Upsidonia Part 16

Auntie Tricky was with Lord Hebron. And we saw them supping together at the whelk stall in Paradise Row when we were coming home."

"That will do, dear," said Lady Blueberry, with calm authority. "Lord Hebron is an old friend of Uncle Claudie's, and no doubt he had asked him to look after Auntie Tricky for the evening."

"It is a good thing, at any rate," said Edward, "that they got through the winter in their railway arch. It would not be so bad now. And I suppose they will soon be off to the strawberry fields?"

"I am not sure," said Lady Blueberry. "Tricky came to see me the other day, and told me she thought of going in for the complicated life this summer. It seems to me a perfectly insane idea. After the privations she has gone through her digestion will not stand it. But there it is! It is a new idea; others are taking it up, and, of course, Tricky must be in the movement."

"Besides," said Edward, "the complicated life, as it is practised by the dirty set, is such a sham. If they lived it seriously, as we do, year in and year out, and really did live it with all its drawbacks, they would very soon get tired of it."

"Of course they would," said Lady Blueberry. "It is not the same thing at all."

"How do they live it?" I enquired.

"They make up a party," said Lady Blueberry, "and descend upon some large house in the country, where they live a life of ease and luxury as long as it amuses them. I think myself that to play at being rich in that way is extremely immoral. It has already been known to give some of the younger people who have practised it a taste for luxury that has led them into a life of degradation. I believe young Bertie Pilliner has been quite ruined by it. I heard the other day that he had acquired a motor-car, and joined a golf club. And he used to be such a nice boy. He was in Sandpit's gang, but, of course, he had to be requested to go."

"What becomes of the people whose houses they descend upon?" I enquired.

"Do they live with them as their guests?"

Lady Blueberry laughed pleasantly. "That would not suit them at all,"

she said. "They choose their house--generally the most elaborate one they can find--and write and tell the owners that they are to leave it by a certain date. Then they take possession of it, and live just as if they were rich themselves, but, as Edward says, they suffer none of the inconveniences. They refuse to do the least little thing that the servants tell them, and as they are not among their own possessions they do not feel the burden of them. It is only because the servants like to have people they can a.s.sociate with, instead of their masters and mistresses, and the owners of the houses are glad to have somebody to consume their stores while they can go away for a holiday, that the system is possible at all."

"It is a very dangerous game to play at," said Edward, "and goes directly against all our work. If the movement spreads to any extent it will prove to be an immense temptation to those whose principles are not firmly fixed. They will see the complicated life in an entirely false aspect, and think that it is always like that, and, perhaps, even that it is preferable to the simple life. Then the very foundations of society will be undermined, and we shall have such a revolution as it makes me tremble to think of."

He spoke so earnestly that the young Lady Cynthia, who was of a sympathetic disposition, burst into tears, and implored her mother not to let Auntie Tricky lead the complicated life any more.

Lady Blueberry soothed her tenderly, and said that she would do what she could to prevent it, and soon afterwards we rose from the table.

Mrs. Perry stayed in the house to help her sister wash up, and, no doubt, to have a little intimate conversation with her; and Edward went off with apologies, to some engagement in the way of self-improvement.

The rest of us adjourned to the park, and when we had seen the children happily amusing themselves in the pony paddocks, where there were hurdles, and a little water-jump, I had the delight, which I had hoped all along might come to me, of wandering alone with Miriam through the bosky shades of that beautiful pleasance.

Miriam seemed at first a little nervous, but we soon fell into easy converse, which gradually drifted, with possibly a little urging on my part, into one of a more confidential nature. I will not repeat any of it; perhaps it is not worth repeating. I said things that come easily to the lips of any lover, and she received them with a sweet modesty that made me think them almost inspired.

It was a lovely quiet evening; the retired walks in which we strolled amongst the trees and flowers might have been deep in the country, instead of in the heart of a city; and if we met, as we did sometimes, other pairs of lovers, who had fled to these comparative solitudes, they only seemed to justify our own emotional condition. It soon became wooing in dead earnest with me, but I knew that I must not pa.s.s a certain point in my declarations until Miriam gave me to understand that I had leave to do so.

At last, when once or twice she had turned from me, twisting her handkerchief in her little ungloved hands, and pausing as if about to say something which she could not make up her mind to say, I cried: "Oh, this heavenly garden! I shall never forget walking here with you this evening as long as I live."

Then she turned towards me, and smiled and blushed and dropped her eyes again, and said: "Would you like to walk with me in _my_ garden?"

At these words I forgot all about Upsidonia, and the possibility of shocking her by accelerating its etiquette. Hang etiquette at so sweet a moment! I took her in my arms and kissed her.

And apparently etiquette was the same at this stage in Upsidonia as everywhere else. Or else she forgot all about it too.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] This park was one of the most beautiful of the many in Culbut, and of something like twenty acres in extent. It was not really a public park, although it was called so, and was kept up with public money. It was used exclusively by the inhabitants of the houses ab.u.t.ting on to it; the Ladies Susan and Cynthia might play all over it without any risk of infection, mental or physical, from rich children; and if Lord and Lady Blueberry took a walk there in the cool of the evening they would meet none but those whom it might be agreeable to them to meet.

[29] Genuine aristocrats, like the Blueberrys and the Rumboroughs, never hesitated to acquire such possessions as seemed necessary for a well-balanced life, or for legitimate pleasure. In the matter of music, all poor children were taught some instrument at first, but only those who showed considerable apt.i.tude for it were allowed to go beyond a certain point. And they were never allowed to practise at home, even where there was a piano. But on reaching the age of fourteen, if they could pa.s.s a rather stiff examination, their parents submitted to the annoyance of acquiring another piece of property, such as a piano, or a violin, for the sake of the pleasure they could gain from their children's performance.

As a consequence of these wise provisions, there were no girls to be found in Upsidonian homes, at least among the poor, who, as the result of a long and expensive education, could play one piece and three hymn tunes indifferently, and did so whenever they felt inclined.

CHAPTER XVI

I am not going to describe Miriam's garden. I will only say that of all the gardens I have ever seen, large or small, it remains in my memory as the quietest, the most retired and the most beautiful. It was not long before I asked for a key, and Miriam gave me one; and I was free of that enchanted spot, and of all the sweet intercourse it brought me.

When, on that evening, we hurried away from the comparative solitude of the park, to enfence ourselves in the complete solitude of Miriam's garden, and left Mrs. Perry and Mollie to come home by themselves, the only excuse that we could offer was the true one. Before the evening was out it was known to all the occupants of Magnolia Hall that Miriam had asked me into her garden.

Dear Mrs. Perry smiled on us and kissed us both. She was an unworldly woman, and only desired her daughter's happiness. Mollie showed a gratifying excitement at the unexpected news; Tom eyed me rather suspiciously, and, while not witholding his congratulations, said enigmatically that it was my white flannel suit, but he supposed he should get used to it in time. Edward expressed some doubts. I had to have it out with Edward. But that was later. When he came home that night I had already interviewed Mr. Perry.

Mr. Perry was as kind as possible, but, as was only natural, wanted to know something about my circ.u.mstances.

"You are aware," he said, "of the great work in which my life is spent.

I am not able to do as much for my daughters as I should look to doing, if I lived as my neighbours do. But I will do what I can. You shall allow me three hundred pounds a year, and I will get rid of it as best I can. At five per cent interest, that would be tantamount to a settlement of six thousand pounds; and I should charge my estate with it, so that you would not suffer in the event of my death."

I thanked him suitably, and, gathering my wits about me, offered to settle upon Miriam Mr. Brummer's U. O. Me for two hundred and thirty-four pounds, and my account with the Universal Stores of a hundred pounds odd.

"I am sorry to say that those are the only debts I have in the world," I said, "but on the other hand I do not earn much money."

"Excuse my asking the question," said Mr. Perry diffidently, "but what is your occupation?"

"I will make a clean breast of it to you," I said. "I am a University Extension lecturer, and am also employed in editing educational works."

"A very honourable occupation," said Mr. Perry. "A scholar is always a respectable person, and his calling is not a lucrative one."

"I hope," I said, "that there will never be any doubt about my being able to support Miriam in the poor way in which a daughter of yours ought to live."

Mr. Perry sighed pensively. "I will not deny," he said, "that I should have liked a larger settlement. I have already sacrificed one daughter to my pa.s.sion for the amelioration of mankind, and although Herman Eppstein's character is irreproachable I suffer somewhat from the remarks of my friends as to that marriage. I should have liked Miriam to make what the world calls a good match, and to be placed beyond all risk of wealth. Still, with what I can do for you, you will start your married life in embarra.s.sed circ.u.mstances, and we must hope that no unforeseen accidents will occur. If you keep to your comparatively ill-paid work, and avoid the temptation that so many young men fall into, of trying to get poor quick, all will go well. It is something, at any rate, to have a daughter marrying into a Highland family, and my friends can hardly reproach me with another misalliance in that respect."

He said this with an agreeable smile, and I left him, feeling that I had got through the interview more easily than I could have hoped for.

I had the congratulations of Lord Arthur. He himself was in the stage of walking out, or rather of walking in her garden, with a house-maid from a neighbouring establishment--one of the prettiest of the debutantes of the season--and was inclined towards sympathy with my state of mind. He said that the earlier a fellow settled down in life the better it was for him, and directly he and his fiancee could find a situation as butler and housekeeper to an amenable married couple without enc.u.mbrances, their wedding would take place. He talked more about his own love affair than about mine, and made it plain--although I am sure that he did not intend to--that my engagement was but a moderate affair beside his. His father was a Marquis, and would largely decrease his younger son's allowance upon his marriage; and his prospective father-in-law was a Dean of aristocratic lineage, who was prepared to settle on his daughter the whole debt for repairing the West front of his cathedral.

Edward's att.i.tude was a mixture of pleasure and anxiety. He said he liked me personally, and there was no one to whom he would rather see his sister married if he saw no difficulties in the way. "You won't tell us where you come from," he said rather peevishly. "No one can call me curious about my neighbours' affairs--I have far too many and important ones of my own to occupy me--but if you are going to marry my sister I _should_ like to know something more about you. How _did_ you come here?

If you walked from the Highlands, you couldn't have come into Culbut on the side on which my father first saw you."

"I have already told you how I came," I said. "I walked over the moors, and came through an underground pa.s.sage into the wood where your father found me. I don't profess to understand it; but that is exactly how it happened."

He looked at me suspiciously. "My dear fellow," he said, "you are playing with me. My father found you asleep in a little copse that you have to pa.s.s through to get to the Female Penitentiary, which he was visiting that afternoon. Beyond that there is at least a mile of suburb; it is on the high-road to the town of Somersault, and the country is well populated all the way."

"I am not surprised to hear it," I said. "I told you that I did not understand what had happened. But I have given you the facts as I remember them."

"Then it is very plain," said Edward, "that you must have suffered in your brain, and have escaped from some lunatic asylum. Your behaviour when we first met would seem to point to that; and the wildness of the ideas which you disclosed to me was more like what one would expect to exist in the brain of a maniac than anything else. I think it is very likely that you do come from the Highlands; or why should you have mentioned that region at all? Your appearance is good, and it is evident that you have come from some place where you have filled a position of dignity."

"I am glad that it strikes you like that," I said. "But I don't feel in the least like a lunatic. In fact, I am quite sure that I am as sane as you are."

"I think you are, _now_," said Edward; "and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't remain so. If that is really the solution of your eccentricities, then all my difficulties are done away with, and I can welcome you, my dear fellow, cordially as a brother-in-law."