VII
As soon as he was gone, a sigh of relief ran half-unawares through thelittle square party. They felt some unearthly presence had been removedfrom their midst. General Claviger turned to Monteith. "That's a curioussort of chap," he said slowly, in his military way. "Who is he, andwhere does he come from?"
"Ah, where does he come from?--that's just the question," Monteithanswered, lighting a cigar, and puffing away dubiously. "Nobody knows.He's a mystery. He poses in the role. You'd better ask Philip; it was hewho brought him here."
"I met him accidentally in the street," Philip answered, withan apologetic shrug, by no means well pleased at being thus heldresponsible for all the stranger's moral and social vagaries. "It's themerest chance acquaintance. I know nothing of his antecedents. I--er--Ilent him a bag, and he's fastened himself upon me ever since like aleech, and come constantly to my sister's. But I haven't the remotestidea who he is or where he hails from. He keeps his business wrapped upfrom all of us in the profoundest mystery."
"He's a gentleman, anyhow," the General put in with militarydecisiveness. "How manly of him to acknowledge at once about the cobblerbeing probably a near relation! Most men, you know, Christy, would havetried to hide it; HE didn't for a second. He admitted his ancestors hadall been cobblers till quite a recent period."
Philip was astonished at this verdict of the General's, for he himself,on the contrary, had noted with silent scorn that very remark as a pieceof supreme and hopeless stupidity on Bertram's part. No fellow can helphaving a cobbler for a grandfather, of course: but he need not be such afool as to volunteer any mention of the fact spontaneously.
"Yes, I thought it bold of him," Monteith answered, "almost bolder thanwas necessary; for he didn't seem to think we should be at all surprisedat it."
The General mused to himself. "He's a fine soldierly fellow," he said,gazing after the tall retreating figure. "I should like to make adragoon of him. He's the very man for a saddle. He'd dash across countryin the face of heavy guns any day with the best of them."
"He rides well," Philip answered, "and has a wonderful seat. I saw himon that bay mare of Wilder's in town the other afternoon, and I must sayhe rode much more like a gentleman than a cobbler."
"Oh, he's a gentleman," the General repeated, with unshaken conviction:"a thoroughbred gentleman." And he scanned Philip up and down with hiskeen grey eye as if internally reflecting that Philip's own right tocriticise and classify that particular species of humanity was a trifledoubtful. "I should much like to make a captain of hussars of him.He'd be splendid as a leader of irregular horse; the very man for ascrimmage!" For the General's one idea when he saw a fine specimen ofour common race was the Zulu's or the Red Indian's--what anadmirable person he would be to employ in killing and maiming hisfellow-creatures!
"He'd be better engaged so," the Dean murmured reflectively, "than indiffusing these horrid revolutionary and atheistical doctrines." For theChurch was as usual in accord with the sword; theoretically all peace,practically all bloodshed and rapine and aggression: and anythingthat was not his own opinion envisaged itself always to the Dean'scrystallised mind as revolutionary and atheistic.
"He's very like the duke, though," General Claviger went on, aftera moment's pause, during which everybody watched Bertram and Fridadisappearing down the walk round a clump of syringas. "Very like theduke. And you saw he admitted some sort of relationship, though hedidn't like to dwell upon it. You may be sure he's a by-blow of thefamily somehow. One of the Bertrams, perhaps the old duke who was outin the Crimea, may have formed an attachment for one of these Ingledewgirls--the cobbler's sisters: I dare say they were no better in theirconduct than they ought to be--and this may be the consequence."
"I'm afraid the old duke was a man of loose life and doubtfulconversation," the Dean put in, with a tone of professionaldisapprobation for the inevitable transgressions of the great and thehigh-placed. "He didn't seem to set the example he ought to have done tohis poorer brethren."
"Oh, he was a thorough old rip, the duke, if it comes to that," GeneralClaviger responded, twirling his white moustache. "And so's the presentman--a rip of the first water. They're a regular bad lot, the Bertrams,root and stock. They never set an example of anything to anybody--barhorse-breeding,--as far as I'm aware; and even at that their trainershave always fairly cheated 'em."
"The present duke's a most exemplary churchman," the Dean interposed,with Christian charity for a nobleman of position. "He gave us a coupleof thousand last year for the cathedral restoration fund."
"And that would account," Philip put in, returning abruptly to theprevious question, which had been exercising him meanwhile, "for thepeculiarly distinguished air of birth and breeding this man has abouthim." For Philip respected a duke from the bottom of his heart, andcherished the common Britannic delusion that a man who has been elevatedto that highest degree in our barbaric rank-system must acquire at thesame time a nobler type of physique and countenance, exactly as a Jewchanges his Semitic features for the European shape on conversion andbaptism.
"Oh, dear, no," the General answered in his most decided voice. "TheBertrams were never much to look at in any way: and as for the old duke,he was as insignificant a little monster of red-haired ugliness as everyou'd see in a day's march anywhere. If he hadn't been a duke, witha rent-roll of forty odd thousand a year, he'd never have got thatbeautiful Lady Camilla to consent to marry him. But, bless you,women 'll do anything for the strawberry leaves. It isn't from theBertrams this man gets his good looks. It isn't from the Bertrams. OldIngledew's daughters are pretty enough girls. If their aunts were like'em, it's there your young friend got his air of distinction."
"We never know who's who nowadays," the Dean murmured softly. Beinghimself the son of a small Scotch tradesman, brought up in the FreeKirk, and elevated into his present exalted position by the earlyintervention of a Balliol scholarship and a studentship of ChristChurch, he felt at liberty to moralise in such non-committing terms onthe gradual decay of aristocratic exclusiveness.
"I don't see it much matters what a man's family was," the General saidstoutly, "so long as he's a fine, well-made, soldierly fellow, like thisIngledew body, capable of fighting for his Queen and country. He's anAustralian, I suppose. What tall chaps they do send home, to be sure!Those Australians are going to lick us all round the field presently."
"That's the curious part of it," Philip answered. "Nobody knows what heis. He doesn't even seem to be a British subject. He calls himself anAlien. And he speaks most disrespectfully at times--well, not exactlyperhaps of the Queen in person, but at any rate of the monarchy."
"Utterly destitute of any feeling of respect for any power of any sort,human or divine," the Dean remarked, with clerical severity.
"For my part," Monteith interposed, knocking his ash off savagely, "Ithink the man's a swindler; and the more I see of him, the less I likehim. He's never explained to us how he came here at all, or what thedickens he came for. He refuses to say where he lives or what's hisnationality. He poses as a sort of unexplained Caspar Hauser. In myopinion, these mystery men are always impostors. He had no letters ofintroduction to anybody at Brackenhurst; and he thrust himself uponPhilip in a most peculiar way; ever since which he's insisted uponcoming to my house almost daily. I don't like him myself: it's Mrs.Monteith who insists upon having him here."
"He fascinates me," the General said frankly. "I don't at all wonder thewomen like him. As long as he was by, though I don't agree with one wordhe says, I couldn't help looking at him and listening to him intently."
"So he does me," Philip answered, since the General gave him the cue."And I notice it's the same with people in the train. They always listento him, though sometimes he preaches the most extravagant doctrines--oh,much worse than anything he's said here this afternoon. He's reallyquite eccentric."
"What sort of doctrines?" the Dean inquired, with languid zeal. "Not, Ihope, irreligious?"
"Oh, dear, no," Philip answered; "not that so
much. He troubles himselfvery little, I think, about religion. Social doctrines, don't you know;such very queer views--about women, and so forth."
"Indeed?" the Dean said quickly, drawing himself up very stiff: for youtouch the ark of God for the modern cleric when you touch the questionof the relations of the sexes. "And what does he say? It's highlyundesirable men should go about the country inciting to rebellion onsuch fundamental points of moral order in public railway carriages."For it is a peculiarity of minds constituted like the Dean's (say,ninety-nine per cent. of the population) to hold that the more importanta subject is to our general happiness, the less ought we all to thinkabout it and discuss it.
"Why, he has very queer ideas," Philip went on, slightly hesitating; forhe shared the common vulgar inability to phrase exposition of a certainclass of subjects in any but the crudest and ugliest phraseology. "Heseems to think, don't you know, the recognised forms of vice--well, whatall young men do--you know what I mean--Of course it's not right, butstill they do them--" The Dean nodded a cautious acquiescence. "Hethinks they're horribly wrong and distressing; but he makes nothing atall of the virtue of decent girls and the peace of families."
"If I found a man preaching that sort of doctrine to my wife or mydaughters," Monteith said savagely, "I know what _I_'d do--I'd put abullet through him."
"And quite right, too," the General murmured approvingly.
Professional considerations made the Dean refrain from endorsing thisopen expression of murderous sentiment in its fullest form; a clergymanought always to keep up some decent semblance of respect for the Gospeland the Ten Commandments--or, at least, the greater part of them. Sohe placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together in the usualdeliberative clerical way, gazed blankly through the gap, and answeredwith mild and perfunctory disapprobation: "A bullet would perhaps bean unnecessarily severe form of punishment to mete out; but I confessI could excuse the man who was so far carried away by his righteousindignation as to duck the fellow in the nearest horse-pond."
"Well, I don't know about that," Philip replied, with an outburst ofunwonted courage and originality; for he was beginning to like, and hehad always from the first respected, Bertram. "There's something aboutthe man that makes me feel--even when I differ from him most--that hebelieves it all, and is thoroughly in earnest. I dare say I'm wrong, butI always have a notion he's a better man than me, in spite of all hisnonsense,--higher and clearer and differently constituted,--and that ifonly I could climb to just where he has got, perhaps I should see thingsin the same light that he does."
It was a wonderful speech for Philip--a speech above himself; but, allthe same, by a fetch of inspiration he actually made it. Intercoursewith Bertram had profoundly impressed his feeble nature. But the Deanshook his head.
"A very undesirable young man for you to see too much of, I'm sure,Mr. Christy," he said, with marked disapprobation. For, in the Dean'sopinion, it was a most dangerous thing for a man to think, especiallywhen he's young; thinking is, of course, so likely to unsettle him!
The General, on the other hand, nodded his stern grey head once or twicereflectively.
"He's a remarkable young fellow," he said, after a pause; "a mostremarkable young fellow. As I said before, he somehow fascinates me.I'd immensely like to put that young fellow into a smart hussaruniform, mount him on a good charger of the Punjaub breed, and send himhelter-skelter, pull-devil, pull-baker, among my old friends the Duranison the North-West frontier."