VI
It was a Sunday afternoon in full July, and a small party was seated
under the spreading mulberry tree on the Monteiths' lawn. General
Claviger was of the number, that well-known constructor of
scientific frontiers in India or Africa; and so was Dean Chalmers,
the popular preacher, who had come down for the day from his London
house to deliver a sermon on behalf of the Society for Superseding
the Existing Superstitions of China and Japan by the Dying Ones of
Europe. Philip was there, too, enjoying himself thoroughly in the
midst of such good company, and so was Robert Monteith, bleak and
grim as usual, but deeply interested for the moment in dividing
metaphysical and theological cobwebs with his friend the Dean, who
as a brother Scotsman loved a good discussion better almost than
he loved a good discourse. General Claviger, for his part, was
congenially engaged in describing to Bertram his pet idea for a
campaign against the Madhi and his men, in the interior of the
Soudan. Bertram rather yawned through that technical talk; he was a
man of peace, and schemes of organised bloodshed interested him no
more than the details of a projected human sacrifice, given by a
Central African chief with native gusto, would interest an average
European gentleman. At last, however, the General happened to say
casually, "I forget the exact name of the place I mean; I think it's
Malolo; but I have a very good map of all the district at my house
down at Wanborough."
"What! Wanborough in Northamptonshire?" Bertram exclaimed with
sudden interest. "Do you really live there?"
"I'm lord of the manor," General Claviger answered, with a little
access of dignity. "The Clavigers or Clavigeros were a Spanish
family of Andalusian origin, who settled down at Wanborough under
Philip and Mary, and retained the manor, no doubt by conversion to
the Protestant side, after the accession of Elizabeth."
"That's interesting to me," Bertram answered, with his frank and
fearless truthfulness, "because my people came originally from
Wanborough before--well, before they emigrated." (Philip, listening
askance, pricked up his ears eagerly at the tell-tale phrase; after
all, then, a colonist!) "But they weren't anybody distinguished--
certainly not lords of the manor," he added hastily as the General
turned a keen eye on him. "Are there any Ingledews living now in
the Wanborough district? One likes, as a matter of scientific
heredity, to know all one can about one's ancestors, and one's
county, and one's collateral relatives."
"Well, there ARE some Ingledews just now at Wanborough," the
General answered, with some natural hesitation, surveying the tall,
handsome young man from head to foot, not without a faint touch of
soldierly approbation; "but they can hardly be your relatives,
however remote. . . . They're people in a most humble sphere of
life. Unless, indeed--well, we know the vicissitudes of families--
perhaps your ancestors and the Ingledews that I know drifted apart
a long time ago."
"Is he a cobbler?" Bertram inquired, without a trace of mauvaise
honte.
The General nodded. "Well, yes," he said politely, "that's exactly
what he is; though, as you seemed to be asking about presumed
relations, I didn't like to mention it."
"Oh, then, he's my ancestor," Bertram put in, quite pleased at the
discovery. "That is to say," he added after a curious pause, "my
ancestor's descendant. Almost all my people, a little way back, you
see, were shoe-makers or cobblers."
He said it with dignity, exactly as he might have said they were
dukes or lord chancellors; but Philip could not help pitying him,
not so much for being descended from so mean a lot, as for being
fool enough to acknowledge it on a gentleman's lawn at Brackenhurst.
Why, with manners like his, if he had not given himself away, one
might easily have taken him for a descendant of the Plantagenets.
So the General seemed to think too, for he added quickly, "But
you're very like the duke, and the duke's a Bertram. Is he also a
relative?"
The young man coloured slightly. "Ye-es," he answered, hesitating;
"but we're not very proud of the Bertram connection. They never did
much good in the world, the Bertrams. I bear the name, one may
almost say by accident, because it was handed down to me by my
grandfather Ingledew, who had Bertram blood, but was a vast deal a
better man than any other member of the Bertram family."
"I'll be seeing the duke on Wednesday," the General put in, with
marked politeness, "and I'll ask him, if you like, about your
grandfather's relationship. Who was he exactly, and what was his
connection with the present man or his predecessor?"
"Oh, don't, please," Bertram put in, half-pleadingly, it is true,
but still with that same ineffable and indefinable air of a great
gentleman that never for a moment deserted him. "The duke would
never have heard of my ancestors, I'm sure, and I particularly
don't want to be mixed up with the existing Bertrams in any way."
He was happily innocent and ignorant of the natural interpretation
the others would put upon his reticence, after the true English
manner; but still he was vaguely aware, from the silence that
ensued for a moment after he ceased, that he must have broken once
more some important taboo, or offended once more some much-revered
fetich. To get rid of the awkwardness he turned quietly to Frida.
"What do you say, Mrs. Monteith," he suggested, "to a game of
tennis?"
As bad luck would have it, he had floundered from one taboo
headlong into another. The Dean looked up, open-mouthed, with a
sharp glance of inquiry. Did Mrs. Monteith, then, permit such
frivolities on the Sunday? "You forget what day it is, I think,"
Frida interposed gently, with a look of warning.
Bertram took the hint at once. "So I did," he answered quickly.
"At home, you see, we let no man judge us of days and of weeks, and
of times and of seasons. It puzzles us so much. With us, what's
wrong to-day can never be right and proper to-morrow."
"But surely," the Dean said, bristling up, "some day is set apart
in every civilised land for religious exercises."
"Oh, no," Bertram replied, falling incautiously into the trap. "We
do right every day of the week alike,--and never do poojah of any
sort at any time."
"Then where do you come from?" the Dean asked severely, pouncing
down upon him like a hawk. "I've always understood the very lowest
savages have at least some outer form or shadow of religion."
"Yes, perhaps so; but we're not savages, either low or otherwise,"
Bertram answered cautiously, perceiving his error. "And as to your
other point, for reasons of my own, I prefer for the present not to
say where I come from. You wouldn't believe me, if I told you--as
you didn't, I saw, about my remote connection with the Duke of East
Anglia's family. And we're not accustomed, where I live, to be
disbelieved or doubted. It's perhaps the one thing that really
almost makes us lose our tempers. So, if you please, I won't go
any further at present into the debatable matter of my place of
origin."
He rose to stroll off into the gardens, having spoken all the time
in that peculiarly grave and dignified tone that seemed natural to
him whenever any one tried to question him closely. Nobody save a
churchman would have continued the discussion. But the Dean was a
churchman, and also a Scot, and he returned to the attack,
unabashed and unbaffled. "But surely, Mr. Ingledew," he said in a
persuasive voice, "your people, whoever they are, must at least
acknowledge a creator of the universe."
Bertram gazed at him fixedly. His eye was stern. "My people, sir,"
he said slowly, in very measured words, unaware that one must not
argue with a clergyman, "acknowledge and investigate every reality
they can find in the universe--and admit no phantoms. They believe
in everything that can be shown or proved to be natural and true;
but in nothing supernatural, that is to say, imaginary or non-
existent. They accept plain facts: they reject pure phantasies.
How beautiful those lilies are, Mrs. Monteith! such an exquisite
colour! Shall we go over and look at them?"
"Not just now," Frida answered, relieved at the appearance of
Martha with the tray in the distance. "Here's tea coming." She was
glad of the diversion, for she liked Bertram immensely, and she
could not help noticing how hopelessly he had been floundering all
that afternoon right into the very midst of what he himself would
have called their taboos and joss-business.
But Bertram was not well out of his troubles yet. Martha brought
the round tray--Oriental brass, finely chased with flowing Arabic
inscriptions--and laid it down on the dainty little rustic table.
Then she handed about the cups. Bertram rose to help her. "Mayn't
I do it for you?" he said, as politely as he would have said it to
a lady in her drawing-room.
"No, thank you, sir," Martha answered, turning red at the offer,
but with the imperturbable solemnity of the well-trained English
servant. She "knew her place," and resented the intrusion. But
Bertram had his own notions of politeness, too, which were not to
be lightly set aside for local class distinctions. He could not
see a pretty girl handing cups to guests without instinctively
rising from his seat to assist her. So, very much to Martha's
embarrassment, he continued to give his help in passing the cake
and the bread-and-butter. As soon as she was gone, he turned round
to Philip. "That's a very pretty girl and a very nice girl," he
said simply. "I wonder, now, as you haven't a wife, you've never
thought of marrying her."
The remark fell like a thunderbolt on the assembled group. Even
Frida was shocked. Your most open-minded woman begins to draw a
line when you touch her class prejudices in the matter of marriage,
especially with reference to her own relations. "Why, really, Mr.
Ingledew," she said, looking up at him reproachfully, "you can't
mean to say you think my brother could marry the parlour-maid!"
Bertram saw at a glance he had once more unwittingly run his head
against one of the dearest of these strange people's taboos; but he
made no retort openly. He only reflected in silence to himself how
unnatural and how wrong they would all think it at home that a
young man of Philip's age should remain nominally celibate; how
horrified they would be at the abject misery and degradation such
conduct on the part of half his caste must inevitably imply for
thousands of innocent young girls of lower station, whose lives he
now knew were remorselessly sacrificed in vile dens of tainted
London to the supposed social necessity that young men of a certain
class should marry late in a certain style, and "keep a wife in the
way she's been accustomed to." He remembered with a checked sigh
how infinitely superior they would all at home have considered that
wholesome, capable, good-looking Martha to an empty-headed and
useless young man like Philip; and he thought to himself how
completely taboo had overlaid in these people's minds every ethical
idea, how wholly it had obscured the prime necessities of healthy,
vigorous, and moral manhood. He recollected the similar though less
hideous taboos he had met with elsewhere: the castes of India, and
the horrible pollution that would result from disregarding them;
the vile Egyptian rule, by which the divine king, in order to keep
up the so-called purity of his royal and god-descended blood, must
marry his own sister, and so foully pollute with monstrous
abortions the very stock he believed himself to be preserving
intact from common or unclean influences. His mind ran back to
the strange and complicated forbidden degrees of the Australian
Blackfellows, who are divided into cross-classes, each of which
must necessarily marry into a certain other, and into that other
only, regardless of individual tastes or preferences. He remembered
the profound belief of all these people that if they were to act in
any other way than the one prescribed, some nameless misfortune or
terrible evil would surely overtake them. Yet, nowhere, he thought
to himself, had he seen any system which entailed in the end so
much misery on both sexes, though more particularly on the women,
as that system of closely tabooed marriage, founded upon a broad
basis of prostitution and infanticide, which has reached its most
appalling height of development in hypocritical and puritan
England. The ghastly levity with which all Englishmen treated this
most serious subject, and the fatal readiness with which even Frida
herself seemed to acquiesce in the most inhuman slavery ever
devised for women on the face of this earth, shocked and saddened
Bertram's profoundly moral and sympathetic nature. He could sit
there no longer to listen to their talk. He bethought him at once
of the sickening sights he had seen the evening before in a London
music-hall; of the corrupting mass of filth underneath, by which
alone this abomination of iniquity could be kept externally decent,
and this vile system of false celibacy whitened outwardly to the
eye like Oriental sepulchres: and he strolled off by himself into
the shrubbery, very heavy in heart, to hide his real feelings from
the priest and the soldier, whose coarser-grained minds could never
have understood the enthusiasm of humanity which inspired and
informed him.
Frida rose and followed him, moved by some unconscious wave of
instinctive sympathy. The four children of this world were left
together on the lawn by the rustic table, to exchange views by
themselves on the extraordinary behaviour and novel demeanour of
the mysterious Alien.
