Upsidonia Part 14

"And you don't know anything about my lady's garden, either," said Edward, leaning forward to address me across his sister. "I suppose you hardly understand what we have been talking about?"

"I have gathered something of what it means," I said, glad to be able to avow my ignorance, for Miriam's benefit, "but I didn't know before. I suppose if a lady asks a man into her garden, it means that she--she likes him?"

"She would not do it," said Mrs. Perry, "unless he had first shown that he liked _her_, and would be glad to have the invitation."

"Rather a delicate subject for conversation at the dinner-table, isn't it?" put in Mr. Blother, from the carving-table, where he was slicing the salmon. "Why not let the men explain it when the ladies have left the room?"

This suggestion was acceded to, and we talked on other subjects as long as the ladies were with us.

Mrs. Eppstein seemed anxious that I should understand that, although she had married beneath her, she had not done it for fun, so to speak. She talked a great deal about lifting the richer cla.s.ses, and her husband seemed quite to fall in with her views upon the subject. I noticed that as dinner progressed he drank considerably more wine than Edward did, though not so much as Mr. Perry, and was inclined to take a larger share in the conversation than at the beginning.

The subject of the servants[25] was introduced over dessert, and Eppstein waxed eloquent and indignant at being expected to give up the use of his library after dinner, because the house-maid was reading up for matriculation at the Culbut University, and wanted a quiet room to work in.

"Well, of course, we _can_ sit in the drawing-room," said Mrs. Eppstein.

"I don't mind that so much. But what I really had to put down my foot about the other day was the new parlour-maid objecting to Herman and me talking together at meals. I said, 'It may be quite reasonable to impose silence upon the usual rich and vulgar family, but I should never think of submitting to such a rule myself.' And then she had the impudence to say that she didn't mind _my_ talking, and I could talk to her if I liked, but the master's accent was so disagreeable that it unfitted her for her work. I told her that my husband and I were one, and that if I could put up with it _she_ could."

"Domestic servants are not what they were," said Mrs. Perry. "There used to be something like friends.h.i.+p between them and their mistresses. I know many ladies, who went out to service as girls, who still visit their old mistresses, and even ask them to their own houses. But that kindly feeling is getting rare nowadays. I do not think it is all the fault of the mistresses, either, although with the spread of education, they are certainly getting very uppish."

"I think that it is entirely the fault of the servants," said Edward.

"The rich are not content now to be mere drudges, and to spend their lives on being waited on hand and foot. And it is not right that they should be. Servants are really a parasitical cla.s.s, and it is unfair that the burden of providing them with work should be put upon the rich, when they are so over-burdened already with having to consume more than their fair share of the produce of the country."

"There'll be a strike some day," said Eppstein rather excitedly. "You mark my words. If the rich was to combine together and say they wouldn't eat no more than they wanted to, and all was to agree to chuck the food they didn't want away, p'raps the poor would think twice about piling it up on them."

"That would be a serious day for the country," said Mr. Perry. "We must work by legitimate means, not anarchy. The solution of the problem of over-production can only come, I feel sure, by more individual members of the community sympathising with the rich, and sharing their lives, as we try to do here. It is not easy, I know. I have spent my own time in a humble endeavour to lead the way, but sometimes I am rather inclined to sink under the burden. I have my moments of dejection. There are times when I feel as if I positively cannot face the prospect of another rich meal."

He sat at the foot of the table with his s.h.i.+rt-front crumpled and eyes slightly glazed, and it was not difficult to believe that this was one of the moments he had so feelingly alluded to, in which his philanthropic efforts sat heavily on him.

But Edward, who had been as abstemious as had been permitted him, leant forward and put his hand on his father's. "Cheer up, dad," he said. "You are doing a n.o.ble work; you must not faint under it."

"I do feel rather faint," said Mr. Perry. "I wish Blother would bring the brandy."

The ladies left us at this point, and Edward, who was in a mood of harangue, went into this question of food, which counted for so much in the economic problems of Upsidonia.

"You see, it must all come down to that in the end," he said.

"Agricultural and pastoral pursuits are so much sought after that the over-production of food is the most serious item in the general over-production of the country. The cry of 'back to the towns' is all very well, but people won't live in artificial surroundings if they have once tasted the pleasure and excitement of hard bodily toil; and you can't make them."

"Well, you wouldn't like it yourself for long," said Eppstein, "not if you know when you're well off. 'Ow did you get 'ere from the 'Ighlands?

Walk? Tell us abaht it."

"We were going to tell Howard about my lady's garden," said Edward. "You see, Howard, in the country there is room for everybody, and the young men and young girls can go courting in a natural way, in lanes with briar hedges and nightingales and the moon, and all that sort of thing.

They can secure the necessary privacy. But in towns there is so little privacy. It is the one thing in which the rich are really better off than the poor, because they have large houses and gardens of their own."

"Which seem to belong more to their servants than to them," I said.

"Well, of course, the servants have to be considered. I am not an extremist, and I do not advocate, as some do, that property should carry no disadvantages other than those obviously inherent in it. If the rich, for instance, were allowed to surround themselves with the gracious things of life--s.p.a.ce, freedom, flowers, art, leisure for study and self-improvement--without the checks that a wise State has imposed upon the abuse of those things, the incentive to break loose from the bonds of property would be lessened. Don't you agree with me, Herman?"

"It's a bore, sometimes, to 'ave to eat too much," Eppstein corroborated him.

"Quite so!" said Mr. Perry, awakening suddenly out of a species of trance. "Quite so, Herman! Then why eat too much? I ask you--_why_ eat too much?"

"'Cos the State makes you," said Eppstein.

"Ah!" said Mr. Perry, wagging his head with an expression of deep wisdom. "But now you're talking politics." He then relapsed into his former air of aloofness.

"Well, to come back to my lady's garden," said Edward. "It is generally acknowledged that it is a good thing for young girls to be alone sometimes, and in beautiful surroundings, so that they may feed their minds on beautiful thoughts. So every girl in the towns, when she reaches a certain age, has a garden of her own given to her, which she has to look after entirely herself. She can retire into it whenever she pleases, and n.o.body may break in on her privacy. When she accepts the attentions of a man, she invites him into her garden, and if the intimacy between them stands the test, by and by he asks her for a key.

If she consents to give him one, he has the right to enter her garden whenever he pleases."

"A very pretty notion," I said, thinking all the time how dreadfully forward I must have seemed to Miriam in asking her to show me the garden--which she must naturally have taken to mean _her_ garden--after about an hour's acquaintance, and wondering how soon I could get her to ask me to see it of her own accord.

Eppstein laughed rather vulgarly. "You should see the old maids standing with their garden gates wide open," he said.

"Oh, not all of them, Herman," expostulated Edward. "And some of the old maids' gardens are as beautifully kept as any young girl's, and it is quite a privilege to be invited into them. You are not expected to ask for a key, and if you did they wouldn't give you one."

"Oh, wouldn't they!" exclaimed Eppstein. "You try, my boy. Now look 'ere, I'll tell you. When I was courtin' Amelia----"

But he did not continue his reminiscences, for Mr. Perry, suddenly emerging from his gloomy trance, sang with a happy smile:

"When I married A-me-li-ar, Rum-ti tumti tum,"--and then laughed consumedly.

We all shared in his hilarity, and when he had relapsed once more into his solemn and even dejected mood, with the same suddenness as he had emerged from it, I asked: "Do they give up their gardens when they marry?"

"Seldom at once," said Edward. "They need not give them up at all, and there are cases of old men and women still keeping up the gardens in which they first made love to one another, and retiring to them frequently. But in practice they are generally given up within a year or so. They haven't the time to look after them."

At this point Mr. Perry said that he felt rather giddy. He thought he had done rather too much during the day, and would be better in bed. So Mr. Blother was summoned to help him upstairs, and we went into the drawing-room without him.

We talked, and Miriam played to us. It was delightful to sit by the open window, looking out on to the lovely garden, which lay mysterious under a sky of spangled velvet, and listen to the sweet music she made.

By and by I felt that I did not want to talk any more, and fortunately I was left to myself for a time, where I could see the garden, and by turning my head could also see Miriam, her fair hair irradiated by the shaded lamp that stood by the piano.

Soft thoughts began to steal over me--very soft thoughts, and very sweet ones. I thought how delightful it would be to sit every evening like this and listen to Miriam playing; and still more delightful if there should come a time when she would shut the piano and come across the room and put her hand on my shoulder, and look out on to the moonlight lawn and the dark shrubs and the starry sky with me; and neither of us would want to speak, but only to feel that the other was there.

And the night before I had spent in prison, and had not even known that there was such a girl as Miriam!

FOOTNOTES:

[24] They possessed all the Greek and Latin Cla.s.sics in Upsidonia, but had not learnt to treat them as living languages. Their greatest scholars had decided that although they were made up of words, or what looked like words, they had not, and never had had, any consecutive meaning. At one time a school had arisen which held them to be mathematical symbols, and a certain Professor Pottinger had claimed to have proved that they referred to the movements of the heavenly bodies.

He had predicted, out of Propertius, the arrival of a hitherto unknown comet, but the comet had failed to make its appearance, and the influence of his school had dwindled.

Another advanced school, led by a Professor of a Highland University, taught that the words did have an actual meaning. By picking out all those that are known to-day, such as "omnibus," "miles," "tandem,"

"[Greek: hekista]," and the like, and rearranging them, this school professed to have translated a good deal. But as each student rearranged them differently, the results were not altogether satisfactory, even to themselves.

I was told of a don in the University of Culbut who had been struck with the number of words which did not seem to correspond with any p.r.o.nunciation, however corrupt, with which Upsidonians were acquainted; and who even went so far as to say that cla.s.sical words that were not known might not be those words themselves, but symbolical, as it were, of quite different words. The word "hoc," for instance, he did not believe to be a mis-spelling of the wine of that name, or even to stand for "hook," as some scholars maintained. And there had always been a dispute as to whether the word "et," which occurred so frequently in both languages, should be read as "ate," or as "Et," with a capital, short for "Etta," or "Henrietta." This man boldly proclaimed that it was neither, but from the frequency of its occurrence, was probably intended to represent the word "and." He was, however, unable to explain why people who wished to write "and" should prefer to write "et"; and although his views had aroused some interest in learned circles, he was commonly regarded as a crank.

The great ma.s.s of Upsidonian cla.s.sical scholars were content to employ themselves usefully in examining the different collocations of words in various authors, and in the schools a great deal was learnt by heart.

The cla.s.sics were considered a most valuable exercise of the faculties, and the conservative teachers and men of learning held that it would be a thousand pities to drop them, simply because they did not help the learner to lose money.

[25] This was a favourite subject of conversation with ladies in Upsidonia.