Next day was (not unnaturally) Sunday. At half-past ten in the morning,
according to his wont, Philip Christy was seated in the drawing-room at
his sister's house, smooth silk hat in gloved hand, waiting for Frida
and her husband, Robert Monteith, to go to church with him. As he sat
there, twiddling his thumbs, or beating the devil's tattoo on the red
Japanese table, the housemaid entered. “A gentleman to see you, sir,”
she said, handing Philip a card. The young man glanced at it curiously.
A visitor to call at such an early hour!--and on Sunday morning too! How
extremely odd! This was really most irregular!
So he looked down at the card with a certain vague sense of inarticulate
disapproval. But he noticed at the same time it was finer and clearer
and more delicately engraved than any other card he had ever yet come
across. It bore in simple unobtrusive letters the unknown name, “Mr.
Bertram Ingledew.”
Though he had never heard it before, name and engraving both tended to
mollify Philip's nascent dislike. “Show the gentleman in, Martha,” he
said in his most grandiose tone; and the gentleman entered.
Philip started at sight of him. It was his friend the Alien. Philip
was quite surprised to see his madman of last night; and what was more
disconcerting still, in the self-same grey tweed home-spun suit he had
worn last evening. Now, nothing can be more gentlemanly, don't you know,
than a grey home-spun, IN its proper place; but its proper place Philip
Christy felt was certainly NOT in a respectable suburb on a Sunday
morning.
“I beg your pardon,” he said frigidly, rising from his seat with his
sternest official air--the air he was wont to assume in the anteroom at
the office when outsiders called and wished to interview his chief
“on important public business.” “To what may I owe the honour of this
visit?” For he did not care to be hunted up in his sister's house at
a moment's notice by a most casual acquaintance, whom he suspected of
being an escaped lunatic.
Bertram Ingledew, for his part, however, advanced towards his companion
of last night with the frank smile and easy bearing of a cultivated
gentleman. He was blissfully unaware of the slight he was putting upon
the respectability of Brackenhurst by appearing on Sunday in his grey
tweed suit; so he only held out his hand as to an ordinary friend, with
the simple words, “You were so extremely kind to me last night, Mr.
Christy, that as I happen to know nobody here in England, I ventured
to come round and ask your advice in unexpected circumstances that have
since arisen.”
When Bertram Ingledew looked at him, Philip once more relented. The
man's eye was so captivating. To say the truth, there was something
taking about the mysterious stranger--a curious air of unconscious
superiority--so that, the moment he came near, Philip felt himself
fascinated. He only answered, therefore, in as polite a tone as he could
easily muster, “Why, how did you get to know my name, or to trace me to
my sister's?”
“Oh, Miss Blake told me who you were and where you lived,” Bertram
replied most innocently: his tone was pure candour; “and when I went
round to your lodgings just now, they explained that you were out, but
that I should probably find you at Mrs. Monteith's; so of course I came
on here.”
Philip denied the applicability of that naive “of course” in his inmost
soul: but it was no use being angry with Mr. Bertram Ingledew. So much
he saw at once; the man was so simple-minded, so transparently natural,
one could not be angry with him. One could only smile at him, a superior
cynical London-bred smile, for an unsophisticated foreigner. So the
Civil Servant asked with a condescending air, “Well, what's your
difficulty? I'll see if peradventure I can help you out of it.” For he
reflected to himself in a flash that as Ingledew had apparently a good
round sum in gold and notes in his pocket yesterday, he was not likely
to come borrowing money this morning.
“It's like this, you see,” the Alien answered with charming simplicity,
“I haven't got any luggage.”
“Not got any luggage!” Philip repeated, awestruck, letting his jaw fall
short, and stroking his clean-shaven chin with one hand. He was more
doubtful than ever now as to the man's sanity or respectability. If
he was not a lunatic, then surely he must be this celebrated Perpignan
murderer, whom everybody was talking about, and whom the French police
were just then engaged in hunting down for extradition.
“No; I brought none with me on purpose,” Mr. Ingledew replied, as
innocently as ever. “I didn't feel quite sure about the ways, or the
customs, or the taboos of England. So I had just this one suit of
clothes made, after an English pattern of the present fashion, which I
was lucky enough to secure from a collector at home; and I thought I'd
buy everything else I wanted when I got to London. I brought nothing at
all in the way of luggage with me.”
“Not even brush and comb?” Philip interposed, horrified.
“Oh, yes, naturally, just the few things one always takes in a
vade-mecum,” Bertram Ingledew answered, with a gracefully deprecatory
wave of the hand, which Philip thought pretty enough, but extremely
foreign. “Beyond that, nothing. I felt it would be best, you see, to set
oneself up in things of the country in the country itself. One's surer
then of getting exactly what's worn in the society one mixes in.”
For the first and only time, as he said those words, the stranger struck
a chord that was familiar to Philip. “Oh, of course,” the Civil Servant
answered, with brisk acquiescence, “if you want to be really up to
date in your dress, you must go to first-rate houses in London for
everything. Nobody anywhere can cut like a good London tailor.”
Bertram Ingledew bowed his head. It was the acquiescent bow of the utter
outsider who gives no opinion at all on the subject under discussion,
because he does not possess any. As he probably came, in spite of his
disclaimer, from America or the colonies, which are belated places,
toiling in vain far in the rear of Bond Street, Philip thought this an
exceedingly proper display of bashfulness, especially in a man who had
only landed in England yesterday. But Bertram went on half-musingly.
“And you had told me,” he said, “I'm sure not meaning to mislead
me, there were no formalities or taboos of any kind on entering into
lodgings. However, I found, as soon as I'd arranged to take the rooms
and pay four guineas a week for them, which was a guinea more than she
asked me, Miss Blake would hardly let me come in at all unless I could
at once produce my luggage.” He looked comically puzzled. “I thought
at first,” he continued, gazing earnestly at Philip, “the good lady was
afraid I wouldn't pay her what I'd agreed, and would go away and leave
her in the lurch without a penny,--which was naturally a very painful
imputation. But when I offered to let her have three weeks' rent in
advance, I saw that wasn't all: there was a taboo as well; she couldn't
let me in without luggage, she said, because it would imperil some luck
or talisman to which she frequently alluded as the Respectability of her
Lodgings. This Respectability seems a very great fetich. I was obliged
at last, in order to ensure a night's lodging of any sort, to appease
it by promising I'd go up to London by the first train to-day, and fetch
down my luggage.”
“Then you've things at Charing Cross, in the cloak-room perhaps?” Philip
suggested, somewhat relieved; for he felt sure Bertram Ingledew must
have told Miss Blake it was HE who had recommended him to Heathercliff
House for furnished apartments.
“Oh, dear, no; nothing,” Bertram responded cheerfully. “Not a sack to
my back. I've only what I stand up in. And I called this morning just to
ask as I passed if you could kindly direct me to an emporium in London
where I could set myself up in all that's necessary.”
“A WHAT?” Philip interposed, catching quick at the unfamiliar word with
blank English astonishment, and more than ever convinced, in spite of
denial, that the stranger was an American.
“An emporium,” Bertram answered, in the most matter-of-fact voice: “a
magazine, don't you know; a place where they supply things in return
for money. I want to go up to London at once this morning and buy what I
require there.”
“Oh, A SHOP, you mean,” Philip replied, putting on at once his most
respectable British sabbatarian air. “I can tell you of the very best
tailor in London, whose cut is perfect; a fine flower of tailors: but
NOT to-day. You forget you're in England, and this is Sunday. On the
Continent, it's different: but you'll find no decent shops here open
to-day in town or country.”
Bertram Ingledew drew one hand over his high white brow with a strangely
puzzled air. “No more I will,” he said slowly, like one who by degrees
half recalls with an effort some forgotten fact from dim depths of his
memory. “I ought to have remembered, of course. Why, I knew that,
long ago. I read it in a book on the habits and manners of the English
people. But somehow, one never recollects these taboo days, wherever
one may be, till one's pulled up short by them in the course of one's
travels. Now, what on earth am I to do? A box, it seems, is the Open,
Sesame of the situation. Some mystic value is attached to it as a moral
amulet. I don't believe that excellent Miss Blake would consent to
take me in for a second night without the guarantee of a portmanteau to
respectablise me.”
We all have moments of weakness, even the most irreproachable Philistine
among us; and as Bertram said those words in rather a piteous voice,
it occurred to Philip Christy that the loan of a portmanteau would be a
Christian act which might perhaps simplify matters for the handsome
and engaging stranger. Besides, he was sure, after all--mystery or no
mystery--Bertram Ingledew was Somebody. That nameless charm of dignity
and distinction impressed him more and more the longer he talked with
the Alien. “Well, I think, perhaps, I could help you,” he hazarded
after a moment, in a dubious tone; though to be sure, if he lent the
portmanteau, it would be like cementing the friendship for good or for
evil; which Philip, being a prudent young man, felt to be in some ways a
trifle dangerous; for who borrows a portmanteau must needs bring it
back again--which opens the door to endless contingencies. “I MIGHT be
able--”
At that moment, their colloquy was suddenly interrupted by the entry
of a lady who immediately riveted Bertram Ingledew's attention. She was
tall and dark, a beautiful woman, of that riper and truer beauty in face
and form that only declares itself as character develops. Her features
were clear cut, rather delicate than regular; her eyes were large and
lustrous; her lips not too thin, but rich and tempting; her brow was
high, and surmounted by a luscious wealth of glossy black hair which
Bertram never remembered to have seen equalled before for its silkiness
of texture and its strange blue sheen, like a plate of steel, or the
grass of the prairies. Gliding grace distinguished her when she walked.
Her motion was equable. As once the sons of God saw the daughters of
men that they were fair, and straightway coveted them, even so Bertram
Ingledew looked on Frida Monteith, and saw at the first glance she was a
woman to be desired, a soul high-throned, very calm and beautiful.
She stood there for a moment and faced him, half in doubt, in her
flowing Oriental or Mauresque robe (for she dressed, as Philip would
have said, “artistically”), waiting to be introduced the while, and
taking good heed, as she waited, of the handsome stranger. As for
Philip, he hesitated, not quite certain in his own mind on the point
of etiquette--say rather of morals--whether one ought or ought not to
introduce “the ladies of one's family” to a casual stranger picked up
in the street, who confesses he has come on a visit to England without
a letter of introduction or even that irreducible minimum of
respectability--a portmanteau. Frida, however, had no such scruples. She
saw the young man was good-looking and gentlemanly, and she turned to
Philip with the hasty sort of glance that says as plainly as words could
say it, “Now, then! introduce me.”
Thus mutely exhorted, though with a visible effort, Philip murmured half
inarticulately, in a stifled undertone, “My sister, Mrs. Monteith--Mr.
Bertram Ingledew,” and then trembled inwardly.
It was a surprise to Bertram that the beautiful woman with the soul in
her eyes should turn out to be the sister of the very commonplace young
man with the boiled-fish expression he had met by the corner; but he
disguised his astonishment, and only interjected, as if it were the most
natural remark in the world: “I'm pleased to meet you. What a lovely
gown! and how admirably it becomes you!”
Philip opened his eyes aghast. But Frida glanced down at the dress with
a glance of approbation. The stranger's frankness, though quaint, was
really refreshing.
“I'm so glad you like it,” she said, taking the compliment with quiet
dignity, as simply as it was intended. “It's all my own taste; I chose
the stuff and designed the make of it. And I know who this is, Phil,
without your troubling to tell me; it's the gentleman you met in the
street last night, and were talking about at dinner.”
“You're quite right,” Philip answered, with a deprecating look (as who
should say, aside, “I really couldn't help it”). “He--he's rather in a
difficulty.” And then he went on to explain in a few hurried words
to Frida, with sundry shrugs and nods of profoundest import, that the
supposed lunatic or murderer or foreigner or fool had gone to Miss
Blake's without luggage of any sort; and that, “Perhaps”--very
dubitatively--“a portmanteau or bag might help him out of his temporary
difficulties.”
“Why, of course,” Frida cried impulsively, with prompt decision;
“Robert's Gladstone bag and my little brown trunk would be the very
things for him. I could lend them to him at once, if only we can get a
Sunday cab to take them.”
“NOT before service, surely,” Philip interposed, scandalised. “If he
were to take them now, you know, he'd meet all the church-people.”
“Is it taboo, then, to face the clergy with a Gladstone bag?” Bertram
asked quite seriously, in that childlike tone of simple inquiry that
Philip had noticed more than once before in him. “Your bonzes object to
meet a man with luggage? They think it unlucky?”
Frida and Philip looked at one another with quick glances, and laughed.
“Well, it's not exactly tabooed,” Frida answered gently; “and it's
not so much the rector himself, you know, as the feelings of one's
neighbours. This is a very respectable neighbourhood--oh, quite
dreadfully respectable--and people in the houses about might make a talk
of it if a cab drove away from the door as they were passing. I
think, Phil, you're right. He'd better wait till the church-people are
finished.”
“Respectability seems to be a very great object of worship in your
village,” Bertram suggested in perfect good faith. “Is it a local cult,
or is it general in England?”
Frida glanced at him, half puzzled. “Oh, I think it's pretty general,”
she answered, with a happy smile. “But perhaps the disease is a little
more epidemic about here than elsewhere. It affects the suburbs: and my
brother's got it just as badly as any one.”
“As badly as any one!” Bertram repeated with a puzzled air. “Then you
don't belong to that creed yourself? You don't bend the knee to this
embodied abstraction?--it's your brother who worships her, I suppose,
for the family?”
“Yes; he's more of a devotee than I am,” Frida went on, quite frankly,
but not a little surprised at so much freedom in a stranger. “Though
we're all of us tarred with the same brush, no doubt. It's a catching
complaint, I suppose, respectability.”
Bertram gazed at her dubiously. A complaint, did she say? Was she
serious or joking? He hardly understood her. But further discussion was
cut short for the moment by Frida good-humouredly running upstairs
to see after the Gladstone bag and brown portmanteau, into which
she crammed a few useless books and other heavy things, to serve as
make-weights for Miss Blake's injured feelings.
“You'd better wait a quarter of an hour after we go to church,” she
said, as the servant brought these necessaries into the room
where Bertram and Philip were seated. “By that time nearly all the
church-people will be safe in their seats; and Phil's conscience will
be satisfied. You can tell Miss Blake you've brought a little of your
luggage to do for to-day, and the rest will follow from town to-morrow
morning.”
“Oh, how very kind you are!” Bertram exclaimed, looking down at her
gratefully. “I'm sure I don't know what I should ever have done in this
crisis without you.”
He said it with a warmth which was certainly unconventional. Frida
coloured and looked embarrassed. There was no denying he was certainly a
most strange and untrammelled person.
“And if I might venture on a hint,” Philip put in, with a hasty glance
at his companion's extremely unsabbatical costume, “it would be that
you shouldn't try to go out much to-day in that suit you're wearing; it
looks peculiar, don't you know, and might attract attention.”
“Oh, is that a taboo too?” the stranger put in quickly, with an anxious
air. “Now, that's awfully kind of you. But it's curious, as well; for
two or three people passed my window last night, all Englishmen, as
I judged, and all with suits almost exactly like this one--which was
copied, as I told you, from an English model.”
“Last night; oh, yes,” Philip answered. “Last night was Saturday;
that makes all the difference. The suit's right enough in its way, of
course,--very neat and gentlemanly; but NOT for Sunday. You're expected
on Sundays to put on a black coat and waistcoat, you know, like the ones
I'm wearing.”
Bertram's countenance fell. “And if I'm seen in the street like this,”
he asked, “will they do anything to me? Will the guardians of the
peace--the police, I mean--arrest me?”
Frida laughed a bright little laugh of genuine amusement.
“Oh, dear, no,” she said merrily; “it isn't an affair of police at all;
not so serious as that: it's only a matter of respectability.”
“I see,” Bertram answered. “Respectability's a religious or popular, not
an official or governmental, taboo. I quite understand you. But those
are often the most dangerous sort. Will the people in the street, who
adore Respectability, be likely to attack me or mob me for disrespect to
their fetich?”
“Certainly not,” Frida replied, flushing up. He seemed to be carrying
a joke too far. “This is a free country. Everybody wears and eats and
drinks just what he pleases.”
“Well, that's all very interesting to me,” the Alien went on with a
charming smile, that disarmed her indignation; “for I've come here on
purpose to collect facts and notes about English taboos and similar
observances. I'm Secretary of a Nomological Society at home, which is
interested in pagodas, topes, and joss-houses; and I've been travelling
in Africa and in the South Sea Islands for a long time past, working at
materials for a History of Taboo, from its earliest beginnings in the
savage stage to its fully developed European complexity; so of course
all you say comes home to me greatly. Your taboos, I foresee, will prove
a most valuable and illustrative study.”
“I beg your pardon,” Philip interposed stiffly, now put upon his mettle.
“We have NO taboos at all in England. You're misled, no doubt, by a mere
playful facon de parler, which society indulges in. England, you must
remember, is a civilised country, and taboos are institutions that
belong to the lowest and most degraded savages.”
But Bertram Ingledew gazed at him in the blankest astonishment. “No
taboos!” he exclaimed, taken aback. “Why, I've read of hundreds. Among
nomological students, England has always been regarded with the greatest
interest as the home and centre of the highest and most evolved taboo
development. And you yourself,” he added with a courteous little bow,
“have already supplied me with quite half a dozen. But perhaps you call
them by some other name among yourselves; though in origin and essence,
of course, they're precisely the same as the other taboos I've been
examining so long in Asia and Africa. However, I'm afraid I'm detaining
you from the function of your joss-house. You wish, no doubt, to make
your genuflexions in the Temple of Respectability.”
And he reflected silently on the curious fact that the English
give themselves by law fifty-two weekly holidays a year, and compel
themselves by custom to waste them entirely in ceremonial observances.