WHICH SHE IS DISQUIETED BY WHAT SHE LEARNS FROM PROFESSOR HANKY: SHE
SENDS FOR HER SON GEORGE AND QUESTIONS HIM
The Professors, returning to their hotel early on the Friday morning,
found a note from the Mayoress urging them to be her guests during the
remainder of their visit, and to meet other friends at dinner on this
same evening. They accepted, and then went to bed; for they had passed
the night under the tree in which they had hidden their purchase, and, as
may be imagined, had slept but little. They rested all day, and
transferred themselves and their belongings to the Mayor’s house in time
to dress for dinner.
When they came down into the drawing-room they found a brilliant company
assembled, chiefly Musical-Bankical like themselves. There was Dr.
Downie, Professor of Logomachy, and perhaps the most subtle dialectician
in Erewhon. He could say nothing in more words than any man of his
generation. His text-book on the “Art of Obscuring Issues” had passed
through ten or twelve editions, and was in the hands of all aspirants for
academic distinction. He had earned a high reputation for sobriety of
judgement by resolutely refusing to have definite views on any subject;
so safe a man was he considered, that while still quite young he had been
appointed to the lucrative post of Thinker in Ordinary to the Royal
Family. There was Mr. Principal Crank, with his sister Mrs. Quack;
Professors Gabb and Bawl, with their wives and two or three erudite
daughters.
Old Mrs. Humdrum (of whom more anon) was there of course, with her
venerable white hair and rich black satin dress, looking the very ideal
of all that a stately old dowager ought to be. In society she was
commonly known as Ydgrun, so perfectly did she correspond with the
conception of this strange goddess formed by the Erewhonians. She was
one of those who had visited my father when he was in prison twenty years
earlier. When he told me that she was now called Ydgrun, he said, “I am
sure that the Erinyes were only Mrs. Humdrums, and that they were
delightful people when you came to know them. I do not believe they did
the awful things we say they did. I think, but am not quite sure, that
they let Orestes off; but even though they had not pardoned him, I doubt
whether they would have done anything more dreadful to him than issue a
_mot d’ordre_ that he was not to be asked to any more afternoon teas.
This, however, would be down-right torture to some people. At any rate,”
he continued, “be it the Erinyes, or Mrs. Grundy, or Ydgrun, in all times
and places it is woman who decides whether society is to condone an
offence or no.”
Among the most attractive ladies present was one for whose Erewhonian
name I can find no English equivalent, and whom I must therefore call
Miss La Frime. She was Lady President of the principal establishment for
the higher education of young ladies, and so celebrated was she, that
pupils flocked to her from all parts of the surrounding country. Her
primer (written for the Erewhonian Arts and Science Series) on the Art of
Man-killing, was the most complete thing of the kind that had yet been
done; but ill-natured people had been heard to say that she had killed
all her own admirers so effectually that not one of them had ever lived
to marry her. According to Erewhonian custom the successful marriages of
the pupils are inscribed yearly on the oak paneling of the college
refectory, and a reprint from these in pamphlet form accompanies all the
prospectuses that are sent out to parents. It was alleged that no other
ladies’ seminary in Erewhon could show such a brilliant record during all
the years of Miss La Frime’s presidency. Many other guests of less note
were there, but the lions of the evening were the two Professors whom we
have already met with, and more particularly Hanky, who took the Mayoress
in to dinner. Panky, of course, wore his clothes reversed, as did
Principal Crank and Professor Gabb; the others were dressed English
fashion.
Everything hung upon the hostess, for the host was little more than a
still handsome figure-head. He had been remarkable for his good looks as
a young man, and Strong is the nearest approach I can get to a
translation of his Erewhonian name. His face inspired confidence at
once, but he was a man of few words, and had little of that grace which
in his wife set every one instantly at his or her ease. He knew that all
would go well so long as he left everything to her, and kept himself as
far as might be in the background.
Before dinner was announced there was the usual buzz of conversation,
chiefly occupied with salutations, good wishes for Sunday’s weather, and
admiration for the extreme beauty of the Mayoress’s three daughters, the
two elder of whom were already out; while the third, though only
thirteen, might have passed for a year or two older. Their mother was so
much engrossed with receiving her guests that it was not till they were
all at table that she was able to ask Hanky what he thought of the
statues, which she had heard that he and Professor Panky had been to see.
She was told how much interested he had been with them, and how unable he
had been to form any theory as to their date or object. He then added,
appealing to Panky, who was on the Mayoress’s left hand, “but we had
rather a strange adventure on our way down, had we not, Panky? We got
lost, and were benighted in the forest. Happily we fell in with one of
the rangers who had lit a fire.”
“Do I understand, then,” said Yram, as I suppose we may as well call her,
“that you were out all last night? How tired you must be! But I hope
you had enough provisions with you?”
“Indeed we were out all night. We staid by the ranger’s fire till
midnight, and then tried to find our way down, but we gave it up soon
after we had got out of the forest, and then waited under a large
chestnut tree till four or five this morning. As for food, we had not so
much as a mouthful from about three in the afternoon till we got to our
inn early this morning.”
“Oh, you poor, poor people! how tired you must be.”
“No; we made a good breakfast as soon as we got in, and then went to bed,
where we staid till it was time for us to come to your house.”
Here Panky gave his friend a significant look, as much as to say that he
had said enough.
This set Hanky on at once. “Strange to say, the ranger was wearing the
old Erewhonian dress. It did me good to see it again after all these
years. It seems your son lets his men wear what few of the old clothes
they may still have, so long as they keep well away from the town. But
fancy how carefully these poor fellows husband them; why, it must be
seventeen years since the dress was forbidden!”
We all of us have skeletons, large or small, in some cupboard of our
lives, but a well regulated skeleton that will stay in its cupboard
quietly does not much matter. There are skeletons, however, which can
never be quite trusted not to open the cupboard door at some awkward
moment, go down stairs, ring the hall-door bell, with grinning face
announce themselves as the skeleton, and ask whether the master or
mistress is at home. This kind of skeleton, though no bigger than a
rabbit, will sometimes loom large as that of a dinotherium. My father
was Yram’s skeleton. True, he was a mere skeleton of a skeleton, for the
chances were thousands to one that he and my mother had perished long
years ago; and even though he rang at the bell, there was no harm that he
either could or would now do to her or hers; still, so long as she did
not certainly know that he was dead, or otherwise precluded from
returning, she could not be sure that he would not one day come back by
the way that he would alone know, and she had rather he should not do so.
Hence, on hearing from Professor Hanky that a man had been seen between
the statues and Sunch’ston wearing the old Erewhonian dress, she was
disquieted and perplexed. The excuse he had evidently made to the
Professors aggravated her uneasiness, for it was an obvious attempt to
escape from an unexpected difficulty. There could be no truth in it. Her
son would as soon think of wearing the old dress himself as of letting
his men do so; and as for having old clothes still to wear out after
seventeen years, no one but a Bridgeford Professor would accept this. She
saw, therefore, that she must keep her wits about her, and lead her
guests on to tell her as much as they could be induced to do.
“My son,” she said innocently, “is always considerate to his men, and
that is why they are so devoted to him. I wonder which of them it was?
In what part of the preserves did you fall in with him?”
Hanky described the place, and gave the best idea he could of my father’s
appearance.
“Of course he was swarthy like the rest of us?”
“I saw nothing remarkable about him, except that his eyes were blue and
his eyelashes nearly white, which, as you know, is rare in Erewhon.
Indeed, I do not remember ever before to have seen a man with dark hair
and complexion but light eyelashes. Nature is always doing something
unusual.”
“I have no doubt,” said Yram, “that he was the man they call Blacksheep,
but I never noticed this peculiarity in him. If he was Blacksheep, I am
afraid you must have found him none too civil; he is a rough diamond, and
you would hardly be able to understand his uncouth Sunch’ston dialect.”
“On the contrary, he was most kind and thoughtful--even so far as to take
our permit from us, and thus save us the trouble of giving it up at your
son’s office. As for his dialect, his grammar was often at fault, but we
could quite understand him.”
“I am glad to hear he behaved better than I could have expected. Did he
say in what part of the preserves he had been?”
“He had been catching quails between the place where we saw him and the
statues; he was to deliver three dozen to your son this afternoon for the
Mayor’s banquet on Sunday.”
This was worse and worse. She had urged her son to provide her with a
supply of quails for Sunday’s banquet, but he had begged her not to
insist on having them. There was no close time for them in Erewhon, but
he set his face against their being seen at table in spring and summer.
During the winter, when any great occasion arose, he had allowed a few
brace to be provided.
“I asked my son to let me have some,” said Yram, who was now on full
scent. She laughed genially as she added, “Can you throw any light upon
the question whether I am likely to get my three dozen? I have had no
news as yet.”
“The man had taken a good many; we saw them but did not count them. He
started about midnight for the ranger’s shelter, where he said he should
sleep till daybreak, so as to make up his full tale betimes.”
Yram had heard her son complain that there were no shelters on the
preserves, and state his intention of having some built before the
winter. Here too, then, the man’s story must be false. She changed the
conversation for the moment, but quietly told a servant to send high and
low in search of her son, and if he could be found, to bid him come to
her at once. She then returned to her previous subject.
“And did not this heartless wretch, knowing how hungry you must both be,
let you have a quail or two as an act of pardonable charity?”
“My dear Mayoress, how can you ask such a question? We knew you would
want all you could get; moreover, our permit threatened us with all sorts
of horrors if we so much as ate a single quail. I assure you we never
even allowed a thought of eating one of them to cross our minds.”
“Then,” said Yram to herself, “they gorged upon them.” What could she
think? A man who wore the old dress, and therefore who had almost
certainly been in Erewhon, but had been many years away from it; who
spoke the language well, but whose grammar was defective--hence, again,
one who had spent some time in Erewhon; who knew nothing of the
afforesting law now long since enacted, for how else would he have dared
to light a fire and be seen with quails in his possession; an adroit
liar, who on gleaning information from the Professors had hazarded an
excuse for immediately retracing his steps; a man, too, with blue eyes
and light eyelashes. What did it matter about his hair being dark and
his complexion swarthy--Higgs was far too clever to attempt a second
visit to Erewhon without dyeing his hair and staining his face and hands.
And he had got their permit out of the Professors before he left them;
clearly, then, he meant coming back, and coming back at once before the
permit had expired. How could she doubt? My father, she felt sure, must
by this time be in Sunch’ston. He would go back to change his clothes,
which would not be very far down on the other side the pass, for he would
not put on his old Erewhonian dress till he was on the point of entering
Erewhon; and he would hide his English dress rather than throw it away,
for he would want it when he went back again. It would be quite
possible, then, for him to get through the forest before the permit was
void, and he would be sure to go on to Sunch’ston for the night.
She chatted unconcernedly, now with one guest now with another, while
they in their turn chatted unconcernedly with one another.
Miss La Frime to Mrs. Humdrum: “You know how he got his professorship?
No? I thought every one knew that. The question the candidates had to
answer was, whether it was wiser during a long stay at a hotel to tip the
servants pretty early, or to wait till the stay was ended. All the other
candidates took one side or the other, and argued their case in full.
Hanky sent in three lines to the effect that the proper thing to do would
be to promise at the beginning, and go away without giving. The King,
with whom the appointment rested, was so much pleased with this answer
that he gave Hanky the professorship without so much as looking . . . ”
Professor Gabb to Mrs. Humdrum: “Oh no, I can assure you there is no
truth in it. What happened was this. There was the usual crowd, and the
people cheered Professor after Professor, as he stood before them in the
great Bridgeford theatre and satisfied them that a lump of butter which
had been put into his mouth would not melt in it. When Hanky’s turn came
he was taken suddenly unwell, and had to leave the theatre, on which
there was a report in the house that the butter had melted; this was at
once stopped by the return of the Professor. Another piece of butter was
put into his mouth, and on being taken out after the usual time, was
found to shew no signs of having . . . ”
Miss Bawl to Mr. Principal Crank: . . . “The Manager was so tall, you
know, and then there was that little mite of an assistant manager--it
_was_ so funny. For the assistant manager’s voice was ever so much
louder than the . . . ”
Mrs. Bawl to Professor Gabb: . . . “Live for art! If I had to choose
whether I would lose either art or science, I have not the smallest
hesitation in saying that I would lose . . . ”
The Mayor and Dr. Downie: . . . “That you are to be canonised at the
close of the year along with Professors Hanky and Panky?”
“I believe it is his Majesty’s intention that the Professors and myself
are to head the list of the Sunchild’s Saints, but we have all of us got
to . . . ”
And so on, and so on, buzz, buzz, buzz, over the whole table. Presently
Yram turned to Hanky and said--
“By the way, Professor, you must have found it very cold up at the
statues, did you not? But I suppose the snow is all gone by this time?”
“Yes, it was cold, and though the winter’s snow is melted, there had been
a recent fall. Strange to say, we saw fresh footprints in it, as of some
one who had come up from the other side. But thereon hangs a tale, about
which I believe I should say nothing.”
“Then say nothing, my dear Professor,” said Yram with a frank smile.
“Above all,” she added quietly and gravely, “say nothing to the Mayor,
nor to my son, till after Sunday. Even a whisper of some one coming over
from the other side disquiets them, and they have enough on hand for the
moment.”
Panky, who had been growing more and more restive at his friend’s
outspokenness, but who had encouraged it more than once by vainly trying
to check it, was relieved at hearing his hostess do for him what he could
not do for himself. As for Yram, she had got enough out of the Professor
to be now fully dissatisfied, and mentally informed them that they might
leave the witness-box. During the rest of dinner she let the subject of
their adventure severely alone.
It seemed to her as though dinner was never going to end; but in the
course of time it did so, and presently the ladies withdrew. As they
were entering the drawing-room a servant told her that her son had been
found more easily than was expected, and was now in his own room
dressing.
“Tell him,” she said, “to stay there till I come, which I will do
directly.”
She remained for a few minutes with her guests, and then, excusing
herself quietly to Mrs. Humdrum, she stepped out and hastened to her
son’s room. She told him that Professors Hanky and Panky were staying in
the house, and that during dinner they had told her something he ought to
know, but which there was no time to tell him until her guests were gone.
“I had rather,” she said, “tell you about it before you see the
Professors, for if you see them the whole thing will be reopened, and you
are sure to let them see how much more there is in it than they suspect.
I want everything hushed up for the moment; do not, therefore, join us.
Have dinner sent to you in your father’s study. I will come to you about
midnight.”
“But, my dear mother,” said George, “I have seen Panky already. I walked
down with him a good long way this afternoon.”
Yram had not expected this, but she kept her countenance. “How did you
know,” said she, “that he was Professor Panky? Did he tell you so?”
“Certainly he did. He showed me his permit, which was made out in favour
of Professors Hanky and Panky, or either of them. He said Hanky had been
unable to come with him, and that he was himself Professor Panky.”
Yram again smiled very sweetly. “Then, my dear boy,” she said, “I am all
the more anxious that you should not see him now. See nobody but the
servants and your brothers, and wait till I can enlighten you. I must
not stay another moment; but tell me this much, have you seen any signs
of poachers lately?”
“Yes; there were three last night.”
“In what part of the preserves?”
Her son described the place.
“You are sure they had been killing quails?”
“Yes, and eating them--two on one side of a fire they had lit, and one on
the other; this last man had done all the plucking.”
“Good!”
She kissed him with more than even her usual tenderness, and returned to
the drawing-room.
During the rest of the evening she was engaged in earnest conversation
with Mrs. Humdrum, leaving her other guests to her daughters and to
themselves. Mrs. Humdrum had been her closest friend for many years, and
carried more weight than any one else in Sunch’ston, except, perhaps,
Yram herself. “Tell him everything,” she said to Yram at the close of
their conversation; “we all dote upon him; trust him frankly, as you
trusted your husband before you let him marry you. No lies, no reserve,
no tears, and all will come right. As for me, command me,” and the good
old lady rose to take her leave with as kind a look on her face as ever
irradiated saint or angel. “I go early,” she added, “for the others will
go when they see me do so, and the sooner you are alone the better.”
By half an hour before midnight her guests had gone. Hanky and Panky
were given to understand that they must still be tired, and had better go
to bed. So was the Mayor; so were her sons and daughters, except of
course George, who was waiting for her with some anxiety, for he had seen
that she had something serious to tell him. Then she went down into the
study. Her son embraced her as she entered, and moved an easy chair for
her, but she would not have it.
“No; I will have an upright one.” Then, sitting composedly down on the
one her son placed for her, she said--
“And now to business. But let me first tell you that the Mayor was told,
twenty years ago, all the more important part of what you will now hear.
He does not yet know what has happened within the last few hours, but
either you or I will tell him to-morrow.”