which we express in types -with “heigho!” It was at once apparent to me that the situation had -lightened--but how or why I cannot profess to guess. Uncle Dudley, to -whom I subsequently narrated what I had observed, abounded in theories, -but upon reflection they do not impress, much less convince, me. Here -is in substance one of the several hypothetical conversations which -he sketched out as having passed in that moment of pre-occupied and -surcharged silence: - -Mother [_lowering brows_]. You may be sure that at the very best it will -be Bayswater. - -Daughter [_with quiver of nostrils_]. Better that than hanging on for a -Belgravia which never comes. - -Mother [_disclosing the tips of two teeth_]. It is a chance of a title -going for ever. - -Daughter [_curling lip_]. What chance is ever likely _here?_ - -Mother [_lifting brows_]. He’s as old as Methusaleh!” - -Daughter [_flashing eyes_]. That’s my business! - -Mother [_little trembling of the eyelashes_]. You will never know how I -have striven and struggled for you! - -Daughter [_smoothing features_]. Merely the innate maternal instinct, my -dear, common to all mammalia. - -Mother [_beginning to tip head sidewise_]. It is true that Tristram is -docile, sheep-like, simple---- - -Daughter [_lifting her chin_]. And old enough to be enchained at my feet -all his life. - -Mother [_head much to one side_]. And he has always been extremely -cordial with _me_---- - -Daughter [_chin high in air_]. And not another girl in my set has had a -proposal for _years_. - -Mother [_brightening eye_]. We shall be in time to buy everything at the -January sales! - -[Mother _smiles;_ Daughter _sighs relief. The imaginations of both -wander pleasantly off to visions of sublimated Christmas shopping, in -connection with the trousseau and betrothal gifts. General joy._] - -As I have said, this is Uncle Dudley’s idea, not mine. My own fancy -prefers to conjure up a tenderer dialogue, in which the mother, all fond -solicitude, bids the maiden search well her heart, and answer only its -true appeal, and the sweet daughter, timid, fluttering, half-frightened -and wholly glad, flashes hack from the depths of her soul the rapt -assurance of her fate. But Dudley was certainly right about the ending, -as the first words Mrs Albert uttered go to show. - -“Don’t forget to remind me, then, about presents for the Gregory -children,” she said all at once, in a swift sidelong whisper at -Ermyntrude. Then she turned, and as I gazed wistfully upon her face, -it melted sedately, gracefully, a little at a time, into the smile I -sought. - -“My dear Tristram,” she began, and her voice took on a coo of genuine -kindliness and warmth as she went on, “of course Albert and I have had -other views--and the dear girl is perfectly qualified to adorn the -most exalted and exclusive circles--if I do say it myself--but--but -her happiness is our one desire, and if she feels that it is getting--I -_would_ say, if you and she are quite clear in your own minds--and we -both have the greatest confidence in your practical common-sense, and -your _honour_--and we have all learned to be fond of you--and--and I am -really very glad!” - -“Most of all things in the world, dear lady, I hoped for this,” I had -begun to say, with fervour. I stopped, upon the discovery that Mrs -Albert was not listening, but had turned and was conferring with her -daughter in half-audible asides. - -“Mercy, no!” the mother said. “They’d know in a minute that it had been -a present to us. That old Mrs Gregory is a perfect _lynx_ for detecting -such things. I suppose their boys are too big for tricycles, else your -father knows a dealer who----” - -My own Ermie looked thoughtful. “It won’t seem queer, you think, -our bursting in upon them with Christmas presents like this--without -provocation?” she asked. - -“My dear child, queer or not queer,” said Mrs Albert, “it is imperative. -You know how much depends upon it--there are plenty of others who would -be equally useful in various ways, but not like the _Gregorys_--and -if there were there’s no time now. If this could have happened, now, a -fortnight ago, or even last week----” - -“Yes, but it didn’t,” replied Ermyntrude. “It only happened to-day.” She -turned to me, with a little laugh in her eyes. “Mamma complains that we -delayed so long. We have interfered with the Christmas arrangements.” - -“If I had only known! But--I claim to be treated as one of the family, -you know--I couldn’t quite grasp what you were saying about the -Gregorys. I gather that our--our betrothal involves Christmas presents -for them, but I confess I don’t know why. Or oughtn’t I to have asked, -dear?” - -For answer Ermyntrude looked saucily into my face, twisted her dear -nose into a pretty little mocking grimace, and ran out of the room. Mrs -Albert vouchsafed no explanation, but talked of other matters--and there -were enough to talk about. - -It was not, indeed, till late in the evening, when Uncle Dudley and -I were upon our last cigar, that I happened to recall the mystifying -incident of the Gregorys. - -“That’s simplicity itself,” said Uncle Dudley. “The Gregorys own one of -the tidiest country seats in Nottinghamshire--lovely old house, sylvan -arbours, high wall, fascinating rural roads--in the very heart of county -society, too--O, a most romantic and eligible place!” - -“Well, what of it? What has that to do with Ermyntrude and me and Santa -Claus?” - -“If you will read the _Morning Post_ the day after your wedding, my -dear, dull friend, you will learn that Colonel Gregory has placed at -the disposal of a certain bridal couple for their honeymoon his ideal -country residence. The paper will not state why, but I will tell you in -confidence. It will be because the bride’s mother is a resourceful and -observant woman, who knows how to plant at Christmas that she may gather -at Easter.” - -“I hate to have you always so beastly cynical, Dudley,” I was emboldened -to exclaim. - -Uncle Dudley regarded me attentively for an instant. He took a -thoughtful sip at his drink, and then began smiling at his glass. When -he turned to me again, the smile had grown into a grin. - -“You are belated, my boy,” he said. “You ought to have married into the -Grundys years ago. You were just born to be one of the family.” - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs Albert Grundy--Observations in -Philistia, by Harold Frederic - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS GRUNDY *** - -***** This file should be named 50496-0.txt or 50496-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/4/9/50496/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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