ON THE TRUMPINGTON ROAD
Professor Ingleby lived on the Trumpington Road, about a mile and a
quarter from the Senate House. Her residence was a large and handsome
house shut in by a high wall, with extensive grounds, and surrounded by
high trees, so that no one could see the garden from the main road. The
house was a certain mystery to the girls who on Sundays took their
constitutional to Trumpington and back. Some said that the Professor was
ashamed of her husband, which was the reason why he was never seen, not
even at Church; others said that she kept him in such rigid discipline
that she refused the poor man permission even to walk outside the
grounds of the house. Her two daughters, who regularly came to church
with their mother, were pretty girls, but had a submissive gentle look
quite strange among the turbulent young spirits of the University. They
were never seen in society; and for some reason unknown to anybody
except herself, the Professor refused to enter them at any college.
Meantime no one was invited to the house: when one or two ladies tried
to break through the reserve so strangely maintained by the most
learned Professor in the University, and left their cards, the visit
was formally returned by the Professor herself, accompanied by one of
her girls. But things went no further, and invitations were neither
accepted nor returned. It is therefore not surprising that this learned
woman, who seemed guided by none of the motives which influence most
women--who was not ambitious, who refused rank, who desired not
money--gradually came to bear a mythical character. She was represented
as an ogre: the undergraduates, always fond of making up stories, amused
themselves by inventing legends about her home life and her autocratic
rule. Some, however, said that the house was haunted, her husband off
his head, and her daughters weak in their intellect. There was,
therefore, some astonishment when it was announced officially that the
Professor was bringing Lord Chester to stay at her own house--'in
perfect seclusion,' added the paper, to the disgust of all Cambridge,
who would have liked to make much of this interesting young peer.
However, long vacation had begun when he came up, so that the few left
were either the reading undergraduates or the dons.
'Here,' said the Professor, as she ushered her guest into a spacious
hall, with doors opening into other rooms on either hand, 'you will find
yourself in a house of the past. Nothing in my husband's house, or
hardly anything, that is not two hundred years old at least; nothing
which does not belong to the former dynasty: we use as little as
possible that is new.'
Lord Chester looked about him: the hall was hung with pictures, and
these were of a kind new to him, for they represented scenes in which
man was not only the executive hand, but also the directing head,
usurping to himself the functions of the Higher Intelligence. Thus Man
was sitting on the Judicial Bench; Man was preaching in the Church; Man
was holding debate in Parliament; Man was writing books; Man was
studying. Where, then, was Woman? She was represented as spinning,
sewing, nursing the baby, engaged in domestic pursuits, being wooed by
young lovers, young herself, sitting among the children.
'You like our pictures?' asked the Professor. 'They were painted during
the Subjection of Woman two hundred years ago. Men in those days worked
for women; women gave men their love and sympathy: without love, which
is a stimulus, labour is painful to man; without sympathy, which
supports, labour is intolerable to him; with, or without,
labour--necessary work with head or hand for the daily bread--is almost
always intolerable to woman. Therefore, since the Great Revolution,
there has been no good work done by man, and no work at all by women.'
She opened a door, holding the handle for a moment, as if with reverence
for what was within.
'Here is our library,' she whispered. 'Come, let me present you to my
husband. I warn you, beforehand, that our manners are like our
furniture--old-fashioned.'
It was a large room, filled with books of ancient aspect: at a table
sat, among his papers, a venerable old man, the like of whom Lord
Chester had never seen before. It must be owned that the existing régime
did not produce successful results in old men. They were too often
frivolous or petulant; they were sometimes querulous; they complained of
the want of respect with which they were treated, and yet generally
neither said nor did anything worthy of respect.
But this was a dignified old man: thin white locks hung round his square
forehead, beneath which were eyes still clear and full of kindliness;
and his mobile lips parted with a peculiarly sweet smile when he greeted
his guest. For the first time in his life, Lord Chester looked, with
wonder, upon a man who bore in his face and his carriage the air of
Authority.
The room was his study: the walls were hidden with books; the table was
covered with papers. Strange, indeed, to see an old man in such a place,
engaged in such pursuits!
'Be welcome,' he said, 'to my poor house. Your lordship has, I learn,
been the pupil of my wife.'
'An apt and ready pupil,' she interposed, with meaning.
'I rejoice to hear it. You will now, if you please, be my pupil--for a
short time only. You have much to learn, and but a brief space to learn
it in before we proceed upon the Mission of which you know. Will you
leave Lord Chester with me, my dear?'
The Professor left them alone.
'Sit down, my lord. I would first ask you a few questions.'
He questioned the young man with great care; ascertained that he knew
already, having been taught in these late days by the Professor, the
most important points of ancient history; that he was fully acquainted
with his own pedigree, and _what it meant_; that he was filled with
indignation and shame at the condition of his country; that he was ready
to throw off the restraints and prejudices of Religion, and eager to
become the Leader of the 'Great Revolt,' if he only knew how to begin.
'But,' said Lord Chester, stammering and confused, 'I shall want
help--direction--even words. If the Professor----' he looked about in
confusion.
'I will find you the help you want. Look to me, and to those who work
with me, for guidance. This is a man's movement, and must be guided by
men alone. Sufficient for the moment that we have in your lordship our
true leader, that you will consent to be guided until you know enough to
lead--and that you will be with us--to the very death, if that must be.'
'To the very death,' replied Lord Chester, holding out his hand.
'It is well that you should first know,' the old man went on, 'who I am,
and to what hands you entrust your future. Learn, then, that by secret
laying on of hands the ancient Episcopal Order hath been carried on, and
continues unto this day. Though there are now but two or three Bishops
remaining of the old Church, I am one--the Bishop of London. This
library contains the theology of our Church--the works of the Fathers.
The Old Faith shall be taught to you--the faith of your wise fathers.'
Lord Chester stared; for the Professor had told him nothing of this.
'You may judge of all things,' said the Bishop, 'by their fruits. You
have seen the fruits of the New Religion: you have gone through the
length and the breadth of the land, and have found whither the
superstition of the Perfect Woman leads. I shall teach you the nobler
Creed, the higher Faith,--that'--here his voice lowered, and his eyes
were raised--'that, my son, of the PERFECT MAN--the DIVINE MAN.
'And now,' he went on, after a pause, ringing the bell, 'I want to
introduce to you some of your future officers and followers.'
There appeared in answer to this summons a small band of half a dozen
young men. Among them, to Lord Chester's amazement, were two friends of
his own, the very last men whom he would have expected to meet. They
were Algy Dunquerque, the young fellow we have already mentioned, and a
certain Jack Kennion, as good a rider, cricketer, and racquet-player as
any in the country. These two men in the plot? Had he been walking and
living among conspirators?
The two entered, but they said nothing. Yet the look of satisfaction on
their faces spoke volumes.
'Gentlemen,' said the Bishop, 'I desire to present you to the Earl of
Chester. In this house and among ourselves he is already what he will
shortly be to the whole world--His Royal Highness the Earl of Chester,
heir to the crown--nay--actual King of England. The day long dreamed of
among us, my children--the day for which we have worked and planned--has
arrived. Before us stands the Chief, willing and ready to lead the Cause
in person.'
They bowed profoundly. Then each one advanced in turn, took his hand,
and murmured words of allegiance.
The first was a tall thin young man of four-and-twenty, with eager eyes,
pale face, and high narrow forehead, named Clarence Veysey. 'If you are
what we hope and pray,' he said, looking him full in the face with
searching gaze, 'we are your servants to the death. If you are not, God
help England and the Holy Faith!'
The next who stepped forward was Jack Kennion. He was a young man of his
own age, of great muscular development, with square head, curly locks,
and laughing eyes. He held out his hand and laughed. 'As for me,' he
said, 'I have no doubt as to what you are. We have waited for you a long
time, but we have you at last.'
The next was Algy Dunquerque.
'I told you,' he said laughing, 'that I was ready to follow you. But I
did not hope or expect to be called upon so soon. Something, of course,
I knew, because I am a pupil of the Bishop, and knew how long Professor
Ingleby has been working upon your mind. At last, then!' He heaved a
mighty sigh of satisfaction, and then began to laugh. 'Ho, ho! Think of
the flutter among the petticoats! Think of the debates in the House!
Think of the excommunications!'
One after the other shook hands, and then the Bishop spoke, as if
interpreting the thought of all.
'This day,' he said, 'is the beginning of new things. We shall recall
the grandeurs of the past, which no living man can remember. Time was
when we were a mighty country, the first in the world: we had the true
Religion, two thousand years old; a grand state Church; we had an
ancient dynasty and a constitutional monarchy; we had a stately
aristocracy always open to new families; we had an immense commerce; we
had flourishing factories; we had great and loyal colonies; we had a
dense and contented population; we had enormous wealth; science in every
branch was advancing; there was personal freedom; every man could raise
himself from the lowest to the highest rank; there was no post too high
for the ambition of a clever lad. In those days Man was in command.
'Let us,' he continued, after a pause, 'think how all this has been
changed. We have lost our reigning family, and have neither king nor
queen; we have thrown away our old hereditary aristocracy, and replaced
it by a false and pretentious House, in which the old titles have
descended through a line of women, and the new ones have been created
for the noisiest of the first female legislators; we have abolished our
House of Commons, and given all the power to the Peeresses; we have lost
the old worship, and invented a creed which has not even the merit of
commanding the respect of those who are most interested in keeping it
up. Does any educated woman now believe in the Perfect Woman, except as
a means of keeping men down?
'As for our trade, it is gone; as for our greatness, it is gone; as for
our industries, they are gone; as for our arts, they have perished: we
stand alone, the contempt of the world to whom we are no longer a Power.
Our men are kept in ignorance; they are forbidden to rise, by their own
work, from one class to another; class and caste distinctions are
deepened, and differences in rank are multiplied; there is no more
science; electricity, steam, heat, and air are the servants of man no
longer; men cannot learn; they are even forbidden to meet together; they
have lost the art of self-government; they are cowed; they are cursed
with a false religion; they have no longer any hopes or any aims.
'Fortunately,' he continued, 'they have left man something: he has
retained his strength; they have even legislated with the view of
keeping him healthy and strong. In your strength, my sons, shall you
prosper. But you will have to revive the old spirit. That will be the
most difficult--the only difficult--task. Take Lord Chester away now, my
children, and show him our relics of the past.'
In the room next to the library was a collection of strange and
wonderful things, all new and unintelligible to Lord Chester. Jack
Kennion acted as exhibitor.
'These,' he said, 'are chiefly models of the old machinery. I study them
daily, in the hope of restoring the mechanical skill of the past. These
engines with multitudinous wheels which are so intricate to look at,
and yet so simple in their action, formerly served to keep great
factories at work, and found occupation for hundreds and thousands of
men; these black round boxes were steam machines which dragged long
trains full of people about the country at the rate of sixty miles an
hour; these glittering things in brass were made to illustrate knowledge
which has long since died out, unless I can recover it by the aid of the
old books; these complicated things were weapons among us when science
ruled everything; all these books treat of the forgotten knowledge;
these paintings on the wall show the life of the very world as it was
when men ruled it; these maps showed the former greatness of the
country: everything here proves from what a height we have fallen. And
to think that it is only here--in this one house of all England--that we
can feel what we once were,--what we _will_ be--yes, we _will_
be--again.'
His eyes were lit with fire, his cheeks aflame as he spoke.
During the talk of this afternoon, Lord Chester discovered that the
education of every one of these young men had been conducted with a view
to his future work in or after the Revolution. Thus Algernon Dunquerque
was learned in the old arts of drilling and ordering masses of men. Jack
Kennion had studied mechanics and mathematics; another had learned
ancient law and history; another had been trained to speak,--and so on.
Clarence Veysey, for his part, had been taught by the Bishop the
Mysteries of the Old Religion, and was an ordained Priest. These things
the new recruit made out from the eager talk of his friends, who seemed
all of them anxious to instruct him at once in everything they knew.
It was a relief at last, when the first bell rang, to be alone for a few
minutes, if only to get his ideas cleared a little. What had he learned
since he left London? What was before him?
Anyhow, change, action, freedom.
He found the Professor and her daughters in the drawing-room. The girls
received him with smiles of welcome. The elder, Grace--a girl whose
sweetness of face was new to Lord Chester, accustomed to the hard lines
which a life of combat so early brings upon a woman's eyes and
brow--had, which was the first thing he noticed in her, large, clear
gray eyes of singular purity. The other, Faith, was smaller, slighter,
and perhaps more lovely, though in a different way, a less spiritual
fashion. Both, in the outer world would have been considered painfully
shy. Lord Chester was beginning to consider shyness as a virtue in
women. At all events, it was a quality rarely experienced outside.
He was already prepared for many changes, and for customs new to him.
Yet he was hardly ready for the complete reversal of social rules as he
experienced at this dinner. For the subjects of talk were started by the
men, who almost monopolised the conversation; while the ladies merely
threw in a word here and there, which served as a stimulus, and showed
appreciation rather than a desire to join in the argument. And such
talk! He had been accustomed to hear the ladies talk almost
uninterruptedly of politics--that is, of personal matters, squabbles in
the House, disputes about precedence, intrigues for title and higher
rank--and dress. Nothing else, as a rule, occupied the dinner-table. The
men, who rarely spoke, were occasionally questioned about some
cricket-match, some long race, or some other kind of athletics. This was
due to politeness only, however; for, the question put and answered, the
questioner showed how little interest she took in the subject by
instantly returning to the subject previously in discussion. But at this
table,--the Professor's--no, the Bishop's table,--the men talked of art,
and in terms which Lord Chester could not understand. Nevertheless, he
gathered that the so-called art of the Academicians was a thing
absolutely beneath contempt. They talked of science, especially the
square-headed youth Jack Kennion, to whom they deferred as to an
authority; and he spoke of subjects, forms, and laws of which Lord
Chester was absolutely ignorant: they talked of history, and all,
including the Bishop's daughters--strange, how easily the new proselyte
fell into the way of considering how the highest education is best
fitted for men!--showed as intimate an acquaintance with the past as the
Professor herself. They talked of religion; and here all deferred to the
Bishop, who, while he spoke with authority, invited discussion.
Strangest thing of all!--every man spoke as if his own opinion were
worth considering. There was not the slightest deference to authority.
The great and standard work of Cornelia Nipper on Political Economy, in
which she summed up all that has been said, and left, as was taught at
Cambridge, nothing more to be said; the _Encyclopædia of Science_,
written by Isabella Bunter, in which she showed the absurdity of pushing
knowledge into worthless regions; the sermons and dogmas of the
illustrious and Reverend Violet Swandown, considered by the orthodox as
containing guidance and comfort for the soul under all possible
circumstances,--these works were openly scoffed at and derided.
Lord Chester said little; the conversation was for the most part beyond
him. At his side sat the Bishop's elder daughter, Grace--a young lady of
twenty-one or twenty-two, of a type strange to him. She had a singularly
quiet, graceful manner; she listened with intelligent pleasure, and
showed her appreciation by smiles rather than by words; when she spoke,
it was in low tones, yet without hesitation; she was almost
extravagantly deferent to her father, but towards her mother showed the
affection of a loved and trusted companion. It was too much the custom
in society for girls to show no regard whatever for the opinions or the
wishes of their fathers.
The younger daughter, Faith, talked less; but Lord Chester noticed that
as she sat next to Algy Dunquerque, that young man frequently ceased to
join in the general conversation, and exchanged whispers with her; and
they were whispers which made her eyes to soften and her cheek to glow.
Good; in the new state of things the men would do the wooing for
themselves. He thought of Constance, and wished she had been there.
When the ladies retired, the Bishop began to talk of the Great Cause.
'Your training,' he said to Lord Chester, 'has been, by my directions,
that of a Prince rather than a private gentleman. That is to say, you
have been taught a great many things, but you have not become a
specialist. These friends of ours,'--he pointed to his group of
disciples,--'are, each in his own line, better than yourself, and better
than you will ever try to become. A Prince should be a patron of art,
learning, and science and literature; but it does not become him to be
an artist, a scholar, a philosopher, or a poet. You must be contented to
sit outside the circle, so to speak. Now let us speak of our chances.'
He proceeded to discuss the best way of raising the country. His plan
was a simultaneous revolt in half a dozen country districts; an appeal
to the rustics; the union of forces; the seizure of towns; continual
preaching and exhortation for the men; repression for the women; the
destruction of their sacred pictures and figures; but no violence--above
all, no violence. The Bishop was an ecclesiastic, and he was a recluse.
He therefore did not understand what men are like when the passion of
fighting is roused in them. He dreamed of a bloodless Revolution; he
pictured the men voluntarily confessing the wisdom and the truth of the
Old Religion. The event proved that all human institutions rest on
force, and cannot be upset without the employment of force. To be sure,
women cannot fight; but they had on their side the aid of superstition
and the strong arms of the men whom they led in superstitious chains.
Upstairs one of the girls played and sang old songs: the words were
strange; words and air went direct to the heart. Lord Chester listened
disturbed and anxious, yet exultant.
The Professor pressed his hand.
'It is death or success,' she whispered. 'Be of good cheer; in either
event you shall be counted noble among the men to come.'
When Grace Ingleby wished him good-night, she held his hand in hers with
the firm grasp of a sister.
'You are one of us,' she said frankly. 'In this house we are all
brothers and sisters in hope and in Religion. And if they found us out,'
she added with a laugh, 'we should be brothers and sisters in death.
Courage, my lord! There is all to gain.'
Faith Ingleby, the younger sister, who had less ardour for the Cause
than for the men who were pledged to it, whispered low, as he took her
hand,--
'We know all about Lady Carlyon; and we pray daily for her, and for you.
Mother says she is worthy to become--to be raised--to be----'
'What?' he asked, reddening; for the girl hesitated and looked at him
with a kind of awe.
'Queen of England.'
'Don't anticipate, Faith,' said Algy. 'Considering, however, what we
have come out of, it strikes me that we have nothing to lose, whatever
we may gain. Come, Chester, we want to have a quiet talk together as
soon as the Bishop goes to bed.'
* * * * *
They talked for nearly the whole night. There was so much to say; one
subject after another was started; there were so many chances to
consider,--that it was four o'clock when they parted. Algy found,
somewhere or other, a bottle of champagne.
'Come,' he cried, 'a stirrup-cup! I drink to the day when the "King
shall enjoy his own again."'
'Algy!' said Lord Chester. 'To think that you have deceived me!'
'To think,' he replied laughing, 'that we have dreamed of this day so
long! What would our Revolution be worth unless we were to have our
hereditary and rightful king for leader! Yet, I confess it was hard to
see you drawn daily closer to us, and not to hold out hands to drag you
in--long ago. Yes, the Professor was right. She is always right. She
glories in her obedience to the Bishop, but--whisper,--we all know very
well that the Bishop does nothing without consulting her first, and
nothing that she does not agree with. Don't be too sure, dear boy, about
the Supremacy of Man.'