Upsidonia Part 5

He laughed at me. "I don't know why you should want to buy them _cheap_," he said. "But, of course, you can get what you want. Do you really mean you would like to be dressed like a rich man?"

"Yes, I should," I said. "I should like to have quite a large new wardrobe."

"I think you're splendid!" he said admiringly. "I only hope you won't regret it when you come to experience actual wealth."

"I hope not," I said modestly. "But whatever it costs me I am prepared to carry it through, and I should like to begin at once."

"Well, you might get what you want to play your part at the Stores.

Then, if you want to do the thing thoroughly, later on you can go to a good tailor and bootmaker, and so on, and have things made for you."

I said the Stores would do for the present. I was not quite clear in my mind as yet how the question of payment would work out, but it did not seem to be difficult to get hold of money in Culbut.

However, as a precautionary measure, I asked the price of the first article shown me, which was a ready-made flannel suit--dark green with a purple stripe in it, quite smart-looking.

The shopman looked at a secret mark on the label, and said: "Three pounds."

"Oh, come now!" said Perry at once. "We're not paupers, you know. You can't treat us in that way."

The man explained that the material wore exceptionally badly for that cla.s.s of goods; but to us he would make it three pounds ten.

"Not a penny less than four pounds," said Perry, and I confounded his officiousness.

"I'll pay his price," I said. "I hate haggling."

"No," said Perry. "I'm not going to see you bestowed upon. He'll have to let you pay four pounds for it."

The man said he would go and see the manager, and when he had left the counter Perry said: "Don't you give way to him. These people are always open to a bargain, although they profess to sell dear. Why, that suit would last you for ever so long! If we hadn't come in like this he would have let us pay six pounds for it."

"Do they give credit?" I asked.

"They think themselves very lucky if they're allowed to," he said, with a laugh. "I shouldn't trust them too far, if I were you; they might forget to send in their bill."[4]

"Oh, I'll see to that all right," I said. "I think I'll get a lot of things. What would happen if I didn't pay for them at all?"

"Well, you would be conferring a benefit on the shareholders of this company which they would thank you for pretty heartily. The business lost only ten per cent last year, and it used to lose twenty when it first started. This new manager is no good. You'll see, he'll give way about this."

He was right. I was allowed to owe four pounds for the flannel suit, and when I had been through all the departments, and set myself up thoroughly, with several suits, and with hats, boots, hosiery, and everything I could possibly want for some time to come, I was in debt to the Stores for something considerably over a hundred pounds. But under the circ.u.mstances that did not trouble me, and I determined to do a little more shopping on credit in Culbut, but without young Perry, who was always trying to beat things up, and telling me that I didn't need this, and could do quite well without that.

We each took a parcel, and left the rest to be forwarded to Mr. Perry's house.

As we walked on through the streets I asked Perry to point me out any people of note whom we might meet, and as I spoke he lifted his hat to a woman who pa.s.sed us.

"That is Lady Rumborough, a cousin of my mother's," he said.

I should not have picked out Lady Rumborough from a crowd as being anyone in particular, although she was a good-looking woman, and held herself well. She was dressed in a print gown, and wore a hat of plain black straw. She carried a string bag bulging with packages, and had a large lettuce under her arm.

"Is Lady Rumborough a leader of society?" I asked.

"Well, she is in a way," he said, "although she is not very poor. Lord Rumborough is a greengrocer in a fair way of business, and they hate the dirty set and all their ways."

He then explained that the dirty set was inclined to usurp the lead in the aristocratic society of Culbut. Aristocrats of extreme poverty, such as Lord Potter, belonged to it, but it was largely recruited from amongst those who were n.o.bodies by birth and had not infrequently risen from the opulent and leisured cla.s.ses. They made a parade of their poverty, and were ashamed to be thought to possess the smallest thing, even a cake of soap.

We next pa.s.sed a cheerful active young man in an old but well-cut serge suit who went by in a great hurry.

"That," said Perry, "is Albert White, the great newspaper proprietor. He has made himself a most extraordinary career."

It seemed that Mr. Albert White was the son of a man of good family, but one possessing considerable wealth. At an early age, when other young men in his position were preparing for a life of dull idleness, he decided that he would raise himself to a high position amongst the workers. He started a weekly paper which few people could read, and lost a good deal of money over it. Using this as a stepping-stone, he started other papers, each more unreadable than the last. He developed a positive genius for discovering what the people didn't want, and in a very few years had lost more than any other newspaper proprietor had dropped in a lifetime. Now he was one of the poorest men in Upsidonia, and had made his family, and many others whom he had picked out to help him, poor too.

"Others have since followed in his footsteps," said Perry, "but none have had the success that he has. His daily paper has by far the smallest circulation of any in Upsidonia. People refuse to read it in enormous numbers, and it is the worst advertising medium in journalism."

"Why?" I asked. "What is its character?"

"It is mostly written by very learned men. White does not mind how little he pays to get the right people. He makes a frank appeal to the literate, and, of course, there are fewer of them than of any cla.s.s. The odd thing is that n.o.body ever seems to have realised before what a great field for newspaper enterprise there is amongst those who _will_ have the best and nothing but it. White has taught us that you can drop more money over it, and in a shorter time, than with almost anything else."

"I suppose your learned men are amongst the poor?" I asked.

"Yes. Aren't yours?"

"We keep them fairly poor as a rule."

"It is the only possible way. The mind is of much more importance than the body, and it cannot do fullest justice to itself if it is hampered by the distractions of wealth, or clogged by luxury. For that reason, I take it, in both countries, we keep our learned men poor, and strive after what knowledge we can."

"I can't say that in my country we _all_ strive after it," I said. "We don't like to let our learned men feel that we are cutting them out."

"Ah, I think that is a mistake; but perhaps it is not a bad one. If there is one thing that our upper cla.s.ses lack, it is humility. I suppose, though, that all your people _do_ earnestly desire the best gifts in life--knowledge, high character, and so on!"

"Most of us, of course. But there are some who seem to prefer to be merely well off."

"Ah, I'm afraid that there will always be those; but I rather gather from things that you have let fall that you don't despise them quite as much as we do."

"Possibly a shade less. We are charitable in that respect."

"Then you are always ready to relieve a rich man of his wealth, I suppose?"

"There are quite a large number of people amongst us who are anxious to do so."

"My dear Howard, what a happy state of things! Your country must be a Utopia. Do you see that man over there? That is John De Montmorency, the popular actor-manager."

He pointed to a very seedy-looking unkempt man who, however, held his head high, and gazed around him as he walked for admiring looks, which he got in plenty, especially from the young girls.

"They say," said Perry, "that his dresser once pressed a crease into the trousers in which he was to play a lord, out of revenge for some slight, and he went on to the stage in them without noticing. It took him a long time to recover from the blow."

"Am I to believe," I asked when Mr. De Montmorency had pa.s.sed us, "that in Upsidonia the chief things that are desired are, as you say, high character and knowledge and poverty?"

"There can be no difficulty in believing that, can there? Those are the best things in life, and everyone naturally desires the best things.

Well, of course, poverty in itself isn't one of the best things; it is only a means to an end. Still, we are none of us perfect, and I don't deny that there are many who desire poverty for its own sake. I am interested to learn that among you there is not the fierce race for it that we have here."

"Why should anybody desire it for itself?" I asked.