IV
Whether Philip Christy liked it or not, the Monteiths and he weresoon fairly committed to a tolerably close acquaintance with BertramIngledew. For, as chance would have it, on the Monday morningBertram went up to town in the very same carriage with Philip and hisbrother-in-law, to set himself up in necessaries of life for a sixor eight months' stay in England. When he returned that night toBrackenhurst with two large trunks, full of underclothing and so forth,he had to come round once more to the Monteiths, as Philip anticipated,to bring back the Gladstone bag and the brown portmanteau. He did itwith so much graceful and gracious courtesy, and such manly gratitudefor the favour done him, that he left still more deeply than ever onFrida's mind the impression of a gentleman. He had found out all theright shops to go to in London, he said; and he had ordered everythingnecessary to social salvation at the very best tailor's, so strictlyin accordance with Philip's instructions that he thought he shouldnow transgress no more the sumptuary rules in that matter made andestablished, as long as he remained in this realm of England. He hadcommanded a black cut-away coat, suitable for Sunday morning; and acurious garment called a frock-coat, buttoned tight over the chest, tobe worn in the afternoon, especially in London; and a still quaintercoat, made of shiny broadcloth, with strange tails behind, which wasconsidered "respectable," after seven P.M., for a certain restrictedclass of citizens--those who paid a particular impost known asincome-tax, as far as he could gather from what the tailor told him:though the classes who really did any good in the state, the working menand so forth, seemed exempted by general consent from wearing it. Theirdress, indeed, he observed, was, strange to say, the least cared for andevidently the least costly of anybody's.
He admired the Monteith children so unaffectedly, too, telling them howpretty and how sweet-mannered they were to their very faces, that hequite won Frida's heart; though Robert did not like it. Robert hadevidently some deep-seated superstition about the matter; for he sentMaimie, the eldest girl, out of the room at once; she was four yearsold; and he took little Archie, the two-year-old, on his knee, as if toguard him from some moral or social contagion. Then Bertram rememberedhow he had seen African mothers beat or pinch their children till theymade them cry, to avert the evil omen, when he praised them to theirfaces; and he recollected, too, that most fetichistic races believe inNemesis--that is to say, in jealous gods, who, if they see you love achild too much, or admire it too greatly, will take it from you or do itsome grievous bodily harm, such as blinding it or maiming it, in orderto pay you out for thinking yourself too fortunate. He did not doubt,therefore, but that in Scotland, which he knew by report to be a countryexceptionally given over to terrible superstitions, the people stillthought their sanguinary Calvinistic deity, fashioned by a race of sternJohn Knoxes in their own image, would do some harm to an over-praisedchild, "to wean them from it." He was glad to see, however, that Fridaat least did not share this degrading and hateful belief, handed downfrom the most fiendish of savage conceptions. On the contrary, sheseemed delighted that Bertram should pat little Maimie on the head, andpraise her sunny smile and her lovely hair "just like her mother's."
To Philip, this was all a rather serious matter. He felt he wasresponsible for having introduced the mysterious Alien, howeverunwillingly, into the bosom of Robert Monteith's family. Now, Philip wasnot rich, and Frida was supposed to have "made a good match of it"--thatis to say, she had married a man a great deal wealthier than her ownupbringing. So Philip, after his kind, thought much of the Monteithconnection. He lived in lodgings at Brackenhurst, at a highlyinconvenient distance from town, so as to be near their house, and catchwhatever rays of reflected glory might fall upon his head like a shadowyhalo from their horses and carriages, their dinners and garden-parties.He did not like, therefore, to introduce into his sister's house anybodythat Robert Monteith, that moneyed man of oil, in the West Africantrade, might consider an undesirable acquaintance. But as time woreon, and Bertram's new clothes came home from the tailor's, it began tostrike the Civil Servant's mind that the mysterious Alien, though heexcited much comment and conjecture in Brackenhurst, was accepted onthe whole by local society as rather an acquisition to its ranks thanotherwise. He was well off: he was well dressed: he had no trade orprofession: and Brackenhurst, undermanned, hailed him as a godsendfor afternoon teas and informal tennis-parties. That ineffable air ofdistinction as of one royal born, which Philip had noticed at once thefirst evening they met, seemed to strike and impress almost everybodywho saw him. People felt he was mysterious, but at any rate he wasSomeone. And then he had been everywhere--except in Europe; and had seeneverything--except their own society: and he talked agreeably when hewas not on taboos: and in suburban towns, don't you know, an outsiderwho brings fresh blood into the field--who has anything to say we do notall know beforehand--is always welcome! So Brackenhurst accepted BertramIngledew before long, as an eccentric but interesting and romanticperson.
Not that he stopped much in Brackenhurst itself. He went up to townevery day almost as regularly as Robert Monteith and Philip Christy.He had things he wanted to observe there, he said, for the work hewas engaged upon. And the work clearly occupied the best part of hisenergies. Every night he came down to Brackenhurst with his notebookcrammed full of modern facts and illustrative instances. He worked mostof all in the East End, he told Frida confidentially: there he could seebest the remote results of certain painful English customs and usages hewas anxious to study. Still, he often went west, too; for the West Endtaboos, though not in some cases so distressing as the East End ones,were at times much more curiously illustrative and ridiculous. He mustmaster all branches of the subject alike. He spoke so seriously thatafter a time Frida, who was just at first inclined to laugh at hisodd way of putting things, began to take it all in the end quite asseriously as he did. He felt more at home with her than with anybodyelse at Brackenhurst. She had sympathetic eyes; and he lived onsympathy. He came to her so often for help in his difficulties that shesoon saw he really meant all he said, and was genuinely puzzled in avery queer way by many varied aspects of English society.
In time the two grew quite intimate together. But on one point Bertramwould never give his new friend the slightest information; and that wasthe whereabouts of that mysterious "home" he so often referred to. Oddlyenough, no one ever questioned him closely on the subject. A certainsingular reserve of his, which alternated curiously with his perfectfrankness, prevented them from trespassing so far on his individuality.People felt they must not. Somehow, when Bertram Ingledew let it oncebe felt he did not wish to be questioned on any particular point, evenwomen managed to restrain their curiosity: and he would have beeneither a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured tocontinue questioning him any further. So, though many people hazardedguesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him thepoint-blank question: Who are you, if you please, and what do you wanthere?
The Alien went out a great deal with the Monteiths. Robert himself didnot like the fellow, he said: one never quite knew what the deuce he wasdriving at; but Frida found him always more and more charming,--so fullof information!--while Philip admitted he was excellent form, and such acapital tennis player! So whenever Philip had a day off in thecountry, they three went out in the fields together, and Frida at leastthoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the freedom and freshness of thenewcomer's conversation.
On one such day they went out, as it chanced, into the meadows thatstretch up the hill behind Brackenhurst. Frida remembered it wellafterwards. It was the day when an annual saturnalia of vulgar viceusurps and pollutes the open downs at Epsom. Bertram did not care to seeit, he said--the rabble of a great town turned loose to desecrate theopen face of nature--even regarded as a matter of popular custom; hehad looked on at much the same orgies before in New Guinea and on theZambesi, and they only depressed him: so he stopped at Brackenhurst, andwent for a walk instead in the fresh summer meadows. Robert Monteith,for his part, had gone to the Derby--so they call that or
gy--and Philiphad meant to accompany him in the dogcart, but remained behind at thelast moment to take care of Frida; for Frida, being a lady at heart,always shrank from the pollution of vulgar assemblies. As theywalked together across the lush green fields, thick with campion andyellow-rattle, they came to a dense copse with a rustic gate, abovewhich a threatening notice-board frowned them straight in the face,bearing the usual selfish and anti-social inscription, "Trespassers willbe prosecuted."
"Let's go in here and pick orchids," Bertram suggested, leaning overthe gate. "Just see how pretty they are! The scented white butterfly! Itloves moist bogland. Now, Mrs. Monteith, wouldn't a few long sprays ofthat lovely thing look charming on your dinner-table?"
"But it's preserved," Philip interposed with an awestruck face."You can't go in there: it's Sir Lionel Longden's, and he's awfullyparticular."
"Can't go in there? Oh, nonsense," Bertram answered, with a merry laugh,vaulting the gate like a practised athlete. "Mrs. Monteith can get overeasily enough, I'm sure. She's as light as a fawn. May I help you over?"And he held one hand out.
"But it's private," Philip went on, in a somewhat horrified voice; "andthe pheasants are sitting."
"Private? How can it be? There's nothing sown here. It's all wild wood;we can't do any damage. If it was growing crops, of course, one wouldwalk through it not at all, or at least very carefully. But this ispure woodland. Are the pheasants tabooed, then? or why mayn't we go nearthem?"
"They're not tabooed, but they're preserved," Philip answered somewhattestily, making a delicate distinction without a difference, after thefashion dear to the official intellect. "This land belongs to Sir LionelLongden, I tell you, and he chooses to lay it all down in pheasants.He bought it and paid for it, so he has a right, I suppose, to do as helikes with it."
"That's the funniest thing of all about these taboos," Bertram mused, asif half to himself. "The very people whom they injure and inconveniencethe most, the people whom they hamper and cramp and debar, don't seem toobject to them, but believe in them and are afraid of them. In Samoa, Iremember, certain fruits and fish and animals and so forth were tabooedto the chiefs, and nobody else ever dared to eat them. They thoughtit was wrong, and said, if they did, some nameless evil would at onceovertake them. These nameless terrors, these bodiless superstitions, arealways the deepest. People fight hardest to preserve their bogeys.They fancy some appalling unknown dissolution would at once result fromreasonable action. I tried one day to persuade a poor devil of a fellowin Samoa who'd caught one of these fish, and who was terribly hungry,that no harm would come to him if he cooked it and ate it. But he wastoo slavishly frightened to follow my advice; he said it was taboo tothe god-descended chiefs: if a mortal man tasted it, he would die on thespot: so nothing on earth would induce him to try it. Though to be sure,even there, nobody ever went quite so far as to taboo the very soil ofearth itself: everybody might till and hunt where he liked. It's only inEurope, where evolution goes furthest, that taboo has reached that lastsilly pitch of injustice and absurdity. Well, we're not afraid of thefetich, you and I, Mrs. Monteith. Jump up on the gate; I'll give you ahand over!" And he held out one strong arm as he spoke to aid her.
Frida had no such fanatical respect for the bogey of vested interests asher superstitious brother, so she mounted the gate gracefully--she wasalways graceful. Bertram took her small hand and jumped her down on theother side, while Philip, not liking to show himself less bold than awoman in this matter, climbed over it after her, though with no smallmisgivings. They strolled on into the wood, picking the pretty whiteorchids by the way as they went, for some little distance. The richmould underfoot was thick with sweet woodruff and trailing loosestrife.Every now and again, as they stirred the lithe brambles that encroachedupon the path, a pheasant rose from the ground with a loud whir-r-rbefore them. Philip felt most uneasy. "You'll have the keepers afteryou in a minute," he said, with a deprecating shrug. "This is just fullnesting time. They're down upon anybody who disturbs the pheasants."
"But the pheasants can't BELONG to any one," Bertram cried, with agreatly amused face. "You may taboo the land--I understand that'sdone--but surely you can't taboo a wild bird that can fly as it likesfrom one piece of ground away into another."
Philip enlightened his ignorance by giving him off-hand a brief andprofoundly servile account of the English game-laws, interspersed withsundry anecdotes of poachers and poaching. Bertram listened with aninterested but gravely disapproving face. "And do you mean to say,"he asked at last "they send men to prison as criminals for catching orshooting hares and pheasants?"
"Why, certainly," Philip answered. "It's an offence against the law, andalso a crime against the rights of property."
"Against the law, yes; but how on earth can it be a crime against therights of property? Obviously the pheasant's the property of the man whohappens to shoot it. How can it belong to him and also to the fellow whotaboos the particular piece of ground it was snared on?"
"It doesn't belong to the man who shoots it at all," Philip answered,rather angrily. "It belongs to the man who owns the land, of course, andwho chooses to preserve it."
"Oh, I see," Bertram replied. "Then you disregard the rights of propertyaltogether, and only consider the privileges of taboo. As a principle,that's intelligible. One sees it's consistent. But how is it that youall allow these chiefs--landlords, don't you call them?--to taboo thesoil and prevent you all from even walking over it? Don't you see thatif you chose to combine in a body and insist upon the recognition ofyour natural rights,--if you determined to make the landlords give uptheir taboo, and cease from injustice,--they'd have to yield to you, andthen you could exercise your native right of going where you pleased,and cultivate the land in common for the public benefit, instead ofleaving it, as now, to be cultivated anyhow, or turned into waste forthe benefit of the tabooers?"
"But it would be WRONG to take it from them," Philip cried, growingfiery red and half losing his temper, for he really believed it. "Itwould be sheer confiscation; the land's their own; they either bought itor inherited it from their fathers. If you were to begin taking it away,what guarantee would you have left for any of the rights of propertygenerally?"
"You didn't recognise the rights of property of the fellow who killedthe pheasant, though," Bertram interposed, laughing, and imperturbablygood-humoured. "But that's always the way with these taboos, everywhere.They subsist just because the vast majority even of those who areobviously wronged and injured by them really believe in them. They thinkthey're guaranteed by some divine prescription. The fetich guards them.In Polynesia, I recollect, some chiefs could taboo almost anything theyliked, even a girl or a woman, or fruit and fish and animals and houses:and after the chief had once said, 'It is taboo,' everybody else wasafraid to touch them. Of course, the fact that a chief or a landownerhas bought and paid for a particular privilege or species of taboo, orhas inherited it from his fathers, doesn't give him any better moralclaim to it. The question is, 'Is the claim in itself right andreasonable?' For a wrong is only all the more a wrong for having beenlong and persistently exercised. The Central Africans say, 'This is myslave; I bought her and paid for her; I've a right, if I like, to killher and eat her.' The king of Ibo, on the West Coast, had a hereditaryright to offer up as a human sacrifice the first man he met every timehe quitted his palace; and he was quite surprised audacious freethinkersshould call the morality of his right in question. If you English wereall in a body to see through this queer land-taboo, now, which drivesyour poor off the soil, and prevents you all from even walking atliberty over the surface of the waste in your own country, you couldeasily--"
"Oh, Lord, what shall we do!" Philip interposed in a voice of abjectterror. "If here isn't Sir Lionel!"
And sure enough, right across the narrow path in front of them stood ashort, fat, stumpy, unimpressive little man, with a very red face, and aNorfolk jacket, boiling over with anger.
"What are you people doing here?" he cried, undeterred by the presenceo
f a lady, and speaking in the insolent, supercilious voice of theEnglish landlord in defence of his pheasant preserves. "This is privateproperty. You must have seen the notice at the gate, 'Trespassers willbe prosecuted.'"
"Yes, we did see it," Bertram answered, with his unruffled smile; "andthinking it an uncalled-for piece of aggressive churlishness, both inform and substance,--why, we took the liberty to disregard it."
Sir Lionel glared at him. In that servile neighbourhood, almost entirelyinhabited by the flunkeys of villadom, it was a complete novelty to himto be thus bearded in his den. He gasped with anger. "Do you mean tosay," he gurgled out, growing purple to the neck, "you came in heredeliberately to disturb my pheasants, and then brazen it out to my facelike this, sir? Go back the way you came, or I'll call my keepers."
"No, I will NOT go back the way I came," Bertram responded deliberately,with perfect self-control, and with a side-glance at Frida. "Every humanbeing has a natural right to walk across this copse, which is allwaste ground, and has no crop sown in it. The pheasants can't be yours;they're common property. Besides, there's a lady. We mean to make ourway across the copse at our leisure, picking flowers as we go, and comeout into the road on the other side of the spinney. It's a universalright of which no country and no law can possibly deprive us."
Sir Lionel was livid with rage. Strange as it may appear to anyreasoning mind, the man really believed he had a natural right toprevent people from crossing that strip of wood where his pheasants weresitting. His ancestors had assumed it from time immemorial, and by dintof never being questioned had come to regard the absurd usurpation asquite fair and proper. He placed himself straight across the narrowpath, blocking it up with his short and stumpy figure. "Now look here,young man," he said, with all the insolence of his caste: "if you try togo on, I'll stand here in your way; and if you dare to touch me, it'sa common assault, and, by George, you'll have to answer at law for theconsequences."
Bertram Ingledew for his part was all sweet reasonableness. He raisedone deprecating hand. "Now, before we come to open hostilities," he saidin a gentle voice, with that unfailing smile of his, "let's talk thematter over like rational beings. Let's try to be logical. This copseis considered yours by the actual law of the country you live in: yourtribe permits it to you: you're allowed to taboo it. Very well, then; Imake all possible allowances for your strange hallucination. You've beenbrought up to think you had some mystic and intangible claim to thiscorner of earth more than other people, your even Christians. Thatclaim, of course, you can't logically defend; but failing arguments, youwant to fight for it. Wouldn't it be more reasonable, now, to show youhad some RIGHT or JUSTICE in the matter? I'm always reasonable: if youcan convince me of the propriety and equity of your claim, I'll go backas you wish by the way I entered. If not--well, there's a lady here, andI'm bound, as a man, to help her safely over."
Sir Lionel almost choked. "I see what you are," he gasped out withdifficulty. "I've heard this sort of rubbish more than once before.You're one of these damned land-nationalising radicals."
"On the contrary," Bertram answered, urbane as ever, with charmingpoliteness of tone and manner: "I'm a born conservative. I'm tenaciousto an almost foolishly sentimental degree of every old custom orpractice or idea; unless, indeed, it's either wicked or silly--like mostof your English ones."
He raised his hat, and made as if he would pass on. Now, nothing annoysan angry savage or an uneducated person so much as the perfect coolnessof a civilised and cultivated man when he himself is boiling withindignation. He feels its superiority an affront on his barbarism. So,with a vulgar oath, Sir Lionel flung himself point-blank in the way."Damn it all, no you won't, sir!" he cried. "I'll soon put a stop to allthat, I can tell you. You shan't go on one step without committing anassault upon me." And he drew himself up, four-square, as if for battle.
"Oh, just as you like," Bertram answered coolly, never losing histemper. "I'm not afraid of taboos: I've seen too many of them." And hegazed at the fat little angry man with a gentle expression of mingledcontempt and amusement.
For a minute, Frida thought they were really going to fight, and drewback in horror to await the contest. But such a warlike notion neverentered the man of peace's head. He took a step backward for a secondand calmly surveyed his antagonist with a critical scrutiny. Sir Lionelwas short and stout and puffy; Bertram Ingledew was tall and strongand well-knit and athletic. After an instant's pause, during which thedoughty baronet stood doubling his fat fists and glaring silent wrathat his lither opponent, Bertram made a sudden dart forward, seized thelittle stout man bodily in his stalwart arms, and lifting him like ababy, in spite of kicks and struggles, carried him a hundred pacesto one side of the path, where he laid him down gingerly withoutunnecessary violence on a bed of young bracken. Then he returned quitecalmly, as if nothing had happened, to Frida's side, with that quietlittle smile on his unruffled countenance.
Frida had not quite approved of all this small episode, for she toobelieved in the righteousness of taboo, like most other Englishwomen,and devoutly accepted the common priestly doctrine, that the earth isthe landlord's and the fulness thereof; but still, being a woman, andtherefore an admirer of physical strength in men, she could not helpapplauding to herself the masterly way in which her squire had carriedhis antagonist captive. When he returned, she beamed upon him withfriendly confidence. But Philip was very much frightened indeed.
"You'll have to pay for this, you know," he said. "This is a law-abidingland. He'll bring an action against you for assault and battery; andyou'll get three months for it."
"I don't think so," Bertram answered, still placid and unruffled. "Therewere three of us who saw him; and it was a very ignominious positionindeed for a person who sets up to be a great chief in the country.He won't like the little boys on his own estate to know the great SirLionel was lifted up against his will, carried about like a baby, andset down in a bracken-bed. Indeed, I was more than sorry to have to dosuch a thing to a man of his years; but you see he WOULD have it. It'sthe only way to deal with these tabooing chiefs. You must face them andbe done with it. In the Caroline Islands, once, I had to do the samething to a cazique who was going to cook and eat a very pretty younggirl of his own retainers. He wouldn't listen to reason; the law was onhis side; so, being happily NOT a law-abiding person myself, I took himup in my arms, and walked off with him bodily, and was obliged to drophim down into a very painful bed of stinging plants like nettles, so asto give myself time to escape with the girl clear out of his clutches. Iregretted having to do it so roughly, of course; but there was no otherway out of it."
As he spoke, for the first time it really came home to Frida's mind thatBertram Ingledew, standing there before her, regarded in very truth thePolynesian chief and Sir Lionel Longden as much about the same sort ofunreasoning people--savages to be argued with and cajoled if possible;but if not, then to be treated with calm firmness and force, as anEnglish officer on an exploring expedition might treat a wrathfulCentral African kinglet. And in a dim sort of way, too, it began tostrike her by degrees that the analogy was a true one, that BertramIngledew, among the Englishmen with whom she was accustomed to mix,was like a civilised being in the midst of barbarians, who feel andrecognise but dimly and half-unconsciously his innate superiority.
By the time they had reached the gate on the other side of the hanger,Sir Lionel overtook them, boiling over with indignation.
"Your card, sir," he gasped out inarticulately to the calmly innocentAlien; "you must answer for all this. Your card, I say, instantly!"
Bertram looked at him with a fixed gaze. Sir Lionel, having had goodproof of his antagonist's strength, kept his distance cautiously.
"Certainly NOT, my good friend," Bertram replied, in a firm tone."Why should _I_, who am the injured and insulted party, assist YOU inidentifying me? It was you who aggressed upon my free individuality. Ifyou want to call in the aid of an unjust law to back up an unjust andirrational taboo, you must find out for yourself who I am,
and where Icome from. But I wouldn't advise you to do anything so foolish. Three ofus here saw you in the ridiculous position into which by your obstinacyyou compelled me to put you; and you wouldn't like to hear us recount itin public, with picturesque details, to your brother magistrates. Let mesay one thing more to you," he added, after a pause, in that peculiarlysoft and melodious voice of his. "Don't you think, on reflection--evenif you're foolish enough and illogical enough really to believe inthe sacredness of the taboo by virtue of which you try to exclude yourfellow-tribesmen from their fair share of enjoyment of the soil ofEngland--don't you think you might at any rate exercise your imaginarypowers over the land you arrogate to yourself with a little moregentleness and common politeness? How petty and narrow it looks to useeven an undoubted right, far more a tribal taboo, in a tyrannical andneedlessly aggressive manner! How mean and small and low and churlish!The damage we did your land, as you call it--if we did any at all--wascertainly not a ha'pennyworth. Was it consonant with your dignity as achief in the tribe to get so hot and angry about so small a value? Howgrotesque to make so much fuss and noise about a matter of a ha'penny!We, who were the aggrieved parties, we, whom you attempted to debarby main force from the common human right to walk freely over earthwherever there's nothing sown or planted, and who were obliged to removeyou as an obstacle out of our path, at some personal inconvenience"--(heglanced askance at his clothes, crumpled and soiled by Sir Lionel'sunseemly resistance)--"WE didn't lose our tempers, or attempt to revileyou. We were cool and collected. But a taboo must be on its very lastlegs when it requires the aid of terrifying notices at every corner inorder to preserve it; and I think this of yours must be well on the wayto abolition. Still, as I should like to part friends"--he drew a coinfrom his pocket, and held it out between his finger and thumb with acourteous bow towards Sir Lionel--"I gladly tender you a ha'pennyin compensation for any supposed harm we may possibly have done yourimaginary rights by walking through the wood here."