Time.--_Last Sunday in March, 5 p.m._

1st Citizeness. O, thank you _so_ much!

2nd do. _So_ good of you to come!

1st do. I _so_ dote upon art!

2nd do. So kind of you to say so!

1st do. Thank you _so_ much for asking us!

2nd do. Delighted, I’m sure! Thank _you_ for coming!

1st Citizeness. Not at all! Thank you for--for thanking me

for--Well--_good-bye_. (_Exit--with family group_.)

Husband of 2nd Citizeness (_with gloom_). And who might _those_ thankful

bounders be?

2nd Citizeness (_wearily_). O, don’t ask _me!_ I don’t know! From

Addison Road way, I should think.

1st Citizeness (_outside_). Well! If _that_ thing gets into the Academy!

Family Group. Did you notice the ridiculous way her hair was done? Did

you ever taste such tea in your life? How yellow Mrs. General Wragg is

getting to look in the daylight. Yes--there’s our four-wheeler. (_Exeunt

omnes._)

The above is not intended for presentation upon any stage--not even

that of the Independent Theatre. It has been cast into the dramatic

mould merely for convenience’ sake. It embodies what I chiefly remember

about Picture Sunday.

It has come to be my annual duty--a peculiarly hardy, not to say

temerarious, annual--to convoy Mrs Albert Grundy and her party about

sections of Chelsea and Brompton on the earlier of the two Show

Sabbaths. I drifted into this function through having once shared an

attic with a young painter, whose colleagues used to come to borrow

florins of him whenever one of his pictures disappeared from any shop

window, and so incidentally formed my acquaintance. My claim nowadays

upon their recollection is really very slight. I just know them well

enough to manage the last Sunday in March: even that might be awkward if

they were not such good-natured fellows.

But it would be difficult to persuade Mrs Albert of this. That good lady

is wont, when the playfully benignant mood is upon her, to describe me

as her connecting link with Bohemia. She probably would be puzzled to

explain her meaning; I certainly should. But if she were provided with

affidavits setting forth the whole truth--viz., that my entire income

is derived from an inherited part-interest in an artificial-ice machine;

that there are two clergymen on the committee of my only club; that I am

free from debt; and that I play duets on the piano with my sister--still

would she cling to the belief that I am a young man with an extremely

gay, rakish side, who could make thrilling revelations of Bohemia if I

would. Of course, I am never questioned on the subject; but I can see

that it is a point upon which the faith of Fernbank is firmly grounded.

Often Mrs Albert’s conversation cuts figure-eights on very thin ice when

we are alone, as if just to show me that _she_ knows. More than once

I have discovered Ermyntrude looking furtively at me, as the wistful

shepherd-boy on the plains of Dura might have gazed at the distant haze

overhanging bold, unspeakable Babylon. I rarely visit the house but

Uncle Dudley winks at me. However, nothing is ever asked me about the

dreadful things with which they suppose me to be upon intimate terms.

It seemed for a long time, on Sunday, as if an easy escape had been

arranged for me by Providence. At two o’clock, the hour appointed for

our crusade, a heavy fog overhung everything. Looking out from the

drawing-room windows, only the very nearest of the neatly trimmed

firs on the lawn were to be distinguished. The street beyond was utter

blackness.

At three o’clock the ladies took off their bonnets. It was really too

bad. Uncle Dudley, strolling in from his nap in the library, suggested

that with a lantern we might visit some of the nearer studios: “not

necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.” Mrs

Albert turned a look of tearful vexation upon him, before which he fled.

“There’s this consolation,” she remarked presently, holding me with an

unwavering eye: “if we are to be defrauded out of our expedition to-day,

that will furnish all the more reason why you should take us next

Sunday--_the_ Sunday. You have often talked of having us see the

Academicians at home--but we’ve never been.”

“I remember that there has been talk about it,” I said; “but hardly that

the talk was mine. Truth is, I don’t know a single Academician, even by

sight.”

It was clear that they did not believe me. Mrs Albert continued: “Lady

Wallaby expressed surprise, only last evening, that we should consent to

go about among the outsiders. She and her daughter _never_ do.”

“Outsiders!” I was tempted into saying. “Why, they can paint the head

off the Academy!”

Miss Timby-Hucks simpered outright. “You do say such droll things!” she

remarked, somewhat obscurely. “Mamma always declares that you remind her

of the _Sydney Bulletin_.”

“Whom _do_ you take to the Academy Show Sunday?--or perhaps I oughtn’t

to ask,” came from Ermyntrude.

“No, we have no right to inquire,” said Mrs Albert; and I turned to the

window and the enshrouded lawn once more.

All at once the fog lifted. The bonnets were produced again. Nearly

three hours of daylight remained to us. Tidings that the horse was too

lame to be taken out only staggered Mrs Albert for the briefest fraction

of time. There were still four-wheelers in Gilead. Besides, if the

driver happened to be sober, he would know the streets so much better

than their stupid coachman. This would be of advantage, because time

was so limited. We should have to just run in, say “How-d’ye-do,” take

a flying look round, and scamper out again, Mrs Albert said. By firmly

adhering to this rule, she estimated that we might do sixteen or

seventeen studios.

Heaven alone knows how many we did “do.” Nor have I any clear

recollections of what we saw. A confused vision remains to me of long

hall-ways lined with frames and packing-cases; half-an-acre, more or

less, of painted canvas, out of which only here and there a pair of

bright eyes, a glowing field of poppies, or the sheen from a satin gown,

fixed itself disconnectedly on the memory; hordes and hordes of tall

young women helping themselves to tea and cakes; and always the pathetic

figure of the artist’s wife, or sister, tired to very death, standing by

the door with a wearied smile on her lips, and the polite falsehood,

“So good of you to come!” on her tongue. I wondered, I remember, if she

never forgot herself and said instead, “So kind of you to go!” But under

Mrs Albert’s system there was no time to wait and see.

Once, indeed, we dallied over our task. Mrs Albert encountered a lady

from Wormwood Scrubs of her acquaintance, who was indiscreet enough to

mention that she had been asked to stop here for supper. The news

spread through the petticoated portion of my group as by magic. Miss

Timby-Hucks came over and asked me, so audibly that the artist-host

had to blush and turn away, if I didn’t think it would be a deliciously

romantic experience to sup in one of these lofty studios, with the

gaslight on the armour, and the great, solemnly silent pictures looking

down upon us as we ate. Mrs Albert lingered for some time looking at

this artist’s work with her head on one side, and eyes filled with rapt,

dreamy enjoyment--but nothing came of it.

It was after we had been back in Fern-bank for an hour or more--our own

cold repast nearly over--that Mrs Albert thought of something. She laid

down her fork with a gesture of annoyance. “It has just occurred to me,”

she said; “we never went to that Mr Whistler’s, whose pictures are on

exhibition in Bond Street. Everybody’s talking about him, and I did so

want not to miss his studio.”

“I don’t think he has a Show Sunday,” I said. “I never heard of it, if

he has.”

“O no, it is only these last few weeks that anybody has heard of him,”

Mrs Albert replied. “I read the first announcement about his beautiful

pictures in _The Daily Tarradiddle_ only the other day.”

“Whistler? Whistler?” put in Uncle Dudley. “Why, surely _he’s_ not new.

Why--I remember--he was mixed up in a law-suit, wasn’t it, years ago?”

“O no, Dudley,” responded Mrs Albert; “I was under that same impression,

till Lady Wallaby set me right. It seems that was another man

altogether--some foreign adventurer who pretended to be able to paint

and imposed upon people--don’t you recall how _The Tarradiddle_ exposed

him?--and Mr Burnt-Jones had him arrested, or something--O, quite a

dreadful person. But _this_ Mr Whistler is an Englishman. I read in _The

Illustrated London News_ that he represented modern British Art. That

alone would make it quite clear it was a different man. I did so want to

see him! Lady-Wallaby tells me she has heard he is extremely amusing in

his conversation--and quite presentable manners, too.”

“Why don’t you ask him to dinner?” said Mr Albert Grundy. “If he’s

amusing it’s more than most of the men you drum up are.”

“You seem to think _everybody_ can be asked to dinner, Albert,” the

lady of the house replied. “Artists don’t dine--unless they are in the

Academy, of course. Tea, yes--or perhaps supper; but one doesn’t

ask people to meet them at dinner. It’s like actors--and--and

non-commissioned officers.”

_Affording a Novel and Subdued Scientific Light, by which divers

Venerable Problems may be Observed Afresh_

It is my opinion,” said Uncle Dudley, stretching out his slippered

feet, and thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat--“it

is my opinion that women are different from men.”

“Several commentators have advanced this view,” I replied. “For example,

it has been noted that the gentle sex cross a muddy street on their

heels, whereas we skip over on our toes.”

“That is interesting if true,” responded Uncle Dudley. “What I mean is

that all this talk about the human race is humbug. There are _two_ human

races! And they are getting wider apart every few minutes, too!”

“Have you mentioned this to any one?” I asked.

Uncle Dudley went on developing his theme. “I daresay that for millions

of years after the re-separation of the sexes this difference was too

slight to be noticed at all. The cave man, for instance--the fellow who

went around hunting the Ichthyosaurus with a brick tied on the end of an

elm club, and spent the whole winter underground sucking the old bones,

and then whittling them up into Runic buttons for the South Kensington

Museum: I suppose, now, that his wife and sister-in-law, say, didn’t

strike him as being specially different from himself--except, of course,

in that they only got plain bones and gristle and so on to eat, whereas

all the marrow and general smooth-sailing in meats went his way. _You_,

can’t imagine _him_ saying to himself: ‘These female people here are not

of my race at all They are of another species. They are in reality as

much my natural enemies as that long-toed, red-headed, brachycephalous

tramp living in the gum-tree down by the swamp, who makes offensive

gestures as I ride past on my tame _Ursus spelous_’--now, can you?”

I frankly shook my head. “No, I don’t seem to be able to imagine that.

It would be almost as hard as to guess off-hand where, when, and how you

caught this remarkable scientific spasm.”

Uncle Dudley smiled. He rose, and walked with leisurely lightness up

and down in front of the chimney-piece, still with his palms spread

like little misplaced wings before his armpits. He smiled again. Then he

stopped on the hearth-rug and looked down amiably upon me.

“Well--what d’ye think? There’s something in it, eh?”

“My dear fellow,” I began, “what puzzles me is----”

“O, I don’t mean to say that I’ve worked it all out,” put in Uncle

Dudley, reassuringly. “Why, I get puzzled myself, every once in a while.

But I’m on the right track, my boy; and, as they say in Adelaide, I’m

going to hang to it like a pup to a root.”

“How long have you been this way?” I asked, with an affectation of

sympathy.

Uncle Dudley answered with shining eyes. “Why, if you’ll believe me, it

seems now as if I’d had the germs of the idea in my mind ever since I

came back to England, and began living here at Fernbank. But the thing

dawned upon me--that is to say, took shape in my head--less than a

fortnight ago. It all came about through being up here one evening with

nothing to read, and my toe worse than usual, and Mrs Albert having been

out of sorts all through dinner. Somehow, I felt all at once that I’d

got to read scientific works. I couldn’t resist it. I was like Joan

of Arc when the cows and sheep took partners for a quadrille. I heard

voices--Darwin’s and--and--Benjamin Franklin’s--and--lots of others. I

hobbled downstairs to the library, and I brought up a whole armful of

the books that Mrs Albert bought when she expected Lady Wallaby was

going to be able to get her an invitation to attend the Hon. Mrs

Coon-Alwyn’s Biological Conversaziones. Look there! What do you say to

that for ten days’ work? And had to cut every leaf, into the bargain!”

I gazed with respect at the considerable row of books he indicated:

books for the most part bound in the scarlet of the International Series

or the maroon of Contemporary Science, but containing also brown covers,

and even green “sport” varieties.

“Well, and what is it all about?” I asked. “Why have you read

these things? Why not the reports of the Commission on Agricultural

Depression, or Lewis Morris’s poems, or even----” but my imagination

faltered and broke.

“It was instinct, my boy,” returned Uncle Dudley, with impressive

confidence. “There had been a thought--a great idea--growing and

swelling in my head ever since I had been living in this house. But

I couldn’t tell what it was. As you might say, it was wrapped up in

a cocoon, like the larvæ of the lepidoptera--ahem!--and something was

needed to bring it out.”

“When I was here last you were trying Hollands with quinine bitters,” I

remarked casually.

“Don’t fool!” Uncle Dudley admonished me. “I’m dead in earnest. As I

said, it was pure instinct that led me to these books. They have made

everything clear. I only wanted their help to get the husk off my

discovery, and hoist it on my back, us it were, and bring it out here in

the daylight. And so now you know what I’m getting at when I say: Women

are different from Men.”

“That is the discovery, then?” I inquired.

Uncle Dudley nodded several times. Then he went on, with emphasised

slowness: “I have lived here now for four years, seeing my sister-in-law

every day, watching Ermyntrude grow up to womanhood and the little girls

peg along behind her, and meeting the female friends who come here

to see them--and, sir, I tell you, they’re not alone a different sex:

they’re a different animal altogether! Take my word for it, they’re a

species by themselves.”

“Miss Timby-Hucks is certainly very much by herself,” I remarked.

My friend smiled. “And not altogether her own fault either,” he

commented. “But, speaking of science, it’s remarkable how, when you once

get a firm grip on a big, central, main-guy fact, all the little facts

come in of their own accord to support it. Now, there’s that young

simpleton you met here at dinner a while ago: I mean Eustace Hump.

Do you know that both Ermyntrude and the Timby-Hucks, and even Miss

Wallaby, think that that chap is a perfect ideal of masculine wit and

beauty? You and I would hesitate about using him to wad a horse-pistol

with: but there isn’t one of those girls that wouldn’t leap with joy if

he began proposing to her; and as for their mothers, why, the old ladies

watch him as a kingfisher eyes a tadpole.”

“Your similes are exciting,” I said; “but what do they go to show?”

“My dear fellow, science can show anything. I haven’t gone all through

it yet, but I tell you, it’s wonderful! Take this, for instance”--he

reached for a green book on the mantel, and turned over the leaves--“now

listen to this. The book is written by a man named Wallace--nice,

shrewd-looking old party by his picture, you can see--and this is what

he says on page 285: ‘Some peahens preferred an old pied peacock; a

Canada goose paired with a Bernicle gander; a male widgeon was preferred

by a pintail duck to its own species; a hen canary preferred a male

greenfinch to either linnet, goldfinch, siskin, or chaffinch.’ Now,

do you see that? The moment my eyes first lighted on that, I said to

myself: ‘Now I understand about the girls and Eustace Hump.’ Isn’t it

clear to you?”

“Absolutely,” I assented. “You ought to read a paper at the Royal

Aquarium--before the Balloon Society, I mean.”

“And then look at this,” Uncle Dudley went on, with animation. “Now,

you and I would ask ourselves what on earth such a gawky, spindling,

poor-witted youngster as that thought he was doing among women, anyhow.

But you turn over the page, and here you have it: ‘Goat-suckers, geese,

carrion vultures, and many other birds of plain plumage have been

observed to dance, spread their wings or tails, and perform strange

love-antics.’ Doesn’t that fasten Hump to the wall like a beetle on a

pin, eh?”

“But I am not sure that I entirely follow its application to your

original point,” I suggested.

“About women, you mean? My boy, in science everything applies. The woods

are full of applications. But seriously, women _are_ different. As I

said, in the barbarism at the back of beyond this divergence started.

With the beginning of what we call civilisation, it became more and

more marked. The progress of the separation increases nowadays by

square-root--or whatever you call it. The sexes are wider apart to-day

than ever. They like each other less; they quarrel more. You can see

that in the Divorce Courts, in the diminished proportion of early

marriages, in the increasing evidences of domestic infelicity all about

one.”

I could not refrain from expressing the fear that all this boded ill for

the perpetuity of the human race.

Uncle Dudley is a light-hearted man. He was not depressed by the

apprehensions to which I had given utterance. Instead he hummed

pleasantly to himself as he put Wallace back on the shelf. He began

chuckling as a moment later he bethought himself to fill our glasses

afresh.

“Did I ever tell you my cat story?” he asked cheerily, testing the knob

to see that the door was shut. “Once a little boy came in to his father

and said: ‘Pa, we won’t be troubled any more with those cats howling

about on our roof at night. I’ve just been looking out of the upstairs

window, and they’re all out there fighting and screaming and tearing

each other to pieces. There won’t be one of them alive by morning!’ Then

the father replied: ‘My son, you imagine a vain thing. When increasing

years shall have furnished your mind with a more copious store of

knowledge, you will grasp the fact that all this commotion and dire

disturbance which you report to me only signifies more cats.’”

At this juncture the servant came in with the soda-water. We talked no

more of science that evening.

_Touching the Experimental Graft of a Utilitarian Spirit upon the

Aesthetic Instinct in our Sisters_

I HAD strolled about the galleries of Burlington House for a couple of

hours on Press Day, looking a little at pictures here and there, but for

the most part contemplating with admiration the zeal and good faith of

the ladies and gentlemen who stopped, note-book in hand, before every

frame: when some one behind me gave a friendly tug at my sleeve. I

turned, to find myself confronted by a person I seemed not to know--a

small young woman in an alpine hat and a veil which masked everything

about her face except its dentigerous smile. Even as I looked I was

conscious of regret that, if acquaintances were to be made for me in

this spontaneous fashion, destiny had not selected instead a certain

tall, slender, dark young lady, clad all in black and cock’s-plumes,

whom I had been watching at her work of notetaking in room after room,

with growing interest. Then, peering more closely through the veil, I

discovered that I was being accosted by Miss Timby-Hucks.

“You didn’t know me!” she said, with a vivacious half-giggle, as we

shook hands; “and you’re not specially pleased to see me; and you’re

asking yourself, ‘What on earth is she doing here?’ Now, don’t deny it!”

“Well, you know,” I made awkward response--“of course--_Press_ day----”

“Ah, but I belong to the Press,” said Miss Timby-Hucks.

“Happy Press! And since when?”

“O it’s nearly a fortnight now. And most _interesting_ I find the work.

You know, for a long time now I’ve been _so_ restless, _so_ anxious to

find some opening to a real career, where I might be my genuine self,

and be an active part of the great whirling stream of existence, and

concentrate my mind upon the actualities of life--don’t you yourself

think it will be _just_ the thing for me?”

“Undoubtedly,” I replied without hesitation. “And do you find focussing

yourself on the actualities--ah--remunerative?”

“Well,” Miss Timby-Hucks explained, “nothing of mine has been printed

yet, you see, so that I don’t know as to that. But I am assured it

will be all right. You see, I’m _very_ intimate with a cousin of Mrs

Umpelbaum, who is the wife of the proprietor of _Maida Vale_, and in

that way it came about. Lady-reporters never have any chance, I am told,

unless they have friends in the proprietor’s family, or know the editor

extremely well. It all goes by favour, like--like----”

“Like the dearest of all the actualities,” I put in. “But how is it they

don’t print your stuff?”

“I haven’t written any, as yet. The difficulty was to find a subject,”

Miss Timby-Hucks rejoined. “O that awful ‘subject’! I thought and thought

and thought till my head was fit to burst. I went to see Mrs Umpelbaum

herself, and asked her to suggest something. You know she writes a great

deal for the paper herself. She said they hadn’t had any ‘Reminiscences

of Carlyle’ now for some weeks; but afterwards she agreed with me that

would not be quite the thing for one to _begin_ with. She couldn’t

suggest anything else, except that I should have a chat with my

dressmaker. Very often in that way, she said, lady-reporters get the

most _entertaining_ revelations of gossip in high life. But it happened

that just then it was not--not exactly convenient--for me to call upon

my dressmaker; and so _that_ suggestion came to nothing, too.”

“I had no idea lady-journalism was so difficult,” I remarked, with

sympathy.

“O indeed, yes!” Miss Timby-Hucks went on. “One can’t expect to be _en

rapport_, as we journalists say, with Society, without spending a great

deal of money. There is one lady-reporter, Mrs Umpelbaum told me, who

has made quite a leading position for herself, solely through

hairdressers and American dentists. But I don’t mind admitting that that

would involve more of an outlay than I could afford, just at the

moment.”

“So you never got a subject?” I asked.

“Yes; finally I did. I was over at the Grundys’, telling my troubles,

and Uncle Dudley--you know, being so much with the girls, I always

call him that--Uncle Dudley said that the fashionable thing now

was interviews, and that lady-journalists did this better than

gentlemen-reporters because they had more nerve. By that I suppose he

meant a more delicate nervous organisation, quicker to grasp and absorb

fine shades of character. But that hardly helped me, because whom was I

to interview, and about what? _That_ was the question! But Uncle Dudley

thought a moment, and was ready with a suggestion. Everything depended,

he said, upon making a right start. I must pick out a personality and

a theme at once non-contentious and invested with popular interest His

idea was that I should begin by interviewing Mr T. M. Healy on ‘The

Decline of the Deep-Sea Mock-Turtle Fisheries on the West Coast of

Ireland.’ If I could get Mr Healy to talk frankly on this subject, he

felt sure that I should chain public attention at a bound.”

“Superb!” I cried. “And did you do it?”

“No,” Miss Timby-Hucks confessed; “I went to the House and sent in my

card, but it was another Irish Member who came out to see me--I think

his name was Mulhooly. He was very polite, and explained that since

some recent sad event in one of the Committee Rooms, fifteen I think

its number was, it was the rule of his party that, when a lady sent in

a card to one Member, some other Member answered it. It prevented

confusion, he said, and was not in antagonism to the expressed views of

the Church.”

“Talking of nothing,” I said, leading the way over to a divan, on which

we seated ourselves: “you seem to have finally secured a subject. I

assume you are doing the Academy for _Maida Vale_.”

“Yes,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks with gentle firmness; “you might say I

have _done_ it. I have been here since the very minute the doors opened,

and I’ve gone twelve times round. I wish I could have seen you earlier.

I should so like to have had your opinion of the various works as we

passed.”

“It is better not,” I commented. “There are ladies present.”

The lady-reporter looked at me for a furtive instant dubiously. Then

she smiled a little under her veil. “You _do_ say such odd things!” she

remarked. “I am glad to see that a great many ladies _are_ present.

It shows how we are securing our proper recognition in journalism.

I believe there are actually more of us here than there are

gentlemen-reporters--I should say gentle-men-critics. And it is the

same in art, too. You can see--I’ve counted them up in my catalogue

here--there are this year two hundred and forty-four lady-artists

exhibiting in this Academy three hundred and forty-six works of art.

Think of that! Fifty of them are described as Mrs, and there are one

hundred and ninety-four who are unmarried.”

“Think of _that!_” I retorted.

“And there are among them,” Miss Timby-Hucks went on, “one Marchioness,

one Countess, one Baroness, and one plain Lady. I am going to begin my

article with this. I think it will be interesting, don’t you?”

“I’d be careful not to particularise about the plain Lady,” I suggested.

“That might be _too_ interesting.”

She was over-full of her subject to smile. “No, I mean,” she said, “as

showing how the ranks of British Art are being filled from the

very highest classes, and are appealing more and more to the female

intellect. I don’t believe it will occur to any one else to count up in

the catalogue. So that will be original with me--to enlighten my sex as

to the glorious part they play in this year’s Academy.”

“But have you seen their pictures?” I asked, repressing an involuntary

groan.

“Every one!” replied Miss Timby-Hucks. “They are all good. There isn’t

what I should call a bad one--that is, a Frenchy or immoral one--among

them. I shall say that, too, in my criticism; but of course I shall have

to word it carefully, because I fancy Mr Umpelbaum is a foreigner of

some sort--and you know they’re all so sensitive about the superiority

of British Art.”

“It is their nature; they can’t help it,” I pointed out. “They try their

best, however, to master these unworthy emotions. Sometimes, indeed,

their dissimulation reaches a really high plane of endeavour.”

“They have nothing at all on the Continent like our Royal Academy, I am

told,” said Miss Timby-Hucks. “That isn’t generally known, is it? I had

thought of saying it.”

“It will be a safe statement,” I assured her. “You might go further,

and assert that no other country at any stage of its history has had

anything like the Royal Academy. It is the unique blossom of British

civilisation.”

Miss Timby-Hucks seemed to like the phrase, and made a note of it on

the back of her catalogue. “Yes,” she continued, “I thought of making

my criticism general, dealing with things like that. But I’ve got

some awfully interesting figures to put in. For example, there are

sixty-eight Academicians and Associates exhibiting: they have one

hundred and thirty-five oil paintings, sixteen water-colour or

black-and-white drawings, eight architectural designs, and twenty-three

pieces of sculpture--a total of one hundred and eighty-two works of art,

or two and sixty-seven hundredths each. I got at that by dividing the

total number of works by the total number of Academicians. Do you think

any one else will be likely to print that first in a daily paper? Mrs

Umpelbaum told me that _Maida Vale_ made a special point of new facts. I

don’t think I shall say much about the pictures themselves.

What _is_ there to say about pictures by the Academicians? As I told

mamma this morning, they wouldn’t be Academicians if they didn’t paint

good pictures, would they? and good pictures speak for themselves. Of

course, I shall describe the subjects of Sir Frederic’s pictures--by the

way, what _is_ a Hesperides?--and some of the others: I’ll get you to

pick out for me a few leading names. But I shall make my main point the

splendid advance of lady-artists--I heard some one say in the other room

there’d never been half so many before--and the elevating effect this

has upon British Art. In fact, mightn’t I say that is what makes British

Art what it is to-day?”

“It is one of the reasons, undoubtedly,” I assented, as I rose. “There

are others, however.”

“Ees, I know,” said Miss Timby-Hucks: “the diffusion of Christian

principles amongst us, our high national morality, and the sanctity of

the English home. Mrs Albert said only last night that these lay at the

very foundation of British art.”

“Mrs Albert is a woman of discernment,” I said, making a gesture of

farewell.

But Miss Timby-Hucks on the instant thought of something. Her eyes

glistened, her two upper front teeth gleamed. “O, it’s just occurred

to me!” she exclaimed, moving nearer to my side, and speaking-in

confidential excitement. “I know now how that lady-reporter manages with

the hairdressers and dentists. She doesn’t pay them money at all. She

mentions their names in the papers instead. How dull of me not to have

thought of that before! Why--yes--I will!--I’ll put my dressmaker among

the Private View celebrities!”

One likes to be civil to people who are obviously going to succeed in

the world. I forthwith took Miss Timby-Hucks out to luncheon.

_Relating to Various Phenomena attending the Progress of the Sex along

Lines of the Greatest Resistance_

My own idea,” said Uncle Dudley, “is that women ought to be confined to

barracks during elections just the same as soldiers.”

“I was quite prepared to find _you_ entertaining views of that

character,” remarked Miss Wallaby, with virginal severity. “Men who

have wandered about the less advanced parts of the earth, and spent long

periods of time in contact with inferior civilisations, quite generally

do feel that way. Life in the Colonies, and in similar rude and remote

regions, does produce that effect upon the masculine mind. But here

in England, the nerve-centre of the English-speaking race, the point

of concentration from which radiate all the impulses of refinement and

culture that distinguish our generation, men are coming to see these

matters in a different light. They no longer refuse to listen to the

overwhelming arguments in favour of entire feminine equality----”

“Oh, _I_ admit _that_ at once,” broke in Uncle Dudley. “But do women

nowadays believe in equality among themselves? In my youth they used to

devote pretty well all their energies to showing how much superior they

were to other women.”

“I spoke of the masculine attitude,” said Miss Wallaby, coldly. “Viewed

intelligently, the gradations and classifications which we maintain

among ourselves, at the cost of such infinite trouble and personal

self-sacrifice, are the very foundation upon which rests the

superstructure of British Society.”

“I admit that, too,” Uncle Dudley hastened to put in. “Really, we are

getting on very nicely.”

Miss Wallaby ignored the interruption altogether. “The point is,” she

went on, “that the male mind in England is coming--with characteristic

slowness, no doubt, but still coming--to recognise the necessity of

securing the very fullest and most complete participation of my sex in

public affairs. As the diffusion of enlightenment progresses, men will

more and more abandon the coarse and egoistic standards of their days of

domination by brute force, and turn instead to the ideals of purity and

sweetness which Woman in Politics typifies. It has been observed that

one may pick out the future rulers of England in each coming generation

by scanning the honour-lists of Oxford and Cambridge. How happy a day it

will be for England, and civilisation, when this is said of Girton and

Newnham as well!”

“I spent a summer in the State of Maine once, some years ago,”

said Uncle Dudley. “That’s the State, you know, where they’ve had a

Prohibition law now for nearly forty years. The excess of females

over males is larger there, I believe, than it is anywhere else in the

world--owing to the fact that all the young men who are worth their salt

emigrate to some other State as soon as they’ve saved up enough for a

railway-ticket. The men that you do see lounging around there, in the

small villages, are all minding the baby, or sitting on the doorstep

shelling peas, or out in the backyard, with their mouths full of

clothes-pins, hanging up sheets and pillow-cases on the line to dry. The

women there take a very active part in politics--and every census shows

that Maine’s population has diminished. Shipbuilding has almost ceased,

farms are being abandoned yearly, the State is mortgaged up to its

eyebrows, and you get nothing but fried clams and huckleberry-pie for

breakfast--but, of course, I suppose there _is_ a good deal of purity

and sweetness.”

Miss Wallaby rose and walked away from us; the black velvet riband

around her neck, the glint of gas-light on her eyeglasses, the wearied

haughtiness on her swarthy, high-nosed face, seemed to unite in saying

to us that we were very poor creatures indeed.

“She’s been down to the Retired Licensed Victuallers’ Division of

Surrey, you know,” exclaimed Uncle Dudley, “making speeches in favour of

the sitting Member, old Sir Watkyn Hump.”

“Ah, that accounts for the milk in the cocoa-nut,” I remarked.

“Well, no,” my friend mused aloud, “I fancy _young_ Hump accounts for

that. See--she’s gone and cut him out from under the Timby-Hucks’s

guns.”

It was at one of Mrs Albert Grundy’s evenings at home, and Uncle Dudley

and I now had possession of a quiet corner to ourselves. From this

pleasant vantage-ground we indolently surveyed the throng surrounding

Mrs Albert at the piano end of the room, and stretching off through the

open double doors into the adjoining chamber--a throng of dazzling

arms and shoulders, of light-hued satins and fluffy stuffs, of waving

feathers, and splendid piles of braided hair, and mostly comely faces

wreathed in politic smiles. Here and there the mass of pinks and whites

and creams was broken abruptly by a black coat with a hat under its

sleeve. Dudley and I idly commented upon the fact that almost all these

coats belonged to undersized elderly men, generally with spectacles

and a grey beard, and we noted with placid interest that as they came

in--announced in stentorian tones as Mr and Mrs So-and-so--their wives

as a rule were several inches taller and many many years younger than

themselves.

Then it was entertaining, too, to watch Mrs Albert shake hands with

these newcomers. She knew just at what angle each preferred that

ceremony, keeping her knuckles well down in welcoming the more

sophisticated and up-to-date people from about Cromwell Road and the

Park, but elevating them breast-high to greet those from around Brompton

way, and hoisting them quite up to the chin-level with the guests

from beyond Earl’s Court, who were still in the toils of last year’s

fashions.

“Smart woman, that sister of mine!” said Uncle Dudley. “See the way

she’s manoeuvred her shoulder around in front of the Timby-Hucks’s nose,

so as to head her off from getting in and being introduced to the Hon.

Mrs Coon-Alwyn. And--hello! by George, she’s won!--there’s the Dowager

Countess of Thames-Ditton coming in! You’ll never know the anguish, my

boy, that was caused by the uncertainty whether she would come or not.

Emily hasn’t been able to eat these past four days, expecting every

moment the knock of the postman bringing her ladyship’s refusal to come.

The only thing that enabled her to keep up, she said, was fixing her

mind resolutely on the fact that the aristocracy are notoriously

impolite about answering invitations. But now, happy woman--her cup is

fairly running over. This is a great night for Fernbank.

And--look!--hanged if that girl isn’t trying to edge her way in there,

too! See how prettily Emily managed that? Oh, Timby-Hucks! Timby-Hucks!

you’ve put your foot in it this time. You’ll never figure on the

free-list for _this_ show again.”

Misfortune indeed claimed Miss Timby-Hucks for its very own. Mrs Albert

had twice adroitly interposed her well-rounded shoulders between that

enterprising young woman and social eminence--the second time with quite

obvious determination of purpose. And there, too, behind the door, young

Mr Hump bent his sloping shoulders and cliff-like collar humbly over

Miss Wallaby’s chair, listening with all his considerable ears to her

selected monologues. Ah, the vanity of human aspirations!

Casting an heroic glance over the field of defeat, Miss Timby-Hucks’s

eye lighted upon our corner, and on the instant her two upper front

teeth gleamed in a smile of relief. At all events, _we_ were left--and

she came towards us with a decisive step.

“I’ve hardly seen you since the Academy,” she said in her sprightly way

to me, after we had all shaken hands, and she had seated herself between

us on the sofa.

“And how did your article come out?” I asked politely.

“Oh, it never came out at all,” she replied. “It seems it got left over

too long. The editor _said_ it was owing to the pressure of interesting

monkey-language matter upon his columns; but _I_ believe it was just

because I’m a lady journalist, and so does the cousin of Mrs Umpelbaum,

the proprietor’s wife. It must have been that--because, long after the

editor gave this excuse, there were the daily papers still printing

their criticisms, ‘Eleventh Notice of the Royal Academy,’ ‘The Spring

Exhibitions--Fourteenth Article,’ and so on. I taxed him with it--told

him I heard they had some still left, that they were going to begin

printing again after the elections were over--but he said it was

different with dailies. All _they_ needed were advertisements and market

reports, and police news, and telegrams about the Macedonian frontier,

and they could print art criticisms and book reviews whole years after

they should have appeared, because nobody ever read them when they were

printed--but weeklies had to be absolutely up to date.”

“Evil luck does pursue you!” I said, compassionately. “So you haven’t

got into print at all?”

“O I’m not a bit cast down,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks, with jaunty

confidence. “There’s no such word as fail in my book. The way to succeed

is just to keep pegging away. I know of one lady-journalist who went

every day for nine weeks to interview the Countess of Wimps about her

second son’s having been warned off Newmarket Heath. Every day she was

refused admittance--once she got into the hall and was put out by a

brutal footman--but it never unnerved her. Each morning she went again.

And she would have succeeded by this time, probably--only the Countess

suddenly left England to spend the summer in Egypt.”

“Yes, Wady Halfa _has_ its advantages, even in July,” said Uncle Dudley.

“It is warm, and there are insects, but one is allowed by law to kill

them--in Egypt.”

_Illustrating the operation of Vegetables and Feminine Duplicity upon

the Concepts of Maternal Responsibility_

I FELT that I was on sufficiently intimate terms with Mrs Albert Grundy

to tell her that she was not looking well. She gave a weary little sigh

and said she knew it.

Indeed, poor lady, it was apparent enough. She has taken of late to

wearing her hair drawn up from her forehead over a roll--the effect of

mouse-tints at which Nature is beginning to hint, being frankly helped

out by powder. Everybody about Fernbank recognises that in some way

this reform has altered the whole state of affairs. The very servant

who comes to the door, or who brings in the tea-things, seems to carry

herself in a different manner since the change has been made. Of course,

it is by no means a new fashion, but it was not until the Dowager

Countess of Thames-Ditton brought it in person to Fernbank that Mrs

Albert could be quite sure of its entire suitability. Up to that time it

had seemed to her a style rather adapted to lady lecturers and the wives

of men who write: and though Mrs Albert has the very highest regard for

literature--quite dotes on it, as she says--she is somewhat inclined to

sniff at its wives.

We all feel that the change adds character to Mrs Albert’s face--or

rather exhibits now that true managing and resourceful temper, which was

formerly obscured and weakened by a fringe. But the new arrangement has

the defects of its qualities. It does not lend itself to tricks.

The countenance beneath it does not easily dissemble anxiety or mask

fatigue. And both were written broadly over Mrs Albert’s fine face.

“Yes,” she said, “I know it.”

The consoling suggestion that soon the necessity of giving home-dinners

to the directors in her husband’s companies would have ended, and

that then a few weeks out of London, away somewhere in the air of the

mountains or the sea, would bring back all her wonted strength and

spirits, did no good. She shook her head and sighed again.

“No,” she said, “it isn’t physical. That is to say, it _is_ physical, but

the cause is mental. It is over-worry.”

“Of all people on earth--_you!_” I replied reproachfully. “Why think

of it--a husband who is the dream of docile propriety, a competency

broadening each year into a fortune, a home like this, such servants,

such appointments, such a circle of admiring friends--and then your

daughters! Why, to be the mother of such a girl as Ermyntrude-------”

“Precisely,” interrupted Mrs Albert. “To be the mother of such a girl,

as you say. Little you know what it really means! But, no--I know what

you were going to say--_please_ don’t! it is too sad a subject.”

I could do nothing but feebly strive to look my surprise. To think

of sadness connected with tall, handsome, good-hearted Ermie, was

impossible.

“You think I am exaggerating, I know,” Mrs Albert went on. “Ah, you do

not know!”

“Nothing could be more evident,” I replied, “than that I don’t know. I

can’t even imagine what on earth you are driving at.”

Mrs Albert paused for a moment, and pushed the toe of her wee slipper

meditatively back and forth on the figure of the carpet.

“Yes, I _will_ tell you,” she said at last. “You are such an old friend

of the family that you are almost one of us. And besides, you are always

sympathetic--so different from Dudley. Well, the point is this. You know

the young man--Sir Watkyn’s son--Mr Eustace Hump.”

“I have met him here,” I assented.

“Well, I doubt if you will meet him here any more,” Mrs Albert said,

impressively.

“The deprivation shall not drive me to despair or drink,” I assured her.

“I will watch over myself.”

“I dare say you did not care much for him,” said Mrs Albert. “I know

Dudley didn’t. But, all the same, he _was_ eligible. He is an only son,

and his father is a Baronet--an hereditary title--and they are _rolling_

in wealth. And Eustace himself, when you get to know him, has some very

admirable qualities. You know he _writes!_”

“I have heard him say so,” I responded, perhaps not over graciously.

“O, _regularly_, for a number of weekly papers. It is understood that

quite frequently he gets paid--not of course that that matters to

him--but his associations are distinctly literary. I have always felt

that with his tastes and connections his wife--granting of course that

she was the right kind of woman--might at last set up a real literary

_salon_ in London. We have wanted one so long, you know.”

“Have we?” I murmured listlessly, striving all the while to guess what

relation all this bore to the question of Ermyntrude. I built up in my

mind a hostile picture of the odious Hump, with his shoulders sloping

off like a German wine-bottle, his lean neck battlemented in high

starched walls of linen, and his foolish conceited face--and leaped

hopefully to the conclusion that Ermyntrude had rejected him. I could

not keep the notion to myself.

“Well--has she sent him about his business?” I asked, making ready to

beam with delight.

“No,” said Mrs Albert, ruefully. “It never got to that, so far as I can

gather--but at all events it is all over. I expect every morning now

to read the announcement in the _Morning Post_ that a marriage has been

arranged between him and--and--Miss Wallaby!”

I sat upright, and felt myself smiling. “What!--the girl with the black

ribbon round her neck?” I asked comfortably.

“It would be more appropriate round her heart,” remarked Mrs Albert,

with bitterness in her tone. “Why, do you know? her mother, for all that

she’s Lady Wallaby, hasn’t an ‘h’ in her whole composition.”

“Well, neither has old Sir Watkyn Hump,” I rejoined pleasantly. “So it’s

a fair exchange.”

“Ah, but _he_ can afford it,” put in Mrs Albert. “But the

Wallabys--well, I can only say that I had a right to look for different

treatment at _their_ hands. How, do you suppose, they would ever have

been asked to the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn’s garden-party, or met Lady

Thames-Ditton, or been put in society generally, if I had not taken an

interest in them? Why, that girl’s father, old Sir Willoughby Wallaby,

was never anything but chief of police, or something like that, out in

some Australian convict settlement. I _have_ heard he was knighted by

mistake, but of course my lips are sealed.”

“I suppose they really have behaved badly,” I said, half

interrogatively.

“Badly!” echoed the wrathful mother. “I will leave you to judge. It was

done here, quite under my own roof. You know Miss Wallaby volunteered

her services, and went down into the Retired Licensed Victuallers’

Division of Surrey to electioneer for Sir Watkyn. Do you know, I never

suspected anything. And then Miss Timby-Hucks, she went down also, but

they rather cold-shouldered her, and she came back, and she told me

things, and _still_ I wouldn’t believe it. Well then--three weeks

ago--my Evening At Home--you were here--the Wallabys came as large as

life, and that scheming young person manoeuvred about until she got

herself alone with Eustace and my Ermyntrude, and then she told her a

scene she had witnessed during her recent election experiences. There

was a meeting for Sir Watkyn at some place, I can’t recall the name,

and there were a good many of the other side there, and they hooted and

shouted, and raised disturbance, until at last there was one speaker

they would not hear at all. All this that girl told Ermyntrude

seriously, and as if she were overflowing with indignation. And then she

came to the part where the speaker stood his ground and tried to make

himself heard, and the crowd yelled louder than ever, and still he

doggedly persisted--and then someone threw a large vegetable marrow,

soft and very ripe, and it hit that speaker just under the ear, and

burst all over him!”

“Ha-ha-ha!” I ejaculated. “The vegetable marrow in politics is new--full

of delightful possibilities and seeds--wonder it has never been thought

of before.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Albert, with a sigh. “Ermyntrude also thought it was

funny. She has a very keen sense of humour--quite too keen. _She_

laughed, too!”

“And why not?” I asked.

“Why not?” demanded Mrs Albert, with shining eyes. “Because the story

had been told just to trap her into laughing--because--because the

speaker upon whom that unhappy vegetable marrow exploded was--_Eustace

Hump!_”

_Containing Thoughts upon the Great Unknown, to which are added

Speculations upon her Hereafter_

It is not often that I find the time to take part in Mrs Albert

Grundy’s Thursdays--the third and fifth Thursdays of each month, from 4

to 6.30 P.M.--but on a certain afternoon pleasant weather and the sense

of long-accrued responsibility drew me to Fernbank.

It was really very nice, after one got there. Perhaps it would have been

less satisfactory had escape from the drawing-room been a more difficult

matter. Inside that formal chamber, with its blinds down-drawn to shield

the carpet from the sun, the respectable air hung somewhat heavily about

the assembled matronhood of Brompton and the Kensingtons. The units in

this gathering changed from time to time--for Mrs Albert’s circle is a

large and growing one--but the effect of the sum remained much the same.

The elderly ladies talked about the amiability and kindliness of

the Duchess of Teck; and argued the Continental relationships of the

Duchesses of Connaught and Albany, first into an apparently hopeless

tangle of _burgs_ and _hausens_ and _zollerns_ and _sweigs_, then

triumphantly out again into the bright daylight of well-ordered and

pellucid genealogy. The younger wives spoke in subdued voices of more

juvenile Princesses on the lower steps of the throne, with occasional

short-winged flights across the North Sea in imaginative search of a

suitable bride for the then unwedded Duke of York, if an importation

should be found to be necessary--about which opinions might in all

loyalty differ. The few young girls who sat dutifully here beside

their mammas or married sisters talked of nothing at all, but

smiled confusedly and looked away whenever another’s glance, caught

theirs--and, I daresay, thought with decent humility upon Marchionesses.

But outside, on the garden-lawn at the rear of the house, the _Almanach

de Gotha_ threw no shadow, and the pungent scent of jasmine and lilies

drove the leathery odour of Debrett from the soft summer air. The gentle

London haze made Whistlers and Maitlands of the walls and roof-lines and

chimney-pots beyond. The pretty girls of Fernbank held court here on the

velvet grass, with groups of attendant maidens from sympathetic

Myrtle Lodges and Cedarcrofts and Chestnut Villas--selected homesteads

stretching all the way to remote West Kensington. They said there was

no one left in London. Why, as I sat apart in the shade of the ivy

overhanging the garden path, and watched this out-door panorama of the

Grundys’ friendships, it seemed as if I had never comprehended before

how many girls there really were in the world.

And how sweet it was to look upon these damsels, with their dainty

sailor’s hats of straw, their cheeks of Devon cream and damask, their

tall and shapely forms, their profiles of faultless classical delicacy!

What if, in time, they too must sit inside, by preference, and babble

of royalties and the peerage, and politely uncover those two aggressive

incisors of genteel maturity when they were asked to have a third cup

of tea? That stage, praise heaven, should be many years removed. We will

have no memento mori bones or tusks out here in the sunlit garden--but

only tennis balls, and the inspiring chalk-bands on the sward, and the

noble grace of English girlhood, erect and joyous in the open air.

# Much as I delighted in this spectacle, it forced upon me as well a

certain vague sense of depression. These lofty and lovely creatures were

strangers to me. I do not mean that their names were unknown to me, or

that I had not exchanged civil words with many of them, or that I might

not be presented to, and affably received by, them all. The feeling was,

rather, that if it were possible for me to marry them all, we still to

the end of our days would remain strangers. I should never know what to

say to them; still less should I ever be able to guess what they were

thinking.

The tallest and most impressive of all the bevy--the handsome girl

in the pale brown frock with the shirt-front and jacketed blouse,

who stands leaning with folded hands upon her racket like an indolent

Diana--why, I punted her about the whole reach from Sunbury to Walton

during the better part of a week, only last summer, not to mention

sitting beside her at dinner every evening on the houseboat. We were so

much together, in truth, that my friends round about, as I came to know

afterwards, canvassed among themselves the prospect of our arranging

never to separate. Yet I feel that I do not know this girl. We are

friends, yes; but we are not acquainted with each other.

More than once--perhaps a dozen times--in driving through the busier

of London streets, my fancy has been caught by this thing: a

hansom whirling smartly by, the dark hood of which frames a woman’s

face--young, wistful, ivory-hued. It is like the flash exposure of

a kodak--this bald instant of time in which I see this face, and

comprehend that its gaze has met mine, and has burned into my memory a

lightning picture of something I should not recognise if I saw it again,

and cannot at all reproduce to myself, and probably would not like if I

could, yet which leaves me with the feeling that I am richer than I was

before. In that fractional throb of space there has been snatched an

unrehearsed and unprejudiced contact of human souls--projected from one

void momentarily to be swept forward into another; and though not the

Judgment Day itself shall bring these two together again, they know each

other.

Now that I look again at the goddess in the pale-brown gown, these

unlabelled faces of the flitting hansoms seem by comparison those of

familiar companions and intimates.

I get no sense of human communion from that serene and regular

countenance, with its exquisite nose, its short upper-lip and glint of

pearls along the bowed line of the mouth, its correctly arched brows and

wide-open, impassive blue eyes. I can see it with prophetic admiration

out-queening all the others at Henley, or at Goodwood, or on the great

staircase of Buckingham Palace. I can imagine it at Monte Carlo, flushed

a little at the sight of retreating gold; or at the head of a great

noble’s table, coldly poised above satin throat and shoulders, and

stirring no muscle under the free whisperings of His Excellency to the

right. I can conceive it in the Divorce Court, bearing with metallic

equanimity the rude scrutiny of a thousand unlicensed eyes. But my fancy

wavers and fails at the task of picturing that face at my own fireside,

with the light of the home-hearth painting the fulness of her rounded

chin, and reflecting back from her glance, as we talk of men and books

and things, the frank gladness of real comradeship.

But--tchut!--I have no fireside, and the comrades I like best

are playing halfcrown whist at the club; and these are all nice

girls--hearty, healthful, handsome girls, who can walk, run, dance,

swim, scull, skate, ride as no others have known or dared to do since

the glacial wave of Christianity depopulated the glades and dells of

Olympus. They will mate after their kind, and in its own good time along

will come a new generation of straight, strong-limbed, thin-lipped,

pink-and-white girls, and of tow-headed, deep-chested lads, their

brothers--boys who will bully their way through Rugby and Harrow,

misspell and misapprehend their way into the Army, the Navy, and the

Civil Service, and spread themselves over the habitable globe, to rule,

through sheer inability to understand, such Baboos and Matabele and mere

Irishry as Imperial destiny delivers over to them.

The vision is not wholly joyous, as it with diffidence projects itself

beyond, into that further space where new strange other generations

walk--the girls still taller and more coldly tubbed, the boys astride

a yet more temerarious saddle of dull dominion. Reluctant prophecy

discerns beneath their considerable feet the bruised fragments of many

antique trifles--the _bric-à-brac_ of an extinct sentimental fraction

that had a sense of humour and could spell--and, to please mamma, the

fig-leaves have quite overspread and hidden the statues in their garden.

But power is there, and empire; they still more serenely loom above the

little foreign folks who cook, and sing to harps and fiddles, and paint

for their amusement; such as it is under their shaping, they possess the

earth.

So, as the sun goes down in the Hammersmith heavens, I take off my hat,

and salute the potential mothers of the New Rome.

_Glancing at some Modern Aspects of Master John Gutenberg’s ingenious

but Over-rated Invention_

It was very pleasant thus to meet Uncle Dudley in the Strand. Only here

and there is one who can bear that test. Whole legions of our friends,

decent and deeply reputable people, fall altogether out of the picture,

so to speak, on this ancient yet robust thoroughfare. They do very well

indeed in Chelsea or Highgate or the Pembridge country, where they are

at home: there the surroundings fit them to a nicety; there they produce

upon one only amiable, or at the least, natural, impressions. But to

encounter them in the Strand is to be shocked by the blank incongruity

of things. It is not alone that they give the effect of being lost--of

wandering helplessly in unfamiliar places. They offend your perceptions

by revealing limitations and shortcomings which might otherwise have

been hidden to the end of time. You see suddenly that they are not such

good fellows, after all. Their spiritual complexions are made up for the

dim light which pervades the outskirts of the four-mile radius--and go

to pieces in the jocund radiance of the Strand. It is flat presumption

on their part to be ambling about where the ghosts of Goldsmith and

Johnson walk, where Prior and Fielding and our Dick Steele have passed.

Instinctively you go by, looking the other way.

It was quite different with Uncle Dudley. You saw at once that he

belonged to the Strand, as wholly as any of our scorned and scornful

sisters on its comers, competing with true insular doggedness against

German cheeks and raddled accents; as fully as any of its indigenous

loafers, hereditary in their riverside haunts from Tudor times, with

their sophisticated joy in drink and dirt, their large self-confidence

grinning through rags and sooty grime. It seemed as if I had always

associated Uncle Dudley with the Strand.

He was standing in contemplation before a brave window, wherein American

cheese, Danish butter, Norwegian fish, Belgian eggs, German sausages,

Hungarian bacon, French vegetables, Australian apples, and Algerian

fruits celebrate the catholicity of the modern British diet. He turned

when I touched his shoulder, and drew my arm through his.

“Sir,” said Uncle Dudley, “let us take a walk along the Strand to the

Law Courts, where I conceive that the tide of human existence gets the

worst of it with unequalled regularity and dispatch.”

On his way he told me that his gout had quite vanished, owing to his

foresight in collecting a large store of the best medical advice, and

then thoughtfully and with pains disregarding it all. He demonstrated to

me at two halting places that his convalescence was compatible with rich

and strong drinks. He disclosed to me, as we sauntered eastward, his

purpose in straying thus far afield.

“You know Mrs Albert is really a kindly soul,” he said. “It isn’t in her

to keep angry. You remember how sternly she swore that she and Fernbank

had seen the last of Miss Timby-Hucks. It only lasted five weeks--and

now, bless me if the girl isn’t more at home on our backs than ever.

She’s shunted herself off, now, into a new branch of journalism--it

seems that there are a good many branches in these days.”

“It has been noticed,” I assented.

“She doesn’t write any more,” he explained, “that is, _for_ the papers.

She goes instead to the Museum or somewhere, and reads carefully every

daily and weekly journal, I believe, in England. Her business is to pick

out possible libels in them--and to furnish her employers, a certain

firm of solicitors, with a daily list of these. They communicate with

the aggrieved people, notifying them that they _are_ aggrieved, which

they very likely would not otherwise have known, and the result is, of

course, a very fine and spirited crop of litigation.”

“Then that accounts for all the recent----”

“Perhaps not quite _all_,” put in Uncle Dudley. “But the Timby-Hucks is

both energetic and vigilant, and she tells me she is doing splendidly.

She is very enthusiastic about it, naturally. She says that while

the money is, of course, an object, her real satisfaction is in the

humanitarian aspects of her work.”

“I am not sure that I follow,” I said doubtingly.

“No, I didn’t altogether myself at the start,” said Uncle Dudley, “but

as she explains it, it is very simple. You see business is in a bad

way in London--worse, they say, than usual. The number of unemployed is

something dreadful to think of, so I am told by those who have thought

of it. There are many thousands of people with no food, no fire, no

clothes to speak of. Most people are discouraged about this. They can’t

see how the thing can be improved. But Miss Timby-Hucks has a very

ingenious idea. Why, she asks, do not all the Unemployed sue all the

newspapers for libel? Do you catch the notion?”

“By George!” I exclaimed, “that is a bold, comprehensive thought!”

“Yes, isn’t it?” cried Uncle Dudley. “I am immensely attracted by it.

For one thing, it is so secure, so certain! Broadly speaking, there are

no risks at all. I suppose there has never yet been a case, no matter

what its so-called merits, in which the English newspaper hasn’t been

cast in damages of some sort Nobody is too humble or too shady to get

a verdict against an editor or newspaper proprietor. Miss Timby-Hucks

relates several most touching instances where the wolf was actually at

the door, the children shoeless and hungry, the mother prostrated by

drink, rain coming through the roof and so on--and everything has been

changed to peace and contentment by the happy thought of bringing a

libel suit. The father now wears a smile and a white waistcoat; the

drains have been repaired; the little children, nicely washed and

combed, kick each other’s shins with brand new boots, and sing

cheerfully beneath a worsted-work motto of ‘God bless our Home!’ I find

myself much affected by the thought.”

“You had always a tender heart,” I responded. “I suppose there would be

no trouble about the Judges?”

“Not the least in the world,” said Uncle Dudley, with confidence. “Of

course the Bench would have to be greatly enlarged, but there need be no

fear on that score. There is a mysterious but beneficent rule, my boy,

which you can always count upon in this making of judges--no matter how

hail-fellow-well-met an eminent lawyer may be, no matter how intimate

his connection with newspapers, how large his indebtedness to them for

his career--the moment he gets on the Bench he catches the full, fine,

old-crusted judicial spirit toward the Press. The scales fall with a

bang from his eyes, and he sees the editor and newspaper proprietor

as they really are--designing criminals, mercenary reprobates, social

pests--to be lectured and bullied and put down. O, you may rely on the

Judges! They are as safe as a new Liberal peer is to vote Tory.”

“But the ‘power of the Press’?” I urged. “If the newspapers combine in

protest, and----”

“You talk at random!” said Uncle Dudley almost austerely. “I should say

the most certain, the most absolutely reliable, element in the whole

case is the fact that newspapers do not combine. Whenever one editor

gets hit, all the others grin. One journal is mulcted in heavy damages:

the rest have all a difficulty in dissembling their delight. You read in

natural history that kites are given to falling upon one of their kind

which gets wounded or decrepit, and picking out its eyes. Well, kites

are also made of newspapers.”

“And juries?” I began to ask.

“Here we are,” remarked Uncle Dudley, turning in toward the guarded

portals of the great hall.

“I have a friend among the attendants here, a thoughtful and discerning

man. I will learn from him where we may look for the spiciest case. He

takes a lively interest in the flaying of editors. I believe he was once

a printer. He will tell us where the axe gleams most savagely to-day:

where; we shall get the most journalistic blood for our money. You were

speaking of juries. Just take a look at one of them--if you are not

afraid of spoiling your luncheon--and you will see that they speak for

themselves. They regard all newspapers as public enemies--particularly

when the betting tips have been more misleading than usual. They stand

by their kind. They ‘give the poor man a chance’ without hesitation,

without fail. They are here to avenge the discovery of movable types,

and they do it. Come with me, and witness the disembowelling of a daily,

the hamstringing of a sub-editor--a publisher felled by the hand of the

Law like a bullock. Since the bear-pits of Bankside were closed there

has been no such sport.”

Unhappily, it turned out that none of the Judges had come down to the

Courts that day. There was a threat of east wind in the air. “You see,

if they don’t live, to a certain age they get no pensions, and their

heirs turn a key in the lock on the old gentlemen in weather like this,”

explained Uncle Dudley, turning disappointedly away.

_Detailing certain Prudential Measures taken during the Panic incident

to a Late Threatened Invasion_

I HOPE,” said Mrs Albert, “that I am as free to admit my errors in

judgment as another. Evidently there has been a mistake in this matter,

and it is equally obvious that I am the one who must have made it. I did

not need to have this pointed out to me, Dudley. What I looked to you

for was advice, counsel, sympathy. You seem not to realise at all how

important this is to me. A false step now may ruin everything--and you

simply sit there and grin!”

“My dear sister,” replied Uncle Dudley, smoothing his face, “the smile

was involuntary. It shall not recur. I was only thinking of Albert’s

enthusiasm for the----”

“Yes, I know!” put in Mrs Albert; “for that girl with the zouave

jacket----”

“_And_ the scarlet petticoat,” prompted Uncle Dudley.

“_And_ the crinoline,” said the lady.

“O, he did not insist upon that. I recall his exact words. ‘Whether this

under-garment,’ he said, ‘be made of some stiff material like horsehair,

or by means of steel hoops, is a mere question of detail.’ No, Albert

expressly kept an open mind on that point.”

“I agree with you,” remarked Mrs Albert coldly, “to the extent that he

certainly does keep his mind on it. He has now reverted to the subject,

I should think, at least twenty times. I am not so blind as you may

imagine. I notice that that Mr Labouchere also keeps on referring, every

week, to another girl in _her_ zouave jacket, whom _he_ remembers with

equal fondness, apparently.”

“Yes,” put in Uncle Dudley, “those words about the ‘stiff material like

horsehair’ _were_ in _Truth_. I daresay Albert simply read them

there, and just unconsciously repeated them. We often do inadvertent,

unthinking things of that sort.”

Mrs Albert shook her head. “It is nothing to me, of course,” she said,

“but I cannot help feeling that the middle-aged father of a family might

concentrate his thoughts upon something nobler, something higher, than

the recollection of the charms of a red petticoat, thirty years ago.

That is so characteristic of men. They cannot discuss a question

broadly----”

“Think not?” queried Uncle Dudley, with interest. “You should listen at

the keyhole sometime, after you have led the ladies out from dinner.”

“I mean personally, in a general way. They always particularise. Albert,

for example, allows all his views on this very important question to be

coloured by the fact that when he was a young man he admired some girl

in a short red Balmoral petticoat. Whenever conversation touches

upon any phase of the whole subject of costume, out he comes with his

tiresome adulation of that particular garment. Of course, I ask no

questions--I should prefer not to be informed--I try not even to draw

inferences--but I notice that Ermyntrude is beginning to observe the

persistency with which her father----”

“My good Emily,” urged Uncle Dudley, consolingly, “far back in the

Sixties we all liked that girl; we couldn’t help ourselves--she was

the only girl there was. And we think of her fondly still--we old

fellows--because for us she was also the last there was! When she went

out, lo and behold! we too had gone out, not to come back any more. When

Albert and I babble about a scarlet petticoat, it is only as a symbol of

our own far-away youth. O delicious vision!--the bright, bright red, the

skirt that came drooping down over it, not hiding too much that pretty

little foot and ankle, the dear zouave jacket moulding itself so

delicately to the persuasive encircling arm----”

“Dudley! I really must recall you to yourself,” said Mrs Albert. “We

were speaking of quite another matter. I am in a very serious dilemma.

First of all, as I explained to you, to please the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn

I became one of the Vice-Presidents of the Friendly Divided Skirt

Association. You know how useful she can be, in helping to bring

Ermyntrude out successfully. And of course everybody _knew_ that, even

if we _did_ have them _made_, we should never _wear_ them. That was

_quite_ out of the question.”

“And then?” asked Uncle Dudley.

“Well, then, let me see--yes, next came the Neo-Dress-Improver League.

I never understood what the object was, precisely; it was a kind of

secession from the other, led by the Countess of Wimps, and I needn’t

tell you that she is of the _utmost_ importance to us, and there was

simply _nothing_ for me to do but to become a Lady Patroness of _that_.

You were in extremely nice company--there were seven or eight ladies of

title among the Patronesses, our names all printed together in beautiful

little gilt letters--and you really weren’t committed to anything that

I could make out. No--_that_ was all right. I should do the same

thing again, under the circumstances. No, the trouble came with the

Amalgamated Anti-Crinoline Confederacy. That was where I was too hasty,

I think.”

“That’s the thing with the protesting post-cards, isn’t it?” inquired

Uncle Dudley.

“That very feature of it alone ought to have warned me,” Mrs Albert

answered with despondency. “My own better sense should have told me

that post-cards were incompatible with selectness. But you see, the

invitations were sent out by the authoress of _The Street-Sprinkler’s

Secret_, and that gave me the impression that it was to be literary--to

represent Culture and the Arts, you know; and that appealed to me, of

course, very strongly.”

“I have always feared that your literary impulses would run away with

you,” Uncle Dudley declared gravely.

“It is my weak side; I don’t deny it,” replied his sister. “Where

letters and authorship, and that sort of thing, you know, are concerned,

it is my nature to be sympathetic. And besides, the Dowager Lady

Thames-Ditton was very pronounced in favour of the movement, and I

_couldn’t_ fly in the face of that, could I? I must say, though, that I

had my misgivings almost from the first. Miss Wallaby told the Rev. Mr

Grayt-Scott that a lady she knew had looked over quite a peck or more of

the post-cards which came in one day, and they were nine-tenths of them

from Earl’s Court.”

“Yes,” remarked Uncle Dudley, “I think I have heard that the post-card

reaches its most luxuriant state of literary usefulness in that

locality. It was from that point that they tried to rush the

Laureateship, you know.”

“Well, you can imagine how I felt when I heard it. It is all well enough

to be literary--nobody realises that more than I do--and it is all very

well to be loyal--of course! But one draws the line at Earl’s Court--at

least, that part of it. I say frankly that it serves me right. I should

have known better. One thing I cannot be too thankful for--Ermyntrude

did not send a post-card. Some blessed instinct prompted me to tell her

there was no hurry about it--that I did not like to see young girls

too forward in such matters. And now--why--who knows--Dudley! I have an

idea! Ermie shall join the Crinoline Defence League!”

“I see--the family will hedge on the crinoline issue. Capital!”

“You know, after all, we may have to wear them. It’s quite as likely as

not. The old Duchess of West Ham is President of the League, and she is

very influential in the highest quarters. Her Grace, I understand, _is_

somewhat bandy, but she has always maintained the strictest Christian

respectability, and her action in this matter will count for a great

deal. Just think, if she should happen to take a fancy to Ermyntrude!

That Miss Wallaby has thrust herself forward till she is actually a

member of the Council, and she is going to deliver an address on ‘The

Effect of Modesty on National Morals.’ She told our curate that at

one of the meetings of the Council she came within an ace of being

introduced to the Duchess herself. Now surely, if _she_ can accomplish

all this, Ermie ought to be able to do still more. Tell me, Dudley, what

do _you_ think?”

“I think,” replied Uncle Dudley musingly, “I think that the scarlet

petticoat, _with_ the zouave jack----”

Mrs Albert interrupted him with sternness. “Don’t you see,” she

demanded, “that if it _does_ come, the dear girl will share in the

credit of bringing it in, and if it doesn’t come, I shall have the

advantage of having helped to stave it off. Whichever side wins, there

we are.”

Uncle Dudley rose, and looked thoughtfully out upon the fog, and stroked

his large white moustache in slow meditation. “Yes--undoubtedly,” he

said at last, “there we are.”

_Dealing with the Deceptions of Nature, and the Freedom from, Illusion

Inherent in the Unnatural_

There was once a woman--obviously a thoughtful woman--who remarked that

she had noticed that if she managed to live till Friday, she invariably

survived the rest of the week. I did not myself know this philosopher,

who is preserved to history in one of Roscoe Conkling’s speeches, but

her discovery always recurs to me about this time of year, when February

begins to disclose those first freshening glimpses of sunlight and blue

skies to bleared, fog-smudged and shivering London. Aha! if we have won

thus far, if we have contrived to get to February, then we shall surely

see the Spring. At least the one has heretofore involved the other--and

there is confident promise in the smile of a noon-day once more able to

cast a shadow, albeit the teeth of the east wind gleam close behind that

smile.

It was a day for a walk--no set and joyous rural tramp, indeed, with

pipe and wallet, and a helpful spring underfoot in the clean hard

roadway, and an honest, well-balanced stick for the bell-ringing gentry

who shall come at you on wheels from behind--but just an orderly,

contemplative urban ramble, brisk enough for warmth, but with no hurry,

and above all no destination. And it was a day, moreover, for letting

one’s fellow-creatures pass along with scant notice--a winter-ridden,

shuffling, mud-stained company these, conscious of being not at all

worth examination--and for giving eye instead to the house-fronts in the

sunshine, and radiant chimneypots and tiles above them, and the signs of

blessed, unaccustomed blue still further up. There was, it is true, an

undeniable disproportion between the inner look of these things, and

this gladness of the heart because of them. Glancing more closely, one

could see that they were not taking the sun seriously, and, for their

own part, were expecting more fogs next week. And farther westward, when

stucco, brick, and stone gave way to park-land, it was apparent at sight

that the trees were flatly incredulous.

They say that in Ireland, where the mildness of climate has in the past

prompted many experiments with exotic growths, the trees not really

indigenous to the island never learn sense, but year after year are

gulled by this February fraud into gushing expansively forth with

sap and tender shoots, only to be gripped and shrivelled by the icy

after-hand of March. The native tree, however, knows this trick of old,

and greets the sham Spring with a distinctive, though well-buttoned-up

wink. In Kensington Park region one couldn’t be sure that the trees

really saw the joke. It is not, on the whole, a humourous neighbourhood.

But at all events they were not to be fooled into premature buds and

sprouts and kindred signs of silliness. Every stiffly exclusive drab

trunk rising before you, every section of the brown lacework of twigs up

above, seemed to offer a warning advertisement: “No connection with the

sunshine over the way!”

Happily the flower-beds exhibited more sympathy. Up through the mould

brave little snowdrops had pushed their pretty heads, and the crocuses,

though with their veined outer cloaks of sulphur, mauve, and other tints

still wrapped tight about them, wore almost a swaggering air to show

how wholly they felt at home. Emboldened by this bravado, less confident

fellows were peeping forth, though in such faltering fashion that one

could scarcely tell which was squill, which narcissus or loitering

jonquil. Still, it was good to see them. They too were glad that they

had lived till February, because after that comes the Spring.

And it was better still, as I turned to stroll on, to behold coming

toward me down the path, with little swinging step, and shapely head

well up in air, none other than our Ermyntrude.

I say “our” because--it is really absurd to think of it--it seems only a

few months ago since she was a sprawling tom-boy sort of a little girl,

who sat on my knee and listened with her mouth open to my reminiscences

of personal encounters with unicorns and the behemoth of Holy Writ. She

must be now--by George! she _is_--not a minute under two-and-twenty. And

that means--_hélas!_ it undoubtedly means--that I am getting to be an

old boy indeed. At Christmas-tide--I recall it now--Mrs Albert spoke of

me as the oldest friend of the family. It sounded kindly at the time,

and I had a special pleasure in the smile Ermyntrude wore as she,

with the others, lifted her glass towards me. I won’t say what vagrant

thoughts and ambitions that smile did not raise in my mind--and, lo!

they were toasting me as an amiable elderly friend of the Fernbank

household. No wonder I am glad to have lived till February!

Ermyntrude had a roll of music in her hands. There was a charming glow

on her cheeks, and a healthy, happy, sparkle in her eyes. She stopped

short before me, with a little exclamation of not displeased surprise!

“Why, how nice to run upon you like this,” she said, in high spirits.

“We thought you must have gone off to the Riviera, or Algiers, or

somewhere--for your cold, you know. Mamma was speaking of you only

yesterday--hoping that you were taking care of yourself.”

“Had I a cold?” I asked absently. The air had grown chillier. We walked

along together, and she let me carry the music.

“O--you haven’t heard,” she exclaimed suddenly, “such news as I have for

you! You couldn’t ever guess!”

“Is it something about crinoline?” I queried. “Your mother was telling

“Rubbish!” said Ermyntrude gaily. “I’m engaged!”

The wind had really got round into the East, and I, fastened my coat

at the collar. “I am sure”--I remarked at last--“I’m sure I

congratulate--the happy young man. Do I know him?”

“I hardly think so,” she replied. “You see, it’s--it’s what you might

call rather sudden. We haven’t known him ourselves very long--that is,

intimately. You may have heard his name--the Honourable Knobbeleigh

Jones. It’s a very old family though the title is somewhat new. His

father is Lord Skillyduff, you know.”

“The shipping man?” I said, wearily.

“Yes. He and papa are together on some board or other. That is how we

came to know them. Papa says he never saw such business ability and

sterling worth combined in one man before--I’m speaking of the father,

you know. He began life in quite a small way, with just a few ships that

he rented, or something like that. Then there was a war on some coast in

Africa or Australia--it begins with an A, I know--oh, _is_ there a place

called Ashantee?--yes, that’s it--and he got the contract to take out

four shiploads of hay to our troops--it would be for their horses,

wouldn’t it?”

“Yes: the asses connected with the military branch are needed at

home--or at least are kept there.”

“Well, after he started, he got orders to stop at some place and wait

for other orders. He did so, and he waited four years and eight months.

Those orders never came. The hay all rotted, of course: the ships almost

moulded away: I daresay some of the crew died of old age--But Mr Jones

never stirred from his post. Finally, some English official came on him

by accident--quite! and so he was recalled. Papa says very few men would

have shown such tenacity of purpose and grasp of the situation. Mamma

says his fidelity to duty was magnificent.”

“Magnificent--yes,” I commented; “but it wasn’t war.”

“Oh, bless you! there _was_ no war _then_,” explained Ermyntrude. “The

war had been ended for _years_. And all that while the pay for shipping

that hay had been going on, so that the Government owed him--I think

it was £45,000. Of course he got more contracts, and then he was made a

baronet, and could build his own ships; and now he is a lord, and papa

says the War Office would be quite helpless without him.”

“And the son,” I asked; “what does he do?”

“Why, nothing, of course!” said Ermyntrude, lifting her pretty brows a

little in surprise. “He is the eldest son.”

“I didn’t know but he might have gone in for the Army, or Parliament, or

something,” I explained weakly: “just to occupy his mind.”

She smiled to herself--somewhat grimly, I thought. “No,” she said,

assuming a serious face, “he says doing things is all rot, if you aren’t

obliged to do them. Of course, he goes in for hunting and shooting and

all that, and he has a houseboat and a yacht, and one year he was in the

All-Slumpshire eleven, but that was too much bother. He hates bother.”

We had come out upon the street now, and walked for a little in silence.

“Ermie,” I said at last, “you mustn’t be annoyed with me--this is one of

my sentimental days, and you know as an old friend of the family I’ve

a certain right of free speech--but this doesn’t seem to me quite good

enough. A girl like you--beautiful and clever and accomplished, knowing

your way about among books, and with tastes above the ruck--there ought

to be a better outlook for you than this! I know that type of young

man, and he isn’t in your street at all. Come now!” I went on, gathering

courage, “look me in the face if you can, and tell me that you honestly

love this young man, or that you really respect his father, or that you

candidly expect to be happy. I defy you to do it!”

I was wrong. Ermyntrude did look me in the face, squarely and without

hesitation. She halted for the moment to do so, and her gaze, though not

unkindly, was full of serious frankness.

“There is one thing I do expect,” she said, calmly. “I expect to get

away from Fernbank.”

_Suggesting Considerations possibly heretofore Overlooked by

Commentators upon the Laws of Property_

You will find Dudley up in what he calls his library,” said Mrs Albert

in the hallway. “I’m _so_ sorry I must go out--but he’ll be glad to see

you. And--let me entreat you, don’t give him any encouragement!”

“What!” I cried, “encourage Uncle Dudley? Oh--never, never!”

“No, just be firm with him,” Mrs Albert went on. “Say that it mustn’t be

thought of for a moment. And Oh--by the way--it’s as well to warn you:

_don’t_ ask him what he did it for! It seems that every one asks him

that--and he gets quite enraged about it now, when that particular

question is put. As like as not he’d throw something at you.” She spoke

earnestly, in low, impressive tones.

“Wild horses should not drag it from me,” I pledged myself. “I will not

encourage him: I will not enrage him; I swear not to ask him what he did

it for. But--if you don’t mind--could I, so to speak, bear the shock of

learning what it is that he _has_ done?”

“You haven’t heard?” Mrs Albert asked, glancing up at me, with an

astonished face, as I stood on the stairs. When I shook my head, she put

out her hand to the latch, and opened the door, as if to heighten the

dramatic suspense. Then she turned and looked me in the eye with solemn

intentness. “What has he done?” she echoed in a hollow voice: “You go

upstairs and see!”

The door closed behind her, and I made my way noiselessly, two steps at

a time, to the floor above. Some vague sense of disaster seemed to

brood over the silent, half-lighted stairway and the deserted landing.

I knocked at Uncle Dudley’s door--almost prepared to find my signal

unanswered. But no, his voice came back, cheerily enough, and I entered

the room.

“Oh, it’s you!” said my friend, rising from his chair. “Glad to see

you,”--and we shook hands. Standing thus, I found myself staring into

his face with a rude and prolonged fixity of gaze, under which he first

smiled--a strange, unwholesome sort of smile--then flushed a little,

then scowled and averted his glance.

“Great heavens!” I exclaimed at last. “Why, man alive, what on earth

possessed you to--”

“Come now!” broke in Uncle Dudley, with peremptory sternness. “Chuck

it!”

“Yes--I know”--I stammered haltingly along--“I promised I wouldn’t ask

you--but--”

“But the original simian instincts triumph over your resolutions, eh?”

said my friend, crustily. “Yes, I know. I’ve had pretty nearly a week of

it now. That question has been asked me, I estimate, somewhere about six

hundred and seventy-eight times since last Thursday. It’s only fair to

you to tell you that I have registered a vow to hit the next man who

asks me that fool of a question--‘What did you do it for?’--straight

under his left ear. I probably saved your life by interrupting you.”

Though the words were fierce, there was a marked return of geniality

in the tone. I took the liberty of putting a hand over Uncle Dudley’s

shoulder, and marching him across to the window.

“Let’s have a good look at you,” I said.

“I did it myself; I did it with my little hatchet; I did it because

I wanted to; I had a right to do it; I should do it again if the

fit struck me----” Thus, with mock gravity, Uncle Dudley ran on as I

scrutinised his countenance in the strong light. “And furthermore,” he

added, “I don’t care one single hurrah in Hades whether you like it or

not.”

“I think on the whole,” I mused aloud--“yes, I think I rather do like

it--now that I accustom myself to it.”

Uncle Dudley’s face brightened on the instant. “Do you really?” he

exclaimed, and beamed upon me. In spite of his professed indifference to

my opinion, it was obvious that I had pleased him.

“Sit down,” he said--“there are the matches behind you--hope these

aren’t too green for you. Yes, my boy, I created quite a flutter in the

hen-yard, I can tell you. Did my sister tell you?--she nearly fainted,

and little Amy burst out boo-hooing as if she’d lost her last friend.

When you come to think of it, old man, it’s really too ridiculous, you

know.”

“It certainly has its grotesque aspects,” I admitted.

Uncle Dudley looked up sharply, as if suspecting some ironical meaning

in my words. “You really do think it’s an improvement?” he asked, with a

doubtful note in his voice.

“Of course, it makes a tremendous change,” I said, diplomatically, “and

the novelty tends perhaps to confuse judgment: but I must confess the

result is--is, well, very interesting.”

My friend did not look wholly satisfied. “It shows what stupid people we

are,” he went on in a dogmatic way. “Why, the way they’ve gone on, you’d

think I had no property rights in the thing at all--that I was merely a

trustee for it--bound to give an account to every Tom-Dick-and-Harry who

came along and had nothing better to occupy his mind with. And then that

eternal, vacuous, woollen-brained ‘What did you do it for?’ Oh, that’s

got to be too sickening for words! And the confounded familiarity of the

whole thing! Why, hang me, if even the little Jew cigar dealer down on

the corner didn’t feel entitled to pass what he took to be some friendly

remarks on the subject. ‘Vy,’ he said, ‘if I could say vidout vlattery,

vot a haddsobe jeddlebad you ver, and vy did you do dot by yourself?’ It

gets on a man’s nerves, you know, things like that.”

“But hasn’t anyone liked the change?” I asked.

Uncle Dudley sighed. “That’s the worst of it,” he said, dubiously.

“Only two men have said they liked it--and it happens that they are both

persons of conspicuously weak intellect. That’s rather up against me,

isn’t it? But on the other hand, you know, people who are silliest about

everything else always get credit for knowing the most about art and

beauty and all that. Perhaps in such a case as this, I daresay their

judgment might be better than all the others. And after all, what do

_I_ care? That’s the point I make: that it’s _my_ business and nobody

else’s. If a man hasn’t got a copyright in his own personal appearance,

why there is no such thing as property. But instead of recognising this,

any fellow feels free to come up and say: ‘You look like an unfrocked

priest,’ or ‘Hullo! another burglar out of work,’ and he’s quite

surprised if you fail to show that you’re pleased with the genial

brilliancy of his remarks. I don’t suppose there is any other

single thing which the human race lapses into such rude and insolent

meddlesomeness over as it does over this.”

“It _is_ pathetic,” I admitted--“but--but it’ll soon grow again.”

Uncle Dudley laughed a bitter laugh. “By Jove,” he cried, “I’ve more

than half a mind not to let it. It would serve ‘em right if I didn’t.

Why, do you know--you’d hardly believe it! My sister had a dinner party

on here for Saturday night, and after I’d--I’d done it--she cancelled

the invitations--some excuse about a family loss--a bereavement, my boy.

Well, you know, treatment of that sort puts a man on his mettle. I’m

entitled to resent it. And besides--you know--of course it does make

a great change--but somehow I fancy that when you get used to it--come

now--the straight griffin, as they say--what do _you_ think?”

“I’m on oath not to encourage you,” I made answer.

“There you have it!” cried Uncle Dudley: “the old tyrannical conspiracy

against the unusual, the individual, the true! Let nobody dare to be

himself! Let us have uniformity, if all else perishes. The frames must

be alike in the Royal Academy, that’s the great thing; the pictures

don’t matter so much. You see our women-folk now, this very month,

getting ready to case themselves in ugly hoops which they hate, at the

bidding of they know not whom, because, if they did not, the hideous

possibility of one woman being different from another woman would darken

the land. A man is not to be permitted the pitiful privilege of seeing

his own mouth, not even once in fifteen years, simply because it

temporarily inconveniences the multitude in their notions as to how he

is in the habit of looking! What rubbish it is!”

“It _is_ rubbish,” I assented--“and you are talking it. Your sister who

fainted, your niece who wept, your friends who averted their gaze in

anguish, the hordes of casual jackasses who asked why you did it, the

kindly little Jew cigar man who broke forth in lamentations--these are

the world’s jury. They have convicted you--sorrowfully but firmly. You

yourself, for all your bravado, realise the heinousness of your crime.

You are secretly ashamed, remorseful, penitent. I answer for you--you

will never do it again.”

“And yet it isn’t such a bad mouth, either,” mused Uncle Dudley, with

a lingering glance at the mirror over the mantel. “There is humour,

delicacy of perception, affection, gentleness--ever so many nice

qualities about it which were all hidden up before. The world ought to

welcome the revelation--and it throws stones instead. Ah well!--pass

the matches--let us yield gracefully to the inevitable! It shall grow

again.”

“Mrs Albert will be so glad,” I remarked.

_Narrating the Failure of a Loyal Attempt to Circumvent Adversity by

means of Modern Appliances_

If his name was Jabez, why weren’t we told so, I’d like to know?”

demanded Mrs Albert of me, with a momentary flash in her weary glance.

“What right had the papers to go on calling him J. Spencer, year after

year, while he was deluding the innocent, and fattening upon the bodies

of his dupes? To be sure, now that the mask is off, and he has fled,

they speak of him always as Jabez. Why didn’t they do it before, while

honest people might still have been warned? But no--they never did--and

now it’s too late--too late!”

The poor lady’s voice broke pathetically upon this reiterated plaint.

She bowed her head, and as I looked with pained sympathy upon the

drooping angle of her proud face, I could see the shadows about her lips

quiver.

A sad tale indeed it was, to which I had been listening--here in

a lonesome corner of the cloistral, dim-lit solitude of the big

drawing-room at Fernbank. It was not a new story. Kensington has known

it by heart for a generation. Bloomsbury learned it earlier, and before

that it was familiar in Soho--away off in the old days when the ruffling

gentry of Golden Square fought for the chance of buying ingenious John

Law’s South Sea scrip. And even then, the experience was an ancient and

half-forgotten memory of Bishopsgate and the Minories. It was the old,

old tragedy of broken fortunes.

Mrs Albert was clear that it began with the Liberator troubles. I had

my own notion that Mr Albert Grundy was skating on thin ice before the

collapse of the building societies came. However that may be, there was

no doubt whatever that the cumulative Australian disasters had finished

the business. There were melancholy details in her recital which I lack

the courage to dwell upon. The horse and brougham were gone; the

lease of Fernbank itself was offered for sale, with possession before

Michaelmas, if desired; Ermyntrude’s engagement was as good as off.

“It won’t be a bankruptcy,” said Mrs Albert, lifting her face and

resolutely winking the moisture from her lashes. “We shall escape

that--but for the moment at least I must abandon my position in society.

Dudley is over to-day looking at a small place in Highgate, although

Albert thinks he would prefer Sydenham. My own feeling is that some

locality from which you could arrive by King’s Cross or St Paneras would

be best. One never meets anybody one knows there. Then, when matters

adjust themselves again, as of course they will, we could return

here--to this neighbourhood, at least--and just mention casually having

been out at our country place--on the children’s account, of course. And

Floribel _is_ delicate, you know.”

“Oh well, then,” I said, trying to put buoyance into my tone, “it isn’t

so had after all. And you feel--Albert feels--quite hopeful about things

coming right again?”

My friend’s answering nod of affirmation had a certain qualifying

dubiety about it. “Yes, we’re hopeful,” she said. “But a fortnight ago,

I felt positively sanguine. Nobody ever worked harder than I did to

deserve success, any way. I only failed through gross treachery--and

that, too, at the hands of the very people of whom I could never,

_never_ have believed it. When you find the aristocracy openly actuated

by mercenary motives, as I have done this past month, it almost makes

you ask what the British nation is coming to!”

“Dear me!” I exclaimed, “is it as bad as that?”

“You shall judge for yourself,” said Mrs Albert gravely. “You know

that I organised--quite early in the Spring--the Loyal Ladies’ Namesake

Committee of Kensington. I do not boast in saying that I really

organised it, quite from its beginnings. The idea was mine; practically

all the labour was mine. But when one is toiling to realise a great

ideal like that, one frequently loses sight of small details. I ought to

have known better--but I took a serpent to my bosom. I was weak enough

to associate with me in the enterprise that monument of duplicity and

interested motives--the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn. Why, she hadn’t so much as

an initial letter to entitle her to belong----”

“I am not sure that I follow you,” I put in. “Ladies’ Namesake

Committee--initial letter--I don’t seem to grasp the idea.”

“It’s perfectly simple,” explained Mrs Albert. “The idea was that all

the ladies--our set, you know--whose name was ‘May’ should combine in

subscribing for a present.”

“But your name is Emily,” I urged, thoughtlessly.

“Oh, we weren’t exactly literal about it,” said Mrs Albert; “we

_couldn’t_ be, you know. It would have shut out some of our very best

people. But I came very near the standard, indeed. My second name is

Madge. You take the first two letters of that, and the ‘y’ from Emily,

and there you have it. Oh, I assure you, very few came even as near it

as that--and as I said to Dudley at the time, if you think of it, even

_her_ name isn’t _really_ May. It’s only a popular contraction. But that

Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn, she had no actual right whatever to belong. Her

names are Hester Winifred Edith. She hasn’t even one _letter_ right!”

“Ah, that was indeed treachery!” I ejaculated.

“Oh, no, that, was not what I referred to,” Mrs Albert set me right. “Of

course, I was aware of her names. I had seen them in the ‘Peerage’

for years. It was what she did after her entrance that covers her

with infamy. But I will narrate the events in their order. First, we

collected £1100. Of course, our own contribution was not large, but

Ermyntrude and I hunted the various church registers--we don’t speak of

it, but even the Nonconformist ones we went through--and we got a

tremendous number of Christian names more or less what was desired, and

our circulars were sent to _every one_, far and near. As I said, we

raised quite £1100. Then there came the question of the gift.”

Mrs Albert uttered this last sentence with such deliberate solemnity

that I bowed to show my consciousness of its importance.

“Yes,” she went on, “the selection of the gift. Now I had in mind a most

appropriate and useful present. Have you heard of the Oboid Oil Engine?

No? Well, it is an American invention, and has been brought over here by

an American, who has bought the European rights from the inventor. He is

in the next building to Albert, in the City, and they meet almost

every day at luncheon, and have struck up quite a friendship. He has

connections which might be of the _utmost_ importance to Albert, and

if Albert could only have been of service to him in introducing this

engine, there is literally _no telling_ what might not have come of it.

Albert does not _say_ that a partnership would have resulted, but I can

read it in his face.”

“But would an oil engine have been--under the circumstances--you know

what I mean----” I began.

“Oh, _most_ suitable!” responded Mrs Albert with conviction. “It is

really, it seems, a very surprising piece of machinery. After it’s once

bought, the cheapness of running it is simply _absurd_. It does all

sorts of things at no expense worth mentioning--anything you want it to

do. It appears that if it had been invented at that time, the pyramids

in Egypt could have been built by it for something like 130 per cent,

less than their cost is estimated to have been--or something like that.

Oh, it is quite extraordinary, I assure you. Albert says he could stand

and watch it working for hours--especially if he had an interest in the

company.”

“But I hadn’t heard that there were any new pyramid plans on just

now--although, when I think of it, Shaw-Lefevre did have some

Westminster Abbey project which----”

“No, no!” interrupted Mrs Albert. “One of the engine’s greatest uses is

in agriculture. It does _everything_--threshes, garners, mows, milks--or

no, not that, but almost _everything_. No self-respecting farmer, they

say, dreams of being without one--that is, of course, if he knows about

it. You can see what it would have meant, if one had been thus publicly

introduced on the princely farm at Sandringham. All England would have

rung with demands for the Oboid--and Albert feels sure that the American

man would have been grateful--and--and--then perhaps we need never have

left Fernbank at all.”