The British Barbarians Read online

  III

  On the way to church, the Monteiths sifted out their new acquaintance.

  "Well, what do you make of him, Frida?" Philip asked, leaning back inhis place, with a luxurious air, as soon as the carriage had turned thecorner. "Lunatic or sharper?"

  Frida gave an impatient gesture with her neatly gloved hand. "For mypart," she answered without a second's hesitation, "I make him neither:I find him simply charming."

  "That's because he praised your dress," Philip replied, looking wise."Did ever you know anything so cool in your life? Was it ignorance, now,or insolence?"

  "It was perfect simplicity and naturalness," Frida answered withconfidence. "He looked at the dress, and admired it, and beingtransparently naif, he didn't see why he shouldn't say so. It wasn't atall rude, I thought--and it gave me pleasure."

  "He certainly has in some ways charming manners," Philip went on moreslowly. "He manages to impress one. If he's a madman, which I rathermore than half suspect, it's at least a gentlemanly form of madness."

  "His manners are more than merely charming," Frida answered, quiteenthusiastic, for she had taken a great fancy at first sight to themysterious stranger. "They've such absolute freedom. That's what strikesme most in them. They're like the best English aristocratic manners,without the insolence; or the freest American manners, without theroughness. He's extremely distinguished. And, oh, isn't he handsome!"

  "He IS good-looking," Philip assented grudgingly. Philip owned alooking-glass, and was therefore accustomed to a very high standard ofmanly beauty.

  As for Robert Monteith, he smiled the grim smile of the whollyunfascinated. He was a dour business man of Scotch descent, who had madehis money in palm-oil in the City of London; and having married Fridaas a remarkably fine woman, with a splendid figure, to preside at histable, he had very small sympathy with what he considered her high-flownfads and nonsensical fancies. He had seen but little of the stranger,too, having come in from his weekly stroll, or tour of inspection, roundthe garden and stables, just as they were on the very point of startingfor St. Barnabas: and his opinion of the man was in no way enhanced byFrida's enthusiasm. "As far as I'm concerned," he said, with his slowScotch drawl, inherited from his father (for though London-born andbred, he was still in all essentials a pure Caledonian)--"As far as I'mconcerned, I haven't the slightest doubt but the man's a swindler. Iwonder at you, Frida, that you should leave him alone in the house justnow, with all that silver. I stepped round before I left, and warnedMartha privately not to move from the hall till the fellow was gone, andto call up cook and James if he tried to get out of the house with anyof our property. But you never seemed to suspect him. And to supplyhim with a bag, too, to carry it all off in! Well, women are reckless!Hullo, there, policeman;--stop, Price, one moment;--I wish you'd keep aneye on my house this morning. There's a man in there I don't half likethe look of. When he drives away in a cab that my boy's going to callfor him, just see where he stops, and take care he hasn't got anythingmy servants don't know about."

  In the drawing-room, meanwhile, Bertram Ingledew was reflecting, ashe waited for the church people to clear away, how interesting theseEnglish clothes-taboos and day-taboos promised to prove, beside somesimilar customs he had met with or read of in his investigationselsewhere. He remembered how on a certain morning of the year the HighPriest of the Zapotecs was obliged to get drunk, an act which on anyother day in the calendar would have been regarded by all as a terriblesin in him. He reflected how in Guinea and Tonquin, at a particularperiod once a twelvemonth, nothing is considered wrong, and everythinglawful, so that the worst crimes and misdemeanours go unnoticed andunpunished. He smiled to think how some days are tabooed in certaincountries, so that whatever you do on them, were it only a game oftennis, is accounted wicked; while some days are periods of absolutelicence, so that whatever you do on them, were it murder itself, becomesfit and holy. To him and his people at home, of course, it was theintrinsic character of the act itself that made it right or wrong, notthe particular day or week or month on which one happened to do it. Whatwas wicked in June was wicked still in October. But not so among theunreasoning devotees of taboo, in Africa or in England. There, what wasright in May became wicked in September, and what was wrong on Sundaybecame harmless or even obligatory on Wednesday or Thursday. It was allvery hard for a rational being to understand and explain: but he meantto fathom it, all the same, to the very bottom--to find out why, forexample, in Uganda, whoever appears before the king must appear starknaked, while in England, whoever appears before the queen must wear atailor's sword or a long silk train and a headdress of ostrich-feathers;why, in Morocco, when you enter a mosque, you must take off your shoesand catch a violent cold, in order to show your respect for Allah; whilein Europe, on entering a similar religious building, you must uncoveryour head, no matter how draughty the place may be, since the deity whopresides there appears to be indifferent to the danger of consumptionor chest-diseases for his worshippers; why certain clothes or foods areprescribed in London or Paris for Sundays and Fridays, while certainothers, just equally warm or digestible or the contrary, are perfectlylawful to all the world alike on Tuesdays and Saturdays. These werethe curious questions he had come so far to investigate, for which thefakirs and dervishes of every land gave such fanciful reasons: and hesaw he would have no difficulty in picking up abundant examples of hissubject-matter everywhere in England. As the metropolis of taboo, itexhibited the phenomena in their highest evolution. The only thing thatpuzzled him was how Philip Christy, an Englishman born, and evidentlya most devout observer of the manifold taboos and juggernauts of hiscountry, should actually deny their very existence. It was one moreproof to him of the extreme caution necessary in all anthropologicalinvestigations before accepting the evidence even of well-meaningnatives on points of religious or social usage, which they are oftenquite childishly incapable of describing in rational terms to outsideinquirers. They take their own manners and customs for granted, and theycannot see them in their true relations or compare them with the similarmanners and customs of other nationalities.