V
For a day or two after this notable encounter between tabooer and
taboo-breaker, Philip moved about in a most uneasy state of mind.
He lived in constant dread of receiving a summons as a party to an
assault upon a most respectable and respected landed proprietor who
preserved more pheasants and owned more ruinous cottages than
anybody else (except the duke) round about Brackenhurst. Indeed, so
deeply did he regret his involuntary part in this painful escapade
that he never mentioned a word of it to Robert Monteith; nor did
Frida either. To say the truth, husband and wife were seldom
confidential one with the other. But, to Philip's surprise,
Bertram's prediction came true; they never heard another word about
the action for trespass or the threatened prosecution for assault
and battery. Sir Lionel found out that the person who had committed
the gross and unheard-of outrage of lifting an elderly and
respectable English landowner like a baby in arms on his own estate,
was a lodger at Brackenhurst, variously regarded by those who knew
him best as an escaped lunatic, and as a foreign nobleman in
disguise, fleeing for his life from a charge of complicity in a
Nihilist conspiracy: he wisely came to the conclusion, therefore,
that he would not be the first to divulge the story of his own
ignominious defeat, unless he found that damned radical chap was
going boasting around the countryside how he had balked Sir Lionel.
And as nothing was further than boasting from Bertram Ingledew's
gentle nature, and as Philip and Frida both held their peace for
good reasons of their own, the baronet never attempted in any way to
rake up the story of his grotesque disgrace on what he considered
his own property. All he did was to double the number of keepers
on the borders of his estate, and to give them strict notice that
whoever could succeed in catching the "damned radical" in flagrante
delicto, as trespasser or poacher, should receive most instant
reward and promotion.
During the next few weeks, accordingly, nothing of importance
happened, from the point of view of the Brackenhurst chronicler;
though Bertram was constantly round at the Monteiths' garden for
afternoon tea or a game of lawn-tennis. He was an excellent player;
lawn-tennis was most popular "at home," he said, in that same
mysterious and non-committing phrase he so often made use of. Only,
he found the racquets and balls (very best London make) rather
clumsy and awkward; he wished he had brought his own along with him
when he came here. Philip noticed his style of service was
particularly good, and even wondered at times he did not try to go
in for the All England Championship. But Bertram surprised him by
answering, with a quiet smile, that though it was an excellent
amusement, he had too many other things to do with his time to make
a serious pursuit of it.
One day towards the end of June, the strange young man had gone
round to The Grange--that was the name of Frida's house--for his
usual relaxation after a very tiring and distressing day in London,
"on important business." The business, whatever it was, had
evidently harrowed his feelings not a little, for he was
sensitively organised. Frida was on the tennis-lawn. She met him
with much lamentation over the unpleasant fact that she had just
lost a sister-in-law whom she had never cared for.
"Well, but if you never cared for her," Bertram answered, looking
hard into her lustrous eyes, "it doesn't much matter."
"Oh, I shall have to go into mourning all the same," Frida
continued somewhat pettishly, "and waste all my nice new summer
dresses. It's SUCH a nuisance!"
"Why do it, then?" Bertram suggested, watching her face very
narrowly.
"Well, I suppose because of what you would call a fetich," Frida
answered laughing. "I know it's ridiculous. But everybody expects
it, and I'm not strong-minded enough to go against the current of
what everybody expects of me."
"You will be by-and-by," Bertram answered, with confidence.
"They're queer things, these death-taboos. Sometimes people cover
their heads with filth or ashes; and sometimes they bedizen them
with crape and white streamers. In some countries, the survivors
are bound to shed so many tears, to measure, in memory of the
departed; and if they can't bring them up naturally in sufficient
quantities, they have to be beaten with rods, or pricked with
thorns, or stung with nettles, till they've filled to the last drop
the regulation bottle. In Swaziland, too, when the king dies, so
the queen told me, every family of his subjects has to lose one of
its sons or daughters, in order that they may all truly grieve at
the loss of their sovereign. I think there are more horrible and
cruel devices in the way of death-taboos and death-customs than
anything else I've met in my researches. Indeed, most of our
nomologists at home believe that all taboos originally arose out of
ancestral ghost-worship, and sprang from the craven fear of dead
kings or dead relatives. They think fetiches and gods and other
imaginary supernatural beings were all in the last resort developed
out of ghosts, hostile or friendly; and from what I see abroad, I
incline to agree with them. But this mourning superstition, now--
surely it must do a great deal of harm in poor households in
England. People who can very ill afford to throw away good dresses
must have to give them up, and get new black ones, and that often
at the very moment when they're just deprived of the aid of their
only support and bread-winner. I wonder it doesn't occur to them
that this is absolutely wrong, and that they oughtn't to prefer the
meaningless fetich to their clear moral duty."
"They're afraid of what people would say of them," Frida ventured
to interpose. "You see, we're all so frightened of breaking through
an established custom."
"Yes, I notice that always, wherever I go in England," Bertram
answered. "There's apparently no clear idea of what's right and
wrong at all, in the ethical sense, as apart from what's usual. I
was talking to a lady up in London to-day about a certain matter I
may perhaps mention to you by-and-by when occasion serves, and she
said she'd been 'always brought up to think' so-and-so. It seemed
to me a very queer substitute indeed for thinking."
"I never thought of that," Frida answered slowly. "I've said the
same thing a hundred times over myself before now; and I see how
irrational it is. But, there, Mr. Ingledew, that's why I always
like talking with you so much: you make one take such a totally new
view of things."
She looked down and was silent a minute. Her breast heaved and
fell. She was a beautiful woman, very tall and queenly. Bertram
looked at her and paused; then he went on hurriedly, just to break
the awkward silence: "And this dance at Exeter, then--I suppose you
won't go to it?"
"Oh, I CAN'T, of course," Frida answered quickly. "And my two other
nieces--Robert's side, you know--who have nothing at all to do with
my brother Tom's wife, out there in India--they'll be SO
disappointed. I was going to take them down to it. Nasty thing!
How annoying of her! She might have chosen some other time to go
and die, I'm sure, than just when she knew I wanted to go to
Exeter!"
"Well, if it would be any convenience to you," Bertram put in with
a serious face, "I'm rather busy on Wednesday; but I could manage
to take up a portmanteau to town with my dress things in the
morning, meet the girls at Paddington, and run down by the evening
express in time to go with them to the hotel you meant to stop at.
They're those two pretty blondes I met here at tea last Sunday,
aren't they?"
Frida looked at him, half-incredulous. He was very nice, she knew,
and very quaint and fresh and unsophisticated and unconventional;
but could he be really quite so ignorant of the common usages of
civilised society as to suppose it possible he could run down alone
with two young girls to stop by themselves, without even a
chaperon, at an hotel at Exeter? She gazed at him curiously.
"Oh, Mr. Ingledew," she said, "now you're really TOO ridiculous!"
Bertram coloured up like a boy. If she had been in any doubt before
as to his sincerity and simplicity, she could be so no longer. "Oh,
I forgot about the taboo," he said. "I'm so sorry I hurt you. I was
only thinking what a pity those two nice girls should be cheated
out of their expected pleasure by a silly question of pretended
mourning, where even you yourself, who have got to wear it, don't
assume that you feel the slightest tinge of sorrow. I remember now,
of course, what a lady told me in London the other day: your young
girls aren't even allowed to go out travelling alone without their
mother or brothers, in order to taboo them absolutely beforehand
for the possible husband who may some day marry them. It was a
pitiful tale. I thought it all most painful and shocking."
"But you don't mean to say," Frida cried, equally shocked and
astonished in her turn, "that you'd let young girls go out alone
anywhere with unmarried men? Goodness gracious, how dreadful!"
"Why not?" Bertram asked, with transparent simplicity.
"Why, just consider the consequences!" Frida exclaimed, with a
blush, after a moment's hesitation.
"There couldn't be ANY consequences, unless they both liked and
respected one another," Bertram answered in the most matter-of-
course voice in the world; "and if they do that, we think at home
it's nobody's business to interfere in any way with the free
expression of their individuality, in this the most sacred and
personal matter of human intercourse. It's the one point of private
conduct about which we're all at home most sensitively anxious not
to meddle, to interfere, or even to criticise. We think such
affairs should be left entirely to the hearts and consciences of
the two persons concerned, who must surely know best how they feel
towards one another. But I remember having met lots of taboos among
other barbarians, in much the same way, to preserve the mere
material purity of their women--a thing we at home wouldn't dream
of even questioning. In New Ireland, for instance, I saw poor girls
confined for four or five years in small wickerwork cages, where
they're kept in the dark, and not even allowed to set foot on the
ground on any pretext. They're shut up in these prisons when
they're about fourteen, and there they're kept, strictly tabooed,
till they're just going to be married. I went to see them myself;
it was a horrid sight. The poor creatures were confined in a dark,
close hut, without air or ventilation, in that stifling climate,
which is as unendurable from heat as this one is from cold and damp
and fogginess; and there they sat in cages, coarsely woven from
broad leaves of the pandanus trees, so that no light could enter;
for the people believed that light would kill them. No man might
see them, because it was close taboo; but at last, with great
difficulty, I persuaded the chief and the old lady who guarded them
to let them come out for a minute to look at me. A lot of beads and
cloth overcame these people's scruples; and with great reluctance
they opened the cages. But only the old woman looked; the chief was
afraid, and turned his head the other way, mumbling charms to his
fetich. Out they stole, one by one, poor souls, ashamed and
frightened, hiding their faces in their hands, thinking I was going
to hurt them or eat them--just as your nieces would do if I
proposed to-day to take them to Exeter--and a dreadful sight they
were, cramped with long sitting in one close position, and their
eyes all blinded by the glare of the sunlight after the long
darkness. I've seen women shut up in pretty much the same way in
other countries, but I never saw quite so bad a case as this of New
Ireland."
"Well, you can't say we've anything answering to that in England,"
Frida put in, looking across at him with her frank, open
countenance.
"No, not quite like that, in detail, perhaps, but pretty much the
same in general principle," Bertram answered warmly. "Your girls
here are not cooped up in actual cages, but they're confined in
barrack-schools, as like prisons as possible; and they're repressed
at every turn in every natural instinct of play or society. They
mustn't go here or they mustn't go there; they mustn't talk to this
one or to that one; they mustn't do this, or that, or the other;
their whole life is bound round, I'm told, by a closely woven web
of restrictions and restraints, which have no other object or end
in view than the interests of a purely hypothetical husband. The
Chinese cramp their women's feet to make them small and useless:
you cramp your women's brains for the self-same purpose. Even
light's excluded; for they mustn't read books that would make them
think; they mustn't be allowed to suspect the bare possibility that
the world may be otherwise than as their priests and nurses and
grandmothers tell them, though most even of your own men know it
well to be something quite different. Why, I met a girl at that
dance I went to in London the other evening, who told me she wasn't
allowed to read a book called Tess of the D'Urbervilles, that I'd
read myself, and that seemed to me one of which every young girl
and married woman in England ought to be given a copy. It was the
one true book I had seen in your country. And another girl wasn't
allowed to read another book, which I've since looked at, called
Robert Elsmere,--an ephemeral thing enough in its way, I don't
doubt, but proscribed in her case for no other reason on earth than
because it expressed some mild disbelief as to the exact literary
accuracy of those Lower Syrian pamphlets to which your priests
attach such immense importance."
"Oh, Mr. Ingledew," Frida cried, trembling, yet profoundly
interested; "if you talk like that any more, I shan't be able to
listen to you."
"There it is, you see," Bertram continued, with a little wave of
the hand. "You've been so blinded and bedimmed by being deprived of
light when a girl, that now, when you see even a very faint ray, it
dazzles you and frightens you. That mustn't be so--it needn't, I
feel confident. I shall have to teach you how to bear the light.
Your eyes, I know, are naturally strong; you were an eagle born:
you'd soon get used to it."
Frida lifted them slowly, those beautiful eyes, and met his own
with genuine pleasure.
"Do you think so?" she asked, half whispering. In some dim,
instinctive way she felt this strange man was a superior being, and
that every small crumb of praise from him was well worth meriting.
"Why, Frida, of course I do," he answered, without the least sense
of impertinence. "Do you think if I didn't I'd have taken so much
trouble to try and educate you?" For he had talked to her much in
their walks on the hillside.
Frida did not correct him for his bold application of her Christian
name, though she knew she ought to. She only looked up at him and
answered gravely--
"I certainly can't let you take my nieces to Exeter."
"I suppose not," he replied, hardly catching at her meaning. "One
of the girls at that dance the other night told me a great many
queer facts about your taboos on these domestic subjects; so I know
how stringent and how unreasoning they are. And, indeed, I found
out a little bit for myself; for there was one nice girl there, to
whom I took a very great fancy; and I was just going to kiss her as
I said good-night, when she drew back suddenly, almost as if I'd
struck her, though we'd been talking together quite confidentially
a minute before. I could see she thought I really meant to insult
her. Of course, I explained it was only what I'd have done to any
nice girl at home under similar circumstances; but she didn't seem
to believe me. And the oddest part of it all was, that all the time
we were dancing I had my arm round her waist, as all the other men
had theirs round their partners; and at home we consider it a much
greater proof of confidence and affection to be allowed to place
your arm round a lady's waist than merely to kiss her."
Frida felt the conversation was beginning to travel beyond her
ideas of propriety, so she checked its excursions by answering
gravely: "Oh, Mr. Ingledew, you don't understand our code of
morals. But I'm sure you don't find your East End young ladies so
fearfully particular?"
"They certainly haven't quite so many taboos," Bertram answered
quietly. "But that's always the way in tabooing societies. These
things are naturally worst among the chiefs and great people. I
remember when I was stopping among the Ot Danoms of Borneo, the
daughters of chiefs and great sun-descended families were shut up
at eight or ten years old, in a little cell or room, as a religious
duty, and cut off from all intercourse with the outside world for
many years together. The cell's dimly lit by a single small window,
placed high in the wall, so that the unhappy girl never sees
anybody or anything, but passes her life in almost total darkness.
She mayn't leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the
most pressing and necessary purposes. None of her family may see
her face; but a single slave woman's appointed to accompany her and
wait upon her. Long want of exercise stunts her bodily growth, and
when at last she becomes a woman, and emerges from her prison, her
complexion has grown wan and pale and waxlike. They take her out in
solemn guise and show her the sun, the sky, the land, the water,
the trees, the flowers, and tell her all their names, as if to a
newborn creature. Then a great feast is made, a poor crouching
slave is killed with a blow of the sword, and the girl is solemnly
smeared with his reeking blood, by way of initiation. But this is
only done, of course, with the daughters of wealthy and powerful
families. And I find it pretty much the same in England. In all
these matters, your poorer classes are relatively pure and simple
and natural. It's your richer and worse and more selfish classes
among whom sex-taboos are strongest and most unnatural."
Frida looked up at him a little pleadingly.
"Do you know, Mr. Ingledew," she said, in a trembling voice, "I'm
sure you don't mean it for intentional rudeness, but it sounds to
us very like it, when you speak of our taboos and compare us openly
to these dreadful savages. I'm a woman, I know; but--I don't like
to hear you speak so about my England."
The words took Bertram fairly by surprise. He was wholly
unacquainted with that rank form of provincialism which we know as
patriotism. He leaned across towards her with a look of deep pain
on his handsome face.
"Oh, Mrs. Monteith," he cried earnestly, "if YOU don't like it,
I'll never again speak of them as taboos in your presence. I didn't
dream you could object. It seems so natural to us--well--to
describe like customs by like names in every case. But if it gives
you pain--why, sooner than do that, I'd never again say a single
word while I live about an English custom!"
His face was very near hers, and he was a son of Adam, like all the
rest of us--not a being of another sphere, as Frida was sometimes
half tempted to consider him. What might next have happened he
himself hardly knew, for he was an impulsive creature, and Frida's
rich lips were full and crimson, had not Philip's arrival with the
two Miss Hardys to make up a set diverted for the moment the
nascent possibility of a leading incident.
