The British Barbarians Page 2

  I

  The time was Saturday afternoon; the place was Surrey; the person of thedrama was Philip Christy.

  He had come down by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the worldknows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our southernsuburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that town ofvillas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, thefirst full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse-chestnut, and guelder-rose.The air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philippaused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, admiring itsilently. He was glad he lived there--so very aristocratic! What joy toglide direct, on the enchanted carpet of the South-Eastern Railway, fromthe gloom and din and bustle of Cannon Street, to the breadth and spaceand silence and exclusiveness of that upland village! For Philip Christywas a gentlemanly clerk in Her Majesty's Civil Service.

  As he stood there admiring it all with roving eyes, he was startledafter a moment by the sudden, and as it seemed to him unannouncedapparition of a man in a well-made grey tweed suit, just a yard or twoin front of him. He was aware of an intruder. To be sure, there wasnothing very remarkable at first sight either in the stranger's dress,appearance, or manner. All that Philip noticed for himself in thenewcomer's mien for the first few seconds was a certain distinct air ofsocial superiority, an innate nobility of gait and bearing. So much atleast he observed at a glance quite instinctively. But it was not thisquiet and unobtrusive tone, as of the Best Society, that surprised andastonished him; Brackenhurst prided itself, indeed, on being a mostwell-bred and distinguished neighbourhood; people of note grew asthick there as heather or whortleberries. What puzzled him more was theabstruser question, where on earth the stranger could have come fromso suddenly. Philip had glanced up the road and down the road just twominutes before, and was prepared to swear when he withdrew his eyes nota soul loomed in sight in either direction. Whence, then, could the manin the grey suit have emerged? Had he dropped from the clouds? No gateopened into the road on either side for two hundred yards or more; forBrackenhurst is one of those extremely respectable villa neighbourhoodswhere every house--an eligible family residence--stands in its owngrounds of at least six acres. Now Philip could hardly suspect that sowell dressed a man of such distinguished exterior would be guilty ofsuch a gross breach of the recognised code of Brackenhurstian manners aswas implied in the act of vaulting over a hedgerow. So he gazed in blankwonder at the suddenness of the apparition, more than half inclined tosatisfy his curiosity by inquiring of the stranger how the dickens hehad got there.

  A moment's reflection, however, sufficed to save the ingenuous young manfrom the pitfall of so serious a social solecism. It would be fatal toaccost him. For, mark you, no matter how gentlemanly and well-tailored astranger may look, you can never be sure nowadays (in these topsy-turvytimes of subversive radicalism) whether he is or is not really agentleman. That makes acquaintanceship a dangerous luxury. If you beginby talking to a man, be it ever so casually, he may desire to thrust hiscompany upon you, willy-nilly, in future; and when you have ladies ofyour family living in a place, you really CANNOT be too particular whatcompanions you pick up there, were it even in the most informal andmomentary fashion. Besides, the fellow might turn out to be one of yoursocial superiors, and not care to know you; in which case, of course,you would only be letting yourself in for a needless snubbing. In fact,in this modern England of ours, this fatherland of snobdom, one passesone's life in a see-saw of doubt, between the Scylla and Charybdis ofthose two antithetical social dangers. You are always afraid you may getto know somebody you yourself do not want to know, or may try to knowsomebody who does not want to know you.

  Guided by these truly British principles of ancestral wisdom,Philip Christy would probably never have seen anything more of thedistinguished-looking stranger had it not been for a passing accidentof muscular action, over which his control was distinctly precarious.He happened in brushing past to catch the stranger's eye. It was a clearblue eye, very deep and truthful. It somehow succeeded in riveting for asecond Philip's attention. And it was plain the stranger was less afraidof speaking than Philip himself was. For he advanced with a pleasantsmile on his open countenance, and waved one gloveless hand in a sort ofimpalpable or half-checked salute, which impressed his new acquaintanceas a vaguely polite Continental gesture. This affected Philipfavourably: the newcomer was a somebody then, and knew his place: forjust in proportion as Philip felt afraid to begin conversation himselfwith an unplaced stranger, did he respect any other man who felt soperfectly sure of his own position that he shared no such middle-classdoubts or misgivings. A duke is never afraid of accosting anybody.Philip was strengthened, therefore, in his first idea, that the manin the grey suit was a person of no small distinction in society, elsesurely he would not have come up and spoken with such engaging franknessand ease of manner.

  "I beg your pardon," the stranger said, addressing him in pure andlimpid English, which sounded to Philip like the dialect of the verybest circles, yet with some nameless difference of intonation or accentwhich certainly was not foreign, still less provincial, or Scotch, orIrish; it seemed rather like the very purest well of English undefiledPhilip had ever heard,--only, if anything, a little more so; "I begyour pardon, but I'm a stranger hereabouts, and I should be so VERY muchobliged if you could kindly direct me to any good lodgings."

  His voice and accent attracted Philip even more now he stood nearat hand than his appearance had done from a little distance. It wasimpossible, indeed, to say definitely in set terms what there was aboutthe man that made his personality and his words so charming; but fromthat very first minute, Philip freely admitted to himself that thestranger in the grey suit was a perfect gentleman. Nay, so much did hefeel it in his ingenuous way that he threw off at once his accustomedcloak of dubious reserve, and, standing still to think, answered after ashort pause, "Well, we've a great many very nice furnished houses abouthere to let, but not many lodgings. Brackenhurst's a cut above lodgings,don't you know; it's a residential quarter. But I should think MissBlake's, at Heathercliff House, would perhaps be just the sort of thingto suit you."

  "Oh, thank you," the stranger answered, with a deferential politenesswhich charmed Philip once more by its graceful expressiveness. "Andcould you kindly direct me to them? I don't know my way about at all,you see, as yet, in this country."

  "With pleasure," Philip replied, quite delighted at the chance ofsolving the mystery of where the stranger had dropped from. "I'm goingthat way myself, and can take you past her door. It's only a few steps.Then you're a stranger in England?"

  The newcomer smiled a curious self-restrained smile. He was both youngand handsome. "Yes, I'm a stranger in your England," he answered,gravely, in the tone of one who wishes to avoid an awkward discussion."In fact, an Alien. I only arrived here this very morning."

  "From the Continent?" Philip inquired, arching his eyebrows slightly.

  The stranger smiled again. "No, not from the Continent," he replied,with provoking evasiveness.

  "I thought you weren't a foreigner," Philip continued in a blandlysuggestive voice. "That is to say," he went on, after a second's pause,during which the stranger volunteered no further statement, "you speakEnglish like an Englishman."

  "Do I?" the stranger answered. "Well, I'm glad of that. It'll makeintercourse with your Englishmen so much more easy."

  By this time Philip's curiosity was thoroughly whetted. "But you're notan Englishman, you say?" he asked, with a little natural hesitation.

  "No, not exactly what you call an Englishman," the stranger replied,as if he didn't quite care for such clumsy attempts to examine hisantecedents. "As I tell you, I'm an Alien. But we always spoke Englishat home," he added with an afterthought, as if ready to vouchsafe allthe other information that lay in his power.

  "You can't be an American, I'm sure," Philip went on, unabashed, hiseagerness to solve the question at issue, once raised, getting thebetter for the moment of both reserve and politenes
s.

  "No, I'm certainly not an American," the stranger answered with a gentlecourtesy in his tone that made Philip feel ashamed of his rudeness inquestioning him.

  "Nor a Colonist?" Philip asked once more, unable to take the hint.

  "Nor a Colonist either," the Alien replied curtly. And then he relapsedinto a momentary silence which threw upon Philip the difficult task ofcontinuing the conversation.

  The member of Her Britannic Majesty's Civil Service would have givenanything just that minute to say to him frankly, "Well, if you're not anEnglishman, and you're not an American, and you're not a Colonist,and you ARE an Alien, and yet you talk English like a native, and havealways talked it, why, what in the name of goodness do you want us totake you for?" But he restrained himself with difficulty. There wassomething about the stranger that made him feel by instinct it would bemore a breach of etiquette to question him closely than to question anyone he had ever met with.

  They walked on along the road for some minutes together, the strangeradmiring all the way the golden tresses of the laburnum and the richperfume of the lilac, and talking much as he went of the quaintness andprettiness of the suburban houses. Philip thought them pretty, too(or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where thequaintness came in. Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on sorespectable a neighbourhood: for to be quaint is to be picturesque, andto be picturesque is to be old-fashioned. But the stranger's voice andmanner were so pleasant, almost so ingratiating, that Philip didnot care to differ from him on the abstract question of a qualifyingepithet. After all, there's nothing positively insulting in calling ahouse quaint, though Philip would certainly have preferred, himself, tohear the Eligible Family Residences of that Aristocratic Neighbourhooddescribed in auctioneering phrase as "imposing," "noble," "handsome," or"important-looking."

  Just before they reached Miss Blake's door, the Alien paused for asecond. He took out a loose handful of money, gold and silver together,from his trouser pocket. "One more question," he said, with thatpleasant smile on his lips, "if you'll excuse my ignorance. Which ofthese coins is a pound, now, and which is a sovereign?"

  "Why, a pound IS a sovereign, of course," Philip answered briskly,smiling the genuine British smile of unfeigned astonishment that anybodyshould be ignorant of a minor detail in the kind of life he hadalways lived among. To be sure, he would have asked himself with equalsimplicity what was the difference between a twenty-franc piece, anapoleon, and a louis, or would have debated as to the precise numericalrelation between twenty-five cents and a quarter of a dollar; but then,those are mere foreign coins, you see, which no fellow can be expectedto understand, unless he happens to have lived in the country they areused in. The others are British and necessary to salvation. Thatfeeling is instinctive in the thoroughly provincial English nature. NoEnglishman ever really grasps for himself the simple fact that Englandis a foreign country to foreigners; if strangers happen to showthemselves ignorant of any petty matter in English life, he regardstheir ignorance as silly and childish, not to be compared for a momentto his own natural unfamiliarity with the absurd practices of foreignnations.

  The Alien, indeed, seemed to have learned beforehand this curiouspeculiarity of the limited English intellect; for he blushed slightly ashe replied, "I know your currency, as a matter of arithmetic, of course:twelve pence make one shilling; twenty shillings make one pound--"

  "Of course," Philip echoed in a tone of perfect conviction; it wouldnever have occurred to him to doubt for a moment that everybody knewintuitively those beggarly elements of the inspired British monetarysystem.

  "Though they're singularly awkward units of value for any one accustomedto a decimal coinage: so unreasonable and illogical," the strangercontinued blandly, turning over the various pieces with a dubious air ofdistrust and uncertainty.

  "I BEG your pardon," Philip said, drawing himself up very stiff, andscarcely able to believe his ears (he was an official of Her BritannicMajesty's Government, and unused to such blasphemy). "Do I understandyou to say, you consider pounds, shillings, and pence UNREASONABLE?"

  He put an emphasis on the last word that might fairly have struck terrorto the stranger's breast; but somehow it did not. "Why, yes," the Alienwent on with imperturbable gentleness: "no order or principle, you know.No rational connection. A mere survival from barbaric use. A score, anda dozen. The score is one man, ten fingers and ten toes; the dozen isone man with shoes on--fingers and feet together. Twelve pence make oneshilling; twenty shillings one pound. How very confusing! And then, thenomenclature's so absurdly difficult! Which of these is half-a-crown, ifyou please, and which is a florin? and what are their respective valuesin pence and shillings?"

  Philip picked out the coins and explained them to him separately. TheAlien meanwhile received the information with evident interest, as atraveller in that vast tract that is called Abroad might note the habitsand manners of some savage tribe that dwells within its confines, andsolemnly wrapped each coin up in paper, as his instructor named it forhim, writing the designation and value outside in a peculiarly beautifuland legible hand. "It's so puzzling, you see," he said in explanation,as Philip smiled another superior and condescending British smile atthis infantile proceeding; "the currency itself has no congruity ororder: and then, even these queer unrelated coins haven't for the mostpart their values marked in words or figures upon them."

  "Everybody knows what they are," Philip answered lightly. Though for amoment, taken aback by the novelty of the idea, he almost admittedin his own mind that to people who had the misfortune to be bornforeigners, there WAS perhaps a slight initial difficulty in thisunlettered system. But then, you cannot expect England to be regulatedthroughout for the benefit of foreigners! Though, to be sure, on theone occasion when Philip had visited the Rhine and Switzerland, hehad grumbled most consumedly from Ostend to Grindelwald, at those verydecimal coins which the stranger seemed to admire so much, and hadwondered why the deuce Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland couldnot agree among themselves upon a uniform coinage; it would be so muchmore convenient to the British tourist. For the British tourist, ofcourse, is NOT a foreigner.

  On the door-step of Miss Blake's Furnished Apartments for Familiesand Gentlemen, the stranger stopped again. "One more question," heinterposed in that same suave voice, "if I'm not trespassing too muchon your time and patience. For what sort of term--by the day, month,year--does one usually take lodgings?"

  "Why, by the week, of course," Philip answered, suppressing a broadsmile of absolute surprise at the man's childish ignorance.

  "And how much shall I have to pay?" the Alien went on quietly. "Have youany fixed rule about it?"

  "Of course not," Philip answered, unable any longer to restrain hisamusement (everything in England was "of course" to Philip). "You payaccording to the sort of accommodation you require, the number of yourrooms, and the nature of the neighbourhood."

  "I see," the Alien replied, imperturbably polite, in spite of Philip'scondescending manner. "And what do I pay per room in this latitude andlongitude?"

  For twenty seconds, Philip half suspected his new acquaintance of adesire to chaff him: but as at the same time the Alien drew from hispocket a sort of combined compass and chronometer which he gravelyconsulted for his geographical bearings, Philip came to the conclusionhe must be either a seafaring man or an escaped lunatic. So he answeredhim to the point. "I should think," he said quietly, "as Miss Blake'sare extremely respectable lodgings, in a first-rate quarter, and witha splendid view, you'll probably have to pay somewhere about threeguineas."

  "Three what?" the stranger interposed, with an inquiring glance at thelittle heap of coins he still held before him.

  Philip misinterpreted his glance. "Perhaps that's too much for you," hesuggested, looking severe; for if people cannot afford to pay for decentrooms, they have no right to invade an aristocratic suburb, and bespeakthe attention of its regular residents.

  "Oh, that's not it," the Alien put in, reading hi
s tone aright. "Themoney doesn't matter to me. As long as I can get a tidy room, with sunand air, I don't mind what I pay. It's the guinea I can't quite rememberabout for the moment. I looked it up, I know, in a dictionary at home;but I'm afraid I've forgotten it. Let me see; it's twenty-one pounds tothe guinea, isn't it? Then I'm to pay about sixty-three pounds a weekfor my lodgings."

  This was the right spirit. He said it so simply, so seriously, soinnocently, that Philip was quite sure he really meant it. He wasprepared, if necessary, to pay sixty odd pounds a week in rent. Now, aman like that is the proper kind of man for a respectable neighbourhood.He'll keep a good saddle-horse, join the club, and play billiardsfreely. Philip briefly explained to him the nature of his mistake,pointing out to him that a guinea was an imaginary coin, unrepresentedin metal, but reckoned by prescription at twenty-one shillings. Thestranger received the slight correction with such perfect nonchalance,that Philip at once conceived a high opinion of his wealth and solvency,and therefore of his respectability and moral character. It was clearthat pounds and shillings were all one to him. Philip had been right,no doubt, in his first diagnosis of his queer acquaintance as a manof distinction. For wealth and distinction are practically synonyms inEngland for one and the same quality, possession of the wherewithal.

  As they parted, the stranger spoke again, still more at sea. "And arethere any special ceremonies to be gone through on taking up lodgings?"he asked quite gravely. "Any religious rites, I mean to say? Any poojahor so forth? That is," he went on, as Philip's smile broadened, "isthere any taboo to be removed or appeased before I can take up myresidence in the apartments?"

  By this time Philip was really convinced he had to do with amadman--perhaps a dangerous lunatic. So he answered rather testily, "No,certainly not; how absurd! you must see that's ridiculous. You're in acivilised country, not among Australian savages. All you'll have todo is to take the rooms and pay for them. I'm sorry I can't be ofany further use to you, but I'm pressed for time to-day. So now,good-morning."

  As for the stranger, he turned up the path through the lodging-housegarden with curious misgivings. His heart failed him. It was half-pastthree by mean solar time for that particular longitude. Then why hadthis young man said so briskly, "Good morning," at 3.30 P.M., as if onpurpose to deceive him? Was he laying a trap? Was this some wile andguile of the English medicine-men?